In the 1950s my family walked once a week from our float house on the Booming Grounds along Marine Drive to 41st and Dunbar to get our mail and groceries.

I remember standing on the sidewalk near the Woolworths or Five and Dime Store on Sunday and watching as families chatted and entered the door of a small church located on the southwest corner of 39th and Dunbar. I always looked up to the top of the church’s wooden steeple to see if the silver metal hand that pointed to the heavens was still there.

Mr. Piatt, of Piatt’s Confectionery Store just down the street said that this Dunbar Church was very special, and that people came on the interurban street car line every Sunday to worship there. I remember in the summer as I walked by waiting for Mom to pick up the mail, I saw church people painting and working in the vegetable and flower gardens there.

I think it was in the 1960s that I noticed that The Hand To the Heavens on the steeple was missing. I asked at the Blue Moon Confectionery down the street if a bolt of lightning had knocked it off. They did not seem to know. As years passed by, I noticed that the gardens slowly grew in with weeds, but the Church building was kept up with painting, etc.

Then one day I noticed children laughing and playing with each other in the front garden. It was wonderful to see the community connection with the Church alive again!

As walked by today and saw the development signs, and looked up at the place where the steeple and Hand To The Heavens once stood, I wondered if there is still time to step inside — some thing I’d never had the chance to do as a kid From The Booming Grounds.

Terry Slack

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