What's in a Name? Practicality and Puns!

We’ve been referring to the hearse as Carl since we bought it in May, so here’s his origin story.

When we got back home after a weekend trip to Salt Lake City in early May, our to-do list became more interesting than it had been in awhile. We were on a mission: Find a hearse. Buy it. Modify it for the kind of road trip we like to do. Go.

Thankfully, buying a hearse isn’t really that difficult, if you know where to look (and if you don’t, Google can help). Based on our budget and needs, CW Coach Sales in Cincinnati looked like our best bet. Since he’s a wholesale dealer (which means you vacuum out the dead flowers yourself), the prices were about half of what other hearse resellers were charging for similar vehicles. Aaron called to get a little more information about their inventory and was pleased to discover that the six hour drive to Cincinnati was going to be totally worth it. Unlike Aaron, Mike (the accountant at CW) was a man of few words. He told Aaron that we’d probably want to get a 1995 or 1996 model because they were a little bigger and had powerful engines. He also assured Aaron that people buy decommissioned hearses for a lot of uses, and no, we weren’t crazy.

We made plans to meet up with some friends who had moved to Cincinnati, and scoped out the CW Coach lot after hours on Friday. The fenced-in lot was jampacked with hearses and limos of various styles, colors, and conditions—which meant we would have a good chance of finding just the right car. Satisfied, we had dinner and caught up with Matt (Aaron’s co-worker from his WSIL days) and his fiancée Sarah, as well as Dan and Brett (fellow poets from my MFA program at SIUC). Our conversation meandered through suggestions for road trip stops, questions about the logistics of living in a car for a month, and things to consider while buying a hearse—since that’s something none of us had ever done.

We went to CW Coach the next morning to find the hearse of our dreams. The dealership is in an area of Cincinnati that is mostly used car lots—the type with large, garish signs and bizarre statues in the lots (we saw a gorilla, a black panther with a gold chain around it’s neck, and a horribly racist depiction of a Native American, just to give you an idea). CW Coach didn’t go in for gimmicks like pushy salesmen or a clean lobby, though—and we appreciated the no-nonsense approach of "We have cars. Go find the one you like and then pay for it."  Mike turned us loose in the lot, inviting us to explore our options. We climbed inside to test out the length of the “bed” and confirmed that hearses are extremely roomy and perfectly suited for modification. Think about the possibilities: the passenger cabins are luxurious and comfortable, and the back is a box nine feet long, four feet wide, and just over three feet high, with large access doors on both sides and the back. We were both drawn to a 1996 Cadillac Fleetwood Brougham, recently acquired from a funeral home in Iowa. We knew a white hearse would be better for our purposes, since so much of our trip was going to take us through the American Southwest. Even though he was 20 years old, the interior was in excellent shape and it had just a shade over 60k miles on the odometer.

When it was time to take Carl for a test drive, Mike had to play an impressive game of hearse-and-limo Tetris, making a 17-point turn to maneuver the car out of the gate to the street. Mere blocks into the drive, we were throwing out adjectives like “pillowy” and “cloudlike” to describe the smoothness of the ride. You don’t drive a hearse, exactly; you guide it and it just glides. Aaron was impressed with the effortless power of it. We concluded that it’s a real shame that most people only ride in a hearse once—and that they are in no condition to enjoy it.

We went back to the dealership and completed the sale with Mike. Afterwards, he took us to meet the proprietor of the dealership, Carl W. He stood next to a small barbecue grill parked in the open garage bay door, eating a plate of ribs. We explained our trip to him, and he advised us not to make the mistake most others do by tearing out the platform floor, since it really doesn’t give that much extra useful space. Carl told us he’s sold hearses to roadtrippers before, but they’re also useful for anyone who wants to haul stuff, or for the obvious Halloween-related purposes. Aaron and I appreciated that Carl never put down his plate of ribs the whole time we spoke with him. It put us at ease because there was no bullshit to his approach: what you see is what you get. If you want something else, go elsewhere. Our kind of guy.

Aaron led the drive home in the hearse while I followed behind in my Toyota. We took scenic country roads and passed through the quaint main streets of small towns in Ohio and Michigan. A few people stared. A few waved or smiled. Later that night, we decided the only appropriate name for our hearse was Carl. It commemorates the decision to buy the hearse and take the trip, and all the weight of that choice. Personally, I have always liked names with a multitude of variations, and Carl doesn’t disappoint: Charles, Charlie, Charley. Chuck. Karl with a K. Carlo, Carlos, Carla, Carly. Charlemagne and Charlton, Charlotte and Charlene. I thought of all the men and women our hearse carried to their final resting places, that there may have been a Carl, or any of those other names. I’m grateful to Carl that he gave them such a smooth ride.

The other benefit of naming him Carl? We really like puns, jokes, rhymes, and silly nicknames.

How much can it haul? A Carl-load.

Where do you take him when he needs a bath? The Carlwash.

What’s his pirate name? Carrrrl!

The Dick-and-Jane version: See Carl. See Carl Go. Go Carl, Go! Or, if we have a flat Carl Can’t Go? Oh, No!

The Walking Dead version: Where’s Carl? Carl! Carl!

Charlie hearse.

Friday as we crossed the flint hills and rolling prairie of Kansas along the Pony Express highway, he became Carl the Conestoga—our own prairie schooner. Once we crossed into Colorado, he became Carl the Colorado Cowboy. As we continue on this trip, I’m sure he’ll earn many more nicknames. We’ll certainly have plenty of time to get to know him.