West Lawn: Death and Commerce in the American Landscape

[Note: This is an essay I wrote for my Contemporary American Landscapes class, in which we were assigned to take the bus to a random place in Eugene and write about what we found. It turned out a bit more morbid than I would have expected, but the results were interesting nonetheless.]


Any landscape architect wishing to achieve the stately, respectable, American appearance of West Lawn Memorial Park on Danebo Road can easily do so by mimicking the following design strategies. First, plant Douglas fir in a long, neat line near the busy road and wait sixty years for them to fatten. Clear the rest of the land and put in rows uniform headstones, and throw in a couple of American flags and a fake waterfall for ambiance. Then, be sure the cemetery is situated in a sprawling, industrial end of town, across the street from such barbed-wired establishments as Bad Bitch Choppers and Pacific Metals. It will easily be the most attractive enterprise in the area by simple process of elimination.
West Lawn’s unexpectedly dignified appearance is what first drew me in as I wandered up Danebo from West 11th last weekend. West Eugene is notorious for its sketchiness, and I’d arrived at its most distant fringe: the bus stop just past Wal-Mart, realm of speeding semis and disaffected young men in black hoodies. In this setting, West Lawn Memorial Park appeared a peaceful refuge. I paused for a moment on the narrow shoulder to appreciate the neat daffodil bed around the large sign at the entrance. Looking down, I noticed something misshapen and feathery by my feet. A dead bird. I didn’t know it yet, but that’s the closest encounter I would have with my own mortality at this thoroughly modern American cemetery.
“Cemetery,” of course, isn’t the term the West Lawn proprietors would prefer. The sign out front advertises “funerals, cremations, and memorial park,” dignifiedly refusing to allude to the unpleasantness of death with more descriptive words. This is a safe place, it seems to announce. We’re sorry you have to come here, but we do welcome your business.
It’s a Sunday – prime grave-visiting day – but there are only two cars in the West Lawn parking lot and they might as well belong to the former drivers belowground. The place is deserted. However, it’s not entirely unpleasant, either: The “park” lives up to its promise of shady trees, green lawns and inviting benches. Only a sign warning of a security camera in the parking lot reminds me that this is not a public space. At the top of the upward-sloping pavement is a red brick building with a slanted roof and generic stained-glass window. Though it at first appears to be a church, this is in fact a non-religious “Chapel of Memories” attached to the West Lawn office, part of the one-stop-shopping funeral package offered by the business.
I wander toward the waterfall nestled in a grove of trees between the parking lot and the grassy hillside of burial plots. Another sign tells me I’ve entered the Memorial Garden. A walkway meanders among shrubbery and shiny granite markers, most of which are blank, unwritten pages in the West Lawn death ledger. One is freshly engraved: “Teresa Morales, 1940-2009. Mamá siempre estarás en nuestro corazón,” it reads, the inscription accented by carved roses. I move on, drawn to the sound of the waterfall, which almost manages to drown out the hum of traffic on Danebo. Peering inside the water, I spot a plastic koi fish on a pole, disfigured by a healthy growth of algae.
The Memorial Garden is not disorderly but lacks cohesion, its elements holding in common only their newness, like displays at a home and garden show. Next to the small pool is a wood gazebo with a bench inside, and next to that a stone box that looks like a chest of drawers (I later learn its name: "columbarium". The units inside are known as "niches" and can store the ashes of one to two people.) A little farther down the circular path is another stone box and cardboard sign: Private Mausoleum. Available for purchase.
Memory and sales just became too closely tied for my tastes. I exit the garden for the wide open space of the cemetery proper. A cold wind sweeps over the grass, fluttering plastic flowers and miniature flags. In the distance, I can make out the roof of a Target store. Stenciled wooden signs demarcate sections of the graveyard in a fashion reminiscent of a Disneyland parking lot. Only here, instead of leaving your car in "Goofy," you can abandon your carcass in "David" or "Peace." For children, there's "Baby Circle," watched over by a statue of a marble angel kissing a fawn. One segment has bushes cut into a strange funnel shape; another is shaped into a mound with a single tree growing in the center. Is it the tree of life? A symbol of the lone individual reaching toward heaven?
I’m stirred from my ponderings by a blue Pontiac that drives up suddenly, a white-haired woman at the wheel. Disregarding the parking lot, she takes advantage of the cemetery's paved lanes and pulls up to a point near the headstone of her choice. It takes her less than three minutes to exchange the flowers and get back in her car.

