A Friend Called Me to Talk About the Brown and White

 A friend of mine called me from his new home out west where it is much warmer than Illinois. He wanted to congratulate me on my book The Brown and White. He recently bought a copy without any arm twisting. It was good to have his kind words because one of the main characters in this fictionalized biography passed away about a year ago. Like a lot of other people, I am coping with the loss as we approach Christmas. I feel good that I got to tell a little of his story along with mine and I know he liked the book. The Brown and White tells our story about high school life on the south side of Chicago in the late 1960s. It's a funny story with a dose of lost love and drama. I suppose I can say it is "based on fact." 

Of course, when I wrote the book we thought we lived through some tough times, but kids today have lived through some unimaginable horrors. But my story is my story and it is about times as they were back then. 

My friend is a marketing/sales guy who said I really soft pedaled the book to the extreme. I suppose my sales efforts have been understated, but at the same time true to myself.  I have this idea in the back of my head that some day someone from the movies will give me a call and ask if I am interested in selling the story. I've joked about this for a few years now. 

It's hard to be too confident in promoting your work these days. I am just an average guy who wrote my story over 40 years and then published my book. I had plenty of time to make it better. In good conscience I can't brag about a 200 page work that I took four decades to write. In my publishing career I once had an academic with a rough manuscript on a hot topic that he would send my way only if I could produce it as a textbook in six months. I got his book done as required.  I worked on another book that once came in a few thousand pages with hundreds of very difficult formulas and reams  of pages on government programs and regulatory materials. I was lucky to get a lot of help from a great editor with a math degree and we got it out several months later. I think we sold a dozen or so editions. 

It's tough to sell a personal story because everyone has their own. What made mine more interesting than most is the times and my school characters. My add copy  reads: 

The Brown and White 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.

If you read this and are intrigued by story, take a chance on a copy, it's $12.50. A few of my kids spend that on side trip to Starbucks when they buy a few of those gigantic flavored coffees. That is about as strong a pitch as I can make! 

Lawrence Norris 

sportingchancepress.com

Brown and White Update

I have not paid enough attention to marketing my own book, The Brown and White. However just recently I have been sending note out to high school English teachers. If  you get one of these, I am serious about sending sample books out to English teachers that may be able to use the book and assign it for their courses.  I am convinced that The Brown and White will get read by students from Catholic High Schools. I started writing just after graduating myself! 

You can see the book at sportingchancepress.com

Description:

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.

About the Author:

Sporting Chance Press author Lawrence Norris has a little marble angel on his desk, just under his computer screen. It's not very big, but Norris says it "looks over" all his labor each day. Norris wears a brown scapular of Our Lady of Mount Carmel every day. It's the scapular that he always wore as a student at Mount Carmel High School in Chicago. On one wall of his little office, there are religious images housed in beautiful gold frames that are shaped like little stained glass windows. His desk is home-made from an old dining room table. And as a publisher and an author, surrounding Norris are boxes of his company's books and an old floor to ceiling bookcase that includes a small sampling of his old books. He has another small bookcase by him and several more throughout his house. Most of his old books have little value to anyone other than himself.

Norris is not sure if the Dominican Sisters who educated him in grade school or the Carmelites who did the same in high school or the Benedictines who took Norris on in college would love all his work. But he hopes so.

Details:
Product Details: The Brown and White
ISBN: 978-0-9819342-7-3
192 pages, paperback,
September 2016

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

Brown and White Book Author Writes on Catholic Boys Schools

My book, The Brown and White is a fictonalized memoir of Collin Callaghans freshman year at a Catholic Boy's high school. The Brown and White 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 humorous story unfolds.

But today, I wanted to write about a serious and important topic--related to the Brown and White.

Boys Catholic High Schools are expensive! Many range between $8,000-$12,000 a year. There are certain student aid programs that help of course. If a boy finds a job, he may be able to contribute a few thousand himself, but for the most part, parents have to pick up the cost.  And once the student finishes his education at his college prep school, he and his parents have a bigger financial fish to fry with a college education. Still, Catholic High Schools are surviving, but it just can't be easy. 

