City of the Dead

"California State Penal Code #297 prohibits burials on grounds other than established cemeteries"

That's how "colmahistory.org" introduces Colma, California in its very first paragraph. With 1500 residents, Colma is easily designated as a town rather than a city. Underground, 15,000,000 dead make for a full city. Seventeen cemetaries including a pet cemetary take up 73% of its land, making Colma a teeming necropolis otherwise best known for its large Target and Circuit City. The town motto is "It's great to be alive in Colma.""Kill-yrself then kick it in Colma" might be a more thematic name for this, but way too long a URL.

My family and I stayed in a Daly City Inn that borders Colma so closely that it may as well be annexed. The innkeepers were a smiling married couple who offered us fresh saltwater taffy as two elderly basset hounds shuffled around behind the desk. It was late August, which the weather did not reflect. That's characteristic for the Bay Area but hasn't felt so fitting since. Hundreds of knotty leafless trees reached their branches out for consolation from the blanket of rolling white fog that obscured everything but empty hillsides and shining black gravestones.

I live nowhere near the valley, anymore. Odd transitional town, but I'm no one to argue. The saltwater taffy was just as sweet as the innkeepers assured me it would be, and eating candy in foggy weather is a pretty solid treat even on its lonesome.