Do people vacation in graveyards!
Linda wrote in and told the following story:
My son, age currently 40, is a bailiff in our local court and does part time security work. One of the recent requests was to "secure" a local cemetery from when the office closed until sun down. He thought it was a piece of cake gig. The owner of the company was thrilled that he wanted to do it as most of the other LEO's were hesitant to drive around a cemetery for hours, son told him that there was no problem, he was use to it. I ran into the fellow who runs the company and he asked me where we use to take our children on vacation when they were young, after several statements such as camping, state parks, etc, he said no, something about grave stones. So I told him that I had been searching for my dead relatives for about 30 years, long before data bases listed anything. I would write the names that we were looking for on paper and the 5 of us would fan out in a cemetery in search of family members. Oh, the excitement of finding a matching name. Then it just got so that where ever we traveled, if we saw a grave yard that looked interesting we would stop and read the inscriptions, try to find the oldest dates, identify the nationality of the people buried there, see how many young children died, find patterns of death dates ( big epidemics). The gentleman just looked at me and said, "Your son was not kidding, he did grow up in cemeteries". Guys, some of those big burly, full armed active and retired cops were afraid of ghosts.
My children learned very young that tombstones are the marker of the last earthly remains of our family and must be cared for and respected. Scrub brush and bucket in hand, they learned to clean the dirt and bird dropping from the family markers
Got a genealogical one-liner to share? A funny story about your searches? A feaux-pas worth a ROFL? How about a touching story you're willing to share? I created this space for us to share our genealogical stories. Simply email me at omchodoy-at-comcast-dot-com and I will add your "ditty" to the page.
1 comment:
I have to laugh at this one as it rings a bell. My Grandmother, who passed in 1991, used to say, "Let's go for a ride." I knew what it meant as far back as I can remember. It meant we were going to the cemetary and the Indian Burial Mounds where several ancestors are buried. I loved every moment of it and to this day I cannot understand why most people do not enjoy cemetaries! Ahhh-the history!
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