Oakwood and the Confederate Cemetery

Obviously, the Snow Demons have not been appeased. They’ve unleashed their fury a second day in a row here in Philadelphia. As feet of snow drift down past my window, the lyrics of Randy Newman’s song “Sail Away” take me back to a warmer clime—June in Raleigh, North Carolina, to be exact.

Back in 2007 I was photographing in Raleigh’s beautiful Oakwood Cemetery, which is situated in the Historic Oakwood district of North Carolina’s state capitol. You can tell by all the Victorian homes here that this perfectly manicured cemetery had its origin in the same era. Though this National Historic District contains one of the largest collections of Victorian-era homes in the country, I was surprised that Raleigh seemed to be such a modern city—very little antebellum architecture (though there is some in the cemetery itself, as you see here). I guess I expected “Old South” plantation homes and “Gone With the Wind” mansions—sort of like how my Dad expected to see Royal Canadian Mounted Police (on horseback) as we crossed the border into Canada when I was a child.

Oakwood Cemetery  is wonderfully picturesque, with its flowering catalpa trees and magnolias, its massive shady oaks. Just up the road a piece is the coolest Krispy Kreme I ever saw, with a magnificent retro neon sign about the size of Rhode Island. So, equipped with a bag of warm glazed ones and large coffee (breakfast of champions), I entered Oakwood Cemetery. In one of my past lives, I’m sure I was born Southern—I’m inexplicably drawn to Krispy Kremes, crawdads, and smoked BBQ, as well as Southern music ranging from Robert Johnson to Lynyrd Skynyrd.

Headstone of the Controversial Jesse Helms

Boasting a mix of the old and the new, Oakwood captivates the taphophile. Gone with the Wind author Margaret Mitchell is buried here, along with her first husband, Berrien K. Upshaw. Upshaw, a Raleigh native, is believed to be the inspiration for the Rhett Butler character in her book. Political characters abound in Oakwood--North Carolina Senator Jesse Helms is now a resident. Helms, who died in 2008 (after my visit) conservatively had his pre-need planning done, as you can see from my 2007 photo. In December 2010, Elizabeth Edwards (ex-wife of presidential hopeful and North Carolina Senator John Edwards) was buried nearby after her long bout with breast cancer.

The statuary and other memorial sculpture at Oakwood range from the simple to the sublime. One of the most amazing monuments here rests at the grave of Wade Edwards (son of John and Elizabeth), who died in an automobile accident in 1996. The 10-foot high, 10-ton white marble sculpture “Wade’s Angel” shown below (sculpted by Robert Mihaly), is one of the most stunning contemporary memorials I’ve ever seen.

Wade Edwards' Angel, Oakwood Cemetery, Raleigh

Within Oakwood is the “Confederate Cemetery” (seen here mapped out on granite), with about 1500 graves marked with uniformly sized “CSA” (Confederate States of America) headstones. The stones are rather oddly peaked at the top, not flat or rounded, as you typically see in a military cemetery. Gazing out on this expanse of CSA graves for the first time gave me the same feeling I got in New Orleans when I saw slave shackles and “receipts” in a collectible store. History meets reality when it smacks you in the face. You think, damn, this “war between the states” stuff really happened…

For anyone who was as poor a history student as I was, here's the Civil War in a nutshell: The Confederate States of America was an unrecognized group of eleven southern slave states of the USA (North Carolina was one of them) that had declared their secession from the United States. The U.S. government rejected secession as illegal, and after four years of fighting in the American Civil War (1861 to 1865), the Confederate armies surrendered, its government collapsed, and its slaves were emancipated. The sanitized, history book version usually doesn’t account for the magnitude of lives lost—618,000 Americans died before the Rebel Yell was finally silenced (compared to 404,000 who died in WW II).

"Deo Vindice" - "With God our Vindicator" (in other words, God will justify our actions)

It was interesting to me that such a significant number of Confederate soldiers were buried there, given that the cemetery was not established until 1869—four full years after the Civil War ended. I thought maybe these were not graves of casualties, but of veterans who died after the war. I noticed a cemetery employee near the office building so I thought I would go ask. As I was packing up my camera gear, and about to walk down the hill toward my rental car, I noticed another car driving up the narrow roadway toward it. Though I didn’t see it happen, I heard the unmistakable sound of two vehicles scraping each other...!

I grabbed my cameras and ran down the hill, in time to see the moving car parked in front of mine, and an older gentleman (its driver) outside looking at the side of my car. I asked what was the problem, and an old woman in the passenger seat yells out to me, “Oh nothin’ … we just heard a noise and was wonderin’ what it was!” Um, yeah. Before they sped off, I photographed their license plate—just in case. Of course they hit my rental car, on which I had waived the insurance rider. Oh well, a little mud and dirt splattered on the scratches and maybe the agency won’t notice it was side-swiped. Here’s a photo of my Guardian Auto-Angel asleep on the job…

Afterward, I did manage to track down the cemetery employee and speak with him about the origin of the Confederate Cemetery within Oakwood. It wasn't as obvious as one might think. To summarize his words, I'll quote the author and historian Michael Hardy, from his article  "North Carolina and the Civil War:"

"Cemeteries exclusively for Confederates were a product of post-war bitterness..."

