Christopher Walker wrote:
> <snip>
> I love to go a wandering
> Along the mountain track
> And as I go, I love to sing
> My knapsack on my back.
> <snip>
>
> When I was bad, and as a child I was not invariably good, that song was
> condign punishment.
>
Anything that reminds me, correctly or not, of the Trapp Family,
automatically qualifies as a vile memory.
Junior High School #127, 9th grade, December 1958. Bronx, New York.
The Spanish teacher's name is Fortunata Patelli. She taught us Spanish
with an Italian accent. The benefit was that when I came to opera about
a year later, I was primed. Other than that she couldn't have taught a
cat to walk on four legs.
Fortunata, right before Christmas, got her back up about religion. She
began holding forth with some degree of anger about Christmas being the
celebration of the birth of Jesus Christ, and how everyone forgets
this. Then she *made* us sing "Silent Night." Not in Italian, not in
Spanish, not even in German. My estimate: 90% of the kids in class were
Jewish. We all sang it. Everyone giggled at the word "virgin" but
nobody gave a damn otherwise. And no harm was done to anyone. It would
have been like singing "Kol Nidre" in Our Lady of The Angels RC school:
a plentiful waste of time.
Ken
------------------
Kenneth Wolman rainermaria.typepad.com
"I agree with the Chekhov character who, when in a crisis, he is
reminded that 'this, too, shall pass,' responds 'Nothing
passes.'"--Philip Roth
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