What does the landscape of West Lawn reveal about Eugenians, living and dead? As J.B. Jackson, the great American landscape critic, has pointed out, Americans – and Europeans before us – have a long tradition of collecting populations of the deceased and placing them under the ground. Traditionally, those with higher social status were buried closer to the church, but in general we prefer to hide away these groupings of bodies, behind a glade of trees or outside of town somewhere. In these locations, plots tend to be rectangular, like the squared-off spaces – houses, fields – in which their occupants spent their lives.
Landscape truly is history made visible, as Jackson said, and this modern graveyard reflects changes in American habits and values over the past hundred or so years. It’s egalitarian, yes – now everyone can be buried near a church. Of course, that church can’t be a real one in the sense of being affiliated with a religious institution. That would narrow the customer base.
So religion, which once was integral to culture, has been reduced to a representation in this landscape. Death is a business here, made abstract by the mingling of cash with the respectable facade of the cemetery. Walking through, I don’t feel morbid, just curious. Who would want to be buried in this place? My best theory is that few actually chose this end. Perhaps these dead are all relations of the country’s transitory class, people who came here to seek their fortune and moved on long ago, choosing an economical site on cheap West Eugene land for a quick and easy burial. The lack of family plots may be evidence of this theory. Or maybe these discrete, nearly identical units are simply indicators of a society that simultaneously values individuality and conformity, where a membership to any community is a burden but standing out comes at a cost. By becoming conspicuous consumers – of fancy caskets, a “niche” near the waterfall, dozens of flowers – even in death, we make that passing less threatening for ourselves and easier for loved ones to bear.
Judging by the abundance of blank plots and markers in West Lawn, its owners are at least subconsciously counting on the next generation of dead sharing the values of those already in the ground. They’re not the only ones, though; we all depend on the eventuality of these slots becoming filled. Babies are born each day, newcomers fill apartment complexes and suburbs. We always need more space.
I watch the lady in the Pontiac drive off and turn to leave as well. As I do, I notice a backhoe in the next field over, pouring out a cloud of black smoke that stands out against the grey sky. It doesn’t take long for me to figure out what it’s doing over there in that far corner of the hedged-in lawn. Shovelful after shovelful, a new grave is quietly being dug.

Environmentalism: East vs West

[Note: This is half of a two-part Oregon Voice article comparing approaches to environmentalism on the East and West coasts of the US. A fellow student from New Jersey is writing the other half, so it should be an interesting final product (I believe they're looking at printing next month, so look for it on oregonvoice.com) This article is also in draft form, so feedback is appreciated!]


West Coast: Keeping the Green in our Wallets

I believe the ideals of environmentalism on the west coast are best embodied by my father, an old-school conservative who grasps better than a lot of eco-conscious Generation Y-ers these days what it means to reduce, reuse and recycle. Raised by a depression-generation single mother and with decades as a small business owner behind him, the man knows how to cut corners. Yes, it’s admirable, but if you’re not careful, this frugality can deliver some unpleasant surprises.
I learned this lesson the hard way one family vacation in Hawaii a few years ago. Having forgotten to pack my own, I asked dad if I could borrow some floss. Instead of the customary plastic case containing a spool, he handed me single, suspicious-looking waxy strand. However, it was generously long, for which I give him credit. I accepted the offering, ran it between my molars and deposited it in the wastebasket as usual.
An hour later, it was his turn to perform the ritual pre-bed hygiene. He went into the bathroom. Then he came back out. With admirable coolness, he asked, “Hey, where’d you put that floss?”
“What floss?” I asked.
“The floss I gave you earlier.”
“Um, threw it away,” I said, a little confused. He looked at me with an expression of mixed disappointment for having lost his floss and dismay at my carelessness.
“Tuula,” he sighed. “That was my only piece.”

