A Grave Situation

Written by Drew Mashburn

Dick Payton worked for Combs' Welding in Ojai. That business used to be located in the long-vacant building located directly across Ojai Avenue from Sea Fresh restaurant. Mr. Payton was one of my best buddies, Mike's father. We only lived a couple of homes away from one another for many years when I was a boy. I called Mr. Payton by his first name, even when I was a little boy in the 1950s.

One of Dick's duties at Combs' was to operate tractors equipped with buckets and backhoes. He needed those because Comb's Welding was often called to dig the graves at the Nordhoff Cemetery at the northwest corner of Cuyama and Del Norte roads, adjacent to the Arbolada residential tract.

During the 1969 rain season, it was super wet! There was major flooding throughout Ventura County. I mean, it was hellaciously DEVASTATING!!! If you've never heard of this historical flooding, you best research it.

Due to the soil being so drenched and, therefore, super soft, squishy, and muddy, a tractor was too heavy to be used to dig a grave at the Nordhoff Cemetary. I was a Senior at Nordhoff High School that winter and Mike was a Junior there. We were young bucks in terrific physical condition. So, Mike's father asked Mike if he and I would be interested in digging a grave by hand for some old gal who had kicked it and been on ice for too long. We jumped at the idea of becoming known as local gravediggers and making some decent coin.

Dick showed Mike and I where to dig. We were instructed how wide, long, and deep to go. We were supposed to make the grave seven feet deep — well over our heads! After lining out us gravediggers, Dick departed. Mike and I began digging with shovels, but after about a foot (if that) deep, the mud was so sticky, super wet adobe-like clay, that we could hardly pull our shovels free from the glommed-on mud. We weren't about to give up and lose the opportunity to make much-needed bucks. So, we began scooping the grave with five-gallon plastic buckets. That worked for a bit until we got so deep that it was necessary to put one bucket aside. We switched to one guy digging with the bucket, then handing it up to the other guy to dump. The bucket-fulls were about half mud and half muddy water. They were dang heavy bucket-loads!

We had started bright and early in the morning, but it was a struggle and slow going. It was getting late in the day when Dick came back to check on us. He couldn't simply call us... these were pre-cell-phone days. Evidently, Dick was concerned that we extremely mud-caked gravediggers would not be able to finish our excavation before darkness fell upon us. And, I don't know how Mike felt, but this stud didn't want to be diggin' in a dark graveyard. So, Dick decided to go get his tractor, sneak it into the cemetery, then try to gingerly finish the job with the backhoe.

Mike and I gratefully stood to one side while Dick dug the final two feet. As soon as Dick told us he was done digging, Mike jumped down into the bottom of the grave. That's when I noticed that the backhoe's bucket had scraped the edge of a redwood coffin in an unmarked grave. Water was running at a decent rate out of the seams of the coffin. I shouted to Mike, "Hey, there's a coffin!" Mike turned whiter than a white bed sheet, and he exited the grave rather rapidly!

Dick accidentally broke a few concrete grave borders and left deep tire ruts under the tractor's weight. Mike and I filled in the ruts and realigned the borders as best as we could. We weren't there for when the coffin was placed in the grave and covered.

When we got to Mike's and Dick's home late that day, Dick told his wife, Betty, about the unmarked coffin revealed by his backhoe digging. He told her we took all kinds of valuable jewelry off the body. She about flipped before Dick told her that he was just joking.

Man, I was tired that night! And I'm sure glad we didn't bust open that old redwood coffin.