Summer 2014. Our youngest was dating and about to turn 18. Our son was in the Twin Cities, and our oldest, who had moved home, was working 2 jobs and going to school. The mom taxi had become superfluous, and I had a hatchback I was about to put to thorough use, in addition to getting the grand-dog through the drive-thru.
In the first half of June, the job I had worked at since moving back to our hometown 12 years prior closed permanently, laying off about 4 dozen of us, and those of us that had been there a while received a fair severance package, so I planned to take at least a few weeks off prior to hitting the job search with gusto. In the meantime, I needed a hobby that I could sink my resources into. I don't garden, and since trying to train for our local half marathon hadn't panned out the summer prior, I went with a life-long passion - genealogy. My youngest had joined me in a few adventures and we had gone on quite a few field trips to local and regional cemeteries. My family is not rooted in our town or even nearby, but my husband has a branch here. I made some phone calls.
The Polish Cemetery on the edge of town is one of two here set aside for the Polish immigrants that settled here, most of them in the late 1880's. There is a small churchyard way outside of town, and this larger cemetery which abuts three others, all in a row. "Polish" as many refer to it, is bounded on 2 sides by the much larger Catholic cemetery, and it turns out that there was a significant dispute many decades ago regarding how the Catholic church handled differences, and the cemeteries became separate entities.
Older burials are a bit scattered throughout a few of the sections closest to the road, the cemetery driveways having become paved long after the first burials here. I decided to set to work on the first section geographically, although in the books this is section #2. I started cleaning the graves closest to the entrance road, and very quickly found that a gardening spade, a scissors and gardening gloves were NOT going to be sufficient. I hadn't done a great deal of research or talked to anyone who knew more than I, simply obtained permission from the sextant (I've since taken a preservation class and learned a bit more). It didn't take long for me to ask my husband to join me and have a look at what I was undertaking and weigh in regarding tools. Here is the list I ended up with, packed in my car with the spade and the gloves:
A long-handled edger, the kind you use along your sidewalk in the spring to make a straight edge.
A soft brush.
Water. LOTS of water.
Sunscreen and bug dope.
A sweatshirt, just in case.
Sturdy shoes and a hat.
A five-gallon bucket (this is for hauling weeds/sod to the edge of the woods).
Cell phone (per husband, do NOT leave in car)
It's been almost 10 years, so I'm probably forgetting something important, and can no longer locate the little instructional video I made at the time. I had fun, I had rest and relaxation and I probably lost a few pounds. I saw a lot of deer, I talked with quite a few older folks coming to pay their respects to loved ones, and I learned a little Polish spelling and pronunciation. And yes, I hurt myself. My goal was ultimately to remove sod from stones that were no longer visible, as there is very little funding and volunteers are few. I had no plans to invest in D2 or the scrubbing of individual stones. There was one stone in particular that was just outside the section I worked that I'd had my eye on unearthing, and when I worked on it, found that the stone had been broken in half, likely many years ago. It was not large, so I chose the smaller half and carried it (maybe 20 feet) to one of the faucets and gave it a good bath. I'll just say that tired as I was that afternoon, I should have left the other half for another day. I paid for that choice with a bulging disc for about a year and a half.
All told, I did clear an entire section, and a few other spots. In the years since, the sod has regrown and I'd like to give it another go, but I do think it's going to have to be someone else's turn. I'm currently working on some of my state's poor farm cemetery records, from the relative safety of my living room.
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