Lysol

Thinking we know about feminine hygiene, yet only resorting to now-and-then care may make all the difference in marital bliss, as our trusted family practitioner Dr. Cummington pointed out so many winters ago when I blossomed into womanhood right here in Swoyerville, PA.   By the time Dr. Cummington retired, he had treated all three generations of our family at his busy medical practice.  Dr. Cummington would go on to keep my secrets, and for this he proved valuable.  I was so desperate to hide, and he was willing to falsify certain items of my medical records to preserve my esteem within the community.   But his gruff manner and bryl-greased hair was something we all tolerated only because he was so very discreet.  I guess it took him having to die before I re-evaluated some of the possible harm he may have done to me and to my children.  As a child, he frightened me with the notion that my teenage body would change, and that noticeable things would start happening to me.  He made me ashamed of my breasts and curves.   Did he do this to my daughter too? 

Once upon a time, Dr. Cummington prescribed Lysol brand disinfectant for my (how-shall-I-say-it?) personal cleansing.

Well, we are obedient,  here in the NePa, I suppose.  Just tell us anything, give us a set of rules, and some of us will go about following those rules, still others will go on to break them!  I certainly am a rule follower.  I developed the skill of not questioning authority early on with my Catholic education right here in the Wyoming Valley.  I know my rightful place in Heaven awaits because of this devotion and faith, groomed since childhood.


But alas, those good intentions were tested by the particular application of a Lysol solution that quite burned my tender parts with each and every attempt.  Maybe I should have diluted the chemical with more water?  Maybe my enthusiasm for a more wholesome cleanse drove me to add extra Lysol on the basis of more-is-better?  I didn't question authority.  Lysol was deemed viable for useage "down there" and at a certain point in our Good Christian Exuberance and Zeal to get to Heaven, women everywhere tried it for intimate cleansing.

Dr. Cummington warned me that freshness was imperative 24 hours a day, especially for the woman, should a happenstance tragedy of some sort occur amid our daily bustle, necessitating the removal of clothing by medical personnel.  Now, if during such emergencies, the gotchies are wilted, or stained, or if they produced odors of any kind, it could stave off vital medical treatment while the paramedics were overcome by shame at the inkling of our uncleanliness.   A careless risk, he explained, and I quickly agreed, but this agreement was very short lived.


All of the strange psychology of Dr. Cummington may have had a deleterious effect, and if it did, I was none the wiser.  Until now.  We were rigorous with our fingernails, hair and body grooming, and the stakes always seemed so high when the male authority figures counseled us about feminine freshness.  Who was I to speak up and defy them?  I was just a woman, and they were authority figures.  This is how many of us were raised, you see. Certainly my family...all ten of us brothers and sisters were poked and prodded and made to feel dirty by our family doctor, and we never stood up for ourselves because we were too afraid, and didn't think we deserved it.

The familiar brown Lysol bottle became a staple in each and every one of my sister's feminine cabinets except for mine.  I guess there's something to be said for a Fresh Holy Flower, but thankfully, women know better these days.  I am certain that almost every gal in the family drew her own conclusions the hard way, but we never spoke of such matters.  The same way I now realize that Dr. Cummington often gave terrible recommendations and always made me feel very uncomfortable. Come now, Dr. Cummington!   Lysol is for bathroom tile, not our delicate jewels of femininity.  If only I didn't need his discretion regarding my eating disorder!

Father Olexy later echoed similar recommendations about God's Lysol Douche, and at one point he too inquired about my womanly cleansing rituals during my Confessions.  This advice always came during those familiar periods of indifference in marriage to my Walter.  And let me tell you over the years Walter and I had several periods of indifference.  Olexy cautioned me, "If your man is not attentive, maybe the fault is yours?"

Father Olexy's well credentialed opinion seemed to echo Dr. Cummington's, and both men warned me to never run a careless risk with dainty feminine freshness.  Problem is, they were men and I was woman, and their Lysol had burnt me.  I finally began defiance of this so called God's Lysol douching, and simply concealed that sin from the Confessional.  Certainly the men in my life were none the wiser.  Once Lysol was omitted from my daily toilette, I stayed equally fresh by other means, and thusly cannot be held accountable for any Christian Cleansing rules that may have been broken.   If either of these men had happened to me today, I would have slapped both and shouted, "Get GOING!!"

I shall end my story here.

Yours in the Love of Christ, 

Mrs. Walter J. Katsellas, Jr. 

Valley Lesbian Comes Out of the Closet

Now you all have heard me mention my ladyfriend Josie Scarnulis plenty of times before. Over the last few months, her behavior has gotten strange.  Every other Saturday, she and I used to see Roberta over at the Narrows for a wash and set, then we'd drive to Sizzle-Pi on the way home for lunch.  Roberta would even come along sometimes. Well that all stopped 2 months ago, and I now understand why.

Josie is now wearing a crew cut.  Like me, she grew up in the Wyoming Valley as a God fearing Roman Catholic, but unlike me, her voracious humor and sheer beauty made her much more of a success at it than I.  She's buried 2 husbands, and has grandchildren in their 30's who are all respected pillars of the community. Chet Scarnulis was the nicest man you'd ever want to know and he sure did treat Josie good in those last years before he succumbed to an accidental poisoning at his workplace.  She says that she's been lesbianese for quite some time and Chet even knew about it, but she never told me because she feared what I had to say.

