A visit to an old friend

As part of the revisiting of the previously-posted-about movie Song of the South, Morgan (of the Maniacal Missives blog found linked to your right) and I today took another one of our too-infrequent road trips, this time to Crown Hill Cemetary here in Indianapolis. In looking up information about Song of the South recently, I discovered that actor James Baskett, who portrayed Uncle Remus, is an Indianapolis native, and is actually buried at Crown Hill. Armed with fairly accurate information about where to look for him, we set out for 38th Street.

Upon arriving at the cemetary, and locating section 37, we began a foot search for the gravesite. Crown Hill is a fairly large place, being located in a large city like Indy and "housing" a great many famous (or at least well-known) individuals, such as Eli Lilly, L.S. Ayers, John Dillinger, President Benjamin Harrison, and of course our own Uncle Remus, James Baskett. Luckily, the size of the section we began perusing wasn't too terribly large, so I would say within the span of about fifteen or twenty minutes I found what I was looking for.

There's two stones side by side...the actual headstone, and a slightly larger "memorial" stone commemorating Mr. Baskett's achievement. Naturally, I had set out looking for the memorial stone, since in its design it stands out better from the regular headstones, so that's the one I found first. It's in very good shape still, save for a few souvenirs left by visiting birds. I cleaned it up a little and got a decent pic:

The other stone directly to the left of the memorial stone is the headstone, and we assumed the name on top to be James' father:

I got several pics, and we stayed a few minutes to briefly discuss one or two things about this and that pertaining to the moment and the events leading up to said moment, then we came on back home. All in all, I found it a little surreal to be at the resting place of such an icon, who passed long before either one of us was born, and who played such a big part in our childhood entertainment. Of course, the surreality could also be attributed to the fact that it's the first celebrity gravesite I've ever visited...who knows. If nothing else, it was kind of a "full circle", in which Mr. Baskett entertained and moved on, we came along and enjoyed his work, and now we're here in his hometown, and came to pay a visit to say, "Thank you. We remember what you did, and we'll do our small part to keep it alive."

Anyway...that was our experience for this weekend. We talked briefly about road-tripping in the future and visiting other famous gravesites. A little morbid, perhaps, or maybe we're just getting to the age when we need to see things like this to set us back on track with whatever priorities may be missing from our lives. "Tales yet to be told...mysteries yet to unfold," or something like that.

Until next time...