Last month I wrote about how any drive along Texas backroads will surely provide a slam-on-the-brakes-and-turn-around moment. Here is the latest: Strong Memorial Park Cemetery in the Piney Woods of Anderson County.

Watch the short video for the big reveal halfway through…

Later that day, I showed the video to Severn Rodgers, a native of the Burrantown community not too far away. Rodgers, a retired logging truck driver turned more or less full-time hog hunter, knew the cemetery well. By his reckoning there wasn’t much too peculiar about the sight of a pumpjack bobbing up and down a few feet from the mortal remains of a few generations of the Strong family.

It just makes sense.

“Well, they built the cemetery before they hit oil, and right near there is the most productive well for miles around,” he said. “And it don’t bother the dead none,” he added. “In fact, it’s cleaning up that graveyard, sucking all that nasty oil out from under ‘em.”