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(back to page 5)
But back to Terry and Jerry who likely don't know anything about the Rural Cemetery Movement and probably could care less as they, and their backhoe, ply the back roads in Lane, Douglas, and northern Coos counties where their services are needed.
Jerry and Terry are responsible for digging graves, setting up the paraphernalia associated with today's graveside services, such as canopies, ground covering, and simulated brass railings.
They also sign death certificates after matching them with an identification tag on the coffin, the mate of which is also affixed to the toe of the corpse bearing the same number. This procedure is the result of an Oregon law passed during the 1980s in the aftermath of a nationally covered cemetery scandal. In a mortuary garage in Lincoln City, Oregon, a well-liked local mortician was found to be inter-mixing human remains that he buried in plastic bags or cardboard boxes and warehoused corpses he had been contracted to cremate.
His crimes against the living and the dead goaded lawmakers in several Western states into changing laws regarding interment. Earlier today, Jerry referred to this scandal as "that Lincoln City mess." Terry added, "It made us all look bad."
I would have difficulty hiring the brothers on my own since they are not listed under "grave digging" in the Yellow Pages. Grave digging is a still a vocation to be concealed. The average person considers not only the task itself, but he who undertakes it, distasteful, if not repugnant. The brothers advertise as a "vault" company. Seeing such a listing, most of us would picture a bank vault not a grave.
I gather that manufacturing vaults and liners provides Jerry and Terry with a nice supplemental income. Liners are concrete slabs several inches thick that are placed on the four sides and bottom of a grave. The casket is then lowered into this boxlike structure and a top is put into place.
Jerry and Terry's vaults are concrete cast in two-piece molds. Also designed to contain the casket, they are heavier and thicker than liners. The vault's principal selling point is the fact that it is so tightly sealed. It also is more expensive. The brothers would probably argue that in addition to taking more time to manufacture, vaults are more aesthetically pleasing. They spray paint their vaults in silver or copper colors.
Why not gold? I should have asked Jerry. Perhaps it would make the vault appear too imperial and ostentatious. Maybe gold spray paint just costs more. When the plastic shroud was removed and I saw that Elsie Patton's vault was copper colored, it just seemed silly--an attempt to make a silk purse out of a sow's ear.
Terry and Jerry asked me if this cemetery requires liners in graves. They pointed out several rectangular depressions where there are older graves.
"Now that's the kind of thing that happens when you don't have liners or vaults. The grave caves in," Terry said in a serious, almost admonishing tone of voice. He added that every grave should have a barrier between the coffin and the dirt.
For a moment I felt defensive then I rallied, saying, "But graves are in dirt to begin with. We deliberately bury people in dirt. We expect that they will be surrounded by earth. That's what it's all about."
"Well, you're forgetting the moisture damage to the casket which can be prevented," Terry said.
"For how long?" I asked him, feeling as though he were running a car wash and trying to get me to sign up for the most expensive full-car-wash-deal: the super deluxe, hand-rubbed, anti-moisture-seal-deal.
Terry shrugged. "I guess you could say, longer than it would otherwise. The wet really ruins things. It happens a lot faster without a liner or a vault, you know. And there is other stuff..." Terry added, screwing up his face a little as though the topic were distasteful even to a big man like himself.
Childhood's dark ditty came to mind: "The worms crawl in, the worms crawl out, the worms play pinochle on your snout."
"But liners don't stop anything," I wanted to say. "Or vaults either." Not in the long run. Dust to dust. Everything goes, eventually--though in the right conditions the bones themselves outlast other parts of the body.
I stopped myself because I realized there were some economic considerations underlying our discussion. The brothers manufactured liners and vaults, after all, in addition to installing them. Of course they thought liners and vaults were a good idea. I did ask them whether the "casket protection" they installed was required by law. They admitted it wasn't. Such things are left to the discretion of the cemetery.
I might have added that there is nothing in Oregon law that states human remains even need to be placed in a casket. If a cemetery wanted to use a biodegradable papier-mache coffin such as those patented by a pair of Australian women a few years ago, it would be perfectly legal as long as other rules regarding the disposal of the dead were obeyed.
"You should really think about requiring liners," Jerry advised. "People like knowing they are protecting their loved ones. It brings them peace of mind."
It's only been ten years or so since Terry and Jerry began using a backhoe. Grave digging by hand is laborious; they strain the same muscles those assigned to burying the dead have always strained since Neanderthal times. But if a cemetery prohibits use of heavy equipment, digging by hand is what they do.
Watching them, I could see that there is a certain amount of craft involved in the proper digging of a grave. I watched as pieces of plywood were carefully laid down so that the backhoe, and the truck hauling the concrete vault, would not leave tracks over adjacent plots. Jerry told me that when the ground is as hard as concrete they are obliged to use a jackhammer. Jackhammers can collapse liner roofs or vault lids on adjacent graves.
They tamped an iron rod into the earth, prodding until they struck a bordering liner, in order to be sure they were digging in the right place. They proceeded methodically, at an almost leisurely pace. If the prod hit something, Jerry said, they moved far enough away so as not to disturb the neighboring site regardless of what the cemetery sexton's grave markers indicated.
(continued on the next page)
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