|
Personal tales and anecdotes do more to paint the history of a church
or a region than pictures or droll history books could ever hope to do. This bit of All Saints' history from a personal (and witty) point of view was submitted by Margaret Falatico of the Lynch Circle Ranch near Hyannis. It is an excerpt from an article written by her grandfather, Thomas Lynch, entitled, "In Praise of Irish Fathers". 
|
My father was a frugal man and my father knew and loved livestock.
He soon became the wealthiest Catholic within fifty miles of his neighboring
cow-town, and that is not even a wealth-worshipper's boast, for there were
more coyotes than men in that area; no really rich men; only occasional
Catholics.A tiny wooden church was built, Father Healy helping the carpenter, and succeeding Irish priests at the railroad-shops town came down a few times every year, a sixty mile train ride. As a gangling boy, a son of his later years and schooling in Omaha, I spent a few summers away from my mother and sisters, "roughing it" with my father in the sod ranch house. Once, dressed all in solemn black, his trousers pulled over the tops of his riding boots, and driving a team of broncos hitched to a heavy wagon, he took me to Mass. There was no acolyte, no music. After the "Ite, missa est", the men remained in the resin-blistered pews, while the women and children (except me) waded thru the sandy road to the hitching rack. The celebrant removed his robes and came to the altar rail with a small book in his hand. From this he read the names of his adult male parishioners. "Henry Allen". Henry answered, "Five dollars". "John Brady". The answer was the same. And so was it for the Fred Brimeyer and Geroges la Liberte, the priest repeating the name, and the identical sum every time, and noting the "fives" in his book. But when my father's name was called, and he sing-songed, "five dollars" like the rest, the priest recited "Thomas Lynch, twenty five dollars." This he did without the least hesitation or accentuation.
Nobody shuffled or grinned. I cast a startled
glance at my father; he made no sign. And as I went out of the box-like
In this way, too, my father preserved his reputation (precious to him) as a "tight wad", at the same time that he was accorded full recognition as a local Croesus. The pastor, likewise, proved himself a man of wit and understanding. And got the extra twenty dollars. Everybody was contented." (by Thomas Lynch, c. 1950) Return to All Saints - Hyannis
|
church, holding his hand --- the hand with the twisted little finger, frozen
in the great blizzard of '88 --- I thought that this was probably not the
first time that my father's donation had been thus "hiked", and that the
whole maneuver was a fine example of frontier sagacity. For, look you: in
so democratic a community it would have been distasteful to all if my
father had boasted of his wealth by offering a greater donation than did
his neighbors. Yet it would have been quite unfair had he escaped with so
light a tax as the others. 