Maybe Be Rain
DALZELL — After a lifetime of serving his God, area Catholics and the students of St. Bede Academy, the Rev. Bernard Horzen decided it was time to write his memoirs.
It began several years ago, when the abbot of St. Bede commented to Horzen that he had had a rich life.
“I said to him, ‘So many people have done so much for me that I’d like to write a book,’” Horzen said.
Another inspiration for Horzen was the quotation by the author Honore de Balzac, that there are three things a man should do before he dies.
One is to plant a tree, and Horzen had planted many of those, and the second was to write a book.
“The third, which I can’t do, is father a child, so we’ll settle for two,” Horzen said with a smile.
In 2001, before being assigned to the St. Thomas More parish in Dalzell, Horzen traveled to California to a relative’s ranch.
“I wanted to be free of newspapers, computers, television and radio,” he said. “I just took along a tape recorder.”
And so Horzen spent a month recording his life story, filling six 90-minute tapes.
“I thought that if Mike Ditka and Jim McMahon could do it that way, I could too,” Horzen said.
Horzen’s niece transcribed the tapes, and then Horzen looked for someone to polish them. He eventually ended up with Dan Nagle.
Nagle said he wanted to do a minimal amount of polishing and editing, so he carefully smoothed out Horzen’s words, and created sections and chapters where things seemed to fit.
Nagle said it was important to him not to change the way Horzen spoke, which is as a first generation American from Slovenian immigrants.
“Father’s transcriptions have created a subtle link to the “old country” (as Father and my own relatives refer to Slovenia), and I wanted to preserve this flavor, which adds great character to these memoirs,” Nagle said. “Father’s own stories, lessons, and recollections were powerful enough, and they remain, as memoirs should, the focus of this collection.”
Horzen said the book recalls things he remembers from his travels, people that he encountered and his missionary activities.
“I want to share what a lot of people have done for me,” he said.
One of the stories comes from the years 1963 to 1968, when Horzen was in charge of St. Bede’s kitchen. Horzen was struggling to feed the boarding students with a food allotment of 35 cents per meal, when Buzzy Verucchi came to inspect his kitchen.
“He said, ‘I think I know somebody that can be helpful to you,’” Horzen said.
That man was Milford Pohren, a railroad adjuster in Princeton.
Verucchi told Horzen that Pohren often had distressed merchandise.
“He said, ‘I think he’s got a carload of potatoes and a carload of flour now,’” Horzen said.
So Horzen called the adjuster, and Pohren told him to bring his truck.
“He sold me potatoes $2 a hundred, and the flour, $3 a hundred, and cake mixes, $5 a hundred,” Horzen said.
The priest made the trip to Princeton every Saturday, and finally Pohren had an idea.
“He said ‘Put down what you’re going to need next month. If I can get it, I’ll have it shipped to Bureau,’” Horzen said.
One day, Pohren called Horzen.
“He called up and said ‘I’ve got a carload of lettuce on the track at Bureau, but it won’t last too long, though,’” Horzen said. “We had a lot of salad that week.”
Another interesting story is how the book got its name.
While most people would say maybe there’ll be rain, Horzen’s father Anton, with his heavy Slovenian accent, would say “Maybe be rain.”
Anton wanted, and frequently got, laughs when using that phrase in response to questions from his youngest son, Tony. However, “maybe be rain” was a reply that also frustrated his young son, who was sometimes seeking deeper or more direct answers from his father.
His father’s persistence, symbolized by “meb’be be rain,” caused Tony Horzen himself to develop his own unique persistence, which would serve him and many others so well over the years.
Today, Horzen said he wrote the book so people can see what one man can do.
“I want to give some support to people who feel depressed at times and feel useless,” he said.