A Cemetery ... Coloring Book?

Your favorite Cemetery Traveler does not have to visit actual cemeteries to get his jollies. Oftentimes adventures can be had in other places, like a used book store, for example. Phoenix Book Store in Lambertville, New Jersey, has been something I’ve wanted to check out for months. In mid-June, I had the opportunity to do just that.

Let me start by saying that they are going out of business in August 2013, so time’s a wastin’ if this article excites you and you want to partake of their wares. Phoenix Books specializes in used, rare, and out-of-print books. Antiquarian booksellers are not businesses I frequent, but I do read a lot so it seemed worth checking out. When I got there, I was surprised to see a sign on the door saying everything was half price! So that made the not terribly high prices even more palatable.

I looked around a bit and noticed a large rack of photography books, art books, architecture books, but nothing having to do with cemeteries. After picking up a monograph of Brett Weston’s photography (Voyage of the Eye), it occurred to me to ask the shopkeeper, “Do you have any books on cemeteries?” He thought a moment then shook his head, saying, “No, we don’t … don’t think so …” And then he brightened up and said, “Oh wait! We do!” And he went darting off between the stacks (that’s librarian-speak for the shelves full of books). The kind gentleman returned with the coloring book you see pictured here.

I was astounded. Shocked, tickled even, by my good fortune. Ask and you shall receive. Who would have thought such a thing existed? Not I, said the Cemetery Photographer. The 8.5 x 11 inch sized, thirty-page paperback was published by California’s “Forest Lawn Memorial-Park Association” in 1962 (what were they thinking?!). While I paid four dollars for it, there is no actual price on the cover. This led me to believe that it was given to children (with a pack of crayons?) by the funeral director while the parents were …making final arrangements? But I was wrong (as I so often am). I found this tidbit on the Internet, written in 2009, recalling the author's memories from 1969:

"What I do remember very well is the Forest Lawn coloring book I bought in the gift shop. In it, one could lay crayons to the sculpture and buildings peppering the deep green landscape. (Green was a dominant color in this book.) The cover foretold the fun inside: two children, hand in hand, walk through Forest Lawn's open gate. Ah, family values. Four decades later, who knows if any of the Forest Lawns even have a gift shop."

(Steve Crum on Show Biz)

I’m not certain the writer (Steve Crum) realized the oddness of his experience. Does anyone reading this blog know of any other cemeteries that have published coloring books? To a child, I suppose coloring a scene from the Crucifixion or angels serenading a deceased baby might not raise eyebrows. I know my own three-year-old daughter is undiscerning about what she colors. Granted, the Last Supper and the Pieta are relatively innocuous and safe, but wouldn’t you think coloring an outline of the Administration Building and the Flower Shop to be rather boring? And what about that front cover? A little boy and girl walking hand-in-hand through the cemetery gates? What’s up with that? Why the amber vortex beneath their feet? Are they entering a Disneylandia-type entertainment complex or did they just die and are entering Heaven? And why SIX scenes from the crucifixion?!

At the time of Steve Crum’s colorful experience (1969), I don’t expect Forest Lawn was the huge entity it is now, owning ten Forrest Lawn memorial parks around southern California. I’ve been to two – the one in the Hollywood Hills and the one in Glendale. Back in 1993, I visited the Glendale memorial park in search of movie stars’ graves. I found none, while I expected to see many. I guess I thought the place would look like the Hollywood Forever Cemetery (Hollywood, CA), where massive monuments to silver screen titans cover the grounds – even if you weren’t totally up on your silent movie star catalog, at this place ALL the surnames sound familiar! Not so at Forest Lawn. Forest Lawn is, as its architect might have said, more ‘dignified.’

