Lustfully Yearning for Something Illicit

I warned my husband Walter time and again about this one neighbor of ours Sally Sipples when I was pregnant with Walter Jr back in 1957, 15 years before the flood. I knew for sure Sally was trouble.  A sly young mother with a husband named Richie, they lived next door to Gert Whipple in the other side of her double block.  Why did Sally only come out of doors when my Walter was mowing the lawn?

My Walter, with his jet black hair and broad shoulders was the envy of most on our block, and sometimes when it was hot out, he would take his shirt off while working in the yard. That’s when she’d come out in a tight blouse to hang dry her laundry on the clothesline in her adjacent backyard. I was scandalized, because this laundry was far from clean, if you catch my drift!  Her girly foundations flirted with the  summer breezes like flimsy pieces of lace at an orgy--all Brazen and immodest--the sight of which made me blush.   In due time,  I'd catch my Walter’s manly eyes roving towards Sally Sipple's frills blowing in Penna's gentle summertime breeze.  That’s when I had to act.

Goodness gracious, the Holy Spirit works in mysterious ways, so what I did was to watch her. I watched her and kept tabs on her comings and goings and got to know her daily routine. I documented everything, and sometimes I would quiz Sally’s husband Richie Sipples on her whereabouts whenever I saw him out sitting on their front porch.

Because I was watching Sally’s every move, I noticed that the tags on her Buick had expired, and so placed an anonymous call to PennDOT (Department of Transportation) which resulted in a very heavy fine for the Sipples.  The Holy Lord in Heaven Above Will Uncover and Punish You For your flaws when you do slutty things of ill repute.   Take heed.   In Sally's case, it was a literal coveting of thy neighbor’s spouse!  My spouse.  My beloved Walter.

For reinforcement, I taught her a face to face lesson that summer while making Potato Pancakes at the Church Bazzaar.  While we were peeling potatoes and it was just us girls, I told her that I heard about her alleged affair with the Boy’s Swim Coach, a taut and appealing black man named Mortimer Nagle from South Africa. Then I put my potato peeler down on the counter and slapped her hard across the face in retaliation for the overuse of her feminine wiles in her summertime backyard. I slapped her hard enough to leave behind my fingerprints, and the kitchen door that had been left open to allow a breeze caused the ladies in the Bingo tent clear across the church parking lot to hear my crack, and Sally’s gasp.  But you see, the Holy Spirit intended for her to learn a lesson, and that night, appointed me as her teacher. 

After that, she stopped prancing around in tawdry outfits and dried all laundry in a new Kenmore I had convinced Richie to buy as a birthday gift from Sears’s.  What a nice husband that Richie was, but like I says, not too much going on upstairs.  Eventually,  he got a job with the textile mill out in Dallas, and they moved out to swanky Harvey's Lake, so I never saw them again except once in 1986 when I ran into Sally at Boscov’s and got an update.

Despite Sally's lack of couth, it turns out her son Dickie Jr. grew up to be Mayor of Larksville for one term back in the 1980’s. Dickie Sipples was quite a popular chap, and when I think back to when we were neighbors, and all of the sass and plunging necklines, I never dreamed she had the guts to raise a successful local politician.  I suspect it was some of the early mentoring I gave to Ms. Sipples that night over Holy Potato Pancakes which had a lasting effect on the boy, residually speaking.

Yours in the Love of Christ,

Mrs. Walter J. Katsellas, Jr.

My Daughter Betko Katsellas

Do you think she ever calls me? Never.

Many years ago, Betko traded her Slovak nickname for an Americanized name Betty, just to give you an idea of what I'm dealing with here, but to this day, I call her by only Elizabeth or Betko.  Betko (make sure you pronounce the T!!) is a perfectly decent nick name invented upon her birth in 1946.  My Late Great Aunt Sabina (an unknown relative from Europe who came to stay with us that year) invented the nickname.

