My Father, the Cemetery Man

Lately, my father Rick Gauger has been dropping into the Sweatshop chatroom to hold court, and to regale the audience with stories both real and imagined. He’s a two-tour Vietnam War veteran who has worked in every adventurous occupation from private investigator, to science fictional novelist, to Dungeons and Dragons professor, to cowboy.

He told us the following story during a recent Sweatshop. I have edited it into paragraph format, although he told it in the chatroom, complete with commentary by the other guests, thoughtful pauses, and ellipses to heighten the suspense as we waited for his next sentence. Some of the timing of the chatroom delivery is lost in this format, but really, you had to be there.

I used to be the night watchman at the Memphis Methodist Cemetary. One night, I was sitting in the little caretaker’s shack, about to make my rounds. I noticed an awful stink, and there was a knock at the door. There had been a huge constuction project right across the cemetary, many graves had to be moved. It was a high-voltage power line, from the (then) brand-new TVA Rural Eletrification Project.

There had been a big political fight in the city, people who wanted the power line and those who objected to messing with the cemetary, which dated from Andrew Jackson’s time. They had just powered up the high tension lines the previous week.

Even though the stink was awful, I went to the door, thinking it was a motorist in trouble, a not infequent happening. I got the shock of my life. A walking corpse was standing at the door!

(lurid description of zombie)*

“W-wha do you want?” I finally was able to say.

To make a long story short…the fresher denizens of the Cemetary had a complaint. The electrical induction from the power lines was activating their decaying nervous systems just enough to make them aware of their situation. I actually recognized this one; he was the pastor of the local Baptist Church, a very religious man.

I said, “Brother Phil is that really you? Have you risen from the dead?” Anyway, Bro Phil spoke in a gurgly voice. He said he really wasn’t Brother Phil, he was only Brother Phil’s body, Brother Phil having gone off to the afterlife, about which I naturally inquired. Phil replied that he was sorry, but he knew nothing about it. Brother Phil’s corpse went on. It said that he had been elected to visit me in the night to ask that the powerline be shut down.

I was backed all the way to the rear corner of the shed. I asked Brother Phil how he expected me to call the authorities with this story. They would fire me from my job.

[At this point in the story, Rick announced that he had to go to bed. We clamored for him to stay and finish!]

Oh, I was just giving the preamble to telling about how I led the first civil rights demonstration in Memphis that had nothing to do with race! We had to march down the power line right of way that day, not the street.

[And that was that.]

*Unedited. Rick decided to skip the details of an animated corpse, which we all know by heart, anyway.