(Now I'm reminded of last year when  Josie and I took a trip to Atlantic City, and how she woudln't let me change into my swimsuit while she was in the room, by explaining a new form of modesty on her part. She also stayed in a private room with Nancy Ansinanski, of whom I don't approve, due to her Wiccanism.   It was in their hotel room that I noticed a vcr tape of TheBoys in the Band; something also at the time, I found objectionable.)

I marvel at all these years that I didn't know about her being a lesbian, or the fact that (it finally dawned on me!)  Josie and Nancy are a lesbian couple! Lesbian this. Lesbian that. Everywhere I turn I see Lesbians. My daugher has been this way for many years and has begun lording it over me lately, and now my best friend from cradle to grave its gonna be came out as a lesbian too. It all had me in a very anxious mood. It is not often that I so focus on sex, but anytime you mention those gays, my mind immediately goes to the magnitude of their private acts.

Nobody should be given a free pass to premarital sex either. If the gays could simply remain chaste, like all unmarrieds, there wouldn't be any problem. But no. Here they are enjoying an unGodly smorgasbord of consistent unmarried pleasure, mocking the pure, who choose to remain Vestal like the unopened rosebud on her sanctified wedding day. Yes I know I sound old fashioned, but premarital sex is still a sin, so when the gays do it, I would guess it's even moreso of a sin, due to the ignominious nature of such genital pairings.


I was so very agitated, to my Parish Priest I went.  The lines for Confession have been dreadful since the merger of my church St. Chmieloski's with The Church of the Black Madonna, a lower end Parish past the tracks.  Now there's so much foul language in the lines for Confession, it's enough to make St. Cunegunde, our new patroness, frost over in her ancient grave.  Because of the coarse profanity and teeth gnashing, I dread going to Confession.  I sweat profusely, and today was worse as I was also preparing to cut Josie out of my life entirely. I felt so terrified and alone in my courage to stand up to the Gays and Lesbians, speaking out God's Truth.   Deep down I was sad.  Could I change my mind and now declare that all lesbians were good people?  Or might that render meaningless the entire life of turmoil I created for my daughter in retaliation for her lesbianism?  Foryousee, if I choose to  keep Josie, shouldn't I have been nicer to my very own flesh and blood lesbian Betko?  I cried so many days over all of this in a continual sweat.

I didn't arrive at that decision overnight, but since I ultimately decided against keeping Josie in my life,  I broke down crying and begged palliation.  My tears accidentally destroyed the double-blind confessional privacy when I also (accidentally) let Josie's name slip.  I am sincerely hoping Monsignor Wasileski upholds his Churchly Ethics and does not share with anyone the lesbian earfull I had just thrust upon him. Once I realized that I had become a terrible gossip, I began to hyperventilate, as a precaution.  I also told him my own name too.

Thence, I fled the confessional for fresher air, and awaited another spot in line--at the very end of a very long line of sinners.  Jeepers it was crowded.   I explained to Wasileski that I was back and he told me to keep lesbianism confidential and not to burden Josie if I had a problem with it, and that I should mind my own business. I was shocked.  I was surprised by what appeared to be a sudden change of heart amongst my clergy.  Will I next consult with the Bishop, or maybe the Pope in Rome?  Just to verify that this Priestly advice about gays is indeed kosher?

In the meantime, I had no plans for today, and Josie called me up because she baked some Pagatch, and she knows how much I love it.  I took some butter over there and we had a long discussion about what we mean to each other. Nancy was not around.  Josie told me that when my Betko had a crisis with her lesbianism, she went out there to Los Angelos to help her, and that was awfully nice.  I had no idea that she even did that.  I am glad that she was able to assist my daughter at a time when my strict devotion to the Lord forbid me to fraternize with fringe elements of society.

But friends, Eighty five years of self induced agony in the Luzerne County have landed me into analysis. I am now seeing an analist, which has been very helpful.  It seems that everyone around me are either Lesbians or dead, and it is like I have no choice but to somehow accept all lesbians, because I know Josie from up the street my  whole life long and I know she's a good woman, and I don't want to lose her.  I told her that I would need some time, and that my analist might help me.  I mentioned that I think I will need to start watching Ellen, and then we hugged, but I didn't make it a warm, lingering hug, lest her mind wander onto me as an object of affection.

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

The Bible is confusing sometimes!

My Parish Priest told me that it can sometimes confuse people to read so much scripture, that is why the Catechism is a better alternative to reading the Bible. Now I disagree sometimes, because just holding that Holy Blessed book in my hands, and leafing through each silky page, I feel Christ's Love. It inspires me to spread his good news of love and peace.

But once they came out with the Catechism, Pastor told me to stop reading The Bible, for Catechism is easier to understand. I worry sometimes about today's children and if they are being taught the Catechism like we were taught. It was invaluable, because it saves you from all that reading.

Even today, I rarely open my Bible. If I pay attention in church to what the Priest is saying, I learn everything I need to know, (unless the celebrant is Father Doran, who always talks like he's got napkins in his mouth.)

Yours in the Love of Christ,

Mrs. Walter J. Katsellas

Wait a Second was that Dottie Sandusky?

