in the 1950s, I lived right across the street from from the Church Saint Michae’s It was was built on 12 acres of land and went 2 blocks lwest to east some, and 3 blocks north to south! It was the biggest Chruch in the country at the time and many attented mass there on Sundays and many were married there over the years and my oldest sister was married there also in 1958, it was built in 1869 and completed in 1875.

I moved there when I was 4 years old and still remember when they first put down tar for cars to park in one section, and the other section was dirt with trees and it was fenced in the entire length, so as I got older that’s where the kids in the neighborhood would gather to play, and we would play stickball down where the cars parked after Sunday services. It also had basketball hoops on each side of the parking area.

On the other end is where we would play baseball, the city would add a back stop later on but the bases we made with any decent size rock we could find for 1st, 2nd, and 3rd base, but we did have a home plate the city also added. Many times you could spend most of the day there, only to go home for diner then back again to play a game.

And I remember summer days shooting off those toy water rockets that had a launcher and when you pumped it up it took off straight up and we could have sworn it was headed into orbit! And of course, that’s where the city would dump those wonderful mountains of snow! from around the city and seemed to last a year in the cold winter!

I’m not kidding it took forever for them to melt and they were large and seemed to go on forever and the truth is, we didn’t mind if they did!  Oh but what fun we had making snow forts and making up sides to have snowball fights! The Church is still standing there but no longer active with membership it was upgraded for the area high schools for sports and looks nice and on the south end part about three blocks away from there are condominiums built on the land a number of years ago very nice looking.

So very once in awhile when I’m in the area I say in a quiet whisper “Hello to  Saint Michael’s Church” Thanks for the memories!