I talked a while back about the telltale narrowing of the stretch of Bishop L.N. Forbes [formerly Lane] Street that runs past Rountree, Odd Fellows, and Vick Cemeteries. It’s the only city street I can think of that lacks curbs and gutters. Rather, rainwater drains into open ditches that run along a strip of blacktop barely wide enough for two cars to pass abreast. 

And that narrow road is losing its edges. 

A close look at this divot across from the Vick Cemetery parking lot reveals two layers of asphalt over a bed of sand.

Here’s a view looking across the road from the ditch running alongside the cemetery. Runoff has cut a channel through the ditch’s soft soil.

And, at the edge of the road, the opening to an animal’s burrow, large as a softball.

A few months ago, Wilson City Manager Grant Goings mocked my efforts, via Lane Street Project, to keep Odd Fellows Cemetery mowed and its woods clear. We ask, “And why do you look at the speck in your brother’s eye, but do not consider the plank in your own eye?”

Photos by Lisa Y. Henderson, November 2024.