Wednesday, July 12, 2006
Golf Cemetery
I was reading the Chicago Tribune’s daily email and they had an article on things that makes Chicago weird. One of the things they listed was the Ahlgrim Family Funeral Services and Miniature Golf Course. Here’s what they had to say:
Where else can you pay your final respects to a loved one,then play nine holes of mini-golf? Answer: Palatine. About 40 years ago,Roger Ahlgrim installed a mini-putt course(now called "Ahlgrim Acres") in the funeral parlor's basement, mostly for private use. Now, the public comes to play past red-eyed skulls and tongue-in-cheek coffin obstacles, but only during non-service hours.201 N. Northwest Highway
I can’t explain how excited and surprised I am by this. I’m excited because I love mini-golf. I don’t play very often because, well, I never think of playing. It’s also an incredibly stupid game. Yet, it’s very enjoyable because of how stupid it is. It takes little skill, which is just the right amount for me. And yet it’s incredibly enjoyable sinking a 5 foot putt, as if I were on The Price is Right playing “Hole in One” and I just won the car.
The surprising thing is that I hadn’t heard about this place before. I’m generally pretty hip when it comes to the northwest suburbs of Chicago. I spent virtually my entire life living in them. So imagine my shock when I heard about this place. It’s so odd, yet somehow it escaped me all this time. Rest assured, though, I will be playing golf at this place because it comes so close to doing what I’ve always wanted to do: link death and golf together.
I know what you’re thinking. Golf is boring. But do you think it’s deathly boring? I sure do. (Well, to watch anyway. Or to hear other people tell stories about their games. Playing is fun. If you call 4 hours spent looking for my ball in the woods “fun.”) Anyway, golf courses and cemeteries are the biggest waste of real estate ever. My idea was to combine them into one multi-purpose Golf Cemetery.
I know you’re thinking it’s completely disrespectful. There’s no way your grandmother would want people driving carts over her or shanking their drives off her tombstone for the rest of her, um, “eternal slumber.” I couldn’t agree more. But, maybe your grandfather golfed. Maybe he golfed too much. Maybe he’s senile and won’t know that you’re going to have him interred on a golf course. Either way, it’s great business.
My Golf Cemetery won’t be built over an existing cemetery. Instead, we’ll take a golf course and start filling plots ON the course. We can probably get it started cheaply with the aforementioned senile people. But I’m sure golf fans would line up to be planted on the 9th tee box or near the sand trap on Hole 17. In fact, a sand trap would be the perfect place to have my brother buried. He spent so much of his life in them anyway, why not stay there in death too?
If the Golf Cemetery is a success, we can expand our services to include other non-traditional funerals. For example, cremation is becoming more and more popular. Well, what if we filled the sand traps with ashes? Talk about killing two birds with one stone. And raking the sand after you hit out would have a more profound feel to it.
We could also do burials at sea, though that would require having access to a larger body of water than I think we could get. But if we dug a big lake in the middle of the course, we could do it there. We could also float bodies down a river. We could have funeral pyres on the river/lake. The hardest ritual would be sending old Eskimos out on ice floes. But I’m sure we could work up something with a snow machine and a leaky inflatable raft.
Where else can you pay your final respects to a loved one,then play nine holes of mini-golf? Answer: Palatine. About 40 years ago,Roger Ahlgrim installed a mini-putt course(now called "Ahlgrim Acres") in the funeral parlor's basement, mostly for private use. Now, the public comes to play past red-eyed skulls and tongue-in-cheek coffin obstacles, but only during non-service hours.201 N. Northwest Highway
I can’t explain how excited and surprised I am by this. I’m excited because I love mini-golf. I don’t play very often because, well, I never think of playing. It’s also an incredibly stupid game. Yet, it’s very enjoyable because of how stupid it is. It takes little skill, which is just the right amount for me. And yet it’s incredibly enjoyable sinking a 5 foot putt, as if I were on The Price is Right playing “Hole in One” and I just won the car.
The surprising thing is that I hadn’t heard about this place before. I’m generally pretty hip when it comes to the northwest suburbs of Chicago. I spent virtually my entire life living in them. So imagine my shock when I heard about this place. It’s so odd, yet somehow it escaped me all this time. Rest assured, though, I will be playing golf at this place because it comes so close to doing what I’ve always wanted to do: link death and golf together.
I know what you’re thinking. Golf is boring. But do you think it’s deathly boring? I sure do. (Well, to watch anyway. Or to hear other people tell stories about their games. Playing is fun. If you call 4 hours spent looking for my ball in the woods “fun.”) Anyway, golf courses and cemeteries are the biggest waste of real estate ever. My idea was to combine them into one multi-purpose Golf Cemetery.
I know you’re thinking it’s completely disrespectful. There’s no way your grandmother would want people driving carts over her or shanking their drives off her tombstone for the rest of her, um, “eternal slumber.” I couldn’t agree more. But, maybe your grandfather golfed. Maybe he golfed too much. Maybe he’s senile and won’t know that you’re going to have him interred on a golf course. Either way, it’s great business.
My Golf Cemetery won’t be built over an existing cemetery. Instead, we’ll take a golf course and start filling plots ON the course. We can probably get it started cheaply with the aforementioned senile people. But I’m sure golf fans would line up to be planted on the 9th tee box or near the sand trap on Hole 17. In fact, a sand trap would be the perfect place to have my brother buried. He spent so much of his life in them anyway, why not stay there in death too?
If the Golf Cemetery is a success, we can expand our services to include other non-traditional funerals. For example, cremation is becoming more and more popular. Well, what if we filled the sand traps with ashes? Talk about killing two birds with one stone. And raking the sand after you hit out would have a more profound feel to it.
We could also do burials at sea, though that would require having access to a larger body of water than I think we could get. But if we dug a big lake in the middle of the course, we could do it there. We could also float bodies down a river. We could have funeral pyres on the river/lake. The hardest ritual would be sending old Eskimos out on ice floes. But I’m sure we could work up something with a snow machine and a leaky inflatable raft.
