Fun is where you find it

What was the most fun I ever had at the funeral home? It’s hard to pin down to one, that’s like asking a 6 year old to pick their favorite candy. But if pressed I would have to say it was when my partner and I traveled to the big city to pick up a body on what seemed like a normal day at work.

It was a beautiful day. The family wasn’t going to be at the hospital so we were facing an easy drive there and back. After picking up the body and heading back to the interstate we realized that we were low on gas and starving. We headed first to the gas station so that we could enjoy our meal on the ride home.

We found a self-service gas station that was manned by several black gentlemen. We pulled to the pumps and waited. After a few minutes we realized that no one was coming. Assessing the situation I saw 6 grown men wedged into the station door, staring at us wide-eyed. I asked if they were coming out and as a chorus they said that we could pump it ourselves because they weren’t coming anywhere near a dead body. We were laughing at the looks on their faces while looking for some eats and realized that we had not closed the curtains on the back of the hearse. That’s why the gentlemen at the gas station wouldn’t pump our gas; NOT while having to look at a dead man under a blanket. We thought it couldn’t get any better than that. But we were wrong.

Leaving the drapes open while transporting a body is a HUGE no-no. In respect to the deceased you always close the curtains. That would have to be fixed as soon as we got to the restaurant. We spotted a McDonalds and headed that way.

But before we could get in the parking lot we found ourselves locked in mortal combat with a redneck in a jacked up mustang. He must’ve fancied himself a fighter pilot because he did donuts around us as he pretended to strafe our hearse. When we finally parked he slid in beside us. We jumped out and opened the side doors to close the curtains. As we were doing so this bearded, 350 lb fighter pilot ace leapt from his car asking if I was going to get my friend anything to eat, referring to the corpse in the back. I leaned in and yelled “Hey, you want anything to eat”? My partner, bent down in the other door answered with “Hell no, I ain’t hungry”!

I turned back and saw that Ace and his F-15 Mustang had vanished. As if he had been caught in a time warp or sucked into a Bermuda triangle indigenous to McDonalds. We felt slightly relieved when we caught site of him racing down the street. We realized that he had not seen my partner and apparently thought that the dead man in the back had either died on a full stomach or did not want his first meal among the non-living to be McDonalds. However he was not about to hang around to see which was which.

I told you before that we put the FUN in Funeral Home.