|
Agnes Cunningham, Gordon Friesen: Red Dust and Broadsides A Joint Biography Chapter 1: Gordon's Childhood Page 12, Excerpt |
My folks were taken to Brownsville and shown some land around there; the real estate man took them across the Rio Grande to Matamoras, Mexico. What Dad remembered most, was a trip to a graveyard — the fact, that the Mexican people had to pay rents on the graves by the year. If the families of the dead didn't keep up with the rent, the skeletons were dug up and thrown over a wall into the "bone pile". Dad was stunned to look over the wall and see the mass of mingled and mixed-up skeletons of poor devils, whose surviving relatives hadn't been able to pay enough to satisfy the landlord of the cemetery.
This is the disgusting extreme of the real estate profession, which should NEVER be allowed to happen. Since there is not much land left, which is not parceled up by some "owner" or "landlord", who are making a killing on most property, not just a modest, reasonable fee, the real estate industry should be taxed A LOT MORE and such tax revenue should then be made available to fund poor people's graves, who can't afford to keep up with the payments. Secondly, grave fees should also be regulated more and TOP LIMITS set (based on the lowest salaries), in order to keep charges affordable. Anyone overcharging should go to jail.