Hardy explains:

"Oakwood Cemetery had its origin during the occupation of Raleigh by General Sherman’s Union troops. Prior to that, Confederate soldiers were buried at Raleigh’s Rock Quarry Cemetery [later renamed Raleigh National Cemetery] alongside Union casualties. After General Lee’s surrender at Appomattox, Raleigh started to become flooded with wounded Union troops. [As more and more of them died, larger burial facilities were needed.] The Federal Army wanted Rock Quarry Cemetery all to themselves, for a National Cemetery for Union dead.

In 1867, when the Ladies Memorial Association of Wake County was formed, their mission was to "protect and care for the graves of our Confederate soldiers." The reason that it was the "Ladies Memorial Association" was that men were banned by the Federal government from meeting in large groups. The ladies acquired a piece of property from Henry Mordecai and began to clean and level the property. Their goal was to move the Confederates interred at the Rock Quarry Cemetery, and others buried in the surrounding area, to the new Confederate cemetery. There were an estimated 500 Confederates interred at the Rock Quarry Cemetery.

On February 22, 1867, the group received a letter from the Federal commander in Raleigh. All Confederates had to be moved from Rock Quarry Cemetery immediately to make room for a National Cemetery. The Ladies Memorial Association set about work. Volunteers disinterred the [nearly 500] Confederate graves and began moving them to the new cemetery. Their progress was too slow for the Federal government, and in March 1867, the Federal commandant issued a letter, stating that if the Confederate dead were not moved by the given date [three days later], "their remains would be placed in the public road." [Can you BELIEVE that?!] By the end of March, the ladies and their volunteers had finished the work."

“So," Chardy says, "If the Federal government came and told you that the remains of your loved ones would be dug up and dumped in the road, well, I guess that could cause a little bitterness.” As they say on the Sopranos, “To the victor, belongs the spoils." Christ—no wonder the old folks whacked my car. “Damn Yankee...,” they were probably thinking. Legend has it that the tops of Oakwood's CSA grave markers were cut to a point so that no Yankee could sit on a Confederate tombstone.

The nonprofit Raleigh Cemetery Association, established in 1869, continued to add land to the original Confederate Cemetery site, chartering it as "Oakwood Cemetery." Its present size (102 acres) is attributable to the city itself and private donors in acquiring adjoining land for expansion. As CSA veterans died over the next several decades, many were buried here, bringing up the total to the present 1500 graves.

As a parting thought, if you're tempted to take sides, have a look at this wonderfully touching film of a 1913 meeting of Civil War veterans in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. 

Links to Further Reading:

For the politically correct, history book version of Oakwood’s origin, see video here.

Northern Industry in the Civil War
Oakwood Cemetery Website
Raleigh's Confederate Cemetery 
Elizabeth Edwards' 2010 Burial at Oakwood Cemetery
Rhett Butler in Oakwood Cemetery 
Raleigh’s Serene And Scenic Oakwood Cemetery


Hear Randy Newman’s song “Sail Away”

Hell Hounds of the Abandoned Cemetery

As I hunch through the underbrush while keeping my cameras from falling into the snow, I’m trying to visualize, then compose, creepy photographs within this inner circle of abandoned mausoleums. Death beneath the permafrost is not as unnerving as the relatively close barking of wild dogs. After half an hour, I hear Veronika call out “Ed!” Then silence. Shit. I call her cell phone—no answer. What the—then my phone rings. It’s her. Christ. I tell her, “Let’s stay close to each other, okay? YOU’RE the one with the tazer!”

How did I get myself into this? The question is, how could I NOT get myself into this? The cemetery is so overgrown that it’s essentially a forest. A forest punctuated with monuments, tombstones, and mausoleums—so bizarre, you'd half expect you were on a movie set. The thrill of urban exploration notwithstanding, think of the photographs! In other seasons, the dense foliage of trees and bushware obscure the statuary and granite memorials, to the degree that you must hack your way through the graveyard. Thorns and brambles, full of life, rip your skin right through your clothing. In winter, however, when the foliage is as dead as the bodies below, one finally gets a clear view (through the trees) of all the freakishness of this abandoned 380-acre cemetery.

Ed, as BatBoy

Yesterday morning, as I waited for the Snow Demons to unleash their fury, I pondered whether or not to take my lovely Nikon F3 out into the elements. On most cemetery photographic excursions, the main questions are: which camera(s) to bring? Film or digital? If the former, what kind of film? Tripod? For this visit, my main concern was a different type of equipment—weapons. When I make a trip to one of Philadelphia’s abandoned cemeteries, my concern is more about PPE—Personal Protective Equipment, in healthcare parlance. My own arsenal of PPE consists of an antique ice hook and an aluminum baseball bat. Since I don’t have a license to carry, I usually leave Grandma’s Winchester at home. For the upcoming excursion I didn’t expect to run into any people, what with the snow and lack of hiding places, so I just took the bat. However, as the resident wild pit bulls of Mt. Moriah have definitely NOT gone south for the winter, I asked along a friend with a tazer.

Honestly, I thought they would’ve gone to Lauderdale or something, but last week I saw one of the little scamps trot up the steps and around the back of one of the old mausoleums. Same area, in fact, where this little beauty of a pit bull skull greeted me! So in planning my visit following the storm, I thought a tazer might be in order. If one of the little beasties goes for your leg in the underbrush, you really have no room to swing a bat.