There is a sensational trial going on right now in Bellefonte. Pennsylvania is once again in the national news.  Each and every day, we watch the new and lower life forms being ousted from public positions of trust that they have held for years.  Ousted they are, but I weep at their corrosive legacy. Our leaders harmed us, consistently and brazenly!  There is nothing we can do to fight back, so we hold onto the anger.  Oh that is a famous Pocono Mountains routine! I'm a powerless old lady.  I cry a lot each time I realize that every tier of our local government and almost every educational institution in Northeast Penna has been systematically corrupt for generations. I want to pray for a more righteous and just Pennsylvania, but it seems as though Pennsylvania citizens haven't known even one day of life without the mar of grievous betrayals!  Who the heck can keep up with all of that when I'm busy praying for so many other things in my own terrible life?

I don't know what the heck she was doing in Wilkes Barre, but it happened about 6 months ago right here in Public Square.  A lady with yellow teeth came and sat next to me while I was feeding the pigeons some breadcrumbs.   The day was chilly, but she was dressed in a ski parka and poly skirt and a pair of sandals with her toes hanging off the front edges.  No hosiery, tut tut. (Proper foundation undergarments [girdles] are essential for women of a certain age to [how shall I say it] keep things together, but today was a day she had obviously gone without.)

I took particular note of her lower extremities, her ill-fitting vinyl padded sandals with braided jute across the vamp, and the several toes hanging off the front. They were dry and crackled, and each toenail was yellowed like her teeth, resembling a tiny bacon rind.  It appeared to be an officious toenail fungus, the likes of which no podiatrist of average merit could rectify on even their most triumphant of days.  My own toenails aren't looking so hot these days due to my swollen ankles, so I understood her predicament.  But.  Goodness gracious, I keep my toenails covered in good taste and decency.  

Dottie's toenails (If this was, in fact, Dottie Sandusky!) were not covered.   She just plopped herself down on the bench adjacent to mine and after several minutes of silence, pulled out a cellar phone and placed a call.   I recognized the attention grabbing cock of her head when the party to which she connected said hello.  She trumpeted her remarks into my general vicinity so as to provide ease of listening for both me and the birds.  I believe she was "whooping it up" for my benefit as she intoned:

"Gerry and I are in town for two bleep-ing days and you know what? You can go bleep  yourself, okay?   Bleep YOU and your lousy Scampi.  No i'm not going to calm down, you think the plates of shit (bleep) at your restaurant are any better because you're the one open the longest?  Our table stunk and your service stinks and the people in the other room were talking about us!  You kept me and Gerry on the toilet all night with the *bleeps*.  I can't wait to get onto the interwebs to smear your lousy name into the mud on every single solitary website I can find with the name Hottle's on it!!   *Bleeeeep* you!!"

By this time my eyes were fluttering everywhere and I began to get very nervous, as is often the case whenever I bear witness to salty behavior from a gal. I naturally assume all women know the value of dainty conduct in public, and how to act accordingly.  But that's always been my problem, folks:  Giving too much credit where absolutely no credit is due.  

I was completely flustered at this point, and Dottie (if this was actually her) caught me looking.  My loaf of pigeon bread had been entirely depleted, and I didn't have any activity to camouflage or mask my eavesdroppish behavior, so I glassed up my eyes and pretended that I didn't notice her noticing me and began pulling imaginary lint off of the sleeve of my knit sweater. (Part of me wanted to engage her in conversation so that I could tell her to try some apple cider foot baths and to stop wearing open toed shoes.)  She stood up, inhaled loudly and said in a terrifying low baritone, "Which bus goes out to Miners Mills?"  and I was so frightened now,  I grabbed my cane and screamed in horror hoping that she would assume I was truly insane and step back to allow me a safe window of retreat.  Which is exactly what happened.

But when I screamed and yelled, my flapping arms and loud voice caused all of the well-fed pigeons in Public Square to scream and flap their arms too.  Dottie, well, let's just call her Dottie just in case, became trapped in a fray of birds just like the gal in the Hitchcock movie.  One actually hit her in the side of the head while I ambled my way to the safety of my parked car nearby.

Please tell me there were others there, who saw her too?  We know he's locked up behind bars now, but where was her Gerry that morning, and who was she going to see in Miners Mills?   I know I was screaming loudly, and the birds were really cavorting, and perhaps some passersby saw the commotion, and someone can step forward to help me confirm that this isn't just another one of those holy stupors  I am plagued with from time to time.

Yours in the Love of Christ,

Mrs. Walter J. Katsellas, Jr.

An Unpleasant Childhood Memory

Blame it on Pennsylvania humidity that tests our sanity each and every summer? Why do I keep having so many flashbacks to my childhood?    Blame it on the depression?  Why were my parents screaming at one another under the grape vine arbor that night?  I was only 5 years old and just wanted to see happiness and frolic in the backyard.   I didn't speak Slovak, so I had no idea what any of the fight was about, but I knew they were angry because they were spitting their awful words at one another in a violent way.  All of the other kids were asleep in the big beds we shared, but I was standing at the window, trying my best to see what the commotion was.  Mother did most of the shouting, with Papa interjecting every so often.  I just know the neighbors heard all of it. The same way I heard all of it.  I never forgot those sounds, or the paralysis they induced that night.

