4/8/2023 0 Comments Hard west graveyard shift![]() ![]() My footsteps echoed on the cold, cement floors as I walked for what seemed like minutes toward the garden center. Have you seen our beautiful caulking guns?" The smock-wearing handymen, who had seemed so friendly and helpful when trying to match my homemade livingroom paint in the light of day, now seemed to be mocking me with sinister, knowing sneers, as if to say, "We were expecting you. Neon lights flickered eerily overhead as I made my way past the bins of nails and screws. A chill came over me like the unseen hand of a homeowner whose kitchen remodel had gone terribly, horribly wrong. ![]() I sensed that the shivers down my spine were more than just the promise of a half-price special on molley bolts. Who were these people prowling the corridors of construction in the middle of the night? Contractors in search of Midnight Madness sales? Bewitched housewives lured by the call of a restless apparition in the form of the Dutch Boy paint can? And what kind of deranged mind would agree to work the graveyard shift in a place where chainsaws and ice picks were in more abundance (and at cheaper prices) than in all of the Friday the 13th movies combined? Weirdly (surprisingly) the parking lot was more than half full. It was a late, late Saturday night - one of those nights when you're tossing and turning in bed and you suddenly realize you can't go another minute without a timer thingy for your garden hose - that I found myself at 2 a.m. Still, up til now, it has always felt like suburban purgatory to me.Ĭolma, try as it might to appear somber, eery - or at the very least, respectfully unnerving - has never managed to conjure up anything approximating "the creeps." Today, history buffs and romantics regularly make a pilgrimage out here, leaving poker chips and flowers and lucky coins in their wake. A few years back, Earp aficionados decided that the unassuming plaque marking his grave wasn't prominent enough to honor the folk hero, so they replaced it with a fancier headstone. The sheriff, gunslinger, and Wild West legend was laid to rest in 1929 at the Hills of Eternity Memorial Park on El Camino Real, interred next to the love of his life, his wife, the actress Josie Marcus, whose family lived in San Francisco. One look at the checkered flags flying cheerily over the new shipment of Toyota trucks, and the hungry mall rats lining up for all-you-can-eat popcorn shrimp at Red Lobster, and he probably figured he'd be laughed out of limboland. Which is why, I think, Wyatt Earp has never felt the urge to come back from the dead and take us to task for the whole OK Corral thing. And frankly it's hard to take a specter seriously when there's a really good Value Savings Special at Target. 04:00:00 PDT COLMA, CA, USA - Ever since they dug up and exiled San Francisco's dead from the cemeteries around Lone Mountain and Laurel Heights, the ghosts of our ancestors have been forced to haunt the Serramonte Shopping Center. CHRONICLE PHOTO BY SAM DEANER SAM DEANBER Facebook Twitter Email Professor Michael Svanevik peers into the Hearst family Masoleum at Cypress Lawn Cemetery in Colma. ![]()
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