S O P(Sneak Out Of Primary)

The above image is the building which used to be the old Boise 12^th ward meetinghouse on Broadway Avenue in South Boise. It looks to me as if it is gone back to being some form of ecclesiastical meeting place but I know that for a while a number of years ago the building was sold and was used as business building of some sort. I am searching the see if I can find some old photographs of the building as it was in the 60s when I attended services there as a child andThe as an adult. The building shown here is quite spruced up to what it used to be. It was never dilapidated or anything like that the building just didn't look as spiritual as it does now. What sort of frustrating for me is that when the remodeled the building the remodeled the front of the building. That entryway used to be between two lattices that went from the concrete all the way to the top of the building. Little steel bars crisscross themselves making a perfect ladder nine or 10-year-old boys to climb. Obviously somewhere along the line somebody realize this and took them out when they did the latest remodel.

The old Boise 12^th ward sure the building with the sixth Ward. It was your standard LDS meetinghouse/ward house. There was a chapel connected to a gymnasium (social Hall) with the stage and appropriate lighting and of course a kitchen. All around these items were classrooms or smaller rooms used for various classes and smaller meetings. Very businesslike. This building had two stories in the center of the building, right over the entryway there were classrooms with Windows which opened out. Two of the classrooms were next to the aforementioned lattice and I noticed that you should be able to open the window lean out and grab a hold of the bars and pull myself out and down the lattice to freedom.I was somewhere between seven or eight or nine maybe a little older years old at this time.

The LDS church has a program for the youth from about five years old on to adulthood. But the primary school program is called “Primary”. Like the Catholic catechism usually on Saturdays it's too teach the youth/children of the church principles of the church with a fair amount of indoctrination. Primary is usually held during the week and usually a Tuesday or Wednesday or Thursday. That was then nowadays things that change significantly and strictly with Covid 19 I don't know what or how they are indoctrinating children now. Primary is held after school usually around 4 PM.

I can't remember if I was in the Trekkers age group may be a little younger and how I figured out how to exit the Windows on the top floor of the building. But I did somehow. Primary as I indicated started at 4 PM usually and there's a general meeting area of all the population of the kids where they had a opening prayer some Scriptural conditioning, a little bit of fundraising called the penny parade (every week kids would be encouraged to dump change in the collection boxes for the primary Children's Hospital in Salt Lake City) there is music instruction and then a breaking for classes. There was three or four of us in the Trekkers class that sat in the back rows of the chapel. As the music instruction was given we would go to the floor pull ourselves. Pew by pew to the back of the room and then roll out the back door up the stairs and into one of these rooms that had access to the grating on the sides of the building. We climbed down to the porch and offered go usually over to the Smith store or just mess around at the school across the street. I'm not sure if we climbed back up or just came in the back door for the end of primary when our parents pick us up. I'm totally surprised I didn't fall and break my neck then. Somehow I think I was always on a course for spinal cord injury one way or another…