The Yankee Flea market was another fun stop because it is enormous with over 200 vendors. As such you never know what you’re going to find! We spent quite a while here picking through the various booths and finding everything under the sun. The great thing about a place with this many vendors is that you’ll find not just a large variety of items but also price ranges. There’s something for everyone! And I came home with a jar of marbles since I have stopped taking marble photos at every location. I guess at the time I didn’t feel particularly encouraged to do so but it was a cute little signature of mine.
We picked through creepy clowns, dolls with vaguely threatening auras, cow creamers in the midst of an existential crisis, bad taxidermy, cast iron everything, hilarious Disney knock offs that looked just the slightest bit off, a model of a human spine, a marshmallow man with a changing face, and even an Old Timey Bottle reading “Cathartic Compound” which I am sure was something that throw you on your ass. Oh, and random “Pin the Pistol on the Cowboy” game and a mug with a naked woman and a wobbly butt. Very weird but hilarious. There were even a couple booths that appeared to be maintained by artists selling their works which is always lovely to see. You get out there!
All and all this was definitely one of the larger venues I’d go back to in a few months or years when everything has rolled over again. Fun fun!
Having failed to find any aquarium plants that tickled my fancy at Forest Wonders I decided to continue down the street to find Pet Supplies Plus which is a larger store – a chain store – though I think one that might be locally owned (but don’t quote me on that.)
Walking in it looked more or less like PetCo or Petsmart – big, open, a sort of Wal-Mart for pets, though I don’t know about the pricing! There were a few cashiers and one of them warmly greeted me as I came in. I went straight for the fish isle which was labelled critters for some reason. They had a nice assortment of tanks, especially ones on the smaller side. At the end were the bettas. Just a handful, all looking as pitiful as bettas in little plastic tubs always do. There was one really small one for five bucks. He looked half dead but then again that’s how they normally look in these places. I talked myself out of it. I don’t have the right set up for a betta. Next to the bettas was two small tubs of plants. One read cryptically, “assorted plants” and had only one dried up brown plant in it. Aquarium tumbleweed? The other tub was java moss and looked almost as bad.
Within the fish department there were rows of tanks with the usual assortment of glo fish and whatnot. One tank had a few plants in it. $7 for a little pot of dwarf baby tears actually was a super decent price. Too bad the plant itself was yellow as fuck and I didn’t feel like I knew enough about rescuing plants to bring it back to life. Not yet anyway. Seems I struck out once again.
I stayed a little longer only to see what they had for critters – a furless guinea pig, two ferrets, and some miscellaneous fuzz that were probably hamsters – before leaving. The staff flagged me down again and asked if I needed help.
“No, I’m good, but thank you!” I smiled. At least the personnel here were super friendly. I give them that!
I’m setting up my own heavily planted 55-gallon fish tank and up until now I have been buying plants (and shrimp!) online but I had a bad nitrate spike and figured I could use some more plants quick to help resolve the issue. And so I asked the allmighty Google gods if there were any mom-and-pop shops still in existence in the area. The answer was…. not a lot. Most have been obliterated by PetCo and PetSmart which is a bleeding shame. I can tell you so many stories of a misspent youth perusing all these tiny weird pet shops of the past. You NEVER knew what you were about to walk into and the diversity of animals was amazing! But alas. Today was not a day for nostalgia. I had an errand to complete!
That’s how I ended up at Forest Wonders. Honestly, I have no idea how this place escaped my radar but it looks like it’s been here a long while. It sits in the same plaza as a hydroponics store (how ironic is that?) and a smoke shop. The outside is garishly decorated in a probably desperate attempt to flag down whim shoppers. I get it. it must be tough being a mom-and-pop pet store these days.
