The UPS truck can’t seem to find them. Neither can the cable guy. And the residents of the little Queens cottage have given up ordering pizza. Then again, the neighbors are quiet, and the Manhattan-skyline views are to die for.
So goes life in a cemetery.
“I like to say I live in a gated community,” says Ellen Moschetto, 61, who shares her home — cozily set on 70-odd headstoned acres — with a Shih Tzu, two cats and her husband, Bob, the graveyard’s caretaker.
There are at least two dozen cemeteries in Queens, several of them here in Maspeth. Many have live-in — and, yes, living — residents whose job it is to open and close the gates, patrol the grounds and keep out trespassers dying to get in.
“It’s not a job,” Bob says. “It’s a responsibility.”
The gregarious 65-year-old used to make his rounds through the rolling hills astride a BMW motorcycle. These days, he cruises the winding roads in his Hyundai, pointing out headstones with the pride usually accorded national monuments.
“Look at the carving on that one!” he says, pulling up beside an imposing piece of granite. “You’re looking at an easy 10, 15 grand. And this one here, with all the writing on it? Fuhgeddabout it!”
Around the bend is a mound of freshly churned dirt.
“Oh, look!” cries Ellen, 61. “New neighbors!”
She and Bob arrived 13 years ago, after he answered an ad in a local paper for a cemetery caretaker. It certainly helped that the job came with rent-free accommodations, in the form of a fairy-tale stone cottage complete with a turret. The couple, who both have grown children from previous marriages, say they’ve never regretted the career decision or the move.
And when their grandkids visit, Ellen says they’re happy to play outside.
“I don’t think they know what the headstones are,” she says. “If they do, it doesn’t affect them. None of them are afraid or spooked.”
True, the pair live a few blocks down from a crematorium — “you don’t really smell anything,” Bob says, “but sometimes you can see the smoke” — but they’re nearly just as close to a BJ’s and a Toys “R” Us.
In the midst of death, there is life.
At least, there is at this place. Each spring and summer, Ellen and Bob’s small, fenced-in backyard brims with begonias — real ones, not plastic. Yet on the other side of the tall wooden slats lie half a dozen headstones and an empty plot marked 666.
“No one wants 666,” Bob says.
They even grill in the back yard. A few weeks after moving in, they invited the in-laws over for a barbecue. “And I,” Ellen says, “in an unthinking move, made ribs. Everyone was hysterical: ‘Whose ribs?! Where did she dig them up?’ ”
A lot of people can’t believe someone actually lives here. After the cottage’s furnace broke down, Ellen waited and waited for a repairman, finally flagging down the utilities truck at the gate.
“Who needs heat here?” the driver said.
“We do,” she replied. “It’s not as hot in hell as you think!”
Then there are the mistaken deliveries merely assumed to belong here, like the coffin that arrived at the boneyard’s back gate, minus the customary hearse.
“I think the guy had three words of English and they were, ‘Sign here! Delivery!’ ” Ellen recalls. She refused; the casket eventually found its way to the neighboring crematorium.
The cemetery’s population is about 70,000 occupants, though not all the graves are marked. Legs Diamond’s in there somewhere, but the couple has yet to find his final resting place.
And then there’s the Dimes family. Believe it or not, they’re interred next to someone called Nickel.
There are mausoleums here, too — many of them quite lovely, like little temples on a hill. One day, Ellen was alarmed to see smoke pouring from one.
“An Asian family was in there burning dollar bills,” Bob recalls of the ritual, a way of honoring the dead.
Another family marks their loved one’s passing with a wine-and-cheese party on the grounds each spring, parking their car alongside the grave and setting up little tables. Yet another frequent visitor took advantage of a hot summer day — and a nearby water spigot — to clean her new red car alongside her relatives’ headstones. Bob gently told her it wasn’t appropriate.
“She was a very nice lady,” he says. “Now whenever she comes, she stops by [the house] to say hello.”
Unwelcome guests also manage to find their way in. Once the gates shut at 4:30 p.m. — and until Bob opens them again at 8:30 the next morning — the cemetery is off limits to everyone except its residents, living and dead.
Which didn’t stop a young woman from paying an after-hours visit to her father’s grave one night.
“It was 10:30,” Bob says. “I asked her how the hell she got in.” She told him the people across the street lent her a ladder. Sure enough, there it was, leaning against the graveyard gate.
There are other interlopers, too. What Ellen once thought was “a wolfman at the window” turned out to be a wayward raccoon. The graveyard’s rolling green hills and weeping willows are home to more wildlife, including rabbits, squirrels, skunks, possums and flocks of birds.
“Listen!” Ellen commands as Bob stops the car at the top of a hill. Beyond is the Manhattan skyline, stretched out like a glittery necklace. Gone is the cacophony of the bustling Queens streets: The only sound is the twittering of birdsong.
“This is my sanctuary,” says Ellen, whose parents are buried here. “Once the gates are closed, then it’s our choice whether we want to deal with the crazies of the world or not. Here, we’re in a world of our own.”
“The dead won’t hurt you,” her husband adds. “It’s the living that can kill you!”