Safe in the bathroom wastebasket – where even my father wouldn’t delve – that floss was spared from the mango-fiber and pineapple-strand hell that was sure to have lain ahead during those fourteen days in the tropics.
Of course, the frayed and gummy quality of his floss over the course of that trip would never have fazed my dad. For him, stretching consumer goods beyond their reasonable lifespan is not just a way of life, it’s an ongoing little game he plays with our throw-away society. There’s nothing he enjoys more than plucking something out a discard pile, brushing it off, and using it for the next twenty years. The wobbly, undersized bicycle he rides came from a gulley near his house. He drags his firewood in off the beach. If he does come across something new, he ensures it’s darn well expired before he disposes of it himself – writing on every square inch of a used envelope and wearing t-shirts until they’re more hole than fabric.
It would be nice to believe that this thriftiness goes beyond penny-pinching and is based in a more deeply rooted conservationist ethic. But if such a philosophy does exist, it is buried under a strong aversion to environmental and social “do-gooders” that defines my father’s political views. Instead – perhaps out of a simple desire to save funds – Pop has invented his own form of environmentalism, one that rejects the entire concept of consumables.

These days, recycling the items we use in our daily lives falls under the self-righteous headings of “sustainability” or being “green” – terms that would be nice to write off on east-coast yuppies but that we’re culpable for perpetrating as well. Worse, we’ve allowed marketers to convince us to attempt to buy our way out of our multiple, converging environmental disasters with such things as hybrid cars and organic cotton clothing sold at Wal-Mart. After all, in this era of plenty, one of the luxuries we’ve earned ourselves is the ability to throw things away and purchase newer, better, greener versions. A classic example of this are the well intentioned “light bulb exchange” campaigns that you see cropping up form time to time. Sure, it sounds nice to get a free fluorescent bulb, which will save who knows how many megawatts of electricity, but do we have to throw away thousands of perfectly good “old” bulbs in order to make the transition?
So, in this context of this hip(ocritical) eco-friendliness, can west-coasters keep our cool and rationally discern between what’s good for the earth and what simply makes us feel good? The west coast in general, and Oregon in particular, has a good reputation for not only rejecting the pretentious but also enacting legislation that helps make it easier to reduce our collective footprint (which is itself a slippery concept, but we’ll run with it). Oregon was the first state to create a bottle deposit system, providing broke college students and the homeless in 11 states now the opportunity to regain some of their beer money. Its somewhat controversial land-use system – in which urban growth boundaries are strictly enforced and land designated as agricultural must remain that way – has also been heralded by environmentalists. And of course, one can’t discuss green policies without tipping a hat to Portland, where happy citizens bike, recycle and build energy-efficient structures with an air of smugness that should itself be monitored by the EPA.
Oregon’s neighbors generate a good amount of eco-friendly smug themselves. California was the first state to place emissions caps on new vehicles lower than those imposed by the federal government and is generally ahead of its east-coast counterparts in environmental leadership. Washington gained attention this winter for refusing to put salt on Seattle’s roads, irritating commuters around Puget Sound but probably generating a lot of gratitude among those who live in its waters.

Of course, good ol’ dad scoffs at all of the above schemes, and maybe he’s right to do so. But at some point, the priority needs to be placed not only on protecting consumers from themselves, but also on protecting the earth from our resource-gobbling, polluting habits. The west coast does a reasonably good job of doing so, even if we’re sometimes given to “greenwashing.” One thing’s for sure, though – you won’t find many east coast yuppie environmentalists reusing floss.