Veronika’s boyfriend gave her the tazer for Christmas—quite the sentimental gift! Part of the reason actually was so that she would have reasonable protection for visits to Mount Moriah Cemetery! Apparently on her last visit, she was alone and exploring the back wooded area when she heard some noises ahead. As she continued to push her way through the thicket, she came upon a shovel, some rope, and bag of lye! Not wishing to be part of some unhappy event, she beat a hasty retreat and hadn’t been back since. Today there is snow—so forgiving, it hides the fact that this cemetery has been degraded to base uses.

So there I was, clambering out from inside the circle of grafittied, blocked-up mausoleums so I could meet back up with her. Almost stepped in a huge groundhog hole, that was burrowed under some granite coping. Its dining area padded down outside the hole, the eerie remains of its dinner scattered on the packed snow. A woodpecker perched strangely close tapping at a small tree. We rejoined and went off in a seemingly rudderless fashion, yet going deeper into the cemetery. Stepping into 2-foot drifts, beautiful blue sky, great light, 35 degrees, packs of wild dogs. What’s not to like? We decided to head off toward the area where she had seen the shovel and other implements of destruction. Then we heard the dogs again—deep, throaty barking—only this time they were closer. We wondered if it would be more dangerous to be attacked in the open or in the woods, but then we figured we’d risk it for the good of photography.

Tunneling under dead vines and pickers, we soon came to what had once been a dynasty (family) plot with a 15-foot high cast iron monumental funerary urn, listing to port in the uneven ground, rusted to the point where little of its original green paint remained. As we were swooning over this find, Veronika looked over my shoulder and froze, saying, “Look….” I turned slowly around to see a pair of small dog-sized creatures turn tail and disappear deeper into the woods. At first glance I thought they were a couple of the pit bull puppies I had seen a few months before, trotting back to alert their over-protective mother. However, Veronika pointed out that these had bushy tails. Hmmm, yeah, couldn't be pit bulls. I tried to convince myself that they were really cute furry red foxes, a scene right out of Mutual of Omaha’s “Wild Kingdom.” We joked about the “pit bull foxes” for a half a moment, when we heard the barking again … I had a visceral hallucination of a wild dog clamping its jaws around my ankle. You get distracted from the dangers of this place when you come across some interesting monument to photograph. Then abruptly, all your little nightmares bring you back to reality. Steady, old soldier.

Tracks of attack dogs (right) following Veronika's

Veronika with Taser

Having second thoughts about our second thoughts, we decided it would be safer out in the open. As we plodded up the long snowdrift-filled road around the center wooded area of the grounds, Veronika noticed her footprints from her earlier walk. I humorously noted the three sets of dog tracks alongside hers, and asked if they were there when she entered the area. She said, “No…you think they were…following me?” I intimated that that was a distinct possibility, and asked her if she could keep her tazer out and ready. When she almost lost her balance in a drift, she pointed out that if she dropped the weapon in the snow, it might short out. Even to a pair of intrepid explorers, this scenario lacked appeal.

As we ventured out into the wider open spaces, it became obvious that the dogs were circling us and periodically asserting themselves. At first we would hear the barking chorus. At one point we saw them all together, watching and barking at us from across an open patch of desolate graveyard. Soon after, their relatively close barking startled us—we turned to find them facing us at the end of a snow-filled road. Too far to photograph, but close enough to make out the three of them, different shapes and sizes—junkyard dogs! We were being circled by the Hounds of Hell, Philadelphia branch! Probably got loose from one of those reclamation sites behind the Auto Mall. These were definitely NOT pit bulls, but that did nothing to ease the tension—legend has it that staring into a Hound's eyes causes you to, uh...die.

After the stand-off, we were kind of rattled and were about to call it a day when I realized my Holga (cheap 120mm plastic toy camera) was no longer hanging from my arm. Damn. Must back-track to where we just were, back toward the dogs. I found the lowly Holga mostly buried in the powder (better it than the Nikon). For a camera that allows prodigious light leaks, it seemed to block the snow fairly well! It was getting late. Tired, we plodded through drifts down to my car, loaded the weapons and photo gear in the trunk, and said goodbye to no one. I drove up Cemetery Road past the crumbling gatehouse and off to find some alcohol to steady our nerves.

Gatehouse, Mount Moriah Cemetery

Do I really need this? Why do I keep coming back here? Surely not for the photo ops, which are only marginally interesting, at best. Do I just do it for the thrill of it all, or is there some deep-seated psychological reason? I keep thinking how people continually buy more books than they can possibly read in a lifetime with the subconscious purpose of prolonging that lifetime. Obviously, my obsession has something to do with death—maybe its this: If you’ve ever wondered what it would be like to be forgotten after you die, visit Mt. Moriah Cemetery.

Cemetery Photographer Wanted by FBI

However powerful a tool the camera may be, I'd never considered it to be a weapon of mass destruction. The FBI has its own opinion, however, evidenced by their questioning of my photographic activities in the summer of 2006.

I used to live near an industrial gas supply company--you know, the kind of place you take your gas grill propane tank to be refilled. Well, one hot summer day I found myself in front of the place, idling in traffic as I waited for a freight train to pass. I was probably on my wait to shoot cemetery statues somewhere. Anyway, this company has a giant propane holding tank in front, painted to look like an enormous hot dog, complete with mustard and bun. I was in my convertible with my camera on the seat next to me. I don’t know about you, but as a photographer, I can’t avoid taking pictures of goofy things, so I snapped a few images of the giant hot dog. Without me realizing I was arousing anyone’s suspicion, an alert citizen took my license number and reported me to the Department of Homeland Security!

