Flowering dogwood and hush puppies

The brick gateway to Oakland Cemetery in Atlanta, GA, founded in 1850.

It may be odd, but my family spends a lot of time in graveyards.

The first stop on any family vacation is a trip to the local cemetery. We go to outdoor movies at Hollywood Forever, tromp through the myriad types of final resting places in Colma, CA, and I have a long list of famous writers, poets, musicians and actors whose graves I want to visit.

When my kids were little, we hit the burying grounds in Jacksonville, Oregon, a National Historic Place, (yes, the whole town), and spent a few hours wandering around. Then we went into the museum, and were able to read about the town's residents whose headstones we had just seen.

The marker of Margaret Mitchell Marsh and her husband, other Mitchells are on the back side. Devotees have left Mardi Gras beads, pennies and rocks, a custom adopted from Jewish funeral tradition.

So when I go to Atlanta, I knew that I wanted to see where Margaret Mitchell was buried. Not that I am such a big fan, but Gone With the Wind is iconic Americana, and I read Peachtree Road, by Anne Rivers Siddons. In the book, a young women has sex on the Pulitzer Prize winner's grave, and she and her friend speculate about how shocked the dead woman would have been about it.

Jasper Newton Smith oversaw work on his own mausoleum built in 1906. The artist gave him a cravat, and Smith, who hated neckties, made him chisel it off. He moved into the space in 1918. 

The Richards mausoleum, built in the 1880s, is the final resting place of Robert Richards (1830-1888), who opened the first bookstore in Atlanta before going into banking. In the background is the skyline of Atlanta.

What I didn't expect was that Mitchell would rest in such a lovely Victorian garden cemetery, and that it would be so exclusive. It's not that only the rich rest there, because there are plenty of paupers as well, but rather that all the plots were sold by 1884.

According to Phil Hulst, the volunteer in the gift shop, there are still about 15 interments a year at Oakland, usually in family plots, although the City of Atlanta owned some of the spaces.

Retired educator Phil Hulst volunteers
at the Oakland Cemetery Gift Shop.

There are many distinct areas in the cemetery, since the South was still segregated. There is an African American and Jewish section, as well as a potter's field and an area for Confederate soldiers, with rows and rows of identical headstones under the shade of flowering dogwood trees.

In the center of the cemetery lies the Lion of Atlanta, a huge stone lion with a spear in his side and the legend "Unknown Confederate Dead." It was donated by the Atlanta Ladies Memorial Association to honor Civil War casualties.

The whole place is beautiful in the spring, a riot of flowers, flowering dogwood, huge magnolia trees (not flowering yet), and shrubs. It is quiet, even though it is bordered by a main thoroughfare on one side. Hulst tells a woman who is slightly scandalized by the fact that Oakland is the site of many weddings, that it is a Rural Garden Cemetery, and that Victorians saw cemeteries more like parks.

Hulst is quick to point out that these folks who choose to be married in Oakland are not goths, or people into the occult. Actually, they are probably more interested in history.

–––

The Lion of Atlanta, erected in 1894 to honor the
Unknown Confederate Dead.

I wandered around for about four hours, using the cellphone tour of the African American sections, and admiring the foliage and the variety of markers. I saw many headstones carrying symbols I had only seen in books, like Stories in Stone: A Field Guide to Cemetery Symbolism and Iconography. 

The marker of Willie Wayne Farris,
aged 22 months. The stump is a symbol
of a life cut short, the dove of purity and peace.

I was sweating in the warm spring air from the humidity. I leaned up against a stone wall, and pulled my hand away quickly. It has been years since I lived in Texas, and I had completely forgotten about chiggers, those obnoxious, almost microscopic bugs that are everywhere in the South.

Beat, I decided to go across the street for dinner before catching a cab back to my hotel. The Six Feet Under pub was jumping on this Friday night, with a huge selection of draft beer and funky decorations. I sat at a counter that had a view of Oakland. The fried shrimp basket was great, and the waitress was surprised when I asked to substitute hush puppies for their freshly made potato chips. 

"You already get four hush puppies. You want eight?" she said incredulously. I told her that where I came from, we don't have hush puppies, and I need to get my fill while I'm here.

I'd love to go back, because Oakland does a variety of events at the Cemetery. "Tunes from the Tombs," a weekend of music and spirits, is a fundraiser for the Historic Oakland Foundation in May, and "Sunday in the Park: A Victorian Festival" where people come dressed in period costume is in October. Halloween weekend, there are tours, where volunteers dressed as people buried at the cemetery tell visitors about their lives. Go to www.oaklandcemetery.com for more information.

The Six Feet Under pub, with Oakland Cemetery headstones in the foreground. The shrimp
and hush puppy basket is amazing. (Apologies to Huell Howser.)