Pa worked for many different mining companies, but for a few years he was at Glen Alden Coal Company out in Nanticoke, which meant that the coal we used to heat our home was blue coal.  This superlative made us the envy of all our neighbors, and kept our winters cozy in the giant feather beds we shared with our brothers and sisters.  Papa was always working, going from company to company, seeking better salary and better conditions.  Mother enjoyed being able to buy a new frock only once every 10 years, but it was so much fun to spend time with Mother and my sisters when she enjoyed being a girl.  The four daughters eventually began to sew our own clothing from patterns, just the way Mother had taught us.  We also earned extra money doing it for others.  Once my own daughter was born, it was like a lid was placed over her heart, like she wasn't interested in anything.  I think this phenomenon is hereditary, because I grew to feel the same way deep inside my own heart.   I cry all the time nowadays, I don't even know why.   I began gardening back then, and I still do it to this day, even though Daddy's grapevines and the pretty trellis are long gone. The morning sunlight still grows regal hollyhocks each and every summer, and they are the talk of the block, a summer Katsellas Tradition, you might say.  My goodness, don't tell anybody that the only reason we planted them way back then was to camouflage the outhouse!


Mother and Papa had escalated their quarrel, and someone was being struck with fists.  It sounded like she was slapping him, and that he was defending himself.  I quietly ran outside and hid in the flowers to see Papa's shirt ripped in pieces but still clinging to his heaving 6' 6" frame.  He was sobbing, and he looked so vulnerable and hurt; nevertheless, he snarling and still engaged in battle. His face had a monstrous glare, and I had never seen a barechested male before.  He seemed to posses an animal-like force, and he was covered in thick black hair.

Mother's face was bright red as her open hand came down across his face.  He bounced back to immediately slap her in reciprocation.  Watching a strong man hit a diminutive woman made me frightened, and seeing Papa so upset reduced me to tears and panic.  He then picked up a crucifix and threw it to the ground.  Was Papa angry at God?   The crucifix shattered to pieces, and Mother blanched.  I know my childhood eyes were not deceiving me, for I had never seen anything like this before.  The sound of the broken porcelain echoed into the night until everything became silent but for the crickets and night birds off in the distance.  They were both staring at one another, moving in a circle like dogs in a fight, waiting for an opportunity to pounce. 

Then I watched him raise his left hand to her, snatching the collar of her dress violently,  tearing it into two pieces that instantly fell from her body.  She stood motionless for awhile and then jumped into his arms with an unusual, almost primal gyration.  Were they moving in slow motion with one another, or was my scared little brain playing tricks on me?   Did any of this really happen?   She began kissing him passionately.  I still remember Mother's naked silhouette against Papa's dark fur, but now I worry if this was all a dream of my own since it happened so long ago.  Papa stiffened his body, shot his arm around her waist, and took her down to the floor, returning her ardor and passion.  They weren't yelling anymore, but I was still frightened.  At this point, I decided that I had seen enough and ran away from this horrifying scene.  I had never seen two people so angry before.   I was glad they never found out that I had been watching them, for I truly would have been a goner.

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

My Ancestral Home

It was the lovely summer night in my backyard tonight that transported me back in time to my childhood.  The mind is a funny thing, you know.  Or maybe it was that blasted neighbor of mine Gert Whipple next door, burning her garbage again.  Everybody used to burn their garbage, but the Borough outlawed that long ago, so I now take certain delight when I inhale fresh air.  But hey that doesn't stop Gert from keeping an illegal fire pit to burn her refuse.   Or maybe it was because I should have been in bed a long time ago.  Then again, I have always had problems falling asleep at night, I don't expect to lose that bad habit now that I am well into my 80's.

My mind would not stop reeling.  I began to smell whiskey boilo and hear the childhood laughter of my sister Zlata.  So many memories are coming to the surface lately.  My dreams are tormenting me, and I feel as though my imagination is constantly playing tricks.  We were children in the 1930's, and Zlata has been dead for over 30 years, bless her heart, but I conjured an image of Daddy pushing me on one of the swings he had suspended from a tree limb, and I wanted to keep swinging higher and higher.  Zlata looked on wearing a lavender dress, clapping her hands and squealing patiently waiting her turn.  I smiled so broadly back then that oftentimes, my face would begin to hurt.  I felt so loved and so admired when Daddy would push us high in the swings.  Afterwards, he would waltz around singing Slovak folk tunes with the visitors in all manner of drunken caprice.  It was a different person than we knew in the privacy of our home.


I still call that place my home, that three bedroom coal shanty house my parents built when they settled here in the 1890's.  That is where I live now, modernized over the years, of course!  I had a full remodel after the Agnes flood and since it is only me, everything remains in pristine condition.  I became full matriarch of this home with my Walter once we married back in 1945.

Mother and Papa moved up the street to live with Zlata and her husband in the 1950's, but there was always a brother or sister hanging on.  This house has seen an awful lot of foot traffic.  Family and neighbors would often gather in our backyard underneath the trellis where my father's grape vines grew.  He fashioned a small arbor and shaded porch area with a glider and a firepit and chairs for us to convene on breezy weekend nights.  Visitors would be treated to a drink from his cauldron of home made boilo or perhaps some birch beer or a maybe cold Stegmaier's out of the cool cellar.  I think this was before the delicious Ma's Colas swept into the Valley and won our hearts.


