He Was a Lumberjack, and He Was Okay!

The absolutely best way to ensure I’m not going to find your house (or anything else) is to use the words “You can’t miss it!”  It’s obvious from today’s Odyssey excursion that there’s something about that phrase that kicks my topographagnosia into high gear and I’ll be wandering around the country for five hours.

Such was the case when I set off this morning to find “Demon’s Alley,” a.k.a. New City Road in West Milford.  The legend of Demon’s Alley is that much like the Roanoke Colony in 1587, the once inhabited (though not densely so) road became completely abandoned.  Allegedly, even meals were left on the table and clothes in the closets.  According to The Guidebook, most of the homes have been demolished, but of course there are rumors of ghosts and mysterious sounds.  Yay!

I drove over 25 miles only to find this:

Well, that was anticlimactic.  Somewhat depressed, I took some pictures of this babbling brook which sounded like an old man peeing in order to cheer myself up.

Still, it was with high hopes that I headed out to the Stone Living Room , which was supposedly only eight miles away right over the Belleville boarder.  It’s pretty much what the name suggests—a mysterious Neolithic structure resembling a living room.  No one knows why it’s there. Exactly how long it’s been there, or what it was for.  It only took a little research to find very explicit directions—there was a park there and everything.

I should mention that, according to the Wells Fargo I passed ten minutes earlier, it was only a balmy 39 degrees outside and there was snow on the ground.  I was determined to not let this thwart me, and I went to the little hut at the entrance of the park.

ME:  Could you tell me how to get to the Stone Living Room?

GUY:  Oh, it’s easy!

ME:  (enthused) Good!

GUY:  Just walk about 100 feet to the left, then you’ll see a trail on your right by a stream.  Hike two and a half miles up the mountain, and you can’t miss it.

I stared.  Two and a half miles?  Up a mountain?  Alone?  In 39-degree weather?  Are you out of your freakin’ mind?  I don’t even want to hike two and a half miles up a mountain when it’s the height of spring.  I wouldn’t do it in the winter even if I had two sherpas, a guide dog, and a yak.  The climb up would be treacherous enough, but the trek down would be worse.  I’m so dyskinetic that I can’t even walk from my bathroom to my bedroom without whacking one of my appendages.  I don’t think there’s been a day in 45 years that has gone by when I didn’t have at least one bruise on my body.

“Screw that,” I said, only I used a much ruder word.  Instead, I took some pictures of a frozen lake, which isn’t weird at all, but still pretty:

 I was a bit disheartened—I was 0 for 2 for the day, but I still had the Giordino family graves (which are shaped like a peace sign and a light bulb) in Totowa to look forward to.  As I drove out of town, I almost drove off the road because I saw this in front of a dry cleaning store:

What the hell?  Why?  Why would anyone put that in front of a dry cleaner’s?  Do the Blues Brothers have some connection with One Hour Martinizing that I don’t know about?  They wore the same suits through the entire movie—I don’t think they even washed their underwear, let alone have anything dry cleaned.

Still, I was excited to have found some bonus weirdness, especially after the disappointments of Demon's Alley and the stone living room.

Before pushing on to the fifth cemetery on my list, I decided to stop for a gnosh.  I was happy to see a Friendly's--site of many wonderful lunches with my parents when I was a kid.  There's absolutely nothing like a hamburger, french fries, and Coke from Friendly's, because they put so much syrup in the Coke that you can eat it with a fork.  I parked, and then saw this:

Oh, man.  Anyone who's around my age remembers those terrifying signs, and I actually did get a chill when I saw it.  Again, not weird, but...disturbing.

Okay, time to cheer myself up by seeing dead people!

The Totowa Cemetery in, logically, Totowa, cooperated immensely by having an actual address.  However, when the GPS told me I had reached my destination, I found myself in the middle of a burned-out ghetto—this couldn’t possibly be right.  I went to a place called “Pappy’s Texas Wiener” (Not “wieners” – “wiener,” because apparently he has only one)  and asked the waitress behind the counter.  She told me that there were, in fact, four cemeteries in Totowa alone, because there were actually more dead Totowans(?) than living ones.  That's not unlike where I live in Estell Manor, actually. According to her, none of the cemeteries in town were called simply the Totowa Cemetery.  Lovely.

I drove up and down the main drag in the ghetto for a bit longer and was then delighted to spot a monument store—I figured if anyone in the town would know where the cemetery was it would be those guys—and I was right.  It turned out that the cemetery had been renamed Laurel Grove Cemetery, which is why the wiener lady had no idea what I was talking about.  (Even cooler, by sheer serendipity, I had stopped at the same monument shop that had actually been commissioned to make the exact gravestones I was looking for—Sgobba Monuments).

Of course, Laurel Grove Cemetery was huge enough to warrant its own county, but I stuck it out, and I was rewarded by yet more bonus weirdness!  First, I found the grave of an actual lumberjack that had a log on it  (huh-huh, she said "log"):

But wait!  There's more, more, more!  As I circled around the south end, I came upon this family plot:

Holy Mary, Mother of God, look at that thing!  I suppose it’s not as freaky as if it had had a behemoth armadillo or an aardvark or a platypus or something, but it’s still very pretentious. I'm assuming that the whole family was into hunting, which is kind of odd considering their name is Charity. 

 I explored further and finally found the graves I was looking for!

The stones are carved out of black marble, and are lettered with real gold. According to The Guidebook, it was Sal Giardino’s daughter Laurie that arranged for the lightbulb tombstone to be built.  Tragically, Laurie’s younger sister Kim was killed in a motorcycle accident, and Laurie also paid tribute to her by having her tombstone designed as a peace sign.

A heavy fog was starting to set in.  It was prime zombie weather, and I wouldn’t have been surprised to see that scrawny, pale, candy-ass from Twilight come lurching out of the woods, so I decided to pack it in for the night.

Before I leave you, here is some bonus weirdness I actually ran into on Wednesday as I was coming out of a brick oven pizza place:

Wow.  Is there really a demographic for that in the central Jersey area?  Are people honestly torn between brisket and Baingan Bharta that they need to be able to satisfy both cravings at once?  And I can't help but think that anything involving curry that's cooked by Texans, or anything barbecue that's prepared by Indians just wouldn't be that authentic.  It would be like when I was in graduate school and would have "Soul Food Night," which was cooked by entirely upper-middle-class white kids.

There will be another update tonight, provided the hotel I'm at supports Blogger.  Because I really don't want to come to the McDonald's again.

Odyssey out.