Mount Carmel: Going Back in Time

Sometimes, I can feel a certain tug on my roots. Most of my relatives still live south of Chicago, but a job brought me north of the city years ago and I have been living in McHenry County since 1985. I have been making a 140 mile round trip to visit my mom in Tinley Park who is 97 years old. Recently, it was time to get back in touch with my alma mater, the great Mount Carmel High School. I recently published a book called The Brown and White about my freshman year in high school in 1967-1968. It is a fictionalized memoir. After meeting up with a number of alums—they asked me, “Are you going to alumni banquet?” I hadn’t been to a banquet for a long time and I said, “Yes!”

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I am sitting in a school bus in front of the Cork and Kerry Pub at 106th and Western Avenue in Beverly. We are about to go to the 2017 Mount Carmel Alumni Banquet. I had been to visit my mom and brought along my wife and two youngest children who are still with her. The banquet is at the school itself in Woodlawn—a few blocks from the future sight of the Barack Obama Presidential Library. Generous alum have built a campus now—including athletic fields, plentiful parking, and clean modern buildings. In my freshman year, we had an old field of crabgrass, a Quonset hut cafeteria, and the old administration building.

The "Best Selling" Brown and White

The bus we are taking is a conventional yellow bus unlike the Brown and White “spaceship” that took us to school in my freshman year in 1967-1968. Our bus was the Frankenstein of school buses, made from parts of many different buses. But it was also very cool. Today, I am reliving my high school days as this new bus takes me to school once again. But life has changed.

Mt. Carmel was a school for the Irish and every other ethnic group in Chicago. Today, it holds more lessons than ever and certainly has a powerful mix of kids—an ethnic alchemy going on. As the banquet bus pulls away from the Cork and Kerry, we are just a few blocks away from my old pal Hanni’s stop in The Brown and White and at that point in the journey, I would have been surrounded by friends—good company all four years. We would joke about everything and everyone, practice initiation rites having to do with underwear, and look down at girls’ legs in passing in cars. One friend would imitate all the Ed Sullivan acts each Monday morning. Topo Gigio was given a new dialogue. Our unofficial “sergeant-at-arms,” a stocky guy named Mo, would maintain control by just being himself, and our bus driver, Willie, would teach us Manhood 101. We talked incessantly about our teachers who had huge personalities and offered ready discipline. There is no way you could have scripted a funnier, better, or more complete education for rest of century.

In 2017, I don’t know the people on the banquet bus. We are brothers though. Some Carmel grads still say “Our Lady of Mount Carmel Pray for Us” as a closing line to a phone call or an email. They have never forgotten the school song. Most everyone still wears the brown scapular. I know, I do.

A few weeks before the bus trip, I met with the class of ’65 at the Cork and Kerry. They gave me a written testament to five Carmel grads from their class who had died in Vietnam—a war many of them saw firsthand. The 1965 class was the largest class ever—an eclectic group no doubt. They were interested in my book and I answered many questions. It is a fictional work with a basis on fact, but they want to pencil in the names of the real people. I wrote the book and didn’t know how interesting my life would be for others. I didn’t write it thinking about sales. I had worked on it over a 40-year period.

My personal family history is one of emigration for jobs—from Ireland. Members of my family sometimes stopped in Scotland or England before hitting the United States. My fraternal grandfather started a business with a horse and wagon—ice, vegetable, and furniture delivery. He graduated to a truck and later become a teamster officer. Also on my father’s side, there were cops and then nurses and teachers followed.

My dad liked architecture and dentistry, but after high school he was in the Civilian Conservation Corp to help his family make ends meet in the Depression. Like a lot of people of the Era, he was interested in security. My dad was on a waiting list for 7 years to become a cop. While waiting, he worked as a tuck-pointer and often found himself on tall ladders working on brick apartment buildings. When one of his pals fell off a ladder—he quit that job and began looking for something on terra firma. He began working in a shoe factory. He moved on to Ford Motors, where he put in windshields. He was laid off one Christmas Eve. Still waiting for the Chicago Police Department, he took a job as a guard at US Steel. And then, he finally got his patrolman job that he retained for over 30 years. He was at his best on a beat, talking to regular folks about their lives.

On my mom’s side, her parents were born in Ireland (mom from Dublin; dad from Donegal) and moved to Clyde Bank Scotland for jobs. Her mother died at my mother’s birth. Her father, a soldier, fought in the Boer War. He got consumption and died when my mother was six. Her older sisters and brothers looked after her and she came over here on the Caledonia as a small child. It was no coffin ship, but her sisters felt like death—seasick for the duration. Mom loved the trip, but she never went back—a one-way ticket for her. Her sisters got homesick and they returned to Scotland. One of my mom’s brothers raised her here in Chicago. Back in Scotland, one of her sisters married a school master and they would eventually run a Catholic boys’ school in Africa. Globe trotters those folks from Scotland.  

Some of my relatives caught the acting bug and there are a few writers in the group. John S. Norris, my grandfather’s brother wrote a political “potboiler” (or snoozer according to my sister who has a copy) called The Connivers about Chicago politics. My uncle Jim Divers wrote a novel that my mother says read like Hotel and Airport, but was lost after he died. My cousin, William J. Norris was a Chicago actor and playwright. I have a nephew, Mike Norris, who was in Improv and traveled around the country. My niece, Marianne Walsh, has a column in Chicago Parent magazine, a popular blog on childrearing called “We Band of Mothers,” and a funny book called Epic Mom.

