Strip-mall cemetery
May 14th, 2008
Recently I made a quick trip to a dollar store in my town, thinking they would have microwave popcorn in single-serving bags. They didn’t, so I decided to walk over to the large grocery store in the same shopping center. I’ve been to this particular shopping center hundreds of times in the last three years, so you can imagine how surprised I was when I rounded the corner and saw a tiny cemetery.
I don’t know how I managed to miss it all this time. I suppose I don’t shop at the Fashion Bug, which is the store it’s closest to. And I usually don’t walk in that direction from the dollar store. But still…a cemetery! Right there, in the strip mall!
There was a wrought-iron fence around the plot, and on two sides rosebushes were planted all along the fence. There were two trees growing in one corner of the square. It was a lovely, peaceful place, as cemeteries often are. I spied a gate on the other side of the fence, and it was unlocked so I let myself in.
Most of the headstones are very weathered, some of them worn almost completely smooth by time and the elements, some of them broken and almost buried under the grass. Others are still readable, and from those it’s clear that this was a family cemetery.
I wondered, as I brushed my fingers over the carved names and took photos, if any Hammett relatives ever visit to pay their respects. Or maybe when they sold the land to the developers and added the clause that the family graves had to be left intact, they felt they’d done their best to honor their ancestors and never looked back. Maybe it’s just too weird to think of your great-great-great grandfather being laid to rest in a shopping-center parking lot.
I lingered a while longer, trying to read the faded headstones, smiling at the absurdity of life. Then I put away my camera, latched the gate carefully behind me, and headed over to the grocery store.
For the whole set, go to Strip-mall cemetery – a photoset on Flickr
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There’s a grave in a movie theatre parking lot here, which is kind of freaky but very handy for meeting friends at the enormous complex (“let’s park out by Mary”). There’s a Wikipedia entry but there’s a better picture (well, better in showing where the grave is with relation to the building and also how nicely they fixed it up when the theatres were put up…) at Weird NJ. Every time we see a movie there, I feel bad for the poor woman – trapped for eternity between an ugly mix of highway/business road and a lot of movies she can’t get in to see, with her gorgeous river valley view completely obliterated by ugly build-ups.
Bethany says: Wow, the story of Mary’s grave is very cool! It is a little sad, I guess, that you can’t see the river from where she is anymore, but in a way having her grave end up where it did gave her, and the story of her love, a sort of immortality they might not otherwise have had.
I feel completely cheated that we don’t have random graves around here. I adore cemeteries. And I adore weird stuff.
I feel oddly for those buried there, though. I think it would have been more proper to move them to a real cemetery – maybe put up a playground to honor them in that spot or something.
Totally crazy, but that’s the way things go now, I guess…
That is one of the most interesting stories I have heard in a long time. I am totally fascinated by old cemeteries so this story totally caught my eye.
I feel bad for them. No one should have to end their days by a Fashion Bug.
I was wondering about the pictures when I saw them in your flickr. I’ve never heard of a graveyard in a strip-mall.
Wow. Those strip malls really DO have everything, don’t they?
Hi I have been lurking for a little while and wanted to pop in and say hi. I also live in Maryland and my mom lives in Waldorf and she has an old cemetery in her back yard from the 1800′s and the family which we know dont come visit at all. I have always loved having it back there growing up we used to plant flowers and were in charge of keeping the grass cut.
I find this kinda neat. It is similar to some of the cemeteries that Hubby and I visited in Bermuda. I would love to see what the land was like around the cemetery before the strip mall was put in.
Two things I thought of as I read this post – first of all, there is a cemetery in the middle of the parking lot for the Buffalo Bills stadium. I think it is something that happens more often than we think. Second, you mentioned the name Hammett. In Erie, PA, the big hospital is Hammett Memorial. I wonder if the family is the same?
Wow! My first thought was that a woman who loved to shop must have requested to be buried near the Fashion Bug! Then I saw that the tombstones were so old. What a curious thing to see. Great post!
Cool! How very pretty and peaceful. But I wouldn’t want to be the bagger retrieving stray carts late at night!
I’ve never seen anything like this before. Looks like the stores sprang up around it!! I’m not going to do a whole Poltergeist post about what must happen in the stores when no one is there. I’ll just say that it is very cool and tranquil looking and leave it at that. :)
That’s progress for ya, right? :)
I suppose you could kill two birds if you needed to do a grave-rubbing and pick up a skirt at Fashion Bug.
The more I look at those pictures, though, my thought (like Aileen’s) is that it looks like a nice, peaceful spot. Not like I’m about to pull up a lawn-chair or anything, but nice none-the-less.