Oh wake up you silly old Mrs. Katsellas! It is the year 2012, and you are all alone right now. You have been left all alone in this house!  A lonesome old lady with an internet's connection who thinks too much.  A sad old lady who cries too much.   This house knows heartache and pain, for what is family, if not heartache and pain?   I don't think Daddy was a happy man, he never spoke English, so I didn't know if he ever complained about anything.  Mother had better command of the language, but even then she kept quiet, preferring to demonstrate and charade out the words for us all to interpret.  She knew how to sign her name, and that was it.  Papa was able to read, I assumed, but no, wait a second, if he couldn't speak English, well then forget it, he couldn't read either. 

Rarely did we hunger for food, except for a very lean period of two years, when our resources were stretched for beyond comfort for a family of ten.  Let me tell you, the Depression left no survivors, we all died in some way as a result of terrible government practices.  Mostly though, we all had shoes and we each had a down pillow, and we each had 2 dresses and 2 knockabout outfits, and plenty of underwear and socks. When we grew out of our clothing, naturally, the garments were handed down and the one who outgrew the clothing began extra chores in order to procure a replacement.  Daddy kept himself and all of us working so hard to keep the down mattresses we shared (5 kids per bed) and by making the home decent and presentable through hard work and ingenuity.    He tried to make life good for us in his own little way, and I don't know how he managed to do all of it with ten little mouths to feed.  There were times that all of us saw his dark male personality, and for whatever reason, he called upon me to vent time and again.  Whenever I saw that look in my father's eyes, my blood instantly ran cold.  I learned to swallow my pride and allow Papa to verbally abuse me or whip me if he needed to.  I just wished I knew what the heck all that Slovak was that he'd be hollering at me while I cried and cried!

Walter had one of these dispositions as well.  Maybe I do too?  I think it is a Wyoming Valley trademark, that we hold our anger deep inside.  We don't trust the promise of relief that is found in confiding a secret to a loved one.  Naturally, the Church has cleansed me of my sins. By telling all in the confessional, I still place a great deal of faith in the powerful sacrament of confession.  I adore the word of the Lord, and strive to walk in Christ's Love each and every day, but it doesn't always work.  Nor does Christs' Love seem to take any of my anger away.  

Blogging on my new Appel computer has helped.  Janice down at the Senior Center helped me pick it out and buy it and all of my grammar and secretarial skills of yesteryear are whisking you visitors on a thrill ride through the emotions and private folly of an 85 year old boobie.  I know I am completely confidential, but getting things off my chests is not in my nature, as a Catholic, perhaps.  Rather than talk, it always feels so good for us to scream at somebody or break something.

But after so many years, I am fighting against this cruel habit that is so deeply ingrained into my soul, for I realize that I am alone and lost and I cannot take much more pain.  Here I sit typing at my computer pouring out my heartache and pain in a last ditch effort to assuage my guilt and shame of all the mistakes I made and continue to make in in my foolish life of 85 years.

Does God still love me?  Or has he forgotten about me because I sin too much?   Or did God forget about me and everybody in Wilkes-Barre/Scranton a long time ago, because we all sinned so much?  I wish I knew who God was.  I just don't know anymore. 

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

I was beautiful at the Hotel Sterling

--> It was 1941, and I was dancing in circles in the Grand Ballroom at the Hotel Sterling while the rest of the room looked on, enviously delighted by my carefree whimsy on the dancefloor.  I was wearing a yellow dress with ruffled sleeves and a big scarf that shimmered a great deal in any direction I moved.  The weather was warm and breezy.  There had been a terrible storm the night before that served only to polish some coal dust off of the Wilkes-Barre landscape, supplying my memories of that night with a kind of glitz not often observed here in the NePa.  This recollection comes 61 years later, yet I remember it so fondly.  I was growing into a mature young woman and spent the night spinning like a top on the dance floor with my Senior Prom Date, Cousin Vince.

Even though my Walter and I had known each other in high school, I continually turned down his propositions when we were students, and thus, l did not have a date.  My sister Iris convinced me to ask Cousin Margie's permission that her husband, Vincent Seracino, accompany me to my Senior Prom, held at the swanky Hotel Sterling in Wilkes-Barre, PA.  Oh I was so excited for a night of dinner and dancing at the Sterling!  Margie hated to dance, but Vincent was an absolute dreamboat on the dance floor.  We always danced together at weddings and family outings.  Back then, Daddy taught us to hate the Italians, for the jobs they took away from our boys, so when Margie married Vince, many of our relatives disowned her and she needed to curry favor from all of us every chance she got. But I never believed that Italians were bad deep in my heart.  I loved the foxtrot and so did Vincent, and he was all smiles when he was in his element.  

Mother taught me how to work my thick Eastern European tresses, and she assisted with the incorporation of tiny grape hyacinth buds into my hair,  plucked from the clay of our modest Swoyerville backyard gardens.   I remember wearing my shiny raven hair in an upsweep, spending almost the entire day getting every tendril to drape perfectly, having received my first permanent wave the week before.  I have always had poker straight thick hair.  Naturally, I still require the perms, and still receive compliments for my coiffures even now at my advanced age, although I am salt and pepper.   More pepper than salt if you can believe it!

