Tuesday, April 15, 2008
Day of the Dead
AUGUSTA, GA. - So I know that graveyards aren't supposed to be funny... Wait. Let me try again.
So I know that graveyards aren't funny. But if we superimpose my psyche upon the beauty of Magnolia Cemetery, we get both a disturbing portrait of a woman (me) who seems to take nothing seriously and we get things to laugh about.
I don't really laugh at everything. On the contrary: I was so upset at seeing all the tiny babies' graves (stupid yellow fever!) that my eyes began to water. Some people think that all I do is find ways to joke about things. Maybe that's true. But given a choice between laughter and tears, I'll take laughter any day.
Okay, so the first one is rather disappointing.I thought this was just pretty.
Not so much with the funny.
This may be the world's largest crepe myrtle tree. Did I ever tell you why I hate crepe myrtle trees? First, because you cannot climb them. That puts them in the Not a Tree category. But also because they remind me of my hometown, Conyers, Ga. It claims to be the "Crepe Myrtle Capital of the World." That because I planted them all while I was in Campfire Girls & Boys. Every time something happened - someone died, a library branch opened, Arbor Day came around, or we passed a blade of grass - my mom, who was our troupe leader, would run over to Pike Nurseries and pick up a friggin' tree. Out came the shovel and I knew I was digging a hole somewhere. I wonder if some little girl in Augusta's Girl Scout troupes had an experience like that, and perhaps that little girl has a blinding hatred of gardening, too.
"A one-room efficiency," Henry Wynn Sr. joked. He was showing us his favorite spots in the cemetery. It seems he used to bring his two kids to the cemetery for picnics and Easter Egg hunting. I think that's what's wrong with them today!
We looked at the epitaph on this headstone.
"That's kind of weird," A.C. remarked.
"And it's missing a comma," I said.
"That's kind of weird," A.C. remarked.
"And it's missing a comma," I said.
Someone liked corn so much in their life that they wanted to be surrounded by it in their death.
Our guide, Henry Wynn, Sr. He used to muck around in the fill dirt that they kept against the wall. Sometimes he found bones and once, a coffin handle. He kept creeping me out by examining the ground for more crap like that. "You never know! Sometimes you might just see a toe peeking out of the ground," he said. "And then I would run screaming out of this cemetery," I replied.
Okay, then, we hold the world ransom for... One... Hundred... BILLION DOLLARS!
Heh heh. Bones... This must be their yard.
so a zombie-free day, then?
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