Funeral Home Purgatory: The Grave of Spaghetti, the Carny Mummy

March 30, 2013 — You’d be absolutely correct if you said that Cancetto Farmica was buried after he died. But you’d miss his whole story. He was buried more than 60 years after he died, spending that interval in between as a mummified corpse in the garage of a North Carolina funeral home.

Nobody’s really sure of Farmica’s exact name. There are four or five variants of it. I’m going to stick with the one stamped on his grave. Those words are usually the last on any topic.

However, most people don’t bother with his real name, choosing instead his nickname of “Spaghetti.” Actually, his corpse’s nickname of “Spaghetti,” since it was awarded posthumously by the townfolk who came around regularly to visit the local celebrity/desiccated human.

In life, Farmica worked at a carnival as a musician. And live a carny life, die a carny death. In his case, it was a tent peg to the head during a fight with a colleague.


The altercation happened on April 28, 1911, in the town of McColl, South Carolina, and he died a few hours later in a hospital across the state line in North Carolina. He was about 23.

But Farmica also lived a carny afterlife

He was taken to the McDougald Funeral Home in Laurinburg, North Carolina, where he was embalmed as they waited for the next of kin. An Italian man who claimed to be his father identified him and paid a small down payment for the funeral arrangements.

And then the man completely disappeared….unlike the embalmed corpse of Farmica, which stuck around the funeral home for decades after going the way of the Egyptian pharaohs.

After hanging him on a wall in the embalming room for a while, the funeral home placed him in a glass-topped casket, along with the weapon of his demise, and set it on end in the garage, where it became a local attraction.

Eventually, pressure from a politician of Italian heritage and peers in the funeral industry caused the McDougalds to bury Farmica (although they claimed it was merely because somebody finally ponied up the money). He was buried with his last earthly possession, the tent peg, and encased within a block of concrete. He was that famous. For some perspective, they did the same thing to the bodies of Charlie Chaplin and Whitney Houston. Because some twisted souls interpret the phrase “Rest in peace” as “Free, take one.”

That was on September 30, 1972, making me about 45 years late to one of the longest wakes on the books. My consolation prize was a measly bronze plaque in the sod of Hillside Cemetery in Larinburg. Hillside Avenue cuts through the cemetery, and the grave is located on the north side, near the road, at the end opposite the main brick gates. Nothing about the graveside even hints at the strange path the interred took to get to that spot below our feet.

I checked out the present-day location of the McDougal Funeral Home, as well. Apparently the place moved three of four times since 1911, taking Farmica with them. It's been at the current location on Church Street since 1958, so I guess this was the last place his body was ever upright.

In general, there’s a surprising amount of information around about the weird afterlife of Cancetto Farmica. A detailed account can be found in Christine Quigley’s book, Modern Mummies, including a picture of the mummy itself (which you can see here thanks to Google Books).

Anyhow, the moral of the story is that you don’t have to do cool things during your life to be remembered. After all, Cancetto Farmica is remembered for having been forgotten in the first place.

Cavin' in Boston

March 25, 2013 — I'm not a concert goer. And few musicians buffet me the way I need it. But Nick Cave does. Enough that I kind of hate talking about it. But I wanted to at least mark that I got to see him and the Bad Seeds at the Orpheum Theatre in Boston last night. It was the first time I've ever seen him live. That's about 17 years from the first time I heard one of his songs. It was Red Right Hand. It was on the Songs in the Key of X: Music From and Inspired by the X-Files. That's an embarrassing origin story, but you should hear how I met my wife.

We were three rows from the stage. It was an amazing night.

Warren Ellis does it his way.

The Inside-Out Museum: Cabela’s in Connecticut

March 23, 2013 — When I posted last November about my safari into the taxidermy of the outdoors retail store Kittery Trading Post, I was informed on the OTIS Facebook Page about a similar store called Cabela’s (thanks, Samantha). Turns out, there are two within a couple of hours of me, so I dropped by one, ending up in New Haven, Connecticut (the other near me is in Scarborough, Maine).

If the Kittery Trading Post is like your local nature museum, Cabela’s is more like a full-on natural history institution.

Cabela’s is a chain of some 40 outdoor equipment stores spread across all of North America. The stores are massive, and the fact that I’d never heard about the company says a lot about my skin pallor, I think.

The whole thing started in 1961 when Dick Cabela tried to sell some fishing lures in a classified ad in Wyoming. That simple act butterflied into an absolute empire of outdoor retail and media. Here’s a video of Cabela himself being interviewed in his mansion of taxidermy, all of which are creatures he and his wife hunted across the globe.

But I don’t really care about Cabela’s as a retail store or as an entrepreneurial success story. I care about it for its dead animals.

The habitat inside Cabela’s is the same as in Kittery, outdoor clothes and equipment, anything else you’d want when your roof is sky. Unlike Kittery, though, the taxidermy that decorates the store is of a more exotic sort and isn’t constrained to local beasties. And the way they display it is awe-inspiring.

