The Laundry, and...

Laundry Day!  But first we have to wake up.

 Rrringg!  Riinnngggg! It’s the phone. Who’s phone? My phone. Then get it.

Hello?  TAMMI!!??  Mona, it’s Tammi Boatman and she’s in Memphis at her daughter’s with the new baby, Katie Bug!

And so tomorrow we meet Tammi, one of the leaders at our former church, Hope United Methodist in Douglassville, PA, for lunch at the Arcade Restaurant on South Main, across from one of Tammi’s and my favorite spots: The Memphis Railroad Museum!

YES. There is a SIX TRACK Rail Line under the
1852 entrance bridge to Elmwood Cemetery

As for today, the laundry will wait till this evening. We are heading for the cemetery.  Yes, we slept in one for several nights last week, but today we are going to tour one of the most historic in the southland.  Elmwood Cemetery was founded in 1852 when a group of Memphis businessmen each put $500.00 together and bought a 40 acre plot of rolling hills about two miles south of the city line.

  

They needed to consolidate two older cemeteries , one built right next to where we are going to dine with Tammi tomorrow, under the present Central Railroad Station (and museum). They saw the future of their city in a growing population, which would of course mean a growing need for burial plots. 

Little did they know how much they would need those new plots.  After the Civil War Elmwood grew to 80 acres. And after the two yellow fever epidemics of the 1870’s it included mass graves of more than a thousand victims.

The cemetery provides you with a CD for your car (they are moving to MP3 format soon) which aligns with a very interesting, approximate 90 minute auto tour of the most interesting carriage roads of the park.  I call it a park for that truly is what it is.  In fact, it is a registered arboretum, with hundreds of different shrubs and trees, a lovely small picnic area, and room for people of all ages to ride, walk, or run.  Just not faster than 5 mph.

Among the more interesting graves to Mona and I were:

E.H. Crump.  Longtime Memphis Mayor and Tennessee Democratic Party Boss through the 19210's, 30's, and 40's.

E.H. placed his miniature 'Washington Monument' near the entrance bridge well before he died.  He liked to picnic under it with his family in the summer.

But he didn't like the pigeons defecating from the top down its sides so he had a stone mason sharpen the angle and the tip of the top so no bird could stand on it.

Interesting note: His family intermarried with the local Pidgeon family sometime after his death and today... his obelisk is surrounded by Pidgeons.

Virginia Bethel Moon was one of the south's most ardent spies.  From the time the Union Army took Memphis in 1862 till almost the end of the war she kept a stable of beau's treating her to parties and dances, all the while she was gleaning military information from them to pass on to Confederate General Nathan Bedford Forrest who kept active in the rural areas around her city.

She lived into her nineties but never dropped her love for 'HER' south.

 Mattis Stephenson was newly arrived at Memphis when the yellow fever struck the city the first time. She chose to assist the doctors, clergy, and nurses who risked all to try and help the sick and dying.

Unfortunately she, like so many of the others who wanted to help, soon ended up in her own permanent home in Elmwood, today marked by a community donated stone.

For she had come to Memphis after being jilted at the altar by her husband to be back in Illinois. She had heard that serving others helped to heal yourself.

But she died penniless, and so those she helped found and marked the place we find her mortal remains to this day. Though some paranormal 'experts' say her troubled spirit walks the moon lit lanes of Elmwood to this day.  Well, if her troubled soul is walking, I'm thinking there's a traffic jam on those old one way carriage roads that snake all over the cemetery when the moon comes up.  From the 300 plus slaves buried in unmarked graves to the over 1,000 Sultana Steamship disaster union soldier victims, most just returning from the hell of Andersonville Prison (later moved to the National Cemetery in Memphis) to trhe over 1,000 fever taken souls this place must be a regular Grand Central Station at night!

Speaking of Central Station, we can't wait to see you tomorrow at the Arcade Tammi!

Memphis' oldest ongoing restaurant- 1919. Elvis ate here!

And now... the laundry.

-Ken