A Brief Moment in Time When Nothing You Had Done Before Seemed Important or Relevant.

Here is an except from my book, The Brown and White, which is Copyright by Sporting Chance Press: 

Perhaps you can remember  a brief moment in time when nothing you had done before seemed important or relevant. Perhaps you can remember a time when you were aware of every sound, every image and every smell around you. Perhaps you can remember a time when you felt your entire body tense like a wild animal sensing a life and death struggle about to occur. If you could weave all these feelings into one, then you can understand how we felt that first Friday afternoon on the Brown and White. That Friday night was the school's first football game and for the upperclassmen, it was time for their ticket-checking ritual.

After the bus was on its way for about fifteen minutes and pulling out of the most dangerous neighborhood in the world, a team of upperclassmen came forward. Perry Houlan, a big lanky guy with dark short cropped hair, a pug nose and a face full of pimples spoke for the upperclassmen.

"Ok all you freshmen need to pull out your football tickets. This is an official ticket check and no excuses are taken. So dig into your pockets and let's see 'em!"

The first kid, John Riley, a little nerdy freckle faced red haired kid squirmed nervously in his seat and began to plead with Houlan.

"I was going to buy my ticket at the gate tonight. I didn’t have the money today to buy my ticket and lunch. Gimme a break."

Before Riley could get another word out he was pulled out of his seat and thrown to the back of the bus to the howls of the mob that awaited him. The bus rocked sideways as the weight shifted from one side to the other. Riley was pounced on by a gang of upperclassmen. Bloodcurdling screams came from the little freshman followed by menacing howls of the boys in the back of the bus. In a flash, the older boys pulled up Riley's shirt and grabbed the elastic waist band of his underwear and began pulling towards the roof of the bus. Riley's underwear was no match for his weight and it was immediately shredded into several pieces. Riley had been “webbed.”

More Freshmen who did not have tickets were sent to the back of the bus one by one. The terrorist upperclassmen pounced on the high school Lilliputians and grabbed their “wares” (underwear) one right after another. If the underwear was strong, the underclassman would actually bounce a few times and hit his head on the ceiling before the wares would finally rip and come off in the hands of the menacing upperclassmen.

The sheer terror we felt that day was incredible, but through it all we began to laugh about it as we saw some of our compatriots come back to their seats apparently no “worse for the wear."

After the entire underclassmen were checked for tickets and those without summarily "webbed", the pieces of underwear were collected. The shreds were passed on to the upperclassmen in window seats who waited until we passed a particular intersection on 95th Street that was always populated with a large number of Catholic girls on their way home from the Saint Ann’s, an all-girls’ school, that attracted many of the southwest side girls. The remnants were tossed to the girls with some appropriate ceremony and pronouncement.

“Here you go girls, we wanted to give you a ticker-tape parade.” Or, “here’s some “holey” relics for you girls.”

Since I was determined that I was not going to experience the "Webbing Ceremony" and had been tipped off beforehand, I faithfully bought my football tickets. However, the next Friday the upperclassmen decided that every freshman was going to get webbed.

All at once a gang of upperclassmen came to the front of the bus and we were all summarily hurdled to the back of the bus to insure that we all participated in the ritual at least once. I was pushed towards the back of the bus feeling as if I was in suspended animation. I could see dozens of arms and hands come after my underwear all at once. I was so nervous I did not notice that I was being scratched as my underwear began to disintegrate before my eyes. I was glad to see my own personal wares were torn up so badly that no one could really tell whether they were completely clean. I could only imagine what might happen if the upperclassmen had pulled out a handful of brown-stained wares from someone.

Unfortunately, my friend Hanni, who was pushed down the aisle just after me, was wearing boxer shorts with little red triangles that menacing Friday. As the hands from Hell began to grope wildly at his waist, a loud hoot was sounded in the melee. After bouncing from one side of the bus to the other and up and down for what seemed like dozens of time, his boxers finally tore in half with one section going to a group on his left and the second going to a group on his right. The upperclassmen quickly made a couple flags from the rags and waved them out the window for most of the trip that night. Poor Hanni was one sore freshman.

The webbing initiation rite was one that all those who rode the brown and white remember until the day they die. It was a high school bungee jump. Once you experienced it, you felt like you had somehow matured immeasurably. Once you had the underwear torn out from under you, a lot of the other crap you experienced seemed minor by comparison. You were ready for most anything.

