The Burg (in which I live) is a rather historical town, having buildings dating back to the 1700s and such. In one stretch downtown, there is literally a church on every corner.. including a part where there are four in a half-block or so. All four of them are old enough to be old, at least by Floridian standards, and all four of them have bell towers although perhaps the bell has been removed from one or two of them. At least three or four churches downtown still chime the hours and sometimes more often than that throughout the day, and I'm not sure if any of them still chime in services on Sunday mornings or weddings or such.

The church I'm currently attending has been working on finding a new building for a while, because we're really outgrowing our space and it was a space we weren't supposed to inhabit for as long as we have, anyway. One opportunity that came up was sharing space with one of the belltower churches on the everycorner block, and we're in the midst of our two-week trial run with that idea. So last Saturday, we were over there setting up our stuff, and had the chance to tour the church a little in the process. Jason, one of the bunches of college guys attending my church, Aimee, and myself all went to see the Sanctuary. After we had seen all of that and the lobby, Jason remarked about the bell tower and a turret-ey thing you could see from the outside, and wondered how to get in there. So we went exploring, he and I, to see what secret passageways we might be able to find.

We figured out that the tower was right over the front corner lobby/entrance to the church, and when we went into that area, saw a ladder going up right as the bells started chiming the hour. He climbed the ladder to see if the doorway at the top was open, and I looked at all the old-church paraphernalia while I was waiting for the verdict. I saw this one little schooldesk looking thing with some sheet music and whatnot on top, and opened it up expecting to find more sheetmusic. Instead, I found what looked to me like a 1920s child's keyboard. Having grown up in a home with an organ (my mother is an organist), I couldn't resist seeing if it still worked. No sound, though, when I pressed the keys. When Jason came back down, I was mentioning that it didn't work, and then saw a tiny key in the side. When I turned the key, a red light came on, and Jason pressed two keys quickly. We heard the bells ring sporadically, and realized that he had just played the bells in the belltower instead of a child's keyboard! There's one of those experiences I never knew could be had, but could now cross off my "things to do before I die" list, if I kept such a list.