The store has two floors, but was built to be open so that there is a large central area that extends to the ceiling. A gun check attendant greeted us at the door, and I could see a two-seater airplane hanging from the ceiling. But these details didn’t register until later. Because dominating the entire central area of precious retail space was…a mountain.

Covered in taxidermy.

It’s like somebody stuck their hands into the gift shop of a conventional natural history museum and then flipped the whole thing inside out so that the purchasables surrounded the exhibits.

On that mountain, the animals were posed in active stances, coyotes fought each other, a bear poked at a wasp nest, a fox made off with a pheasant in its jaws. Things with horns and antlers capered. A waterfall splashed down into a pool from above.

The real surprise was under the mountain, though, since it contained a giant aquarium full of freshwater fish of immense proportions. And a lots of black eels for some reason, swimming through the autumn-tinted fronds of submerged oak trees.

Which seems like a weird aquarium feature, except that it matched the rest of the store, which was decorated in a permanent autumn. That was especially true of a back room that was set up to be a museum of local fauna. In this case, moose, deer, and Yale students. An animatronic outdoorsman kneeled in front of a rustic tent and told us things that I couldn’t really hear over the sight of two enormous moose locking horns.

On the second floor, besides more massive floor space full of guns, reels, and other things my baby-soft hands have never hefted, was a full restaurant and an exhibit of African animals that ranged in size from a small genet to a large elephant.

From the railing of the second floor, we also got a great view of the central feature, revealing even more animals that it was impossible to see from the ground floor.

To put the whole place in perspective, on the way out I bought chocolate-covered bacon on a stick at a dinner truck, and it wasn’t even in the top three highlights of the visit.

UPDATE: I've since visited a second Cabela's, this time in Maine, which featured a carnival-style shooting gallery, a 100-pound elephant skull, and Jeff Foxworthy-brand jerky. Pics here.

Party for Poe: The 2013 Cask of Amontillado Wine Tasting Among the Bones

It's not A Cask of Amontillado party without
Fortunato and Montresor.

March 19, 2013 — The grave of Edgar Allan Poe has become one of my more oft-visited oddities, up there with the heady wonders of Sleepy Hollow, the bedeviling atmosphere of Salem, and anything with the word “Smithsonian” somewhere in its name.

Saturday, I returned to my home state of Maryland and found myself once again above his bones in Baltimore. However, this time it was to pay my respects in a whole new way…by drinking wine labeled with his face, watching Goth belly dancers, and touring dusty crypts.

The event was called the 2013 Cask of Amontillado Wine Tasting Among the Bones. It was held in Westminster Hall, the ex-church that gives verticality to the burial ground where Poe is interred. The event was thrown by these guys to raise funds for the Poe House, the place where Poe lived and which has been a museum dedicated to him for decades. Due to budget problems, it’s currently closed to visitors, but will hopefully open again at the end of the year.

Besides performances that included music, dance, and—of course—recitations of The Raven, the event featured Poe-inspired art, artifacts such as a piece of Poe’s coffin and a lock of his wife’s hair, and Poe-themed merchandise. The best part, though, is that we got to hang out with a bunch of like-minded Poe admirers, many in Venetian masks according to the theme of the party, just a few dozen feet from where the remains lay of the man who was the “common spring” for our passion.

It was also somehow my first time venturing into the crypts beneath Westminster Hall, a fascinating place that at one time was open air before the building was constructed atop of it some 160 years ago. But my foray there is a story for another day.

While I was in Baltimore, I also revisited some old Poe-related haunts and dropped by a few that were new to me, all of which, like the crypts, will get a full OTIS treatement at some other point.

Right now I just wanted to show you a bit of my Saturday.

Selling a limited-edition Poe-themed wine...

And, of course, I bought a bottle for
some future celebration...

The only church in the world with a quote from
Vincent Price on its walls. Here's a cool pic of his visit.

An excellent, literary rendition of The Raven by
Tony Tsendeas. You can tell he's playing Poe
because of his mustache.

In the foreground, one of the previous medallions that
adorned Poe's grave. In the background, some of the
bottles of cognac left by the sorely missed Poe Toaster.

A child's ice casket, used to preserve
the body before burials.

Annabel Lee Tavern.

Present day...

A decade ago. At least Poe has aged well...

Rockin’ the Cashel: The Rock of Cashel

March 13, 2013 — It wouldn’t surprise me if the Rock of Cashel wasn’t on our original Ireland itinerary. That we  just happened to drive past and saw its edifices high up on the limestone outcropping like a real-life City on the Edge of Forever. That it pulled us to itself by sheer power of presence alone. It’s an amazing site, and cinematic as all get out. And it took us back in time as surely as the Guardian of Forever.

The Rock is crowned by a complex of medieval ruins from buildings erected over the span of centuries, with the earliest dating as far back as the early 12th century. The rock is said to have been created by the Devil, who spat it out after biting a local mountain chain, that it was the place where the Kings of Munster ruled, and that St. Patrick himself visited it and converted one of those kings to Christianity. A place this grand needs a grand back story. As for the complex itself, it was originally a fortress and later an ecclesiastical center. So towers, walls, and churches.

