<Begin Segment 7>

JB: Well, I understand that earlier in the 20th century there were some anti-Catholic sentiments, which followed some of the anti-immigration sentiments especially on the East Coast, and were you ever aware of any of those feelings, or did your family ever talk about that?

JF: The only, the only thing that I recall along that line is that, I don't know what sense it was used and I don't know whether it was ever used, but there was, there was the word "Cat Licker" for Catholic. I don't know whether you've ever heard that phrase or not, but that, that was a, excuse me. That was a phrase that I heard somewhere along, and I don't know. I kind of shrugged it off. It didn't make too much sense to me, and it didn't make much, much difference to me. But that, that was a derogatory term that someone along the line had used. But I don't recall any -- we said prayers in school, and the Catholics end The Lord's Prayer one way and they end it before the Protestants do, and now they're, now it's pretty much all the same, but I never got in any problem, but not saying "for thy kingdom, the power and the glory forever and ever," which is the way the Protestants end the prayer. So I never had any problem with that.

I don't -- oh, we used to get kidded about eating fish on Friday. That was, I mean, that was the single, the big single thing. But it didn't amount to anything that I can remember, except my mother would send me to the store to get a pound of filet, and I thought filet was a kind of a fish. And I didn't realize it was filet of haddock. And I can't find it anywhere. It's kind of like cod. It would come in slices about like so and break off in big, white, almost like topaz, different colors. But I really enjoyed it. I liked it. But I'd have to go down to Mr. Hoffman's store and get a pound of filet all the time, whereas the people all around us were eating meatballs and all these other, sour beef or sour rabbit or whatever the hell they ate, and we had to eat fish.

SF: Was that fish-eating kind of, sort of a negative thing, or did you look forward to eating fish on Friday?

JF: Well, as I said, I liked the fish. I liked that haddock. I liked the stuff. So it was all right with me. But lots of times my mother would make other dishes that were not, not necessarily fish dishes, but not, didn't have meat in them. But I, it's always been my personal opinion that the Catholic Church made a mistake in, in doing away with that day of fasting because that, eating fish on Friday and the nuns' habits and not eating after midnight when you were going to communion the next day, those three things to me were being Catholic. And, now all of a sudden you can't tell a Catholic nun from a, from a schoolteacher. I mean, there's no, I mean, when I was a kid and you saw that nun come walkin' down the hall with those big pointed white things, [Gestures to head] there was an authority figure. And there's no two ways about it. You knew exactly what that nun would do to you if you screwed up. And she was a real authority figure. Now all of a sudden you walk down the school, and you can't, here's somebody in a skirt and blouse, and maybe she's got a little cross around the neck, but what the hell is that? Doesn't make anything -- any difference at all. I mean, that was, to me, it was a tremendous mistake. They lost the Catholicism, they lost that strength right there. But in order to get people into the church, they made it, being in the church easier, from my view, which eroded the church. So that's one of the reasons I don't go to the services anymore. One of them. I've got a whole series of them. But I, I think that that was one of the big mistakes that they made. A good many of my friends went to Catholic school, and invariably, Sister Margaret or Sister Mary, she was the topic of conversation. Even I got to know some of these nuns by what they would, would or wouldn't do to the guys that I played ball with. And it was just a pure matter of authority, and they lost all that.

<End Segment 7> - Copyright © 2000 Densho. All Rights Reserved.