F. P. Dorchak

Speculative Fiction (New Weird) Author

McColloms Cemetery

Upstate New York

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Barnum Pond, New York
Barnum Pond, New York

Last week we’d made a trip to visit family and attend a retirement party, in New York State. We had a great time there, and it was shorter than our regular trips, but we weren’t there for sightseeing so much as attending my stepmom’s retirement party.

But…we did do some driving and checked out a “camp” (these are not tented affairs, but buildings, that NYS calls “camps”; I love checking them out, especially if they’re on water…) on an upstate New York lake, the McColloms Cemetery, and drove to Barnum Pond, off of Route 30. It was a great trip, our last for the year—and it’s been a great year for fun travel, with our South Dakota, Montana, and Wyoming trips!

But, now it’s time to buckle back down on my manuscript work (have I said this before?!), and continue readying for the rest of what I call “The Holiday Season,” which starts with Hallowe’en and goes through New Year’s….

Ah, what a fun year it’s been!

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McColloms Cemetery, Brighton, New York

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McColloms Cemetery, Upstate New York
McColloms Cemetery, Upstate New York

For the past week, I’ve been in waaay upstate New York (about an hour south of Montréal), visiting family, and while there stopped by a small cemetery I’ve been wanting to stop by for literally many, many years, and never had. I’ve driven past this cemetery for so long, both as a high school kid on the after-school athletic bus to and from athletic “meets,” or on the after-school “late bus” dropping everyone one off after after-school sports practices (more likely this), as well as an adult visiting family.

I’ve kept from inserting a comma between the “m” and “s” in this post, since there’s not one on the cemetery’s sign.

McColloms Cemetery is a private cemetery (which I did not know at the time—and no one came out to meet us while we were there), located on Route 30, 6.3 miles north of the intersection with Route 86, in the town of Brighton, NY, which was first settled around 1815.

One of the headstones is for Michael Samburgh (1959 – 1988). I knew him in high school, and found his picture in my year book the year before I graduated.  Rest in peace, Micheal.