Lima Cemetery

I was visiting a friend near Clermont, Iowa in 2007 and we went out to the Lima Cemetery and I wanted to share this amazing tombstone with you.........

 

 

Prairie Birthday

An excerpt from an essay in Sand County Almanac entitled 'Prairie Birthday'.

It is an ordinary graveyard, bordered by the usual spruces, and studded with the usual pink granite or white marble headstones, each with the usual Sunday bouquet of red or pink geraniums. It is extraordinary only in being triangular instead of square, and in harboring, within the sharp angle of its fence, a pin-point remnant of the native prairie on which the graveyard was established in the 1840's. Heretofore unreachable by sythe or mower, this yard-square relic of original Wisconsin gives birth, each July, to a man-high stalk of compass plant or cutleaf Silphium, spangled with saucer-sized yellow blooms resembling sunflowers. It is the sole remnant of this plant along this highway, and perhaps the sole remnant in the western half of our county. What a thousand acres of Silphiums looked like when they tickled the bellies of the buffalo is a question never again to be answered, and perhaps not even asked.

Aldo Leopold would be pleased to know that the compass plant, and many other prairie plants that he wrote about are blooming still in the little cemetery just off Hwy 12 here in Wisconsin. I love that because of the angle of this cemetery fence a small remenant of native prairie land was preserved.

2008 Hobo Convention in Britt, Iowa

A friend of mine invited me to go with him to the Hobo Convention in Britt, Iowa. He has attended for years and thought it would be something I would enjoy and he was right!

We arrived on Friday morning in time for the memorial service at the Hobo cemetery. Burlap was hanging from the fence, and each of us were given a strip of burlap to represent humility. A few words were said or songs were sung about each of the 7 hobos who had died this year. One was a woman by the name of Slo Freight Ben. She attended the National Hobo Convention in Britt, every year for 40 years, until she died last September. Hobo King Steam Train Maury gave her the name, "Slo Freight Ben" because she took off from every stop sign in her car "slower than a freight train".

One of the lady hobos had taken Slo Freight's ashes on two trains before they were brought back to Britt to be buried.

 

There is a cross in the cemetery made of railroad ties, and many of the tombstones are homemade.

This mobile hangs at the cemetery entrance and each of the aluminum discs carries the name of one of the hobos. 

Bill Geist from my favorite TV show~ CBS Sunday Morning~ was there doing a story that will aire in September.

Melinda and Bill Geist!

The hobo museum in town is well worth a visit- this peice of stitchery created by one of the hobos is just one of the many exhibits.

I got to see a hobo wedding and sit around the campfire singing songs  and I slept in a tent in the hobo jungle. It was so much fun to hear all the stories and talk to people who have had a lot of adventures traveling around this country by rail.