On Friday afternoon the kids and I went on a cemetery adventure, searching for the tombstone for a guy who's name was given to us by my dad.  I realize that this might seem a strange request, an even stranger outing for the kids, but in my family, cemeteries have been a big part of our life.  Even before my dad was in a business that's part of the cemetery industry, we often visited cemeteries.  We joke that no vacation is complete without a visit to the cemetery.  It was pretty common to stop at cemeteries in other towns to look for long-gone relatives.  Or stop at cemeteries to take pictures of the famous and departed.  I remember stopping to take a picture of the tombstone of "Wild Bill" Hickock then going to the saloon where I sat facing the door and had my first sarsaparilla.

So, on Friday, we drove through the cemetery in town in search of a particular family name.  As the rain pounded down on the car, I rolled down the kids' windows a bit so they could see the headstones as we drove by.  "Look for words that start with the letter 'D'," I said.  We drove slowly down the narrow roads, and I hopped out to take a photo whenever we spotted the last name given to us by my dad.  As we were about to leave, Martin shouted that he'd found another "D" name.  I pulled over, hopped out and took a photo of the marker even though it wasn't the name we'd gone there to find.


I took this one for my dad.  Because if he had been there, I knew exactly what he'd say.  "Well, there's only one other guy with a name worse than that."  And I think you know what that is.