An Adventure in Homeland Security

A couple days later and totally unaware that I’d been reported, I get home from work and grab mail out of the box. There’s a business card in there from an FBI agent, with a message scrawled on the back, “Please call me.” Not bad for a practical joke, I think, as I promptly forget about the card. Next day, I get home from work and ask my son how school was. “Okay,” he says, then adds, “Two guys from the FBI were here looking for you.” Hmmm. Maybe I should call that number.

Now realize that I had no idea why the FBI would want to talk to me. I always try to cut the mustard legally, so I thought maybe this might be about the recent drug raid on the house next door. (Though I didn’t know the neighbors very well, it gave me an odd feeling to come home and see the head of household being escorted to a police car in handcuffs. As he sheepishly nodded to me and gave me a little wave with a cuffed hand, I felt like yelling, “I do not know this man!”)

But it wasn’t about drugs, it was about dogs—hot dogs, to be precise. I called the locally-based FBI agent and introduced myself. To the best of my recollection, here’s how the conversation went:

FBI: “Mr. Snyder, you were observed photographing something over the weekend.”
PHOTOGRAPHER: “Uh…. photographing what? I take a lot of pictures.”

FBI: “It was an industrial site.”

(Normally I take a lot of pictures, mostly in cemeteries, so I really had no idea what he was talking about.)

PHOTOGRAPHER: “Could you be more specific? I take a lot of pictures.”
FBI: “Do you…?” (he replies, in character reminiscent of Mr. Bookman, the Seinfeld library detective).

PHOTOGRAPHER: (Pause while thinking) ”Where was this?”
FBI: “Near where you live.”
Hmmm, knows where I live...or he’s bluffing…then it hits me and I exclaim:

PHOTOGRAPHER: “Oh! You’re talking about the giant hot dog…?”
FBI: (Silence)

PHOTOGRAPHER: “At the propane place?”
FBI: “Go on…” (he says, as if he were Sgt. Joe Friday from the old Dragnet TV series).

At this point I rattle off my explanation that I was stuck in traffic, and like any photographer, I'm genetically unable to resist photographing odd things, like this silly hot dog which was obviously put there for people to notice and be amused by!…I start chuckling, like its all one big misunderstanding, but quickly realize I’m just digging myself in deeper. By Sgt. Friday’s profound silence I realize that the Fed has no sense of humor. Assuming I was either a lunatic, a terrorist, or both, he continues:

FBI: “The fact that you work for a hospital makes this even more suspicious.”
PHOTOGRAPHER: “Um…what? Why?” (I stammer, as I realize that they investigated me! AND…they've determined my M.O.!)

Once you know what they’re after, you can begin to talk your way out of it—I’ve always found it much easier to get forgiveness than permission. This guy got the report of someone photographing an industrial complex, but never actually went there to check it out himself! Not having seen the giant wiener, I guess he didn’t realize how silly this all sounded. So I offer:

PHOTOGRAPHER: “Look, its just that there’s this giant hot dog there smiling for all the world to see and…”
FBI: (In a manner totally devoid of emotion, he says) ”What do you plan to do with the pictures? Have you printed them?”

Cleverly avoiding the subject of digital photography, and its infinite potential for communicating via the Internet, I said:

PHOTOGRAPHER: “I rarely print what I shoot because, well, I just shoot on impulse (perhaps a poor choice of words) and I have thousands of images—“
FBI: “Well, you won’t print them. If your story checks out, you won’t be hearing from us again. You will, however, be getting some calls from other agencies. Keep my card and when they contact you, just give them my name and tell them you’ve spoken to me.” (Hangs up—no fanfare, no twenty-one bun salute.)


Epilogue

If my story ... “checks out?” I imagine him calling in a 10-3 for a black and white to be dispatched to the scene … “Affirmative on the outsized red-hot, over.” I guess they were able to corroborate my story, as I was never contacted again. They must have verified the existence of the ginormous wiener and determined that I was of minimal threat to the free world. So the FBI has a file on me, due mainly to the paradigm shift of our post-9/11 planet. I'm kind of surprised I wasn't contacted even when the gas supply company did subsequently explode, but that was years later (see link below).

At some point, I may have promised Sgt. Friday that I would not do anything with the pictures I took, and I’ve been true to my word. They are lost among thousands of other images I’ve captured over the years and will never look at again (digital allows us to do this quite easily, as you may know). So for your benefit, I returned to the scene and took other pictures for this article. Hey, I was true to my word—technically. I never printed the ones to which he referred--I went back and took different ones.

Further Adventures with the Man
 

As an aside, a few weeks after my run-in with the “Bureau,” I found this little squeak toy between the seats in my car. Now, here’s the deal: I only told the FBI story to a handful of people. A few of them know where I park my car in South Philly (I walk the rest of the way to work). Even fewer know that I leave my car unlocked (due to a break-in a few years ago which left my ragtop slashed). So, it follows that one of these people planted the item in question. Who was the perp? To this day, no one has fessed up to the deed! The entire FBI experience taught me something--that I should just stick to taking pictures in cemeteries--I get in less trouble there! Call me paranoid, but as the great philosopher Charles Manson said, total paranoia is total awareness!

