You Can Take It with You

During 50 years of farming at Hiawatha, Kans., John M. Davis accumulated a half million dollars and a long white beard. He also developed a turned-down nose, a turned-down mouth and a suspicious and belligerent eye. John M. Davis had a problem and he wrestled with it morning, noon & night. The effort gave him a mean look.

Everybody wanted his money. It seemed to John M. Davis that he couldn't spit, scratch or let down his galluses without somebody scheming up something to do with it. His relatives wanted it. Everybody else wanted it--they wanted him to build a hospital or a swimming pool. For all he knew they wanted him to build a fly, locust and grasshopper hatchery. John M. Davis was damned if he'd give them a nickel but he couldn't figure out what to use it for, himself.

Then, in 1930, when his wife Sarah died, he got the answer. After he buried her he called in the local tombstone merchant, and told him to get to work. He wanted a tomb as big as a house, with six polished stone pillars and a shiny granite roof as thick as a bomb shelter. He also wanted two marble statues: Sarah and John M. Davis as young folks, sitting discreetly at opposite ends of a love seat. The statues were made in Italy, modeled after pictures from the Davis photo album and they cost a mint of money; but John liked them and decided to get more.

As the years passed, ten more statues of Sarah and John M. Davis were set up in the tomb. There was Sarah as a young wife and Sarah as an old wife, standing and gazing. There was John sitting with Sarah; there was John sitting beside an empty marble chair (which bore an engraved inscription: "The Vacant Chair"). There was John kneeling on his wife's grave and Sarah, equipped with a set of wings, kneeling with a stone bouquet in one hand on the spot he had reserved for himself.

That wasn't all. John also set up urns and a fancy granite stone which was inscribed: "Kindly Keep Off the Memorial." Then he surrounded the whole business with a four-foot marble wall--he didn't want strangers' children on his lap.

The tomb became a tourist attraction. John became famous. He used to spend his Sundays at the graveyard, watching folks gawking at his marble likenesses. His relatives quit bothering him. He used up all his money, retired to the Brown County poor farm and lived at public expense. Last week he died, aged 92. Those who attended the funeral said he looked satisfied.

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