Pardon My Hearse: A Colorful Portrait of Where the Funeral and Entertainment Industries Met in Hollywood (29 page)

The Chinese would often hire a marching band to congregate in Chinatown. The band would play while everyone marched through the main street as a black convertible carried a 3’ x 5’ photo of the deceased through downtown. This car drove in front of the hearse, followed by two or three limos. Ron would purchase a black Cadillac convertible every year as his personal vehicle for these services.

At many Chinese services, a limousine was designated for the ancestors and carried no passengers, while another one transported the paid professional mourners. Our drivers didn’t like to drive the mourner’s limo because the women, all dressed in black, would wail all the way from Chinatown to the cemetery. At the conclusion of the service, everyone was given a small white envelope containing a piece of candy and a nickel, unless the deceased was 80 or older, in which case the envelopes were red and contained the candy and a dime.

Ernie Quan was the manager of a mortuary doing many of these Chinese services, and over the years we became good friends. While Kathy and I were dancing at our wedding reception, Ernie came up to us and handed me a red envelope containing a $100 bill and a piece of candy. It was a very nice gesture, but I wasn’t sure if he was trying to send me some sort of subtle message about marriage.

Fukui Mortuary conducted many funerals and our drivers, who were not Japanese, got the same respect as anyone else conducting the service. As each family walked up the steps of the temple, they would bow at the waist and we would reciprocate the gesture. The Fukui family had been held in an internment camp during World War II. After all they endured, they still managed to open a mortuary in downtown LA.

When we started serving the Fukuis, the parents had their son, Soichi, manage the business. His mother still lived in the upstairs apartment and would answer the phones at night. She would call us in the middle of the night and give me an order to make a removal. She spoke broken English, and on one occasion she told me that the deceased was at the Paco Ima Hospital. Confused, I wrote the name as it sounded and realized that it was the Pacoima Hospital. Another time she called and said the case was
at the Tanu Prima Hospital. The name didn’t sound familiar to me at all, so after repeating the name two or three times she hung up in frustration. The phone rang about two minutes later and Soichi Fukui asked me, “Don’t you know where Daniel Freeman Hospital is?” I apologized and told him we would make the call immediately.

Later, Soichi’s son, Jerry, became the manager, making him the third generation we had served. One day, Jerry called about an upcoming funeral for a man who had possibly committed suicide. In our conversation, he mentioned how rare suicide was among the Japanese community. We were good friends so I jokingly told him that I always thought that the Japanese had practically invented ritual suicide, or seppuku, as their culture calls it.

One of our biggest supporters over the years was Groman Mortuary, which did the greatest number of Orthodox Jewish funerals. They owned one hearse and no limousines, so we picked up all their families for every funeral. When Groman’s completed a death call, sometimes their staff became aware that the deceased was not Jewish. The remains were immediately taken down the street and left in their parking garage until the family could contact a Gentile funeral home.

Orthodox funerals are very different from Reform Jewish services. In Orthodox services, the blood is saved in jars and buried with the deceased. Often, this all had to be accomplished before the sun set, depending on the time of day that the person had died.

Most rabbis performed traditional services, which concluded with everyone reciting a funeral prayer, or Kaddish, with the rabbi. The rabbi would then approach one or more members of the family and cut the man’s lapel or the woman’s blouse with a small pocketknife. During a few Orthodox services, the families were apparently unaware of this custom and were visibly upset when it happened. Eventually, they began using black Kriah ribbons that were pinned on family members and cut, instead of damaging someone’s clothing.

At one Orthodox service, many attendees were surprised when the rabbi lifted the artificial grass covering the mound of dirt and used a shovel to break the metal handles from the wooden casket. Orthodox caskets are not supposed to have any metal used in the manufacturing process, so they’re assembled with glue and dowels, much like fine furniture.

Whenever our drivers would return a family to their home we would give them a Shiva candle in a glass container. They explained to the family that it was to be lit and would burn for seven days and nights. We trained our drivers to explain the significance of the candle, because some of the families were not aware of its purpose.

