Rat's Country: "Don't Put No Headstone on My Grave"

"Don't Put No Headstone on My Grave"

Charlie Rich

Those of us who have come lately have come to stay.  Don't ask why.  Don't believe our explanations.  We might not say it, but maybe it's to be close to the Tuscarora cemetery.  Everybody in town has friends or relatives there.    Long ago Milt told me he's going no further from his doublewide than "over there," he says giving the cemetery a nod.

Tour guides name Tuscarora a ghost town.  I say the wind blew the ghosts away long ago.  When I wander among the headstones, the wrought iron fences and weathered crosses, the new slabs of decorated concrete, I think of the named and the nameless as the same.  Gone.