On that Friday night when all the freshmen were webbed, we were numbed by the experience. It seemed like the bus sailed in slow motion to the famous intersection on 95th where the Saint Ann’s High School girls waited for public busses in large groups. At the sight of the girls, we woke from the shock and our hormones kicked in. We all congregated to one side of the bus to see the girls and as usual the bus tipped to the one side. The windows came down with a metallic bang and we could see the record-breaking amount of shredded underwear fly out the windows like confetti. Hanni’s red triangles floated down on one plaid skirted girl with braces. The poor girl’s mouth was open and a shred of cloth caught on the metal and hung over her lower lip. She swatted it off like it was a fly and gave us all a stern look and shook her fist up at the bus.

I turned to Hanni and pointed at the girl who was sneering at us.

“She doesn’t like your confetti, Hanni and by the look of her, she’d probably doesn’t like much of anything. She’d be a good teacher,” I joked.

“No,” said Hanni, “I’d say she’ll work for the park district, one of those snotty people who hand out the balls and bats―making you sign in blood for ‘em.”

Toward the back of the bus we heard an upper classman say, “Hey, I know that girl―she is the girl friend of one of the football players, Jim Duggan.” The bus grew quiet for a few seconds as all the heads turned around and around as if turrets on a tank to see if Duggan was present. As soon as it was determined that Duggan was not present, conversation continued. Dollar, who was sitting in front of Hanni and I, said in a husky voice, “It doesn’t matter whoever she is dating, she is still a b#*@h.”

I shook my head in disbelief at Dollar’s statement. “The man must have a death wish, “ I whispered to Hanni. Duggan’s girlfriend was no great beauty, but Duggan was a big ugly lineman, who must have outweighed Dollar by a hundred pounds. “It’ll catch up to Dollar,” I said.

Some of the other girls who received the confetti snow fall look annoyed with their lips forming the words “gross” or “yuck,” but most of them just looked up and laughed. Most of the girls did not take us too seriously. If nothing else, the Brown and White was great entertainment.

As the bus pulled away from the High School girls, I looked up at the large review mirror that hung over our elfin bus driver’s head. The old boy Willie had his famous nearly toothless grin going strong. He didn’t say anything, but you could tell that he was proud of us and happy that another class had withstood the web ceremony on his old Brown and White.

We had our little tickertape parade honoring the beauty of Catholic high school girls and we celebrated our coming of age at the same time. I thanked God that my older sisters who had graced that same corner may years previously had graduated long before my days at Mount St. Mary’s. I was also thankful that my little sister was a few years behind me at Saint Sean’s and was not yet there.

Copyright 2016, Lawrence M. Norris

Amazon Description of The Brown and White.

Our Brown and White Experiences by Lawrence Norris

The Brown and White by Lawrence Norris is a fictionalized memoir that tells the story of Collin Callaghan's freshman year at a Chicago Catholic High School.  The book was written over decades as I grew from a young man and went through various stages of fatherhood and life.  I suppose it might be a little too rough for some sensibilities, but I think it's rather mild compared to most everything that is out there today. 

Writing a memoir, even fictionalized, is a little dangerous, because if people don't like it, you might just feel like your life was not interesting enough for readers.  That can leave you in a bad spot or maybe give a sense of depression.  I don't worry about that too much, because much of the action in the book was created by those around me.  I was the quiet guy who sat around in class and recorded in my own mind what was going on and then wrote about long afterward. 

Catholic schools had different personalities and back when I went to high school, the schools and their teachers had to be a lot tougher than the kids who came to school.  Many of the dads had fought in World War II and they were raising kids who could take a little punishment and keep coming back for more lessons. The teachers were in many cases from the same school of "child development." They wanted a better world for us, but they were not about to skip out on lessons. And the moms were very important as well, if not more important because they were around a lot more. 

Our school based a lot on the methods that had worked in past.  Although there were many changes starting to shape a new society around us, both the school and our families clung to what they knew with both hands. 

The Brown and White is a difficult book describe and write about. It has a serious setting, life in Chicago in a racially charged city with changes knocking on our door, but high school back then was mostly about humor. Even our punishments were delivered and accepted with humor. We were wanted "everything to be relevant" in those days, so it could be a little scary at times, but our families staid the course. 