Now sixty some years later, closet doors fly open and Betko tells me that she is a practicing lesbian. She told me this just last year, and it came as such a shock to me because I had no idea that she would do this so late in life. But. I always suspected her of having these tendencies way back to the cradle.  Of course, like all parents at the time, we were obligated by the clergy to ignore that part of her being. I did my best to undermine any and all of her attempts at self-expression,  always concerned with preventing the world from knowing there was a homosensual side to her.  Maybe I had an inkling.

Very often, she was a brazen kid, making fists, and she had a very aggressive tone of voice during her bowel movements. For that matter, she wasn't very popular with any of the boys in Senior High the way I was in my young youth, and I don't remember a day in her childhood where she wasn't crying real tears about something.  I don’t think the poor dear ever got over what had happened at the prom, and as much as I was responsible, my esteem at the church necessitated a cover up.

Maybe the sum total of all these things made her gay? Although I can never bring myself to tell her any of this, all I want for her is to be happy. I was such a proud young mother when I brought her home from the hospital that day.  In my arms I was showing off the fresh fruits of my loom, but even so, I knew that Original Sin would rear its ugly head and ruin her life the same way it has ruined  everyone's lives here in Northeast PA.

"Why even bother trying to be happy about motherhood?" Aunt Sabina taught me, and even though she spoke very little English, boy was she right!  Unless I misunderstood her.  Well, looking back, motherhood was never very joyous for me, and once the newness of those first few days wore off, (when everyone was speaking nicely to me and bringing gifts) I  felt continually sad.  I moved into a sadness that was abnormal for me at the time, but one that has continued thenceforth.  Oh well.   

Early 1945 when Walter returned home from the war,  we married, and one month later, an unclean feeling of nervousness had swept into my life.  Three weeks later, I learned the reason why.  It was Betko, and I was pregnant.  Did having sex with my Walter for the first time on our honeymoon (and never again until several years later) do this to me?  I was so confused, because none of my brothers and sisters and I trusted one another to talk about sex.  It was taboo to have impure conversations, and we always told an authority figure whenever the boys would try to steer the conversations there.  But  I had nobody to talk to about menarche, pleasing a mate, my feminine wiles, garnets with silver, garnets with gold, how to apply mascara, etc.  Is this what pregnancy was like?  I gasped and heaved up potato pancakes for months, but kept the daily agony all hidden up quiet so as not to burden anybody unnecessarily.  Everyone's lives were rough back then, and I did not want to be an attention hog, so I kept mum. 

The Grapevine Trellis

My dear sister Iris and I spent hours together under the grapevine trellis, fantasizing about what we might do after graduation from high school.  Iris wanted to be a violinist, and the entire neighborhood knew it.  This is why we spent so much time together: preventing her from practicing her scales protected my eardrums and those of our neighbors!  But when I remember Iris as a young girl, she was gracious and kind, and always laughing.  She later went on to study music and become a music teacher and choral conductor, that Iris.  We stopped communicating in 1989 though. 

Zlata wanted to be a nurse, and on Sunday afternoons, she would experiment in the kitchen, with all sorts of outlandish and never before heard of cookies.  My goodness Zlata cleaned houses for rich women, and somewhere along the line, she served us something called a chocolate chip cookie, which being rather new and unusual, was met with some bit of resistance.  But oh they were delicious.  I loved my sister Zlata.  She followed her dreams and attended College Misrecordia, got her degree and never married.  Me?  Well, I dabbled in many things, and during WWII, I did my fare share of going to work in the factories when all the boys went off to war.  Early on, I showed a natural aplomb with needle and thread, but more on that at another time.



Iris made a couple hostile comments to me when I was in mourning after Zlata died.  I was devastated by the loss, and once I came to grips, I said "to heck with Iris and her sourpuss attitude!"  I never thought she'd call my bluff, but to this day there's a stalemate about who is supposed to return a phonecall.  She lives up the line in the Greenridge section of Scranton but we never talk.