If a parish feeds students into a Catholic High School, they may be able to have a collection or two for the program, but chances are they are having a hard enough time as it is themselves. Never-the-less, I believe that a high school, a grade school, the local Catholic bookstore, parish organizations and the parish church itself are all part of a faith continuum. The distinct pieces need to be fed for the health of the whole.  I can't help but believe that when the schools fall off the radar, that church membership is likely to drop over time.  When schools are healthy, I suspect the church is going to do well. A local Catholic bookstore that carries merchandise also helps support the faith continuum. Catholics who pass by the Catholic gift and bookstore for their Communion and Confirmation gifts are not helping the cause. In this troubled time, you must be "in for a penny, in for a pound."

I think it's funny that many people think that the Catholic Church is rich.  I suspect they have this belief based on the Vatican treasures and properties in places like Rome. But frankly, if they get to Rome, they will find that these treasures are for the entire world not church property like a parish bank account. When some of the great Catholic churches have burned and needed costly rebuilding and renovation, it might surprise many people that donations frequently came from people from many different faiths--including Jews and Moslems. 

And on some level, Catholic Schools have also been very ecumenical as well. In some ways, this can be disturbing to some Catholics, but by doing so, it supports an opened mindedness and does not put the breaks on true charity. When I was a kid way back in the dark ages, we had a couple Jewish kids in Catholic School with us. The nuns did their best to teach the Catholic program, but at the same time tried to be kind to the students of other faiths.  This must have been difficult when you consider there was a Catholic slant built into practically every subject in its textbooks and curriculum.

As neighborhoods changed in Chicago, for example, it became more difficult in that Catholic Schools sometimes served more Protestants than Catholics. Many of the schools were serving middle class people, but some found themselves in poorer areas. I find it disturbing when a Catholic home for children, a hospital or some other institution that serves mostly non-Catholics, receives government funds to help it provide for services (at much cheaper rates than the public organizations) and people have criticisms for the serving organization. 

When schools came to serve poorer minority populations, the Sisters and other teachers shifted their curriculum somewhat and wanted so badly to make a contribution to help these poor kids move up and out of poverty. In some cases it worked and if it didn't work, it had more to do with society at the time than the teachers. My sister taught in schools like this in Detroit. 

At the same time, you can find yourself in a no-win situation.  At my high school, one of its most prominent Protestant students remarked that there was a certain teacher who harassed him (I suppose like in racism). The kindest thing he had to say was that  "the teachers did not try to convert him." A generous man no doubt.

Most Catholic institutions have come back to tighter Catholic curriculum, but they retain their respect for the other faiths of  their non-Catholic students.  Catholics criticized schools when they found their kids were graduating without even a fundamental understanding of the "Roman" faith.  To maintain their appeal however, the schools today must show their academic excellence. Producing good Catholics with bad ACT scores is not an option. 

But if the whole Catholic Faith continuum is to survive, people have to support all the Catholic institutions.  The people that whine about this institution is too liberal or this one is too conservative are just expressing their views and it's their right. But again, I think we need to be "in for a penny and in for a pound" on Catholicism. If  you are waiting for just the right pope, bishop or priest to come along before you support the Church, good luck with that.

I think Catholic High Schools can use some help. I have a hard time thinking that we will be judged by whether we gave to a conservative or liberal one. We might be judged if we could have given and didn't because they were too liberal or conservative for our taste.

Copyright 2016, Sporting Chance Press

Book for Plane Trip

If you went to a Catholic High School and you have a plane trip coming up, 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.

Available on Amazon. 

Brown and White Available as eBook on Kindle

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.

Kindle Edition.

Brown and White eBook about to Publish

Forty plus years in the making, The Brown and White will be on Amazon Kindle very soon. 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 loveable family, especially his Irish Catholic policeman father and his Irish immigrant mother who blazes her own trail through the 60s.