My dad was a writer, too, “sorta.” Late in his career, he became a review officer and wrote up crime reports and official materials for his district. When I was in college, I often got a letter from him that was copied and sent out to others in the family. He wrote his letters like his crime reports: “Your mother and I went to see Margaret. Same went on to McDonalds.” About six or seven sentences told me everything of importance.

My dad’s stripe was a JFK Irish Catholic Democrat and public servant. But he had something of his union father’s sensibilities. He was never easy on the alderman:

Tap, tap, tap, the Alderman is at the door.

“Come in,” my father says, “have a drink.”

After some small talk, the Alderman got to the point.

“Mr. Norris, can we count on your vote? You know it is critical for your job...”

My dad would lean back and think about his 7-year stretch on the Chicago Police waiting list and then how it took him two jobs to make ends meet. As he looked back at the Alderman, I can only imagine what he wanted to say, but instead he made some innocuous comment that he would see.

He would always vote for the mayor, but he kept the alderman guessing.

Before things got too cozy for 20th century Americans, there was World War I, The Depression and World War II. Those who came of age around World War II are called the “Greatest Generation.”

The 1950s looked pretty bright for many Americans, but it took a little while before the enthusiasm ran deep. We had Korea, the Cold War and some fear of nuclear annihilation. But once the baby boom got into full bloom, there was no turning back. By the time the 1960s were here, some had set a course for success, although the 1960s in Chicago were ugly and controversial. Generational fights were common and the sameness of the 1950s led to a re-invention of values and institutions. And those who had been left out of the party wanted in. My family had some miserable times—rarely had a car, almost never had one that ran well. Our tiny house was two steps ahead of the wrecking ball (it was in fact, eventually flattened).

Irish author Frank McCourt and others have suggested that a miserable childhood is the only one worth writing about. When you look back on your miserable childhood regardless of your roots, you can look at misery or reflect on love. I’ve tried to look at love when I wrote my book, The Brown and White. My bus mates will tell you that many of the events in the book did take place, but I wrote the book for the brown and white all over who went to many different schools. A book can be organic in a sense and it can stir readers’ memories and bring out their own stories. I hope my book does that the way John Powers Last Catholic in America and Do Patent Leather Shoes Really Reflect Up did back in the day. But I am also hoping that someone will make a movie from the book. I have my sister out in LA looking for a director each time she heads out for dinner. I want Gillian Anderson to play my mother, I can give her plenty of tips. And I was thinking of Danny DeVito for Willie the bus driver.

The southwest side makes me think Irish, especially around the Cork and Kerry and other bars in the area. The Southside St. Patrick’s Day parade runs through the area. When the neighborhoods south started to change, the Irish bars seemed to multiply serving as cultural centers and places where neighbors felt at home. But being Irish has never been a requirement for Mount Carmel men. Many nationalities were represented. I couldn’t spell the names of many of the guys I went to school with back in the day—even with two or three tries. The guys from over east were a mix of Poles, Czechs, Germans, Italians, Swedes, Mexicans, and others. Blacks were coming to school—sometimes from places like wealthy Pill Hill and some not so well to do. But after Martin Luther King’s death, the brown and white chemistry seemed restricted and troublesome. I am sure it took some time to heal.

After I published The Brown and White, I was apprehensive about promoting it to Mt. Carmel. My Irish Catholic story of Collin Callaghan (Callaghan was my fraternal granny’s name) started to hit a nerve and within a few weeks I had been on the “Skinny and Houli Radio Show.” 

The alumni bus has turned east and I am looking out the window at some “different” neighborhoods. Carmel guys came from all kinds of socio-economic backgrounds in 1967-1968. Integration in Chicago did not go well. Most of the white kids moved out of their neighborhoods when blacks moved in.

As the bus takes a drive down the Dan Ryan and then crosses over on 67th Street towards Mount Carmel, much had changed. It does not look like the same place at all. There are improvements all over. Obviously, there are still areas of trouble, but the neighborhood is much improved. 

Mount Carmel Today

When I arrive at Mount Carmel, the athletic center where the banquet is held is magnificent. I meet up with my classmates and since I don't drink any more, I think I ran out of things to say about 10 minutes into it. I was always a better writer than a talker though. Most of the big athletes from my year look like normal people now—many guys who were twice as wide as everyone in 1967-1968 are now normal sized. I did get a chance to talk to many people and had a good time.

We talked about teachers and some of the guys had kind things to say about the book. So that was good. A few guys told me they never read books, but they did read mine. Not sure how that would play in a book review on Amazon, so I didn’t push it. After some awards and dinner, the night came to an end. I got back on the bus.

As I was sitting there, an odd question comes into my mind. What it would be like today to cross the city on a CTA bus from the far southwest side all the way east toward the Steel Mills as I did to date my girlfriend back in the late 1960s? At the time, my hair was slightly greased back with my dad’s Score, I wore a brown beret that was knit by my mother, I sported black pants and a black shirt, and I wore alligator shoes. Yes, that’s right alligator shoes.

Realistically, I suppose I would still look as out of place now, as I did then! 

A few months ago I was interviewed by Catholic TV. At the end of the segment, we did a short cut that might be used for the Feast Day of Our Lady of Mount Carmel. It was customary to record a note wishing everyone a happy feast day, but I had a miserable time just recording a sentence. You see, automatically right out of my mouth kept popping this sentence, which is part of everyone's routine who ever attended a Carmelite School:

Our Lady of Mount Carmel pray for us.

And today, let me say: Our Lady of Mount Carmel pray for us all, publics and Catholics.

Larry Norris is a Crystal Lake resident, the president of Sporting Chance Press and the author of The Brown and White, a book that is available on Amazon. He hopes the book will become a movie.