Ever since I hinted that I might tell this story in my last blog entry, I've received a lot of requests from my readers to hear about the time I dug up a dead guy. Even I have to admit, it is a true classic....
I've done many jobs over the years. I've started and owned many business ventures over the years. At one time, I owned a hot rod shop called Phase 3 Automotive Technologies, located in beautiful Salinas, California. Well it started out as a hot rod shop, but I soon found out that tuning Subaru's paid the bills. I also found that when you pay your employees, sometimes they go on a drunk and don't come back to work for a couple of days, or worse, are found face down in a different County. Whoops, I guess I better save the Phase 3 story for another day. Back to digging up a dead guy.
After I closed up my shop to take a job as a sales rep with one of my customers, I found myself unemployed. Now there is an old saying among computer guys. "A good computer guy is never unemployed, just running his own consulting firm." I kind of followed along that line, and ran a small computer and small business consulting firm.
I was pretty lucky. I knew a ton of business people in the community. Many of my customers at Phase 3 were fleet accounts. It was an easy transition to move these folks into my client base. Business wasn't always as busy as I would have liked, but we always got by.
One of my clients was a "Memorial" business. They made tombstones, and provided services to the city for some cemetery maintenance. I had never thought much about how tombstones were made. I had assumed that some old guy with a chisel would hammer on a slab of granite. I was wrong. Tombstones are now high-tech.
A tombstone starts out as a chunk of granite. My clients would shape it to the desired shape. A rubber mat is cut so that the letters are exposed. The engraving on the granite is then done with a very high powered sand blaster. As the sand hits the stone, it etches into the granite where the rubber mat has been cut. It is kind of a cool process.
My clients had purchase a Sumagraphics digitizer tablet. This allowed them to lay out how the tombstone would look. They would then send the finished product to the printer. The printer in this case was a little different. It actually cut the rubber mat for them. While it doesn't sound all that cool now, 20 years ago this was state of the art stuff.
I was installing the device and kind of bs'ing with my clients. They were complaining that they were going to have to rent a back ho to exhume a body. I forgot the amount they were talking. It didn't seem that much to me, but they were under some kind of city contract where they were going to have to eat the costs themselves.
I asked them why they were going to exhume a body. They said that back in the 1950's a woman was passing through town and unexpectedly died. They city was unable to identify her or her next of kin. The city took care of her remains, and burried her in the city "Paupers Field." Forty years later, her children had tracked her down and wanted to move their Mother to a nicer final resting place.
Now my business was ok, but I was always looking for more money. I spoke up and said that I would dig her up by hand, and I undercut the estimated costs of the backhoe by at least a hundred bucks. "You would do that?" the guys asked. "Sure, how hard could it be?" I figured I would make a good day or two wages for about an hours work, and I could still take my kids surfing in the afternoon. It sounded like easy money!
Client: "Do you know where the Paupers Field Cemetery is?"
Me: "Ahhh no"
Client: "Well it's right next to the Chinese Cemetery."
Me: "Hey guys, I don't spend much time at cemeteries." "Why don't you just tell me an address and I'll find it."
This was starting to get a little weird. I didn't even know they had segregated cemeteries. Well they then told me it wasn't in a very good part of town, and we agreed to meet at their business early the next morning. They said I could follow them out to the cemetery, where we would meet the Coroner, and the family. This was going to be easy money. I could follow them out, dig up the body, and get out quick. They could deal with the Coroner and the family while I took the kids surfing.
The next morning I threw a shovel and a pick in the back of my 4x4 and headed over to meet my clients. I then followed them to the Paupers Field. When we got there, the Coroner and the family were waiting outside. This didn't look like any cemetery I had ever seen. It looked like a big dirt field. It actually looked like my back pasture in Prunedale, minus the nice oak trees.
My clients unlocked the gate to the cemetery and pulled out a little map. Since many people who were buried there were unknown, there was a small numbered plaque indicating the grave site. The family knew the number of the grave, so we headed off.
We got to the correct area of the cemetery and got out of our trucks.
This is where the fun starts. Stay tuned for part 2!
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