We found ourselves virtually alone there somehow and wandered through its massive, vertically sweeping walls, accompanied only by the sounds of birds from their perches throughout the roofless buildings…as if the sky were the only thing capable of topping such a place.

Outside, it had a magnificent graveyard full of mossy Celtic crosses and a vast view in multiple stunning shades of green that told me beyond a doubt and probably better than any other site I visited on that trip, “You’re in Ireland.”

Frenching the Irish: The Blarney Stone

March 8, 2013 — My strongest memory of Ireland is being held in the steady arms of a burly, unshaven man and gently lowered backwards for a kiss.

And like all the most romantic moments in history, it happened at a castle.

Of course, there are castles all over Ireland. Drive around with your eyes closed and you’ll hit one. Because that’s what happens when you drive around with your eyes are closed. Don’t do that.

This particular one is named Blarney Castle, it’s about 3,400 miles outside of Pittsburgh, and you’ve certainly already heard about it since it’s probably the most famous castle on the island.

All because of an extremely slutty rock called the Blarney Stone.

The current version of Blarney Castle dates back to the 1400s. It was built by Dermot McCarthy, the King of Munster, and supposedly got its name when Queen Elizabeth I of England tried to take possession of it. McCarthy was able to put off the takeover with letters full of empty eloquence that the queen called, “A lot of blarney.”

Today the castle is mostly ruins, although it still retains its basic rectangle-on-end shape with its adjoining cylinder of a tower. Around it are gardens tended to seem very Irish, even for Ireland, with green, mossy trees and formations with such fanciful names as Witches Stone and Druids Cave.

But it’s not its history or its architecture that has made Blarney Castle famous. It’s the myth of a single stone set into a wall high up on the parapet.

Actually, myths, since there are quite a few stories about this bit of masonry.

The historical-sounding one was that it was originally half of the Stone of Scone, the rock on which the Kings of England and Scotland are coronated, and was a gift to Dermot’s forefather Cormac McCarthy by Robert the Bruce for his support at the battle of Bannockburn in 1314. Cormac told his men to stick his gift in the castle, and they took it literally.

The fanciful-sounding one goes that Cormac appealed to a Celtic goddess for help in a court case in which he was tangled. She told him, according to the impenetrable rules by which deities deal with mortals, to kiss the first stone he saw on his way to court. He did so and then won the case thanks to a sudden and uncharacteristic ability to argue well. So he kept the stone, which was eventually worked into Dermot’s castle. Now, anybody that kisses it gets that same gift of eloquence.

I know there are some timeline problems in those stories, but I burnt out all my initiative for research figuring out the distance from Pittsburgh to Cork.

There are other legends, too, of course. My favorite is that a bunch of local entrepreneurs got together and made a bet that they could get tourists to do anything.

Whatever the reason, for hundreds of years, tourists have pilgrimaged to the site for a make-out session with an ancient castle.

The Blarney stone is in the main tower. You take circular stone staircases up to the top level, from which vantage you can look out over miles of Irish countryside or down into the central courtyard of the castle itself.

At the top, two gentleman were waiting, tip jar at the ready.

You can see the stone without doing anything silly, but there’s not much to it. To get within a coating of chapstick from it, you have to be lowered backward down a thin space between the floor and the outer wall, you head upside down and staring at three stories or so worth of air.

It wasn’t scary. Too many safeguards have been erected since the days you had to be lowered by your ankles for you to at all think you'll go plummeting down the outside wall of the castle like so much boiled tar. It had iron bars anchored into the wall to hold onto, and an iron track beneath that would hurt if you were dropped on it, but probably a lot less than dropping the whole way (not counting death). But it was a bit dizzying and bewildering. I mean, for just a few seconds, you’re upside down kissing a rock at the top of a 600-year-old castle.

So what kind of a kisser was the Blarney Stone? Wet and cold. Just the way I like them. I’m not sure if the moisture was from being recently washed or from morning condensation or from the collected saliva of millions of tourists.

And that sounds disgusting in hindsight, although it didn’t at the time. Only a smattering of people were at the castle, and none of them were in line for the stone, so we were able to get comfortable with the illusion that it was just us.

It’s okay if the stone has a tawdry past, I just don’t want it shoved in my face.

Want to read about more of my Ireland jaunts? Click here.

Want to read more about my obsession with visiting rocks? Select any one below, weirdo.

Hopewell Rocks (New Brunswick, Canada)

Madison Boulder (Madison, NH)
Dighton Rock (Berkley, MA)
Cliffs of Moher (County Clare, Ireland)
Vasquez Rocks (Los Angeles, CA)
The Burren (County Clare, Ireland)
Haystack Rock (Cannon Beach, Oregon)
Giant's Causeway (County Antrim, Ireland)
Dungeon Rock (Lynn, MA)
Skull Cliff (Lynn, MA)