YA'LL GONNA HAVE TO 'SCUSE ME

The Asbury Cemetery lies between Wright City and Overton on county road 2089.

I don't know the condition of those catacombs today, but for many years it was cleaned up only one time per year in order to get it ready for the annual "picnic". The picnic brought together the families of those who had loved ones buried in the cemetery. It also served as a fund raiser to try to get donations that would pay to maintain those entombed.

For a number of years, Dad was paid a one time fee to do the Asbury clean up job. On occasion, I would help him.

Talk about tackling a vicious jungle? That East Texas sand and spring rain would make the weeds, grass burrs, and thistles grow like fairy tale bean stalks! Dad's ancient lawn mowers and weed-eater would be challenged to the limit to slowly whack back the encroachment of Mother Nature. Surely, this was a hot, tough, brutal job that no sane person would have accepted. No one except Dad, that is.

Dad took jobs like this for two reasons:

1. He needed the money fairly desperately to survive.

2. Dad had a deep and abiding respect for the departed souls therein.

Each time Dad would start a cleanup of the crypts, he would walk to the gate of the Garden of Rest and declare in a loud voice, "Ya'll gonna have to 'scuse me now cause I gotta clean you up." This was Dad's way of asking forgiveness for walking on the graves of the loved ones of others. I saw it as a measure of unparalleled respect for those he said had "gone on down amongst 'em".

Dad also had a year round (monthly salary) job taking care of the cemetery that was on county road 2110, West of where the Lyles family lived.

Dad kept this mausoleum immaculate for many years. During the grass growing season, he worked like a Trojan. During drought and winter, he just "piddled" while the check kept coming (I think it was $50 per month?).

This was a very old (as evidenced by the dates on some tombstones) private cemetery. Many of the graves had six inch concrete borders around the plots. This was useful to define the grave site, but the devil's own mischief if you were mowing the grass. I would have killed the mower, pulled it over the concrete border, and restarted the mower (over and over). Dad didn't have time for that crap. He would just use his incredible hand/wrist/arm strength and flip the running mower up in the air and over the barrier. He'd then quickly mow the plot and reverse his aerial lawn mower show to get the sharp spinning blade back into action.

As mentioned, this was an old boneyard. "Ashes to ashes, dust to dust" means that we all eventually return to Mother Earth in a more pure form. For Dad, this meant that occasionally he would be merrily pushing his weed whacking machine in the old section of the cemetery and one of his legs would break thru the soil. This was promptly followed by said leg falling into the ground a few feet where the casket beneath had deteriorated to dust.

Now picture that you are in the country, all alone in a cemetery. Suddenly the specter of death reaches from the grave to grab your leg and jerk you into its subterranean resting place. Yeah, kinda dramatic, but it scared the sh_t out of Dad every time it happened!

Another interesting aspect of cemetery maintenance is that it requires miles of weed-eater line. The sharp edges of the granite tombstones cut the line at every turn. Add to this the fact that as you work around a tombstone to edge the weeds, you are turning in a circle. Now do this circle several hundred times in a row while holding the weight of a weed-eater out in front of you and see how you feel?

My favorite story of Dad and graveyards has to do with planting flowers. Dad hated flowers planted permanently at the graveyard as they created additional work for him.

One day a couple of elderly ladies approached Dad at the cemetery. They asked if he thought the rose bushes they had brought would grow if they planted them adjacent to their loved one's grave. Dad solemnly told them the roses would not grow there. The ladies replied they would plant them regardless and hope for the best.

The ladies left after the planting and as Dad was spraying Roundup (herbicide) on the roses he said, "I told those ladies these roses wouldn't grow here?"