“Umm, there’s a hearse out front,” I said to my wife and son a few Wednesdays ago. We were in my kid’s upstairs room, and I could just see a black vinyl top that had appeared out his window. I was only puzzled for a moment, and then I ran down the stairs and yelled, “Dad!”
No, nothing bad had happened – I knew he was driving!
My father’s close friend Jeff runs a well-established funeral home near Portland, Maine, where I grew up. Dad is retired from a million-mile career in truck equipment sales but somehow can’t quite stay off the Interstates. A couple times a month, he puts on a dark tie and runs a rig like this from Portland to somewhere else in the northeast. While he’s been doing this for years, his arrival that Wednesday night was a complete surprise.
I’ve never really taken a close look at a hearse. I’ve been part of a few funerals, but that’s a less than ideal setting for car-watching. The front end of this one seems completely stock, except for the little flag holders. It’s clearly a late-model Cadillac DTS, though I have no idea how to tell the model year. Any guesses?
While I’d prefer whitewalls on my own final chariot, at least these wheels are handsome and well-polished. That’s a 55-profile tire; in 2012, not even the dead can escape having their bones rattled by too-big rims on Rust Belt streets.
Dad was headed back up to Maine with a “paying customer,” as he calls them. He had shown up at my house in Massachusetts too late for dinner, so I made him a ham sandwich. It’s kind of a family tradition. Back when he was a sales rep, he’d often arrive unannounced at his parents’ house in Connecticut on his way home from points south and west.
In stereotypical Italian-American fashion, no matter how late he arrived, my grandmother would bend his ear and bring out bread, cold cuts, homemade soup, egg cookies, pepper biscuits, what-have-you. Not hungry? Don’t feel like talking after six hours on the road, with four more to go? Sorry, that’s not on the menu!
On this trip, Dad had had a passenger on the way down to Massachusetts, as well. He was a young man who died accidentally, not long before he was to graduate from Harvard.
I was about to add a link to a news article about this sad event, but somehow, that seems ghoulish. More so than sharing the story at all? Yes, somehow. It’s natural to wonder about death, and sometimes it’s easier to wonder about strangers, in the company of strangers. (Like you and me, for example.) Still, it seems better to let lost strangers stay anonymous, rather than knowing their names only for their having died.
Dad’s visit that Wednesday was a surprise, which is maybe why it sent my mind down this odd emotional path. Routine visits with family are no big deal. Of course, they really are, but it can be hard to wipe the routine from your eyes.
Before he left, Dad asked me to help him with something. We went around the back of the car and he opened the gate. Here I must confess that my title is a bit misleading. This customer was not riding in a casket, but rather in a heavy vinyl bag on a chrome-tube gurney. There was a rubber mat that had slipped out from under it, so I was there to help lift while Dad straightened the mat. The gentleman was quite heavy.
Now, I have no particular fascination with the morbid, but it’s impossible not to look at a bag with a body inside. What struck me, more than its size or shape, was the zipper. It was so ordinary, so matter-of-fact, without polish or flag holders or a brass padlock, nothing to embellish its role or keep anyone away.
And I guess that’s as it should be. Seeing a plain zipper to pull, knowing what it’s for, I knew not to touch. It doesn’t need to pad its part, or draw attention to that cusp that nothing can keep us from, not a Cadillac or Harvard degree, not even a Wednesday night ham sandwich, with your father, mother or son.
That’s niiiiiice.
Given the front end treatment it has to be a 2005 or newer model.
its a 2011 Eagle Coach Cadillac Ultimate
In stereotypical Italian-American fashion, no matter how late he arrived, my grandmother would bend his ear and bring out bread, cold cuts, homemade soup, egg cookies, pepper biscuits, what-have-you. Not hungry? Don’t feel like talking after six hours on the road, with four more to go? Sorry, that’s not on the menu!
A good article, albeit a bit depressing. The casket, body bag, and hearse are the fates of all of us. As a person grows older, he or she begins to think about the eventual, and realizes how really helpless we are in this matter. I asked a fellow I used to golf with, now deceased, how it felt to be 92. He replied that he tried not to think about it. The best policy, no doubt.
On the lighter side, the last two Cadillacs I bought were purchased after burying members of my family. I wanted to drive one, instead of being the “honored guest”.
or ‘paying customer’ 🙂
Alan, a melancholic but great read. My parents are retired down in Ft. Lauderdale and I’ve not seen them since mid April…….and I confess that I WISH my old boy would swing by for a ham sandwich, a beer and some conversation.
You’re a lucky guy.
Thanks for sharing your story, Alan. I have a longstanding interest in professional cars and it’s good to see one featured in CC. I’m wondering, are flower cars more of an East Coast thing? I haven’t seen one here in So Cal, but I always see a long line of them in every funeral procession for a (how shall I put this?) New York or New Jersey person of note.
