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One can never pray too much

The Sunday column

As we get closer to celebrating turkey day, I imagine many of you will be offering up a prayer of Thanksgiving on the special day, giving thanks for all that is good in your life.

I’ll just add that to my already long and growing list of prayers between me and the good guys upstairs.

If you picked up on the plural use of the words in that sentence, you are correct.

Because I was raised Catholic, my mother always taught me it was all right to pray to more than just God. I prayed to saints, angels; I prayed to grandparents, a brother and my father. That always had me thinking that heaven was one giant corporation, which actually gave me a good feeling.

During my 15 years living in Lewistown, my wife, Ann Marie, and I had to sell our home twice because of our growing family. My mother did the strangest thing. It was something that other Catholics had known about, but not me. She mailed me a small St. Joseph’s statue, told me to bury it upside down in my backyard and then pray that my house would sell.

Now this was something I really didn’t want the neighbors to see me doing when I lived in Mifflin County. And yet, I did that — twice! — both times after dark. Nothing like a guy with an Italian name like mine, with a shovel, digging a hole in the dark and then plopping down a small bag with an item into the ground. St. Joseph! I always thought Al Abraham was the patron saint of real estate, but Jeanie Franco said otherwise.

By the way, both times the house sold within a month.

I also can remember being in college and losing my wallet, keys, books, backpack, etc., on numerous occasions. I would call home to vent to my mother about that, and she would tell me to pray to either my brother, Stevie, who passed away when he was 5 years old in 1963, or to St. Anthony to help find it.

Now, I can see praying to St. Anthony, but I always believed a 5-year-old in heaven would be spending all his time in a Toys R’ Us near the Rainbow Bridge. Stevie would not have had time for a brother who was not responsible enough to put his wallet in his back pocket. It’s kind of hard to lose your pants … when you’re wearing them out in public!

And who of us didn’t get a St. Christopher medal for their car from their mom growing up? Again, that AAA sticker on my back window was not enough for Jeanie Franco. Of course, St. Christopher isn’t going to tow your 1980 Chevy Citation back to Altoona when it dies in front of the Hotel Wayne, just outside of Lewistown in 1989.

My two daughters have St. Christopher medals in their cars.

Now, I’m not saying their cars are a lot messier than any car I ever owned — in fact, I guess I am about to say that — but I just pray that the medals are prominently on display inside their respective cars, so that the patron saint of travel is able to locate them from HQ up in heaven.

A lot of religions want you to just pray to God, and that’s a good thing, too. My mother would ask me to pray to my dad sometimes after he passed away in 1994.

Again, I felt like I was infringing on his time up there, thinking he had a remote control with a battery that never died, with a TV that showed either “Barnaby Jones,” “Hawaii 5-0,” “Cannon,” “Hill Street Blues,” or “Magnum” on a 24/7 basis. My dad’s advice to me: “That’s what you have saints for!”

And I pray to my mom for everything. For my daughters to get to work and school safely, for my sons to not get hurt badly playing football, and for my wife to still want to stay married to me, regardless of what damage I do to her house when she is off at work, making money to pay for the damage I do to her house when she is off at work. That’s a lot of praying.

I wonder if she doesn’t go into the Big Guy’s office sometimes and ask for a break from me. Maybe she just wants to enjoy that Ethan Allen living room in the sky she always deserved.

But then again, maybe God has a really good sense of humor, something I am counting on big time.

Wouldn’t it be a hoot that in heaven, my mom, dad and my brother are in a house where our dogs, Benji and Taffy, are allowed on the furniture because … well … it’s heaven!

She wasn’t real big on animals inside the home. I can really see her debating the Lord Almighty on that one.

I can only pray that if it’s true, there’ll be footage of it someday, which I’ll be blessed enough to see on YouTube in heaven.

See, there’s that prayer thing again. I told you!

Mirror Sports Copy Editor Scott Franco writes a monthly column for the Mirror.

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