Local Color

Aug272015

The Tornado

Sixteen years ago, I was working in a job that turned out to be the start of my career in the editorial arts. Of course, I didn’t know that’s what was going to happen at the time. Back then, it was just another job. An incremental improvement over the previous one, better paying and a little more in line with my actual skills and interests, but still not anything to get excited about.

The company was situated in a modest, thoroughly anonymous two-story brick building a few blocks east of Salt Lake’s downtown core. I used to go out walking during my lunch breaks, and fantasize about buying one of the rundown Victorian houses that dotted the neighborhood and restoring it to its old glory. I remember trying to imagine what it would be like to live a more urban lifestyle than I enjoyed on the Bennion Compound at the other end of my commute.

However, for some reason, I didn’t leave the office on the afternoon of August 11, 1999. Maybe I had a pile of work to finish that day, or maybe I just plain didn’t feel like walking — I wasn’t nearly as conscientious about it when I was younger, because I didn’t yet need to be. The office had no windows, and there was no social media back then to flash trending news to everyone on Earth in a nanosecond, so I had no way of knowing anything was amiss outdoors. At some point, though, I became aware of a hub-bub in the office; a number of my coworkers were chattering excitedly about something. I caught the word “tornado” and immediately stood up to look over my cube wall like a prairie dog scanning for danger.

I couldn’t believe I’d heard correctly. After all, Utah isn’t known for trailer-park-devouring funnel clouds or little girls being whisked away to Technicolor fairy lands. Nevertheless, someone was saying a tornado had ripped its way through downtown a short while earlier, and they weren’t joking. A transistor radio was quickly located in somebody’s desk — remember, the Internet was still primarily comprised of GeoCities sites and Napster, so we weren’t going to get any real-time information there — and we soon had confirmation.

At first it was kind of fun and exciting to think about, in the way that any big, out-of-the-ordinary event can be. A tornado in Salt Lake City! Wowsers! And we were here to see it, or at least to hear about it and tell our future kids about it!

But then the grim details started coming in… damage to the Delta Center sports arena, and the tents comprising the Outdoor Retailers’ Show, the biggest annual convention this city hosted before Salt Lake Comic Con came along; old-growth trees in Memory Grove, a sheltered park at the mouth of City Creek Canyon and one of my favorite places in the whole valley, torn from the ground like weeds; homes in the adjoining Avenues neighborhood stripped of their shingles. Rumors that someone had been killed. Suddenly the idea of an urban tornado wasn’t so nifty anymore. And oh, by the way, did anyone know where Cristina was?

Cristina, my boss, the woman who’d given me a chance even though my resume didn’t really warrant it and whom I considered a friend, had left to meet her husband for lunch just before the tornado took shape. Nobody knew where she’d been meeting him, only that it was somewhere in the downtown area. Maybe somewhere along the path of the killer windstorm.

We tried to get back to work, but I don’t think anybody’s heart was in it. Mine certainly wasn’t. I recall the rest of that afternoon dragging past very slowly, and a sick, knotted feeling in my belly. That eased up after Cristina finally checked in several hours later. She was unharmed, but her car was a mess; it’d been parked on the street right across from the Delta Center, and it had been thoroughly sandblasted. Even though the tornado didn’t come anywhere near the neighborhood of my office, I found myself feeling like I’d dodged a bullet by not going for my walk that day.

The Salt Lake Tornado isn’t something I think about very often. All the damaged buildings were repaired within weeks of the event, and the replanted trees in Memory Grove have grown to maturity over the past decade and a half. It’s hard now to even remember what it looked like before. But for some reason this sixteenth anniversary seemed to get a lot more attention than in years past. Or perhaps I just happened to take notice of it this time around. In any event, I thought I’d pass along this commemorative video that ran on one of our local news broadcasts for anyone who might be interested. The tone strikes me as a little too “ah, shucks, folks” for the subject matter, but that’s to be expected from the reporter who narrates it, Craig Wirth. (Craig is a longtime fixture in Salt Lake television, a feature-story reporter who does warm ‘n’ fuzzy nostalgia pieces in his occasional “Wirth Watching” segments, kind of like Salt Lake’s version of Charles Kuralt.) Tone aside, though, it is a nice overview of what went down that August day so long ago…

Aug092014

What, Beards Are Cool Now? Really?

