Dick Johnson volunteers to spruce up cemetery signs he made some years ago. The following is an edited interview.

I think my wife’s father has got plots already paid for down in Post Mills, so that’s where we’ll be, probably. But I’ve known quite a few people who have ended up here (in Krook Meadow).

Down in Krook Meadow there’s a few new ones. There’s a man who was well liked in the town - a heck of a nice guy. He died young. And one little baby who died. I want to see things right for them, and it’s something I like to do anyway.

For years, there weren’t any signs at any of the cemeteries in town at all. It was kind of disgraceful, because nobody knew what cemetery they were at beyond local people. I didn’t understand how they’d gone so long without signs, but that’s the way it was.

Several years before I built these signs, the trustees spoke to me about straightening things up. The stones were a real mess. I worked two summers - just about every day that I could except for when it was hotter than Hades - until I got them all straightened out.

Maybe five or six years ago, I made these signs. I used good cedar wood and painted both sides with good enamel paint. Now there’s a lot of fungus or something on them, all these spots that have built up.

I’ve got them all down, and I’m cleaning them up. I sand them down a bit, and give them a new coat of paint. My hand isn’t as steady as it was when I first made them, but they’re just outside signs.

Some other guys are going to be doing a fence around one of the cemeteries this summer. They were going to have me help them some, but my wrists are so bad that I can’t lift anything. They left me out of it, so I did this.

People have spoken about the signs a lot. They thank me for it. The thing of it is, somebody’s got to do it. Some people don’t want anything to do with it, but I think it’s my duty. It was something that needed to be done, so, like a Good Samaritan, I volunteered.