Inside I was greeted with this absolutely darling black kitty, clearly in heat and out of her kitten loving mind, just rolling around in the window like an Amsterdamian hooker. Her physique was that of a Siamese, probably a cross. I have SUCH a soft spot for Siamese crosses. I gave her scritches and continued on. There were a few isles of fish stuff, a nice variety actually. And then there was the actual fish. This is the first time I have seen feeder guppies in decades. Seriously. I think they were 50 cents a piece and all in a huge tank next to the feeder goldfish. (All the previous pet stores were selling their guppies for 5 or 6 bucks a pop no matter how butt ugly they were.) And then we got to the real deal. Here there was the best assortment of fish by far that I have seen in the area. Mostly all in little two and a half gallon holding tanks but not overcrowded, just fancy. There were a number of cheaper L-series plecos, two “rope fish” that looked like eels to me, an electric catfish, a foot long arowana, and some more common fair. In the corner was a marine set up but it was mostly empty – only had two fish – a spirited maroon clownfish (who took a piece of my heart) and some other fish I would have totally taken home and nursed if I had a saltwater tank. Despite all the other fish looking fantastic this one looked thin as fuck and stressed. She took a bigger part of my heart. GAH.
Around the corner was a row of bettas and some of them were actually pretty! (Sorry, I just think most are kind of fugly. It’s a matter of personal taste I know.) And then beyond them was a whole room of critters which was soooo fun. Canaries and finches of odd varieties and colors, a gaggle of parakeets, a smattering of common lizards, and even a few fury things including a long-haired rex mouse and a degu. Thank god I am really allergic to mice because that little fucker was cuuuuuuute! This room was all dark and when the woman realized I was in there she turned on the lights for me. That’s when everything here became even cuter. They had a good diversity of critters. This really reminded me of the golden age of pet shops and it didn’t smell bad. It was all very clean.
Back into the main part of the pet store I noticed one large tank divided into four with large fish in it including some absolutely stunning huge L-series plecos. My heart may have fluttered a bit. But alas, I was here for plants! So I asked if I had missed them. There were maybe five in with the bettas, tiny little sprigs, all super common plants I already had in my tank except for the last which looked like a very small scallion someone shoved in a fish tank appropriately titled “water onion.” I looked at it dubiously, shrugged my shoulders, said thank you and left. All and all I think this is a great place if you’re looking for critters – fancy fish, birds, rodents, and reptiles. I regret I didn’t buy anything but I’m not going to lie – I might be back for fish someday.
We’ve been to the Clinton Antique Center before but it was such a large place that it was worth another visit a few months later. And this time didn’t disappoint!
If you read about my previous visit you may remember this place as the antique center where I found a booth FULL of Nazi shit. Like real Nazi things used by actual Nazis probably during World War II. You may be happy to note that although it looks like the same dealer may be selling in his usual booth all the Nazi shit was gone. Hopefully because of public backlash because that level of bad mojo shouldn’t just be hanging out in public spaces. There was however still a whole booth dedicated to racist black memorabilia just around the corner which had one of the most heinous prints I’ve ever seen of a little black boy screaming as a goose clamps down on his most tender of bits which apparently were through a glory hole?! Now this says nothing about black people but the needless sexualization of a SMALL BOY as well as the flagrant racism says much more about the artist! WHAT A CREEPY ASS OLD MAN HE MUST HAVE BEEN. Good riddance.
But really this shop had a lot less offensive material than in previous visits. Most of it this time seemed to be directed at indigenous Americans. You know Indian rubber pull dolls and cigar statues and whatnot. There was also a lot of fun stuff like – a fox who seemed delighted to be taxidermied, a boar head that looked like it was used for testing cosmetics before being put on someone’s wall, a CAST IRON BICYCLE which must have been so fun to ride, many many creepy clowns, a lot of dolls giving an obscene amount of side-eye, and of course a whole bookshelf of books that had titles which aged very badly. Every one of them was a modern innuendo and I was in stitches going through them starting with Scouts in Bondage, Wooden Willie, and Memorable Balls. Seriously, if I lived in a place large enough for a bookshelf or a coffee table I would have been on these like shivers on a Chihuahua. Just hilarious.
It was well worth the revisit! And I am very happy they pulled the Nazi bullshit off the shelves. If that is to be sold at all it should be under great suspicion behind the scenes.
Fort Wetherill was another one of those finds that I kept having suggested by search engines and AI but nothing online made it look that impressive. Still, it was only a few miles away from where I was staying that day so it made sense to go check it out.