Good point, because I’ve never seen them in Southern funerals, either…at least not in New Orleans.
Its interesting that it has regular DTS wheels and not the big heavy duty livery wheels you see on most hearses.
For a few years in the mid 90’s when I sold cars, I had GM ordering computer program with all the option codes for all GM cars made at the time, the funeral coach up fitter package for a Fleetwood was R1P, someone had a sense of humor.
Being a huge GM option code junkie & build sheet/SPID collector, I find this hilarious….
Sean: As you can imagine, that scene is a favorite. I hasten to add that Dad’s passengers have an easier time of it than Tommy’s.
Impist: Maybe New Englanders are poorer than their Jersey cousins, or just cheapskates, as I don’t recall a flower car at any funeral I’ve been involved in, not even the ones at the Della Vecchia (say “del-vetch”) in Dad’s hometown.
As an aside, my (not Italian) Mom is an avid gardener who is perenially upset by the association of flowers and death. She always gives some other kind of gift.
Dave: Well said. I like to think that a little bittersweet moment can help us appreciate what we have here and now.
(I was about to link to the wiki page for “memento mori” but the medieval imagery is far too gruesome for me. Old religious paintings make “Goodfellas” look like Mr. Rogers.)
Thanks, all, for reading and commenting.
I would have thought that this kind of inter-city transportation would have employed a less conspicuous first-call vehicle instead. I always think of hearses as procession cars. Having said that, I’d much rather have my last ride in a Cadillac like this than in some generic van.
Your musings on death and the dead are beautiful. I’m glad you decided not to provide a link.
Pepper biscuits! (or cookies) One of the pleasures of being East Coast Italian (on my mother’s side, in my case, so I am ineligible to be a made man.)
Alan, a great piece. I worked part time for a funeral home for a bit in the late 1970s, and got a lot of experience driving professional cars and limos. A lot of short trips to the gas station and the car wash, and some long ones like Alan’s dad took.
I suspect that these are still used instead of a garden variety Econoline is that these are specially set up for caskets. Nobody wants to take the risk of a nice casket sliding around in a van and getting dinged up.
I used to joke (but it was true) that up to a point in time, I had more road miles in Cadillacs than anything else. The ones I drove were all from 1977-79 when they were still equipped with the big 425 V8s. The Funeral Home would buy two new ones every year, and keep 4 in regular service at a time. It was funny how even though they were all mostly identical, each one had its own personality. I suspect anyone with any fleet vehicle experience noticed this too.
The other thing I learned was how to use mirrors when backing up. Because the view out the rear of these was awful and more than one guy had a backing mishap.
Alan, be sure to enjoy those ham sandwiches with your dad. I lost my dad several years ago, and I really enjoy remembering times together like that.
This is one of my favorite reads since I’ve begun trolling the site. It’s nice to get a little insight into the writer’s personality itself. I’m not by any means a writer but I thought the balance between emotion/human nature vs. subject matter was just perfect.
Heck ‘Curbside Casket’ is clever in itself & I had to laugh when I first opened the page. Anyway, thanks Alan for sharing this thought-provoking piece.
Thanks, JB and others, for the encouraging words – I really appreciate it.
Per the questions about hearse vs. van…it’s kinda luck of the draw. If the vans are otherwise engaged, a Caddy or Lincoln will get some highway miles.
Joe L, I’m glad someone knows what I was talking about! 🙂 A pepper biscuit is sort of a little bagel, baked then boiled. It’s chewy and tastes of fennel seeds, as good with coffee as it is with wine. It probably has a catchy Italian name but my family’s been assimilating for generations, so no one still living knows what it is. At least we still know how to make them!
Damn you, Alan…I’ve been craving hazelnut gelato and biscotti since reading your post, and it’s going to get the best of me. I’ve learned a lot about the business by writing a whole lot of ads for mortuaries and cemeteries, and the protagonist of my novel-in-progress is a funeral director. Being a rather sick and twisted fellow, I’ve created (and of course never presented) several utterly tasteless print ads for said clients before settling down to the real work. Wish you could see them!
Professionally-crafted tasteless wordplay? Sign me up! Seriously, send Paul your email address re: me and I’ll drop you a line. 🙂
Paul has my email address — I volunteer as an editor here at CC. (Hey, notice how elegantly everything reads lately?)
its a 2011 Eagle Coach Cadillac Ultimate Hearse the last model of the DTS before transfered to the XTS
The latter statements very true…I’ve wondered how older coaches like mine have made it to this day with those silly compact purse size mirrors !
One of the best add-ons that I did for my main coach is to add a GPS with a backup camera.