04:13

Ruth Deutschmann

Benjamin Epp

Innsbruck

2008-06-17

Sylvia Manning - Baumgartner

Nicole D´Incecco

1927

My uncle was ? this is very difficult to say ? an alcoholic. It must have been terrible for him to drink the sacramental wine at mass every morning because alcoholics are not supposed to drink. He was permitted to have one glass of wine at lunch and one glass of wine at supper. He always went to the cellar which was a few doors down. When he came back Aunt Lora made him breathe at her so she could check if he had been drinking or not. If he'd had a drink, all hell broke loose. We children experienced some interesting theatre that way. We could walk all the way around in the house where my uncle lived. You went in by the door, through all the rooms and out again. So uncle went to his room and Aunt Lora followed him and slammed the doors. He just went into the next room. So they ended up running after each other. She was nagging and scolding and he... Because she was the only one who could deal with his alcoholism she was allowed to be his housekeeper when she was only 25 years old. Usually you have to be a certain age - I'm not sure, I think 50 years old - before you could be a priest's housekeeper. He was a poor fellow. He was one of those... He had studied in Trento to become a priest. He wandered around as a so-called beggar student, ate at a different house every day. They were given Leps which is a terrible thing. After pressing the grapes for wine, when all the wine has been pressed out, you pour water over what remains and what you get is Leps. At the places where they ate, they could drink Leps until they passed out. That's why he... Because he often was famished and drank a lot of Leps he somehow became an alcoholic. He was a very nice person, a good soul. A nice person. But a poor devil at the hands of Aunt Lora. She scolded for hours, she was good at it. We didn't mind much. But one thing was bad. Aunt and uncle always prayed for 1½ hours in the evenings. They started with the rosary, then a litany, then the twelve Franciscan Our Fathers and then one more Our Father and finally another litany. And we children had to participate. At the entrance of her bedroom ? her bedroom was here and uncle's was all the way over there ? at the entrance of her bedroom there was a raised threshold. We had to sit on this threshold and pray ? for 1½ hours. But we were used to it. If you start when you're four years old you get used to it, like eating and sleeping.