At first glance, it appears to say "Young". But it really starts with a backwards J, followed by y, o, u, backwards n and g. The back side is equally enigmatic:
No names, just Father, Mother, and the date they died. In 1926. Any ideas?
Friday, April 20, 2007
Friday Cemetery Blogging
In honor of Presbyterian Gal's quest for the strange this week, I'm posting a strange stone for you. This is the side that faces the cemetery road:
At first glance, it appears to say "Young". But it really starts with a backwards J, followed by y, o, u, backwards n and g. The back side is equally enigmatic:
No names, just Father, Mother, and the date they died. In 1926. Any ideas?
At first glance, it appears to say "Young". But it really starts with a backwards J, followed by y, o, u, backwards n and g. The back side is equally enigmatic:
No names, just Father, Mother, and the date they died. In 1926. Any ideas?
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13 comments:
My guess is that the family that bought the headstone couldn't afford to have it professionally carved and did it themselves.
And whoever did it had a bit of dyslexia.
How odd.
QG's idea is probably what happened. Makes me feel a lot better too. I had a Blair Witch type shudder there for a second.
My guess is that they needed a headstone for some unknown people who died, and the headstone maker had a leftover stone that he either screwed up or was using for practice.
I have to say, it's kind of creepy for some reason. Maybe because it makes me feel like death isn't as tidy as it appears from most headstones.
initials? combined with the aforementioned dyslexia? Beats me.
There are some kinda like that in the older section of the cemetery that's the resting place of a significant chunk of my family. Some of them don't appear to have ever had any lettering engraved on them at all.
And I'm with PG on the Blair-Witchiness.
I'm thinking these were headstones for very poor folks who barely scraped up enough cash to get the headstone. My other hypothesis is that they were maybe new to the area (perhaps due to the Dust Bowl?) and died before anyone knew them. Perhaps they had small children they orphaned, who might not have known their names due to their own ages, so the locals buried them as "Mother" and "Father" and adopted the children locally.
Or maybe I have a flair for the dramatic.
I like mile high pixie's story!
I'm late commenting, of course; but, I just gotta' say one thing:
SPOOKY...
Trace: My point EXACTLY. ha ha!
It may be a little dramatic, but I'm liking mile high pixie's story.
MHP's story sounds good, but I'm thinking along morbid lines. Mom and Dad died within days of each other in an outbreak of typhus or scarlet fever. Or maybe Dad shot Mom and then himself because they couldn't stand to keep on starving to death (this did happen during those terrible years).
I have a flair for the awful and tragic.
Were the words carved into the headstone or was it cast concrete? If the latter, it would be a natural enough mistake for a novice to place some of the letters backwards. Then again, maybe it is a fake grave. Maybe there is a vault beneath it hiding some loot from a bank job. Why don't you knock it over and check on that. I'll stand over here.
Miss Kitty: I like your Snicket-y version!
David: You are TOTALLY right! I never thought about it, but it did appear to be cast rather than carved. However, that is a totally uninteresting explanation, therefore I summarily reject it. C'mere and gimme a hand with this shovel!
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