About Cemeteries

What I like about cemeteries

I admit it, I am a cemetery tourist.  I have visited perhaps hundreds by now.  Like people, cemeteries can by large, small, old, young, decrepit, well-maintained, abandoned,  fascinating, boring, creepy, and beautiful.  The Markers vary considerably too, and they vary from the extremely original and spectacular to the mundane and industrial.   I can't say I know much about the cemetery business, but then you can learn a lot by just looking around.  Other stuff is pretty mystifying and may remain always a mystery, because I have neither the resources or the time to track the facts down.   For example, why did the R family and all of the children die on the same day in October?    Why are there husband and wife graves where the husband's name and birth and death dates are there but the wife's are nowhere to be found?  And what of the ones where no birth or death dates are included at all?  Are these just the proactive types who bought their grave and marker long prior to need?  Or did some one not bother to carve the final date on the stone?  Or maybe there was a postmortem falling out, and the surviving spouse decided to move away and be buried somewhere else?   And what happens when the last wishes of the departed are ignored? 

Most cemeteries are free and open to the public.  In areas where there may be crime, cemeteries post hours and have gates and generally want you well out of there before sundown.  Occasionally the cemeteries are locked or have signs telling the public to keep out.  This was the case in Dallas when I wanted to see the grave of Clyde Barrow, the bank robber.  The Western Heights cemetery is in a poor Hispanic neighborhood on the West side.  The grass is dead as are the people interred and probably dried out too, considering the climate.   The cemetery was moderately interesting and I would have stayed longer except I half expected a police car to station itself at the entrance and arrest me as I was technically trespassing.  Apparently visits were controlled by the church.  They had a phone number you could call to inquire about the cemetery, either to see your loved ones, or arrange a burial I guess.  The sign was itself kind of decrepit and the paste-on letters were peeling off.  

I never did find Clyde Barrow's grave.  Bonnie is buried in yet another cemetery elsewhere in the city, and also forbids visitors.    Perhaps they don't want cultists coming by and defacing the graves the way Marie Laveau's grave has suffered in New Orleans.