Whoever mused that life is stranger than fiction should have added that cemetery searching is stranger than cinema. Stranger, but better- because you've right in the middle of the action, with the plum part. Heroine family genealogist takes to the Midwestern back roads with little more than sketchy directions and a prayer. Will she find the gravesite of her paternal 3rd-great-grandparents, or her maternal great grand-uncle or her (fill-in-the-blank-relative)? Okay, you get the plot (and I do mean cemetery plot). Now I expect any male family researcher reading this will be thinking, "Hey, wait a minute. Guys search out cemeteries too." Of course. But as men lean toward those macho adventure genre films, don't count on a call from my casting agent. It's my production, baby, and this is a strictly rom-com chick flick- a girl meets guy movie. Sorry fellas- in this script the heroine gets the guy.

On three separate occasions in recent months, a guy in a pickup truck has come to my aid as I was driving down a somewhere-out-there country road, clutching the steering wheel of my car with one hand, while holding a hand-drawn map of directions to a ghost-town cemetery in the other. Of course I could outfit myself with a GPS unit and never get lost again. Out the car window, however, would go the mystery, drama, suspense, and yes, romance, of a splendid search resulting in a happily-ever-after ending.

My first pickup guy, so to speak, was a 70-something farmer wearing a weatherworn face above a warm heart. My hero. I had stopped at a rural convenience store to ask directions. Inside at that precise moment was a customer who chuckled under his breath when he heard me inform the clerk where I was headed. "Hardin?” he echoed, "I'll show you the place!" Come to find out this gentleman not only knew the parcel of land I sought but was the very one who now owned the land adjacent. Only a few years previous he'd posted a hand-made sign in one of his fields to commemorate the long-lost community. Perfect timing, yes, and perfect staging. He had me follow his pickup right to the spot. He then left me, with a shake of his head and a bemused grin, to commune with the spirits of my ancestors.

My second hero, looking as if he'd had either too late a night or too early a morning (possibly both), came careening down a gravel road just after I'd stopped my car at a country crossroads, unsure whether to take a left, a right, or a road less taken. I rolled down my window to flag him down. Now it may be true that men will never stop to ask directions, but it also must be conversely true that when men are asked directions, they've got their script down word perfect. This one not only clarified the correct course to the cemetery, but also added a colorful sentence or two on local landmarks I'd be passing along the way.

The last and latest of my guys was a deer hunter accompanied by his young son. Again I had stopped, unsure of where I was, and again, right on cue, up the gravel road out of a clear November sky came the pickup truck. This guy had either spent time in the military or had a mother who'd minded his manners. "Take a right, ma'am; go a half mile, ma'am and then follow the left lane to the dead-end, ma'am, where you'll see a sign, ma'am." My (polite) hero. Another satisfying conclusion to a day's cemetery searching.

Now it goes without saying that, in the world in which we live, female searchers of backwoods cemeteries must exercise caution. The requisite three "C's" are: companion, cell phone, and common sense. Explicit directions are not absolutely necessary because you just might find that when you come to a fork in a (choose one:) gravel/asphalt/dirt road, out of the (choose one:) sunrise/sunset/high noon sky there will materialize a (choose one:) shiny /dusty/nondescript pickup just in the nick of time. Your leading man arriving to aid the damsel in distress! It could happen. There are guys out there right now revving their engines, poised for their performance, waiting in the wings for their cue from that Great Genie Director in the Sky.

© 2002