Everything Set for the Funeral-- Part 2

The Cemetery

We drove from Ahlgrim's (always thought this to be a very appropriate name for a funeral home) in Palatine, to Memory Gardens in Arlington Heights so Liz could sign a paper to allow the grave diggers to open the grave. Normally, we wouldn't have had to do this, but Frances is going to be buried in the same vault as her husband Amby. They are buried in a section where the coffins are stacked on one another. This then, in effect, is the opening of a grave.

There was a very interesting picture taken of Memory Garden in 1950 when it first opened. You can see Rand Road (US-12) in the very top right portion. What floored us was that there were mostly open fields in the picture. Definitely not the situation anymore; houses and stores everywhere.

The person we talked with, Jim, is about our age and was in a 1960s Chicagoland rock band called Dawn & the Nights who evidently were quite good as they toured with Paul Rever & the Raiders and he was making $2000 a week back then, quite a bit of money even now, but especially back then when gas was just around 30 cents a gallon and a new car around $2000-3,000. Unfortunately, I had never heard of them.

We went out to the grave and made sure of the style of print.

How Much Does It Cost to Dig a Hole and Fill It In?

Ideally, we would have had Frances buried on Saturday, but the funeral home would be completely bonkers with two big wakes, one with 400 people and the other with several thousand.

They usually don't do funerals on Sundays (which I didn't know). The price to open a grave during the week is $1695. On Saturday it goes to $2495 and is $3500 on Sunday. These prices reflect how much the gravediggers union gets. I think I got into the wrong business to make money.

They don't even have to dig the whole, just clear off some dirt from above the vault, lift the lid off, drop the new casket in and close it.

Plus, it is hard to get a religious person to officiate on a Sunday.

We decided to have the funeral on Monday.

The Luncheon

As we were leaving, we mentioned to Jim that we were now going to look for a place to have the luncheon. He suggested the nearby Bogies in Mt. Prospect, right across from Randhurst.

We decided to have a look. Turned out, this was the only place we had to look. They cater to a lot of funeral luncheons and even have a brochure for it. We don't expect but about twenty people in the whole funeral but can get a private room and order off the menu or from their buffet. Put a $50 deposit to hold it.

We were getting hungry and had their excellent buffet which is American on Thursdays. Mondays, it is Italian.

Snow

What is it about every time we go to Palatine and Mt. Prospect that makes it start to snow. We had a big snowfall when we went back for our 40th anniversary of going steady in December, the same with our trip to visit Randhurst one last time, and now, today, it snowed again.

Maybe the snowmobilers should ante up to pay for us to make some more visits. However, they would have to sign a codicile saying that one of them would have to come up and clear off the driveway and sidewalks.