The last time I was out there was the week before I started working at my new job selling auto glass. But I drove out there last week just out of nostalgia's sake. Since I said I was throwing out all the remaining issues of Tabard Inn, the magazine I used to edit and publish, the locations where we shot the covers have been on my mind.
And if you're wondering, David William Fuller did all photo shoots for Tabard Inn *except* the bumper sticker photos. I was going to link to his website, but it's not there anymore. He works mostly as a DJ these days, so if you need a DJ, you can find him on my Facebook friends list. He used to be my neighbor, but the last time I saw him was for my friend, Jesse's, wedding. Which was a great day, from what I remember, which isn't much. I think those days were when the Liquor finally had me in its clutches and wouldn't let go. My drinking was pretty crazy in those days. But I remember Fuller being an excellent DJ.
At any rate, I first found the roadside tomb when I worked for the City of Elmhurst as a parts driver. I'm trying to remember where they sent me on this run. I'm pretty sure it was to a place out in Virgil, which is just about where farmland begins around here. There are farms before Virgil, but that's where farmland begins in earnest.
To get there you have to go down North Ave. for a long way. I'd never seen a roadside tomb before, and the fact that it was so close to home made it feel even weirder. I knew then that the first issue of my fiction magazine must bear this on its cover.
We had a little difficulty in getting out there, and it was at night, so of course in the middle of our photo shoot (without a permit, what do I look like, Mr. Moneybags?) we were stopped by the cops. Fuller's quick thinking got us through. He said we were working on a school project. We're both roughly the same age, but we always looked younger, so they bought it.
This time out was the first time I'd see the place clearly in the day (and without police lights flashing, I might add). So I took the picture above. I noticed for the first time that the tomb had a name on it: NORTON. And then I saw this little plaque on the gate:
That's pretty cool.
I heard a dog barking relentlessly, but it was across the street at a farm. As I went back to my car, I saw it was called the Norton Farm. There were a bunch of guys working by the barn, and I saw they were looking at me. It made me a bit self-conscious, especially now that I knew that whoever was buried here had living kin so very close by. This tomb is so old I doubt anyone living at the farm knew the deceased, but still. I never met my great-grandparents, for example, and I'd hate to think of some stranger taking pictures of their graves. So I got out of there.
Issues two and three had their covers taken at Graceland Cemetery about a hop, skip and jump from the Music Box Theater (and, oddly, an old friend's methadone clinic, where I drove her two days out of every week back in the summer of 2020. I went back there to take a few more photos. You'll see them in part 2 tomorrow night.
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