My friend Jolene and her husband Tom are cemetery nuts. As lovers of history and genealogy they travel all over the country visiting and photographing cemeteries.
I myself, can’t stand them. Cemeteries not my friends. Ha.
Cemeteries make my insides feel like cement. Heavy, closed off. I can’t visit them. Or at least until recently I couldn’t. At one point this summer when I was home for a visit, I ended up going to the wee cemetery where my dad is buried. I can’t even tell you how long it’s been since I did that. But I did.
Anyhow, that’s not the point of this post. I went for a girl trip with Jolene down to Dunkirk to meet a herbalist with her. And on the drive back, we stopped at Sullivan’s Charbroil for lunch, because of course we did! (MILKSHAKES!) And then I took her to the cemetery where the Smith family is buried and we drove around.
Jolene then told me there’s a very disturbing statue in one of the cemeteries in Gowanda and I absolutely needed to go with her to see it. Sure, ok. But what was the disturbing statue? Well, one of a Painted Jesus on the cross.
Now Jolene has been to hundreds, more likely THOUSANDS of cemeteries so if painted Jesus is a sight to see, I need to see it.
Painted Jesus sits on top of the hill. Hanging on the cross overlooking tombstones below. Most of the time these statues are you know, shades of stone color. Nope not Painted Jesus. This Painted Jesus has a very brightly painted peach colored fleshy tone going on. Which apparently looks very out of place. Cause well, like I said STONE COLORS.
It’s a dreary grey day out which makes this trip even more surreal as we turn around the corner and pass past a small building OH MY GOD IT IS LITERALLY A PAINTED JESUS! I can’t even contain myself, I seriously gasped out loud and couldn’t believe how, brightly and vividly, and almost wildly inappropriate the Painted Jesus on top of the hill seemed to be.
Or is it just me? Me and Jolene who has visited literally thousands of cemeteries and never saw anything like this before.
Also my pictures DO NOT do Painted Jesus justice. From a distance, this statute was almost glowing in the dark-esque.
I think we need to make Painted Jesus one of those things on Offbeat America/Roadtrippers, Atlas Obscura Roadside America websites.