To get to this place you have to wind through a bunch of sweet little neighborhoods reminiscent of European villages. There’s more trees though. And by the time you get there it’s a big park with a ton of parking and no one there. There was literally one other car.
I was not expecting this place to be so massive! Or so taken over by trees. It’s not that old – at least not compared to some of the other forts I have visited for this blog. Fort Wetherill was commissioned during World War II to protect the bay and as a sister fort to Fort Adams – which I haven’t gone to yet but I am sure I will at some point. It’s in complete disrepair now. For the most part it looks like it’s being eaten by a jungle of weeds. Many areas are fenced off from going inside but there are parts you can still go inside or even on top of the fort for some spectacular views of the property and the ocean.
We spent a good chunk of time just wandering around the structure like lost rats. The graffiti was something else. Hilariously someone commented to me that they love the graffiti in New England because you can always read it. And it’s true! We lack the highly stylized fonts of the west coast. In addition to this it was oddly cerebral. Although there were the usual tags there was also some pretty decent art – including a chimp dressed in a gnome cap. And someone had taken the time to hang bizarre vaguely medical looking paper flyers like they may have done in the early 1900’s. It added a certain… ambiance.
I really enjoyed this place. It was a great place to spend the afternoon and probably had some hiking trails too – we just didn’t go that route on this particular day. I don’t know why this isn’t a more known destination although maybe it is and we were just there on an off day. Hard to say as I did also get some responses about other people having loved this place in the past. All and all it was well worth the trip and I think would make a fantastic outing for photographers.
Back at the North Burial Ground it was my companion’s turn to pick a tour and he decided upon the HP Lovecraft tour. HP Lovecraft did indeed live in Providence RI but he is buried elsewhere, in the Swan Point Cemetery, so what this tour had to offer was a bit of a mystery. Still, we parked in our usual spot and ambled in – this time finding ourselves behind the visitor’s center where there was a HUGE memorial to the Armenian Genocide. How we had missed this before… is just testament to how much we weren’t paying attention because I mean this thing is MASSIVE and definitely worth a look if you are already here.
After that distraction was put aside we finally got to business. First up was finding the stone of Clara L Hess who was a classmate of HP Lovecraft although she apparently had quite the illustrious life all on her own as a reporter and editor of the Providence Journal and Evening Bulletin.
Next up was Chester Pierce Munroe – who likely bonded with HP Lovecraft when they were both pups, daring each other to eat paste. OK, so you can’t prove the latter part of that but that’s how I’d like to imagine it. Truth be told they met when they were very young at school and remained chums throughout the rest of their days. Munroe was a working class man and although there’s rumors of him writing a book or several he was unable to get anything published. Not really surprising considering the politics of the day.
Addison P Munroe was another childhood friend although information on him seems a little scarce. Good news is if I remember right his stone was really close to the last one and also had his wife’s name on it who I guess also garnered a small acquaintance with Lovecraft.
James Tobey Pyke was apparently a big influence on his neighbor, a 14-year-old Lovecraft, whom he encouraged to write poetry. Pyke was a poet himself as well as a minister at one point. He apparently had pretty frail health but still insisted on working for his income despite being from a fairly well to do family. Eleanor Francis Pyke was James’ wife who also adored poetry and managed to raise a poet son, growing up alongside the neighbor’s boy Lovecraft.
Samuel Brenton Mumford was a successful local businessman that was one of the first investors to own a part of the Providence Athenaeum which would later become a favorite haunt of Lovecraft’s. In addition to this it was his former home which HP Lovecraft would later spend the last few years of his life.
Cyrus Butler was the Providence’s own Scrouge McDuck kinda character. In life he was obscenely wealthy and really not terribly keen on sharing that but even so he was one of the original investors helping to build the Providence Athenaeum – an institution that he also gave a large donation to after his death. He also bequeathed 30K to build The Rhode Island Hospital for the Insane post humorously. It still exists although it’s called the Butler Hospital and has nothing to do with Lovecraft as far as I can see. Also isn’t it wonderful millionaires can get redemption even after death?! Must be nice!
