The Wrong Corpse
When Sylvia Galmi died she was to be buried at the American Legion cemetery in Chapala. There were many people at her gravesite waiting in the pouring rain. Her body was coming out from Guadalajara because her daughter had wanted her embalmed - a rare practice even these days.
Sylvia was a famous portrait photographer and a very well known character not only about our town; Alan Weinstein wrote his Alger Hiss vs. Whitaker Chamber book at her home. Anna Roosevelt visited for a weekend.
There were two bars in town then: the old Posada, and the Tejeban, that was conveniently kiddy corner across the street from Sylvia's house. She liked parties and had an open house every Sunday - doors wide open and booze flowing freely. When the doors closed late in the day, Sylvia picked up all the half filled glasses and poured them into a large bowl for the "special" punch the following Sunday. When she couldn't sleep she'd throw a tweed cape over her nightgown and step out for a quickie or two across the street. Coming back one night she took a terrible fall and never quite recovered from it.
She was to be buried at 2 PM. We all arrived on time (new to Mexico) in the pouring rain to find the hole in the ground was just being dug.
What to do? Go home? No, we would watch the gravediggers under our umbrellas and the body would soon be there. One and a half hours later the mourners had run out of tears and gone home. When it was clear that the hole was filling with water, someone ran out to his car and came back with a tarpaulin. It just covered the opening, but the edges had to be stood on to keep it up. Eventually a flask was passed around "to keep out the chill" from our wet clothes. One of the men standing on the tarp took a step to keep his balance and fell onto the tarp and into the hole. Simultaneously the dignified long black hearse pulled into the cemetery and up to the now very active gravesite - all of us pulling on the tarp to keep the man on it from drowning.
The footmen from the hearse watched this circus solemnly awaiting a pallbearer or two - someone - to pull Sylvia out of this wagon. It turned out the rescued man was a dignified pallbearer.
Drenched but now on his feet, he stumbled over to the hearse. He lifted the lid of the casket, stared down, looked again, and hollered "Hey! This ain't Sylvia!"
There was a choice then to wait in the rain for the replacement or to head for the nearest bar. Sylvia would have loved it.
