Growing up, I remember our
family picnics. They were usually set up
in the months between May and September because then we could have them at the
park. After everyone ate their fill of
food, we’d get together for a friendly game of baseball. Picnics were always on Sunday because that
was the one day that everyone had off.
Since it was my family’s
turn to arrange the picnic, we would be the ones to go to the park early in the
morning, usually by about six-thirty, and get enough tables together so all the
relatives would have a place to sit and for the food that everyone would be
bringing.
At eight, this wasn’t
the first time that I went along to save tables. It varied though as to which of my brothers
and sisters would go with. On this
particular day, I went with two sisters and one brother. My oldest sister and oldest brother were
still at home. My brother, Fred would
help Dad with the chores while Susie helped Mom with the cooking. Carla, Charlotte, and Cal all joined me at
the park.
Once we got to the park,
we all joined in to help move the fifteen tables into position and then we
placed our supplies sporadically on them so if anyone were to come we could say
they were saved for us.
On this particular
morning, it was a bit chilly. The wind
was blowing through the trees and it was promising to be a beautiful day. I wrapped up in a blanket and sat on one of
the tables as I listened to my sisters and brother talking. Carla, the oldest of the four of us had just
turned fifteen, and whether she wanted to feel important knowing something the
rest of us didn’t or she was trying to scare us, she started telling us the
tale of the lost graveyard.
Lowering her voice as if
what she was telling us was top secret, she told us how the lost grave actually
belonged to Snow White, but she wasn’t called that, instead, the name on the
grave was Merriweather. She went on to
tell us that friends from school had come to the park and held a séance to find
out where the lost graveyard actually was, and they told her how to find out.
By now, my eyes were wide and I could tell
that Charlotte—who was thirteen, and Cal, who was twelve, also had their eyes opened
wide. All three of us were looking
around at the shadows creeping in on us.
Of course, it was just the tree limbs, but to young minds, they could
have been any number of things.
Carla lifted her chin
and said she knew how to get the directions…if we weren’t afraid.
Of course we were
afraid, but there was no way we were going to let Carla know that so we told
her to go ahead.
She took a pancake
turner and spoke into it. We all waited
anxiously, but nothing happened. Seeing
that she was losing us, Carla suggested it needed to be dark. So, the four of us got underneath the blanket
and once again, she spoke into the pancake turner.
An anchor appeared on
the back of the pancake turner.
Charlotte screamed and Carla dropped the utensil. All of us scrambled out from underneath the
blanket and ran to one of the tables in the middle where the four of us huddled
together until our parents arrived a couple of hours later.
You might think that
this was all just the over-active imaginings of four youngsters… But there is one more thing you should
know. The area of the park where we were
saving tables is an Indian Burial Mounds.
The bodies are no longer in the graves since the area was looted years
before, but there is also a cemetery next to the park.
