St. James Episcopal Church was a neat little church. Not much more than a chapel, actually. It had room for a few dozen worshippers, not much more.

I visited St. James several times when I was in high school. I loved the German architecture with the large square corner steeple. It had a tiny vestibule inside that corner – so different from the huge lobbies that churches have today.

And it had gorgeous stained glass windows. You can see the largest one in each of the postcards in my collection. There were smaller stained glass windows that portrayed, I believe, bishops from the early history of the parish.

In front was a small podium, just enough room for a preacher and a rector. And the smallest pipe organ I have ever seen. Just the right size, actually, for such a small chapel.

But the church always faced hard times. It never had any more than a few families attending there. For most of the time that I remember, it shared a minister with the Presbyterian Church across the street. The few families that worshiped there did no evangelizing – no proselytizing. So when they got old, the church got old. The children left and never came back. The roof started to leak. The lead started to separate in the stained glass. The church became dark and musty. And it eventually withered away.

The few members that were left disbanded the church in the late 1970s. The building still stands; it's been converted into apartments.

I always dreamed of coming back to Macon and converting this little church into some sort of meeting hall, a wedding chapel, perhaps. But no, it would never work out financially. I'll always remember St. James Episcopal church for what it used to be – and for what it never was.