The Pope and my Pops
Implications of a Midwestern Pontiff
What a monumental day was May 8. It happened to be my birthday, and boy, did I ever appreciate the delightful gift of habemus’ing a papam!
As we all know, the Catholic Church has, for the 266th time, executed its relaxingly un-democratic process of electing a pope. And in a shocking twist that surprised everyone from the Redwood forest to the Gulf Stream waters, this pope was made for You and Me.
Yes, indeed, Pope Leo XIV is a blue-blooded American. And not one of your fancy East Coast types, nor a concerningly laid-back West Coaster. No, our new supreme pontiff was raised on the south side of Chicago—here’s the kicker—just one blessed mile away from the house that my very own father grew up in.
I don’t think the reality of Pope Leo’s upbringing fully struck me until I watched his brother talk to reporters on the pristine, jewel-green lawn of his home in suburban New Lenox. His grey quarter-zip sweater, his receding hairline, his adamance that the world know Exactly Which Neighborhood They Grew Up In, it was all so…familiar. This was a video that truly had me saying, “Is that my uncle?”
Naturally, I called my dad soon after the news broke. I hoped to glean some insight into what kind of background our new pope was bringing to the table.
Like most dads, mine has told stories of his childhood for my entire life. He likes to say that he grew up in an Archie comic (not a random comparison, since he literally grew up in Riverdale). But I don’t remember Archie shooting at Betty with roman candles as they ran around the backyard. It’s these more, shall we say, colorful aspects of my dad’s upbringing that I was picturing once we found out where the young Robert Prevost had been raised. (By the way, I think it’s worth noting that I can’t remember if that roman candle story is something from his childhood or my own childhood memory of my adult father and his adult brothers during a summer visit to my grandmother’s house.)
To be perfectly honest, when I called my dad, I was really hoping he’d tell me one of my uncles had either punched or been punched by our adolescent pope in a street fight. Unfortunately this was not the case. What did happen was my dad taking a trip down memory lane, which was also highly enjoyable. Here are some things I learned about growing up in the 70s, and to tie this in to the papal theme, let’s just call this section
Things We Can Reasonably Assume Pope Leo XIV Did in His Childhood, Being Raised on the South Side of Chicago in the Dolton/Riverdale Area in the Mid-to-Late Twentieth Century (and other related activities)
Biking
Pretty much every time you ask my dad what he did as a kid, he brings up riding bikes around the neighborhood. He mentioned some place called Kickapoo Woods, in which he and his friends would gleefully kick up dust (not poo) with their fast-moving Schwinn tires. I actually don’t know if he owned a Schwinn, but it conjures up idyllic images of shiny red paint and glorious American summers. Pope Leo probably had a bike, and maybe rode that bike through Kickapoo woods!
Throwing Things At Cars
Before Fortnite, there was Throwing Things At Cars. This was apparently my dad’s second-favorite activity behind biking, as it features prominently in many a nostalgia trip. From what I can tell, it didn’t really matter what you threw so long as it hit the car. There was a tree up which my dad and his brother would climb to throw sticks down on unsuspecting motorists, and on winter days it was snowballs. I’ve gleaned that the intent was not so much to damage the cars as to use the vehicles as moving targets. I guess this could be classified as fun. Would you rather have your kid scrolling reels for an hour or shattering the neighbor’s windshield? That’s for you to decide.
Buying Cars from My Grandfather
Ok, this is legitimately possible, and if you have any info I beg you to reach out. My grandfather ran a car lot called Dolton Auto Sales right down the road from, you guessed it, the Prevost family home. We have no confirmation that a transaction happened, but if it did, my dad says, “I apologize.” As a teenager, my dad drove a blue station wagon with a broken starter. Every time he wanted to drive the car, he had to pop the hood and stick (I kid you not) a screwdriver onto the battery terminal in order to get the thing to turn on. Obviously my grandpa gave his kids the crappy cars, but the point stands. And on the topic of cars, because it seems most activities in the 60s and 70s were car-based:
My Dad Told Me Not To Add This One So As Not To Encourage Dangerous Behavior
On snowy days, my dad and his friends would find a stopped (but not unoccupied) car, grab hold of the bumper, and let the driver unwittingly haul them down the snowy road like they were on water skiis. According to him, the snow would kick up into your face as you were dragged along and “it was miserable but you loved it.” Personally I think it’s awesome, but don’t tell my dad I said that.
Splashing the Lifeguard at the Local Pool
According to my father, Dolton Pool was all the rage in the summer. We’re talking hundreds of visitors at a time. One thing we know for sure about Pope Leo’s youth is that he was always home in the summers, even later in his seminary education. So you bet your bottom dollar that he was out there in his board shorts, jumping off the high dive, or the low dive, or just generally enjoying the over-chlorinated delight of an American public pool. The real shenanigans happened near the lifeguard station, which was next to the high diving board and put the poor guy on duty in perfect splashing range. Kids got street cred at Dolton Pool for drenching the lifeguard with a well-executed cannonball (or “banana,” to use the appropriate 70s southsider parlance). My dad is convinced that Pope Leo was, at least once, relegated to the ultimate shame/honor of a timeout next to the lifeguard chair. But who knows, maybe he was the lifeguard. He certainly is now!
