(Later that day, Chelini’s mother was brought back to his house.)
Q. Was there any conversation in the house?
A. Well, by the time I got there, she was up there, the wife and I decided to put her in the dining room, originally, and when I got up there, he had her in the living room.
Q. Did you have some conversation with him at that time?
A. So, he said, “Well, I think it will be better to have her here, because there is a window here, she’ll get lots of air.” He said he would have to put this body here in the front room on account of the window was here.
Q. Yes.
A. And he said it would be better to have a breeze, a flow of fresh air come in there.
Q. All right, did you have a conversation about the funeral with him to hurry over this?
A. Let’s see. I don’t think there was very much spoken about the funeral right then. I was feeling pretty bad. He spoke of this new embalming. He picked up her cheeks and skin on her and showed me how nice it was, pliable, it was—
Q. Did he tell you that that was a new method of embalming?
A. Yes, and her cheek was very pliable, her skin was especially.
Q. Is that what he said?
A. Well, that is the way he said that is the way it felt, and he told me that is a new type of embalming that they have, pliable….
Q. All right, then you had a discussion with him at that time about paying him the money?
A. I asked him how much it was. He says, “it was $875.” So I says, “Well, I want mother’s ring put back on her finger,” I says, “when she is removed from the crypt to her final resting place. I want that ring put back on her finger,” and I says, “I want some little slippers put on her that I can’t get at this time,” I says, “I want her all straightened up, and cleaned off nice,” and I says, “I will add another $25 for that service, for doing that,” so he says, “All right,” he says, “if that is the way you want it, we will do it, I would have done it for nothing,” so I gave him that extra check for $25…. Oh, I also reminded him to be sure that when they put her finally into the cemetery, to see that she was properly secured, and he says, “Don’t worry about it,” he says, “I will see that everything is done properly.” So, he took the check, and I asked him if he would go out and have a little drink with me, which he consented to, and which we did, in the kitchen.
(Probably, a little drink was seldom needed more than at that moment and by these principals. The scene now shifts to Cypress Lawn Cemetery.)
Q. Did you go out there when your mother was taken out there?
A. Yes, I went out to the funeral, and she had the services there. Why, she left here on one of those little roller affairs, and we all walked out. Mr. Nieri—I came out to the car and asked him if he would go in there and see that she was properly adjusted from any shifting, or anything, and make sure that she was well sealed in, so he went in there, and he come out, and I asked him, I says, “Did you get her all sealed in nice? Did you straighten her all up nice?” He says, “Don’t be worrying about that, Gus,” he says, “I will take care of everything.”
Mr. Chelini was, it appears, the exceptional—nay, perfect—funeral customer. Not only did he gladly and freely choose the most expensive funeral available in the Nieri establishment; he also contracted for a $1,100 crypt in the Cypress Lawn mausoleum. He appreciated and endorsed every aspect of the funeral industry’s concept of the sort of care that should be accorded the dead. An ardent admirer of the embalmer’s art, he insisted on the finest receptacle in which to display it; indeed, he thought $875 a very reasonable price and repeatedly intimated his willingness to go higher.
At first glance, it seems like a frightful stroke of bad luck that Mr. Chelini, of all people, should be in court charging negligence and fraud against his erstwhile friend the undertaker, asserting that “the remains of the said Caroline Chelini were permitted to and did develop into a rotted, decomposed and insect and worm infested mess.” Yet the inner logic of the situation is perhaps such that onlya person of Mr. Chelini’s persuasion in these matters would ever find himself in a position to make such a charge; for who else would be interested in ascertaining the condition of a human body after its interment?
It was not until two months after the funeral that Mr. Chelini was first assailed by doubts as to whether all was well within the bronze casket.
Mr. Chelini was in the habit of making frequent trips to his mother’s crypt—he was out at the cemetery as many as three, four, or even five times a week. Sometimes he went to pay what he referred to as his vaultage; more often, merely to visit his mother. On one of these visits, he noticed a lot of ants “kind of walking around the crypt.” He complained to the cemetery attendants, who promised to use some insect spray; he complained to Mr. Nieri, who assured him there was nothing to worry about.
Over the next year and a half, the ant situation worsened considerably, in spite of the spraying: “I could see more ants than ever, and there is a lot of little hideous black bugs jumping around there. Well, I had seen these hideous black bugs before, like little gnats, instead of flying they seemed to jump like that.”
This time, he had a long, heart-to-heart talk with Mr. Nieri. The latter insisted that the body would still be just as perfect as the day it was buried, except for perhaps a little mold on the hands. Ants would never “tackle” an embalmed body, Mr. Nieri said. To prove his point, he produced a bottle of formaldehyde; he averred that he could take a piece of fresh horsemeat of the best kind, or steak, or anything, saturate it with formaldehyde, and “nothing will tackle it.”
The idea had evidently been growing in Mr. Chelini’s mind that he must investigate the situation at first hand. With his wife, his family doctor, and an embalmer from Nieri’s establishment, he went out to Cypress Lawn Cemetery and there caused the casket to be opened; upon which the doctor exclaimed, “Well, this is a hell of a mess, and a hell of a poor job of embalming, in my opinion.”
In court, the undertaking fraternity rushed to the defense of their embattled colleague. Defense expert witnesses included several practicing funeral directors and Mr. Donald Ashworth, then dean of the San Francisco College of Mortuary Science. They were in an undeniably difficult position, for in order to build a case for Mr. Nieri they were forced to reveal some truths ordinarily concealed from the public. The defense theory—perhaps the only possible one under the circumstances—was that there is no such thing as “eternal preservation”; that the results of embalming are always unpredictable; that, therefore, Mr. Nieri could not have entered into the alleged agreement with Mr. Chelini. Before the case was over, the theory of “everlasting security for your loved one,” an advertising slogan gleefully flung at them by Mr. Belli, was thoroughly exploded by the reluctant experts. They also conceded that the expensive metal “sealer type” caskets, if anything, hasten the process of decomposition. The jury awarded damages to Mr. Chelini in the sum of $10,900.
For another view of what the public wants, let us turn to a man-in-the-street survey conducted by the San Francisco Chroniclein 1961. The method of interviewing could hardly claim to be scientific, for it consisted merely of stopping the first eight people to come along the street and posing the question “What kind of funeral for you?” The answers are, however, interesting. All eight spoke up for the minimum: “A very cheap one …” “Just a plain Catholic service …” “I would like a quiet funeral …” “I don’t care for pomp and circumstance …” were typical responses. One man said, “They can heave me in the Bay and feed the fishes for all I care,” and another, “As long as they make sure I’m dead I don’t care what they do next. A corpse is like a pair of old shoes. It’s ridiculous to put your family in hock over it.”