Kris Schaumburg said:
wonder what the punishment is to just do that now. seems victim less
I remember when my grandmother died in the early 1980's. She lived in a small NH town, in a pre-1700 house that had an old cemetery behind it. She wanted to be buried there. So we went to the town cemetery warden--a thing in New England towns--and asked if that what was possible. The cemetery warden was the town's "public works director", which in a small rural town meant he drove the town snow plow, sanded the roads, patched the few paved town roads in the summer--and managed the town cemeteries, including digging the graves and selling the plots.
He told us that she could not be buried up on Garrity Hill behind her house. That had been a good enough to place to bury people from the 1670's when the town was first settled until about 1900, which was the date on the newest of the grave stones, but it no longer met "state standards" for drainage. (I have no idea what the standards are.) So he sold us a plot for my grandmother, plus one for my grandfather who had been buried at sea but we wanted a space for a headstone for him, and he told us that since we were already going to have to pay for two plots, we might as well buy a "six-plot" so some of the rest of us could be buried there, too. "It's a better deal," he said.
So we bought what we still call "the family six pack", and since then everyone in the family has moved a long way from there. So if anyone needs a grave or two in Lee, NH, let me know. We'll cut you a wicked deal.
As we were leaving his office, the guy said, "You know, it's too bad we can't bury her up there on Garrity. Good digging up there. All sand. Digging a grave down here behind the town office is a real bitch with all the boulders."
A couple of days later when we held the burial service, as we were leaving the grave side we saw him come out of the town garage, start up a backhoe that was sort of hidden behind some trees, and start rolling towards the grave to cover the casket. My uncle Chuck, who's kind of a smart ass, looked at the pile and said, "Looks like he's right--look at all those rocks."
We all burst out laughing--best funeral I've ever been to.