Thurs June 12, 2003
Arcadia Missouri
I am writing from an ornately carved antique bed in a Catholic bedroom formerly inhabited by a Catholic nun, Catholic priest, or Catholic school girl, or perhaps all three, but, presumably, not by all three at the same time.
The bedroom is on the second story of a huge, three story brick building with slate roof and copper gutters built by Catholics sometime in the very early 1900s for the purpose of educating young Catholic children, especially Catholic girls. It's very Catholic.
The bath has an old but stylish china pedestal sink with the faucet mysteriously hidden beneath the rim of the bowl and white china handles.
The toilet has a seat, but no lid, as is common in public toilets, and the tub is a ludicrously long, free standing iron claw tub with a simple white plastic shower curtain suspended from a chrome ring.
There are decorations - a florid yellow and green ceramic water pitcher in a matching bowl, and little boxes, which, having delivered their original contents and thus completed their single mission in life, are forever put out to pasture in the bed and breakfast establishments of the world.
What is noticably absent from our bath is a fresh bar of soap and a stack of clean towels.
A young Morman mother in braids, babe on hip like Sacagewea crossing the Louisiana Purchase, guided us up the creaking stairwell, lit only by an open window - a lace curtain billowing in the mild summer breeze.
Each room, behind its dark pine hallway door, was furnished with antiques and decorated in a different theme - red, white, and blue room, a yellow room with wicker and gardening items, summer flowers and birds painted on the walls. The ceilings were high and the floors varnished yellow pine, mellowed by time to a glowing patina.
One room had been slept in the night before and Sacagewea assured us time and again she would change the sheets if we decided to stay, as if clean sheets were a unique service - the speciality of the house!
The style of the place suits us - why settle for accomodations when you can have adventure?
The antiques were nice enough, though most had some 'fatal flaw' - drawers that didn't quite fit, or a repair which was a little too obvious.
...The beds however, were magnificent - massive specimens, hand carved or lathe turned in a time before mass manufacturing became the norm.
The upholstered chairs and divans looked comfy enough and the decor was not overdone in the 'fou fou' style as it is so often done in B&Bs. There is not a goose, chicken or duck in sight, praise Jesus.
Also noticably absent from the rooms are decent lighting, TVs, telephones, smoke alarms or locking doors, and a good cleaning wouldn't hurt, either.
We chose this particular room for the night because it allows access to the full length balcony porch which looks out into the canopy of huge old oak and maple trees landscaping the extensive grounds behind the building.
Through the sheer gauze curtains over our tall windows we look down onto a courtyard enclosed on two sides by 3-4 story brick buildings like ours - and on the third side by a round brick tower capped with a conical slate roof that houses the Chapel altar.
...There is a religious statue in the courtyard, and parked beside the concrete steps leading up to the back entrance of the Chapel is a red tricycle.
As soon as we had moved into our room, we set off for some serious exploring. As the huge complex of buildings is mostly unoccupied, and few doors are locked, the oportunities to poke around in the church and secular buildings was almost unlimited. Going around the red tricycle we entered a side room to the Chapel. There are many old dark pine cabinets and shelves built into the rooms which reminded me of some Shaker buildings we have seen back East.
Some cabinets had Latin inscriptions painted on them as if an apothecary. Others looked as if they were special made to store vestiments or mysterious religious parapharnelia.
In one room a dusty old cardboard suitcase held an Italian accordian.
Saint Joseph's Chapel, interior
The Chapel is magnificent - it is not very large, but the great high arched ceilings, dimly lit only from the light of tall stained glass windows, gave it a feeling of spaciousness.
In front of the rows of wooded pews the lineoleum on the floor has been worn through by penitent knees to the bare oak boards beneath.
...While photographing the stained glass windows I realized they are of the same quality I have seen in the capitals of Europe - fantastical colors and beautiful classic old world designs.
Chapel glass
Climbing up stairs to a balcony we were able to examine a couple of the windows up close as well as some of the ceiling details.
Also in the balcony we discovered the pipe organ which had been dismantled and stacked to one side, and the ropes leading up to the belfry.
Chapel glass
Door, Saint Joseph's Chapel
Saint Joseph's Chapel
Saint Joseph's Chapel
In front of the Chapel is a large mowed lawn, walled on one side by two huge evergreen trees with drooping boughs.
