Looking Back As Time Marches On...

The second weekend in October, I went back home to Ligonier, PA, the town where I grew up. Each year, our former hometown holds a huge celebration of its rich history called Fort Ligonier Days. From Friday to Sunday, the center of town is shut down and craft and food stands are erected all around the diamond in the middle of town, and re-enactments of the battle of Fort Ligonier are held. In addition to being historically significant, this festival is a lot of fun as well, with a parade that features some of the best bands, bagpipers and shriners in the area. The festival is held at what might be argued as a quintessentially perfect time of the year for Pennsylvania, autumn, just as the leaves are at their peak, with the chilly autumn air aiding their change to a stunning riot of color.

Growing up, we would go to the festival every year, rain or shine, to walk around with friends, watch the parade and, unsurprisingly, go find our parents as they would be drinking beer at their favorite establishment, Joe's Bar.

This year, we came as former residents many years removed, and walked through the town, pointing things out and remembering how, though some things had changed, much of what we remember from our childhood here had remained the same. We got to chat with our neighbor, Emily, who I was amazed to be able to identify on the spot and who now looks amazingly like her mother, but with much better hair.

As we ate some light food on Friday, I was surprised to hear my name called out by two girls that I'd gone to high school with, and was glad of the chance to get caught up with them. They were probably far too kind in saying that I looked very the same as I did in high school, but who am to argue with a compliment like that?

After the parade on Saturday, my sister Dee, her son Billy and I went out to visit our old house in Wilpen, and actually parked in the driveway and got out and walked around, telling Billy how the place had looked when we lived there, pointing out the wooden foot bridge that was, surprisingly, still intact and working. It was strangely amazing to walk around my former yard, and touching the sides of a huge oak tree that I remember my parents planting when I was a kid. I smiled and told Billy that we used to use that tree as "first base" during kickball games and that back then it were still small enough to almost get your hands around. The house, although slightly expanded by the new owner, still looked exactly as I remember it. I laughed and pointed out to my sister the old oval metallic stickers with the fireman carrying a child on it that mom and dad put on our windows to alert firemen that there were kids in that room if the house were to catch fire and the occupants needed rescuing.

My grandparents house, which was next to our house, looked much improved, and it was obvious that the new owners had done a lot of work on it. I pointed out to my sister the old well that was still next to the basement door, and we both laughed as we noticed the old textured cement area beginning to re-emerge from underneath the new coat of spackle the new owners had put over it.

We then decided to drive over to see Grandma and Grandpa's gravesite, which lay atop a very steep hill above St. Ann's Church. As we turned the corner onto the road that led up to St. Ann's, I began to feel something was wrong. It dawned on me immediately what that was when I realized that I couldn't see the church anymore. We pulled up the drive to where the church had been and got out, both my sister and I were in complete shock. I walked up the grassy hill where the the church used to be and saw a single brick sticking out of the ground. I knelt down and picked it up and realized I was crying. It was like someone had frozen my heart and then taken a hammer to it. I am not a very religious person, but this church was a fixture of my youth, a place I remember going for mass every Sunday and every holiday with my family and my grandparents, and to see it just... gone forever... well, after the rollercoaster year I've had, it just took the heart right out of me. I called over to my sister who was also crying and she quickly called my other sister and instructed her not to bring our father out here, lest the loss of the church really shock and upset him as much as it did the two of us.

I remember the last time I had been to the church. In 2001, my grandma had passed away and my family had gathered to lay her to rest. The service had been a good one, and after my Uncle finished speaking, telling us things about her that were weren't exactly sure he didn't quite make up on the spur of the moment, I got up and lamented the loss of this great woman, whom I had always adored. She had taken care of me since I was a baby, keeping me in line as only she knew how to do, instilling in me my pride in my Slovak heritage and showing me how to cook all the old Slovak dishes. Crestfallen, I vividly remember asking who would be throwing the peas at Christmas for the birds and the animals of the forest now that she was gone. (See my Christmas post on here if you don't understand this.)

It never occurred to me that the Catholic Church in Ligonier/Western PA would allow a beautiful historic church like St. Ann's sit idle and rot until it became unsafe and needed to be demolished. I can only guess they were too busy adding that monstrously huge, expensive looking addition onto Holy Trinity in Ligonier to make it look less like the former train turn-around station that it used to be and more like a real church to be concerned with the upkeep of a beautiful historic little country church like St. Ann's.

After my sister and I recovered from our shock, we went up to the cemetery and cleaned off Grandma and Grandpa's grave, visited with them. I then poured some good bourbon onto Grandpa's side of the grave. I figured it was the right thing to do and thanked him for introducing bourbon to me like he did when he gave me my first shot at age 7. I remember that I didn't much like the taste of it back then, and I kinda thought it was going to eat through my esophagus, but it certainly made for a memorable first drinking experience. My sister and I then walked around the graveyard, pointing out the gravestones of some of our other relatives and people that we had known growing up. I paused when I saw the gravestone of Grandma's bingo buddy, Mary Miney and smiled at all the memories her name brought up. I turned and looked back down the hill to where the church used to be and sighed. With the church now gone, the place looked sad and empty to me. When my sister said she thought it was time to get back, I walked back down the steep hill and, with one more sad look at what used to be my old church, I got back in the car and left.

When I got back to NC, I emailed the Ligonier Valley library and asked if it were possible to get some pictures of St. Ann's church. I got a nice email back with some digital images of the way it looked in the 80s and 90s, and some from as far back as the 1913 and 1960. I remember, albeit vaguely, the way the church had looked before it was remodeled in the late 70s, when, for reasons that go beyond understanding, the pretty gilded insides of the church with its statues of saints and the BVM (Blessed Virgin Mary) and Joseph were replaced with a more stark color scheme and a large imposing crucifix. Thinking of this puts me to mind of the scene in the movie "The Birdcage" where the two gay main characters, in a last ditch attempt to impress a conservative couple whose daughter their son wants to marry, take out all their flamboyant furniture and décor and replace it with large uncomfortable looking furniture made of dark wood and, of course, a large imposing cross over the mantle.

I'll post the pics I got of St. Ann's on here and am hoping that I might find some more pictures by emailing the diocese. I would like to get a bunch of pictures and perhaps have an artist paint a portrait from them. St. Ann's was a beautiful church, and, though it is now gone, will always be a part of my life that I will hopefully never forget.