Bob Carroll Part 1
A Most Unforgettable Character
Part I: First Impressions
My first day at St. Joe’s, and my folks had just hugged me and driven off in our ’53 Chevy. I was sitting in my room on the third floor talking to my next door neighbor, Dick Ormsby, who had just introduced himself. He was trying to explain this thing called The Rule to me: “For instance, even though I’m in your room right now, once the Angeles bell rings for dinner, I can never be in here again. Otherwise, we’ll both be thrown out.” (What??)
He told me he was from Mission Dolores parish and had entered with three other classmates right out of eighth grade - which made him an “orig.” I, however, since I was entering in third high, would always be considered a “non-orig.” This seemed to me like a strange label.
Dick was a nice guy and I was grateful that he was taking me under his wing. For his part, he seemed to be enjoying his teacher role a lot, and was in the middle of describing something called a “tu autem” to me when we heard a loud sound echoing down the hollow corridor. Someone was singing.
“All I wont is a room somewhere, far away from the cauld night air . . .”
Dick smiled and shook his head. “That’s Bob Carroll. He must have gone to ‘My Fair Lady’ this summer. He sees every show that comes to town.”
That was my introduction to Bob – Julie Andrews singing her way back from summer vacation with diction and bombast. When he stopped and poked his head into my room, I saw an albino bird with a sharp beak, fragile but also mysteriously strong. I didn’t realize I had just met one of the most interesting people in my life.
The seminary presented us with several bonding opportunities. You might be from the same parish, assigned to the same academic group (A or B), play on the same team, have the same confessor, or, if your voice was good enough, be chosen as a member of the choir. Any of these identities would create bonds that might issue into friendships.
Bob and I didn’t have the same confessor, sing in the choir together, or come from the same parish. I can’t remember who his confessor was, but I’m sure it was one of the more seasoned members of the faculty, whereas I, as a non-orig, was assigned to Father Perkowsky, a freshly-minted Sulpician from back east. Bob had a great voice, so he was already in the choir; I was not. As far as parishes, I came from tiny St. Sebastian’s in Marin, and Bob was from St. Cecelia’s – which, I was soon told, was the wealthiest parish in San Francisco. That meant that his pastor, Happy Harry Collins, would regularly come down for a seminary meal and shower Bob and his cohorts with five dollar bills.
Bob and I did have two bonding points however. Based on a fluke performance on the seminary entrance exam, I had been placed in our class’s A group. That meant that Bob and I were in all the same classes together, along with guys like Pat Browne, Bill Finnegan, Ed Gaffney, Conrad Gruber, Al Larkin, Bob Murnane, Al Potter, and Tom Sheehan. Though several of these guys often got better grades than Bob and won the premiums, Bob was always the class authority when it came to art and culture.
By dint of the sports draft, he and I also ended up on the Indians together. McNamara, Browne and Potter were the mainstays of the team, but Bob provided the color commentary for all our games. He wasn’t much of an athlete, but he held his own on the field just by his wit and antics. I can still see him sauntering up to the plate, gesturing with the bat as he cracked some Groucho Marx joke about players and their balls.
Actually Bob and I had another bond in those early days that he was probably unaware of. I had arrived at the seminary with my grandmother’s stern Irish piety and soon found myself using holiness as a criterion for judging my new peers. I would spend long periods in the chapel talking to Jesus and, whenever I noticed others doing likewise, I would mentally rate them as holy and trustworthy (unlike you other laggards whose only chapel visits were, admit it, the mandatory ones after meals, usually little more than a quick genuflection and sign of the cross). Since I often saw Bob kneeling by himself, wrapped in prayer, I assumed that he, like me, was good friends with Jesus and could be trusted.A Most Unforgettable Character
Part I: First Impressions
My first day at St. Joe’s, and my folks had just hugged me and driven off in our ’53 Chevy. I was sitting in my room on the third floor talking to my next door neighbor, Dick Ormsby, who had just introduced himself. He was trying to explain this thing called The Rule to me: “For instance, even though I’m in your room right now, once the Angeles bell rings for dinner, I can never be in here again. Otherwise, we’ll both be thrown out.” (What??)
He told me he was from Mission Dolores parish and had entered with three other classmates right out of eighth grade - which made him an “orig.” I, however, since I was entering in third high, would always be considered a “non-orig.” This seemed to me like a strange label.
