Saturday, November 14, 2009

Weekend Water
A Gallery of Pleasure Craft Tombstones


Havurah Shalom Cemetery



Wisner Cemetery



Oswego Pioneer Cemetery

I promised long ago to complete my trio of boat monument posts; the first two, you’ll recall, covered fishing and working boats. That I have less pleasure craft than working boats in my collection might be due to my preferences as well as luck in what I find. In the archetypes I chose to accompany this post I notice, just for example, no kayaks (not to mention surf boards) or pontoon boats. Lack of pontoons might be a regionalism, but we have a lot of kayaking in the mountains.


La Center Cemetery



Crescent Grove Cemetery (Tigard, OR)



Pioneer Cemetery (Pioneer, WA)

Regionalism pops up in other ways. The small lakes of Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Michigan, for example, don’t lend themselves to large sailboats; whereas the high-prowed McKenzie River boat is designed to ride over rocks in steep mountain streams. The small outboard fishing boats are universal as are canoes, speedboats pulling water skiers, and small cabin cruisers. There are no propeller propelled punts here.


Bilyeu Den Cemetery



Mt. Calvary (Eugene, OR)

I’ve thrown in two examples of the same stock design, a single fisherman in a small row boat, being used on two different stones conveniently rendered in complimentary colors. As far as I can tell, they’re essentially identical (slightly different water rendering) except that in the red version the fisherman has a pipe in his mouth. Ah, the personal touch.


Hayes Cemetery



Park Hill Cemetery (Vancouver, WA)

1 comment:

JamaGenie said...

How interesting! I'd expect the gone fishin' on men's tombstones, and sailboats to signify sailing away to another dimension, but the cabin cruiser at the end was definitely a surprise. Or maybe not - a friend's stone has a rather detailed depiction of the old car he was restoring. Nice post!