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Pastimes : The Odd The Weird the things we can not understand -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: long-gone who wrote (258)	8/9/2001 10:40:04 PM
From: long-gone	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 358

Here you go One for you: Cemetery workers party Competition 'grave' in statewide games at Evergreen By Mark Kawar/The Gazette It's not what you'd expect at a cemetery: cheering, back-slapping and laughter. Gravediggers, casket handlers and cemetery gardeners converged Wednesday on Evergreen Cemetery to tell macabre jokes, eat barbecue sandwiches among the tombstones and have fun on the job. The occasion was the Colorado Cemetery Skills Competition. Forty-two cemetery workers from around the state took part in events that tested the skills they use to put people in the ground. As one worker said at lunch, "The competition here is grave." When the dust had settled over the speedily dug graves, and the grass clippings had fallen on the monuments, Steve Comfort had emerged as the champion of the graveyard. "I just came here with the attitude that I was going to have a lot of fun, and I got lucky," said Comfort, part of the Grandview Cemetery team from Fort Collins. Comfort has been in the business 20 years. Comfort took first place in the Funeral Set Up (with partner Paul Marcucci), the Backhoe Obstacle Course and the Trailer Backing competition. He also won the Rayburn Maxwell Award of Excellence, which honors the best individual achievement, and was part of the combined Grandview-Roselawn cemeteries team that scored the most team points. "We all do the same thing, we all take pride in what we do, so today is a great chance to learn things and have some fun," said Dan Lucero of the Linn Grove Cemetery team from Greeley. Lucero describes the world of cemetery workers as a kind of club, united by their daily dealings with death. That helps them overcome the queasiness most people have with death. To them, there's nothing morbid about cemetery games such as the grave-digging contest. "The first time you do it, it's a little weird," said Todd Baumgartner, a gravedigging competitor for Evans Cemetery. "But after a while, you're just digging a hole." Lucero also participated in the gravedigging competition -- known in cemetery circles as "interment excavation." Before the judges start their stopwatches, the warning beeps sound as Lucero reverses his backhoe toward a plot. He angles the massive machine into place. He raises the bucket. He waves to the judge and rips the first clods of dirt out of the ground. "See the smooth technique? The even strokes?" said judge Mike Finlay, a landscaper who does work for Evergreen. "You can tell he's done this before." Minutes later, Finlay yells "Time," a freshly dug grave gaping before him. Lucero climbs out of the backhoe and high-fives his friends. "Everyone out here takes it pretty seriously," said John Orth, the event's organizer who works as a maintenance supervisor at Evergreen. "Everybody likes to take a lot of ribbons home to their cemetery." Richard Esty participated in the trimming competition. Before he hits the course, Esty takes a warmup lap around grave markers and a nearby tree, running as the grass flies from the whirring trimmer in his hands. "You see the headstones, and it makes you think," said Esty, who honed his skills at Grandview the past 10 years. "Some people lived long lives. Then there are little babies. I see all the people who come to visit the graves. To me, it's rewarding to make things look nice for them."