Like Caesar wrote about Gaul, Catholic summers are divided into three parts: June, July and August.

I realized Catholic summers were different at the end of first grade at St. Mary's in McKees Rocks, when I still had to go to school, and my best childhood pals, Richie Caputo and Johnny Po(haski), didn't. Catholic schools had 185 days of teaching, and not 180.

Richie and Johnny were singularly unimpressed by that, noting, "You get holy days off and we don't." As a kid, it's impossible to disagree in the face of such irrefutable logic.

Since St. Mary's had its school picnic with Stowe, we always had to go back to school the day after the picnic and "clean our books and get our report cards."

And Sister wanted those books clean: "Get out your erasers and go through every page and remove all pencil marks!" And then you cleaned the binding, and then you took them up to Sister for inspection.

And then, Father Becker would show up and go over your report card with you. Oops. I was a good student, so I was safe, but some other classmates got The Stare from Father. You didn't want to get The Stare.

Finally, you were done and June began. June was summer's appetizer course. I only had the second half of it to mess around in, so let's go! No air conditioning then, or computers, or video games, or much of anything, so kids were always outside -- and our neighborhood had a LOT of kids!

We were fortunate beyond words to have a vacant lot five doors down -- Keitzie's Field. Mr. Keitz was not your regulation friendly guy, but he let us play in that field all day long.

First order of business was to get sunburned. You didn't plan it; it just happened. After three or four days the pain subsided, and you were all set for the rest of the summer. You fixed up the field and played every sport you could think of.

You knew how much fun the day was by how dirty the water was in the bathtub at night. And Mom would always say the same thing: "Rinse the tub and clean that ring. Other people have to use it, too."

The end of June saw the coolest thing in Stowe -- the street fair, sponsored by the fire department. Five days of cotton candy, candy apples and sno-cones. And rides and gambling booths. Losing an entire two weeks' worth of allowance on the Big Six wheel one time cured me of gambling to this day.

July was the main course. Thirty-one days of wonderfulness. Fireworks on the Fourth, set off on Stowe's football field. Nana took me one time when they still had "ground displays." And the cherry on the sundae was that on a couple of Saturdays the Parkway Theater would show 17 cartoons and a double feature of horror flicks. If you can find a better deal for 22 cents come and get me, and I'll go with you.

August was dessert and coffee. Another 31 days of baseball, football, softball, outrageous fun and dirty bath water. But August foretold, inevitably, the grim, spectral visage of "the day after Labor Day." Everyone went back to school then. So you could enjoy August, but you knew the piper was soon to be paid.

The best Catholic part, for me, was when I was picked to be an altar boy, beginning in fourth grade. One of the best parts about Catholic summers was that we got to serve a week at a time, and there were plenty of wedding Masses. Weddings were always so joyful. The best man would always tip the servers -- five or 10 bucks to be split among the four of us, big money in those days for a 10-year-old.

The older kids told me to lie to Father Becker about that because he would "steal" the money. So there I was at a holy place lying to the priest. Nice. Father would always ask if we got tipped, we always lied, he knew we were lying, and this incredibly crusty priest would pretend to believe us.

With whatever Father actually scadged from the altar boys, and with whatever he kicked in on his own, he used the money to throw a picnic for the servers at Kennywood. But we tried to stiff him anyway. I suppose that should be part of my next Confession.

Labor Day night eventually showed up and, after a fitful sleep, I'd get dressed, fold myself into mom's car, and another Catholic summer was over.

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