Edgar Oliver - Greenwood Surrounds

 

I grew up in Savannah, Georgia, with my mother and with my sister, Helen. One of our favorite places to play all throughout my childhood was in cemeteries. We would go get fried chicken at the Woolworths on Broughton Street, and then we’d go with our sketchpads to the Colonial Cemetery to picnic atop the family vaults that were all shaped like gigantic brick bedsteads. 

 

Helen and I loved to climb on the strange bed-shaped vaults and to lie on the gently curved bellies of the vaults and play at being dead. While we played, mother drew in her sketchpad. It was beautiful to lie there in the golden light, feeling so alive, pretending to be dead. [audience laughter] At the very back of the cemetery was a playground with old rusted iron swings that shrieked when you swung in them. Helen and I loved to swing high and make the swing shriek mournfully, [audience laughter] the cry of our flight. 

 

On the other side of the brick wall overlooking the playground rose the Savannah jailhouse, a tall old building with a tower topped by a red onion dome. High up in the jailhouse wall were dark arched windows, where you could see the silhouettes of men's heads. The prisoners watching us as we swang. 

 

Welcome to The Moth at the Greenwood Cemetery.