I pulled up at Odd Fellows a couple of minutes late; I had not anticipated the line at Wilson Doughnuts.

Senior Force members Castonoble Hooks and Briggs Sherwood were unpacking Briggs’ trunk while chatting with our photographer Chris Facey and two newcomers, John Kirk and Thomas Ramirez, who arrived bearing boxes of Bojangles biscuits. Shortly after, Barton College professor Lydia Walker and Raven Farmer, a LSP season-one original, pulled up. Rev. H. Maurice Barnes stopped through on his way to another engagement, and then again in time to pray over the work done and yet to do.

Today there were just these few at Odd Fellows. And we were enough. Whether nine or ninety, however many show up always will be enough.

We tackled the short ditch between Odd Fellows and Rountree, which has been choked with dog fennel and wisteria and privet and cherry saplings. It appears in early aerials of the land, but its purpose isn’t clear. However, given the high bank on which the front edge of Rountree Cemetery sits, however, it seems likely that it was cut as a passageway for wagons to gain access into the cemetery.

Just beyond where Cass Hooks is walking above, the ground slopes up gently to grade level. With the right equipment — a little Bobcat? — we could carefully scrape this out, but I’m getting ahead of ourselves.

The wild overgrowth along the first couple of feet at the top of the bank has been chopped. I thought at first that maybe Wilson Energy was cleaning up around the base of the power pole it rammed into Rountree Cemetery in 1997, but no — the pole is just as enwreathed in gnarly wisteria as ever.

Still there is evidence that someone fairly recently did some rough chopping of some of the larger saplings just behind the pole — and it wasn’t LSP. None of the brush was cleared out, it was simply pushed over — including this log on top of the pile of Ellis headstones I photographed during my initial solo foray into Rountree in December 2019.

We gently pulled the fallen sapling off the pile and cleared vines from ten year-old Buster Ellis‘ headstone.

The Ellis headstones, almost all shattered or snapped, are evidence of some earlier clean-up — or cleanout — conducted with little regard for the memory or graves of those whose graves they mark.

For now, we leave them as they are.

Nearby, Daniel Marlow‘s handsome headstone marks his 1910 burial. The vines are relentless; we cut them back.

We hope, with the blessing of Rountree Missionary Baptist Church, to do more in Rountree Cemetery this season.

Photos by Lisa Y. Henderson, December 2023.