Just as last night’s Wilson City Council meeting closed, Mayor Carlton Stevens posed a question. Lane Street Project volunteers have put a lot of work into Odd Fellows Cemetery, he said. Could the Deputy City Manager shed any light on why the city has stopped cutting the grass?

Said Harry Tyson in response: City crews have never maintained Vick Cemetery. Rather, the City pays a private company to cut the grass and, every once in a while, throw down a little topsoil. “If” anything beyond Vick — like Odd Fellows for 25 years — has ever been cut, it was due to the benevolence of that company. The City doesn’t know anything about it. And doesn’t know anything about why it’s stopped.

A moment of silence to acknowledge my shock at this revelation. The City has not even been doing the little bit at Odd Fellows that I had been giving it credit for.

I think it is safe to say that neither the City nor the contractor (that it has been paying for 25 years to do something it would seem Public Works could do a lot more cheaply) plan to pass another blade over the weeds of Odd Fellows Cemetery.

We press on.

LSP Fam, please start talking to your people. Get them lined up and ready. We have work to do.

Remember, every setback is a set-up for a comeback.

Odd Fellows in weeds, September 2021.