Tom and I were 11 years old, curious about anything within a bike ride’s distance, and school was out for the summer. A risky combination. Our T-shirts should have borne a “Requires Adult Supervision” message. That day’s adventure would unfold some distance from home.

We left early. Lunchtime provisions bulged pants pockets and dusted our pocketknives with cookie crumbs. The snacks would soon be gone. There was nothing else to eat and we took no money, but it didn’t matter. Real adventurers didn’t need either.

By mid-morning our bikes had been secreted in a hayloft at Ohio State University’s agricultural center. We’d hoof it from there on. Where “on” began and ended was the great unknown, the wilderness beyond, adventure’s heartland! We took turns leading and getting lost in the impenetrable forests (called “windbreaks” by farmers whose buildings we pretended weren’t there). Our bushwhacked path finally broke out of the woods and into an overgrown field. A tall white stone pointed skyward. Everything around it was hidden. We trudged on cautiously, yet determined to discover the unseen. A couple dozen steps put us in Thomas A. Legg’s family cemetery.

Headstone dates on either side of 1900 caught our attention. The beginnings and ends of people’s years made us wonder what life was like, so very long ago. Then we read the obelisk’s inscription. “Pause, thou, stranger, as you pass by. As you are now, so once was I. As I am now, soon you must be. Prepare for death and follow me.” Zoom! Two streaks flew for the woods with arms and legs flailing wildly, trying to outrun the grasping hands we imagined were trying to drag us back. We ran until our fears and breath were spent.

Cemeteries still capture my curiosity as I wonder about people now gone. The dates tell incomplete stories of births and deaths. Small stones speak softly of tears and a lost child….or several. A churchyard near Charlotte has four such markers in a row, then a larger one for their mother who died two days after losing her last baby. Small American or Confederate flags fly over veterans’ graves on Memorial Day. Headstones worn wordless lie face-down, forming the church’s sidewalk.

A cemetery several miles from here has more than 200 markers in irregular rows. Those of slaves are near an old holly tree on the hilltop. A monument to the area’s first family lists 11 children’s names back to the late 1700’s. Down the slope, a dozen or more stones face a slightly different direction than the rest, which are aligned eastward in the Scriptural pathway of Christ’s return. There are several markers over toddlers’ graves. Others testify of men who returned from distant wars.

A woman’s leg is buried at Cumberland Knob. The rest of her lies in a State Road cemetery. Decades ago she was riding a horse near the Knob when it tripped in a hole, breaking its leg and crushing hers. The animal was put down. Her leg was amputated, but she apparently lived a full life despite the injury. Another headstone’s inscription brazenly includes the stonecutter’s name.

Beyond the Parkway’s split-rail fence, markers bear names familiar in this area: Blevins, Brooks, Walker, and others. Two have but one date, a year apart; stillborn sons. A simple fieldstone marks another grave without a name, date, inscription, or pleading prayer. Who carried the stone and wept over this spot? Two others identify the graves of a man and wife. He turned 15 the year she was born. When did they marry? How old was she when they had their only child? The young mother died at 26.

I straightened toppled flower baskets at a cemetery several miles north. One family buried five youngsters in 16 years. More than a dozen stones mark the graves of little ones. Successful births did not assure long lives, those many years ago. A Winston-Salem Journal article told of a midwife who delivered hundreds of babies, but lost all of her own. She gave to others what she couldn’t keep for herself.

A shiny black headstone marks Andy (deceased) and Alma Carpenter’s gravesite. The color picture painted on one side speaks of life and love and faith. On its left is a modern brick home. Opposite, an old, once-red pickup truck is parked in front of a house trailer. A heavy-antlered buck and a doe watch from the yard as a young couple walks hand-in-hand toward the house. An angel smiles from the clouds above. Life goes on.

Reportedly, a lady’s headstone in New England bears the accusing inscription, “I told them I was sick!” Years later, someone added a final verse to Thomas A. Legg’s kid-scaring invitation: “To follow you, I’ll not consent, until I learn which way you went!”