 
Arthur Raymond Smith at home. |
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City of the Dead 
Graveyard with a Homespun Edge (Jim Metzner Intro)RealPlayer: 28.8K | 56K WinMedia: 28.8K | 56K Coffins popping up out of the ground like tulips. Must’ve been a disconcerting sight back in the 1800s, when the citizenry of New Orleans experienced firsthand one of the downsides of living in a ville that’s virtually surrounded by water.
There are venerable oak trees draped with Spanish moss. And there are stories. Some of them can be read on gravestones—typically homemade affairs. Some of them can be seen in graveside mementos. This is a place where the living come to terms with the dead.
The atmosphere at Holt is oddly inviting. It’s easy to linger. I first visited Holt with Rob Florence, the man who literally wrote the book on New Orleans cemeteries—New Orleans Cemeteries: Life in the Cities of the Dead.
Because of limited space, many families re-use ancestral plots at Holt to bury the newly dead. The practice is commonplace in New Orleans’ above ground tombs, where bodies tend to decompose quickly. According to Rob Florence, Holt may be soon closed to future burials—an action that will likely generate heated opposition from those with family ties to the cemetery.
In one corner of Holt, there’s an odd assemblage of objects—another work in progress—a memorial tended periodically by Arthur Raymond Smith. New Orleans, like San Francisco, has a special place in its heart for eccentrics and characters—and Arthur is a good example of both. He’s spent the past 30 years gathering ephemera and creating graveside art in memory of his mother and grandmother.
I visited Arthur at his home and at yet another graveyard memorial he’s created in Carrollton Cemetery. Now, a conversation with Arthur is a bit like navigating through a piece of atonal music laced with plenty of improvisation. Lots of stream-of-consciousness riffs; memories of his grandmother—who nursed him as a sickly child—laced with humor, graciousness, spirituality and insight.
—Jim Metzner
Text, Photographs and Recordings: Jim Metzner
Special Thanks to Kate Mytron, Rob Florence, Arthur Raymond Smith, Henry Nickerson, Anna Ross, Tom Woodin, Doug MacCash, Melanie Tennyson, WWNO and the great city of New Orleans.
Pulse of the Planet is presented by the DuPont Company, with additional support from the National Science Foundation. Pulse of the Planet’s Listener Initiative is made possible with support from the National Endowment for the Humanities.
© 2000 Jim Metzner Productions and the National Geographic Society. All rights reserved.
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Nowadays, out of respect to the buoyancy of a high water table, most folks in New Orleans bury their dead aboveground in tombs or mausoleums. But not everybody. For those who can’t afford the high rent district of a last resting place, there are other options, like Holt cemetery, where people are interred in terra firma. Like New Orleans itself, Holt defies a capsule description.
