Not just a number
a brief rememberance for those who deserve a name
Since I grew up in Lincoln, it’s
pretty easy for me to drive by the
place where I grew up. Not the
brand new house my mom bought
after my parents divorced, but the
smaller one that lies just at the edge
of town. Itls in a fairiy small neigh
borhood where I remember the
trees as if they are old friends. I
spent a good number of summers
climbing them and pretending to
be hidden from passers-by.
There was even a giant mulber
ry tree in the back of the alfalfa
field where my friends and I picked
berries. We filled our little baskets
that hung in front of our bicycles to
die top and rode around the neigh
borhood with purple mouths and
sticky hands.
bvery now and then 1 get the
urge to do a drive-by. Drive by my
old house, my old naming trail, the
old park with the tornado slide, my
old make-opt spots with my high
school boyfriend.
I felt like doing a drive-by of
one such old make-out spot. After
all, those memories were pretty
sweet. I was too young to go any
further, he was too shy to ask. Early
fall evenings we would
wrap our arms around
each other and suck face
like orangutans in his lit
tle red Fiero, while we
listened to Milli
Vanilli, or worse yet,
New Kids On
the Block.
Our offi
cial make-out
spot was at
the end ( v*
of a
dead- ‘*
end road that *
covered up the
secret trail
leading to a
graveyard,
which I took him
to one November
night.
I remember
how I grabbed his
hand and pulled
him into the
trees. I wanted
to scare him a
little bit. As
we walked
through the darkness, I ended up
being the one who was scared. I
had only been to the graveyard in
daylight, and even then I had my
gang of three or four of my best
friends to cover me.
Once I heard a legend about the
graveyard. I can’t prove this legend
is true since I heard it from the head
neighborhood bully himself.
(Nothing could ever really be taken
as truth when coming from his
mouth.) But his story actually
made sense this time, and that’s
why I guess I believed it. He
brought us there one day after we
had tired of playing “War” over in
the field where houses were being
built.
Our faces were dusty. Our t
shirts were torn and misshapen
from all the dirt clods we had
thrown at each other and all the
wrestling around in the dirt pits that
we had shoveled out. In case you
didn’t catch on, I was a bit of a
tomboy.
Well, Jeff, you can always fear
a really big kid named Jeff. He was
in fourth grade and we were in sec
ond so he kind of had the upper
hand. Jeff said that the graveyard
contained the
I kept
thinking,
“What a
tragedyAnd
what of these
people, what of
their deaths?
Didn’t anyone
want to visit? I
wondered if
they ever had
actually
committed any
crimes.
bodies of former prison inmates
and crazy people from die regional
center. They had been put on death
row and after they were electrocut
ed, they were buried here.
This explained the fact that
there were no names on the short
sunken tombstones, only carved
hollow numbers. Numbers like #6
00359, or #45-8854.
The entrance had a large
wrought-iron gate set in red brick
columns. The road had long been
covered over by overgrown weeds
and large trees. Obviously it had
been some years since anyone had
been here, adding to its haunting
effect It was obvious from the way
die green grass fell into die six-foot
oblong shapes and from the pitted
soil that there were actual bodies
buried here.
I remember imagining what
the people must have looked like.
Being so little, I imagined them
buried in black-and-white striped
jumpsuits with an actual ball and
chain shackled to their legs.
I even conjured up the picture
of a Mary Shelley’s female
Frankenstein to represent the crazy
people - an old woman with long,
gray, frizzy hair in a
dirty- gray
school
dress with black, lace-up boots.
She had a wicked fire in her eye.
As I got older, we returned less
and less as the novelty wore off and
we found new, scarier places to
explore. But each tune I came back
it bothered me more and more that
these people were just given num
bers over their graves. I kept think
ing, “What a tragedy.” And what of
these people, what of their deaths?
Didn’t anyone want to visit? I won
dered if they ever had actually
committed any crimes.
Maybe they were just lost peo
ple without homes locked up in the
regional center who had died of
various old-age illnesses. Even if
they didn’t have actual legal names,
didn’t someone have to refer to
them in some way?
And still, shouldn’t they at least
have some kind of a name on their
graves? It’s funny that as we got
older none of my friends or I ever
looked into this. I guess we just
took the legend for what it was, a
made-up unknown truth.
Well, one night as I made the
turn to drive by the old make-out
spot, I was shocked to find houses
in place of where die grave site had
been. Not just one or two houses -
an actual neighborhood. Suddenly,
I wondered where all the bodies
had gone. Did the big yellow
Caterpillar Tractors just
churn them up and
spit them out? And
fit were they hauled
^^H^f**^-** away to the
dump? Even at
an adult age, I
couldn’t fathom
what might have
become of them.
As I backed up
to turn around, I real
ized it didn’t real
ly matter. What
mattered was
that when they
» ***■ had died, no
J one had cared
enough to give
them names.
Whatever the
crime, whatever
the reason, they
at least deserved
to have been
, 1 . remembered as
more than just a num
ber.
Yasmin McEwen is a graduate student in secondary education and a Daily Nebraskan columnist.