In the mid-50’s we would go over to the Monastery across the street from our homes, where we played stick ball, baseball, and 2 hand touch football. When we weren’t doing any ball playing sometimes we would climb the fence which the Church had put up to keep people out of that area, at times we would just lay on the green grass and stare at the clouds talking about what we wanted to be when we grew up.

There was a cemetary where the Priests were laid to rest over the fence but we never went to view them, we never wanted to because you never did that, and sometimes we would over the fence to just walk around it was large area and the grounds were always taken care of by the maintaince men.

But we really wern’t allowed there at any time so we had to watch out for the “Fast Runner” he worked mostly in the kitchen area and had a good view of the grounds, so every time we went over there one of us had to be the lookout for him! Whenever he spotted us he would come out running!

He never caught any of us but we ran as fast as we could to jump over the fence I think he could have got one of us if he really wanted, but we weren’t taking any chances that’s for sure!

The Church is still there but empty and the land was up for sale, and it’s sad because it was the biggest Church in the county at the time which many people attended at the time, In the back area of the Church grounds they built condos a numer of years ago.

They did rebuild the grounds where we played ball, it’s for the high schools in the area today for sports and they did a great job with it, but it will always be that place where we would play and try to out run the “Fast Runner”