According to a lighthearted study commissioned recently by Wahl, a company that makes electric hair-trimmers, the fifth most facial-hair-friendly city in America is…Salt Lake? Seriously?! You’ll forgive me if I have difficulty believing that. My own personal experiences as a bearded man living in clean-cut Mormondom have largely been to the contrary.

I was once told in a job interview — an interview for a position that would have had me working alone in a back room with no contact whatsoever with the public — that I would have to shave my beard and make myself “presentable” if I wanted the job. More than one young lady shot down my request for a date because they didn’t like “scruffy” men. And I can’t tell you how many times I’ve practically heard the record-scratching sound effect upon entering a room because I was the only male in the place with facial fuzz. (I should point out, for the record, that I’ve always kept my beard neatly trimmed. Think of Riker on Star Trek: The Next Generation; I didn’t deliberately emulate him, but our styles were similar. Which is one of the reasons why hearing negative remarks about my whiskers has always pissed me off so badly, because they don’t look scruffy, which naturally has made me all the more determined over the years to hang onto them.)

Of course, all these incidents were 20 years or more ago, and I will concede that if I really think about it, I see a lot more mustaches, beards, and assorted variants out there than I used to, especially downtown. Which I suppose makes sense, since I’ve read that metropolitan Salt Lake City is the most liberal spot in the state, with a demographic breakdown that’s now less than 50% Mormon. (The ‘burbs, on the other hand, are far more homogenous… and conservative.)

Old paradigms die hard, though, and I still tend to think my beard marks me as an outsider… a loner… a rebel. Learning that times have apparently changed and I now live (or at least work) in one of the beard-lovingest places in the whole bloody country… well, that’s going to need some time to sink in…

Incidentally, if you’re wondering what other cities are down with ‘staches and whiskers, here’s the rest of Wahl’s list, in order from top to bottom:

1. Boston
2. Los Angeles
3. Miami
4. Chicago
5. Salt Lake City
6. Minneapolis
7. Austin
8. Seattle
9. Denver
10. Nashville
11. Dallas
12. San Diego
13. Philadelphia
14. Houston
15. Detroit
16. New York
17. Indianapolis
18. Atlanta
19. Washington, D.C.
20. Pittsburgh

(Originally spotted at Boing Boing. Of course.)

May132014

She Moves in Mysterious Ways

I was driving to the train station on my way to work this morning, driving into the blinding sunlight of a new day as it poured over the Wasatch Range that borders the valley on the east.The air outside was a bit on the crisp side, following a downright chilly night, but I could tell from the quality of the sky that we’d have pleasant springtime temperatures by afternoon. “Mysterious Ways” by U2 had just started to thrum from the speakers, and I was feeling good… if not yet fully awake. Mornings have never been my best time.

Traffic was moderate as my Mustang dropped into the broad gully known to locals as “the river bottoms.” Until just a few years ago, this was a strip of undeveloped wetlands that formed a natural boundary between the east side of the valley and the west, but subdivisions and office towers are sprouting even here now, and the modest two-lane roads that used to cut through the bottoms with an almost apologetic air have swelled into four- and, in some places, six-lane highways. The posted speed limit is 50, but nobody pays much attention to that; my speedometer needle was edging toward 60 as the downward slope leveled off and my car started to blast across the flat center of this valley within the valley

And then I saw the deer standing on the far side of the road. It wasn’t a huge specimen, probably a doe or a young male, but I knew it was still big enough to cause a lot of damage if it were to have a close encounter with a car traveling at 60 mph. I let off the gas pedal and kept my eyes locked on the animal, feeling, as always, a spark of adrenaline and wonder at encountering a wild creature in a place that feels more and more tamed with every passing year. I found myself thinking of the time when my friend Jeremy clipped a deer in his Grand Am, and ended up needing to replace his entire front fender, and the wheel on that side as well.

