Essay, Research Paper: A Brief Story

A brief story
Having lived in the United States for over four years, I find myself working harder and harder every day and not getting anywhere. Until finally I got a break of a lifetime, I have find a job that would not only pay me a few bucks more, and why not. Working at a fast food restaurant was not something I wanted to do for the rest of my life.
So anyhow, that break came when I applied with a prestige airline. Who ever would think that I would’ve gotten such a job. This airline was looking for a responsible person, personal skills, and the ability to work under pressure. Tired of working my behind for only a few pennies, I went for an interview, and to my surprise I received a phone call the following morning from the person who interviewed me, telling me that I have gotten hired, that I got the job. I felt so happy and relieved to hear the good news, and promptly asked when could I start working?
Before starting my new job I had to go through training. They explained to me every single detail about the company, the companies rules, etc. Within two weeks I had the job of a Customer Representative. Handling phone calls from left to right, and handling customer’s accounts.
Anyhow, let me speed up the story a little.
I’ve been working with this company for over a year now, and it has sure brought me a lot of fun and of course, lets not forget the stress too. But no matter what the consequences, I am satisfied with my new job. I tell you, working for an airline sure has its good and bad side.
What are the good sides of working at an airline?
For one thing you get to travel for free, almost anywhere in the country. I for instance have taken a few trips of my own. I have been to New York, Atlantic City, Texas, Florida, and San Francisco, just to name some of the place I’ve visited.
Florida, was, well, I guess what everyone expects it to be. I got the chance to go to Disney World, and to some of its beaches. I took a lot of pictures, and dance till my feet could not move any more. I interacted with different kinds of people, which it was sort of fun in a way too. Realizing that I was in the middle of strangers did not actually matter, for I was having the time of my life. But the fun was soon going to end, I had to report to work in about forty-eight hours, and only had time to get all my things packed and take a cab to the airport so that I would report to work on time.
Changing the topic let tell you about the day when I went to Los Angeles and at the same time give you a small history class. It has to do with a cemetery. No, its not your typical cemetery, this one is located west to the U.S. Okay, it’s in Hollywood.
Is the permanent home to more movie stars than any other cemetery, Hollywood Memorial Park Cemetery. Some of the stars that reside there are; Douglas Fairbanks, Cecil B. Demille, Marion Davies, and Randolph Valentino, are spending eternity there. It’s where a new generation of ladies in Black continues a tradition that began with Valentino’s death on August 23, 1926. Every year on that date, women dress in black, carry red roses, read poetry, and leave notes and mementos at Valentino’s crypt. The cemetery is also the final resting place of eighty-thousand less celebrated citizens of Hollywood: bankers, carpenters, legislators, printers, poets, maids, housewives, children, and even a few members of the Russian nobility who escaped the Bolshevik Revolution.
It was established in 1899, only a dozen years after Hollywood itself and more than a decade before the start of the movie industry. It rose and fell and now is rising again. At the turn of the century, Hollywood was a small residential community, its dirt streets surrounded by ranches, citrus orchards, and wheat fields. When Isaac Van Nuys, a farmer and businessman, founded the Hollywood Cemetery Association and bought a hundred acres between Santa Monica Boulevard and Melrose Avenue in 1899, the neighbors protested strenuously: A burial site would ruin their community’s appearance and lower property values.
To gain support the association promise a parklike cemetery, one of the first on the West Coast, well maintain, with open green spaces, few rods, classical architecture, and a perpetual-care endowment to assure its future. Yet Hollywood Cemetery continued to have enemies. Before the Civil War, graveyards had been nonprofit, owned and maintained by churches, local governments, or families. Early in the twentieth century, as commercial cemeteries became more widespread, people reacted against the idea of making money on the dead. A Hollywood real state agent, perhaps disliking the competition complained that cemeteries “can charge what they please, and by having some acreage in the city, it is easy for them to reap fortunes,” that was in 1923.
By then the battle against Hollywood memorial Park Cemetery had been going on for nearly a quarter of a century. That year, in a showdown at City Hall, critics armed with petitions attacked the cemetery as a “hindrance to the civic progress and welfare of the community.” But the City Council ruled in favor of the association. With the movie industry’s explosive growth in the 1920’s, fans began driving past star’s homes or stopping to visit their graves, turning the cemetery in to a major attraction. It “looked like an artist’s dream,” one reported wrote. Huge granite mausoleums stood amid rare and exotic plants and Italianate sculptures. The Greek Revival tomb of the industrialist
William Clark, Jr., finished in 1921 for five hundred thousand dollars, rest on its own island in a lake and is reached by a forty-foot granite bridge. The building’s interior, now closed to the public, is of Carrara marble; mosaics of biblical scenes cover the walls and silver and gold stars in a midnight blue-sky circle the domed ceiling.
I tell you no other cemetery is like this one, to think that some people would actually spend a lot of money just to put their remaining in a building with stuff that they won’t even bring with them. Just imagine spending five hundred thousand dollars, for something that would only serve as a monument. In my perspective this kind of person might be either desperate for attention, or simply did not had anything else to spend money on.
It’s very amazing how much history this place holds, when I first saw it, I thought it was a residential place, I guess looks can be deceiving. Never thought it would be a cemetery, as I kept listening to the tour guide it further enriched my brain. By the 1990s Hollywood Memorial Park Cemetery had nearly died from mismanagement and neglect, and the 1994 Northridge earthquake left it with potholed roads, stagnant ponds, open crypts, and rain soaked murals. Maintenance was so minimal that the grass was barely being watered when state officials shoed up in 1995. Pursuing an investigation that had begun with allegations of improprieties at another California cemetery, auditors followed the owners trail to Hollywood, took a look at the books, and issued a report that led the California attorney general’s office to charge that endowment-care funds had been illegally used.
In April 1996 the Hollywood Cemetery Association filed for bankruptcy, and court later appointed a trustee to oversee operations. The resting place of the stars went up for sale. The $375,000 price tag was low, but prospective buyers balked at the estimated seven million dollars needed to reverse the decades of neglect. In late 1997, twenty-seven-year-old Tyler Cassity, whose family owns cemeteries and funeral homes in St. Louis, saw an opportunity in the battered graveyard. He took ownership I April 1998, renamed it Hollywood Forever Cemetery, and began renovations.
So you see, traveling brings can be fun, specially if you are interesting in learning something new. In my situation, I learned so much a bout such cemetery, that if it wasn’t for history I would had never learn that “HOLLYWOOD FOREVER CEMETERY,” was ever called “HOLLYWOOD MEMORIAL PARK CEMETERY.” Sorry for only giving you details about one place, but I feel that if I start writing about every single place I’ve been, this story would probably continues “for ever.”



Bibliography


San Francisco Cemetery
Local Library


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