So ended the Lovecraft Tour. Below are photos of the stones mentioned and a bunch of others that distracted me with thier uniqueness or beauty. It’s a lovely cemetery to explore!
Brimfield MA is known throughout New England as hosting the largest antique fair in the area and they do it three times a year – once in spring, once during the summer, and once during autumn, each time lasting about a week. And these fairs are serious – they are HUGE. Basically a good chunk of main street (all lined with antique shops) turns the entire area into one giant open-air market with literally hundreds of vendors. Every conceivable space that’s not being used for selling is turned into a giant Byzantine parking lot and even so… it’s hard to find parking when it’s busy.
I’ve been to Brimfield before and knew it was something you take a whole day to do. I have been wanting to go back for years now but have never managed to get someone to go with me and it’s one of those things I’d rather share than go alone to because it is such an experience. So I was happy when a few weeks ago my companion brought it up. This year I wouldn’t forget and I wouldn’t go in summer (in the miserable heat!)
We woke up late that day and honestly I was expecting to spend the day looking for a dentist so I didn’t really try to wake up early but instead of this my companion really wanted to go somewhere so I laid out two options – Brimfield which was two hours away or an abandoned fort that was 15 minutes away. The fair closes at 5 and with two hours of driving that was only two hours to spend there. I once again said it was a HUGE event and said maybe we’d better go the next day but no, he was all charged to go on Tuesday. So off we went.
The weather was PERFECT and I was very excited to finally be going. I wanted to see if I could find any terrifying medical antiques (not that I can afford them) and just have a generally good day. It’d been so long since I had been there that I had forgotten about the parking situation. By the time I drove up we were already running out of time and I passed all the parking lots (as many had “full” and “closed” signs out and the ones that didn’t also didn’t look promising.) I drove one mile an hour through the whole fair in a row of traffic as people who were completely unafraid of cars just walked in front of them whenever! I had to turn around and seek parking somewhat outside of the festivities for a cheaper $10. The lots more centrally located were $20. The sight of all the people and everything going on immediately sent my companion into a downward spiral of overwhelm. It wasn’t a great start.
However, we were successful at finding parking (there were TWO spaces left) and we went on our merry way. The one great thing about the Brimfield antique fair that has nothing to do with antiques is all the food trucks. They’re everywhere and make spending the day there a lot more pleasant. I could smell fried dough (which I really wanted – but couldn’t figure out who had it) and I found the lemonade stand that uses real lemons that is SO GOOD in summer heat. We started to wanter into the back end of the antique fair and look around and without even going far we found this fabulous orange couch I totally fell in love with and the usual parade of probably haunted dolls – two of them were even anatomically correct baby dolls. (Just why??) There were also marbles up the wazoo!
Sadly, nothing I picked up was marked with a price. Not the marbles, not the cool rock skulls I thought would make a nice fish tank decoration, not the partially hidden Tupperware tub FULL of racist bullshit, not the odd rusted out farming implements, not the possessed dolls… and I know if something isn’t marked it’s too expensive for me. Some of the vendors were also missing in action which didn’t really help matters. By now my companion had gone from overwhelm to shutdown as his toothache became too much to bear. I rescued him from an old hippie vendor who was trying to talk to him as I chatted happily with other vendors. And it’s weird. I used to come to these things HATING the social aspect of it but today I was really enjoying the chit chat.
We wandered back and forth with no sense of direction for only an hour or so before heading back to the car, having seen only the tiniest bit of the fair. We had stayed only long enough to see some truly bizarre art, some odd ideas of lawn ornamentation, and the closest thing to a medical antique I could ask for – a poster of the spine for chiropractic usage. I never did get my fried dough but it’s probably for the better. By the time I got done driving 2 hours home a migraine had set in and I was exhausted – but still happy I went! And as usual I can’t wait to go again.
