Being on a committee can be fun!

So I am on the Tabor Mennonite Church centennial committee (coming right up in 2008!).

We’ve been going through the church archives, and I’ve been scanning in interesting photos. Here’s one, taken about 1950.

This is a photo of the original 1908 Tabor Church building, as remodeled in the 1930s.

You’ll notice the front door, the many windows.

And the two well-worn paths out back.

They are leading to the two outhouses. If I understand correctly, they continued to be used up until the mid-1960s when the “new” (present) church building was constructed.

The building in the middle housed a Delco Light Plant (generator), which was used until rural electrification provided power to the church.

So yes, this church had its own on-site generator, decades before it got indoor plumbing.

There’s a joke in there somewhere but it’s late and somehow I can’t come up with a good one. Feel free to post your own ;-)

3 thoughts on “Being on a committee can be fun!

  1. cliff says:

    John, what a great, neat, huge building. I’ve long been a fan of that type of architecture. Fan meaning I like to look at it but I’m glad it’s not mine for several reasons. Size, heating, drafty windows, stairs, ad inf.

    1. jgoerzen says:

      You’re right on. I really like interesting and historic architecture. It’s so neat to be inside old buildings — that “going back in time” feel and everything.

      Yours are pretty much the reasons they built a new building in the 1960s rather than remodeling that one again, I think.

      But the largest, and oldest, church in the community still is in use and has been since, if memory serves, 1880 or so. (This building pictured here represents a church plant in 1908 from that one!) I have some photos of it, too, that I’ll post sometime.

      BTW, the preset church building stands right about where the outhouses were in this photo. But lest anyone think we’re not thrifty, the outhouses were moved to a far corner of the church park and are used for storage now.

  2. Jamie Dawn says:

    I’m visiting here via Cliff Morrow.
    The paths to the outhouses were indeed well worn. Had I attended there, I would have avoided using the outhouse unless it was a dire emergency. My maternal grandmother was bitten on her bottom by a black widow while using an outhouse. I don’t want to repeat history.

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