Sunday school building

I am going to regress a little, because I think the old Sunday school building needs a shout out.  The church truly surrounded the parsonage because Sunday school was held in a whole separate building.  This building, since torn down, was on it's last legs when we got there, and it met it's demise in '80 or there about.  But until then, it was a quirky old gem of a building.

First off, it had a little two lane bowling alley in the basement.  I didn't have an automatic pin setter, so we took turn picking up and resetting pins and sending back balls.  There was always the possibility that, if you had an over-eager bowler, you could become one of the targets.  I don't remember anybody getting hit, but I think there were a lot of close calls. 

There was also a raised caged in ping pong room.  You could see into the cage from the gymnasium, so I guess if you wanted to have a tournament, the audience could be safe from stray ping pong balls!  I say it was a ping pong room cause that's what we used it for, but who knows the original purpose!  Maybe it was for punishing stray Christians...

 On the upper floors, there was a large open area and an actual stage.  The large room was ringed on all sides with a balcony.  the 2nd floor rooms all opened off of the balcony.  Under the balcony, were a series of open rooms,  slightly elevated from the main floor.  One of the upstairs rooms had a definite slant, and we were cautioned not to have more than one person in that room at a time.  I think it was condemned!

 Oh, and there was an old fashioned coke machine that had its home on the landing heading into the gym.  I hope someone rescued that machine, because it would probably be worth a fortune now.  For a quarter, you could get a full size glass bottle of coke!  That was a deal even then! 

I remember my mom producing at least one play on that stage.  There had been an active theater group at our Calvary church, where we were members in St. Louis, and we had fun recreating the tradition in Jefferson City, too. 

The Sunday School building was the scene of many Spaghetti Suppers, Chili diners, pot lucks, and of course, ice cream socials!  Ice cream socials were an excuse to make and eat massive amount of homemade ice cream.  Fortunately, Central Dairy made an ice cream starter. I actually think you didn't have to do anything to it except put it in the ice cream maker.  I am talking about the old fashioned, crank-until-you-get- tendonitis type ice cream makes.  Just add rock salt and crank for what seemed like hours.  But the result?  Nothing better than soft, runny ice cream straight out of the maker.  We must have had a huge number of machines and every kid in the congregation took a turn at the crank.  No one argued about doing it, because I don't remember any limits to how much we could eat! 

I also want to talk about the massive hill behind the church.  The hill bottomed out at the church parking lot and then continued on behind the Sunday school building.  In the winter, we would sled down the hill behind the church and sail across the parking lot.  If we were really moving, we could keep going down the next hill.  We had to be careful, though because that hill evened out onto a seriously busy street (for Jefferson City any way).  It does snow in Missouri (for anyone who thinks Missouri is the deep south.  When I went to Michigan for grad school, people actually used to ask me if I had ever seen snow...)

 We used to park our car  in the church parking lot because the garage was scarily small.  I learned to drive in Missouri among the hills and later taught myself how to drive a stick shift.  (You haven't really driven a stick shift until you've driven one where there are hills!)  But at the time, we had a Ford Maverick. I didn't know that I could adjust the seat, so I drove the thing with my 6'5'' father's seat settings. I'm 5'4''  Once when I was at a rehearsal for the Jefferson City Symphony, it snowed so I had to drive home, up and down a bunch of hills, in the new slippery snow.  It felt like it took forever.  I finally got into the church parking lot, skidded around some more and never got it into our spot.  I trudged up the hill to our house (carrying my cello),  Got into the house and yelled,  "The car's in the middle of the parking lot.  If you want to move it you'll have to do it yourself!"     My mom says she remembers me using the '"f" word, but I think I wouldn't have at that time.  At least not to my parents!