 

According to the “Seeing Stars” website, “There are more major Hollywood stars buried at Forest Lawn Memorial Park than at any other spot in the world.” Now realize, there were no such websites in 1993. All I had to go on were some stupid “Hollywood Stars” maps that people sell on the street corners on Sunset Boulevard (which is where I bought mine). The Glendale Forest Lawn, I have since discovered, is the original and largest (300 acres) of the Forest Lawn Memorial Parks. That coupled with the fact that all the grave markers were flat-to-the-ground and very spread out, I found no movie stars.

Forest Lawn is a memorial park. At the time, I did not distinguish between this and a typical cemetery with upright headstones, statues, and monuments. At the time, I also did not realize the historical importance of Forest Lawn being the nation’s FIRST memorial park. For the uninitiated, a memorial park is a cemetery without upright gravestones or family monuments. They are characterized by flat meadow-like grassy fields with flush-to-the ground grave markers.

Back in 1912, a fellow by the name of Dr. Hubert Eaton purchased Forest Lawn Cemetery in Glendale, California (it was established in 1906). His innovative plan for the cemetery was to turn it into "a great park devoid of misshapen monuments and other signs of earthly death, but filled with towering trees, sweeping lawns, splashing fountains, beautiful statuary, and ... memorial architecture." (Wikipedia ref.)

For the most part, Dr. Eaton succeeded. His idea caught on and spread throughout America. I can’t say I’m a big fan of the concept, much preferring the art and architecture of an old Victorian cemetery. The major attraction of the memorial park to the owner, I am sure, is the relative ease with which the grounds can be maintained. Run that riding mower right over the flat grave markers – no bothersome statues and monuments to dodge, no meticulous weed-whacking necessary.

But according to the coloring book, Forest Lawn has many other attractions including the Finding of Moses Fountain, Wee Kirk o’ the Heather Chapel, and the Last Supper stained glass window in the Memorial Center of Honor. For a more updated list, you can check out Forest Lawn’s website.

So while Phoenix Books did not provide me with any other cemetery books, the Forest Lawn coloring Book is a substantial piece to add to my collection. I did find some other choice pieces,  including a copy of The Devils’Race Track – Mark Twain’s Great Dark Writings. I’m sure there are other treasures awaiting you in these last couple weeks before they close, so run! Perhaps like the phoenix of Greek mythology, it will go down in a blaze of fire and at some point be reborn, rising from the ashes of its predecessor.

Further Reading and Reference:

Yelp Review of Phoenix Books in Lambertville, New Jersey (with map):

Forest Lawn Memorial Parks website

Visit Phoenix Books before they close their doors forever in August, 2013!

49 N. Union Street
Lambertville, New Jersey 08530

609-397-4960

Deerly Departed

This morning I woke up to rolling thunder, lightning, and darkness that spread like a funeral pall over the city. Perfect day for some cemetery photography? Possibly, yes, though certainly challenging under such conditions. 

However, as I went out to my car about an hour later, I saw the blue sky and felt the heat. The day quickly turned into one of those white-hot summer days where birds, caught in the intensely magnified rays of sunlight reflected off plate-glass office buildings, burst into flame in mid-air.  As Buddy Holly sang in Raining in My Heart, “The sun is out - the sky is blue there’s not a cloud to spoil the view.” 

You can photograph the most typical cemeteries in the rain and everything looks new. But on a sunny, scorching day, I needed something new. Even with scores of cemeteries to photograph in and around Philadelphia, you would think I’d have hit them all. Not so. Mount Hope Cemetery in Lambertville, New Jersey, was in my sights. This is a little rural tourist town across the Delaware River from New Hope, Pennsylvania, about ten miles north of Trenton, New Jersey.

I found the cemetery down a side road, off the main street running through town. Cleverly hidden, as some of them are, from non-residents. I drove up the small hill road for a couple blocks until a grassy embankment appeared on my left. Quaint houses, bungalows, really, populated the right. As I slowed down expecting to find the entrance, I noticed quite a strange sight.

