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Greetings ~

In our society today, we are all for fast food, fast cars and fast pleasures. But not that long ago, we were much slower. Before cell phones and social media, life was set in a slower pace. We actually had time...or made time, to enjoy the simpler things in life. And one of those things were a picnic.
Picnics became popular at the start of the invention of the motorcar. People could finally get away for the day and travel around the landscape and a popular thing to do on these day trips was have a picnic in a field somewhere. But picnics actually go farther back than the automobile.
Since the early 1800s, folks around the country would pack a picnic lunch into the carriage, bridle the horse and head out to...wait for it...the local cemetery. That's right! In many small towns there were no parks. The cemetery acted as the town's park. You had lawns, trees and sometimes a pond. And you had plenty of space for yard games and for the kids to play.
By 1850, it was getting very popular to go to the cemetery for lunch. While there, families would decorate graves of loved ones, walk the grounds, skip stones in the pond and lay in the grass and relax. Mausoleums were sometimes left open for people to go into and read the inscriptions. They didn't have to worry back then about idiots spray painting the walls like today. Back then there was no spray paints anyway. It was a much cleaner time.
In the wintertime, people would visit cemeteries to ice skate on the frozen ponds, There were even baseball games played in cemeteries. Today, the fad is coming back and there are groups of folks now picnicking in cemeteries once again. It truely is a way to slow the pace of a hectic lifestyle, if only for a day.
So, if you get the chance, pack a picnic basket, a blanket and a cooler and head to your local cemetery and have lunch. Walk around and visit the local residents and read about their lives on the gravestones, Toss a ball for your dog and lay in the grass awhile. But remember, leave the grounds as you found them. Clean up after yourself and DON"T leave any trash. And for God's sake, leave the spray paint cans at home.