Sometimes it’s difficult to notice what isn’t there, especially if it has ‘always’ been part of the landscape and has disappeared little-by-little over many years.  I’m talking specifics here.  I’m talking about the fence around the Captain Stream Plot at the Oysterville Cemetery.

It was there during my childhood – a distinctive, heavy iron chain draped between large a dozen or so iron stanchions marking the perimeter of the Stream Family gravesite.  I don’t know for sure, but I’ve always thought that the fence was meant to suggest a nautical theme – perhaps an anchor chain – in honor of Captain A. J. Stream’s service as keeper of the Shoalwater Life Saving Station at North Cove, 1881-1884.

It’s unclear when that fence began to disappear, but by the time Larry Weathers did his charming drawings of the Pioneer Section of the cemetery, only the stanchions were left.  That was in 1978.  Nyel remembers that there were only “some” of the stanchions left when he arrived in 1984. A year or so ago there were only three.  Now there are none.

At least one other fence, a wrought iron one, graced the cemetery years ago.  Parts of it, too, have ‘disappeared’ over the years.  I used to think that perhaps those decorative items were taken to be used by someone in their garden.  I’m not that naïve anymore.  It seems more likely that those charming bits and pieces are being sold as scrap metal to help support someone’s drug problem.

I have absolutely no words to describe my thoughts regarding that scenario.  Like the feeling that the air has been sucked right out of a room, the thoughts seem to have been sucked right out of my head.   Just as Captain Stream’s lovely little house graces Main Street in Oysterville, so did his unusual fence add distinction to our cemetery.  We are all poorer for its disappearance.