Maybe I detected some flicker of increased muscular tension or a certain twitch of the ear. Maybe it was some inscrutable vestige of a sixth sense, some holdover from our distant ancestors’ hunter-gatherer days. Whatever it was that tipped me off, I knew, somehow I just knew, that the deer was about to make its move. And then it was in motion, bounding across the westbound lanes at incredible speed for a mere animal, the SUV coming in my direction braking hard enough to drop its nose toward the pavement. The deer made it to the center island and I tried to telepathically tell it to just stay put… but my Spidey-sense was still jangled, and I knew it was going to stand there only a fraction of a second before continuing on its way across the eastbound lanes… into my lane…

I saw, very clearly, that the animal’s speed was perfectly matched to intersect with my own course. I knew I couldn’t stop in time, and the image of Jeremy’s ruined fender was replaced in my mind with a picture of the deer impacting my beloved Mustang dead-center, rolling up across my hood, crushing in my windshield, falling into the cab with me…

My instincts took over. I was still thinking about what it would look like, what it would feel like, to have Bambi come crashing through my windshield, even as my foot mashed the accelerator to the floor. My Mustang boomed forward, closing the distance to the interception point. My fingers tightened on the steering wheel and turned it to the right, swerving the car into the emergency lane, trying to give the deer a little more space to have to cover before it hit me. My laggard imagination now pictured the animal’s broad chest plowing into my driver’s-side door….

And then I was clear, drifting back into the lane where I was supposed to be. I saw the deer in my rear-view mirror finish his (or her) run across the road with a final bounce that carried it over an embankment and down to the marshy riverbank below the level of the road, safely out of the human machine-traffic and back in its own realm. I kept my eyes peeled for another one as my car climbed the opposite side of the gully, but I saw no more.

The road carried me forward, past car washes and fast-food franchises and restaurants and grocery stores and strip malls. I got lucky and coasted through green lights the whole way. I turned into the park-and-ride lot and locked up my trusty ragtop and walked across a field of asphalt to board a gleaming white train. The same gleaming white train I ride every weekday morning into a downtown of concrete and skyscrapers and hemmed-in civilization. More and more tamed every year… but not entirely tamed just yet.

That thought makes me smile.

May012014

So That’s Why I Quit Going…

From a Mormon satire site called “The Bunyion“:

Bottom line, according to the same source: “Those with beards are 67% less righteous than their clean-shaven counterparts, according to a recent study by BYU.”

Remember, kids: NOT. EVEN. ONCE.

(An aside: Even though this is obviously meant to be humor, as a bearded man living in Mormon Utah, I’ve definitely encountered this attitude, up to and including ladies refusing to go out with me in my younger days because of my facial fuzz, and a well-meaning neighbor lecturing my dad on his beard until Dad very memorably reminded him that Jesus himself had one, and that many of the church’s early leaders looked like members of ZZ Top.)

Via the fabulously bearded Andrew Sullivan…

Apr022014

“I’m a Heritage Mormon”

I just ran across an interesting quote from the historian Will Bagley, who specializes in the American West and is probably best known for his book on the infamous Mountain Meadows Massacre, a very touchy topic here in my home state of Utah:

…I’d also like to address the charges that I’m an anti-Mormon. They’re preposterous, because I am still a Mormon. I’m a heritage Mormon, and I have a great-great-grandfather, grandfathers and grandmothers on all sides, who crossed the plains, most of them before the railroad, and I’m very proud of that heritage, and very proud of the Mormon people.

That said, I’ve never believed the theology since I was old enough to think about it.

“Heritage Mormon.” I like that. As someone who has occasionally struggled with how, exactly, to define myself relative to the culture in which I was born and raised but never truly felt a part of, I think it’s a useful term.

Like Mr. Bagley, I trace my ancestry to the intrepid Mormon pioneers who walked across the Great Plains in 1847 in search of a remote place where they could practice their faith in peace, and I honestly take a fair amount of pride in their grit and determination. I can’t help but respect what the early church accomplished out here in the less-hospitable corners of the country. Also, I’ve seen the place where my family’s homestead once stood on the banks of the Jordan River in the central Great Salt Lake Valley and felt a deep connection with that legacy. And I feel no shame at all in admitting that my lineage includes polygamy, as do those of many of the long-established families in this state.

That said, I’ve never been a member of that church, and I do not believe in its teachings. I have a lot of problems with the Mormon culture that dominates Utah, and with the church’s deep involvement in local government. (Briefly, it often seems as if the laws here are being written by the men in the Church Office Building, not the people on Capitol Hill.) But I try not to let my frustration and, yes, occasional anger morph into outright hostility. That would be… counterproductive… considering I have a lot of family and friends who are Mormons.

