The Key Underwood Memorial Graveyard sits under shady old hardwoods and pine trees in the northwest of Alabama, not too far from the towns of Florence and Tuscumbia and Muscle Shoals. It’s quiet there, largely, the silence punctuated now and then by the calls of mockingbirds and other songbirds of the region. All in all, it’s a lovely place for a graveyard.

The first burial there took place fairly recently as southern cemeteries go, the first burial occurring in 1937. A man named Key Underwood used land that had been an old hunting camp to bury the first body there, and the graveyard is therefore named after him. And that first burial set the standard for what bodies can be laid to rest under the quiet trees.

You see, Mr. Underwood set requirements for the occupants of the graveyard.

First of all, bodies laid to eternal rest there must have had specific jobs during their lives. And there must be witnesses that this particular work was performed when the body was alive. Finally, a member of the cemetery committee must view the remains before the burial to insure that the body fits the first criteria.

If those requirements sound odd, well, you’re not wrong.

Now, I will tell you that some of my earliest memories are of cemeteries in the south, specifically in Alabama and the Florida Panhandle. I recall slowly moving between the headstones with my mother and other relatives on Decoration Day, changing out the flowers on the graves, and hearing, as we paused at the stones, the stories of what food aunt so-and-so made that everyone loved and what uncle this-and-that did for a living. But the stories were all tinged with sadness, with a feeling of great loss.

Key Underwood didn’t want that. He wanted a celebration of life, of joy, of activity, and of celebration. One source describes the place as, “the only graveyard I’ve been to that was less an acknowledgment of death than it is a celebration of what almost certainly was…a damn good life.”

And so, it is a cemetery of joy. The headstones have no requirements for standardization; you will find everything from hand-made stones to formal granite as you would in any other cemetery. There’re not any height limits, either, although this place isn’t about having a showy grave. It’s about the life that was lived by the creature that lies beneath the sandy Alabama soil.

Today, songs and poems have been written about the place. The graveyard has been featured in a major Hollywood film. And, every Labor Day, a gathering and remembrance is held with live music and food; a family atmosphere permeates the event. And the 300-odd graves in the Key Underwood Memorial Graveyard are respected and honored and loved and celebrated by those who lost those buried there.

Because it’s not every day that your life is blessed by an honest-to-God coon hound.