As it turns out, there were many changes, but we have progressed and we came out the other side and survived. My classmates went on to raise families and contribute to society in their own ways. And the experiences we had from the Brown and White helped us along.

The Brown and White and My Latin Teacher

The Brown and White is a fictionalized memoir that tells the story of Collin Callaghan's freshman year at a Chicago Catholic High School.  Collin is a white boy who is living in turbulent times in a changing city. He clings to his neighborhood and his family as he heads out each day with his classmates on the Brown and White, the ancient school bus driven by free-spirited Willie.  Memorable characters abound as the right of passage unfolds. The story is also about Collin's lovable family, especially his Irish Catholic policeman father and his Irish immigrant mother (from Scotland--you'll have to read the book) who blazes her own trail through the 60s.

Available on Amazon. Here's a passage from the book:

The school’s mission was established decades before my class ever saw the old brick buildings. MSN  had a reputation for taking all kinds of kids and making something out of them. It was a “no child left behind” or in the case of problem students a “no child left with a behind” philosophy. Most educators today would say that the methods used were certainly primitive by modern standards. Most MSM teachers had their own unique creative method of cruel and unusual punishment to foster discipline. It seemed to us that they dealt corporal punishment out unmercifully. But, for us, taking such medicine was a test of manhood that we were certainly willing to take...

Father Franz Stroussel was the Freshman Latin Teacher and although he was old and sickly, he was an institution at Mount Saint Mary's. A larger than life figure, Father Stroussel had taught students' fathers, uncles and older brothers. He was a tough old German priest who wore the full cassock or long brown robe worn by the more traditional minded Mount Saint Mary priests.

In grade school when the boys had an older nun for a teacher, some of the kids would victimize the poor lady to distraction. There were famous incidents in our grade school where the harassed teacher would leave the room in distress and return with an aspergillum, which is a device that the priest holds to sprinkle holy water to the congregation at times. She would stand at the front of the room and flail away with the device desperate to try to exorcise the demons present. Despite his advanced age, this was not going to happen with Father Franz. He knew his place as master of the class and he was going to make sure we understood ours.

Latin is a dead language, and the reason why it’s a dead language is not because it is no longer spoken, but because it is difficult and most current schools reserve the difficult for Math and Science, not language. In Latin, every word can have many different endings depending upon how it is used in a sentence. Such things as declensions and verb conjugations all must be understood and remembered. Working with Latin successfully means you must master a moving target of verb and noun endings along with grammar and vocabulary.

Before getting to the difficult study of Latin, Father Franz would begin each class with a lecture on his own personal beliefs. From Father Franz we learned that shoes and a good haircut made the man. The more ethnic you were, the more he liked you and that family was all-important. So if you never shined your shoes, your hair was a little long, you had a common American name and he didn't know anyone with your last name from the annals of Mount St Mary past, you were in trouble. On the other hand, if your name was O'Shannon or Flipovich, you had slick close cropped hair, a good pair of shoes and a father that he taught 30 years ago, you were in great shape.

Father Franz had a stout round dowel of wood that looked something like a drumstick that he kept with him at all times. He told us this was the "good wood" and he used it to emphasize points to our posteriors. He spoke with a slight German accent in a calm nasally tone.

His class consisted of constant quizzes on vocabulary and going over our translation homework on the black board. If you were having a difficult time with your board work, Father would come up behind you, grip your pants and pull them high ala a “wedgie” and then give you a few good whacks on the backside. For onlookers it was a very comedic sight, but for those who felt the good wood -- well, you got the message although it was not rip-roaring pain.

I struggled with Latin and although I loved the subject, it didn't come easy and I dreaded Father Franz's class. He was not the same teacher that he had been in his prime and at times he lost his composure. One day while I was at the board, I made a great error in a translation. The good priest tried to straighten my Latin translation out, gave up and then let the good wood do its work. I nervously smirked when he was administering the punishment and he got very angry at me. He dropped the good wood and slapped me a few times for good measure saying: "Here’s something to tell your grandmother!" In most of the classes if a teacher whacked you, it was something of a badge of courage to have survived it. That was not the case with Father Franz – most of us who got whacked were more concerned about the old boy’s stamina than about our posteriors. Father Franz gave us a sense of what the old days may have been like decades before we came to Saint Mary’s. Like other experiences, we took it in and processed it as part of the whole Mount Saint Mary education. 

