How one uses the toilet isn't a topic for polite conversation, but I'm bringing it up because it is an example of how every aspect of our daily life, even the most personal, was regulated.
I've previously written about how we had no privacy even when showering, since there was a nun watching the whole time. What I find ironic is that even though we spent maybe ten minutes naked in front of a nun when showering, the school took elaborate measures to make sure that none of us happened to accidentally see another boy's penis for a few seconds while changing.
The procedure for changing clothes in the dorms involved the cadets in each of the three rows facing the same direction; the center and window rows faced in the direction of the window, and the locker row faced the lockers; in other words, we faced our own chair. We would then put our bathrobe on over our clothes (or pajamas) and change our pants and underwear. Then we would remove the bathrobe to change our shirts or pajama tops. This procedure went on even when changing from khaki pants to green fatigue pants, i.e., when we did not remove our underwear.
In the bathrooms, the urinals had been covered up with brown wrapping paper (some with black plastic garbage bags) by the time I attended in the sixties, so we used the toilets even to urinate. There were partitions between the toilets (I believe they were actual walls, but don't recall exactly what material they were made of) but these were only about three feet tall, and there were no doors on the stalls. I don't know whether there were doors originally and they had been removed sometime later. I did see pictures from the late 1980s in which the stalls do have doors.
This worked fine when urinating, but when defecating there was a special procedure involving the bathrobe. Whether you were wearing pajamas or one of the uniforms, you had to get your bathrobe and put it on backwards, meaning with the opening to the back, before sitting on the toilet. After you were finished, you would either put the bathrobe on correctly (if wearing pajamas) or take it back to your chair.
This was one of a myriad of rules explained to us upon our arrival at Linton Hall, but actually there was more to it than that.
There I was, a recent arrival, sitting on the toilet and wearing my bathrobe the approved way, when a busybody reported me to an officer. You see, I happened to have a hand under my bathrobe. Why? Well, I didn't want my penis accidentally touching the filthy edge of the toilet bowl, and I needed to point my penis down into the bowl so that if I happened to urinate I wouldn't soil my pajamas and bathrobe. I didn't feel comfortable explaining this to the officer or the busybody, so I just did as I was told and kept my hands over my bathrobe.
This little incident illustrates both the prevalent mentality among far too many cadets of looking for and reporting even the smallest infractions by others, and the extent to which even the most personal and insignificant details of our daily existence were regulated.
(Added 11/30/11:) The toilets in the basement had regular sized partitions, but no doors.
Over my lifetime I've probably used hundreds of public restrooms, but I cannot think of even a single one (other than the ones at Linton Hall Military School) where the partitions were only 3 feet tall and/or there were no doors on the stalls.
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Bill Farquhar and I had many conversations over the decades since my departure from Linton Hall MILITARY School in 1949; released after five years for good behavior. There never was in our chats any suggestion that LHMS was not its full acronym. It was printed as such for decades, was emblazoned on our uniform lapels, our shoulder patches, our cap insignias, etc. Can anyone out here try to determine when this misguided communal whitewash began, who began it, and just who it is who’s continuing it?
ReplyDeleteThis is not just one grand typo!
____________________________
André M. Smith,
Brass.work@verizon.net
Bach Mus, Mas Sci (Juilliard)
Diploma (Lenox Hill Hospital School of Respiratory Therapy)
Postgraduate studies in Human and Comparative Anatomy (Columbia University)
Formerly Bass Trombonist
The Metropolitan Opera Orchestra of New York,
Leopold Stokowski’s American Symphony Orchestra (Carnegie Hall),
The Juilliard Orchestra, Aspen Festival Orchestra, etc.
The Benedictine nuns in Bristow have a great deal to regret, in both their personal behavior and their fractured relations to others; child and adult, male and female. My forthcoming autobiography and family history have been in the making for at least the past forty years. My five years confinement at Linton Hall Military School during the 1940s must perforce be one of the more unfortunate experiences to which any child might be subjected. As such it will provide rich fodder for reflection by anyoone interested in the subject as it unfolds.
ReplyDeleteSixty-four years after having been released from bondage, I continue to marvel at the Benedictine skill, founded on a well-refined desire, to turn all human enriching attributes into punishments.
As the Benedictines sowed, so also shall they reap.
_______________________
André M. Smith,
Brass.work@verizon.net
Bach Mus, Mas Sci (Juilliard)
Diploma (Lenox Hill Hospital School of Respiratory Therapy)
Postgraduate studies in Human and Comparative Anatomy (Columbia University)
Formerly Bass Trombonist
The Metropolitan Opera Orchestra of New York,
Leopold Stokowski’s American Symphony Orchestra (Carnegie Hall),
The Juilliard Orchestra, Aspen Festival Orchestra, etc.
Reading the posts on this blog – and, I must add, not only on this one! – has confirmed the accuracies of the many memories I retain of my five years of detention in LHMS. Shipped off from a thoroughly dysfunctional family to give them time and space to refine their own pathologies without the distractions of adult responsibilities, the boom was allowed to lower on me with its full weight.
ReplyDeleteThe mid-to-late 1940s was a difficult time for the entire nation, none of which touched us students – excuse me, Cadets – in a realistic form. It was at LHMS I learned the truest of hatreds, not of race, but of abstraction from, especially, Sister Ethelreda (Altman) and Sister Genevieve (Blyley). The Jews killed Christ and The Lutherans (the lowest of all) rent Mother Church asunder. Years AFTER we, The Americans, had won the war we were being trained by combat veterans from Fort Belvoir to bayonet Japs and eviscerate Krauts. I have many more substantial examples that will lay out clearly the full extent of the cruelty of these Brides of Christ. Sic semper tyrannis!
If anyone reading these few words would like to continue pursuing with me this fascinating enquiry as a matter of obligation please feel free to contact me at any time.
Cordial greetings to all . . .
____________________________
André Michael Smith,
Brass.work@verizon.net
Bach Muss, Mas Sci (Juilliard)
Diploma (Lenox Hill Hospital School of Respiratory Therapy)
Postgraduate studies in Human and Comparative Anatomy (Columbia University)
Formerly Bass Trombonist
The Metropolitan Opera Orchestra of New York,
Leopold Stokowski’s American Symphony Orchestra (Carnegie Hall),
The Juilliard Orchestra, Aspen Festival Orchestra, etc.