With all this ambivalence about Mormonism in general, what am I supposed to call myself when people ask me if I am one, and if not, what am I? (This is not hypothetical, by the way… I’ve gotten those questions, in more or less those terms, many times, both here and when I travel.) I need something that accurately describes my outsider status without disparaging the thing I am claiming to be outside of.

“Gentile” — a term which is pretty commonly used in Mormon culture to describe people who aren’t Mormon — has always struck me as odd, probably because it seems like that one ought to be exclusive to our Jewish friends. “Ex-Mormon” doesn’t apply; as I said, I was never actually a member. (Although I did attend “primary” classes — i.e., the Mormon Sunday school for kids — when I was a small boy.) And “non-Mormon” doesn’t really seem right to me, either. To my thinking, that implies someone from a completely different tradition, a polar opposite. And you can’t grow up in this place, immersed in this culture and these beliefs, surrounded by so many loved ones who are members, without being informed by it. I may not be a believer, but there’s no question in my mind I was shaped by Mormonism and its traditions, whether that shape was in response against it or an embrace of it.

So… “heritage Mormon.” Meaning “of Mormon heritage,” but not necessarily implying membership. Yeah… that works for me. What do you think?

(If you’re wondering, the source for that quote is here.)

Jan142013

It’s Bloody Cold, and I’ve Had Enough of It

January is a hard month in Utah. That’s when The Inversions come. The time when the world loses all its color and turns gray and filthy and indistinct. When the horizon seems to shrivel down and attach itself to buildings and trees and lampposts, like leathery skin with no flesh beneath it adhering to the bones of an ancient, starving man. In January, when The Inversions come, the world becomes small and hard… and very, very cold.

The Inversions. No, they’re not ethereal, soul-sucking monsters straight out of a Harry Potter novel, but they’re pretty damn close in my estimation. I used to tolerate them fairly well. But that was BD, before diagnosis. Things are different now, and January is much harder for me than it used to be. But I’ll get to that.

For my out-of-state readers who may be wondering what in the hell I’m on about today, I ought to explain that “the Inversions” — formally known as temperature inversions — are an annual phenomenon brought on by a quirk of the local climate and geography where I live. Essentially what happens is that, during the winter months, the air near the ground becomes stagnant and cools off, while the air higher up in the atmosphere remains warm, which is of course the opposite of how things are normally. Normally, wind currents would mix the two temperature zones up, but remember that the bottom layer is stagnant; there are no winds to speak of during this time of year, much like the doldrums sailors experience near the Equator. And so the cold air stays in place for days or even weeks at a stretch. And it gets very, very cold during these periods… damn cold. As in “your taun-taun will freeze before you reach the outer marker” cold.

But wait, it gets worse.

Utah is a vast place, but believe it or not, most of it is uninhabited. Some 80% of this state’s population is crowded into a narrow strip of land called the Wasatch Front, which runs roughly 80 miles from Brigham City on the northern end to Santaquin in the south, with the state’s three largest cities — Salt Lake, Ogden and Provo — and their sprawling suburbs right in the middle. The Front is bounded on two sides by mountain ranges, so all these cities essentially lay at the bottom of a gigantic bowl. (Well, it’s shaped more like a trough, but the bowl image is a bit more illustrative for my purposes here.) Now picture this bowl filled with over two million people who are all driving cars and consuming electricity and trying to stay warm. Naturally, these activities all generate air pollution. And that layer of warm air up in the sky during an inversion is like a lid sitting on top the bowl, holding down not only the temperature, but also all that airborne pollution generated inside the bowl. Exhaust from cars and powerplants, smoke from fireplaces, god knows what from refineries and smelters and factories… it all lingers here in the valley during an inversion, growing more and more concentrated day by day until a storm front finally comes through and the savior winds punch a hole in that giant invisible Tupperware seal and drive all the frigid, mucky air away.

The Inversions have been a fact of life around here as long as I can remember, but they’ve been especially bad this year. An article in the Salt Lake Tribune last week noted that four of the five places with the worst current air quality in the entire country are right here in Utah, and three of those four locations are along the Wasatch Front. Doctors are warning of increasing danger to even healthy adults, in addition to the elderly and children they’re usually concerned about, and there’s a growing chorus of voices demanding that our politicians do something about it. But I don’t need newspapers to tell me what I see with my own eyes every time I look out the windows at work. From my offices on the 13th Floor, the Wasatch Mountains on the east side of the valley ought to appear close enough to touch. But for the past week, the mountains have been utterly invisible behind a grey scrim, and even the spires of Salt Lake’s Cathedral of the Madeleine, only a couple blocks away from my building, are mere shadows in the mist.

