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St. Nick's Outlaws
By Jim Colombo
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Copyright 2001 Jim Colombo
Chapter 24
The ladies of St. Vincent’s high school invited the gentlemen of St. Nick’s to their
Halloween Ball. Everyone was required to wear masks. Costumes were optional. The
lads thought that Reverend Mother would ride in on her motorcycle wearing her Hell’s
Angels black leather habit, dismount, crack her bullwhip, and declare that the dance had
begun. They referred to her as Attila the Nun. She was about six feet tall, 180 pounds,
and wore sunglasses every day and night. She believed that her purpose in life was to
defend the virtue of each lady at St. Vincent’s Academy for Virgins. Reverend Mother
personally chilled each lady to thirty-four degrees Fahrenheit prior to the dance to
prevent any warm emotions of passion or lust. The purpose of any social function was
to prepare and educate Catholic ladies and gentlemen in the refinement of the social
graces. “The Locomotion” by Little Eva was number one. For most of the ladies it was
an opportunity to wear their padded bras and back-less dresses. For the gentlemen it
was an opportunity to improve their charming ways when hitting on the ladies. It was also
an opportunity for a gent to accidentally bump the hardware on the chest of a frozen virgin
to see if those were real or heavy metal. Some ladies wore hardware with sharp points.
A gent had to be careful to not lose an eye. The problem with the dances was that most
of the guys and gals had boyfriends and girlfriends from other schools. It was mandatory
for the ladies and gents to attend. The nuns and brothers didn’t think that the student's
initiated contact with the opposite sex without their permission. It was uncomfortable for a
guy or a gal who was going steady with someone else to enjoy an evening of dancing
when they wanted to be with their special person at the dances. Some of the ladies and
gents were dance buddies. They paired off for the night, and hung out just talking and
occasionally dancing. Each were going steady with someone else. After a couple of years
of attending the dances they had become friends.
Jim wasn’t going with anyone, and danced with any gal who looked like she would
enjoy his company. Some gals looked like they were defrosting, and others were born with
headaches. Those were the gals that you faked right and went left to avoid getting
harpooned by an Icelandic virgin. Some ladies spent most of the evening in the ladies
room gossiping and comparing the labels on their dresses. Ladies didn’t compete in
sports, so they competed in other ways, like who had the most expensive dress or the
cutest boyfriend.
Smoking wasn’t permitted and some of the guys went into withdrawal. O’Brien
and Wilson needed a cigarette. The lads went into the men's bathroom and noticed an
electric fan attached to an open window. It circulated the air and blew it out. Wilson lit
one cigarette and blew the smoke towards the fan. The smoke blew outside. Both tried
making smoke rings and aiming them at the fan. When they finished smoking, O’Brien
knocked off the burning head of the cigarette into the sink, turned on the water, and
watched the extinguished ash float in a circle, then go down the drain. The cigarette
butt appeared to be extinguished, and it was tossed into the trash with discarded paper
towels. They walked out confidant that they had smoked a cigarette under Attila's nose
and got away with it. Twenty minutes later at nine-thirty the lads heard sirens. They
became louder. It became apparent that the fire trucks were coming close by. The
students stopped dancing when they saw the flashing red lights reflected in the windows
facing Van Ness Avenue. Attila the Nun told the students to quickly form two lines and
exit. The ladies in the powder room were summoned, and in minutes Attila had evacuated
the hall.
Orlando was an elderly Mexican man who worked as the janitor for St. Mary's
Cathedral. He was returning home from his nightly walk to the liquor store, when he
noticed white smoke coming from the window. Orlando called the fire station. The
fireman answering the phone had a difficult time understanding Orlando’s broken English.