Every outing I feel like I come closer and closer to having the cops called on me for being almost criminally weird. Today was no exception as in my search for the perfect aquascape fish tank I was on the lookout for a clump of wet leaves and mud – which I found before squirrelling it away in my purse in a plastic sandwich bag. No, I’m not conjuring creek nymphs, I swear. I was just after the healthy bacteria that breaks down said leaves so I could introduce them to my little aquatic habitat. Old School filtration – nature knows best! Plus how better to multitask than making your nature walk into a treasure hunt?
So that’s how I ended up at the Wales Loop. I’ve been here before but it wasn’t quite like this – all the rain we’ve been getting this spring and the melted snow from the mountains was whooshing by in a very feisty little river! On my last visit this was little more than a slow creek but not today! It was so loud that I couldn’t hear anything my mother was saying (as I brought her out for this adventure to be my hiking buddy for the day.)
Surprisingly, there was already two cars parked there aside the road (as there’s no proper parking) when we got there and we passed three sets of hikers. For such a tiny and out of the way trail this was encouraging! Also encouraging was the boot brush at the beginning of the trail asking that we wipe our feet before and after entering to avoid the spread of invasive seeds.
As always it was just absolutely gorgeous scenery winding along the river. And it smelled so fresh! I had also chosen this trail because except for this tiny incline at the beginning it’s for the most part very flat and super easy and that’s what my mother needed to start the sunny season. We did not do the whole loop as we wanted to enjoy the river as much as possible so we turned around when it started to head into the woods. Perhaps I will do that half of the loop at a later date.
All and all I would highly suggest this out of the way trail for anyone in the area looking for something a little less known or an easy trail. We all know there’s plenty of mountains around but not all hikers are up to that challenge! And there’s no shame in that. Go out, listen to the birds, dip your feet in a river. It’s all good!
*Scroll to the bottom for photos or enjoy a good read below.
A few weeks ago I heard a book calling out to me as I strolled haplessly through a Barnes and Noble. It was titled Over my Dead Body and it was all about the evolution of the garden cemeteries starting in Paris and working their way over here to the United States. It was a very informative (and often funny) read which mentioned a lot of cemeteries here in New England, one of which I’d never been to before. So that’s how I ended up at the Sleepy Hollow Cemetery in Concord Massachusetts last week. It’s the home of Author’s Ridge which is where Lousia May Alcott author of Little Women, Henry David Thoreau author of Walden or Life in the Woods, Ralph Waldo Emmerson the poet, essayist, and philosopher, and Nathaniel Hawthorne the author of the Scarlet Letter and The House of Seven Gables are all buried quite close to each other.
Honestly it was weird I didn’t know about this place before seeing as I am constantly enamored with authors, cemeteries, and history. Still. Sleepy Hollow is a large cemetery with clearly marked signs leading to Author’s Ridge and scant parking so keep that in mind if you visit.
So how did all these icons of their era end up buried in a row? Simple, they weren’t. Back in the day the cemetery more or less bought their remains so they could put them here to drive-up tourism. Capitalism at its finest. Nothing is off limits. Not even celebrity corpses. But it worked! And people are STILL flocking here. Although oddly enough there were remarkably few pennies. Alcott had the most. I wonder if they weren’t being cleaned up or if this bunch just wouldn’t be fond of having pennies left for them. They seem the type…
I’d been accidentally stalking the life of Lousia May Alcott for some time weaving in and out of the strange and wonderful landmarks they had something to do with and I have been coming to learn they were a fascinating individual, possibly even a trans or non-binary icon as in their own words they declared, “‘I am more than half-persuaded that I am a man’s soul, put by some freak of nature into a woman’s body.” And they liked to be referred to as gentleman, like a boss! They were buried in a family plot with their author mother Abigail May Alcott and author sisters Elizabeth Sewell Alcott and Abigail May Alcott Nieriker. Their last remaining sister wasn’t a writer but she was inspiration for Meg in Little Women and she also resides in the family plot. Her name was Anna Bronson Alcott Pratt. Pretty hard-hitting literary family there.
