"Is Cheney Behind This, Too?"

I just got the word, gang. Are you ready?
Try this on for size: Nobody else can make their penultimate trip to New York City.
Imagine! Certainly, this is a watershed of sorts; a point of "no-return."
LIke saying from now on, you will pay deposits on return bottles but the deposits are so high, you can't afford them!
Lucky that my father in law made it just inside the window.. And my aunts. And a few cousins
on my wife's side.
Yes, my friends, believe it or not, in the City that never sleeps, those who want to sleep can't. The cemeteries are full. Yes, that's right, the cemeteries are full! Can you imagine such a thing?
There is a cemetery in the heart of Brooklyn where virtually everybody is buried from Leonard Bernstein to Civil War generals and just about everyone in between--from famous actors to well known politicians. In fact, there are so many famous people buried at Woodlawn cemetery that they actually give tours. It is actually an interesting way to spend the day...
there are these huge magnificent tombs and estuary and pocket size lakes and hillsides all around on this piece of high land with rolling hills that inevitably slopes to Manhattan harbor below...
But there is no more room there for anyone whether you're a king or a mafia chief and I know of at least one of those buried there...Whether you make a million or a billion, you still can't buy your way in. When the ground is sold, it is sold and that is it. Now, that may not seem like much of a big deal to someone from outside. But there are those who will draw parallels to the area code fiasco when they wanted to add three new area codes to 212 the traditional New York City area code after they gave up on the names like Virginia, Murray Hill and Sacramento. There were riots! People's social lives changed. If you were not in 212, you were simply g.u. (geographically undesirable.) And that was the end, my friend. You would never go out again! Now, even if you are a zillionaire, you will have to be buried in Queens which is like Limbo if you're a dyed in the wool New Yorker~ Buried in Queens? Couldn't have amounted to much will be the resounding comments that will reverberate through history. Queens, of course, is the Borough of diversity and cemeteries. There are 90 ethnic groups and each of them has a restaurant on Steinway Street. And there are cemeteries everywhere.
This, of course, is bad news for my friend Pat who was in charge of all of the bodies shipped to New York from Florida by train...Yes, there really was someone who did that job. Pat used to make sure that all of those who had gone to Florida to escape the cold would wind up in their predesignated final resting place for all Eternity. He used to say that they would go down vertical and come back horizontal. And Pat was good at it, too. I would kid around with him from time to time teasing him as to whether they were offering any two-fers but we can't do that anymore because everyone who is no one in the hierarchy of the dearly departed can no longer be finicky about where they wind up.

It is Queens or the high way, buddy boy!

Of course, this changes things for a lot of people who were planning everything else in their lives except their final resting place assuming that getting a place in Manhattan or Brooklyn would be no big deal. But with the iron curtain descending across Brooklyn, it is now a whole new ball game. Of course, there are always alternatives. I think I like the solution Scotty came up with. They blasted his ashes into space where perhaps a million years from now he may become the building block for a new generation. Who knows? It's kind of inspiring to think about that kind of immortality; almost what Spock got involved in in Genesis....but, hey, Doc and the Captain managed to bail Mr. Spock out before he became solyent green. That, of course, is another solution but I don't know whether I'm ready to be Mr. Fun in the Sun one day and somebody's nutrients the next. It kind of leaves me cold if you know what I mean.

Anyway, just when things were kind of looking predictable, this happened. Somewhere along the line, I am sure Dick Cheney had something to do with it. I never trust a man who spends most of his waking life under ground. Anyway, we just need to remain vigilant!

Les Aaron
THe Ubiquitous Flying Blue Blog: www.lesaaron.blogspot.com