Short Chapters

In my lexicon, "short chapters" is code for "bathroom book."

"Mortuary Confidential; Undertakers Spill the Dirt" by Kenneth McKenzie and Todd Harra Citadel Press Kensington 234 pages $15.95

This is a collection of anecdotes from funeral directors and they cover funny things as well as poignant. This is not in any way a grisly or morbid book.

Have you ever been to a funeral where a fist fight broke out, and escalated to gunfire? You might be a redneck if you brought dead Granma to the funeral home ... rolled up in a sheet in the back of your pick-up truck. "We didn't want to bother the funeral director."

Mortuaries are often now in third generation hands. Families still live above the business, literally. Someone has to be on-call every night and what could be handier than to answer the phone above the garage and then pull on clothes, run down stairs and roll out the wagon?

People who work with the dead provide a necessary service, but they have outside lives, too. Each contributor lists his hobby under his story title - they range from a guitarist to a Vet; an amateur boxer to a college football fan.

The tale "Men and Makeup" starts with this line: People assume that because I'm gay, I must naturally be good at makeup. Another director writes that if he wants to rile up his wife, he asks her if she'd like him to do her makeup.

Funeral directors are human beings (despite what many of us might have thought) and it's a very nice look at their lives and works. I recomend it as a perfect bathroom book or a take-on-the-plane book. Especially on a plane; no seatmate will want to chat with you. And that can be a very good thing...