A story from a small town

Fewer than seven hundred people live in my township.

Fewer than seven hundred additional people live in the village in my township.

As I've mentioned, most go back six generations.

This is not a good thing, although they do not recognize inbreeding.

Feuds go back generations.

This is the mausoleum in one of the cemeteries.

Technically, a mausoleum houses crypts.

This mausoleum, built in 1876 from locally quarried sandstone, was cold storage for folks who died in the winter and needed housing until the ground thawed in spring.

The mausoleum has nothing to do with the story, but it's a neat little Gothic structure.

All around it you can see the tips of trees browned off by the cicadas, and now falling to the ground.

They litter the cemetery.

This town is celebrates Memorial Day big and proper, with parades to the cemeteries and speeches commemorating the more than few service men resting in these grounds. There are Revolutionary War veterans in the oldest cemetery.

The people who manage the cemeteries get a little cranky in the lead up to Memorial Day festivities. It's done the same way every year, and with the same measure of crankiness.

Laura had time on her hands, so I asked one of the organizers if she could help.

She was assigned the weeding of one of the memorial gardens.

The next day I was asked if she could water the plants.

So, every day I go to work, I drop her at the cemetery, she finds the watering can, which seems to wander from grave to grave, pumps the pump, fills the can and makes her rounds.

My friend Nina, a town stalwart, mentioned seeing Laura in the cemetery.

I explained I volunteered her.

"But, there are sextons!" Nina said.

I explained, as the harried official told me in May, they do not want to water, too.

Well, Nina will see about that.

I'll still send Laura to water, It's good for her.