Admittedly I don’t know much about Emerson, he’s flown under my radar for some reason. Though I did previously visit the former resting spot of Henry David Thoreau’s cabin in the woods aside Walden Pond. I could appreciate his deep and intense need to be one with the wilderness. However, my knee jerk reaction since childhood was to not have any real fondness for Nathaniel Hawthorne. I decided at 12 he was whiny, and my opinion has only gotten bleaker with age. He wrote The Scarlet Letter and The House of Seven Gables which is a real place and a delight to visit. He’s buried with his likely more talented writer and artist wife Sophia Amelia Peabody Hawthrone who was relocated from her original burial in London in 2006! THAT POOR DEAR.
I will note now there are other authors buried here who are not on author’s ridge. They include but may not be limited to:
Novelist, poet, and screenwriter Millen Brand known for his 1937 novel The Outward Room and his 1948 screenplay The Snake Pit.
Prominent transcendentalist, poet, and dear friend of Thoreau: William Ellery Channing whose books include “The Woodsman” (1849), “Near Home” (1858), and “The Wanderer” (1871)
Intrepid journalist Irene Agnes Dolores Corbally Kuhn who was the first woman to broadcast on the radio in China and whose career spanned a great many interesting topics from interviewing Charlie Chaplin and Margaret Sanger to covering the Lindbergh baby kidnapping.
Robin Moore – the author of The Green Berets and The French Connection
Franklin Benjamin Sanborne – Writer and one of the “Secret Six” who funded John Brown’s Raid on Harper Ferry sparking the Civil War. Gotta love a trouble maker!
Margaret Sidney – Children’s book author of The Little Peppers and How They Grew series under a penname.
Not be outdone there are other people of historical note here. In fact many of them are written up on a board near the entrance of the cemetery that also has a little map and I think a QR code for an audio tour. We decided to wander around like cracked out squirrels looking for whatever took our interest in any particular second weaving in and out of some areas several times, talking to other lost cemetery goers, and getting distracted by beautiful monuments and really ornate slate stones. So much diversity here!
As we wandered we found slates with ornate carvings – sometimes whole family crests, as well as a number of modern stones that had the deceased’s signature on them. I’ve never seen either of these before or a slab of green granite being used instead of marble. There was also Edward Nealy’s memorial which was an old indigenous mortar being currently used as birdbath. A slate stone commemorating a woman who was a teenager when the British came into the tavern she lived atop of and announced their occupation of the colonies. There was even a few Asian stones with characters on them but my two favorites were a fairly recent burial who had A TON of rocks set on top of his stone. He must have been loved by SO MANY people to have acquired that many rocks! On the complete opposite side of the spectrum I found a husband and wife drama from the 1800’s. They were in a family plot and the husband had practically his whole obituary on his stone – totally mental amount of words and aside him his wife had a matching stone that literally only ready her name, date of birth, and date of death. WOW, what happened there?! Upon closer inspection she didn’t have the same surname so I am guessing she remarried after her husband died and then came back to be buried awkwardly in the family plot. Ooooo the scandal!
But I suppose I should get back to the other famous people buried here… My favorite I think was a very unassuming one. Her name was Anne Rainsford French Bush who was the first woman to get a driver’s license! I left her a penny (as there were none there and if I am thankful for anything in this life it’s that I, as the owner of a pair of tits and a twat, have the freedom to drive a car. VERY UNDERATED RIGHT.) Not to be outdone there was also Katherine K Davis who wrote the lyrics for The Little Drummer Boy. Her stone was the hardest to find as it was a flat ground level stone and there were soooooo many ground hornets in the area. Thousands. I tried taking a photo but they were too small to pick up. You’ll just have to believe me this was the biggest swarm of ground hornets I have ever seen in my life. This cemetery is known for bird watching as migrating birds seem to love it here – I suspect many will get eaten by them in a month or two.
Daniel Chester French, the sculptor responsible for the seated Lincoln in Washing DC also shares a residence here with the other authors and artists. And in a quieter but no less important role we also found Mary Lemnist Titcomb – the creator of the first bookwagon (or bookmobile,) Elizabeth Palmer Peabody who helped create the kindergarten system in the US, William Monroe Spencer – the first man in America to manufacture graphite pencils, and Ephraim Wales Bull – who bred the first Concord grapes, and Marc and Emily Daniels – a married couple working in television as a director and camera coordinator respectively. Marc’s resume is impressive including episodes of I Love Lucy, Hogans Heros, and Star Trek and Emily was one of the first women to work behind the scenes with the cameras on shows such as I Love Lucy. Their stones were the only ones we did not find. I don’t know where they were hiding but we looked a good long time for them – with a terrible map, a confused GPS, and a broken gut instinct.
