You Can't Go Home Again

Whenever my mind starts to wander about the things I’ve done in the past, the places I’ve been, the things I’ve seen, or the best parts of my life up to this point, my mind will invariably take me back to my childhood when my family lived on Beck Drive in Central Gardens, just outside of Richmond, Virginia. To me, that was the best and happiest part of my childhood – not that the rest was bad, of course, it was all good – but to me, that was the best part of it all. And of that time period, the majority of the good memories I have all revolve around the church my family attended, St. Luke’s Episcopal Church on the corner of Cowardin Street and Bainbridge Avenue.

St. Luke’s was considered a “high” Episcopal church, meaning that the services were conducted with a great deal of pomp and ceremony second only to the Catholic church. At the main mass on Sundays the procession consisted of two torch bearers, the crucifer (the man carrying the brass crucifix), two more torch bearers, the thurifer (the man carrying the brass incense burner called a thurible that was suspended on three long brass chains), two acolytes known as #1 and #2, the Master of Ceremonies, and then the priest. Everyone in the procession except the priest were wearing heavy red gabardine cassocks topped with white linen carters, with the priest wearing about twice as much ceremonial robes. There were about 24 candles burning in the altar area of the church during high mass, more at Christmas time, and this was all being done in a church that was not air conditioned.

Yeah, it got hot – you better believe it got hot! More than one young acolyte passed out from the heat and the wine right after communion, let me tell you!

When you started out as an acolyte in the church you always started out as a torch bearer and worked your way up from there. My father was a deacon in the church as well as an acolyte, and I remember when I was finally old enough to serve in the mass with him. I think I was about eight or nine, something like that. I started out as a torch bearer, moving up to crucifer after a while where I found out just how heavy that 5 foot tall solid brass crucifix really was. Then I moved up to thurifer and learned how to manipulate the thurible on those long chains without dropping it or letting it bump into something or someone while swinging it when the procession was moving up the aisle to the alter. I also remember stressing out the first time I did that position, trying not to miss my cue after the sermon to re-enter the service. When the priest, Father Hendricks, would give his sermon the thurifer would leave the altar area through a side door and stay in the acolyte’s room where the robes and cassocks were kept, and it was his job to keep the incense burning while there. You also had to be on your toes and listen for your cue to re-enter the service; if you came in too early you looked like a fool and were sure to hear about it from Father Hendricks later, and if you missed your cue and came in late the same thing happened. But I didn’t miss the cue, I didn’t bump into anything or anyone with the thurible, and all was right with the world.

After doing the thurifer thing a few times I moved up to the #1 position. The #1 and #2 positions were the two acolytes who helped the priest in the consecration of the wafers and the wine used in communion by bringing them to him at the altar to be blessed. Additionally, the #1 position also had the task of ringing the three brass bells at specific times during the blessing of the wafers and the wine, something else that if you botched it up you were sure to hear about it later.

If all of this sounds like a lot to remember, lemme tell ya it was. That’s why every Saturday you’d have rehearsal at the chuch where you’d practice the mass to make sure you got it right. But it was a challenge, it was an honor, and it was fun. I enjoyed serving as an acolyte with my father more than anything else in that period of my life, and I remember him looking over at me during the service after I’d just finished my stint as #1 and giving me a slight smile and a nod. If I’d have felt any prouder my chest would have exploded right then and there.

The church was an old church, even in the 1960’s, and to this day I remember the layout. It had a big flight of concrete steps leading up to the main entrance foyer, and off to the right side of the foyer was the area were the prayer candles were. To the left was a stairwell that led down to the side door and then to the basement, and straight ahead and through the double doors was the church proper. The inside of the church looked fairly huge to an eight year old boy, with high ceilings, big columns on the ends of the rows of pews, big stained glass windows where the Stations of the Cross were located, all leading up to the altar area where the services were held. If you walked up the left side of the church and went through the swinging doors you went into the administrative area of the church, and if you walked up the right side of the church and went through those doors you were in the area where the acolyte’s room and the church library were. At the end of each of those hallways were stairs leading to the second floor of the church where the classrooms where Sunday school was taught.

As I said there was a basement, which you could get to by either the stairs on the left side of the foyer or by a door on the left side of the church. The basement was where coffee and donuts were served after the main mass on Sundays, and it also had a full kitchen and a stage. I remember being in several Christmas pageants on that stage with my sisters and a cousin or two, and I remember my first taste of the most vile liquid I'd ever had in my mouth at the tender age of 6 when I tried coffee for the first time in the basement after mass one Sunday. Also down on that level was Father Hendrick’s office and a study.

Father Hendricks had a Great Dane named Sally that used to wander the church with him, and she was a very gentle dog. I think the two things I’ll always remember about Father Hendricks are his pipe and Sally.

My family was very active in the church in those days, and we spent a lot of time there. I remember going to Stations of the Cross mass with my mother during Easter several times, and I also remember the collection boxes during Lent. After the services on Sunday we’d either go over to my grandfather’s house to visit my father’s parents – my mom’s folks lived in Florida – or we’d go over to my Aunt Helen’s house to visit her and my Uncle Mason. Helen was one of my father’s two older sisters, and she was my favorite aunt. Once my grandmother passed away and my grandfather moved in with Helen and Mason we’d go over there after mass to visit all of them.

Without a doubt, this was the best part of my childhood hands down.

I’m the kind of person who likes to go back to places I’ve been before and see how things have changed, sit back and look at something and do the old “remember when” kind of thing, and one of the things I’ve always wanted to do is go back to St. Luke’s Church and take a look around one more time. Yeah, I know they say you can never go home again, but I’m stubborn when it comes to things like that. My mom told me that she had heard that somewhere along the way Father Hendricks took a sabbatical and become a monk or something like that, leaving St. Luke’s to do so, and that at one point the church had ceased to be an Episcopal church and was being used as a daycare center or something like that. To me that’s a damned shame, because I loved that church just the way it was. Yeah, I know, things change and all that, but sometimes the change isn’t for the better.

So last night I got curious and decided to take a look via Google Maps and see just what had happened to my church, if anything. I called my mom and asked if she remembered the address of the church and she said that she didn’t remember the specific address but that it was located on Cowardin Street; when I asked her if she remembered the school across the street she said that she did. The school was Bainbridge Junior High School and she had attended school there for a year, so I did a quick Internet search for it and found it in the Richmond Public Schools information website. Once I got the address of the school I found it easily with Google Maps, and saw that the school was gone and a medical school was there now. Using the street level view I spun the view around to the church to take a look, and there it was. I was looking at the old St. Luke’s Episcopal Church building from the front, looking up the steps where my parents had come down in a shower of rice after being married there on June 26, 1950, the same steps that led up to the doors that opened into the church where I’d spent so many happy hours in my childhood.

Then I noticed the words in big, black, bold letters emblazoned right across the front of the church, and my jaw dropped.

MOHAMMED MOSQUE NO. 24.

Well, shit!

I guess you can’t go home again, huh?

Well, no matter. That doesn’t change what happened there when I was but a young boy, it doesn’t alter the pleasant and wonderful memories that I have of that time and place, and it certainly won’t stop me from smiling when I remember St. Luke’s, Father Hendricks, Sally, an incense-smoke filled cloak room with a thurible sitting on the table, and serving on the alter with my father.

I guess that’s the good thing about memories – no matter what, no one can take them away from you, ever.

And I can live with that.

IHC