There is nothing as good as getting stuck. Especially, when I’m not driving. Being stuck in a cemetery is even better. Mom, Kim and I went to Magnolia cemetery in Mobile. We had been to visit the US United States and decided to visit this cemetery. This is where my dad saw the poem he wanted on his headstone. I wanted to see it again. But it’s been over 20 years since we were there last, and this cemetery is HUGE.
Do I need to tell you that of course it wasn’t where I remembered it being?
We did see this interesting mausoleum and since there were slits in the door, I wanted to take a look.
And then my sister decided to join me.
Mom thought peeking into a mausoleum was weird but I’m glad we looked. It was really cool in there.
Mom’s scooter had long since died and her knees were bothering her. She didn’t want to just wander until we stumbled upon it.
So she and Kim parked under a tree to eat the banana pudding we’d gotten at Buc-cee’s and off I went. But the farther I walked, the more my hip hurt. I was having no luck finding the headstone, so I limped my way back to the car.
We decided to drive up and down each row hoping to spot it and admire the incredible headstones.
The thing is that some of the rows were gravel and some were not. The ones that were grass were still obvious rows, just without gravel.
We’d given up on finding the headstone we were looking for. Then we noticed one very tall monument we wanted to look at before we left.
This monument was about a quarter of the way down one of the grass rows. Kim turned onto the row and we didn’t make it 4 feet when we got stuck.
Like really stuck.
Turns out this path looked nice and green but there were now two wheels in to a wet soggy bog. Hmm. The back tires were still on good turf but the front two were buried. There is definitely something to be said for rear wheel drive.
Mom is not happy. Kim and I find our predicament typical and funny.
I tried to back up while she pushed. I took less than a minute before we realized that we were just making it worse.
Moms in the passenger seat muttering something about us not having good sense and I get out so Kim and can I assess the situation. “You get stuck WAY more than I do so what do you think we should do?” she asks. When I get stuck, I’m in the woods and I start looking for palm fronds and sticks to jam under the tires. But we’re stuck in Magnolia Cemetery, which is a very well- manicured cemetery and there isn’t anything to use.
We’re in Mom’s SUV and she has no shovel, tow straps or any of the other things I keep in my truck because I do get stuck a lot.
There are two blankets in the car so I suggested we try those and before I could even finish the sentence Mom yelled “No! you are not touching my blankets.”
Kim starts wandering around and she comes back with a 3×4 piece of broken granite. I can not tell you the horror I felt. I can’t imagine the kind of bad ju ju that comes with using a broken headstone for anything. I’m telling her no and to take it back when she showed it to me and it was actually a broken stone from a step up to one of the plots. We can put it right back she insists. Well, we are stuck, no one else is here and we have no tools, so we jammed it under the most stuck tire.
She pushed and I sank us a little deeper. I was still a little freaked out about using anything from there, so she immediately wiped it off and put it back.
We were a long way from the entrance and saw a pickup truck pull in. My hip is toast so Kim hikes over to see if he can help.
Meanwhile, my nicotine level is running low, so I look for my cigarettes. Which are gone! An hour ago, I was wandering a quarter mile from here and I guess they fell out of my pocket. This is bad. Even Mom, who tells me to quit every single day, says “I promise we’ll stop at the first store we come to when we get out of here and we’ll wait as long as you need to smoke.”
The situation made being stuck in the cemetery seem a little dire.
Kim comes back and says the man has no straps, rope, shovel or anything that could possibly of help to us.
Well shit. We’ve found the one man in all of south Alabama who has nothing useful in his truck.
At this point I decide that I’m going to look for my cigarettes – aching hip or not while Kim and Mom figure this out.
Off I limp but after a bit I realized that I was half a mile away from where I must have lost them and my hip was screaming so I turned around headed back to the car.
The sign at the cemetery says that staff lock the gates at 5:30, and right now it’s 4:15. So Kim called the number on the cemetery sign and the man who answered told her that people get stuck in there all the time and sometimes the tow truck gets stuck too. But…he can’t help us, and he will lock the gate at 5:30. Click.
So, she calls AAA, and they tell us the soonest someone can come is going to be about 7. She tells them our predicament, and they say they’ll call her back.
Mom and I both have a semi meltdown at this point. She’s tired, her house is two hours away, and she insists that she does NOT want to spend the night stuck in the cemetery.
I can’t stop thinking about having a smoke.
Right about then AAA calls back and because of our situation they’ve re-routed a tow truck to us, and it will be there about 5.
Thank goodness!
Kim decided to go for a walk while we waited so Mom and I spent that time in the car. After a couple of minutes – out of the blue – Mom says, “I bet we’re sitting on thousands of dollars.”
What?
She says, “think about all of the jewelry buried with these people.” “Grave robbing? Are you seriously talking about grave robbing?” “The Egyptians do it all the time. They’re constantly pilfering those pyramids” she tells me.
My mind hit a twilight zone sort of moment – Kim has used part of a family burial plot to shove under the tire and Mom is thinking about all the jewelry buried around us.
I wasn’t driving, didn’t get us stuck, didn’t use a step to help get unstuck and have not even considered grave robbing BUT it was my idea to come to this cemetery.
And to be honest, if I had a shovel right now, I’d be digging us out of this hole – not grave robbing.
Somehow the bad ju ju that surely must be coming at us is probably going to land square on me.
Mom was stuck in the sun, so I suggested we take one of her blankets and take a nap under the nearest tree.
Turns out, 80 year old women do NOT want to take a nap in a cemetery.
Luckily, my sister turned up with my cigarettes and I decided I would survive. Except for the fact that it’s 5:15 and the tow truck isn’t there yet. Mom wants to know what’s going to happen if the guy locks the gate before the tow truck gets in. Or while he’s in and we can’t get out.
Kim looks like she’s thinking about it, but I had no doubt in my mind what would happen.
I had a personal protection device in my purse and told them that if any of that happened, I was absolutely going to “remove” the lock. Kim said she would post bail for me, but I told her we were going to blame it on Mom. “She’s 80 – no judge will make her spend the night in jail.” Mom looked shocked and wanted to know if I would really throw her under the bus like that. I laughingly replied “Absolutely!”
Fortunately, the tow truck pulled in and within 5 minutes we were unstuck. We got to the gate just as the guy who was going to lock it pulled in. I gave him a big smile and thought “well at least you don’t have to go buy a new lock tonight.”
We managed to get on the I10 right at rush hour and let me tell you the people who work in Mobile but live on the other side of the causeway don’t play when it’s time to go home. We had people pass us on the GRASS to try and get ahead of traffic.
I’m so glad I wasn’t driving. That kind of crazy doesn’t bother my sister at all. They drive crazy, she just drives crazier. I don’t like that kind of traffic and typically start to have a panic attack which is exactly what you don’t want to happen in horrific traffic.
We make the hour drive back to where Kim met us near the Florida/Alabama line, unload mom’s car and off Kim goes.
As Mom and I were driving back to her house I realized that while Mom and Kim were eating their banana pudding I was out grave hunting and didn’t get to eat mine and my pudding was in the cooler Kim took with her. I called and asked her if she would airmail it to me and she laughed, said no and that she was going to eat it when she got home. Damn. Buc-cee’s has the best banana pudding and mine was gone.
I consoled myself by remembering that at least I wasn’t stuck in the cemetery or in the county jail for destroying a lock.
Sometimes you’ve just gotta take the win.
