St. John's and Capelle's

From the time I was 6 years old I attended St. John the Evangelist grade school, with the exception of 7th grade (another story altogether).

St. John's was built along the lines of Spanish missions, with red clay tile roofs and ochre stone walls on the school, possibly limestone. The church itself had grey stone walls though. We were taught by Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondolet. Our sisters lived behind the school. In between the school and the church was a square house where Monsignor lived. Looking back it seems odd that they chose Spanish style architecture, since this was the "French" parish. The Irish Parish was across the river, St. Patrick's, and Sts. Peter and Paul was for some other ethnic group.

Each classroom had ceilings that may have been more than 12 feet in height. When I gazed out the tall windows I could watch the trees, the birds and the sky. The interior hallway was dim, and faced with glazed tilework. the four lower grades were on the first floor as I recall, and the four upper grades upstairs.

Boys and girls were segregated. The boys sat on one side of the classrooms and the girls on another. We girls were sent to the back of the school for recess, to a blacktop space where we could play "Red Rover Come Over", or "Dodge Ball" or jump rope.

The boys had an entire small block to play in, across the street from the school. They could play football or softball, and their play space had grass and dirt to run around on. It was four times the size of the girls' space.

Every morning, we attended 8:00 AM Mass with the sisters. We had fasted from midnight on, as was the rule in Catholicism at that time, so that we could take communion. Naturally, after Mass, we ran over to Capelle's store, which was across the street to the side of the church, to buy "Long Johns". Long Johns were rectangular raised doughnuts with white or chocolate frosting on top. They frequently had bubbles on the top of the crust, and they were delectable. Capelle's also had bearclaws, doughnuts, cinnamon rolls, and if I remember correctly, caramel rolls.

Alongside the baked goods, they offered candy. Square Pan pipes made of orange wax, wax lips, wax buck teeth, candy dots on long strips of white paper, stick candy in many flavors, licorice whips and other delights. One of my favorites was the "flapjack", which was a huge sucker with swirled colors that would look good on a tie-dyed tee shirt. It was flavored with lemon, and had a texture that was in between hard candy and chewy candy. mmmmmmmmmmmmm

Of course they had candy cigarettes, tootsie rolls, bit-o-honeys and rootbeer barrels. With this sort of breakfast, I do not know how we made it to lunch without low blood sugar and depression.