An Informal, Anecdotal History of Saint Francis' Parish
as Told by Past and Present Members
Sometime in the mid-sixties, I developed a habit of going by the church and turning off the lights around midnight. All went well for a time. I began to experience a sense of uneasiness in leaving the cross and tabernacle in the dark and walking out with my back toward the altar. (The light switch was near the Cancel rail.) I started backing down the aisle, which was no good either. Behind the tabernacle there is a space beneath the tile, so I decided to put a soft light in that cavity. I temporarily made a hole to get the plug to a receptacle in the Acolyte Room. The acolyte cabinets were left as they were and the light is still "temporarily" plugged in.
In the early sixties, one of our parishioners had some acreage in the Forest Lane/I-35/Denton Road area. It was condemned and he offered the trees on the property to St. Francis. St. Francis did not have any landscaping then, so a bunch of eager men went to dig trees and shrubs for replanting at the church. Ralph Crocker and I decided that we would dig the placement holes. We thought that the holes should be about the size of a #3 washtub. We started digging and at about the two inch level, we found lovely rocks. Needless to say, we didn't finish the holes that day, but we did have them ready by the time the trees were ready for transplanting. Uncle Bill [Bard] had speculated that a half-case [of beer] job would be about right. Half a case per hole, maybe!
Near the end of the sixties, a Mr. Brown offered St. Francis his small house that had been his office. Mr. Brown was a good church-going Baptist who passed 3838 Walnut Hill Lane on his way to and from work. [Ed. Note: Ralph remembers Mr. Dee Brown as a member of St. John's Episcopal Church.] He had seen us working around the church and thought that we might be able to use the building. Uncle Bill Bard and, I think, Jim Bell went for a looksee and agreed that it could work. We told the Vestry and it was decided to accept the gift. Uncle Bill figured that it would be less than a 50-case job for labor. That was the summer that Joe Jones learned how good beer was and how to estimate by the 6-pack and case. We roared right along with various helpers. A room was added, which gave it that artful roof line: a dubious art when roofing in August. Mr. Brown had been watching our progress and was not sure that it would ever be finished, so he offered to hire a professional carpenter to do the work. I think that payed for the covered walk. Rather than being faced with paint maintenance, a cedar board and bat was used on the outside. Ralph Crocker and his boys really pitched in on the siding.
In the seventies, Bill Bard and I finally gave in to the complaints that the acolyte vestments were mostly on the floor instead of neatly hung up. We set about to correct this and we came up with a plan that would provide individual slots and maybe even doors. All was going well with the construction and progress was made. One day Uncle Bill and I arrived to continue the work and, lo and behold, someone had painted the incomplete cabinets! The conversation went something like this, "Well, I guess that they like them!" "I think so!" "I don't want to hurt the painter's feelings." "Me either." So, Uncle Bill and I sat down, had a beer, and admired the paint job. The cabinets never got their doors.
The main altar at St. Francis originally, and for the longest time, had a plywood top. Money for a marble top was finally available and the stone was ordered. When it arrived and was installed, it was obvious to all there that the Gospel corner had been repaired. The supplier told us that "F" colorization (lots of veins) often had to have cracks repaired. The quarry could go ahead and break the crack and glue it back. We had ordered the most colorful, which had lots of veins. The Vestry and Rector had many spirited meetings about what should be done. Our charity and discernment were not doing well and then the vendor said words of inspiration. He said, "I'll turn the stone around so that the repair is in the back." It was like a slap in the face. Hide our faults? That wasn't the message that we had heard so many times from Padre. "The closer you can live to reality, the closer you are to God," was what Padre had taught us. So, we kept the altar stone and the crack is still in at the Gospel corner - in front. All of us have been broken, have repented and been renewed through God's Grace, not unlike our beautiful altar stone. When the new marble top arrived, I moved the plywood top to the altar in Room 5. What do you do with things that have been blessed and sanctified by use?
For some time in the very early sixties, the Vestry at St. Francis tried to make financial ends meet. We turned off phones and air conditioning and did without untold other things. The Rector always wanted to take a salary cut, but the Vestry finally convinced him that it wasn't going to happen. We told him that we could do without lots of things at St. Francis, but the thing that we could not do without was a priest to confect the sacrifice and pronounce absolution. So, we labored on with never enough money. Finally, after lots of prayer, the Vestry began to understand that they were the "Daddy" of this St. Francis family and they should be setting an example for others. The Vestry was having problems not unlike our parishioners and slowly the concept of the "first fruits" made its way into the Vestry thinking. The first experiment was that instead of paying our assessment to the Diocese last, we paid it first. We prioritized expenditures and used the available income to meet those items that we considered necessary for our collective salvation. It's amazing what happens when you put your money where your mouth was! All of a sudden, we had money left over; enough to add some frills to the budget.
A little witness here; some of us fellows decided that this might work for us at home, also. The norm for giving, according to the Holy Scripture, is the tithe. We discovered that jumping right to the 10% of our income as alms was more than we could do. Some of us came up with a plan to start with a lower percentage of our incomes as alms, but to move steadily toward that 10% goal. It took me three and a half years to get there. The secret, as the Vestry found out and I confirm, is to write that alms check first after the deposit is made. It is still a mystery to me how, if I write that alms check first, I have no problem with more month than money. If I don't, I'm guaranteed to have a problem financially. Padre said that what we would learn is to live on 10% less and maybe a little discipline. We did learn that, but a whole lot more, also.
Early on, St. Francis had a white marble baptismal font which was made up of three parts: the font, a square base with a round column, and a bowl. This lived mostly against the pipe support in the Narthex. We had a very devout, gentle man, Jessie Cantu, who usually came to the 8:00 AM Mass. Jesse had been involved in the early beginnings of St. Francis with the Chancel rail wroght iron. The Cantus were expecting a grandchild and there was a need to baptize this baby. Jessie must have thought about this and made plans to meet this need in a very special way. During the night (maybe two), Jessie arrived with material and a crew and magically built the entire corner into the lovely font it is today. I am sure that the time was greater than what I remember, but it seems to me not to be. Jessie's love and devotion to St. Francis was made clear because he was very careful not to lose the early baptisms. The marble bowl from the original font is embedded in the rock structure. His grandchild was duly baptized and maybe most of the St. Francisfolk (those under 40) have had that white marble bowl holding their water of baptism.
In the sixties, a fire behind the altar cooked the tile mosaic to the extent that the mastic was not holding the tile on the wall as it should have. Every once in a while, a tile would come loose and fling itself toward whomever was around. So, the only solution was to take the mosaic off the wall. It came down in six major pieces, which were laid out in the nursery. We started removing the tiles one at a time, cleaning them, and reapplying them to new plywood. Only about six people could work at one time. Great camaraderie developed because of things like working with someone at two in the morning with the silent church a thought away; taking a break and sharing a sandwich for lunch; finding an all-night diner at midnight. It was a labor of love that was shared with all who came. So much was learned; so much given; so much received. There is a secret that needs to be recorded. That is the location of the mounting screws holding the mosaic to the wall. They are hidden and you will have to look closely to see their hiding place. There are two different colors of tiles in the same place as markers for the screws. That would look like a triangle-cut sandwich of two different colors. Look and you'll find them and, in the process, you'll also see some slightly crooked tiles that were placed by me at two in the morning. -- Joe Jones