Visitors to the grave have left offerings of various sorts. More intensively visited graves for folks such as Jim Morrison, Jimi Hendrix, Jack Kerouac, and Elvis Presley are swamped with offerings from fans who often journey a long way expressly to visit the grave. In many instances, visitors take something from a cemetery to remember their trip. The Kid's marker was stolen in 1950 and lost until 1976, and it was again thieved in 1981 and found within a week in California. Bonney's marker is now set in iron shackles and placed within a cage to discourage its theft.
Grave markers are always communicative mechanisms, and sometimes they take distinctive forms.
This marker at Arlington National Cemetery is for Tom Swann, a Vietnam veteran who is still alive. Personal stories are often told in marker aesthetics. Blackwell's musical collaborator, bluesman Leroy Carr is buried in Indianapolis' Floral Park Cemetery beneath a marker inscribed with piano keys. Carr and Blackwell were among the country's most famous blues musicians between the late 1920s and Carr's death in 1935, spending most of their time playing the city's Indiana Avenue clubs. Carr's current marker was installed about five years ago.