Pounding from speakers at a tailgate just outside Bryant-Denny Stadium's gates, the sound of "Sweet Home Alabama" trails off the deeper you walk into Evergreen Cemetery.

It's quiet here, even on game day.

More than 100,000 piled into this coliseum of modern college football for Alabama's home opener with Arkansas State yet its neighbor to the south sat peaceful as ever.

The juxtaposition of fall Saturday pageantry in the sport's epicenter and 13.8 acres of serenity is striking.

Almost nobody walking by even looks to this grassy field filled with tombstones dating back to the early 1800s. Programs are hawked on the sidewalk across the street near Rama Jama's famous restaurant.

The only business Evergreen gets this Saturday is the walk-through crowd strolling from the game-day condos separated from the stadium only by the burial grounds occupied by some of Tuscaloosa's old money.

It's valuable property with finite space. Despite its healthy size, it's been around for parts of three centuries and there are certain inevitabilities in life. The success of Alabama's football program has made it an attractive final resting place for anyone fortunate enough to land a plot in the shadow of the stadium.

There's a catch.

It's sold out.

A spokesperson for the City of Tuscaloosa, owner of Evergreen, said every plot has been purchased. The last deed transfer from the city was listed in 2013 with two gravesites selling for $3,000.

The only shot at securing an eternal resting place next to Bryant-Denny Stadium is through a private sale.

And it can be pricey. A group of three plots surrounded by marble encasement recently listed in the Tuscaloosa News classified section sold in one day. The selling price: $32,500, according to the deed transfer filed with the county.

County records dating back to 1891 show plots selling for $25 apiece. That would be $673 today with inflation.

Only four obituaries published in 2018 listed Evergreen as the burial site. Jason Wyatt, who worked in the funeral home business for years in Tuscaloosa before moving to Fayette, estimates doing "hundreds" of funerals at Evergreen through the 1990s.

As space ran short, the frequency of funerals dropped. Several plots have the names of still-living, future occupants chiseled into the headstones complete with birthdates.

Count the Nelson family of Tuscaloosa among those with their spots reserved.

Dr. David Nelson will (one day) be the sixth generation of his family buried in Evergreen. His ancestor, Dr. James Somerville, is believed to be the first interred in the cemetery in 1842. Dr. Nelson served on the City of Tuscaloosa's cemetery committee for decades before it disbanded in 2017.

The rise of Alabama's football program created a great deal of interest in plots in Evergreen over the past 50 years, he said. Rows of graves were added over the years were walking paths once stood, but he said that ended about a decade ago.

For Dr. Nelson and his father, Dr. Paul Nelson, the sentiment behind the location of their eventual final resting place has little to do with their football neighbors.

"It means I get to join antiquity," said Dr. Paul Nelson, an 88-year old retired dentist living in Tuscaloosa.

Evergreen Cemetery, across the street from Bryant-Denny Stadium.

Danah Jones Mingles is the general manager of Magnolia Chapel Funeral Home in Tuscaloosa. Though they recently had a funeral in Evergreen, there are fewer inquires at the old cemetery.

There's still a desire to be close to Alabama football for eternity.

From their mausoleum off Old Greensboro Road, there's a clear view of Bryant-Denny Stadium a few miles in the distance.

"If you stand up on a hill, you can see the stadium at our mausoleum," Mingles said. "People want to be buried in our mausoleum looking out at the stadium."

Magnolia offers funerals complete with an Alabama fight song sendoff complete with pom-pom shakers.

"It's literally a football town," she said, "and people who are not from here don't understand."

Surely, they wouldn't have picked this real estate for a cemetery had they known what would be built across the street one-day named for the coach who made it famous.

Evergreen Cemetery almost predates the university. College football didn't come along until 1869 and Bryant-Denny Stadium's first game wasn't played on that site until 1929.

Nobody could have imagined the value of the property Evergreen Cemetery now occupies.

The total assessed value of the land according to property records: $436,000. It's a number that matters little since it was never on the market, nor could it ever be. The 0.15-acre lot across the street occupied by Rama Jama's has a market value of $128,600, according to city records.

Evergreen is 92 times that size.

A 1.14-acre piece of land located a few blocks west of the stadium was valued at $522,300 for a new student apartment building. Condos next to the Alabama practice field several blocks away are selling for close to $2 million apiece.

The apartment/condo building boom is even more intense in the blocks surrounding Bryant-Denny Stadium. Construction cranes have built a new mini-skyline in the streets to the west of the stadium. The Westgate condo complex under construction has penthouse units listed at just below $2.5 million apiece.

Yet there Evergreen sits, undisturbed by much of anything on the afternoon of Alabama's first home game of the season. A few graves have fresh crimson and white flowers placed at the headstones, but it's largely free of Alabama athletics decoration.

A rotting houndstooth hat from the Bear Bryant collection topped a headstone facing Bryant Drive this week. And a script-A floral arrangement faced the stadium a few hundred yards up the same row of graves.

Large sections of the cemetery, however, are not in the best condition.

Years of wear and tear left dozens of broken headstones. Several of the graves are so old, the writing on their markers have been completely sandblasted off by weather. It's not uncommon for the grass to be overgrown. The city is responsible for the grounds and not the graves themselves. So, as the years drag on and generations pass, these tributes go untended -- just lost to time.

"It's kinda sad," said Dr. David Nelson. "I guess it's like they said, back to dust we will go."

The city maintains a separate fund for the Evergreen Cemetery. It had more than $353,000 in assets 10 years ago but is down to $166,184 as of 2016 with expenditures of $4,739. Dr. Nelson said the city tried to stay on top of those now-illegible tombstones and budgeted money to replace them.

A broken headstone at Evergreen Cemetery in Tuscaloosa.

Complaints from locals have long been a part of Evergreen's history. A letter to the editor of the July 20, 1918 Tuscaloosa News called it a disgrace and that it "looks like a wilderness." A year later, cows were found grazing in the cemetery.

A few well-known Tuscaloosa residents have their final resting place in Evergreen. Bert Bank, who founded the Alabama football radio network, was buried there in 2009. Jeff Coleman, the former athletics director for whom Alabama's basketball arena is named, is also in Evergreen.

Two governors -- Joshua Martin and Henry Collier -- and three University of Alabama presidents are there.

And two of the men who conducted Bear Bryant's funeral were buried in Evergreen. F.G. Hocutt, who worked at a funeral home near campus, was a regular at Alabama football practices. A Sports Illustrated account from 1990 says he went to every workout from 1927 through the publication of the story.

"Actually on national television, Coach Bryant was asked if he feared any man," said Wyatt, who worked in the Tuscaloosa funeral business for years. "He said 'The only man I fear is F.G. Hocutt. That's my local undertaker.' They were really good friends. They hunted and fished together."

Hocutt was buried in Evergreen in 1993 when he passed away at 88.

The neighborhood has changed quite a bit since then.

Bryant-Denny Stadium has been expanded twice as the national title count went up by five. The Nick Saban factor has been credited with exploding enrollment, which led to the real estate boom for both the living and dead.

Again Saturday with Texas A&M in town, the campus will fill with tailgaters. The energy will return --Lynyrd Skynyrd and all -- with No. 1 Alabama on a historic pace three games into the season.

Not at Evergreen Cemetery, though.

It'll just be another quiet day in eternity across the street from the party.

Michael Casagrande is an Alabama beat writer for the Alabama Media Group. Follow him on Twitter

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