Deer in the Headlights

First I want to apologize in advance to anyone I might offend, so if you’re sensitive about death or rednecks or plastic flowers, go your way in peace and read no more. Evidently I am morally bankrupt and I've decided to make fun of dead people. Not a dead person I actually knew in life of course, but one whose grieving family and friends determined that the highest and best way they could memorialize him was to buy a couple of fake deer, some crosses and plastic flowers, splash some red paint on a piece of plywood, and set the whole thing up on “dead man’s curve” here in the heart of redneck country. When I first saw the makeshift pseudo grave almost a year ago it was not so elaborate, but bit-by-bit it has evolved, even changing with the seasons, perpetually new. It was easy to ignore until this past Christmas when the first deer appeared. I just marvel at trying to imagine the thought process of the mother or girlfriend coming upon the pint size Blitzen at Wal Mart.

Jamie, choking back tears, says to Summer, “Ohhh, would you look at that? Remember when Joe brought home that big buck on the first day of hunting season?”

Summer, visibly moved, agrees, “Joe sure loved to hunt him some deer. Let’s buy it and put it out under the cross.”

Of course this is an imaginary conversation and I’m not disrespecting their grief. It is real and honest and painful, but these are not the type of people who set up scholarship funds for their departed loved ones. They are the type that just stuff that deer into an over sized plastic bag and throw it in the back of their pickup truck. I guess the girls thought one deer was not enough for Joe, or else one of them got jealous that someone else thought of it first. Either way, the fake stone plastic deer in a permanent resting posture appeared sometime in February. I'll have to give them credit though becaue they took down the tinsel, poinsettias, and ornaments right before Easter and freshened things up with the jonquils. They might have been having trouble making “Brownie” stand steadfast through the winter storms, because it appears that a metal weed whacker handle or some such instrument has been positioned at the deer’s posterior.

Now if all this weren’t amusing enough, I showed the picture to my younger son, thinking he might get a giggle out of it. He looked puzzled for a second, and then said,

“So someone hit a deer and died, and they made a memorial?”

“Well son, I suppose it’s possible, but I don’t think so.” I replied, getting into the spirit of his dry humor.

He continues, “I guess that would be a little morbid, wouldn’t it. Maybe they killed a deer there and the monument is for the deer.” I looked again.

“Well, I guess that could be, after all the second deer is white and ghostly, plastic, but painted to look like simulated concrete.”

“Wow,” quips my boy, “a simulated concrete deer. What will they think of next?”

“Yeah, great isn’t it. It gives the appearance of permanence, and it’s easy to carry down a winding hill on a narrow road.”

There is nothing to say after this except trying to cipher the rest of the names of the loved ones, since neither of us knows the real story. I googled “spontaneous roadside memorials”, thinking I might not be the only one puzzled by this phenomenon. It seems like some scholarly type in UK is doing research on the very subject. Who knew? He sort of blames it on the Mexicans in a back handed way. Well, very back handed actually. His exact words are:

“In the United States elaborately decorated roadside crosses marking violent deaths are most common in the Hispanic Southwest, especially northern New Mexico. Research indicates that the antecedents for these descansos or cruces can be traced to a medieval Spanish practice of erecting crosses at the sites of violent death.”

I told you it was scholarly and back handed. I will say that he gets very creepy at times, probably the results of researching this subject for too long. I have determined to give up on further analysis before I am tempted to click on his link for “The social (and legal) life of corpses”. Some things I just don’t want to know.