As worrisome as it is to be breathing filth, though, it’s really the cold that’s troubling me. It never used to, particularly. Oh, I didn’t like the cold, but I tolerated it quite well. I remember a time when I felt perfectly comfortable wearing only a t-shirt and a leather jacket. No more, though. I mentioned a while back that something has changed in my body over the past year and I no longer “run hot” the way I used to; I don’t know if it’s something to do with diabetes, a side effect of the medications I’m taking, or the result of losing a lot of weight and/or lowering my blood pressure. Whatever it is, these days I’m wearing long johns, layered shirts, and a cardigan underneath a goose-down parka, and I still feel chilly. Even when I’m indoors. Granted, it probably doesn’t help that my desk at work is located in a bump-out that sticks out the side of the building and is surrounded on three sides by glass; I would guess all those windows radiate heat into the cold air outside pretty efficiently, making it difficult to keep my area warm. Or it could just be my own perception. But whatever the explanation, I notice the cold settling over me as I sit at my desk, flowing across my arms and the tops of my thighs, and sinking into my fingers so the joints stiffen up and begin to ache. Lately I’ve been imagining myself as the unfortunate chap in the image above… immobilized beneath a rime of frost, waiting for a spring that seems as if it’s never going to come.

I hate it. I hate every miserable moment of it, feeling like I’ve grown weaker in some fundamental way, even though I’m in fact healthier than I was a year ago at this same time.

I finally understand why my dad has long fantasized about going to Hawaii during the winter months. I’ve been dreaming lately about heading south myself… along with all the other senior citizens who wear their sweaters year-round. And I hate that too. For someone who’s been fretting about getting old for a long time anyhow, this new development does not help the ego…

Sep082012

Little Victories

For a Utah native, no summer is complete without a visit to Lagoon, our local amusement park. Located a few miles north of Salt Lake City, Lagoon is an ancient part of Utah history; it got its start on the shores of the Great Salt Lake in 1886 before moving to its present, inland location ten years later, in 1896. Much of the original park still remains today, although it’s been added onto and upgraded over the years, so the old and quaint attractions mingle side-by-side with the latest in high-tech, computer-controlled thrill rides. I like plenty of the modern rides just fine, but I’m sure my Loyal Readers won’t be at all surprised to learn that my favorite parts of Lagoon are the oldest ones… and my very favorite ride of all is the 1921 roller coaster that has no official name. Locals just call it the White Roller Coaster, due to the coating of white paint that was originally used to preserve the wooden structure. (Lagoon management recently made what I consider a boneheaded decision to stop painting the WRC, so with weathering and the occasional replacement of aging timbers, it’s gradually turning a rather unremarkable shade of grayish-brown. Supposedly, this is to make it easier for the inspection crews to see problems in the elderly structure, but I’m willing to bet it was a cost-benefit thing; somebody figured out they could save a few bucks if they stopped painting it every spring.)

The old roller coaster isn’t sexy, and it certainly isn’t a gentle lover. Compared to the smooth ride of the modern steel coasters that surround it, the WRC is actually something of a bare-knuckled bastard. Every turn, every warped board, every connecting bolt translates as a rattle, a thump, or a jolt. The whole structure seems to shift and flex underneath you as your car passes over it. It makes many people nervous. For me, though, that’s just part of the fun. The coaster feels like an organic, living thing that never delivers quite the same ride twice. Some of my earliest Lagoon memories are of riding it.

