cemetery dirt

Yes, that’s right, only $10,500 is all that I paid for this house.    Seems incredible doesn’t it.   I can’t even buy a new car for $10,500.   But this was way back in the 70’s which was a long, long time ago.   And I am sure that we all have stories of how little we paid for our first house.   This was a 3 bedroom, 1 bath home.   The two trees in the front of the house are interesting because they have sexes to them.   The tree on the left is male and does not produce fruit and the tree on the right is a female and produced an incredible amount of mulberries which I enjoyed eating.   I built that low block wall along the front of the house.   I laid the block myself.   Upon it’s back-breaking completion I knew that I never wanted to be a block layer by profession.    This wall was a long planter for flowers along the front of the house.    But I needed dirt for it.   A lot of dirt.   Here is where my story gets a little gruesome.   I got a call from a friend that I knew.   He needed some dirt for the low spots in his front yard and asked me if I could haul some dirt for him in my pick-up truck that you see in the picture.   I said “sure” but asked him where he was going to get the dirt from (this is where it gets a little gory).   He said “cemetery dirt”.   He worked in a cemetery cremating bodies in the crematory where they had a total of five ovens (I told you that it was going to get gory).    He said that when they bury a casket in the ground in the cemetery there is dirt left over equal to the size of the casket.    They take the excess dirt out to the back part of the cemetery and pile it up.    I asked if I could get some of that dirt for my large planter wall.   He said “fine” and so we spent Saturday first hauling cemetery dirt to his house and spreading it on his front yard and then hauling more cemetery dirt to my house and filling up my planter wall with it.   Enough of the gruesome stuff.   This house served me well and I had it for a total of 15 years.   I wish now that I had kept it because I will never again be able to buy a house for $15,000, even with the drop in home prices recently.   Have a nice day and remember all of those terrific low prices from our past like penny candy.    Lew