Green Hill Cemetery Steps

As a lifelong resident of the HILL, Greenhill Cemetary has always been one of my favorite places. As a child, my friends and I played in there (respectfully, mind you.) We used to walk down the "Hundred steps', as we called them, although there are really about 116 steps. We wondered why they were there and why they were never used anymore. I remember the old water tubs, long since taken down, that the older caretakers used to water the flowers on the graves. As a teen, my friend Andrea and I used to try and salvage the older tombstones that had fallen from either time or vandals, picking them up and trying to fit them in their crumbling bases, propping with rocks and sticks. We collected bags of chestnuts from the many chestnuts trees that were so abundant in the cemetary. Not so many any more...The part of the cemetary that we called 'Baby Hill' used to make us so sad, and we imagined we could almost hear the desperate cries of mourning mothers crying for their lost children. So many of them....Now, as an adult, I still walk in Greenhill, sometimes saddened at the state of some of the tombstones, wishing that the teens today were as respectful of the place as we were at their age...The dates on the tombstones still amaze me and make me wonder about that person and what it was like in Amsteram back then, with all the mills booming and downtown bustling. Must have been really something...