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Sunday was much more enjoyable after I had become a sinner and had left Sunday school and the Church to whatever fate the Lord had in store for them. I arose a little later, had a leisurely breakfast and a refreshing quarrel or fight with my brothers and sister, and then went leisurely to my room and as leisurely put on my Sunday suit, with no intention of removing it until I retired for the night. Curiously enough, as soon as I quit going regularly to church and Sunday school I began to wear my Sunday suit all day, and the little voice that I had in the selection of this garment I raised in hopeful pleas for loud checks and glaring colors. No longer did I wish to clothe myself in the sombre blacks suitable for church wear and religious activity; I desired to blossom and bloom in the more violent and pleasant colors of Hell.
Once arrayed in my Sunday suit, I left the house, a cigarette dangling from my lower lip, and my hat, carefully telescoped in the prevailing mode, sitting just so on the side of my head. I tried to time my march downtown so that I would reach Elmwood Seminary just as the young lady students resident there marched across the street, after Sunday school, from the Presbyterian church; they were not permitted to remain at the church during the fifteen or twenty-minute interval because they attracted such hordes of feverish boys intent upon everything but religion. Usually I reached the scene in time, and leaned nonchalantly against the Seminary fence, puffing vigorously and ostentatiously on a cigarette and winking at various and sundry of the girls as they passed in their caps and gowns.
For these smart-aleck activities I was presently placed upon the school’s black list and was not permitted to call upon the one night each month allotted to such social intercourse, but as I soon learned to climb a rope ladder this did not annoy me greatly. Anyhow, calling night at Elmwood Seminary was not very exciting. The procedure was to place a dozen or so chairs about a big room, in pairs but with at least twelve inches between them, in which sat the girls and their callers. In the center sat a gimlet-eyed teacher, constantly ready with Biblical and other uplifting quotations and seeing to it that nothing scandalous occurred. From eight to ten the caller was permitted to engage his lady love in conversation, but it was a rule that everything that was said must be audible to the teacher on guard. Whisperings and gigglings were taboo, and resulted in the young man being placed on the black list, and forbidden thereafter to darken the doors of the institution. But occasionally the teacher relaxed her vigilance for a moment, providing an opportunity to arrange a clandestine meeting. That was the principal reason that the boys of Farmington went to Elmwood on calling nights.
The regular Sunday incident of the Seminary girls having been brought to a satisfactory and successful conclusion, I went on downtown. I was very young then, and I considered myself, in my Sunday suit, a very striking and elegant figure. I thought of myself as a parade, and felt morally certain that the eyes of every girl were upon me, and that their hearts were fluttering with amatory admiration. The Methodist church was only two blocks south of the Presbyterian edifice, and I generally reached it as the Sunday-school pupils trooped out with their arms full of lesson pamphlets and their souls full of salvation, Golden Texts and catechisms. I regarded them pityingly, puffed vaingloriously at my symbol of sin, and went on past the Christian church and the Northern Methodist church and so to McKinney’s, the Post Office Building and the fascinating popcorn and peanut machine.
In the winter time Doss’s barber shop was generally open until noon so Billy Priester could shine the shoes of the young bucks who proposed to defile the Sabbath by gallivanting around with young hussies. It was a favorite loafing place for all abandoned wretches who did not care for the glory that was free in all churches. But in summer we generally sat in front of McKinney’s and the Post Office Building and, when finances permitted, ate popcorn and peanuts, envying Riley Hough as he hurried out now and then to attend to the machine and stuff his mouth with popcorn before hastening back into the store.
All of the young sinners of the town loafed there during the church services, and at twelve o’clock noon we rose in a body and walked down the street to Pelty’s Book Store, where the Sunday papers were distributed. The afternoons were devoted to baseball games and amatory pursuits, and occasionally we went fishing. But this was considered a Cardinal Sin, and was frowned upon by even our liberal element; it was felt that it was a desecration of God’s Day to drag one of His creatures from the river with a cruel fishhook. On week days, of course, fishing was all right, although a waste of time, but on Sunday an expedition to Blumeyer’s Ford, or to Gruner’s Hole, was followed the next morning by buzzing comment all over town, and only a grown man could hope to indulge in such sinful adventures and escape subsequent punishment.