Mannheim Baptist Church

When firing my father, the church board of senile bluehairs at Mannheim Baptist Church cited as one of their reasons for his termination the fact that he cut the grass around the property and weeded the parking lot. They thought this was unbecoming of his position, and pointed out that they had other church-members who were supposed to take care of that sort of thing. My dad tried to point out that the parking lot had become a forest because of how lax those other parishioners had been in their duties, but to no avail.

That was eight years ago. On Halloween, my band had a show in Franklin Park, so I had to drive past Mannheim and Grand for the first time since the firing. The blue-collar founders of the church had little imagination and had simply named the church after the street it was on. Technically, actually, the church's address was on Grand Avenue, but I suppose the founders were too humble to start "Grand Baptist Church," so they forsook accuracy and clung to the other side of the intersection.

In their spirit, then, I will forsake accuracy and say there was nothing there. This is not technically true, but that was how it felt. The gigantic steepled roof, built when the church had 400 members in the 60s that made the church feel like a cavern when there were only 60-some 60 yr. olds in the 90s, was gone. Half the space the church once occupied was now taken by a used car lot, and the other half was now weed heaven. My father was not there spraying Weed-B-Gone, no senile bluehairs puttering around on riding mowers, and the weeds had won.

I imagine the weed jungle has in fact scared away any further investment in the property, real estate agents eaten Jumanji-style by rogue flora.