Many years ago, my teenage years in the Valley were filled with girlish summer afternoons on the backyard glider, underneath the valley sunshine without a care in the world.  Mother and I enjoyed quiet time together when we weren't tearing one another's eyes out.  She was a strong personality and so was I.  She truly was the pioneer of our family, bringing herself and my Papa to the USA at age 16 after a terrible electrical storm on her parents farm, where she had been living with her husband, newborn and parents.  The infant son was struck by lightening in barren cornfield of Slovakia while she was holding him, engulfed by a surprise surge of lightening that also burnt their home to the ground moments later.  She was unharmed, and lost both parents and all of her property.  Well, that type of experience changes a person forever, and at age 16 mind you!  This is probably why Mother never cared to hug or be sweet, but I spent many many years under the impression that she just didn't like me, which was very confusing to my heart.

After that fire in Czechoslovakia, they came to the US on a boat of squalor and pain to start a family again on American soils via Ellis Island. They clawed their way from New York City a bit west to a small town called Swoyerville, in Northeastern Pennsylvania where the coal industry was booming.  Back when this town really had something to show for itself.  They swallowed the pain and left Eastern Europe to obtain life beyond the farms of Slovakia, and their family grew to 10 young children.

Over the years, Daddy worked for several coal companies of the era, he was a giant man and he won a lot of respect for being so agile and adventuresome so far underneath the ground. He was only at Red Ash for ten years, a few years at Jeddo, another ten at Glen Lyon, etc.  Mom and Papa were able to afford a car, and Papa never cared about loyalty, employee of the month awards or educating himself further.  I suspect we were a lucky family in that we had such a shrewd Mother and Father at the helm, keeping us clothed and fed!  We were by no means rich, but with destitute people around all us during the depression, I was reminded every day in church to cry real tears of thanksgiving that I was not one of those Swoyerville derelicts of which God had forgotten. I didn't understand, but my tears really impressed the adults, and I learned there were great rewards in life for those who toiled and prayed and gave daily thanks to the Almighty.  


But in that small home, we were not allowed the life of folly some families have enjoyed.  It was a stern and dour existence filled with devotion to Jesus Christ and fear of eternal Hellfires.  There was very little time for laughter or joy. 


Yours in the Love of Christ,
Maureen Katsellas

Children should be seen and not heard!!

Last week, I finally got back at that 10 year old stinker Marvin Yadurnyak for his ongoing awful behavior each Sunday at Mass.  Now I know he is mildly retarded, but everyone must sit still and behave in the House of the Lord! Now mind you I've occupied the same pew, 3 rows back from the altar, every day for several years. I will not change what I'm doing on account of this little boy's needs, because  I am a respected pillar of courage and esteem at St. Kinga's of Swoyersville, PA, newly formed in a Godly corporate merger earlier this year.

Nowthen.  I always keep hard tack candies in a ziplock baggie in my purse to combat dry mouth, or to offer to the girl Lurana at the Bank when we stand there chatting  after I deposit my check each month. Her breath is so bad, I had to begin toting extra mints for her.  As a matter of record, I now offer mints to anyone I encounter who may have offensive breath as a sort of courtesy.  Anyhow, four days ago, Marvin reached into MY purse and helped himself to a peach blossom and pinwheel mint.  His mother watched, I suppose?  She is totally unfit, so much so that I was forced to approach her about this matter of theft using my cane for protection, in case things got ugly.  And believe you me, things got ugly. 

The consecration is the holiest part of our worship service where God turns into bread and water for us, and a time when I am generally consumed with my meditations. Imagine then, how violated it made me feel to learn the candy was stolen while I was occupied with prayer.   A woman’s purse was violated!

It would have been unacceptable behavior for me to break my Sacred concentration, so I didn’t actually see Marvin steal my candy, I just know that he did.  I was so mad after church, I had to give his unfit mother of his a piece of my mind, and I could not believe it when she laughed it off. This is when I waved my cane at her and screetched at her not to mess with Mrs. Walter J. Katsellas, Jr.!  I raised my voice for effect, which caused some stragglers on the church steps to also look at the young girl and her hoolegan with a stinkeye disdain similar to my own.