Unfortunately, The Girlfriend and I haven’t been able to enjoy the white coaster together in a very long time. To be perfectly frank, we’d both grown too fat in recent years to comfortably sit in the narrow, old-fashioned cars. The last time we rode together several years ago, Anne was forced to sit with her hips turned sort of sideways — uncomfortable to start with, downright painful once the pounding began. After a very unpleasant run that left her bruised and humiliated, she declared she was done with the WRC, and I accepted this without argument. I’ve since ridden it alone a few times, feeling sad and guilty that she couldn’t be with me, and also pretty cramped myself in those unforgiving seats that were designed for kids and people from, ahem, a time when foodstuffs were less plentiful. Last year, I didn’t go on my favorite roller coaster at all. It didn’t seem worth the trouble anymore. It was just one more thing I’d resigned myself to having to give up now that I was a middle-aged man, one more childish pleasure that I no longer had room for in my grown-up present. At least that’s what I told myself. I didn’t really believe it, and I felt like shit about it. But the situation was what it was…

I’m incredibly happy to report that the situation is different this year. Like I said a few weeks back when I first wrote about that 5K that Anne participated in, she and I have both made a lot of changes since the start of 2012. I’ve lost in the neighborhood of 40 pounds (I haven’t been keeping close track, so I don’t know an exact figure, but I know it’s somewhere around there — possibly even a little higher) and Anne, who’s taken the extra step of hiring a trainer and has been working so very hard, has dropped 60 and is still losing. We’re feeling a lot better about ourselves, both physically and emotionally, and there’s no question that we’re smaller people than we used to be. And today, during our annual outing to Lagoon with her family, we proved it — and earned ourselves a major sense of triumph — when we successfully rode that rickety old wooden roller coaster again, together, sitting in the very front seats. I was perfectly at ease, right in the middle of the seat with room to spare on either side, and Anne, while still feeling pretty cozy, was not at all compressed, crowded, mashed, or packed in. We just got on, closed the lap bars, and had a fun ride, same as anybody else. Although the day was a bit frustrating in several respects, that one moment made everything else worthwhile. It made all of the struggles we’ve both endured — but especially Anne, because quite honestly she’s worked harder at it than I’ve had to — over the last eight months worthwhile. The joy in her face as she sat down, her exuberant “I did it!” at the end of the ride… well, just think of the end of the original Star Wars, the scene in the hanger on Yavin IV after Luke has obliterated the Death Star and everyone is hugging and slapping each other on the back, and you might have some notion of how that moment felt for us.

I’m so very proud of her — of both of us, but especially of her. And I’ve got my White (soon-to-be brown) Roller Coaster back!

Aug172012

Moving Day

I’ll be honest, the primary reason I accepted the offer of my present job seven years ago this month was simply to get some steady work after an extended period of what’s euphemistically called “underemployment.” (This is a polite term for a truly evil state of slow, grinding torture in which you’re not quite a down-and-out bum — you are working, at least from time to time — but you’ve got no long-term security, no disposable income to speak of, and a dwindling sense of self-worth. Another word for this is “contracting.” It’s not a good fit for me.)

However, a second major factor in my decision was the location of my new employer’s offices, a 100-year-old, six-story building called the Commercial Club, which is situated on a quiet side street of downtown Salt Lake known as Exchange Place:

Exchange Place was the vision of a 19th century mining magnate, Samuel Newhouse, who wanted to establish a non-Mormon business district as a counterbalance to the LDS Church-dominated city center four blocks to the north. Described as a “little Wall Street,” Exchange was intended to be a rectangular complex anchored on its four corners by four identical office towers, all financed out of Newhouse’s own pockets. Only two of these, the twin 11-story Boston and Newhouse buildings — Salt Lake’s very first steel-framed skyscrapers — were actually constructed. Newhouse ran out of money before the other two could even break ground. But a number of ancillary buildings were completed, including the nearby Newhouse Hotel (sadly demolished in the 1980s, to be replaced by a parking lot), the Salt Lake Stock Exchange, and my home away from home for the past seven years, the Commercial Club.

Originally built as a recreational facility for the businessmen Newhouse envisioned working on Exchange Place, the Commercial Club at one time featured an indoor swimming pool; a vast, two-story banquet room; card-playing and smoking rooms for the gentlemen; and separate facilities for the ladies, primly located away from the men on their own private floor. And because Newhouse wanted the very cutting-edge in turn-of-the-century technology, the building even featured one of Salt Lake’s first mechanical elevators, which is still there and still operating — if rather creakily — today.

