Description
Brother Elliott Maloney, O.S.B., a monk of Saint Vincent Archabbey who grew up in Pittsburgh’s North Point Breeze neighborhood, presents a memoir of his homelife, friendships, and schooldays from the 1950s, as he remembers his social and religious life from then, for the enjoyment of the reader and perhaps to stimulate some good conversation on raising children today.
The book runs the length of Brother Elliott’s elementary school days, ending in the summer of 1959, when Westinghouse Electric transferred the family to Buffalo, New York. After prep school there he went to Saint Vincent College and entered the monastery as a novice there in 1965, taking first vows as a monk in 1966. After college graduation he studied in Rome for three years and earned a pontifical degree in Sacred Theology (S.T.L.) at the international Benedictine university of Saint Anselm (1972). He then began the Ph.D. program in New Testament Studies at Fordham University in New York, which he completed in 1978.
A large house, the porch swing, the tree-lined streets, the gardens, speak to tranquil days in a neighborhood where the front porch was the entertainment and social center, the soul of a house; where parents had RULES (in all capital letters), where hopes and dreams were nurtured and lessons conveyed.
He tells stories of growing up in the Point Breeze section of the city, where large families were common and friends numerous, where buckeyes were the most lethal weapon a boy had, where Catholic schools and churches educated and inspired the neighborhood children—in spite of their antics.
Discipline rarely elevated beyond the “Nun’s Eye,” he writes. “Long before the deadly red dot of the laser sight from an assassin’s rifle, the sisters had perfected a stare that could immobilize any child whose eye it caught: Nun’s eye. Now every nun had been outfitted with this uncanny, nearly lethal, device, and there were several masters of its use.”
There are 27 short chapters in this memoir assembled into four categories—the house, the neighborhood, church and school. Parents weren’t afraid to let their children play outside, ride their bicycles to the park, take the bus or walk to school. They occasionally got into trouble—the ‘buckeye war’ was a good example of that—but life’s lessons were learned amidst hurts and regrets.