A young deer, a fawn, was struggling up the weedy embankment. This was right out my car widow, about twelve feet away. I made this photo there. I watched the fawn struggle to the top, where its siblings waited - two more fawns of the same size. At this point I had gotten out of my car and was snapping pictures. They were obviously aware of my presence and had the sense to move away. I could see from here that the cemetery entrance was blocked by a downed tree. From this vantage point I could also take in the breadth and width of this lovely hillside cemetery. It was small enough to see that there were driveway entrances around the other side of the grounds. I mounted my steed and drove around Mount Hope back to the center of the cemetery, returning to the area where I had left the fawns. 

I’m not a wildlife nut, and am a pretty bad nature photographer, so why am I so intrigued by deer? Well, for one thing, you don’t see them often in South Philly, where I live. So it’s a novelty, for sure, almost like being in a petting zoo when you can get this close to the animals. Also, I grew up in northeast Pennsylvania, where deer abound and everyone gets a hunting license – even me.

My dearly departed daddy, a Great White Hunter, forced me into it when I was thirteen. He dragged me along for about four years running, until I almost accidentally blew off my uncle’s head. Though no words were ever spoken, Dad and I both took this to be a sign and I was no longer invited  to participate in this manliest of man-sport. Happy to say I never shot a deer. Shot AT them, else I would have incurred the wrath of the Great White Hunter. No one knows this but you, dear reader, that I always aimed a little high. 

It amazed me early on that you only needed to be TWELVE years old to be licensed in the state of Pennsylvania to carry with a high-powered rifle. This was maybe 1971. At the same time, you needed to be SIXTEEN to legally drive and EIGHTEEN to legally drink! My parents had a farm out in the boonies where my cousins and I could do all these things, even before we became of legal rage. We lived in the town, but the farm was sixteen miles away, in some direction of which I am still unsure. Anyway, back to the deer.

My best friend George, with whom I grew up, used to laugh about my family’s fixation with deer. My father would be driving us to the farm in our Ford Country Squire station wagon some Saturday morning, through some godforsaken Bumfukville, when he would slam on the brakes, point out the window into a field and yell “DEER!” We would watch them off in the distance, my parents marveling at their beauty, grace, and gamey flavor, while us kids would be sneaking peeks at our much more interesting Spiderman comic books. George committed the ultimate sacrilege once by rhetorically asking me why my parents are so into deer. “They’re just deer,” he said. And so they are. 

Three fawns, with adult deer in background.

So maybe its because of my bizarre upbringing that a deer standing in a field still gets my attention. This mini-herd of three fawns sure had me intrigued. I found a shady tree under which to park my car (otherwise, this 100-degree heat would have melted my black leather seats), got out with my cameras and approached the fawns. They were now grazing among a cluster of headstones about twenty feet away. They were wary and would stop and look at me if I got closer. I was satisfied to remain at this distance and tried several times to get all three in the shot, classically posed. This I never succeeded in doing. 

If you look in the background of the photo directly above, you’ll see the brown blurred shape of a larger deer (top center, between the house and the large monument). I did not see this through my camera lens. After about ten minutes, I was taken aback by a thumping and snorting!

Doe to the left, buck (in velvet antlers) to the right.

The mama and papa deer, doe and buck, were staring me down! I suppose one or both would’ve charged had I stepped closer to their brood, but I backed away. The mother was more aggressive, the father just standing by (having just been roused from his easychair by the doe, probably). I had no intention of messing with them. The parents trotted toward their fawns and veered off toward the road. The three fawns trotted after them, as best they could on their awkward new legs. To my surprise, they deerly departed down the embankment, through the weeds, into the road, and across the lawn of a nearby house! Living here must be like living in a nature preserve.  

Although Mount Hope Cemetery has woods bordering just one side, it’s all quite rural here. The road surrounding the cemetery turned out to be a dead end, so there really isn’t much traffic to speak of. A lovely place to raise a family, it would seem. Glad I was able to witness it all without my father around.