Watch video of Sept. 1, 2010 Scully Propane Service Corporation Explosion

Tombstone Rubbing

Time for a lighthearted human interest story--this is about tombstone rubbing. Sometime in the 1980s, a friend of mine was a Scoutmaster for the Cub Scouts. Scouts (both boy and girl versions), as you may know, are into activities of various kinds. You know, earn a merit badge for tying rope knots, helping little old ladies across the street, that sort of thing.

Well, my friend Mike the Scoutmaster thought it would be a great activity for his Scout troop to go tombstone rubbing in graveyards. At the time Mike and I worked together near Rochester New York. Rochester’s Mt. Hope Cemetery offered many fabulous examples of Victorian-era stones, so they spent many hours there. The idea was a success and the Scouts enjoyed not only the stone-rubbing activities, but seeing history up close -- Susan B. Anthony and Buffalo Bill's foster son (Johnny Baker) are buried here.

Tombstone rubbing is a process by which one creates a physical impression of a tombstone's surface design. Typically a large piece of paper is fastened to the stone's surface and is rubbed with the side of a crayon to bring out the words and the carved details of old tombstones. People do rubbings for a variety of reasons--their own enjoyment, preserving the historical record, genealogical studies, etc.  Here are some examples of Tombstone Rubbings if you've never seen one.

So back to our story. The Boy Scouts of America were scheduled to have a Jamboree* at the Rochester convention center, during the era when Mike was Scoutmaster. These are regional, national, and even international events at which individual Scout troops and visitors gather to see how Scouts do things in various parts of the world. Mike thought it would be interesting to show people how tombstone rubbing is done, i.e., have the Scouts demonstrate the activity and let interested visitors have a go at it themselves. The only problem: where to get a headstone with which to demonstrate?

Being the resourceful person Mike is, he goes to one of those gravestone memorial stone cutters, explains his need, and walks off with two borrowed stones. No doubt outtakes from the carver’s sample display—you’ve seen them lined up out front of such shops, or like in the photo here, piled up out back. These are misprints (misspelled name, incorrect date, etc.) or just stones people made deposits on but never picked up.

So picture this: Mike and the Scout Troop are all set up at their table. People pass by, Mike engages them in discussion, the Scouts have a blast demonstrating and explaining their project. Except that’s not exactly what happened. While I'm not usually one to let facts get in the way of a good story, I think its best to hear it in Mike’s own words:

“We had an old lady who was one of the first people to stop by our table at the Jamboree. She almost keeled over when she saw her husband's gravestone on display! She screamed that I had stolen the stone from his grave. Then she saw that his name was spelled wrong. The company had made an error on the original stone and had not told her they had made a duplicate to place on his grave. “

Can you imagine yourself in that situation? Poor Mike thought he was providing a community service, but as they say, no good deed goes unpunished. I believe he later absolved himself of the grievous offense by bathing in a pool of sacred lambs’ tears.


References and Links of Interest:

*Scouting Jamboree - The national Scout jamboree is a gathering, or jamboree of thousands of members of the Boy Scouts of America, usually held every four years and organized by the National Council of the Boy Scouts of America. Referred to as "the Jamboree", "Jambo", or NSJ, Scouts from all over the nation and world have the opportunity to attend. They are considered to be one of several unique experiences that the Boy Scouts of America offers.

How to Make Tombstone Rubbings

Want to try it yourself?

Christmas in the Cemetery

“Bring out the tall tales now that we told by the fire as the gaslight bubbled like a diver..’        - from “A Child’s Christmas in Wales” (1954) by Dylan Thomas

Know what Christmas and photographing cemetery statuary have in common? No? …. Well neither do I. But suddenly, its Christmas, and I feel the need to connect the two. Sure, I could use Angels as the crossover vehicle, but that would be like shooting fish in a barrel. Christmas decorations in cemeteries are generally sad and depressing--I needed something edgier.

I was talking with my Mom recently and I guess because it’s close to Christmas she launched into a story about how much she enjoyed taffy pulls and plum pudding as a child at her grandmother’s house. Her grandparents were Welsh coal miners and celebrated Christmas in traditional ways, playing dominoes and Chinese Checkers, enjoying family. I never knew them, unfortunately--they all died off before and during my early childhood. I picture her as one of the children in Dylan Thomas’ poem, ‘A Child’s Christmas in Wales.’

“For dinner we had turkey and blazing pudding, and after dinner the Uncles sat in front of the fire, loosened all buttons, put their large moist hands over their watch chains, groaned a little and slept. Mothers, aunts and sisters scuttled to and fro, bearing tureens. Auntie Bessie, who had already been frightened, twice, by a clock-work mouse, whimpered at the sideboard and had some elderberry wine.”

Perhaps the connection between cemeteries and Christmas is that the people in my mother’s story, as well as in Thomas’ poem, are long dead. Friends have died as well—kids I knew and played pond hockey with—fell through the ice and drowned, as Thomas writes, "small boys, though warned with quotations not to, would skate on Farmer Giles' pond and did and drowned…”

Not having any particular talent for marrying an assortment of disparate topics together in any sort of cogent narrative, I decided to temporarily shelve this blog. While I usually wear my limitations with pride, I believe, like Keats, that if writing doesn’t come as naturally as leaves to a tree, it ought not to come at all. So instead of forcing myself to continue, I’ll put it aside until the ending ceases to elude me.

