The other day, someone asked me to name my earliest memory. That’s easy. Church. I can remember being in the pre-nursery school Sunday school at what used to be First Presbyterian Church ?#34; now Calvary Memorial ?#34; on Lake Street.
I have no idea when the church was built, but it always looked old even when I was little. My first memories are of playing with big wooden blocks in the pre-nursery school room, then moving up to the regular nursery school room, then to kindergarten and so forth. I think I remember kids whose names were Michael Rold, Susan Porch, the Armentrout girls, maybe Steven Post.
We usually got parts in the Christmas pageant in the Sanctuary (I was an ass or a sheep usually ?#34; very high-profile), and some of us sang in the choir. The choir met in the basement under Charlotte Miller’s direction. We rehearsed after school on Thursdays. Mom forgot to pick me up once. The best part of choir practice, though, was the chance to creep down the hall to see the skeleton. Maybe I just dreamed this, but I swear there was a skeleton in a basement room. The bones were hung up on a hanger-y device and they were a nasty yellowish color. Very scary.
Anyway, I went from (as the LuLu song says) crayons to perfume in that church. In high school, about 20 or 30 kids would congregate in the upstairs western wing of the church after school in a crazy young people’s room with couches and chairs and pillows and NO supervision. More than a few kids went through some rites of passage there. I showed up because my big crush of 1970 did. I’ll bet David Starkey is still cute.
But don’t get me wrong, I’m not bad-mouthing the supervision or the church itself. I’m sure there must have been supervision. We were just sneaky kids. In fact, the church was one of the nicest parts about growing up in Oak Park. The huge sanctuary is my definition of a church. Little, modern churches just don’t make me feel as close to God as First Pres’ sanctuary did, with those incredible stained glass windows, arches, high ceiling and awesome organ. We in the choir were somewhat less awesome.
Sometimes I go to France and see churches that may be even more impressive than the church on Lake Street, but when I was young, I couldn’t imagine anyplace that came as close to being “God’s house” than that beautiful stone church. I’m glad it’s still there. I hope it’s filled with wonderful people.