I grew up in a small rural community in Eastern Ontario living far from any job opportunities that a city boy could access. Once I reached high school age it became apparent that a few dollars in my pocket was not going to hurt anything. But where would they come from?
In grade nine friends would mob the local confectionary shop during school breaks, and they always seemed to have money to purchase chocolate bars and a coke. That was very important to me because chocolate bars have always been a good source of nutrition and energy, and every growing boys needs good nutrition and energy. The fact that they tasted good, was way down on my list of benefits.
My father was chairman of the local Cemetery Board of Trustees. It was a small cemetery in a little rural community, and stood across the dirt road from a church. As was done in those days, work on the cemetery was done by volunteers. Local people had measured and laid out the lots many years ago in the deep past. Locals assembled work bees to clean up, cut the grass, and brush and stand up old stones that the passage of time seemed to have a way of knocking down.
Naturally, we dug graves hand, for who wants noisy large machinery rutting up the grass and disturbing the mice and woodchucks. Besides, backhoes were not invented yet!
My father, and his father before him, had labored with a shovel in the sandy loam digging and heaving the soil onto the grass beside the new grave. So, one day, I lucked out when my dad asked if I wanted to dig the next grave. I think my eyes must have lit up with the thoughts running through my head of the riches unrolling ahead of me. Ten whole dollars, a fortune, just falling into my lap, for just moving a little earth. As it turned out, it would be more than more moving a little dirt.
Since I was going to high school, and riding a bus, there were some hurdles. My digging time was not fitting into the hours of daylight left at the end of the day, especially in the autumn. There were a few evenings when I worked all alone using the rear work light on the tractor for illumination. It worked reasonably well, but since it didn’t shine down into the grave, there were a lot of dark shadows for company.
Those dark corners brought to my mind a story Grandpa used to tell around. When he was young there was a local mica mine, and those living on site would come into the community to buy milk from a farmer. Their shortcut trail was right across the cemetery. One day someone dug a new grave, and it was right across the shortcut trail. That night a mine worker hurried along the trail and suddenly found himself looking up through the darkness only to see stars above. Panicked he tried jumping and grabbing at the top of the grave hoping to pull himself out, but the crumbling earth wouldn’t hold him, and he fell back to the bottom. At last, exhausted, he propped himself up against one of the corners and sat there in the dark. Suddenly he was disturbed by a second person who also had fallen in. He too did the jumping and reaching process trying to get out.
Then a voice from a dark corner said, “You can’t get out of here”.
But he did!
Happy RVing!
For more than four decades James Stoness has travelled the roads of North America, photographing and writing about what he has seen. His travel articles and beautiful pictures have been published in several magazines and newspapers. He is also the author of five western novels, a science fiction novel, and an adventure disaster novel.