prepstudinsc: [quote author=Pecker link=board=meetgreet;num=1067157935;start=0#5 date=10/26/03 at 17:22:40]
I was helping the Lions Club deliver fruit baskets over the Christmas Holidays once. The guy who was driving had borrowed a hearse from a Lion mortician since it had so much room in it for the baskets and boxes. We drove up in front of one place where a reclusive old lady lived, an unkempt house with closed shutters and overgrown bushes and grass, and left a huge basket of fruit and canned goods on the porch and walked back to the car. The poor old gal came running out onto the porch yelling, "I'm not dead! I'm not dead!"
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That's why at my funeral home we don't use the hearse for anything but picking up bodies at the hospital or going on funerals. The van is what we use for doing stuff around town because it freaks too many people out. I personally think it's kind of funny to scare people with the hearse, but most people don't share my humor about it. One night, I took one of my friends out for a spin in the hearse because he wanted to ride in it. I told him he should lie down in the back and sit up and wave at people when we got to a red light. He ended up sitting in the front seat, but he did wave to some people as we went by. We stopped to eat dinner, but I parked the car out back behind the restaurant where it was hidden from view of most people. I didn't want people to think someone had died in the restaurant.
AFter that, we took it back to the funeral home and went back home. People just don't see the fun driving a glorified station wagon around town. They only think "death." The word hearse actually comes from teh Latin word "hirpex" which means rake, because back in the early days of Christian funerals, there were men who carried a metal frame over the casket. It had spikes like teeth on a rake, on which candles were stuck.
It gets complicated, but it goes back to the ancient Hebrew rules and regulations regarding a body never being left in the dark and always having the light of God shine upon it. Hence the Catholic (and Episcopalian) tradition of having candles at the head and foot of the casket.
Ok, that's enough of Funeral History 101 for right now....
, I'm so busy, but !!! I just noticed Raal Lexx doesn't post on this board anymore... for several weeks 
