Gods of The Nowhere by James Tipper EPUB & PDF – eBook Details Online
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- Author: James Tipper
- Language: English
- Genre: Folklore
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Sam and Lucia Have Company
Just south of San Francisco, California lies the small town of Colma.
There are only about 1,500 people living in Colma, enough to fill a small
municipal auditorium, but what really makes this town interesting, above all
other towns, is that the majority of the city’s residents are dead.
Aside from the 1,500 who are still breathing in Colma, there are 1.5
million who are not. Currently, this would set the ratio at one thousand dead
people per every living resident. This fact becomes even more startling
when you consider that Colma takes up only two square miles of land.
Colma has more dead bodies per square inch than any other town in the
world with seventeen cemeteries within its modest borders, which include
memorial parks specific to Catholics, Jews, Italians, Greek Orthodox,
Serbs, Japanese and even two set aside for pets. As a result of this
distinction, most of the residents of Colma are not likely to cause any
problems.
Some of them used to, of course. In fact, some of them were very
controversial people in their time, but unfortunately, if you were to come to
the town to rub elbows with its most famous residents – William Randolph
Hearst, Levi Strauss, Joe DiMaggio, Lefty O’Doul and Wyatt Earp – you
would find them to be very dull company indeed.
How the town of Colma came to exist is a combination of hysteria and
good sense. In 1900, San Francisco was getting crowded. The families of
the gold rush had grown roots and now the prospectors were seeing their
children have grandchildren. The railroads were built and the Chinese who
built them were sticking around. So did the many Italians, filling the
waterfront with fishing trawlers. In short, word had gotten out that there
was something for everyone in the City by the Bay. Its streets and hills were
beginning to bustle without much space for bustling.
It is unclear who started the outcry for more space, but among the loudest
voices were real estate developers, city planners, and of course the
politicians who were very eager to please whomever seemed to be
successfully convincing the public. Talks began about moving San
Francisco’s cemeteries to somewhere else – somewhere kind of nice and
sort of close by, but somewhere else nonetheless.
“Crime!” cried some residents. “Cemeteries attract drunks, grave robbers
and ne’er-do-wells!”
“Take care of the living!” cried the real estate developers, investors and
city planners. “Cemeteries breed disease!”
This got people’s attention. After all, the land occupied by cemeteries was
very valuable and often located in some very desirable locations. So the
campaign to instill fear in the public went on, and it seemed to be working –
at least at first. But it wasn’t long before all of this talk of moving their
forefathers out of town started making the public more nervous than they
were afraid.
A compromise began to take shape: simply prohibit any more people
from being buried in the City. Of course, there was a problem with this.
There were already countless bodies in the ground, at rest, and occupying
the land.
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