Rita - cemetery gate
A white wooden gate opens into a small cemetery, the final resting place of some 2 dozen Ursuline nuns who ran the Acedemy.
Cemetery detail
Cemetery detail
I'm listening, God!
When we had our fill of strolling the grounds and poking around in dusty attics, feeling like we had stumbled onto the grounds of Harry Potter's boarding school for magicians while everyone was away on spring break, we returned to the room for showers.
A short drive (we should have walked) took us to the Arcadia Cafe for a fine supper of crostini appetisers, salmon, and an inexpensive bottle of Argentine chardonay.
Tonight I am writing by the light of a cheap modern light fixture suspended on a wire from the center of the ceiling; it is even less attractive (and less effective) than a bare 75 watt bulb would be. There are no less than 3 lovely antique lamps in our room, but only one electrical outlet so two of the lamps must remain unlighted.
From the darkness beyond our balcony porch we can hear a chorus of maniacal frogs and it's easy to imagine ghosts of the buried nuns wandering the grounds under tonight's full moon.
The Mormons live off in another wing, and looking out on the unlit windows of the courtyard it's easy to imagine we are alone in this cavernous old building.
Breakfast was served by a dark, barrel chested man of no more than average height, perhaps middle 50s in age. He would look equally at home in a vineyard, a garden, or under the hood of an old pickup truck, which is where he was yesterday when I first noticed him. Later, I saw him mowing, and I assumed he was the handyman.
In fact, he was the owner - the patriarch of this band of Mormons, grandfather of Sacagewea's child...
...and it was his wife who made our curried pears floating in cream followed by wonderful French toast (or was it pound cake?) under cream cheese and bluberry topping, and bacon and canelope slices and grapes.
Kitchen clock
At first Grandpa Mormon didn't have much to say as he checked on our progress during breakfast; I assumed he was a man of few words - the second time my assumption about him proved to be incorrect. As we asked him for more details about the Academy he warmed up, and soon was telling stories in between the historical facts.
At a reunion for the nuns and girls who had boarded at the Academy there was a lot of talk about ghosts - all the former students agreed - the place was haunted. Apparently there were few mirrors in the dorm rooms at the time of the girls school, but some full length mirrors were added when the rooms were converted for the bed and breakfast guests. At the reunion, one former student got up in the middle of the night, saw herself in the mirror and was so frightened she wet herself.
Next we were off on a guided tour. Grandpa Mormon led us down a long dark hallway to the kitchen - a large room, well lit and equiped with excellent commercial kitchen fixtures. Mrs. Morman told us about how she aquired each piece, generally for pennies on the dollar due to devine intervention. While the equipment was state of the art, the kitchen walls, floor and ceiling have not been completely restored; I was reminded of the set for the movie, the Cook, the Thief, His Wife and Their Lover.
In the Chapel, Grandpa Mormon fished around in the confessional and pulled out a piece of stained glass so we could see details of how metal powders were infused into the glass to make the various colors. The grandson of the German imigrant who did the original glass had visited and explained the process. The Fry (Frie?) family still owns a stained glass studio in the St. Louis area.
Up in the balcony, Grandpa Morman said it was he who had dismantled the 358 pipes of the organ and numbered the 358 pairs of wires that go to the solenoid valves.
He pulled the ropes to ring the 4 great sonorus bells as he told us how the ropes had to be replaced. When I asked him if the bells were bronze or iron, he said he couldn't tell - too much pigeon poop.
He showed us the dining rooms, now serving as a gift shop, the antiques for sale in the former nun's bedrooms, the class rooms - some ready for a small conference, others storing great piles of junk and antiques.
He said the nuns produced all their food except for beans, wheat flour and milk, and the Catholic church provided almost no support. If the girls tuition produced any surplus, however, the Church wanted some of that.
As he showed us the areas under renovation, I got very tired. Plaster walls to be repaired, wood flooring pulled up to install electricity, old boilers, leaks, stuck windows, leaking roofs, endless painting - I calculated if every Morman took seven wives and every wife had seven sons, they would still be a few workmen short of the crew needed to get the job done.