There, I’m back. That didn’t take long, now did it? Like writer’s block for Stephen King. To get the incubus of this story off my chest, I drove out to my favorite abandoned cemetery and realized that what I REALLY want for Christmas is snow! I want to see the tombstones and mausoleums in this godforsaken overgrown forest of a cemetery, “in the muffling silence of eternal snows.” What a wonderful decoration that would be!

Snow, a metaphor for purity, always adds a layer of beguiling beauty over the ground, like pancake makeup on the face of a grimy old clown. Such a pall would cover the dumped loads of building materials, the old mattresses and church pews. It may add some adventure as you step through the snow only to smash through some discarded stained glass window or bag of garbage. But all this can only add to the experience. Snow is magical and theatrical at the same time--it would cap and clothe the broken limbed cemetery angels and hide our indiscretions.

“It was snowing. It was always snowing at Christmas. December, in my memory, is white as Lapland, though there were no reindeers. …snow was not only shaken from white wash buckets down the sky, it came shawling out of the ground and swam and drifted out of the arms and hands and bodies of the trees.”

Me, climbing over a tombstone, desecrated by wreck of a torched car 

In such a winter wonderland, the abandoned cemetery may not seem such a sad place. Like a veil hiding the sins of stolen cars and illegal burials, the snow would make everything sordid appear normal and clean. The feral cats and wild pit bulls will either adapt, or die. The cats turning into polar felines gliding through the drifts, like the ones Thomas describes as he waits to snowball them. One wonders where the feral pit bulls have gone for the winter? Maybe the turkey vultures got them.

I write this as an old friend emails me and tells me he’s having brain surgery in two days, and may not make it. Back yonder, I wasn’t sure how to end this story. Be careful what you wish for. The regret I have is not seeing him as often as I should have, like the regret of not having made the effort to save an abandoned cemetery. Ironic in that the purpose of a cemetery is to help us remember people. When we desert a cemetery, we desert our own history. Do we fear the ghosts of our past so much? Our society is not as apt to pave a cemetery as it is to raze an historic building. The result is that in many cases, the cemetery is simply abandoned. Better that it be forgotten than lost, however, because then there is still hope for recovery.

That’s when it occurred to me—what better way to bring attention to urban blight in need of healing than to light up this old forgotten dump of a cemetery with Christmas Lights! A cause célèbre! If I had the wherewithal, I’d buy a diesel generator, tow it here, and use it to power thousands of big old-fashioned lights that I would string from the peaks and eaves of the old mausoleums!

Wait, I know what you’re thinking—that I’m writing this on my day pass from the asylum. But think of it! With snow falling, standing in the center of a circle of decrepit old tombs, faux dwellings illuminated by joyous lights strung from one to the other, like so many South Philly rowhomes! The mausoleums built on the high ridge are about the only structures you can see from the parkway--imagine the drivers slowing down to look! Imagine this circle of mournfully extravagant, blocked up and grafittied memorials awash in falling snow—a funereal snowglobe of emotion that would draw everyone’s attention to mortality, and possibly encourage us to respectfully treat each other as equals, or as Dickens put it, "fellow passengers to the grave."

Christmas lights on Mausoleum Ridge

This Christmas I think of all the familiar voices that have fallen silent in my life, whose lives have vanished and become no more than a dream. This once-grand Victorian cemetery that boasted inhabitants of consequence, now rots in peace. Its residents no more heeded than angels with broken wings. Maybe the Jews have the right idea, avoiding “guardian angels” in their funerary art. A cracked angel is a forlorn sight, and makes one even more sullen when seen in the midst of such squalor. I once asked a Jewish friend of mine why there are no angels in Jewish cemeteries. She humorously answered, “They would interfere with our suffering.”

I’ve just seen the weather report—it’s supposed to snow on Christmas! I’ll dream about abandoned mausoleums strung with Christmas lights, to illuminate the memory of people we’ve lost and people we’ve forgotten. To quote Dylan Thomas, “I turned the gas down, I got into bed. I said some words to the close and holy darkness, and then I slept.“ Merry Christmas, everyone.



Notes and Links of Interest:

“A Child’s Christmas in Wales” by Dylan Thomas
Read more by Dylan Thomas
Lose yourself in the musical imagery of John Cale’s version of Thomas' poem:














Photo of me and the torched, stolen car taken by Frank Rausch.

Nana’s Ashes

A number of secrets were buried with my Lithuanian grandmother, Leona Snyder, in 2000. She spent the last five of her ninety-two years  in a nursing home, the final two with dementia. Late in the game, she made hardly any sense—to me, anyway. She would be loving toward see my children one minute, then not remember their names the next. It was heartbreaking to see her degradation from the six-foot matriarchal battleaxe and stalwart of our highly dysfunctional family. That's her at the picnic table, sitting on the left, and me sitting second from right, circa 1963. Not sure what the noose was all about...