Copyright 2017, Sporting Chance Press

The Best Story I Could Write: A Great Commuter Read

If you went to a Catholic High School and you have train or bus commute, I have a great book for you: The Brown and White. 

The Brown and White is a fictionalized memoir that tells the story of Collin Callaghan's freshman year at a Chicago Catholic High School.  Collin is a white boy who is living in turbulent times in a changing city. He clings to his neighborhood and his family as he heads out each day with his classmates on the Brown and White, the ancient school bus driven by free-spirited Willie.  

Memorable characters abound as the right of passage unfolds. The story is also about Collin's lovable family, especially his Irish Catholic policeman father and his Irish immigrant mother (from Scotland--you'll have to read the book) who blazes her own trail through the 60s.

What else can I say, it's the best story I could write!

Available on Amazon. 

The Brown and White: A Book that Can Stir a Smile

Holiday shoppers take some worry off you mind and order a couple dozen copies of The Brown and White for everyone on you list! Send your request directly to me (lmj.norris@gmail.com) and I'll sign them and ship them myself along with an invoice. 

Forty plus years in the making, The Brown and White is a fictionalized memoir that tells the story of Collin Callaghan's freshman year at a Chicago Catholic High School. And the book begins about this time of year as Collin is heading off to school. 

Lawrence Norris, The Brown and White

Collin living in turbulent times in a changing city. He clings to his neighborhood and his family as he heads out each day with his classmates on the Brown and White, the ancient school bus driven by free-spirited Willie. Memorable characters abound as this story unfolds. Collin's lovable family, especially his Irish Catholic policeman father and his immigrant mother face life together. Collin and classmates blaze their own humorous and passionate trail through the late 1960s. A unique cast of terrific teachers are there to see the boys through. Laughs and life meet readers head on as they travel on the Brown and White.

Whether it brings back memories of their own high school days that stirs a smile or they just find some of the situations funny, I think readers will like The Brown and White. 

Meaning of Beaver Hunting

A lot of nicknames or slang came out of WWII. Our bus driver on the Brown and White School bus that we rode in Chicago used the word "beaver" to announce there was a girl driving towards us in a car and she might be someone we might want to check out from our windows high above the street. Those were the early days of mini skirts so we made a game of it. We called it "beaver hunting" and in addition to our bus driver, guys from either side of the bus might call "shots" to let the others know and participate. If the girl was pretty and the view was good, the boys would react one way; if the view was not good, the boys would deride the caller. 

It's one of many experiences that I wrote about in my fictionalized memoir called The Brown and White. 

Shortly after the book came out, I was asked to come to a bar and answer questions about The Brown and White for an alum group that meets every couple months. I was asked about why I called the chapter "Beaver on the Right." I told the men that in my years at school that's simply what it was called, we never gave it any thought. My classmates would only accept the term--I really never thought about calling the chapter "pretty legs on the right" or some clumsy title--I preferred a more direct title and wanted to "keep it real."

Like a lot of slang terms there is several meanings to the term "beaver" and you can dig down low. This term was used by our bus driver, a World War II vet. The vets used the term "eager beaver" to describe someone who was gung-ho about something. I think they also used the term at times for a girl and probably in some cases, something more anatomical. But for us, it just meant that there was a girl driving up and we would check her out. 

You do your best when you write a book about experiences. Sometimes you get it right, sometimes you get it wrong.  If you write on young people, you might use a lot of profanity in the dialogue. I didn't do that in The Brown and White because profanity can get real tedious to read. Kids today often use the word "like" in every sentence, but for readers it just gets too tedious. Between kids use of  "like," their liberal does of profanity, and their over use of other terms like "dude," there is a risk no one can read through your copy. So I cut some of the authentic stuff out in dialogue to just make it more appealing. 

The Brown and White

Forty plus years in the making, The Brown and White is a fictionalized memoir that tells the story of Collin Callaghan's freshman year at a Chicago Catholic High School. Collin is a white boy who is living in turbulent times in a changing city. He clings to his neighborhood and his family as he heads out each day with his classmates on the Brown and White, the ancient school bus driven by free-spirited Willie. Memorable characters abound as this story unfolds. Collin's loveable family, especially his Irish Catholic policeman father and his Irish immigrant mother face life together. Collin and classmates blaze their own humorous and passionate trail through the late 1960s. A unique cast of terrific teachers are there to see the boys through. Laughs and life meet readers head on as they travel on the Brown and White.