Of course, I didn’t know any of that when I started working there. But the atmosphere around Exchange Place was immediately and immensely appealing to me. Salt Lake isn’t like other cities I’ve visited; there’s little sense of urban life or identity here. People live out in the ‘burbs, the streets are virtually deserted after 5 or 6 PM, and most everything around downtown is relatively new and, frankly, kind of bland in appearance. But this little pocket of Salt Lake, this one block that’s bisected by Samuel Newhouse’s rebellious gentile* development, feels like a real city environment to me. It’s not quite a New York neighborhood, obviously, but it’s a place with the patina of age and the self-confidence that comes from long establishment, from rising and falling and rising again. I love the idea of a block that’s spirited enough for both thousand-dollar-an-hour attorneys and dive bars, trendy tapas restaurants and the Heavy Metal Shop.

And the Commercial Club itself fit my TV-inspired notions of what an urban, white-collar professional workplace ought to look like, with sleek modern fixtures co-mingling alongside antique decorative flourishes, just like the office sets of, say, Ally McBeal.

Admittedly, working there has had a few downsides. Multiple retrofittings have resulted in a somewhat confusing interior layout, and there have been the plumbing, heating, and insect problems common to any old building. You encounter strange smells in certain areas. That beautiful old art-deco elevator has occasionally gotten stuck between floors, sometimes with people inside (never me, fortunately). And Exchange Place can get kind of sketchy later in the evening, if you find yourself working late. (I’ve seen hookers around there after dark; there were reports of a sexual predator in the area for a while; and there was that big drug bust a few years ago when we learned the roast-chicken restaurant on the corner was a front for heroin dealers.) But generally speaking, I’ve been very comfortable in that old pile. Ancient places with colorful histories suit me.

Alas, the powers-that-be decided a while back that it’s time for a change. So starting Monday morning, I’ll be going to work in a new location… ironically enough, right smack in the middle of that Mormon city center that Samuel Newhouse was so determined to break away from. Preparations for moving 200-some employees and all their attendant stuff have been underway for some time, but it really got real last week as big orange plastic crates were delivered to each and every cubicle so we could pack up our personal effects. Most of us only made token efforts at that for the first couple days, because we needed things at hand so we could continue working. And of course everything on our agendas got put on hold following a power outage on Monday that was caused by an underground explosion. (The blast was reportedly strong enough that it lifted a couple of manhole covers several feet into the air.) But yesterday was zero hour… the moving company arrived in the afternoon, and chaos descended as people finally started dumping their belongings into those boxes. As one of my coworkers remarked to me, he felt like we were in The Empire Strikes Back during the “frantic evacuation from Hoth” scenes. Personally, I felt more like it was graduation day, a mix of bittersweet and difficult-to-articulate emotions brought on by the sense that some kind of era was closing.

As it happens, this job I thought I’d take just long enough to get back on my feet turned out to be a pretty damn good place to be. It’s lasted longer than any other job I’ve ever had, which means I’ve been working in that building for longer than any other. That’s got to generate some level of attachment, doesn’t it? Also, the Commercial Club has so much more personality than any other place in which I’ve ever worked, with the exception of the two movie theaters that will always be my favorite workplaces. Every other job on my resume’ has been in nondescript business-park type settings, and they’ve all blurred in my memory into a generically white-walled, gray-carpeted, cube-farm porridge. But the Commercial Club… ah, I’m going to miss that building. I’m going to miss the funky plaster cow-skull decorations that framed the painted blue-sky ceiling in the lobby. I’ll miss the “lava lounge” that overlooks the old two-story banquet room, which used to be a dance club back in the Awesome ’80s. I’ll miss the marble staircases with the worn-down troughs in their centers that turn so treacherous in wet weather, and the stories about a murdered prostitute who still roams the hallways at night, whispering to those who are stuck working until the wee hours. Hell, I’m even going to miss the gallows humor about cockroach crossings. I’m man enough to admit I had a bit of a lump in my throat as I walked out of there for the last time, out into a hot, dry Utah summer evening.

Our new environs will have the perk of being up high, with lots of natural sunlight and stunning views of the city around us. But a little research reveals that they were only built in 1986, too recently to have the kind of character and identity we’re walking away from. It’s been an era, all right. At least for me.

* Loyal Readers who aren’t from Utah may be confused by my use of the word “gentile” above. FYI, that’s what Mormons have traditionally called non-Mormons. Even Jews. Yes, it’s kind of weird. That’s Utah for you.

Jul032012

Get Off My Lawn! (Literally!)

