Ruth Coker Burks’ family and relatives were buried in the Files Cemetery. When
she was a little girl, Burks’s mother and uncle had a serious fight. So her
mother would secretly buy all of the available grave spaces in the cemetery to
make sure that Burks’s uncle and the rest of his family wouldn’t rest on the same
dirt as they did. She had bought 262 plots. When Burks’s mother told her that
these were going to be all hers one day, Burks didn’t have any idea what she
was going to do. Now, she has buried all of the ashes of the dead bodies in cookie
jars next to her family’s graves. She says that they will be safe resting next
to her family.