O for a longer lens ... and a longer day
That's Springwood Cemetery in downtown Greenville, South Carolina ... a nearly 150-year-old grand dame sporting an elegant pearly mantle of over 7,500 pale, inviting tombstones.
The earthly remains of another 2,600 souls are safely interred beneath her generous (albeit temporarily winter-brown) grass skirts without benefit of grave markers.
And despite the fact that I've been in and out of downtown Greenville for years, until last Thursday I didn't even know La Belle Springwood existed.
See, what happened was this. On Thursday afternoon I received an assignment to cover two depositions in Greenville for the next day.
As is my wont, I hustled onto Google Earth to draw a bead on the exact coordinates of my destination.
(When I know I'll be working in a highrise office tower, very little is left to chance. For example, I won't even crank my auto until I've established where I'll be parking on the other end. Because if it's in a multi-level parking garage -- which I hate -- I allow a little extra time for getting lost recovering from the dizziness that attends locating an empty parking spot not reserved for one of those "lucky" enough to park there five days a week, finding a route out of the maddening concrete maze, then wending my way via two or more elevators to the designated suite of offices, and on time, which for me means early.)
No sooner had I keyed in the address when up went my grave-dar because, lo and behold, clicking on an aerial view of the subject highrise office building using Google better-than-GPS Earth and Maps, what do I see stretching, yawning invitingly, directly across the street?
What I see is a ginormous cemetery.
Mentally, I immediately place it in the (m)oldy-but-goody category. A true formal pre-Civil War burial ground with a massive stone-and-wrought iron gate giving onto acre upon acre of names and dates, with wide paved lanes intersecting fields of tombstones in all sizes, and towering obelisks and bulky monuments and graven tablets and granite vaults and solemn watchful angels and iconic crosses and the mournful romance peculiar to such deliciously lugubrious real estate.
You know! The sort of place I'm always dying to explore.
How in the sam hill, I thought, could I have missed this supersized bone orchard smack dab in the middle of downtown, when you consider all the times I've buzzed in and out of Greenville over the last ten years?
It's a mystery.
Finding that a sunny and warmish -- if windy -- day was forecast for Friday in the upstate, and anticipating that we'd wrap up the depos by mid-afternoon at the latest, I packed my camera and my graving shoes.
(Actually I forgot my sturdy trusty graving shoes at home, having set them down at the last minute beside the cabinet that I opened to retrieve a few CDs for the trip, and having walked right off without them, but in the final analysis, I regret to say it didn't matter.)
So on Friday I was up with the wee birdies preparing my own remains for viewing and by eight o'clock I was nosing my car onto I-26 westbound. Fortunately for me they hadn't moved Greenville. I was there in under ninety minutes.
Due to flawless execution of my own expert Internet reconnaissance (knowledge is power and power is time and time is money!), I parked effortlessly and, within five minutes, was setting up movable shop in the showy window-walled tenth-floor conference room of a quasi-chandelier law firm.
Please Lord, remind me not to yawn! It would be most unprofessional if not downright rude.
(Law firms -- no matter how opulent -- ceased to enthrall me sometime during the first Clinton adulteration administration.)
I got organized and was in the stage where I decide whether to go for a cup of their coffee (they had a Keurig so I was briefly tempted but in the end I opted out, having upon waking used my beloved Bodum Chambord French Press to prepare my customary single cup of hot, strong, fresh Folgers Black Silk, liberally laced with pre-warmed real half and half, no funny flavors, no fat-free nonsense).
I had a Diet Coke instead.
Wandering a few feet over to the plate glass affording a view eastward toward the mountains, I was about to wave "Hi Mom!" (for my mother lives a scant ten miles away in that direction) when I thought to myself, that great big cemetery must be around here somewhere ...
Uhm, yes ... yes it was. When my eyes focused I realized the whole thing was sprawled at my feet.
I momentarily felt like a doofus but that's a familiar feeling so it's easily dismissed, and I did, because I had bigger fish to fry.
Namely, to grab the Nikon D3100 and begin wishing and hoping that, even though I'd left my graving shoes at home, I'd have time for at least a short stroll on the lanes, which were empty and calling to me.
I took a moment to snap a few before the room began filling with lawyers and plaintiffs and defendants (oh my) and I was obliged to arrange my smile so as to appear just interested enough to get the day's job done, but not sufficiently invested to devote even a brain cell's worth of concern to the eventual outcome.
I zoom-zoomed as much as possible on the alluring gravestones so enticingly near and yet so annoyingly far.
(With the Nikkor 18-200mm VR lens Mr. Jim and Miz Donna have advised me to buy -- which piece of equipment I am sad to report I do not yet have -- I could've read those puppies even without my graving shoes!)
Note to self: be patient.
It was soon time to administer an oath to a witness who would commence to prevaricate complain embroider whine testify ad nauseam, seemingly ad infinitum, all the while employing a mixed bag of childishly histrionic body language -- including but not limited to much eye-rolling, sighing, and exaggerated head-and-shoulder sagging -- meant to convey contempt for the proceedings at hand, which always amazes me when you consider that if it weren't for the fact that this very person saw fit to sue others for various and sundry grievances both real and imagined, none of us would be there in the first place and the answers to these two-thousand-or-so onerous and intrusive questions could remain shrouded in the mists of what-might-have-been-except-someone-was-smart-enough-to-avoid-it, for all eternity.
Let's pull over and park here for a mo, shall we?