Mother and I wove grape hyacinth blossoms through my hair and also festooned 2 golden barettes with the posies on each side.  The curls and purple blossoms that we grew ourselves were tucked everywhere for a marvelous effect.  My Mother was so very clever and had a wonderful sense of artistry.  She also fashioned a corsage with the Peonies from our backyard garden.  All the details were in place, and last year's corset from The Boston Store Bargain Basement still fit me like a glove underneath the sophisticated yellow dress I had borrowed from Iris.  But with the really important things, my family was less helpful:  How was I to act on my first date?  Do all gentleman 'expect things?'   I needed practical advice on how to powder myself, and at what intervals depending on the given activity of the moment, but mother never gave advice to prepare me for sexual awakenings, so I never knew them when they occurred.  When all of these new feelings swept over me, I felt like a helpless victim.  A longing began to grow inside of me, but I swept it under the carpet.  Delight had always turned into guilt, something which both confused and comforted me.  Mother witnessed a lot of horror in Slovakia, and now there was a big language barrier.  She couldn't read and barely spoke English, but her fear of the Almighty iron fisted ruler of our destiny had a profound effect on all of the kids.  Father Olexy's advice was to say NO, and to allow suitors the ability to kiss only my hand.  But how could I stop from sinking into nothingness if our lips met on the dance floor?  I banished all thoughts of Father Olexy and his stern warnings from my mind.  I just wanted to smell Vincent’s aftershave.

Vincent had a pretty redness in his cheek on this night.  He wore a jet black mustache that shined and gleamed the same as his thick wavy hair. I gasped when a maroon Lincoln Zephyr pulled into the driveway!  Now, let’s do some math.  Vincent Seracino was a local businessman who owned a Paper Supply Shop over in Pringle.  I'm guessing since he was Italian,  he obtained this luxury car through mafioso ties out in Pittston, for I had never seen him driving it before or after, and how else would a cardboard box salesman afford such an indulgence? I didn’t care. When he stepped out of that car wearing a rich brown tuxedo, strutting confidently in my direction, my neck got warm; my skin flushed with a wave of gooseflesh and nerves.  This kept happening to me all night, and I thought these sensations were new and exciting and terrific.  Cousin Margie could have been one thousand miles away for as much as I thought about her.  Whenever I stole a glance of Vincent's pretty eyelashes, curling up on the ends,  I became trapped in a daze for a few seconds.  His dark brown Italian eyes seemed to be surveying my figure as never before, and at times, they engulfed me with deadly force and undaunted magnitude. 

Now The Hotel Sterling was an impressive hotel for us coalmining folk.  The ediface stands to this day, dilpidated and abandoned, but back then was it was a showpiece for out of towners, and where the locals went to exude style and class.  All the gals were excited and nervous to see the legendary two story lobby with the grand marble columns we had only read about in the papers, and heard about from my older sister Zlata.  We giggled like boobies in the Ladies lounge about the soaring towers of shiny marble that made us feel like tiny peanuts in comparison.  A string quartet was playing in the lobby as we entered, and the violin music filled my ears--nothing like my sister Iris' violin when she practiced at home.  Our school had booked a salon for an hour of hors d’ouvres and conversation before dinner, and it required us to go to the tower portion of the hotel connected by a sweeping long corridor in between called Peacock Alley.   Oh the food at the Sterling was marvelous, but I hardly ate a thing that night, beginning a lifelong obsession about food and my waistline.

We arrived in a bustle of traffic, car horns and naysayers, who were mostly angry that we prom goers were holding up traffic on River Street and also over the Market Street Bridge.  With my Chickadee Yellow dress and Vincent’s dapper tuxedo--certainly, we turned heads and stopped traffic.  There were tall vases stuffed with plumes and ornamental grass at  the entrance of the grand Hotel, and a band in the distance played Moonlight Serenade and Green Eyes.  Still later, this band was playing a Charleston.  The elegant hotel was dimly lit by candles and diffused Hollywood lighting.  I drank it all in emphatically, and when I heard the charleston it caused me to let out a heretofore unfamiliar low pitched sigh and ironic chortle.  Dancing the Charleston made me feel quaint and mature, and all grown up.  The air smelled of bacon, garlic, flashpops, Green Goddess, fruit compote and my own Chanilly by Houbigant, something my three sisters and I afforded by sharing a spray bottle of the classic eau de parfum between us. 

When Vince and I marched down Peacock Alley on the way to our surf and turf, my footsteps were tiny and light, so wistful and delicate on the tile floor.  In my white two inch heels with cutwork over the toes, I don't think my feet made any noise at all.  And when I was dancing, he twirled me everywhere and I felt weightless.   Just like a moviestar, but something terrible happened that night.   I will post Part II when I can muster courage and write it all out.  I've never told anybody before.

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

Betko Changed My Life

My goodness, all of the strange sensations those hormones were making me feel during my first pregnancy.  It frightened me so much at first, because until I found out it was a baby, I actually thought I was being posessed by a demon.  Nobody warned me about this.  I had no education on sex--what was I to think when one day in 1945,  I lost all control of bodily functions such as urination?  I didn't enjoy those feelings at all.   Nobody alive on the planet Earth likes wet panties.  How in the world was I supposed to excel into a life of Motherhood that nobody had prepared me for?

