Grave Robbing 101

As the temperatures start to dip up here and the leaves begin their yearly change of clothes, I am reminded of a story.

Forty-five years ago, a buddy of mine asked me to help him rob a grave.

I had been out of the Army for about a year and had nothing else going on in my life, so I said, "Sure. What the heck." Oh, how many unpleasantrys we begin with those words.

Actually, we had been kicking the idea around for a while; sitting in the basement of my parents old, rented Victorian style house in central New Hampshire; the room shrouded in Holmsian-like pipe smoke. Empty beer bottles stood in yeastey disarray on a blackish-brown, thick oak table.

I had gone through Kerouac, Dickens and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Jack Vances' "Dying Earth" lay, flaccid, on a leather covered chair, next to Leibers storys of Fafahrd and The Grey Mouser. "Mad" magazines lay scattered about.('Humor in a Jugular Vein') copies of "Help", and paper-backs of Harvey Kurtzmans' work were also were piled in the corners, along with 1940's editions of Life.

Plus, of course, strategically hidden Playboys.

Flamenco guitar music floated from my record player.

Oh yeah. And candles in empty chianti bottles. Lots of candles, usually lit. Even in the glare of a mid-summer day. We pulled the curtains.

So, anyway, Bill says. "I know a graveyard deep in the woods not too far from here". His eyes glittered. "Wouldn't it be cool to dig up an old skeleton and use the skull to put a candle on?" Copies of Poe leered at us from my bookshelves.

Now, the word 'ghoul' never entered my mind. 'Igor', perhaps. And even the possibility that morally we would be treading on the edge of gibbering madness. Nothing like that. Just......what fun to rob a grave!

So, nighttime came, and as I said, it was just about this time of year. Cool. Crisp. And Bill showed up in his red Volkswagen. A real Volkswagen. Not the tin-cup mirages they sell now-a-days. With shovels and picks in the back seat. And flashlights, equiped with red cellophane. "So as not to mess up our night vision." Bill said. He was the brains of the group.

Off we rattled into the early fall twilight, hearts gay, although we were straight. Out onto a backroad. Up into the foothills of the White Mountains we puttered as the darkness of a New England night bled accross the headlights. Oh, this was going to be fun! Thnk of what we can tell our friends, years from now.

The idea that we could be telling our friends from the inside of a jail-cell never crossed our minds.

"Hey, check this out." Bill reached down and turned off the headlights as we sped through the stygian (a word that is used by Leiber) New England darkness. There was a full moon that night. We were riding in a Volkswagen at about 60 miles an hour through twisting, impossible dirt country roads with no lights. And just the white light of the moon shining flat in front of us.

How cool.

Although.......at this point the thought that I might be headed towards my own demise DID cross my mind. A few years in Korea does that to a guy. I suggested, in a somewhat subdued voice, that Bill might want to slow down. "Hell, no" He guffawed at my skittishness and floored it.

We reached the old grave yard, of which there are hundreds in the back-roads of New Hampshire and Vermont, a-sprout with chalk white tomb-stones and surrounded by moss covered stone walls that meander off into acres of new-growth forest. Hundreds, if not thousands lie forgotten and forlorn among the pine and oak Many are just big enough to hold a generation or two of a family that at one time farmed the surrounding land. They wrenched a living from the soil, spotted with gray-green stones dropped in the last glaciers wake. Then, when the west opened up after the Civil War and provided a less demanding land to struggle a living from, they picked up, left the house and all those before and followed the sun. This was one of those grave yards.

It was miles from any occupied dwelling, hidden deep down a road I had never thought existed, and I knew most of the surrounding area pretty well.

We turned off the key, the head-lights were already off miles ago and piled out, trembling with excitement. "Shut up, man. Your making too much noise with the tools." Bill hissed at me. We fumbled toward the gate, the moon watching down and the crickets a greek-chorus in the background. Frankly, it was years ago, and I don't even remember the name of the guy whos' grave we finally approached. It was a guy. I was pretty sure of that. The idea of robbing a womans grave just didn't seem right to us.

Morality amongst grave robbers.

We started digging and I never realized how hard the ground was. We kept digging. And waiting.every now and then. Liistening. Was that a car? No. Dig. Chop. Dig.

That was a car! No. No it wasn't. Dig. Shovel. Pick-axe. Pause. Sweat. Dig some more. The night crawled by.

"Bill." I wiped my forehead and looked at him. We had barely dug down six inches. "This is too much like work."

He looked at me. "Yeah." He paused. "Much too much like work." He suddenly siffened. "Headlights!" He yelped. We grabbed everything and ran towards the car. We clattered it all inside and Bill started the engine. Off into the night we sped.

There was no car. There was no grave robbed. There was just a couple of nerdy-jerks who thought they would be cool. All they ended up doing was raising a few blisters and almost wetting their pants.

To this day, I realize that Igor was a better man then me. Hump and all.

"Hump? What hump?"

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