McDowellFuneralDirector-UT1923
So the other night, with little else to do in the Lauderdale Mansion but roam through the dusty library, I pulled some old yearbooks off the shelf to relive the good old days. Looking through a 1923 annual for the University of Tennessee College of Medicine, I was struck by the number of advertisements in the back for funeral directors and funeral parlors.
What an inspiration this must have been for the young doctors and nurses being trained at this fine school!
But the other thing that disturbed me about all these funeral company ads was the additional service they invariably provided — as ambulances!
Does this really seem like a good idea? I mean, seriously: Is it really in the funeral company's best interest to save the life of a sick or injured patient? Why rush him (or her) to the hospital, when they would be better off dawdling around, making a wrong turn here and there, the driver stopping for a smoke, until the patient in back finally expired — and suddenly became a customer of the funeral home?
The ad here shows the McDowell & Monteverde Funeral Directors, offering "prompt and courteous ambulance service," but all the big firms were this way.
Maybe they figured, well, even if the doctors and hospitals manage to save you this time, one way or another, eventually you'll end up with us —and we'll be here, waiting ...
(I must say, it IS a nice-looking ambulance, with leaded-glass windows, carriage lamps by the doors, and even white-walled tired. It would an honor to be carried — to the hospital, not to my funeral — in such a fine vehicle.)