She allowed her son Marvin to open a ladie's private purse and examine the contents and steal? No way Dear Miss Yadurnyak.  She mumbled that he was a little boy and that I shouldn't be so worried, and that I needed to chillout! Once my next door explained to me what ‘chillout’ meant, I knew that I had to act as moral compass, and issue swift justice.

Well, Miss Yadurnyak.  The Holy Spirit works in mysterious ways, and I know that all kids love chocolate, especially retarded kids.  Yesterday, I unwrapped some Ex Lax and purposely left my pocketbook open, so little Marvin was again able to find the treasures.  He was just as rambunctious as ever, getting up and down and fidgeting. And after mass, as I was gathering my things, I noticed the Ex-Lax had been removed from my purse.  Amen.

A humdinger for those gays today

I just got off the phone with my daughter Betko, who called me to tell me that President Obama and Joe Biden want her to marry her  lesbian lady friend who is too afraid to meet me even though they've been roommates for 15 years. Betko moved three thousand miles away from me on purpose and uses it as a convenient excuse to justify the fact that we never speak.  We'll go years sometimes with nary a peep.  She'll always say "oh well, with the time difference it was too early to call you when I was thinking of it, sorry it has been 12 years since we last spoke, etc. " Boy oh boy does that hurt a monthers' heart deeply!! She says that it should now be legal for 2 girls to marry and I should meet her ladyfriend because they want to have children!! 

Betko is 66!! She was always trying to lash out at me even from the cradle, and I see time has changed nothing.  She thinks the power of The White House can convince me that this isn't a sin, just like that?!!

Now you all know I try to live in the love and Light of Jesus Christ, but God said this was wrong and I can't go against what God is telling me deep in my heart. It is wrong for those people to do lesbian things that my Parish Priest warned us about back so many years ago!  Was I the only one paying attention in Chruch?   Have they invented a new way for women to give birth past menopause?  Surely Betko has gone through the change of life.  Unless it would be the galpal!?  Maybe the galpal is substantially younger, and of child bearing years?

If Betko marrys that friend of hers, well, who is supposed to wear the pants in that family?  Who will lead in when the dancing begins?   Additionally, it will be murder on the children to have 2 Mothers in their 60's!! That means when the brats graduate high school, Mama will be 80, haina?

Now.  Heaven will take me soon, and I won't see the kids in a cap and gown with 2 Mothers (possibly in wheelchairs) snapping photos with pride on Graduation Day. My knees went out on me when I was in my 70's so I don't know who they are kidding about having kids, but that Joe Biden is not exactly the person to dismiss either.  That handsome feller is from the Northeast PA region, and we are very proud of the work he has done, although some of his opinions threaten my freedom of religiousity and cause me to worry.  He grew up in Scranton, where the trains still run in and out and he likes lesbians.  For years I have noticed a more cosmopolitan way of thinking up the line in Scranton, on account of the trains, I think.  

Yours in the Love of Christ, 

Mrs. Walter J. Katsellas, Jr.

The Day My Singing Career Was Shattered

John the choir director is in the dog house. Last month when I gave him his haircut, he asked me to step down from my duties as soloist for the Easter Triduum. He waited until after I was finished shaving his neck to foist this bad news upon me.  Men!!

Friends, I know I am getting up there in age, but my soprano is still as strong as ever. I pretended that the news didn't hurt my feelings, and acted very gracefully, but my feelings were hurt. Getting old hasn’t been easy for me, some days are better than others.  I came home from choir practice that night and I was so upset. I think the neigbors heard me crying since I forgot to close my kitchen window like I usually do when I practice my scales and my Gilbert and Sullivan Arias.

