Literally.
This past Saturday our church held a cleaning day. That probably doesn’t sound too exciting to you, but our church building was built in 1873, so cleaning is like going on an archaeological dig. In fact, ripping up some old carpet, someone found this program from the seventy-third anniversary celebration of the church, held in 1934. Funny to think that since that day when someone’s program slipped under a rug, almost everyone present then—old and young—has died.
It’s also been a few decades since someone cleaned out the bell tower. Several of us climbed the rickety ladders up two levels to what appears to be the central bat graveyard/garbage dump of the greater Boston area. I’ve heard that some countries have a thriving guano export business. For anyone interested, I think we can offer you a cut rate deal. Bring your truck.
Updated: Here’s a picture of the Reverend E. E. Bachelder, pastor at the time of this flyer.
4 Comments
thanks for sharing the pics, austin! i’m sure it’s great for all of you to be in a building of your own now. hope i get to make a visit again sometime. old churches are great.
Providing that there wasn’t more than one Rev. E. E. Bachelder during this period, the pastor’s picture can be found here. So what’s a Congregationalist doing in Provo, Utah?
On a different note, did anyone else notice that they were holding Sunday School at 12 noon?
Ahhh, the memory of cleaning days in an urban church building, built in the late 1800s. While our church didn’t have a guano farm in the upper 40, it still gave quite the experience when exploring on high … the old timbers and the odd assortment of artwork, trash, and thick, dark city dust … Does this building have a low-ceiling basement level, dug out of bedrock by hand after the building was built?
Thanks for the neat post.