You Drank What!

In the 1950's in Kasson, Minnesota, I became an "altar boy" serving with usually 1 or 2 others, at weekday and Sunday Masses at St. Olaf's Catholic Church under the direction of a very young Father Vernon Schaefer.  "Serving" meant to assist the Priest with certain simple aspects of the Mass such as lighting candles, holding the incense censure and incense boat, responding to his Latin prayers in Latin (which we had no clue as to what we were saying), holding his Lectionary while he read the daily readings out of the Bible, getting water and wine for him during the Offertory of the Mass, ringing the bell during elevation of the the Consecrated bread and wine, and holding the gold Paten under parishioner's chins as they knelt to receive Holy Communion.  If we were lucky, we would get all the cues correct and the Mass would go smoothly.  Occasionally, tiredness or simply a lapse of attention messed things up and the Priest would need to correct matters an unobtrusively as possible.

Pastor Fr. Vernon J. Schaefer is shown below.  The photo is a scan from the dust cover of his published book "We Ate Gooseberries",  (Growing up on a Minnesota farm during the depression), © 1974 by Exposition Press New York.

Kasson was a small town of about 500 people (It's now about 5,500 to 6,000), with a much smaller congregation who couldn't afford a church.  I remember first serving Mass in the upstairs of an old house, which may have housed the priest's quarters downstairs.  The St. Olaf's Parishioners eventually built a "Basement church" which meant that only the basement of the structure was built.  It was capped with a flat roof and the altar pews etc were in the basement with an entrance with steps leading downward.   In the future, when cash flowed more freely, the above ground church would be constructed.   I don't believe the church was ever finished , as Kasson in 2010 has a "Holy Family" Catholic church.  A St. Olaf's Church was built in Byron, 5 miles east of Kasson on Hwy 14 between Kasson and Rochester.

Below is a cropping from the "Dodge county Independent" newspaper in Kasson for March 8, 1956 (I would have been 13 years old going on 14) showing our server schedule for Sunday Mass during Lent that year.

Now, finally to get to my story.   I arrived early one morning at the St. Olaf basement church to serve for 7 or 7:30 am mass.  Fr. Schaefer was all flustered, because there in the sacristy on the counter was a clear gallon jug holding about 1/2 oz of red sacramental wine.  Just the day before the jug had been half full!   Father felt that 1/2 oz was not enough wine to Consecrate during Mass. This was all the wine in the church. Parishioners were waiting for Mass to start and Father didn't know at that early hour where he was going to get more wine.  Usually the wine was purchased from a church supply house who got it from a handful of  special wineries around the U.S. He resolved the problem  using a "less than certified" wine that a parishioner hurried home to get, and Mass proceeded 20 minutes late.   A few days later, we learned that the church custodian had "gotten into" the wine the day before, drinking most of it but thinking he would leave at least a little bit for morning Mass.   It must have been a great sacrifice for him not to consume that last drop!  Afterwards, the wine was stored in a locked cabinet.