cemeterying

Yesterday my parents and I went on a Sunday afternoon driveabout just like we did with my grandparents when I was young. We went cemeterying.

Mainly we went to look at family. Yesterday we checked on my great grandmother, great grandparents, and two sets of great great grandparents. You go to make sure the cemeteries are being kept up, the headstones are still there and legible . . . but you also go for the stories.

Stories about the people — and places — you’re visiting are bound to spring forth. Every time we visit Grandpap’s we hear about how he came to Alabama in a covered wagon. Here is where my grandfather saw his first airplane — he saw it crash — and he could not pedal his little bike home fast enough he was so scared. Here is the cemetery where my grandmother would stress DO NOT TOUCH THE FENCE IT IS ELECTRIC! every time. I’m still scared of that blasted fence.

The story I set out to remember yesterday was not that of a relative though, but of a person who met a unique, untimely death. My grandmother told it to me and my sister when we were still kids. My memory is of her reading it out of some book or newspaper, then she got excited and said, “I know where that cemetery is; let’s go!”

My memory of the story was vague on names and places but vivid on gory detail. They had been doing blasting work nearby but something went wrong with a warning alarm. A man in a house did not have enough time to take decent cover so he ran around in circles a bit then stuck his head in the chimney.

A rock from the blast arched up across the sky then headed back toward the earth, threading itself delicately through the opening of the chimney, down the flue, then THWACK! right on the poor man’s head taking refuge there. I think it’s safe to say this story stuck with me.

The real morbid part, and the reason my grandmother wanted to find his grave, was they put the chimney-threading rock that killed him on top of his grave. He was buried a short drive away so off we went on that Sunday afternoon and, would you believe it, there it was. Rock and all.

My childhood imagination swore I saw blood on it still.

Last week I was reading things and I came upon this type-up of a newspaper article:

Columbiana Sentinel, Columbiana, Alabama, Thursday, November 29, 1906
“Accidental Death. Mr. Robt. L. Kendrick, who has been keeping a little store at the Narrows in beat 8, was accidentally killed about 2 o’clock last Monday, by a piece of falling rock from a blast. Parties were blasting rock about four hundred yards from Mr. Kendrick’s store, and it appears they had put in an unusually heavy charge. After the explosion it was found that a piece of rock about the size of an ordinary wooden bucket, and which had been thrown from the blast, had fallen through the roof of Mr. Kendrick’s store, striking him on the head, killing him almost instantly. The deceased was about 50 years old, and a man of family. The funeral occurred on Tuesday.”

Oh my goodness, there it was, his name and everything. He was killed when they were blasting to create Highway 280. I knew the cemetery he was buried because every time we would drive by it Mom would say, “There’s where that man’s buried that was killed by the rock.” It’s not two miles from my house.

So off we go, and once again there it was, the same as before. I didn’t see any blood on the rock this time. I wouldn’t want that rock to come down my chimney, though.