The person who almost single-handedly changed the way Jewish funerals were conducted in LA was an unconventional rabbi named Edgar Magnin. He was at the helm of the well-known Wilshire Temple, where many famous entertainers and Hollywood’s elite attended funerals. He was also the only rabbi who had a limousine drive him to every cemetery chapel service. Rabbi Magnin was part of the I. Magnin department store family and was extremely colorful. He referred to his particular style of funerals as “reformed teachings.” I drove him many times as the sole occupant of the limo, and he always sat in the front seat. He had some really great stories to tell and it was always a pleasure driving him.

One day a director from Groman Mortuary arrived at Home of Peace Jewish Cemetery and stopped momentarily to turn in the burial permit at the office just inside the front gate. He left the engine running and when he came out the hearse was gone, casket and all! We got an emergency call from them asking if we had a gray cloth-covered octagon casket in our display room, which we did. They requested that we put it into a hearse and get it to the cemetery ASAP. They informed the family about the problem, but they decided to go on with the ceremony using our empty casket.

Three hours later, Groman called again and asked if we had a car and two drivers who could leave immediately for Indio, California, near Palm Springs. The man who had stolen the hearse stopped there for gas and then drove off without paying for it. The gas station attendant called the CHP, who spotted the hearse and gave chase. Hearses don’t exactly blend in, so he was caught about twenty miles down the road. They arrested an illegal alien trying to get back to Mexico. The lesson here is that if you’re going to steal a vehicle, make sure it’s not a big black hearse.

During our years of delivering flowers, we worked on a number of Gypsy funerals. The Gypsies were, without a doubt, the most unusual people whom we ever encountered. They are very loyal if you give them good service, and we had gotten fairly accustomed to their many peculiarities. Holman & Sons mortuary, which performed many Gypsy funerals, would sometimes buy freight-damaged caskets very cheaply
and have them repaired. At the conclusion of one of their services, we were gathering up the flowers as the pallbearers carried the casket from the chapel to the hearse. Without any warning, the bottom of the casket gave way and the body fell to the ground. As a result, the Gypsies stopped using that mortuary, which set the groundwork for us to become the new official Gypsy mortuary.

The original casket display room that we had turned into dorm rooms before the fire once again became one very large room that the Gypsies loved to use for their wakes. It was like a large living room with easy chairs, couches, and Ron’s baby grand piano.

Many of the observations we had made over the years in the industry helped us avoid making the same mistakes when we opened our own mortuary. When we did our first Gypsy funeral, we knew it would be necessary to explain that certain rules had to be followed or we would not serve them. It was important to be very firm with the Gypsies because, left unchecked, almost anything could happen at one of their gatherings. They would bring kegs of beer, set up barbecue grills on our parking lot, and often rent a large tent under which the chairs were placed.

Gypsies are nomadic people from the Indian subcontinent who established themselves primarily in Eastern Europe. The word “Gypsy” has a negative connotation and has taken on another definition, describing someone who has no home or wanders endlessly. In the many conversations we had with them over the years, it was obvious that they have pride in their culture, although they had some rather strange practices. We paid an employee $100 to stay with them for the entirety of the wake, which would last all night. Their belief was that you should become so exhausted by the experience that when it was over, you could go home, collapse in bed, and forget your sorrow.

Gypsies believe in a variation of resurrection, so they want the deceased to have all the necessities for the next life, known by anthropologists as “grave goods.” They would often buy a brand-new Stetson hat that was placed on the chest of their male loved one, and during the wake everyone would place items of importance in the casket. There was no limit to what was given the deceased—cash, boots, candles, incense, and bottled liquor. Women received even better treatment than men because the casket would end up full of jewelry, perfume, cosmetics, money and even an ivory-handled brush and mirror set once. I was really flabbergasted when a family member put a hot turkey sandwich in the casket
just before we left for the cemetery. I suppose an unscrupulous funeral director could have collected all the cash in the casket and replaced it with a check made out to the deceased. I
know
what you’re thinking—and no, we never did that.

