The American Way of Death Revisited - Jessica Mitford [53]
The advent of the mausoleum boom added a new dimension to the pre-need sales rhetoric. “Talk Mausoleum!” urged Concept; and evaluating the results of a recent direct-mail campaign, it reported, “It was agreed that prestige and horror of ground burial motivated the bulk of replies.”
Mausoleum advertising reaches back into history for its theme—Abraham’s cave, the Pyramids, the tomb of King Mausolus, the Taj Mahal (usually referred to as “the $15,000,000 Taj Mahal”), the “$3,000,000 Lincoln Memorial,” Grant’s Tomb. Concept quotes Tressie Johnson of Texas (“she is a volume producer in mausoleum sales; sincerity plays a great part in her success”) on how to make the most of the historical theme. She suggests mentioning the Taj Mahal, Napoleon, Lincoln, Grant, and Lenin: “But what means even more to the family, tell them Jesus was supposed to have been placed in a rock tomb belonging to Joseph of Arimathea.”
In real life, the brand-new mausoleums mushrooming in communities across the country do not look very much like the Taj Mahal. They look a good deal more like giant egg crates, and the little receptacles have a certain sameness about them—which is not surprising, since they are identical. However, since purchasing power varies from customer to customer, and since those able to pay more should be given every opportunity to do so, distinction and desirability have been conferred on some of the receptacles by the magic of the sales talk.
Like uncounted millions of other Americans, I was visited by a cemetery “Memorial Counselor.” He spread out for my delectation page after page of shiny color representations of rolling lawns, limpid pools, statues of the Good Shepherd, of sundry Apostles; “And here are some of our special Babyland features,” he announced proudly, producing a folder of statues of toddlers and lambs. On each picture was printed in small letters “Artist’s Conception.”
“Can I go out and see it?” I asked.
“Well, there won’t be anything much to see for a while yet; most of it is still in the planning stage. Here’s how the mausoleum is going to look.” He pulled out a folder showing “Preconstruction Corridor” in pink and gray marble, and “Sunshine Garden—An Innovation in Out-of-doors Memorial Construction” in cream and blue. It was gratifying to note that the brochure advertised “Mausoleum staff to serve you every day of the year from sunrise to sunset,” and particularly comforting (in view of the purpose of the property I was being offered) to learn that one’s crypt would be “Judgement Proof.” From the counselor and his brochures I began to get an inkling of how the pricing is established; how liabilities can be transformed into assets, and economies—convenient for the cemetery promoters—made attractive. The crypts facing the corridor are called “mausoleum crypts.” The ones facing outside, and forming in fact the outside wall of the structure, once less salable and therefore lower in price, are now called “garden crypts”—a stroke of creative genius—and often command even higher prices than the stuffy old indoor ones. “It’s all part of the trend towards outdoor living,” explained the counselor. The pavement of the corridors does not go to waste, either. A crypt below floor level has none of the associations of the bargain basement if it is labeled “Westminster Crypt”—on the contrary, it conjures up flattering thoughts of reposing eternally cheek by jowl with the great and famous. Likewise, the cost of a dividing wall between two crypts can be eliminated if they are advertised as a “True Companion Crypt—permits husband and wife to be entombed in a single chamber without any dividing wall to separate them. Here, husband and wife may truly be ‘Together Forever.’ ”
“Then, the corridor crypts would all be one price, the garden crypts another, and so on?” I asked. Oh no, said the counselor, there’s quite a difference. The corridor crypts vary considerably; the cheapest are the ones