Smashing Pennies on the Train Tracks
There were two sets of train tracks in the Dolton/Riverdale area, one of which was closer to my dad’s house and the other closer to the Prevost house. I mostly added this to the list because I wanted to include this quote from my dad, who claimed (rather boldly) that “[Pope Leo’s] train tracks weren’t as cool as ours because ours had elevated parts and his were all on the ground.” I think this interview brought out my dad’s inner 10-year-old, which is delightful, but he should really watch his mouth when insulting the train tracks of our spiritual father. I feel like if word gets out about this, we’re going to have a famine in our hometown or something.
Straight-Up Cheating In Basketball
I’m going to tread lightly here (see above note on famine), but my uncle did give a very hot scoop about Pope Leo’s elementary alma mater, St. Mary’s. He says that their basketball court had all these dead spots, where air pockets beneath the wood floor would immediately stop the ball from bouncing. Basically, my uncle alleges that the St. Mary’s basketball team knew exactly where these dead spots were, and they’d force the opposing team into those spots so the ball would thud sadly low on the ground and they could steal it back. This is cruel and unusual, and as my dad pointed out, possibly a mortal sin. So we won’t say any more about that. I’m too nervous to look up whether Pope Leo was a basketball player. It’s worth noting that St. Mary’s was mortal enemies with my dad’s family’s school, Queen of Apostles. As you can imagine this can result in Shakespearean levels of bloodshed.
My dad also mentioned a lot of food-related activities that the Pope might have taken part in, like getting milk from the milkman and using the milk crates to build forts. Also, there was a very exciting farmer’s market down the road that sold fresh South American produce, so we can assume lil’ Robert Prevost took one bite of uncanned corn and said, “I’m going to Peru.”
Because of this impulse to leave Chicago, so as to find a world of fresh produce and also become a clergyman, young Bob missed out on a couple of staple activities of life as a Doltonese high schooler. I asked my dad to enlighten me on some of these gaps in his cultural education, and so here we have
Southsider Chicagoan Activities that Our Holy Father Pope Leo XIV Would Likely Not Have Participated In, Having Left for Seminary After Eighth Grade
Keg Parties In the Woods
As you grew, Kickapoo grew with you. Gone were the days of Schwinn wheels in the forest — enter keggers. The idea was simple. You paid a flat $5 entry fee to hang around and drink beer, then when the cops showed up (they always showed up), you ran away. One such event resulted in my dad’s first traffic citation, but not in the way you might expect. It seems his friend Booger (yes, Booger) lost his shoes at a keg party while fleet-footing it from the coppers, so my altruistic young father gave him a lift back to the scene of the crime the following day. They never found Booger’s shoes, and as they were leaving, my dad turned right on red at a “No Turn On Red.” Listen, it’s not the most flashy ending, but it does the trick.
Being Part of A Club
It seems that you joined one of two camps as a high schooler in the 70s. Riverdale was affectionately known as “Reeferdale,” with all of the obvious connotations. You were either a “preppie” or a “stoner,” and my dad says the preppies weren’t so much “preppy” as they were “not stoners,” and pretty much the only ones who called them preppies were the stoners. So really, you were either normal or a stoner. One cannot help but wonder, into which of these camps would Robert Prevost have fallen? One concludes that he was likely a preppie, but not because he was preppie, but because he wasn’t a stoner. One could further conclude, however, that he would have been happy to eat at table with the stoners, taking a page out of Jesus’ book. So would the stoners have called him a preppy then, or would they have accepted him as an honorary stoner?
Folks, these are the questions that we can ask ourselves now that we have a Pope raised on the South Side of Chicago. These musings might not be the most scholarly, and certainly not the most theologically kosher, but you’ve got to admit: they humanize the guy. Perhaps that’s what the Holy Spirit’s got in mind for this papacy. We can all sit around and quibble about minute theological issues, or we can think about how this is the first pope, possibly ever, to have known the joys of a Vienna Beef sausage and (to quote a favorite tweet of mine) to have “saved big money at Menard’s”. Though, as my dad would point out when I quoted this to him on the phone, the first Menard’s didn’t show up in the young pope’s neighborhood until the 80s or 90s. But hey — I think he got the point.
-E.S.F
Photo Credits:
Pope Leo XIV—Christopher Furlong, Getty Images
Lincoln Park in the 60’s and 70’s—Carlos Flores
Dolton Pool Back in the Day— Joanne Parke on Pinterest
LaCross, WI Menard’s-1978—Menard’s on LinkedIn
The best journalistic take on Leo XIV since his brother…
His second day of kindergarten my son informed us that he and his friend “Threw stuff at cars” during recess. I always felt ashamed that I wasn’t more ashamed, but instead rather proud. Now it all makes sense. U.S.A., baby