Still No Nuts

I'm still looking for buckeyes, but it has now moved from being a simple task to being a mission. I am determined. The other day, a friend told me about a buckeye tree she was sure was nestled in a cemetery in Small Town Next Door, and she drew a map on the back of a napkin so I would know just where to find it. She even sketched out the shape of the leaf so I wouldn't mistakenly bump into a maple tree.

So, I drove to this cemetery on a quiet morning and set out with a plastic bag stuffed in my purse to hold all the nuts I would gather from the ground. I walked the entire length and width of this graveyard and didn't find a single nut. I'm not sure if I even found the right kind of tree, so it's possible the place had been cleaned up, and any nuts on the ground were swept away. With the hurricane winds we had here last week, that's probable.

I didn't let the situation go to waste, though. Walking through a cemetery in the quiet of the morning with just the birds and the squirrels can actually be a pleasant thing. This guy seemed at least curious but wouldn't let me get any closer.

I found this tombstone honoring someone born as early as 1794, which may not seem remarkable to someone who lives in a place with an older sense of history, but the age of the marker caught my attention.

I can't make out the dates on this one, but I liked the carving of the shaking hands.

And this one, while in poor repair, shows a hand pointing up, I presume to heaven, although in this case it was actually pointing to a utility truck parked by an access road. That could be taken as a clue to the cause of death if it were in a nonsense movie—Abbot and Costello and the Search for Fallen Buckeyes.