I was vomiting daily, and Mother didn't speak enough English to be of any real importance in my life except to embarass me.  Then again, anytime I  yelled at Walter and got him to agree with me at the end of one of our fights, she baked me an apple pie, and of course I loved apple pie.   I trusted Aunt Sabina, but couldn't talk to her either due to the language barrier.  My girlfriends and contemporaries all felt like we were in competition with one another and our husbands and babies, so I dared not ever reveal what was true and in my heart to any of them.  And a demure woman would never admit that she had tasted the pleasures of reproduction.  In the confessional, I weekly declared an intense dislike for impure thoughts, and except for two children, remained steadfast in a repeated denial of my own instincts and longings for sex.

Early in our marriage I was having a recurrent fantasy about my Walter and me procuring nakedly in a lush Hawai'ian waterfall, but the Lord in Heaven put everything into place.  When I confided the dream to our beloved Parish Priest Father Olexy,  none of those fantasies happened.  I had to put all of my faith and trust in what Father Olexy told all the girls.  He was very strict in his teachings on the sins of the flesh.  Father Olexy's approval meant everything to us all, and because I remained faithful to those promises, his Holiness is with me to this day. 

And, thank Goodness for Catholic purity.  Walter and I waited to consummate our love until after marriage, as all good Catholics were instructed. As you may note by the dates I provided that our firstborn Betko was indeed conceived AFTER the sacrament of Holy wedlock so as not to risk a sullied reputation amongst my family or church community.  I was an honors student, and was later voted Most Devout 1961 and 1962, and there were standards to uphold in order to bring pride to the family.

So we baptized our lil Elizabeth and nicknamed her Betko and warned her of the sins of the flesh at a very early age, mostly upon the urgings of Fr. Richard Baublitz, a trusted co-Priest of Father Olexy's.  The two lived with Monsignor Wasilewski at the Rectory back in the 1940's and counseled all of us when we needed it.  Preventative maintenance is what these gentlemen of the cloth suggested for our children and their budding sexuality.

I do wonder if we made mistakes in handling our little Betko.  Aunt Sabina was incredibly cold and distant. I was so busy with the new challenges of motherhood that I never quite bonded with my infant daughter the way I bonded with my infant son the next year.  Do priests still counsel young mothers to reject their children for being born immoral?  There's a lot of people talking about gay this and gay that lately, and I have to tell you it makes me nervous, simply because I don't like thinking about sex.  My late husband Walter was often a close-binding, overly possessive, puritanically domineering father, and I believe that is what triggered the emotional and psychological conditions that produced her lesbianism.  Such a hard life my daughter has chosen for herself, when so many people hate her for it!  Why would she pick this?!

All the stereotypes Father Baublitz told me about those homosensuals must be wrong. For my Betko is certainly not identifiable as one. With her neatly trimmed manicure and all the lipstick she uses, I am forced to conclude that if all Homosexuals turned green tomorrow, we'd have neighbors, mailmen, grocers, ministers, kid sisters, best friends, policemen and others lighting up like St. Patrick's day, and I'd say, "There goes another one! Foiled again!"

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

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

Mr. High Powered Laywer

Well, dear readers in Christ, you'll notice that I've gone back in time on my journal entries and adjusted some of the character's names to fictitious names to retain as much authenticity as possible with respect to my recorded journals. It seems that some of the morally bankrupt individuals who figure prominently in my memoirs are afraid of scandal and can afford to hire lawyers to help them hide their dirty laundry and shameful actions I report to you here.

So from here on in, when I talk about neighbors and other scoundrels in my past and use them as examples of good and bad taste in the eyes of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, the individual's name will be changed slightly. Yes, I must alter living history in order to be a scribe to it.

I half have a mind to press charges against a slutty neighbor who've I've documented numerous times over the last few months in dalliances with numerous men.   Someone took a key and went all the way down the side of my (USA Made) Ford Taurus with a big scratch! I just know it was her.  Now tell me that someone like that can get into Heaven?

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

Gert Whipple and Rosemary the Stinkpot

Now you already know that I live next to Gert Whipple's double block. A double block is a great big house twice the size of normal houses, cut in half with two different people living in each half, with their own front door.  The double block sits in line with 3 other houses, and creates a living situation called a patch.  The least we can all do is make an effort to get along with our neighbors just long enough to coordinate the exteriors and ensure maximum curb appeal at all times.

Last  Christmas, I decorated my house with snowy white Christian lights, and thought it would be nice to coordinate our holiday exteriors to ensure maximum curb appeal. 

Well on the other side of me in the patch is Rosemary, who used heathen multicolors last year. She did this on purpose after all the neighbors had agreed on white. Here we are, months later, she remains a thorn in my side that I simply must take care of.

