To the Mission

Today was our field trip to the San Fernando Mission. I always feel frazzled before a field trip, and I wonder why I ever agreed to such a venture. Yet afterwards I am almost invariably glad we went and remember them as high points of the year. Today followed that pattern closely.

The trip from Third Street to the mission had some problems. Well, the bus that Dr. Fulton’s class and our class was on had a problem. The driver got lost. We drove for at least 30 minutes around the city of San Fernando fairly aimlessly. At one point the driver just stopped and asked a guy standing on the street for directions. Why don’t they just stick a Tom Tom in these buses?

But, we finally made it there. The other two classes had already started their tour and there was only one tour guide left. So that poor man had 55 students to take around the mission. But he was patient and had a sense of humor and all went well. Our first stop was in the blacksmith’s shop where he explained how the mission Indians were put to work making farm tools.

We walked past the carpentry shop (which I love because it has the coffin on the floor) and went to the weaving room where he discussed the jobs that women had on the mission.

Our next stop was the church. Our guide here did a nice job of explaining how the church had been built and rebuilt several times and that the current pictures and statues were not original, but probably looked very close to the original designs. The students loved the idea that there were people buried under the floor.

As we left the church we walked past Bob Hope’s grave. The students had no idea who he was. Ah, how time flies. He was such a big star when I was young. Sic transit gloria mundi and all that, I suppose.

We walked around the mission grounds.

This tour was shorter than previous tours and our guide left us in the mission library. Since I had been to the mission a number of times and remembered a fair amount from those trips, I took the students to the museum rooms of the mission. There were a lot of stuff there, and some of it, like old Eucharistic vestments, did not interest the students much. But they did like this old pipe organ, reputedly one of the oldest in the country.

  We had lunch across the street at the city park. Thanks to Alysoun Higgins and Ivy Andrade, my fantastic parent volunteers, lunch went very smoothly. We finished with a trip through the lovely rose garden. We posed for a picture at the fountain there. One student – grrr – posed a little too much.

The bus ride home was uneventful and quick. Deo gracias, as the padres would have said.

Homework:  Why not have a free day today?