Spaghetti, the Mummy of Laurinburg
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Difficulty:
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Terrain:
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Size: 
(small)
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A very small cache with an interesting story placed beside a tree about ten feet from the grave of Cancetto Farmica (Note that he died in 1911, but he was BURIED in 1972 - look at the gravestone to see for yourself). The cache could be considered either a large micro or a small small. Please take size into consideration when trading.
Please note - this is a cemetery and there are graves in the area, please treat them with respect while you are looking.
The Following has been reprinted from the book "Weird Carolinas" by Roger Manley:
A young roustabout named Cancetto Farmica was little known in life. But in death he became one of the most fabled people ever to visit the town of Laurinburg, NC. Cancetto hung around McDougald Funeral Home, the oldest funeral home in North Carolina, for years and years waiting for his father to show up. Since he was of italian descent, local wags soon nicknamed him Spaghetti. To most folks, he was known as the Laurinburg Mummy.
Cancetto Farmica had arrived, living and breathing, with a traveling show that passed through the area in 1911. Still in his twenties, he was a hothead who apparently pushed on of his colleagues a little too far, because one of them brained him with a heavy tent stake. The blow killed the young worker, and he was taken to the nearby McDougald Funeral Home, where his body was embalmed and prepared for burial. When Farmica's father arrived to claim his son's body, however, he didn't have enough money to cover even the cost of embalming, let alone a funeral. He would have to go back home to get the rest of the cash needed for the services.
But as months passed and the older man never returned, it began to dawn on them that they'd been left holding the bag, so to speak. They decided the easiest thing to do was just to keep on holding it. By then the body had completely dried out and stabilized, and had almost become a member of the family.
For the next twenty-eight years, Cancetto Farmica's dried corpse hung on the wall of the third-floor embalming room, gradually becoming a regional celebrity. As his gruesome fame spread, visitors passing through Laurinburg would pull over and ask for directions to "the mummy".
The morticians were happy to let tourists troop in for a look-see. After all, it was good advertising for their embalming skills (though his preservation probably had as much to do with the effects of simple dessication), and also encouraged their other customers not to dawdle when it came time to settle their bills.
By 1939, the stream of visitors had increased so much that the work of embalming the regular clients was being impeded, so the McDougalds had a special glass-fronted case built in which "Spaghetti" could remain on permanent display elsewhere in the building. When they moved the business to a new location, he went with them, repaying his initial cost many times over in the form of free publicity.
Eventually, the fact that an Italian American had gone unburied for nearly sixty years didn't sit so well with Italian communities elsewhere. Along with pleas from an Italian American Congressman from New York, the funeral home started getting threats from members of the Mafia, who expressed their annoyance at a paisan being treated with disrespect. By 1972, McDougald's decided that its mascot had become more of a liability than an asset, and made arrangements to have him laid to his well-earned rest. Several hundred people were on hand for the funeral as Farmica's casket was lowered into a grave at Laurinburg's Hillside Cemetery. It is said that two tons of concrete were then poured into the hole, but whether this was a tip of the hat to Mafia traditions or simply a strategy to keep him from ever going on display again is not known.
Pictures of the mummy can be seen in the book "Weird Carolinas" and more information can be found by searching www.roadsideamerica.com. On a personal note, searching for 'Spagetti's grave' took us to two different cemeteries in Laurinburg: Hillside Cemetery and Hillside Memorial Park - neither of which, as far as we could tell, is actually on the side of a hill.
FYI:
This cache would count for Page 72 on the North Carolina Delorme Challenge (GCTYE6), and for Scotland County on the North Carolina County Challenge (GC19YRC)
Additional Hints
(Decrypt)
abg gur qbtjbbq, ybbx ol gur whavcre