I was just resting.
Actually, I've been driving some, and I hurt my wrist a little, so I took a while off from typing. I'm not dying anytime soon. But I have been wondering about our fascination with graves, the famous, the infamous, and the unknown.
I wrote about Tom Dula's grave in my book. It is difficult to find, up a muddy and overgrown path, and possibly on private property, but still it has been visited numerous times, to the point that it turned into a souvenir stand for overzealous fans. Why I don't know, he was a bit of a syphilis infested cretin who slept around and may or may not have killed a girl. Still, we want to see it.
Less visited, even though it is just down the road, is Laura Foster's grave. Laura didn't get a trial, let alone two, but she got a rather pretty and peaceful resting place. Less molested than Dula's that's for sure. It could have something to do with being surrounded by cows and an electric fence.
Less known for the person in the grave, and more for the statue on it, Thomas Wolfe's Look Homeward Angel stands in a cemetery in Hendersonville. It is a marker for Margaret Johnson. This sculpture has seen its share of repairs. The wing has fallen off and been fixed, and now it resides behind a wrought iron fence.
A more hidden, and less known grave, if you can call it that, is Annie Lee's grave marker. A stone pylon was designed by a Confederate veteran to honor the final resting place of the daughter of the famous general. Annie died young, and was placed in the small cemetery because it would have been impossible for her remains, and her family, to travel back to her mother's ancestral home. Her mother, a descendant of George Washington, had lost the farm when they had to move after threats from the Republican government nearby, since she was the wife of Robert E. Lee. Her home was then given up to become a military cemetery.
A more peaceful spot is where Robert Harrell rests now. More well known as the Fort Fisher Hermit, his grave is decorated with shells, photos, and a pan where people can still give him a few coins to help him out.
The curious thing about his gravesite is that it sits just outside a cemetery. There is a local Methodist church cemetery there, where an old church used to sit. The church cemetery is still used, but Harrell's grave is not inside the fences. It sits in an older spot, a local historical site, with a few other graves. I'm guessing that he was placed there before the cemetery was well used. I know that the spot was donated for his resting place by a local family.
There are so many grave sites that seem to be famous, either for who rests there, or what they represent. I haven't been to the grave of the little girl buried in a keg of rum, or the grave of a man's legs, the one that looks like tree branches, There's the grave of the guy who got trampled by an elephant, and they put an elephant on his grave marker. Kinda cruel, I think, but then, maybe th elephant got his revenge. Otway Burns has a grave with one of his cannons on it in Beaufort, NC. And there are the two grave sites in Hatteras and Ocracoke where British sailors rest after their ships were torpedoed during World War II.
I did once try to go find Chang and Eng Bunker's grave near Mt. Airy once, but I was with my sister-in-law, and didn't want to seem extra creepy searching out a grave site when she just wanted to go to Mayberry.
Plus I really have mixed emotions about visiting and discussing people's graves. I like the weird stories, the strange events that either led up to their final spots, or just the rather unique markers they use. But at the same time, I don't like the idea of sending people to see them, trampling underfoot the peaceful graves of someone's family member just to get to another person's grave.
At the same time, one day, long in the future, when I finally shed this mortal coil, I wouldn't mind a cool marker for people to visit. Maybe a giant question mark. And a picnic table.
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