Cemetery groundskeeping is strange work. When Lars started, he thought "doing yard maintenance for the dead" was absurd. He needed money, though, and this was the best job he could find. After nine years, his perspective changed.
"This is an important job," he says. "Not everyone can do it, but it needs to get done. The people with friends and family buried here want the place to look nice. It gives them ... comfort, I guess."
Lars is still single, and he has trouble meeting women. When he talks about his job, people think he's creepy. Sometimes he says he works at the "Corpse Garden," to show he still has a sense of humor about it.
The southeast portion of the cemetery has a large section of soldier's graves. Lars' great uncle Walter is buried there. He died during World War II, long before Lars was born. Though Lars never knew his great uncle, he considers the gravesite to be sacred ground.
When flags were stolen from some of the soldier's graves, Lars notified the media. "It must have been a bunch of kids with no respect," he told a newspaper reporter. "Probably a bunch of hippies protesting the war."
The crime was particularly offensive because the flags were torn right off the poles. Shards of Old Glory were left dangling on the line, which Lars said was evidence the crime was meant to send a message.
"I don't see how anyone could rip down flags like that and ever look a veteran in the eye," he told a TV reporter. "I mean, people have a right to their opinions or whatever, but this is just sickening and sad."
It was a full week later when Lars solved the crime. Taking a break from mowing the grass, he stood straight up on his riding mower and stretched his back. Noticing something peculiar in the urban forest that bordered the cemetery, he walked out to have a look.
The missing flags were at the top of an arborvitae tree, stolen by a squirrel to insulate her nest. Lars stood there for about five minutes, wondering if he should try to retrieve the flags or just leave them. He didn't know if he should tell anyone what he saw.
Paul Lundgren is a newspaper columnist and a very nice man. His e-mail address is paul [at] geekprom [dot] com.
