Tom, I suppose it's a comfort to some families that the vault will "help keep out cemetery elements", whatever that's worth. The other big benefit to a sturdy vault is that it prevents collapse of the grave, so when the heavy backhoe rolls over your grave to get to the one it's digging today, it doesn't crush yours and make visible settlement that then needs to be regraded, filled and resodded.

My neighbor the Stude guy was fairly affluent then, VERY affluent now, but he always worried that people would think he was rich. He drove a dark green 49-53 Stude truck every day, always clean and pristine, having been restored. I started looking at the license plate, and noticed that there were more than one of these trucks. Turns out he had 12-15 of them, and would rotate them, but everybody just assumed he had one old truck. Had a Lark VIII convertible and a round lamp Avanti too. Cool neighbor to have. Kept his toys at his farm 30 miles away.

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2002 Ford ZX2
2 x 2013 Honda Civics