I grew up in West. Locals refer to it as West (comma) Texas to distinguish it from the state’s vast, western region. The population is predominately Czech Catholic, although everyone is welcome. West is in Central Texas, about eighteen miles north of Waco. Yes, I know, “Fixer Upper,” the Magnolia Table, the Silos. I’ve been there. I love it! But, did you know that West is also the Kolache Capital of Texas? More on kolaches later.

I attended St. Mary’s Catholic School from grades one through eight. When I was in the first grade, Sister Strausberg was preparing us for our first confession. Imagine being a six-year-old and being told that you had to make a list of all the naughty things you did, said, and thought, and tell them to a priest, a man you most likely had never even spoken to before. If you skipped this step to becoming a full-fledged Catholic, the consequences were unimaginable.

 Sister “S” began by telling us about sin and where our souls go after we died. She said there were four places our souls could end up, depending on how we lived our lives.

1. Heaven: This is the best place. This is where God lives. It is a happy, peaceful place.

2. Hell: This is the worst place. If someone commits a mortal sin and dies before they’ve had a chance to confess and receive absolution, they go straight to hell, where they burn forever (twenty-five first-graders cringed).

3. Purgatory: This place is crowded beyond belief because this is where most good people’s souls go. Hardly any souls go straight to heaven, except for Jesus and Mary. They got to bring their bodies, too. Other souls have to stop in purgatory first to have those sins burned off (twenty-five first-graders cringed again).

[Side note: this all started with Adam when he disobeyed God and ate the forbidden apple. I’m not a big fan of Adam. It’s like he got right down to business and screwed up immediately, and that caused every person born after him to be stamped with his sin. Not fair, if you ask me. But what really irked me was that he blamed his wife. This guy was supposed to be our role model? Don’t get me started.]

What Sister S did not tell us was how long it would take to burn the sins away. Five minutes, five years, five centuries? This is important. If it took five centuries to burn off one little bitty sin, we might think twice about our behavior. Now to the Lowdown on Limbo. Read More

4. The fourth and last place we learned about was called Limbo. There are no fires in Limbo (twenty-five first-graders sighed with relief). The souls in Limbo are happy and comfortable, but they can never see the face of God. God never visits. (twenty-five first graders sighed with sadness). Sister S told us that there are two kinds of souls who go end up in Limbo: the souls of babies who died before they could be baptized; and, as she looked around, “The souls of . . . Pygmies.” Our little six-year-old minds were all thinking, “What the hell is a Pygmy?” (Jerome Galuska couldn’t control himself and blurt out that question without raising his hand. Jerome was not allowed to go out for recess for the next week.)

Sister S said that Pygmies are tiny people who lived in the African jungle. They’ve never had a chance to learn about God. They are savages, and they

are . . . cannibals. They eat people (the collective gasp of twenty-five first graders in Sister Strausberg’s classroom in Texas was loud enough to be heard all the way to the Vatican).

Here are some thoughts that went through my six-year-old mind: so baby souls and Pygmy souls live in the same place? Really? Who takes care of these baby souls? What if the Pygmy souls eat the baby souls? How does that work? Is there a giant wall separating the baby souls from the Pygmy souls?

Over the eight years, I attended St. Mary’s, a lot of my questions went unanswered. But then came a news flash: On April 18, 2007, Pope Benedict XVI stepped out on the balcony overlooking Vatican Square and declared Limbo nonexistent. I thought of those baby souls and Pygmy souls and wondered where they went. In my book, they should have gotten a free ticket to heaven—no questions asked. I hope I live long enough for another Pope to get rid of Hell and Purgatory.

Watch for Growing Up Catholic in a Small Texas Town Part 3: “The Carpool” on May 1.

(If you’re from West, don’t worry, except for my family, the names in my essays are changed, and I’ve embellished a little.)