We didn’t bother to try and find the oodles of politicians and famous gun makers. Suffice to say we’re both a little weary of such things at the moment.
All and all this cemetery has soooo many historically interesting people, especially women of note as well as authors. It was on some beautiful grounds and aside from the lack of parking and the thousands of hornets it was actually really pleasant! I would highly suggest it to any cemetery or literary lover.
I have driven by this cemetery hundreds of times but only recently noticed it because it’s tucked away on its own little road and not something you’re likely to notice unless you’re like me – constantly on the lookout for stones. I had noticed there were a few at the top of the hill all tucked away when the leaves fell off the trees and I have been waiting all winter for the snow to melt so I could go check it out properly.
Ashby is the same town with the grave of a black revolutionary war soldier named Prince Estabrook who is literally just down the road a little bit. Very close. So I was hoping for something else cool here.
As I drove down the little dirt road that ends in the cemetery I noticed there was a house on my right and a turnoff on my left. Was the turn off parking for the cemetery? There weren’t any signs and it looked kinda sketchy ahead so I decided to park there anyway and save the Prius an embarrassing moment stuck in the mud or needing to reverse or something.
There was an old man at the entrance fixing the little fence and dealing with the egregious number of tree limbs that had come down during this past winter. He seemed grumpy at first, or maybe confused why anyone was walking up, but I gave him a big smile and said hello and he warmed up instantly. Above him a big sign read no pets allowed which is bizarre for a cemetery in the middle of nowhere that already doesn’t appear to have any regular visitors but whatever, you do you.
I then walked into the older part of the cemetery which was near the gate. Almost all marble stones from the 1800’s. Not anything particularly remarkable about any of them. Similarly, a quick check with Find A Grave told me there was no one of note in this cemetery. No one?! That’s a first! Even the tiny cemeteries usually have some town contributor or local businessman of note. There were over two and a half thousand stones here, how could none of them have anything to say??
I continued to walk. It was a nice little setting surrounded by thick woods on all sides. Then I spotted the new part of the cemetery, the section that seemed to still be taking in new residents. And for the first time since the Weeping Angels found their way onto Doctor Who in 2007 I FOUND A WEEPING ANGEL! I’d been looking in every cemetery I visited for years and although I found tons of weeping women and lots of angels I’ve never found a weeping angel. It was on a new stone. In fact it was one of only a tiny handful of stones that showed any personality at all. I got up close to it (without blinking) and saw it was the stone of a young man. I don’t know what happened to him but it seemed obvious he probably got this special treatment due to his age and perhaps the sudden circumstances of his death. It was sad but I told him he had a beautiful monument before moving on (I talk to the ‘residents’ of these cemeteries all the time – best be nice and respectful so I don’t drag anything I don’t want home.)
It was only after the weeping angel I started to see a glimmer of personality elsewhere. There was a stone that was in the shape of a horse and then off in a corner with their backs facing the rest of the graveyard I found two slates and went to investigate. They were THICK slates and I was a little shocked to find they were modern. Real modern. Set in the 1990’s but with traditional crudely drawn Cherub head decals. never seen this before but I was intrigued.
I moved back into the older bits of the cemetery and was delighted to find some more modern slates from the 1920’s-1950’s, some with crude cherub heads some with exquisitely delicate carvings of flowers. They all looked like they’d been put up yesterday. Absolutely beautiful. And then I was back at the gate having explored the whole cemetery in a pretty short time.
This was the perfect little distraction for the day I was driving by and if you’re in the area, perhaps eating at the 823 Cafe & Tavern or checking out the Old Burial Ground just up the road this might be a fun little bonus. Otherwise, it probably isn’t worth the drive…. there really wasn’t much here.
