DailySusan Humor Blog

EXHUME THE POSITION

Remove not the ancient landmark,
which thy fathers have set.
-- Proverbs 22:28

They’re talking about making a great, big, honkin’ lake over my dad’s hometown, submerging the little house in “Mortgage Hollow” where Dad grew up, and the darling old Carnegie library, and the sunny little cemetery where our ancestors are buried.

It’d be a huge boost to economic development and recreation in southeastern Nebraska. They’d spend $2 billion to build a dam and an 80-square mile lake where now there are only quiet farms and fields, and the little town of Ashland.

Of course, “Mortgage Hollow” is no longer there. The Wiggenhorn mansion is gone. The curious little shack where “the king of the hobos” lived on the edge of town has disappeared.

Linoma Beach, the riverside waterpark with the kitschy white lighthouse where Dad was a lifeguard eons ago, was almost deserted last time we went. I think the bank where Grandpa worked is a coffee shop now, and the car-repair shop is a little gas station.

The high school’s consolidated; gone is the classroom of the beloved teacher, Miss Duty Vaughn. The meat market’s defunct. Most of the places where Dad hung out, and most of the people he hung out with, are no more.

So I shouldn’t be sad and worried about this lake. But I am. Because . . .

. . . PEOPLE are going to be BOATING AND WATER-SKIING right over Grandma and Grandpa’s GRAVES!!!!

AAAIIIEEE!!!

We can’t have that! How disrespectful! They’ll be doing human pyramids, and mooning, and drinking beer in the boat, and dropping trash over the sides. I can see it now: an old boot, some Bud cans and a Cheetos sack obscuring the “DARST” on our beautiful granite headstone, 30 feet under!

AAAIIIEEE!!!

It reminds me of that scary dream from “Deliverance,” where the dead hand pops up out of the lake!

AAAIIIEEE!!!

We can’t HAVE that!

So . . . if this goes through . . . our family will have to go through the gruesome process of exhuming the bodies, and moving them to higher ground.

We may have a couple of decades to get it done, though. This thing would be more complicated than all the storylines of all the dysfunctional families of all the soap operas ever made.

The plan is to dam the Platte River along Interstate 80 between Omaha and Lincoln, and make a lake bigger than anything from Lake Michigan to the Great Salt Lake. There’d be 145 miles of shoreline for homes and businesses, public marinas, space for resorts, a private airstrip and all kinds of upscale development.

All that makes the old alley where Dad used to work on cars, the little grocery store his friend’s dad ran, and the somber funeral home where we said goodbye to Gram, seem kind of irrelevant and inconsequential.

But are they?

Of course not.

And they’re not really going to be “lost” if this happens, anyway. Any place that’s ever been a part of your life transforms into spiritual capital, stashed away in your heart. No one can ever take it away. Or flood it.

Now, my heart already grieves for all the Ashland residents who would be forced out of homes, farms and businesses that have been in their families for generations. Eminent domain hurts, and hurts bad.

But you’ve got to look at the big picture. Progress happens. And I’ll be for it, if this project survives all the arm-twisting of federal regulators, and legislative wrangling, and financing headaches.

It would be wonderful! It would be worth it.

The Bible says not to remove the ancient landmarks – but that doesn’t mean houses and towns. They can go.

They aren’t the real landmarks. It’s justice and respect, family and friendship, mercy and love that we’re supposed to hang onto, no matter what. All the good things about “Ashcan,” as Dad affectionately called it, are never-ending and eternal.

Dam it!

Or not!

I say, “water” we waiting for? Exhumation won’t be that bad: I can . . . dig it.

As long as Grandma and Grandpa are buried where they can rest in peace, I’m not going to rock the boat.

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Here’s a neat history of Ashland with colorful content about “bull whackers” and other pioneers. It lists my grandfather, G.R. Darst, as a charter member of the Ashland Rotary Club in 1935:
http://www.rootsweb.com/~nesaunde/1983hist/saco83-p44.html