Church

My mother was inflexible. She would have things her way or devote all of her efforts to making my father miserable. That meant on Sunday, despite the fact that our church offered mass hourly from 6:00 AM until noon with two sessions (upstairs and downstairs) at 9:00.

The mandatory routine was that she slept, then we rose and had breakfast. Then we attended the 12:00 mass. The problem was that the nooner was "high" mass while all of the other iterations were "low" mass. For those unfamiliar with the Catholic liturgy of the period, that meant that you could breeze through the low version in about 18 minutes. The high one took at least 50 minutes and could run appreciably longer if the priest felt moved to give a sermon beyond the routine parish announcements. It also involved two passages of the collection plate and an extra fifteen minute addendum of "benediction."

It screwed up the entire Sunday, so when I got old enough to drive, I told her I was going to the 9:00 mass, would hop in the car and go hang out at the candy shop for an hour. Last time I sat through a high or low mass was around 1959.

But, if I had this sort of service, I might have been eager to go: