This blogging business is something that needs weekly
attention. My adventures are so varied
from one week to the next. And I need to be studying my French lyrics for my
Bastille Day gigs and Gay Pride is calling.
Ah alas, tis hard to be so diverse in one’s talents! And to live in a
place that has so much going on all the time.
I s’pose every city has as much happening; it all depends on what your
interests are.
So last week I went on a cemetery crawl.
On some other sunny weekend I had biked to
the Colma Historical Museum, where I picked up my new bumper sticker “It’s
great to be alive in Colma” (1500 above
ground – and I’m one of the few not employed by the cemeteries - 1.5 million
below) I also got clarification on all
those bodies that were ‘disinterred’ from their San Francisco graves, then’reinterred’
in Colma. The process began in 1900,
when the city declared no more burials would take place in San Francisco. The
property was too valuable! Colma was chosen because of transportation access,
and the train stopped at all the
cemetery sites. In 1914 when the first
eviction notices were sent, many bodies were dumped into mass graves because families
could not afford the $10 to have the remains relocated. There was much controversy with the church because of disturbing of the souls.
The final leg of it
happened in the late thirties when 90,000 bodies were taken from Laurel Hill
and Calvary Cemeteries. These were Catholic cemeteries and all of the exhuming
required the presence of a priest and a health inspector. Also bodies had to be
reinterred the same day they were disinterred. Yeow. Too much information???
Although Wyatt Earp and his exotic dancer wife – a stunning
Jewess, Josephine, whose breasts peeking through the opaque wrapper reminded me of Isadora
Duncan – are buried right across the street in the Salem Memorial, (How perfect
for my Daytonian friends, where Salem Avenue was home to Beth Israel Temple and
Temple Israel, and I had plenty of friends there) I chose to crawl around “Pet’s
Rest”. Yes, finally we’re getting to the
meat of things.
Pet’s Rest, as you can tell from the sign, began in
1947. And people are so much more
sentimental about their pets than their families! The Tobins had a plot where five furry family
friends were laid to rest. Near the back of the cemetery there was a mausoleum
of sorts – Cinder blocks with pet ashes and a tile with the pet’s vitals on
it.
One animal was 5 months old. And another was in reverence for my Tehachapi dog Shanna. Pictures of the creatures made their way on
to tombstones. . . . I wondered if my sister would’ve had Meeghee interred in
such a place??? Too late to answer that
one.
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| This one is for Danahy! |
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| Just about the right time frame of Shanna too! |
