The following  excerpt is from  my Stonemasons journal; best way to enjoy it
is to down load and copy to read at a moment of leisure; it is about stone
work I have been doing on the Gulf coast....if not delete or wrap your fish
in it
Old Swede
The great blue sky of the Gulf glistened the air with sparkling  salt
breezes over the majestic palms and Magnolias  of the old white marbled
cemetery.
The light of this  brilliant ocean sun  shafted through  the the large leaves
 and dappled the sweat laden backs of the two old black grave diggers.
They worked the ground expertly in tandem letting pick and shovel  harmonize
with the anointed area . Their faces mirror  the steadfastness  and
resoluteness of their grim work.  Pick and dig ,pick and dig,
 as song birds serenade for fat worms in the sun ot their neat pile.
At about only three feet they  hit what they  were looking for; and called me
over from the chain fall I was working on
Peering into the earth we could see the collapsed brick vaulting in a slanted
shafts of light.of the palms..
 Looking  deeper we could  make out only that the brick fell off into a tight
 abyss of the collapsed vaulting.
A  mist of dust and damp fetid air  spirited lazily from hole in drafts  like
 ghosts from a musty cellar.
"Stand back"  I called;
and as the men stepped away I gave a few more pulls to the chain fall which
steadied the thousand pound monument  whose one side  dangled over the pit
that was  in danger of falling over in on it.
The lifting straps bit hard and the monument held; but I could see the earth
wasn't going to hold its ground for very long.
Maybe an hour, maybe twenty minuets; who knows,
we had to work fast.

I had a local brick layer who was working wall with me ; but the night before
over beers at a dock side saloon full of oil drillers shrimpers, and sweet
drawled southern girls in tight shorts he told me he didn't  work tombs.
He was  a taciturn man with the stare of  a  war veteran.
Over  a couple of shots of the Jagermiester  I got him to  loosen up and told
me a horrific tale about when he was  eight years old  he was playing in a
grave yard when he fell into a fresh cut grave that was half filled with
water with the floating body of a dead rabbit.
. All night he spent in that grave half submerged  in the cold  water;
freaked and unable to climb out .Every time he try he would sink back in with
the corpse of the rabbit.floating at eye level.
Fortunately the next day  his uncontrollable cries were heard  by  passerby
and he was saved..if you can call it that.
I was riveted.
Most guys would have spent the rest of their life in an asylum talking to
walls.
We looked at each other a long time; where I felt  moved  to tell  him my
story
 not to one better  but perhaps show he wasn't alone.
I  shared that that as a twenty year old  I was working in a mine and was
buried alive in a cave in with two men who were dead from the collapse.
When they found me I was given last rites and placed into a steel caged
gurney with  a sheet placed over my head.
I lost an eye and was six months in a body cast where I underwent three
operations  on my leg and eye.; adding that I was still complaining that I
had rocks in my head.

We laughed....such brotherhoods are painfull you search for understanding
among the living but rarely there isn't any.
We drink to the dead and to the living and try to laugh knowing you have been
given a second chance, and wonder if you are living up to it..
Outside on the dock there is only the sound of a distant surf
We watched  a lazy  crescent moon  rise late over the  Gulf  only to hug the
black  horizon  and   nestle into a  blanket of  stars under the wing of the
Southern Cross . We part in good company with the promise of future work.

The monument was now  holding over the hole  but just  so.
We made mud in a wheel barrow and grabbed the fallen brick out of the hole.
At which point my black co-workers stopped wide eyed  calling me down on all
fours for a "look see".
With the top corbel brick now gone I could see right down into the tomb.. The
shafted light from the breezy palms danced into the hole.
There was a large metal coffin in the Victorian  shape of a tapered  base for
the legs with the unusual  cut out shape for the head to rest in . It was all
rusted and had collapsed.
The skull was yawing back at me with a great set of teeth mostly intact.
Tiny spiders had nested in the eye sockets as a pair of curly bugs ran across
the gray gaping jaw .
. "Poor devil" I thought  this is his first light of day and thinks its
Judgment Day with my ugly puss looking in as the redeemer"
I joked with the guys how there was a diamond ring down here and they should
come help get it . Nothing doing.
"This is your work stone man"

The tomb was of a Swede from  Stockholm who had died in the 1850's. a large
man who had probably come to the emerging empire of the American South most
likely by ship.
A typical route was to  either land in South Carolina then ship out for the
new frontiers of New Orleans and Mobile by way of Florida and the keys.
The other route was  take the  overland trail  down the Natchez  Trace rife
with pirates and brigands in wilderness of the Creek Indians. The ship was
safer.

Cotton was king in the Antebellum South  and states like Alabama and
Mississippi were the richest in the country.
It was a land of wealth and untold opportunity and yet plagued with great
hardships and periodic  epidemic's of yellow fever (yellow jack) that
decimated the population.
With whole familys dieing in the same year.
Perhaps this was the Swedes  fate ; we will never know.

 The white regal monument had been mistakenly placed  partially right over
the head; and was in desperate lean  when we got to it with the chain fall.
 We had to work fast.
 Resting on my chest with the stone  dangling above me  the men fed me large
pavers for a base in which I could rebuild  and mud the brick.
With no time to let it set ; I straddled larger pavers strategically over
that work  to take the weight  and then infilled with rubble and dirt making
for a solid base.
Gingerly we lowered the  three part  monument; shimmed the back bite ,
released the straps,  and set to plumb. without dislodging any stone.
She held nicely.
We grouted the joints with lime putty as the mid day hour rang on the old
church bell.
A soft breeze rustled the leaves; and the old Swede could now rest in peace
as we took our lunch quietly in the shade above him.
Michael Davidon  A stonemasons journal May 2000.

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