Make Mine a Double-Wide 0
The funeral directors were in town this week. Apparently, their convention is a grave undertaking.
Interestingly, their business is also adjusting to the American growth rate:
. . . We’re too fat – that is, “heavy-set,” in funereal parlance.
“To accommodate the increased size of Americans, we offer Dimensions caskets,” said Kurt Soffer, a Utah funeral director. They’re up to 16 inches wider inside than standard.
People in the industry are actually injuring their backs more frequently with increasingly heavier clients.
Another difficulty with corpulent corpses: During viewings, it’s hard to keep the hands of fat people lying in their coffins from flopping from their stomachs to their sides, funeral directors said.
In many cases, the hands are sewn together. To avoid the big needles and the mess, Milwaukee funeral director Bernard Yonke invented a wristband that uses Velcro to keep hands in place.
“I had to do something,” Yonke said. “I had people over 300 pounds and I just couldn’t keep their hands up.”
I guess the old 6×3 pine box is moving towards 6×6.