An advance group of friends or family would always come in before the visitation to make sure that everything was in good order. One evening, two young men arrived and were escorted to our large display room by Bob Halverson, to make sure the deceased looked exactly right before the rest of the family arrived. Bob heard them talking and knew from past experience that they would often request something extra, so he waited a few moments. One young man was asking the other one if he had the gold cigarette lighter they were going to place in the deceased’s pocket. The other man produced a lighter, but then his friend asked, “Where did you get this lighter?” When his friend hesitated he exclaimed, “You stole this lighter, didn’t you? You know we can’t use a stolen lighter, so you have to go buy one.”

Gypsies are not so much religious as they are superstitious. One time, a Gypsy man had his leg amputated as a result of diabetes. His son brought the leg into the mortuary and asked us to embalm it. He said his father wasn’t expected to live very long and requested we store the embalmed leg in our body refrigerator. After a year of seeing the father in his wheelchair at a number of subsequent funerals, the son agreed that we could cremate the leg. When the father finally died, the son insisted that we get a replacement leg for him. Ron went downtown to a company and purchased a damaged manikin. I sawed the leg off and we duct-taped it to the man’s leg stump before dressing him. At the funeral, we asked the son why it was so important to attach this artificial leg, and he said that when his dad got to heaven he didn’t want God to think he was a cripple.

A Gypsy client came to me one afternoon and insisted something be done about his deceased brother in our care. The deceased had committed suicide with a gunshot just below the hairline. Our embalmer, Jerry Hendrix, had done a pretty good job waxing the wound and covering it with makeup, but it was still slightly visible. The brother said he didn’t care whom we had to call or how much it would cost but the problem absolutely had to be remedied.

I’m not trained in cosmetology, but I had an idea. Mischa was operating
Mortuary Management
from the building next door to the mortuary, and his girlfriend assisted him there, so I requested that she come upstairs
to the prep room. She had long black hair, and I asked her if it would be possible for me to cut off a piece. She leaned over and exposed the nape of her neck so some could be cut off where it wouldn’t show. It was affixed to his scalp with a little wax, combed over the wound, and held in place with hair spray. When the brother was shown the result that afternoon, he was delighted and tucked a $100 bill into my suit coat pocket. I told him that this was not necessary, but he insisted.

Most Gypsies are not affiliated with any particular church, so we approached the priest at Saint Sophia Cathedral, where Kathy and I were married, about referring our Gypsy clientele to him. He agreed to conduct their services for $150 but made it very clear that he would not tolerate disrespectful behavior. Many times it was necessary to admonish the attendees to stop talking in church. They would comply, but it wasn’t that they were concerned about being asked to leave; it was that their disrespectful behavior during the ceremony might jeopardize the deceased’s chances of being received in heaven.

People’s emotions about death can cause unusual reactions on certain occasions. Once, on my way back from Las Vegas, I was in one of our special black lift vans. The only thing that identified this as a funeral car was the pair of fourteen-inch chrome wreaths on either side. This was back when a gas attendant would actually come out and fill your tank. When he came to my window, I told him to fill it up. While I was stretching my legs after hours of driving, the attendant began with some small talk until he noticed one of the wreaths on the van. That was when he finally made the connection between a black van with chrome wreaths and a funeral car.

He looked at me strangely and asked if the van was some kind of a mortuary car, which I confirmed. Next, he asked if it was used to carry dead people, and I told him that was true as well. Then came the $64,000 question: Is there a dead person inside the truck now? Once again the answer was affirmative. He let go of the gas nozzle as if it had just given him a huge electrical shock and ran into the garage. After topping off the tank myself, I figured he was not coming out to collect the money, so I walked into the garage, where he asked me to place the money on the workbench. With a terrified expression on his face, he looked as though he had just had an encounter with the Grim Reaper.