When the firemen arrived they noticed smoke coming from the men’s bathroom. They
began spraying water at the open window, while another group entered the men’s room
from the main entrance. The fire in the trashcan was quickly put out. There was a black
trail that ran up the charred wall to the ceiling. The fire chief was surprised that the hall
didn’t have a sprinkler system. Attila was enraged. She wanted to carve the heart out of
whoever was responsible for violating of one of her supreme laws, no smoking on the
school premises. She lined up all of the lads, and when she smelled tobacco on O’Brien's
and Wilson's breath, she had to repeat the Fifth Commandment several times,
"Thou shall not kill."
Brother Justin was embarrassed, and personally assured Attila that O’Brien and
Wilson would never attend a dance at St. Vincent’s. The lads spent two weeks in jug with
Bad Ass. Each paid half of the damages to the men's restroom by washing cars for two
months.
Unfortunately, two weeks later on a cold and windy November Saturday night, a
vagrant found an unlocked side door at St. Mary’s Cathedral. He thought that he could
escape the cold and sleep that night in the church. The wind whistled threw the old
church's weathered doors and windows. It created a chilling draft. The vagrant arranged
some newspapers to cover himself from the cold. He lay by a rack of candles to get warm.
The vagrant lit a cigarette with a candle, he got comfortable, and fell asleep before
finishing the cigarette. As the vagrant fell deeper into sleep his shoulders shrugged. The
newspaper on his chest slid to his right arm, then down to the smoldering cigarette that
now lay burning on the floor by his hand. The wax on the floor was beginning to melt
and the newspaper soaked in the melted wax. It ignited and burned his hand. Startled,
he lunged and knocked over the first tray of lit candles. The remaining newspapers that
he used to keep warm landed on the melted wax and lit candles and began burning.
The fire ran across the wax floor towards the wooden pews. Years of wax and varnish
quickly ignited. The fire jumped from pew to pew. The carpet at the altar caught on fire.
Gold and red tapestries hanging from the wooden ceiling ignited. The fire raced up the
tapestries, and the wooden ceiling quickly was engulfed in flame. The vagrant ran to find
something to fight the fire with. There was nothing. Shocked at how quickly the fire had
spread, he ran outside to the back were the janitor lived in a one-room shack. He pounded
on the door, waking up Orlando the janitor. He yelled, "FIRE!" and pointed at the church.
It was three in the morning when Orlando called the fire department. The fire was
only minutes old, but spreading fast. The fireman who answered the call had difficulty
understanding Orlando’s babbling about the fire at St. Mary’s. Moments later a second
call came and the firemen of Station Seventeen were on their way to fight the fire. Precious
time was lost. When the firemen arrived, the stain glass windows were exploding from the
heat. Black smoke twisted upward. St. Mary’s Cathedral was made of brick with a wooden
roof. The fire and heat made the church a brick oven. The fire was extinguished at dawn.
The faithful began to arrive for seven-thirty mass, and looked in shock and horrified. The
brick structure was standing but the wooden roof was gone. The stain glass windows were
blown out or blackened by smoke. The burnt smell that lingers after every fire hung in the
morning air. There were yellow barricades at all of the entrances. All of the pews had
burned like kindling. The wax floor was charred and twisted, and the walls were streaked
with black. All of the gold and red tapestries were burnt or charred black.
The fortress that had once stood atop Cathedral Hill was now a brick shell
waiting to be demolished. After the cathedral was demolished, the students sold bricks
for five dollars each to raise funds to rebuild St. Mary’s. The vagrant who started the
fire fled during the confusion. There was no church to clean, so Orlando was let go. He
went to Stockton, California, to live with relatives. The students no longer had a church
to attend mass during Lent and First Fridays. The services were held in St. Nick's gym, but
the presents of God was missing. One careless cigarette destroyed ninety-two years of
history. St. Mary's was the seat of the San Francisco archdiocese. It was the church that
City Hall, the Police and Fire Departments, St. Vincent's, and St. Nick's attended Mass.
Five years later a new cathedral was built with steel, cement, and stain glass windows
resembling an auditorium rather than the house of God. It didn’t have the same character
and history that St. Mary’s had established. It no longer had the humbling presence of
God.
end:jpc