Once while visiting her, her youngest sister (then in her sixties) was present. “Nana,” as we called my grandmother, went off on some ridiculous tangent about THEIR sister not leaving them a penny when she died, having accumulated “a chain of whorehouses that the state got hold of.” Both her sister and I nodded in agreement until Nana fell asleep. Out in the hallway, I lamented to my great aunt about how difficult it is for me to see my grandmother this way, just rambling incoherently. She said, “What do you mean? You didn’t know about any of that?” Their heretofore unmentioned entrepreneurial sister ran a business that serviced Northeast Pennsylvania coal miners in back in the day. I have every reason to believe that Nana is living as colorful an afterlife as she did in her physical life!

When she died, it was decided to bury her ashes at her parents’ gravesite. My family has cremated most of its kin, for reasons of economy, they’ve said. In retrospect and since they all hated funerals as much as I do, I suspect the real reason is because they cannot bear to see their relation in a coffin surrounded by flowers. Many folks just don’t like long goodbyes. Seeing their loved one die gave them all the sense of closure they needed. Disposal of the body was a simple housekeeping task.

I don’t even know where the cremation was done (some details we just block out, you know?). I do remember, however, my parents asking me to bury the ashes. My first thought was to do this in some romantic fashion, such as scattering them across several farmers’ fields where she had us, as children, steal corn. She’d pull the car over to the side of the road and throw a bag at us: “Fill this up—they’ll never miss it!” However, the family thought it fitting to bury her ashes at her parents’ grave.  Now this isn’t as “normal” as it may sound. Her parents’ grave stone had been originally stolen by her two brothers, a nice red marble "model" lifted from a monument dealer's display. They took it to a different stone carver to have it engraved.

Photo by Tim Snyder

In addition, the intent was to not notify the owners of that little rural cemetery (shown above) that we were burying her ashes here. While its okay to scatter someone’s ashes to the four winds, you’re not supposed to just dig a hole on someone’s private property and bury them! Cemeteries make their money by SELLING you a burial spot, charging you to dig the hole, provide you with a fancy urn for the cremains, etc.That's how they make their money to stay in business.

Doing this illegally just runs in my family’s blood, I guess. As much as I enjoyed them all, they were either criminals, liars, or drunks, and sometimes all three--actual descendants of Molly Maguires gone awry. Once when paying a surprise visit to Nana’s brother, “Uncle Joe,” in Maryland, we found his house burned and boarded up. At about fourteen, I remember walking into the Glen Burnie police station with her as she went up to the officer at the front desk and said (and I’m sure she had no idea of his rank), “Sergeant, we’re looking for Joseph Wilkes.” Without even looking up from his paperwork, he replied, “Who ISN’T, lady?” We slunk out of there.

So one Spring day, three carloads of us drove out to the hillside cemetery where Nana's parents were buried. Not much going on, it being a weekend and the quarry down the road was closed. No houses for a quarter mile in any direction. We were all uncomfortably polite to each other—my parents (that's me between them in the photo below), an aunt with her daughter and child, my brother (not in the photo--he took the picture), and my cousin Albert (far right). You know how you begin to feel twelve years old again after spending a half-hour with your parents? Not this time; I was 42 years old and felt strangely adult.  Nana was there too—her ashes, that is, in a plastic bag.



Photo by Tim Snyder

Albert and I found ourselves in front of the family headstone, shovel in hand. Time settles down and concentrates on the moment, as writer Salman Rushdie would say. Albert and I hadn’t seen each other in twenty years, but we had been almost inseparable as kids. We shared many formative experiences, mainly during weekends and summers spent at Nana’s. I dug an adequate hole and Albert and I opened the bag. Over some nervously light banter, we began pouring the ashes into the hole. As the wind began to kick up and ashes took flight, I looked at him and asked with a grin, "You ever see ‘The Big Lebowski?” thinking of the scene where John Goodman empties a coffee can of Donny’s ashes off a Pacific coastal cliff and the wind blows them into Jeff Bridges’ face. Albert snickered and said, “Yeah…”

No member of my family ever won an award for subtlety. Remember “The Loud Family” from the late 1970’s Saturday Night Live? Where everybody yelled? You know my people then. You could never be certain what they said was true, but they more than made up for it in volume. That said, as our little caravan of cars left the cemetery, my cousin Albert pulled an M-80* out of his shirt pocket, lit it, and threw it out the window! WTF! As the goddamn thing exploded in the woods, we heard invisible horses frantically neighing, as if someone had just uttered “FRAU BLUCHER!”  (from Mel Brooks' movie Young Frankenstein). As the main road behind the quarry came into view, we saw two horses reared up on their hind legs with their riders holding on for dear life! As the horses with their helpless riders galloped down the dirt road like twin bats out of hell, I realized that grieving is a very individual thing—and Albert was grieving in his own special way. It was the perfect denouement to my grandmother’s complex life, and a fitting tribute.

Some Notes and Links you may find amusing:

“FRAU BLUCHER!” video

*An M-80 is a large firecracker, illegal in the U.S. due to its great explosive power (approximately equal to 1/20 stick of dynamite).

Some years later, we buried my father’s ashes in the same spot, with somewhat less fanfare. You can read about it here.

I would have loved to link you to an episode of SNL’s “The Loud Family,” but can’t find anything on the Web. If anyone can locate one, please let me know! Here’s a link to a transcript of an episode, anyway.

