St. John the Baptist Church sits the the highpoint in this farming community. Five roads lead to it. It was the Facebook of our world as we were growing up. Sunday Mass was as social as it was spiritual. It was in the days of "party lines" on the telephone where 8 families shared a telephone line and it was shared and shared and shared. All social activities were centered around the church with dances and picnics and quilt socials. The church bells were rung for Sunday Mass, funerals, and the Angelus every day at 6 a.m., noon and 6 p.m. - three groups of three chimes with a pause in between each group, then 9 consecutive strokes. The honor or ringing the bells was reserved for the men. No women were allowed in the belfry. So the other day when I went to take pictures, I felt like I was going to have to say "Bless me Father for I have sinned..." as I was climbing around in the steeple of the church. When my two brothers, Hal & Steve, were in their prime, they decided to ring these bells at 2 a.m. one Sunday morning. The church was never locked at that time. As the pastor came running out of the rectory and nuns came flying out of the convent on either side of the church, my brothers were already in their getaway car racing over gravel country roads to get back to town. Our family had moved to "town" by this time so my brothers thought they were in the clear - until we went to grandma's house on Sunday afternoon. By 10 o'clock Mass the entire parish knew the culprits and my grandparents were more than a little chagrined. As far as I know it is the only time this caper has been attempted. Our pastor and spiritual leader was Monsignor Hildner. He really liked to talk and some of his sermons went on forever. He told many parables which molded our young minds. One of my favorites was about the intricacies of lying. His parable was that when you tell an untruth about someone or something to just one person it is like taking a feather pillow up in the church steeple (since that was boys only, I guess he didn't think girls lied), then cutting that feather pillow open and shaking all the feathers out of it. Now go back and find everyone of the feathers that was in that pillow and fill it up again. I was about 7 years old when I heard this for the first time and I try to remember it every day. Not long after hearing this parable, one of my classmates, out of nowhere, told the teacher that I had punched her in the stomach. I was flabbergasted that someone could just make something up like this. The look on my teacher's face when she confronted me about it made me realize that damage had been done to me that could never be repaired. No matter what I said or did! In my sixties, I have decided that very few people on this earth had the advantage of the moral teachings that several generations of families benefited from in the pews of this little church on a hill at the highpoint overlooking lush pastures. Bless me Father for I am grateful!