Dick was a nice guy and I was grateful that he was taking me under his wing. For his part, he seemed to be enjoying his teacher role a lot, and was in the middle of describing something called a “tu autem” to me when we heard a loud sound echoing down the hollow corridor. Someone was singing.
“All I wont is a room somewhere, far away from the cauld night air . . .”
Dick smiled and shook his head. “That’s Bob Carroll. He must have gone to ‘My Fair Lady’ this summer. He sees every show that comes to town.”
That was my introduction to Bob – Julie Andrews singing her way back from summer vacation with diction and bombast. When he stopped and poked his head into my room, I saw an albino bird with a sharp beak, fragile but also mysteriously strong. I didn’t realize I had just met one of the most interesting people in my life.
The seminary presented us with several bonding opportunities. You might be from the same parish, assigned to the same academic group (A or B), play on the same team, have the same confessor, or, if your voice was good enough, be chosen as a member of the choir. Any of these identities would create bonds that might issue into friendships.
Bob and I didn’t have the same confessor, sing in the choir together, or come from the same parish. I can’t remember who his confessor was, but I’m sure it was one of the more seasoned members of the faculty, whereas I, as a non-orig, was assigned to Father Perkowsky, a freshly-minted Sulpician from back east. Bob had a great voice, so he was already in the choir; I was not. As far as parishes, I came from tiny St. Sebastian’s in Marin, and Bob was from St. Cecelia’s – which, I was soon told, was the wealthiest parish in San Francisco. That meant that his pastor, Happy Harry Collins, would regularly come down for a seminary meal and shower Bob and his cohorts with five dollar bills.
Bob and I did have two bonding points however. Based on a fluke performance on the seminary entrance exam, I had been placed in our class’s A group. That meant that Bob and I were in all the same classes together, along with guys like Pat Browne, Bill Finnegan, Ed Gaffney, Conrad Gruber, Al Larkin, Bob Murnane, Al Potter, and Tom Sheehan. Though several of these guys often got better grades than Bob and won the premiums, Bob was always the class authority when it came to art and culture.
By dint of the sports draft, he and I also ended up on the Indians together. McNamara, Browne and Potter were the mainstays of the team, but Bob provided the color commentary for all our games. He wasn’t much of an athlete, but he held his own on the field just by his wit and antics. I can still see him sauntering up to the plate, gesturing with the bat as he cracked some Groucho Marx joke about players and their balls.
Actually Bob and I had another bond in those early days that he was probably unaware of. I had arrived at the seminary with my grandmother’s stern Irish piety and soon found myself using holiness as a criterion for judging my new peers. I would spend long periods in the chapel talking to Jesus and, whenever I noticed others doing likewise, I would mentally rate them as holy and trustworthy (unlike you other laggards whose only chapel visits were, admit it, the mandatory ones after meals, usually little more than a quick genuflection and sign of the cross). Since I often saw Bob kneeling by himself, wrapped in prayer, I assumed that he, like me, was good friends with Jesus and could be trusted.
Even though I felt Bob was one of the holy ones in our class, and certainly a font
of culture, I was often, in those early years, put off by his sarcasm, which seemed to have a hint of cruelty about it. Oftentimes I didn’t quite understand the point of his humor, which I suspected was verging on the “uncharitable” (that vague catch-all phrase for any behavior that violated the polite code of seminary decorum and provided us with so many default sins at Friday night confession). Bob was just too smart, too cynical and too quirky; he made me uncomfortable. That’s not to say that he didn’t also awe me at times. I can’t remember the name of the first play I saw at St. Joe’s, but Bob was cast in it as a stern medieval churchman and he got into the role so completely that he terrified me.
Over time, though, Bob and I started to become tentative friends. During summer vacations he would introduce me and several other classmates to foreign films at the Surf Theater - Antonioni, Fellini, Truffaut, Renoir, and my all-time favorite, Jacques Tati. As I got to know Bob better, I started to understand how he ended up with his caustic sense of humor. He had grown up within the wealthy Irish Catholic establishment of San Francisco and had a birds-eye view of its foibles. His uncle was Charlie Harney, the cost overrun king of Candlestick Park, so Bob wasn’t overly impressed by wealth, power or authority. In fact, he really liked to make fun of them.