Molly Maguires

The Lost Civil War Graves of the Johnson Cemetery

The photographs that accompanied the blog related to my initial visit to the abandoned Johnson Cemetery were not my best (see link below). I know that’s like the cardinal sin of the public speaker—apologizing that he had a memory lapse and left something out. Regardless, after that first visit to this abandoned/repurposed Cemetery “Park” in Camden New Jersey, I lost one of my camera’s memory cards. The images on that card were better than the ones I published. So with a heavy heart (and much profanity), I returned a week later in an attempt to recreate those better photos and slip them into the first article without you noticing. As I found out, you really can’t step in the same river twice, as they say. My second  Johnson experience was radically different.

No drug deals going down this time, just a pair of homeless guys hanging out at the ersatz main entrance. As it was late in the day, I went right to the headstones laid flush in the grass to get some better shots of them. I noticed that some of the stones had the surrounding dirt brushed away, as with a broom. I kicked some booze bottles out of the way and shot about five images, when out of the corner of my eye, I noticed two figures in overcoats moving quickly toward me with what looked like machetes.

Bracing myself, it turned out to be two women, maybe in their late thirties, each well-dressed and brandishing a long ice scraper/snow brush—the kind we northerners use to scrape the ice and snow off our automobile windshields on winter mornings. They came up to me and asked if I could take some photos of the tombstones for them! Guess I watch too many horror movies.

They said they were doing genealogical research and were looking for members of their family tree. One had a point-and-shoot digital camera, but she said the battery died. I said, sure, I’d shoot some images for them. They had just been to the dollar store to buy something to sweep off the stones and came back with these brush scrapers. The devices turned out to be quite the archeological tools with which to excavate many of the UNSEEN headstones! I hung out with them for about an hour while they continued sweeping off the exposed stones. During my prior visit, I counted about 20 partially exposed grave markers.

At one point I think it occurred to all of us at the same time that there was a pattern to the way the stones were laid out, sort of in a long, gradual curve, from the northeast corner of the cemetery toward the center. There were spaces between some of the stones so one of the ladies flipped her instrument over and began using the ice scraper end to dig through the dry, grassy dirt. About an inch or so down came the unmistakable sound of plastic on stone! The soil was so thin, it was relatively easy to scrape it away. I watched and photographed with amazement as they unearthed about six additional stones--it was like finding buried treasure.

Periodically people would walk by, entering or exiting through the mangled cyclone fence that separated the cemetery from the projects. They seemed to pay us no mind. The two homeless guys kept their vigil on the bench near the road the entire time. One of the ladies told me about her research and visits to many south Jersey cemeteries, and finding hundreds of relatives to fill out her family tree. She was quite excited to find the Johnson graves and told me about some small old churchyard burial spots in Mt. Laurel (NJ) that I may need to locate.

It’s my guess that wind and rain covered most of the Johnson headstones with dirt and debris over time; according to the fragmentary information available, over a hundred people are buried here. Two of the more decorative stones uncovered today are shown above, perhaps the first time anyone’s seen them in a decade or more. They are decorative to a degree, that is--the elaborateness of a grave marker being directly proportional to the affluence (and sometimes influence) of the deceased. I couldn't help but contrast in my mind these meager, sad stones with the opulent monument to (presidential candidate) John and Elizabeth Edwards'  teenage son, Wade. I had photographed this ten-foot high contemporary marble sculpture (below) at Oakwood Cemetery in Raleigh, North Carolina some years ago. The angel that cradles the lost son seems to elevate the value of that life over that of say, African-American veterans of the Civil War (the main inhabitants of Johnson Cemetery--see previous blog link below for detail). It's a skewed way of looking at things, but we often remember those with the biggest monuments, don't we?

Wade Edwards' Monument, Raleigh, NC

After a while, I counted the headstones, 30 in all, when one of the women made an astute observation—it looked as if there were actually TWO curved rows of stones! It was getting dark and chilly at that point and my camera battery had just died. I told them this project looked like it should be continued at some later date and was about to excuse myself. We traded contact information and said our goodbyes when I realized they had every intention of staying! Hmmm. Either they’re twin spectres of (Sir Walter Scott’s) “Old Mortality” or just naïve. I looked up the hill at the homeless guys and suggested the ladies not stay there much longer. They looked around and realized we were standing at the bottom of a gully beneath a grove of pine trees, not in plain view of the road—not the safest area to be after dark. The fact that they were well-dressed, drove an Acura SUV, and were not from the area, I assumed they didn’t know the place was nicknamed “Needle Park” and so I merely suggested they not remain there too much longer. The cold hard light of reality broke their genealogical reverie and they quickly followed me up the hill.

As we passed the benches at the entrance, the two homeless guys got up and hustled down to the benches close to where we’d been working. Apparently they had dibs on these as sleeping quarters--that’s why there were flattened beer case boxes laid out on the benches. These gents were about to enjoy the dead man’s sleep,  above the remains of a hundred forgotten and battle-scarred Civil War infantry and naval servicemen. As I drove away, I thought of the recent popular song “In the Room Where You Sleep,” by the band Dead Man’s Bones, and these lyrics in particular:

"There's something in the shadows
in the corner of your room.
A dark heart is beating

and waiting for you.

There is no open window, but the floors still creep.

In the room where you sleep.

In the room where you sleep......"





Further Links of Interest:

First Visit to the Johnson Cemetery

Listen to the song “In the Room Where You Sleep,” by the band Dead Man’s Bones 
Dead Man’s Bones’ Website