Ironically, while we were at that church – and Dad can tell you that story – the Lutherans had Advent wreaths. I don’t know if you are familiar with that? And, their Advent wreath hung from the ceiling from the peak over the altar and it was real. It was real ivy or real pine, and it had candles.

We had a custodian there named Floyd Baker and he’d gotten hurt at work and he broke his leg and he really needed the money that he made as a custodian from the church to live on, and of course there was no such thing as disability.

So dad said, “Don’t worry Floyd. Whatever you can’t do I’ll do so that you can keep your pay and you don’t have to worry about how you’re going to live for six weeks.”

Well, one of the things that Floyd couldn’t do was climb the ladder on Sunday morning to light these candles. So, about the fourth Sunday of Advent Dad is climbing the ladder to light the candles and all of a sudden the pine lit instead of the candle.

I was kind of an ornery kid at times and I went outside and Mom was shoveling snow, which was almost unheard of for my mother, but she was shoveling the snow cause Floyd couldn’t do that, and we just had the dusting.

I said to Mom, “Hurry come in! The church is on fire! The Advent wreath is on fire.”

She said to me, “You better not be kidding me or you’re really going to be in big trouble! If this is one of your jokes you’ve had it!”

By the time we got back in it was full blown. The whole – this was probably a six foot diameter wreath and as it’s burning the embers are dropping down onto the carpeting and things like that. Of course, somehow you don’t know where the fire extinguisher is when you need it, and even if you do…

So, Mom sent me for a pail of water. So I got the pail of water which was probably only half a pail cause I was in a hurry. She tried throwing this pail of water and she got my dad instead. So he got doused with this pail of water and we called the Fire Department and they got there and got it put out.

We still had church that morning. Still had Sunday School. The firemen were still putting it out. They gave kids the collection baskets for church and stuff. Heck, they are collecting from the Fire Department and everyone else! Had, you know, collected from everybody and they gave. We went on then to meet in the basement and rebuild the church.

So, that was the Archbold story and we didn’t have anymore Advent wreaths after that. Mom invented one that they built and put outside and we didn’t have anymore Advent wreaths in churches.

That church was brick. But, the interior with the stained-glass windows and stuff had to be repaired. The stained-glass windows had family names on the bottom as to who had given them and what for and stuff like that so there was a lot of work to be done, but nobody ever blamed Dad. I mean, there was never any thing from the church saying, “You started it!” It was just taken care of and it brought the church together really in rebuilding, but it’s kind of a funny story about how Dad burned down the church.