To make things worse, at choir rehearsal just last week, the teeny bopper  Kayla Savinski (who has it out for me ever since her Mom and my Betko were rival honor students in '62) made a comment to the entire alto section about how: "Maureen's breath is ungodly today," and boy did that really make me feel like two cents. I had forgotten my tin of mints, and Josie makes her pagatch with so much garlic, even one piece before quire practice turned me deadly.  Come now, my breath is always heavenly, but the kids today want to hold this one night of too much garlic against me in such embarassing and public ways!  I wouldn't be surprised to see it on youtube soon.  All the world would see my shame and dejection.  It would register clear on my face, and my tears would begin to flow. 

I notice a gradual decline in the respect I get from younger folk.  Maybe it's my cane?  Maybe it's my staunch high brow?  I don't know, but whatever the case may be, I took her aside at a rehearsal break and whispered some mean things to her, and concluded by calling her a little *bleep* (shit.)   It is so unlike me to use salty  language, and in Church of all places, but I felt so cut to the quick, that I had to become confrontational.

And then later on in that rehearsal, it was announced that she (not me) was going to be singing the solo this year!  So much for the jokes about bad breath!  Those paled in comparison to how I felt about  losing a coveted singing role during the services of Lent and Eastertide at our newly merged church St. Cunegunde's.

How could John-John do that to me in public? I have been the church soloist for at least 25 years, regaling everyone at St. Chmielowski's  each year with my rendition of He Shall Feed His Flock Like A Shephard from the Georg Frederic Handel masterpiece called The Messiah.  And then churches everywhere began to merge.  The least my music director could do is warn me beforehand with a phonecall, but he didn't. Of all the people to choose, he gave the solo to Kayla, who, to this day will never look me in the eye when she addresses me!  A thin slip of a girl with a bony neck and overbite who wears white shoes in December.  Now she’s the soloist and I’m not, and thy will be done.

But those haircuts for JohnJohn are going to stop.  With no other practical form of retribution available to me, I prayed to God that she would get laryngitis for her solo at the Easter Triduum, and lo and behold, she did!  I made sure to brush and floss for the service so my breath was as fresh as a daisy and beyond reproach, but when she sang her solo unto the Lord, Kayla Savinski sounded like sandpaper!  Thank you for answering my prayers, Dear Lord.

Yours too, In the Love of Christ,
Mrs. Walter J. Katsellas, Jr.

I live in NEPA.

Northeastern Pennsylvania, or NEPA, as we call it now, is truly the birthplace of Anthracite Coal mining, and was once a real swell place.  My parents came over on a boat from our beloved Slovakia in 1890's, and this corner of Pennsylvania wasn't far from Ellis Island, so they landed here when they got tired from walking. That's the way my parents were.  But good heavens.  By the time the 1950’s came around, coal mining had trickled out of the region, and left disasterous mine fires in Centralia and Laurel Run which heat the grounds below our feet as they burn unextinguished decades after the mining stopped.  The large amounts of coal still beneath us are now being fracked by high tech coal miners.  

When the old timer coal industry left the area, we were all high and dry.  Some of the boys got jobs out at Tobyhanna, some factories out in Dallas, still others moved to Allentown.   Two brothers got jobs as truck drivers, and my Walter got a job with the railroad.  It was so very difficult for us to make ends meet here in this economically challenging landscape.   The Depression certainly didn't help, but as long as we were able to get jobs sewing dresses, we didn't have to toy with the idea of beauticianism and cosmetology.  Once I snagged my Walter, he was breadwinner, and I didn’t need to worry about anything.  I decided against a full time career outside of the home and even though a few of my ladyfriends had jobs, we all seemed very poor. 

In the 1950’s,  I was still a demure bride, but our Wyoming Valley had really changed.  The coal breakers and mine shafts were sealed up and forgotten, and the trees grew high.  The industry left behind mountains of black coal mining waste, and tons of inferior anthracite that the corporations  dumped everywhere.  It wasn't hauled away to toxic waste disposal sites.  It was heaped onto our chiaroscuro, and subsequently, this blackness has made its way into the blood of all who live and work in NePa. 

