“This is our week before Christmas. Everyone wants their monument finished and set in the cemetery by May 30,” says the president of a Seattle monument company, in a Seattle PI story on the business.


While that story quotes fine poetry — “The Grave’s a fine and private place. But none, I think, do there embrace.” (Andrew Marvell, “To His Coy Mistress”) — its sidekick story regales readers with the lighter fare carved in stone:


“You can’t keep a good man down”

“I said I’d live to be 100. What happened?”

“Pardon me for not standing”

“I’d rather be in Reno”

“Charge It!” and below, “Send The Bill to Heaven”

Then there’s the story of the logger:

The sidekick story reporter interviewed Richard Meyer, who published Of Corpse: Death and Humor in Folklore and Popular Culture in 2003:

He quotes an Oregon logger who took the matter of death in his own hands, ordering his stone ahead of time so no one would spoil the fun.


It reads:


“Here under the dung of cows and sheep


Lies an old highclimber fast asleep,


His trees all topped and his lines all hung,


They say the old rascal died


Full of rum.”


Meyer interviewed the man, Paul Swank, before he died. The old-timer swore he’d ordered “bastard” instead of “rascal” — but the engraver told him he wouldn’t carve it. Meyer said he is perpetually asked how he intends to mark his own grave and admits to having a bit of fun answering the question.


As of now, he’s going with everlasting punster Mercutio, from Shakespeare’s “Romeo and Juliet”:


“Ask for me tomorrow,” saith the dying man, “and you shall find me a grave man.”

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