Enchanting tales

If you're ever in West Roxbury's Mt. Benedict Cemetery, do yourself a favor and find the headstone of Francis J. Moriarty, known to his friends as ''Turk." Inscribed on it is the following keeper: ''It's better than waiting in line."

Turk, so called because he enjoyed the 101-proof Wild Turkey elixir, threw himself a funeral there each year near the end of his life. (He died at 73 in 1985.) It was always an affair to remember.

''We made a plywood coffin we'd strap to the top of Billy Hunt's '66 Rambler American -- the car was worth about six cents -- and we'd drive to the cemetery," recalls Richie Polin, a friend of Turk. ''We'd put the bottles on top of the grave -- the headstone was already there. There'd be maybe a hundred of us. Turk would watch from a distance to see who came."

Some of the women who attended actually cried, despite the fact they knew Turk was lurking nearby. (According to Polin, Turk was a bank robber who did hard time for this pastime, later an employee of the Boston Housing Authority, and a poet whose talent was inversely proportional to the amount of bourbon he consumed.)

The whole motley crew would then repair to the now-defunct Sydney's on Green Street in Jamaica Plain -- a bar so named for the leviathan actor Sydney Greenstreet -- to continue the festivities. Perpetual gadfly Dapper O'Neil called the rite ''a most impressive ceremony," according to Jerry Burke.

Burke, the encyclopedic impresario of Doyle's Cafe, showed me Turk's grave last week as part of the Hibernian cemetery tour he mounted. Burke took me to Holyhood in Brookline, St. Joseph and Mt. Benedict in West Roxbury, Old Calvary in Roslindale, and Boston's three city cemeteries -- Mt. Hope in Mattapan, Fairview in Hyde Park and Evergreen in Brighton. We'd have toured the belle of the ball, Forest Hills in Jamaica Plain, but I was already familiar with its beauty, second only to Mount Auburn in Cambridge for sheer pulchritude.

The first thing to say about these cemeteries is they're all gorgeous pieces of land. As developers consume open space like tapirs ingest ants, these rolling tracts only grow more precious. Fall, the most profound season of the year, is the time to appreciate them. The wind blows and the trees turn and the leaves depart in flocks. The views in most are stunning.

One could do worse in October than wander through Old Calvary, home to the graves of James Michael Curley, joined with his wife and nine children, and the great pugilist from the Roxbury Highlands, John L. Sullivan, who spent his final years touring the country as a temperance speaker.

Holyhood bristles with prominent Boston Irish. There lie Hugh O'Brien, Boston's first Irish mayor, and Patrick Collins, the second. Collins was the first Irish-born person to be elected to Congress and also US Consul General in London under Grover Cleveland -- a stick in the eye to the Brits, who considered the Irish pond scum.

There too is John Boyle O'Reilly, one of the preeminent nineteenth-century Irish figures in America -- poet, author, editor of The Boston Pilot, who arrived here from a penal colony in Australia for his transgressions against Britain as an Irish patriot.

We also have Maurice Tobin, former mayor and governor, and William Callahan, the powerful state DPW Commissioner who led the creation of Route 128. Holyhood is also home to the Kennedys. In a modest plot lie JFK's parents, Joseph and Rose Kennedy, along with their grandchildren David and Michael.

St. Joseph boasts former House Speaker John W. McCormack, his gravesite marred by empty beer bottles. Not far away lies John ''Honey Fitz" Fitzgerald, former mayor of Boston and grandfather to JFK, along with mayors John Collins and John Hynes.

Boston's three city cemeteries are nearly full. Only Fairview still offers new burial plots. (Mt. Hope has 194,117 souls beneath the sod. Fairview 41,115, and Evergreen 16,487, reports Don Griffis, head of city cemeteries.) ''By 2025, we'll pretty much be put out of business," he says about the shortage. What happens then is anyone's guess.

Mt. Hope has it all -- monuments to the Knights Templar, Oddfellows, the founder of the Elks and a rich mix of Irish, Chinese, Ukrainians, Yankees, Scots, Norwegians. In a word, Bostonians.

The $2,588 price tag for a double vault city plot is beyond the reach of some. Fairview alone provides plots for the ''city poor," the old appellation for indigent residents. These unmarked graves are identified by number, written in cement flush with the ground.

The latest is always marked by a wooden stake to show grave diggers where to work next. Last Tuesday, it stood by the fresh grave of 19-year-old Terrence Felton, shot to death in Dorchester on Oct. 1 and buried on Oct. 12. A fraying card left at the grave was signed by Arielle, Tee-fee, Lashaye, Teasia, and Gordon.

Griffis also rides herd on Boston's 16 historic cemeteries full of towering figures like John Hancock. But far from the eclat of the Freedom Trail reside all of these other Boston stories, smaller tales that enchant and appall us.

Sam Allis can be reached by e-mail at allis@globe.com