I remember many vignettes about the seminary. The brothers who were assigned to work there, in the kitchen, laundry, or in the print shop, stand out, however. At certain services in the chapel all the brothers would come out in a line and stand in front of the altar steps. Usually, Brother Bartholomew would be the first. Then would come Brother Sylvester and Brother Ivo. If Brother Vincent might be visiting from the Old Mission, he would come next, followed by Brother Clement. Brother Ansgar came last. From our viewpoint in the chapel, it was sort of like looking at a line of trees that had received uneven care, strong wind and poor irrigation.
Bartholomew was tall and slender and tended to lean forward. Sylvester was the shortest, at about four feet, with a severe stoop. He always stood next to Bartholomew. Ivo was of medium height and medium build. He stood upright. Vincent was a little taller than Sylvester, but very wide.
Clement was tall, but stocky and sort of heavy looking. Ansgar walked with a limp and Vincent strutted. The tall one was leaning over, the short one was bent over and one of the middle ones was limping. The other middle-sized brother was plump, and the brothers at the extremes were thin. I don’t know whether they walked in by seniority, or by chance, but it seemed that they would always line up the same way. It is a picture that has remained etched in my mind for sixty years.
Brother Bartholomew had black hair and intersecting eyebrows. I remember thinking of him as “Black Bart”, at least partly because of his features, but also some of the seminarians thought he had been a sailor. He was certainly unafraid of heights. One day he lashed a third section on the end of a two-section extension ladder and was painting the trim above a third-story window on the oldest dormitory. One of the younger kids in that dormitory opened the window, which swung out on steel hinges and pushed Bart’s ladder away from the wall. The kid was startled to hear a voice from over his head shouting, “Shut that damn window!” He looked up to see Brother Bart balancing on an extension ladder that was standing almost straight up. He shut the window very quickly. Brother Bart completed his job.
Brother Sylvester was the baker. He used to make the best Old German bread, the kind that people would drive miles and miles to purchase. It had whole grains and wheat flour in it. Sylvester was almost a gnome. He had an awful hump on his back. He really did have pointy ears with tufts of hair on them. Contrary to his appearance, he was the gentlest, kindest person you could ever know. At four o’clock on school afternoons he used to stand on a box in front of a table in a basement passageway between the main building and the dorm to give us his bread, one slice at a time. It was spread with the most terrible artificially flavored jam! The bread was so good, and the jam was so horrible!
We all thought that Brother Ivo was an “Old German” because he spoke with a slight accent. He was the cook, and he regularly came up with delicious meals for 160 seminarians and twenty priests and brothers. His food was good, but you could tell what day of the week it was by what he served. If I remember correctly, Tuesday and Thursday breakfasts were cornbread. His cornbread was inches thick, delicious, and served with half-gallon pitchers of syrup. Friday evening he usually served great slabs of shark on enameled platters. He cooked “Friday pies” (on Friday, of course,) and these delicacies were used as currency for betting. Throughout the week intramural sports scores were bet on or arguments were settled and the winner of the bet or argument would receive a Friday pie.The waiters in the dining room would carry the pie slices from loser to winner throughout the refectory. Sometimes a winner would have three or four pies at his place. He would use the trophies to pay off his own debts or to share with his table mates.
Brother Clement, “Clem,” was the general maintenance man and did the laundry for the whole institution. Because I understood the problems of maintaining old buildings, he and I were on friendly terms. He was cheerful, unhurried and efficient.
Brother Ansgar was another small man, although not as short as Sylvester. He walked with a limp from some early injury. He liked cigars, and we would occasionally come upon him walking about in the upper quadrangle in the evening, puffing on one. I think he worked in the kitchen with Br. Ivo, and occasionally helped Clem with the laundry. Brother Kevin ran the offset printing press in the basement under the old monastery wing. He was one of the sharpest of the group of brothers, fulfilling the tasks of editing, printing and delivering a monthly magazine and the seminary newsletter for the Province. Kevin used to drive a little bright red Morris Minor van to deliver his products to the post office. Thank you to all the brothers at SAS!
Jim Furlong