A Wyatt Earp Town, Where The Citizens Are Underground
Many readers visit The Pondering Pig just to keep abreast of Wyatt Earp news. You'll want to know the NY Times is running an exclusive profile of Colma, California, Earp's last known address. (see The Strange Case of Wyatt Earp's Tombstone) . For even more on Colma, ask the Pig to put up Patrushka's photo essay on that toddling town.
Labels: Across America, Just For Grins, Wyatt Earp
posted by Christopher Newton at 3:58 PM
9 Comments:
I tink the Pig wanted to be a cowboy when he was a kid. Maybe a lawman.
Nah, I just have a morbid interest in tombstones.
That's true. You should have been on some of those crazy tombstone hunts when I was a kid. I think I saw the insides of more ancient cemetaries than most kids.
"Where are we going now, dad?"
"Oh, to find old Hezekiah Bevanmeisters' grave!"
Or else it was just a stop to ramble around when we were off biking or hiking. I always liked to try to find the oldest grave.
Blogger cut me off before I was done.
The Olde Pigg also took very good care of the little girls' graves down the street that had lived in our house and died of some childhood sickness a century ago. None of this ever seemed creepy to me. We were always reading stories about people of long ago anyway so hanging about the graves of the long dead never seemed weird.
Regarding your morbid interest in headstones - I used to teach a course in Death, Dying & Bereavement as part of a gerontology program back in Michigan. I have an old homemade video of some strange and interesting grave markers...like the one that had a parking meter showing time expired, or the granite marker with a lady's potato recipe etched on the back I’ve spent lots of time wandering in cemeteries and have documented some real classics.
"Life is sad,
Life is a bust.
All you can do is
Do what you must.
You do what you must do
and do it well.
I'd do it for you,
Honeybabe, can't you tell?"
My favorite toy when I was six was my six-shooter and holster. I played with that for years.
Wait a minute, Leo - I don't think that last part is about death and bereavement - more about the joy of making more babies.
As for those little girls' graves...I've always had a hard time separating the past from the present. It all mushes up together in my eyes as I look out.
The girls died with a few weeks of each other back around the Civil War. They were lying right out back behind Clinton Presbyterian Church - I would pass their graves nearly every Sunday. No one else seemed to notice but I always did. All weeded up and forgotten. I just thought I'll bet their Dad took care of those graves immaculately back in 1865. I hated to see them all forgotten like that. I felt like I was getting to know them. Anyway, I decided to clear out the weeds and brush and plant daffodils and tulips and make them nice. Why not? Patrushka and Kirstie and Hannah helped too.
I'm visiting in Clinton right now. After church on Sunday Norah Klippstein came up to me to say the local Cub Scout Pack was going to care of the graves as a project. Hope she does. The mums I planted last summer need to get cut back.
Hey, weren't we talking about cap pistols or something?
I know. I just threw that in because I like the words, add a little levity...
But, what I especially like are the graves in a Tucson cemetary that I wandered as a kid when my dad was in college there. There was a section of Chinese graves with little photographs of the deceased from when they lived. Many were very old, and it was a cool way to get out of the desert heat. It was a forest oasis in the naked pueblo.
The Day of the Dead picnics were also lots of fun, but my Spanish was pretty bad back then and I didn't understand it all.
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