When I was on the corner leafleting again today, she passed me by, so I decided to show her a thing or two about the Holy Spirit, who works in mysterious ways. "Katty Maureen, your leaflets are blowing everywhere, and if you don’t stop, I will call the cops," she screamed at me, but I prepared myself. Just as she came close to me, I fell to the ground, as if she had kicked me.  I screamed as loudly as I could, and since I have the gift of frailty on my side, it sometimes raises the ire of a passerby. Well Rosemary after she was done hollering, walked away and nobody came to my assistance.  I soiled a pair of gabardine slacks in a mud puddle, and the police refused to accept my calls again today, which, I believe is against the law.  I was calling yesterday to report a different, unrelated infraction of the law.

Later on, I took a brown grocer sack and emptied 2 bottles of Colgate Aloe Shaving cream into it.  I put the spout of the bag under the crack of her front door. Then I rang the doorbell, and when I heard her footsteps on the other side, I stomped on the bag to force the shaving cream into her home, and I hurried away.

I didn't dare look behind me, and as she screamed, I ran to my front door and locked it as silently as I could. Lord only knows what Rosemary was doing in there with her man-friend and the lights off. I hardly think her late husband would approve of her new man friend piece named Lester, owner of a Chevelle with a very loud exhaust pipe, but the two of them probably got the surprise of their lives, splattered with shaving foam.

Rosemary has had this coming to her for a long time. Do not cross a God fearing, outspoken Catholic advocate such as myself. I was only thinking of the greater good.

Yours in the Love of Christ,

Mrs. Walter J. Katsellas

In Memory of Walter

Divorce has ripped asunder nearly half of all homes in the USofA, but I'll tell you nothing keeps a husband and wife together like the bond of holy matrimony doled out by the Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church.  Believe what you will, but for many couples of my generation, the Holy Spirit was the only glue keeping us together through toil and strife.

Now mind you, I am old.  The cars had cranks on them, and the good Catholic Al Smith was running for President when I was in kindergarten.  We went without underwear for 2 years of the Great Depression. I’ve buried one husband, survived the mean old Agnes Flood, and that 1936 flood everyone forgets to mention, and also Irene and Lee of 2011.  Bless our hearts.   I waved my bra in Kirby Park when Gloria Steinem came to town, and picketed Insalaco's when they tried to ban Sweet N Low in the mid 1970's.  Along the way I had me two perfect little babies who both turned into mean old stinkpots:  a boy and a girl.  Very little of what I just listed is in chronological order.  

I beg your pardon, I never promised you a Rose Garden (just like the song) was true in the case of my dearly departed husband Walter and me. I’ll never forget one night when I observed him oogling our maid through the key hole during her toilette in the evening hours.  When I saw my Walter crouching down at her bathroom doorknob his hand poised and circling over his crotch, I remained calm even though my heart had already sunk to my knees.  I examined my conscience, then slipped away silently, before he noticed my pain.  I ran to up the staircase, tears streaming my face and slammed the door to the upstairs room.  I flung myself into the closet, where I could obtain the most soundproofing, and I just sobbed and gasped into my closetful of clothes.  I'm sure that I was howling, because never before had I felt such jealous rage towards another woman, this slutty maid of ours who never cleaned half as thoroughly as I did.  After several minutes, a presence came over me.  In the silence only devout Catholic women like myself utilize, I began to teach Walter a lesson.

Three weeks after I fired the maid, my Walter didn't know what hit him. It surprised and frightened me too when I later learned that arsenic in small doses often has that effect. A nightly sprinkle on those powdered doughnuts he loved so much landed him right in the ICU, but at least I got him to apologize to me for cheating in his heart with our naughty maid named Kaye.  Also for Christmas that year, he gifted me a beautiful string of pearls that I wear to this day.

I was so highly influenced by Valiant Lady, and I was so distraught by Walter’s betrayal,  I let my girlfriend Wanda Stavish talk me into a plan of garnishing doughnuts and other baked goods with a mixture of 3 parts confectioner’s sugar and one part Arsenic.  She’d never been a particularly good influence on me, as I fed this to my Walter for 3 weeks. 

Scratch cakes only! Nothing from a box.  Oh I began shopping at Percy Brown's and learned how to prepare extraordinarily delicious meals for my dear husband on a daily basis and not simply for the joy of cooking!  A right and proper woman must never accept the roving eyes of husbandly betrayal.

Additionally, getting a divorce while Catholic results in everlasting Hellfire, so I had to make the best of my situation. Kids today take the option of divorce, but back then, you didn't disobey your Priests.  By that same token, my scorn was not to become grist for the rumor mill at the next Altar and Rosary Society Spaghetti Dinner, so this is why I found myself acting quickly, and in a whirwind of tears.

Clean your homes by yourself!  Do not hire out for this wifely task!  Was it really Wanda Stavish’s plan?  Or was it all mine?   Who can remember now?  It all went awry when Walter almost died, and I remain so deeply sorry for it. 

But I truly believe a twist of events preserved my innocence.  Naturally, I concluded this was the work of the Holy Spirit.  Due to the runoff from some bore holes at the abandoned strip mines out in Eynon, everyone in the entire region drank quite a bit of arsenic by accident that year anyway!  Even me and the kids and all of our neighbors and friends! God somehow twisted this chain of events to diffuse any suspicion pointed in my direction, and Wanda and I have yet to discuss this incident.  We pretend that it didn't happen.  Sometimes I find myself forgetting about it too! God is Great.  Good is Good.  Amen.

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