Months ago, The Eagle and I were driving down the street when she mentioned to me that she would like to go inside Fairview Cemetery (on 26th street in Colorado Springs). She said this with a degree of trepidation, which makes sense, I suppose. Most people are unlikely to want to wander an old cemetery on a bright sunny day. But, I am not most people. I am me and I am quirky, just like The Eagle. I promised her that we would go.
And we did.
While we were there, I told The Eagle about the walks that my mother and I would take in the cemetery near our house – the one that she’s buried in now. My mother loved other people, but feared their judgment, so, when choosing a place for her daily health walks, she chose the cemetery. The cemetery featured trees and grass, just like in a real park, but lacked the irritating crowds and half-dressed women who brought out her insecurities. Being 14 at the time, I thought nothing of this…although the thought occurs that I would have been old enough to consider it odd. Whatever. I thought nothing of it. Anyhow, this was a part of my life from the time that I was 14 until I moved to Colorado. Even after my mother died, I would still walk in the cemetery and follow the old routes whenever I went to visit her.
Obviously, I cannot speak for The Eagle, but it did seem that this was something of a new concept for her. Which makes sense. Although it had not occurred to me that this was an unusual thing to do, I assume it is.
Anyhow, walking in a cemetery is a uniquely peaceful experience. There’s little noise there – nothing except for the occasional bird and the leaves dancing in the wind – and the grounds are generally well-tended and serene. The few people that you do see are always quiet, and usually respectful. In the years that I’ve spent in cemeteries, I can only think of two instances when I saw something untoward occur. It’s a place for rest. A place of respect. This is not a quality that is easy to find in our lives, so The Eagle and I decided that we should return.
This was when we discovered Evergreen Cemetery.
Evergreen Cemetery is only about a mile from our home. I had known that it was there – you can see it from the freeway bypass – but I’d never entered it before. I didn’t even know where the entrance was. But, bored with our regular Sunday routine, we decided to find it one day and ended up stumbling upon one of the largest cemeteries I’ve ever seen. The roads and paths in the cemetery wind around so far that it is easy to get lost, but they all seem to lead back to a small, brick chapel with humble stained-glass windows and undisturbed cobwebs in the corners.
We walked through one day after a storm – a tree had been uprooted and had fallen. The Eagle tried to lift it off the stone to no avail. The sky was bright blue, and the clouds had all cleared away. Fresh grass was in the air, and if you looked up you would never had known the significance of where you were. It’s amazing how much life there is in a cemetery.
After our first forays into Evergreen, we decided to do some research about the land and its history. A quick search on Google revealed the following information:
- It is the oldest cemetery in town
- It is run by the City of Colorado Springs
- They host an annual walking tour
They host an annual walking tour!!!
Honestly, I wasn’t even sure what that meant, but I was certain that I wanted to be a part of it. Because it is an annual walking tour. Of a cemetery. How could I not want to be a part of that? It was scheduled for September 18th, which was only about a week away.
I was excited…. Right up until we entered the cemetery – me holding a wad of one-dollar bills that smelled like pickles and The Eagle with an enormous camera around her neck – and had to figure out the social protocols of attending a cemetery tour. I have only recently mastered the social protocols of shopping at the grocery store, and had no concept of the protocols of a cemetery walking tour. Consequently, I panicked.
“What do we do? What do we do at a cemetery tour?” I asked.
“Oh, God! Oh, God, there’s other people!” I hissed.
The Eagle agreed that these were valid concerns.
We cautiously walked up to the chapel, which we had never seen open before. Inside it is clean and efficient and not noticeably different from any other chapel until you look down the hole by the stairs, which holds a coffin lift. With a coffin on it. Ready to be lifted. Downstairs there was a morgue with brick closets that each had three steel shelves – the highest at least six feet in the air. There, a man stood holding an electronic beeping device of some sort that was measuring the electromagnetic pulses. Several people were there asking questions.
“What kind of spirits do you see?” Asked one woman.
“Are the ghosts only in those shadows?” Asked another.
“How did people in the 1800s get coffins onto the top shelves?” Asked The Eagle.*
Returning to the brilliant sun outside, we paid our money and went on the self-guided tour.
There were nine stations spaced throughout the cemetery, and we were given a map and guide with our admission. At each station there were one or two volunteers who took on the personalities of people who had been buried in the cemetery, or at least had come through Colorado Springs at one point or another. Each volunteer was well-versed in the life of their character, and they responded to questions in that persona. We were able to meet nearly all of them – including a random young couple who walked arm-in-arm down the paths in period dress, as though it were the most natural thing in the world to do – but only one stood out, and that was The Gambler.
I wish I remembered his character’s last name, but I only remember his first name – Luke. Luke was a real dealer in the late 1800s who lived on the gambling circuit – similar to the NASCAR circuit today. Gamblers like Luke would go from town to town on the circuit, making money by dealing cards, and would start again the next year, going on like that until they died. Luke was apparently considered something of an honest gambler, and as such, was recruited by Doc Holliday to work in the casinos in Colorado. Doc Holliday is buried north of Colorado Springs, which I had never heard before, despite living in Colorado for eight years. Anyhow, Luke taught us a game called Farro, which was the Poker of 1885.
I’ll spare you an in-depth analysis of the game, but it is fun and you should check it out. It involves predicting which cards will be drawn next in a deck. It’s possible – even encouraged – to count cards, as this allows you a better chance of an accurate guess. It’s still a guess, though. Chance definitely comes into play here, as evidenced by the fact that I managed to predict all of the last 10 or so cards, but lost all of my chips because my guesses about the order were incorrect. In a real game, Luke would have made some good money off of me.
The Eagle, on the other hand, creamed everyone. She was the only one who was able to earn back and keep any chips. Soon, people were cheering her on as she placed her bets on a handmade felted board underneath a cheap, plastic canopy in the middle of a cemetery. Here we were in a final resting place, lost in playing a game with the odd strangers who were there with us. Luke told us the rules, shared a little strategy, and cheered us on as well, all of this was interspersed with the stories of his life on circuit. He even went into detail about his horrible, horrible death, which came at the hands of a disease with a name that I’ve forgotten, but a description that will haunt me forever; “it caused all my insides to swell up. By the time I died, I had 40 pounds of fluid in my organs.”
We spent the bulk of our time with The Gambler, and needed to move quickly in order to see everything. We saw a milliner, a miner, we skipped the stoneworker, then saw the suffragette. She stood in “silent protest” while the man next to her told The Eagle and I about the long years of pain and suffering that these women endured in order to attain the right to vote. When he finished, the woman finally spoke, saying “think of these women the next time you don’t vote.” Sadly, this statement was lost on me, since I do vote. Not knowing what to say, I simply replied, “m’kay.”
It was getting late, and we had to leave.
Approximately 100 people attended that day – information we received from Luke as we passed him by a second time. This was astounding to me, and very encouraging. Cemeteries are important artifacts of history, and they personalize the people who lived so long ago. It’s important that they are not forgotten, and by visiting these places, we can breathe life into them again. When we read the names on a stone, look at the years that they lived, and think about the things that they saw, we temporarily allow them to live again and remember them – even though they are strangers. And they are worth that, because they are people who loved and were loved in return. It is important that we not let them fall away into dust.
I would avoid setting up card games there, though.
*They usually didn’t
