Never laugh when a hearse goes by

I'm all for hearses being repurposed. 

One of my favorite hitchhiking experiences - from way back in the day when people in general, and myself in particular actually stuck a thumb out when we wanted to get somewhere, i.e., 50+ years ago -  occurred when my friend Joyce and I, were heading home to Boston from a wacky hiking escapade on Mt. Washington in NH. We got picked up by a guy driving a beat up old hearse. We got driven to the NH-MA border, lying there, spread out, resting our heads on our backpacks, in the space in the back of the hearse reserved for the casket. 

I can't remember what the guy's plans were for the hearse. Something to do with a rock band, maybe?

Fast forward all those years, and there are folks in New Orleans who are turning hearses into arty, mobile businesses. Four of these businesses have been chronicled by Emily Kask. Kask is a NOLA photojournalist who had noticed a number of duded up hearses roaming the streets, and decided to focus on some of them in a project entitled "The Four Hearsewomen of New Orleans."

These stories of resurrection are an extension of artist culture, Kask says, in a city where people are not afraid to be themselves and where the idea of death isn’t as scary. “New Orleans has a different relationship around death,” said Ali Kane, who runs “Persephone the Tarot Hearse.” (Source: Washington Post)

I don't think the idea of death not being scary is the exclusive province of New Orleans. Ask anyone of a certain age who grew up Catholic. Sure, the nuns and priests used the idea of death as a scare tactic. How many stories did you hear about the couple who had sex after their high school prom and were killed in a car accident before they had time to get to confession. Which meant they went promptly to hell - no limbo, no purgatory, no nothing. Eternal damnation. Which, naturally, made death seem a bit scary. 

At the same time, Catholics back in the day - at least ethnic Catholics who lived in cities - also had a "different relationship around death" than the bland suburban white-bread Protestants we saw on Leave It to Beaver and Father Knows Best. You lived around family. Around multiple generations. Cheek and jowl with your neighbors. People died. People you actually knew. Mostly - thankfully - they were old, and we all were well aware that it was natural for old folks to die. But sometimes the people who died weren't old. They were your parents age. Sometimes they were even your parents. Kids died, too. Blessedly not often, but often enough. The four-year-old brother of one of my childhood friends died of leukemia. We were about eight or nine when this happened. 

Not far from where we lived, a little girl visiting her grandparents was impaled on a tree in their backyard and died. We - including my friend with the sickly little brother - went off, wheeling our doll carriages, to take a look at the fatal tree, imagining that we actually saw blood.

Not that bad things didn't happen in those bland suburban precincts, but I'm guessing that kids who grew up around grandparents and great-aunts and great-uncles were just more aware of, less shielded from, what goes on when people die. (And a lot more people died at home, so we saw hearses do their pickups.)

And what went on was the people went to wakes and funerals. Including kids.

An embittering experience of my childhood was my parents not letting me go to the wake of a girl who was killed by a car. She was in eighth grade, I was in seventh. We weren't friends-friends, but we were all part of a larger troupe of girls who hung out together, and I spent plenty of time at her house. (Her house was exotic, as she had three older brothers, and her mother ran a beauty parlor out of their basement.) Anyway, my sister Kath - two years older than I - was allowed to go to the wake, where she got to see sweet, pretty D laid out in an angel gown. 

Although I'd been to several wakes and funerals by this point - including going with my friends, on our own (no parents) to the wake of a classmate's fathers - my parents thought I was too young - too histrionic, probably - to see the body of a friend my own age. I did get to go to the funeral, but missed the angel gown thing. 

But I digress.

So, yes, I have no doubt that death is more okay in New Orleans than it is in plenty of other places. 

So, Ali Kane found a hearse for sale on Facebook Marketplace, and thought it was just the thing for her tarot parlor. She had it shipped from South Carolina and fitted it out with "velvet seats and LED lighting."

That ambiance draws in the tarot skeptics, says Kane, and many guests tell Kane they have never been in a Hearse before. Her usual response, with a bit of a wink, is “that’s true for most people.”

Then there's the artist Jane Tardo whose retrofitted hearse has a little rollercoaster in it. A rollercoaster for cell phones. People pay a buck a ride to have their cellphone film the ride. I get death more than I get this, but good luck to Tardo if she can make a go of giving cellphones rollercoaster rides. Talk about the infinite economy.

My favorite of the four horsewomen is Meghan Ackerman who, inspired by a friend who used an old hearse to ferry around his large works of art, thought a hearse would be a perfect venue for her taxidermy and cosplay businesses.

She used to travel and sell her ethical taxidermy in a cargo van, which never quite fit her style. “It wasn’t a statement piece; I like making a statement,” said Ackerman.

As a taxidermist, Ackerman says, “When I see a dead animal, I want to give it a new life.” So her hearse is still delivering a once-living being to a new resting place. “It brings people joy,” she said.

“I’m going to give him a second life, maybe he’ll be a circus performer, how do you think he’d look hanging from a trapeze bar?” said Meghan Ackerman. 

I don't think I'd want the taxidermied anything of an animal in my house, especially if it'd been an animal I knew and loved - ashes are one thing - but you gotta love this attitude toward life and death. 

It doesn't quite make me want to go to New Orleans, but it almost does.

Meanwhile, I'll be on the lookout for anything that looks like an erstwhile hearse roaming the streets of Boston.

And I'll make sure that I never laugh when a hearse goes by. Not that I'm inclined to. After all, I could be the next to die. But, more importantly, it might be someone's taxidermy or tarot business in there.