Wednesday, July 9, 2008

You haven't lived until you see your own gravestone!!!

To keep my theme of “dead things and the places they hang out” on this little road trip. I decided to go to another cemetery. I didn’t want to show favoritism to one side of my family, as both are equally important to me, so I took on the task of finding the Brandon dead people. Apparently, William Brandon’s grave, shown in the picture, is (one of?) the oldest grave in Rowan County, NC. Though impressive, the much more interesting detail is the size of his wife’s grave. Her grave is a mere pebble sticking out of the ground. And, they could only manage to fit her initials, IB, on the gravestone. Talk about shafted! It was after seeing this that the first women’s lib movement began, though that’s never been proven.

The Thyatira Cemetery also boasts three pirates buried among the regular folk. Aledgedly, these three slimy sea scalawags escaped to Rowan county from their youthful days of piledging and killing to become farmers. Their past was revealed and here they are. I was thnking that if I ever die, which is likely, I'm definitely going to have a skull and cross bones on my gravestone. Hell, I don't even want my name on it! Just put the skull and crossbones and a cute little limerick about my womanizing and piledging and call it a day! Speaking of my own gravestone, I saw mine. Matthew Brandon. Luckily, I could barely read it. Still spooky, though.  Picture's at the bottom of the page.
Anyway, below are some pictures of the cemetery and some other graves. To continue on my Dale Trail craze, my dad and uncle took me on a Earnhardt chase. I saw his dad's grave (theme of my summer!), which had a racecar on it. Classy. Then, we pulled up to Dale's mother's house. She lives in a modest home in Kannapolis. And, I actually saw her. As we pulled up to her house at about 9 o'clock in the evening, she proceeded to get up from her porch, shut the door, lock the door, go to the window, and close the shades. What a poor sport! In fear of having a Dateline special about stalkers, we drove off in a cloud of dust as far and quickly away as we possibly could.
Anyway, after a short stint in DC, I made it to San Francisco. It's cold here! Time to go trekking.

1 comment:

dcpeg said...

You're a great story-teller, Matt. I'll look forward to more. If you're into cemeteries, you should visit Rock Creek Cemetery in Northeast DC. There are famous and infamous folk buried there and some odd and intereseting headstones, to boot.