Wrapping up a fun long weekend is always a bit of a downer, but so it goes. Rather than grind all the way north from Nashville on Monday, I decided to pause on the return in Louisville. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d spent any time there – 1990? – though I’ve passed through many times since then. This time, I got off I-65 and made my way to Cave Hill Cemetery.

Cave Hill is a Class A cemetery. Or Class A+ or maybe A++. I ought to create an aesthetic rating system for cemeteries, but I think that would be a lot of work. Enough to say that Cave Hill has everything a top cemetery should have: a vast variety of standing stones, plain to elaborate, including a lot of funerary art and mausoleums and a scattering of odd memorials; historic burials of those notable locally and a few famed worldwide; a Victorian rural cemetery movement pedigree; hilly contour (in places where that is possible) and enough mature trees, bushes and flowers to count as an arboretum; water features; and a chapel or two.

By those criteria, Cave Hill is the complete package. Definitely in the same league as Bonaventure in Savannah, Forest Lawn in Buffalo, Hollywood Forever in Los Angeles, Hollywood in Richmond, Saint Louis No. 1 in New Orleans, Green-Wood in Brooklyn, Woodlawn in the Bronx, Bellefontaine in St. Louis, Laurel Hill in Philadelphia, Woodland in Dayton and Graceland or Rosehill in Chicago.

Bonus in early November: fall foliage.

Funerary art, some relatively modest.

Funerary art, more monumental.

Structures.

An oddity.

Their ashes were probably scatted nearby. This stone is near a part of the cemetery called the Scattering Garden.

Among scenes of fall, at least for now.

Cave Hill sports a number of notable permanent residents, but two far outshine the rest in terms of posthumous fame. At least for someone my age; I can’t vouch for later generations, who may not realize that Col. Sanders was an actual person, not just a cartoon mascot for KFC.

Even more famous worldwide, at least during the last half of the 20th century, was Muhammad Ali. At some point, he was thought to be the best-known person on Earth, or so I read. If not, he was in the running.

Even boxing-indifferent people like me knew him, since he was no mere prizefighter. Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee.