I received my first assignment the other day. There was a request to photograph a headstone in Needles, California. That is about 20 miles from me so I said okay. I found out there were 13 other request for the same cemetery so I accepted them also.
Print out and camera in the car off Michael and I head for Needles. Betty, the GPS got us there without a problem.
It turns out that there isn't anyone there full time. There is no map of the cemetery so we decided to walk the cemetery. We did walk the entire cemetery. We looked at every headstone. Some were not readable. Most of the headstones were horizontal. You could see on some that the blade of the mower had taken chunks out of headstones. Some were sun faded. Some were fancy and some were plain. A few had photos of the individual were on the headstones. Some of the headstones were military issue. Some were out alone with no one else around them. Some were in the shade of trees and some in full sun. Some had full concrete slabs over the casket area. Most did not. Some were so sunken over the casket area that I was a little nervous about walking over them. Some were hand written in wet cement. Most were carved. Most were in English, but a few were in Spanish (I understood it), and one was written in I think Chinese. Wish I could have read that one.
There appeared to be sections. There was an area that the names were mostly Hispanic, or Irish, or English. You could tell family plots that must have been bought as a group.
The baby graves were the hardest. They had toys engraved on them. It made me think of all the children that had died and not been able to live out a life. It reminded me of my son and my brother who predeceased me.
But no matter what the headstone looked like some touched me more than others. If I saw a family name I wondered if they were related. I took a photo just in case.
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