State

It's A Long Sleep Some* Ter Heels who were very particular about Iht» d<»tail*. By JACK AIMS When they leave this place to enter that long sleep, some folks not only want to rest in peace, but in comfort, too. In such widely separated and di¬ verse spots as Pink Hill in Lenoir County and Woodleaf in Rowan, some very special arrangements were made in the 1920s and '30s to achieve that end. In Pink Hill there is a small family cemetery with a house built over it. or over most of it. The structure has been there 60 years and there is nothing sac¬ rilegious about it. The cemetery sits on property owned by Wilbur Tyndall, and is adjacent to his tractor sales and ser¬ vice company. "This lady's husband died and after he was buried she kept having this dream that he was uncomfortable be¬ cause he was so wet and cold." Tyn¬ dall said. "So she had this house built over his grave." The building had a door and three small windows. It was 20-by-20 feet in size with a tin roof coated with faded red paint. Inside the building were three graves and three headstones. There lay: Ivy B. Smith (1862-1922), Sarah Z. Smith (1852-1916) and Ada Viette Smith (1865-1938). Sarah was Ivy Smith’s first wife. Ada Viette was the wife who had the building constructed to keep Ivy Smith warm and dry. “When she died she was put in there, too." Tyndall said. "She was a Ford. When I was young and people said. 'Viette Ford.’ I thought they were talk¬ ing about a car" (as in. V-8 Ford: Viette is pror junccd "vcc-ETT"). So Ada Viette put a roof over both THE STATE. FCBHUAHY 1985 her late husband and her late husband's first wife, and left enough room under her cemetery house for her own grave as well. A fourth grave lies just outside the shelter. E.P. Ford, one of Ada Viette's brothers, died in 1939 after the house was full. He rests directly beside it. within a small picket fence but under the trees and the sky. Apparently nobody dreams that he is wet and cold. But what about Ada Viette? After she had the house built over Ivy Smith's grave, did she stop having that dream about him? "She quit having the dream." Tyn¬ dall said. "It completely satisfied her thoughts, so the neighbors tell me. so she quit having the dream." Up in Rowan County, when Ben Freeze went to his eternal rest at the age of 72. he went in his nightclothes, cov¬ ered with a nice bedspread and lying on a new mattress and springs on the raised floor of a granite vault he had built for that purpose. Dying. Ben Freeze believed, would be just like going to sleep. And what¬ ever Ben Freeze believed, he did. He saw no need for a casket, so at his funeral the six pallbearers carried his body on a hospital stretcher. Among them were two men named Jim. two named Jack and two named Bill. "That's the way he did things." said North Carolina Commissioner of Ag¬ riculture Jim Graham. "One of those two Jims was my daddy. 1 was just a little fella when they slid him in there. Mama, she wouldn’t let us young'uns get out of the car." That was in 1933, in the Woodleaf community, in Jim Graham's home county. Ben Freeze, who ran a cotton gin. was something. When he drove his Dodge car, his wife Alice always rode in the back seat. "He used to tell everybody." Graham said: " ' I paid for two seats and I’m gonna use cm both’." Talton Correll was 27 when he and his father. Frank Correll. laid Ben Freeze away. Talton was the one who tucked him into his final bed. Alice Freeze messed up Ben’s plans some. Talton said: "He intended for her to die first.” Alice had always been sickly; didn’t get around much. What Ben wanted was to have his wife's body placed on the bed in the burial vault with her arm stretched out to cradle his head, when he finally died. "Somehow, she seemed to get better after he died." Talton said. Alice outlived Ben Freeze by 22 years, and was then laid to rest, at the age of 93. in her nightgown, on the bed beside him. Neither Graham nor Talton Correll knew where Ben Freeze had gotten the notion to build a mausoleum for himself. "Out in rural Rowan County, nobody even knew' what a mausoleum was at that time." Graham said. "But he had this fear of being buried in the ground in the water." One rainy day after the burial vault was finished, Ben Freeze and Frank Correll went out to inspect it and found condensation dripping from its ceiling. Talton Correll said. "That will drip right on my face" Freeze said, offended. Frank Correll said: “Well. I tell ya. Ben. II it bothers you. you can just turn over." But they had some holes drilled and the dripping stopped. In fact, Talton Correll said, when they put Alice Freeze in the mausoleum in 1955. "they said everything was in pretty good shape Every thing was dry." Ben Freeze had his way when he was alive, and he took it with him. too. и