The Lengths I'll Go To/In Which I Ruin My Manicure

     Yesterday was the day!  Off to Newark Cemetery to find Uncle Milo.  The village of Newark sent me directions along with a list of nearby graves, so I counted the twelve rows from the fence and found...not much.  Most of the people in row twelve had no markers!  Then I spotted the stone of the woman the list said was buried right next to Milo, and there next to hers was a barely visible stone lying mostly underground.  You can see in the picture-- the whiter part was all that could be seen.  The two stones standing on the other side, supposedly Milo's children, were completely unreadable I'm sorry to say.

    The photo of the Galloway graves I recently came across at the Palmyra library showed a large upright stone and two smaller ones, but who knows how long ago that photo was taken?  This was when I got down on all fours and began tearing at the decades long build up of turf that obscured the tombstone.  After a few minutes the letters "GALLO" became visible, I had found him!  I don't know why, but it never occurred to me the stone might need to be excavated so I was unprepared.

      I continued ripping at the tangled mat of grass and roots lying over the grave, and inch by inch, the stone was revealed.  At one point my husband went back to the car to look for something to cut the grass with but all he could find was my old windshield scraper, it's now in three pieces.  Then he helpfully began taking pictures of me digging at the grave with my bare hands, like one of my terriers.  Most likely so he would have photographic proof in case no one believed him.  But ya know what?  I didn't go all the way to Newark to be defeated by some grass, I was going to see that stone.

     It took about half an hour with no tools, but I got it uncovered.  It's pretty well preserved, much more so than his children's stones, probably because most of it was underground.  You can see next to me in the picture the sizable mound of debris I created, and I felt bad about that but there were no receptacles handy and I couldn't very well throw it in my car.  I did pile it neatly in one spot for ease of removal by the groundskeepers.

     So am I satisfied?  I can't really imagine how I could be; I can't read the other two stones. I must return with a few gallons of water and a very soft toothbrush to remove the lichen, then I'll be satisfied...probably.