Every year as commencement approaches, certain of our seniors who read very little and were remarkable unobservant over the course of their four years, receive a jarring shock. No, it’s not that they don’ graduate; rather, it’s that they receive a diploma from a different institution than the one they thought they attended. Every year there are a couple of particularly dim individuals who are surprised to learn that their university has a “last name” which is du Lac.
When I put this project in motion, I named it Universite de Notre Dame du Lac, for the rather uncreative reasons that A) I didn’t speak a whole lot of English, and B) I was staring at a body of water. Well…I guessed that it was a body of water. It was pretty hard to tell under all that snow, but I was fairly certain that Steve Badin wasn’t working a quarry or keeping an enormous cesspit. As it turned out, there were two lakes, not one. So to be technical, I should have named my operation Universite de Notre Dame des Lacs, but I/ve never been one to quibble over details, rehash old material, look backwards, beat a dead horse…or admit when I’m wrong. “Doo Lock” has a nice ring to it in English–deal with it.
This was an honest mistake, like playing Michigan for the first three football games in a row (I told Tommy Walsh to pit our team against the Purdue Pumpkin-Shuckers, but he thought I was making the name up to play a joke on him). When I realized my error, I promptly named the lakes “Mary” and “Joe.” Sure, it seems equally uncreative, but I had to cover my embarrassing mistake with a little religious symbolism (an old Vatican trick). Besides, what else was I supposed to have called them–“Hypostatic” and “Union”? Maybe “Perpetual” and “Virginity”would have been more appropriate, but it’s too late now.
At any rate, my little university thrived thanks to its proximity to our spring-fed lakes. Fresh water for drinking, bathing, and irrigating was certainly important, but I saw real potential in what lay beneath the wate–good, thick mud. Steve Badin’s cabin was adequate enough to start with, but it was drafty and smelled like wet, moldy forest detritus when it rained (think of ethanol, only more cloying). I needed brick buildings, and that mud was like squishy, sticky gold to me…and roughly the same color. I can’t take all the credit for the idea–I’ve read Exodus after all, and aside from the whole bondage and oppression thing, the Pharaohs had a pretty good idea going with the brick-making. (Any student who takes this opportunity to make a bondage-oppression-parietals joke shall receive at least one of ten plagues.)
Soon I was turning out so many yellow bricks that I started taking orders from customers. Let me tell you, bricks gave me my first successful money making scheme collegiate revenue source. I dredged up every ounce of gold mud from Mary and Joe. And there’s the problem.
You see, I think this Fisher Regatta thing is a fine way to spend a Saturday afternoon. Nothing is more amusing that watching a fleet of ramshackle boats sink in becalmed conditions. For me, it brings back fond memories of the Spanish Navy. But listen up, Fisher lads: that Mary Lake is deep–I mean 70 feet deep in places. Just look at the Main Building, Sacred Heart, Washington Hall, the Science Building that has become a playpen, the sweat-lodge residence that bears my name, and all the other pretty yellow edifices I built; and then realize that all those bricks came off the bottom of that lake. Now, do you really want to be sitting on some contraption you and your roommates slapped together after a couple of beers, floating perilously over the abyss created by all my construction?
I’m told that water safety devices are much more refined now than they were a century ago. For instance, the life-preservers with which I was familiar were constituted of a wooden plank of five feet by one foot, with two rope loops on either end. That’s why I received preemptive Last Rites before every time I boarded a ship. Lately, I have been instructed in the function of these items called life-vests. Before I knew what they were, I was fairly certain Fisher was inhabited by a coven of witches, since everyone knows they float when submerged in water.
Since my brick foundry has been replaced by “development campaigns” I suppose using Mary and Joe for recreation is putting them to their best use. Had this been an event in the 1840s, I assure you Notre Dame would still be selling small watercraft. And seeing the fruits of my students’ engineering and construction abilities is always edifying…even when that includes elevated beds.
I don’t know who woke up on the wrong side of their palliasse on the floor, and decided that the lads in my eponymous St. Edward’s had to do away with their ever-so-creative sky beds; but said person needs to respect the synthesis of ingenuity and ceiling height. And economy. I made my lads farm for their food and make bricks for their tuition. Now someone wants to prevent them from making their own furniture so that the University can purchase the factory-made variety? I’m told this is being done in the name of fire safety. Believe me, I know all about devastating fires (and the malfunctioning liquor stills that start them). But the last time St. Edward’s burned, it had nothing to do with slapdash beds–the blaze was started by the licensed, bonded, and insured professional construction workers the administration hired.
And that brings me to my final point, which is the long-standing abuse of the words du Lac. It is part of the name I created. It honors St. Mary’s Lake. It should never have become a curse-word and a punch-line to vulgar jokes. When seniors turn into graduates and see du Lac in large letters on the far right-hand side of their diplomas, I want them to rejoice, not shudder. So let’s cut back on the mean prohibitions in the student handbook. Let’s have a few more jury-rigged beds and homemade boat races.
Just be careful. Mary really is 70 feet deep…I’m not kidding.
EFS CSC
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Terry Lally
Just a thought…Our parish in Louisville, KY is Notre Dame du Port located in the Portland area of the city. The name has nothing to do with wine. Portland was a little town below the falls of the Ohio River where steamships had to be loaded or unloaded to portage around the falls on their journey either up or down river. The Falls of the Ohio is the only natural barrier on all 980 miles of the river, and a canal was later dug around it. Portland has since been incorporated into the city of Louisville, named for Louis XVI.
Our little church was built in 1839 on ground provided by Fr. Stephen Badin the first priest ordained in the US. Three years later Fr. Badin granted the land to Fr. Ed Sorin for the building of a university dedicated to Our Lady, Notre Dame du Lac.
There you have it. Next question is where did Badin get all that land!
Father Sorin
Steve Badin was a card shark. Baccarat was his original game, but he picked up Poker pretty quick. Steve was always willing to take a tract of land in lieu of cash payment. The Bishop of Vincennes lost the Northern Indiana lake property to him.
Fortunately for me (and generations of students) Steve Badin was quite unfamiliar with a little game I learned in Le Mans — Vingt-et-Un. It only took me six hours of playing to “acquire” the lake(s) and surrounding woodland.
You might know Vingt-et-Un by its American name: Blackjack.
denverirish
Great post as always. Though I still laugh just as much at the tagline, “Son, in 198 years of religious study, I have only come up with two hard, incontrovertible facts: There is a God, and I’m pretty tight with Him.”
GB
Not only did laugh but learned he lake is 70 feet deep and the bricks were made from the mud of the lakes. Keep these coming!!