The House in the Union
Cemetery
I think I was in the 6th grade when we moved here
We lived there for less than a year. This was the
caretakers house. There was some mix up and eventually we had to move out
because the Cemetery Association said it was illegal to rent the house to
someone who was not the caretaker. Dad did work for them at the time doing
different jobs.
It was a nicely built house, yellow on the outside. I
don't recall all of the rooms but Sue and I shared one that had a tiny door in
the wall. When you opened it you were in a small attic space. It had a finished
off floor. We stored boxes in there.
We were there a short while when someone told us that the
odd stain on one of the walls was because a man had killed himself in that room
with a shotgun. I never saw a ghost there but we always wondered.
I was into music there. I collected song sheet magazines.
Dad was always bringing home books and magazines that he got somewhere. Anna and
Millie always grabbed the romance stories and the Hollywood Confidential and
Photoplay. I got Song Hits and others like that. I saved them in a box in the
attic. When we moved they got left behind. I was devastated but it wasn’t the
first time and wouldn’t be the last that stuff got left behind. Was it always my
stuff? Could be fate had a hand in this teaching me that things were things and
I should have learned that lesson but didn’t.
We either had to walk two long blocks around the cemetery
to get to school or walk right through the middle and climb over the fence or
crawl underneath it. I liked to walk through it. I was usually running late
anyway.
We went to the Burgoyne Ave School. It was called Number
Nine at that time. Today it's not even a school. In the winter, if you got there
and you were really wet and cold someone would let you in and send you to the
boiler room where we'd sit on benches to dry out and warm up.
I had a really bad day once in the winter. I was in
school when I started my monthly. I had nothing with me and didn't even know it
when I stood up in class to find blood all over the seat and running down my
leg. I was so embarrassed. The teacher told me I was excused and sent me home to
clean up. She wasn't really mean but she wasn't all that nice either.
I walked home like that and
ducked in the house to the toilet quick to clean up before someone saw me. I was
a mess, my clothes were a mess and I just wanted to hide. I finally had to come
out of the toilet and tell mom. She told me not to worry that it wasn't that bad
but to me it was awful!
I remember the panties I had put on that morning were new
and turquoise. They were made of some kind of nylon that had holes woven in to
make a pattern. We had each gotten two new pairs for school. Mine were blue and
pink. I hated making a mess and especially a mess of my new undies.
No one ever said anything about it in school.
For Christmas we didn't have much but we did have food.
We had a giant turkey and Dad had a Cow's tongue. There is no way I would have
touched that tongue but he seemed to like it.
Sometime on Christmas day he got me to taste it. I think
he tricked me. I don’t remember what it tasted like. I never ate it again,
though. Dad like to eat odd things like pickled pigs feet. I tried this once at
his insistence and I only ate the tiny bit of meat. I wasn’t going to eat that
fat and skin. It was so yucky. All I remember is it tasted briny from the salt
and vinegar it was pickled with.
Mom put the turkey in the room off the kitchen to unthaw
the night before. In the morning when she got up, a rat had got to it and chewed
on one of the legs. She just cut it off and cleaned the bird and cooked it for
us.
Some nuns came the day before Christmas and left boxes of
toys and candy for us.
Uncle Roger came with his wife, Hattie. She sold Avon and
they had just got married. She pretended that she had gifts for us and she
brought in a bunch of Avon products. Soaps and lotions that she said were for
us. I avoided the whole fiasco and as a result when there were not enough to
hand around and I didn't get one.
At first, it hurt my feelings but then I realized, I
wasn't there so how would she know, but in any case I came to feel lucky to not
get a bottle of something I'd never use. Soap seemed like an insult anyway.
I always found that cemetery to be a fascinating place. I
would walk all over looking at the stones and reading what they said. Enid and
Sue would have tea parties on the stones with their dolls.
Years later I took a lot of photos of the head stones and
monuments. There was one of a civil war soldier. In the entrance way to the
cemetery was a fenced in place that claimed to have the remains of Duncan
Campbell and Jane McCrea. There are monuments and markers all over claiming to
have some significance to Jane McCrea. As kids we were told she was a young
bride to be on the way to meet her groom when she was attacked by Natives and
scalped. Years later I found out she wasn’t young at all. When Millie was in
High School, she did a term paper on McCrea and supposedly it was put on display
at the old Fort House Museum in Fort Edward.
I may find some better photos than these if I keep looking.
This is a monument for all soldiers. Those headstones beside it are very old ones. Some dating back to the Civil War.
I tried making this darker in hopes the words would be easier to read.
This is the Civil War Monument.