Sitting on a Rock Wall

So I was sitting in the cemetery today. 

Great way to start a blog post. Let's rewind a bit.

It was pretty cold and midday so I stopped at Crawdaddy's food truck and picked up a bowl of gator chili with a scoop of Voodoo Pimanese and trucked it towards my favorite quiet lunch spot.

Sidebar: today I learned that Walgreen's at the corner of Turner McCall and Martha Berry has the same glass bottles of Coke that Foster's Mill Store sells but they don't have wooden floors, no antique Coke box and if you try to open your bottle on the front of their cooler the manager will throw you out in the street.

So it goes.

Back to the serious stuff. Ok, back to this entry anyway.

So I'm sitting there with Augustus Wright eating reptile meat, beans and cheese that may or may not be cursed. Judge Wright died in 1891. That might explain why he didn't have much to say. So I pull up my music and listen to some Allman Brothers. They wrote most of their music in Rose Hill Cemetery, so I found the selection appropriate.

So I'm sitting on the top of the stone wall with lichens growing on the capstone next to me. I'm eating my chili and drinking vanilla Coke from a plastic bottle and plotting revenge against the poor unsuspecting Walgreen's manager while feeling the "cold wind blowin' through my achin' bones". A van load of sightseers drove past with that all too familiar "look at the weirdo eating lunch in the cemetery" look on their faces. I waved with my plastic spoon and mumbled something about tourists that only the judge could hear. It must not have been very funny. He didn't laugh.

It's only a few more feet to the top of the hill and no one is going to stop long with a weirdo on the loose so the van comes back by soon and faster than it went up. I waved again.

Oh well.

But then I bag up my trash and stand up to walk around to tell the judge goodbye. There's a flash at the corner of my eye and I turn to see a cyclist zipping down the hill. Now where did he come from? He didn't go up the hill. I've been sitting here the whole time. I noticed he was glancing back over his shoulder, looking at me a lot like I was looking at him - each of us wondering what kind of weirdo would...never mind.

In closing, if you haven't had Crawdaddy's gator chili with Voodoo Pimanese, you need to. Their po boys are awesome as well. And the bread pudding with the rum sauce. Tell you what...if it comes out of that trailer, it's good. Go eat something.

Myrtle Hill is a great place for a quiet lunch. But go visit Von Gammon, John Billups or Calvin King. The Judge is spoken for. Oh, First Lady Ellen Wilson likes company too. And if you do visit Mr. King, don't bring banana ice cream. His wife, Fannie, is not a fan of it.

*Myrtle Hill Cemetery has a mobile app available in Android and iOS formats. The app is a great source of information on this beautiful historic cemetery. You can find the app in the App Store or wherever Android users find apps.