In the annals of civil litigation, for a court reporter there is no more dream-within-a-nightmare scenario than that of being retained to report depositions in a case revolving around new construction -- whether it be of a dog house or an edifice designed to challenge the architectural relevance of the Taj Mahal.
Because what you have is people who spent at least one-third more than they could afford to build a five-to-ten-thousand-square-foot house (with a de rigueur four-to-six-car garage) either fronting on water or, at the very least, situated on a lot that would make a postage stamp look spacious, within a mucky-muck subdivision that hobbles its residents with a list of HOA-administrated rules that would make Barack Obama's Healthcare bill look like a milk-and-bread shopping list, just so those who "live" there may secure bragging rights amongst their friends, neighbors, and acquaintances and/or keep up with the proverbial Joneses, who in fact could care less.
Then, finding their little corner of residential heaven is going to cost way more than either they or their banker anticipated and they're destined to be buried in draconian debt up to their justifiably-furrowed brows until Judgment Day and beyond, said once-wealthy landowners begin sniveling because a drywall nail popped or a slate shingle was high by a sixteenth of an inch or a truss was left floating or their dwelling was placed three feet closer to the street and the facade angled six degrees more southward than they'd envisioned when planning their own personal hell on earth dream home.
It has to be somebody's fault! No one should be forced to live this way. This is America! Land of the free and home of the litigation-prone. So they lawyer up and sue every contractor who ever drove his battered pickup past the jobsite, much less set foot on it.
Thousands of hours of excruciatingly boring and ultimately-leading-nowhere testimony ensues. The truth took a hike when the first shovelful of dirt was moved and is not likely to be heard from again.
And that's where I and my ilk enter the dream-within-a-nightmare. It's a nightmare because of the reasons I've just enumerated, and about sixteen dozen more just like them. You don't want to know.
It's a dream because invariably you end up with lots of pages and not one, not two, but several copy attorneys who will most likely buy them, and that means more money for no more work.
So I guess it's a wash. Normally I take it in stride because, when you think about it, unlike the litigious nouveau poor homeowners, I have no choices. In for a penny, in for a pound.
But when a breathtakingly beautiful cemetery is enticing you from ten floors below on a springlike day in January and all you want is to haul your camera down there and walk in the gorgeous clear sunlit air, it's difficult.
In due time my echoing tummy threatened to render me a trifle truculent for the circumstances. I feared if I were forced to endure another syllable of pointless palaver about non-plumb walls and inadequate drains and contractors so stupid and unethical it's a wonder they can find their tool belts with both hands, a flashlight, a detailed map and a dedicated search party, I would locate a hammer and begin to pound on some heads of my own.
Before hunger-induced violence became necessary, we broke for a half-hour lunch.
Back at ground level and a few steps away from the office tower's doors there was a deli where I paid four dollars for a sandwich of pimento cheese on pumpernickel. That's life in the big city. From home I had brought half an apple and it would serve as dessert. But then the deli proprietor instructed me to take a cookie from a see-through acrylic breadbox near the till, so I did as I was told.
Chocolate chip.
The name of this particular highrise office tower is One Liberty Square. In the spirit of southern urban hospitality, there is a cobblestoned courtyard with a couple of benches and a fountain. Last Friday the fountain was filled to the brim with water but there was no movement. Still as glass.
I sat on a bench in the sun, listening to Mozart and Bach lending a sophisticated ambience from speakers hidden in bushes behind me, and ate my lunch.
(If you ever have occasion to order a sandwich from the Manna Deli at One Liberty Square in Greenville, don't get the pimento cheese. Unless you happen to love mayonnaise more than life itself. Trust me on this one.)
When I walked in from the parking garage that morning, I'd noticed that embedded amongst the cobblestone pavers of the courtyard are numerous engraved tablets bearing quotes about liberty.
A myriad of quotes disturbingly germane to the current social, economic, and political situation we face in America this very election cycle. Every citizen should memorize them.
The deposition droned on for three additional hours after lunch. On a break I suggested to one of the defense attorneys -- always a jolly lot, defense lawyers -- that instead of using controversial waterboarding at Gitmo, we should simply force enemy combatants to watch day-long videos of construction testimony. And take notes.
They'll give up Osama Bin Laden, his pet parakeet, Al Queda, their pet hamsters, and every falafel stand between here and Allah's doorstep, I pointed out. Like taking candy from a baby.
The attorney laughed but I think he was just being nice.
We went off the record after four. The wan winter sun had nearly completed its arc over charming Greenville and shadows were lengthening once again in Springwood Cemetery. I took a few last pictures before packing to go.
It was past four thirty before I reached my car. Too late to go a-graving; I had just enough time to get home before it fell dark.
Must abide by the terms of my parole!
As I drove away, out of the parking garage, past the iron gates and silent tombs of Springwood and the hopes and dreams that lie buried there forever, I comforted myself with a thought I often have when there's not time to do what I want, but only time to do what I must.
To wit:
The cemetery and its inhabitants aren't going anywhere. I'll come back another day to take pictures of the graves of folks who couldn't have imagined the times in which we live. The sort, lucky or unlucky, they did not survive to see.
I'll do that, I promised myself, providing time does not run out for me as it did for them. Which of course I know it certainly will.
And as my little gray car joined the heaving stream of traffic back onto I-26 -- eastbound at last, headed home -- thinking as always of my children and grandchildren, I breathed a silent prayer:
Please Lord, may liberty outlive me. May it outlive them.