There is a cemetery up the hill from my home, it sits high on a windy hill. There is a decent road leading there and it is a climb as the road steepens the higher you go. As children, we would go there now and then, but it looks so different now. Gone are the huge trees that surrounded the black iron fence, tall and looking like something you would see in the movie, Omen

The creaky gate is gone along with the fence, only the bolts that protrude from the wall are left intact, and they are rusty and broken. It is stripped of it's appeal and has lost it's forboding appearance. Years ago, it was a kind of eerie feeling you got as you approached, as then you couldn't even see the gravestones for the overgrown weeds and bushes. As you got nearer. after scaling a high embankment, you could tell that inside is a world unto it's own. Pulling and tugging to get the gate open enough to squeeze through, all the time thinking, "'what if I have to hurry out of here", will I have time to tug, pull and push my way through.

Once inside, one hesitates, you stand there looking about and think that this is a resting place for people that have died, and they will remain here, forever.

It does not matter now , that once they were alive and trying to survive, by working at farming, or milling, hunting, trapping and the list goes on. Gone are the worries over sickness of children, of Indian raids, a battle to be fought the next day, what will we eat when we are hungry and where to bury the dead. Their appearence, their wealth, their triumphs, failures and sins all seem to blow away with the winds that blow across the field that surrounds the cemetery, and it does blow hard, as there are no barriers now, no tall trees to stop the flow of air that pushes swiftly wearing away the stone of the wall and the flattened pillars that mark where these bodies lie, deep in the ground.

Some of the markers are very large and elegant, standing out from all the rest, as if saying, "Here I am, over here, look at me. I am important and deserve your attention, because it will be a spell before another comes to visit this place. Well, I turn away from those and gaze at the modest ones that are closer to the road, placed closer because the mourners did not want to trek into the field any further, or the coffins were too heavy, or maybe they wanted to stay closer to them, even in death. There were children's gravestones also, the names have been worn away with time, time that would have been better spent alive than buried, away from friends and family, no more skipping rope, mapping out blocks with chalk on the sidewalk for a game of hopscotch, swimming in the creek with friends, dancing, and all the fun things that childrren do. Some of the stones are leaning as though they are tired, some sunken into the ground, pushed down from the weight of the burdersome granite.

he sun is receding now, dropping low to meet the horzon, and with it is a side glance of the markers, making the ingravings stand out to be read. Hanna K. and Sheshbazzar,all those years gone by. Their ancestors have already made their mark on civilization. The have founded the town of Bentleysville.

The wind is picking up now and nothing is moving as the long overgriown grass is already hugging the ground, New grass will grow in the spring and it only acts to make the carpet of long grass thicker, so your shoes sink into the thickness of it.

Down the hill now, overlooking a community that was once wilderness, quiet times except for the Indian families living near the creeks. They were peaceful people, living to survive, surviving to live and hoping that the white eyes would pass them by, and not choose to make their home here where they were born and raised, their home

My recollections of the Bentley Cemetery. Helen Grayce Petrick Ezarik August 10, 1999