Elegant trees with white bark grow green alongside Pennsylvania highways on the ersatz mountains man has fashioned with this black soil.  Culm is what they call it, and what's piled too high to wash away when the Susquehanna overflows her banks,  will grow the pretty white trees that we turn into a delicious carbonated beverage called Birch Beer. 

Some of the hearts and minds of the people here in the Wyoming Valley?   Well.  They are just as black as the coal--especially down at our Luzerne County Courthouse and in the entire Wilkes-Barre Area.  Don't even get me started on the scoundrels over at Penn State. 

Tut tut, there is coal dust smeared an inch thick across all of our faces, and we cannot scrub it off.

Yours in the Love of Christ,
Mrs. Walter J. Katsellas, Jr.

My Holy Stupor of Ecstasy

Walter was very sick from Arsine gas runoff which had been collecting for years in our Valley’s birdbaths and sewers and bore holes; all remnants from a previous era when Northeastern Pennsylvania was a flourishing and prosperous spot on the map with happy children giggling everywhere.  Parents ate bleenies and wiped coal dust from their shoes and their faces, singing, ""My gown stays white / From morn till night / Upon the road of Anthracite".

We weren’t encouraged to go to school in our family, and although I knew that I was extraordinarily gifted in some areas, I was very happy to find a devout life of connubial bliss.   That night at the General Hospital Center, the sanctity of Walter’s and my marital bond was blessed by my vow to The Almighty that I nurse him back to health. When Walter's condition took a turn for the worse, I was stricken with thoughts about the arsenic, a possible trial and prison sentence to pluck me out of the lifestyle to which I was accustomed.  I was also worried about the woman I had become.  How could I have poisoned my Walter?  I was glad I wore my MaryJanes and jumpsuit, which flattered my slender figure that had not an ounce of pregnancy weight left behind.  I had piled my raven hair high into an elaborate chignon and put on rouge and shiny red lipstick.  A strand of very convincing fake pearls was around my neck, and as the doctor explained Walter's condition to me, I fingered them nervously if I wasn't busy dabbing my eyes.

Naturally! I worried about getting caught trying to poison my husband; a woman of my esteem.  Getting caught doing that simply isn’t done. Still, my heart was in the right place, as it saved our marriage.  God endorsed all of this.  Keep reading, you'll see what I mean.  Because of the emotional rollercoaster his cheating caused me, and because of this terrible stew of emotions I was boiling in,  my veins pulsed with an adrenaline I hadn’t felt before or since, and I slipped into a holy stupor of ecstacy where Dear God came to me in a vision. 

He appeared on the chrome surface of the coffee machine in the Hospital Lounge. He touched my hair and told me that the arsenic poisoning Wanda Stavish dreamed up was endorsed by the Holy Ghost as payback for Walter’s sin of oogling our Maid as I did the supper dishes.  (Oogling is a second-tier sin in line with coveting thy neighbor’s wife, you see.)  God looked just like Jeffrey Hunter and He went on to explain that the local media was about to break the story about arsine gas from the abandoned strip mines out in Duryea, which had leeched into the topsoil and drinking water of several townships in the region.  That week, three other locals had been admitted to the Hospital with the self-same symptoms as my Walter.

This chrome apparition of Holy God, dazzling and shiny, came to me when I was at my lowest hour, and it renewed my faith. I knew in my heart that my Walter was never really in any grave danger, due to the small amount of poison I used nightly.  In fact, he recovered completely and, except for a few nights of fever and dementia unrelated to the arsenic, lived a long and healthy life, never to have roving eyes again.

Though the local Detective Sholtis insisted on further investigation, he eventually dropped the matter when I showed him photographs I had obtained of his wife doing despicable things in the Ladie's Dressing Room at Pomeroy’s department store down town.

This visitation from God in the hospital is one of several instances where the Holy Ghost has taken use of my facility for the greater good. It truly is my ecstasy, and I question HIM not.

Yours in the Love of Christ,

Mrs. Walter J. Katsellas