When I was a boy, I thought living on the route of my hometown’s Fourth of July parade was just great. (Why, yes, I did like Frosted Flakes as a boy. Why do you ask?) But then, things were different then.

For one thing, the parades were held in the morning, and on the actual holiday, rather than on the evening of the day before as they are now. In those halcyon days of the mid-1970s, Riverton was just a sunbaked farm town where the local good ol’ boys whiled away their mornings over cups of joe and slow-burning butts at the counter of the local cafe, and there were as many tractors and combines running up and down the main drag as pickups and cars. Back then, our Independence Day revels began at dawn with the sounding of the yellow, barrel-shaped air-raid siren that used to be crouched on top of a telephone pole behind the town hall. Which just happened to be kitty-corner across the street from my house. If you’ve never heard one of those things, take it from me, there isn’t a living creature on this planet that could sleep through their unholy Banshee’s wail. I remember sitting straight up in bed with my heart hammering away inside my rib cage, year after year, and my dad answering the Banshee with an eruption of profanity that would have left human-shaped shadows singed into the walls, atomic-bomb style, if anyone had been unfortunate enough to be standing at the foot of his bed. After a couple minutes of this clamour, the siren would fall silent, and then, while our ears were still ringing, along came the old sound truck. This was a green 1950s-vintage panel truck with four huge, horn-shaped PA speakers mounted on the roof. The driver — I’m sure my parents could tell me the guy’s name, as he was undoubtedly one of those good ol’ boys from the cafe — would be yammering away over the speakers, exhorting everyone in town to get up and come on down to the city park for an old-fashioned pancake breakfast. My dad usually had some very specific ideas about what that guy could do with his pancakes; I don’t recall my parents or me ever going to that community cookout. The three-person Bennion clan always made our own holiday breakfasts.

Then it was time to get ready for the parade. Dad would put our lawn chairs out in front while most of the townsfolk were still wandering toward the park in search of pancakes, but I don’t recall there ever being any particular sense of urgency about it. Nobody would think of squatting on a lawn that didn’t belong to them, at least not without asking permission, or at least not until the parade was underway and everything became fair game. Around nine o’clock or so in the morning, the normally busy road in front of my house would become eerily still. And about 45 minutes later (the parade has always started about a mile from my house and it takes a while for the slow-moving procession to reach the Bennion Compound), the floats and marching bands and horseback companies and fire engines would begin to stream past. Teenaged beauty queens beamed at their neighbors, salt-water taffy and little boxes of Chiclets and Bazooka Joe rained down on the children lining the street, and the same antique cars and novelty acts we saw every bloody year would roll past, and the spectators would wave and clap and smile as if it were the first time. These parades of my hazy, sepia-toned memories comprised our friends, our neighbors, people we knew… they were family, often in a literal sense — it was a small town, after all — but always in a metaphorical one. Back then, the parade was a ritual that seemed to actually mean something; it wasn’t just a way to occupy the kiddies with gathering free candy for an hour (although that was certainly an aspect of it). The parade reinforced a sense of belonging to something: a place, a community, a town. And when it ended, there were old-fashioned, homespun activities all day in the park, cheesy midway games and hamburger grills and plastic wading pools filled with iced watermelon and friendly horseshoe-pitching competitions, all of it leading up to the big finale, the fireworks that would fill the sky just after sundown. Rude awakening aside, Riverton’s Fourth of July used to be a pretty low-key, and yet thoroughly satisfying, affair. It was cornball, yes, but it was also organic and homegrown, and it was good.

That’s how it used to be.

Today, I still live in the same old house, and the parade still passes right in front of it, but practically everything else has changed. Riverton is now just another anonymous suburb, with a population several times the size of what it was during my childhood. And our small-town Independence Day is now such a Big Damn Deal that it has to spread itself across two days instead of one. Now, instead of fun and games provided by the Lion’s Club and the local church wards and the familiar good ol’ boys, there’s a traveling carnival every year at the park, and concession stands selling national-chain fast food, and the fireworks are electronically synchronized and spectacular. Everything about the Fourth is bigger and more professional now, more sophisticated… and somehow it’s less than it was, too. It feels… commercial. Store-bought. It isn’t ours anymore, it’s just something we ordered on Amazon. As for living on the parade route… well, that’s turned into a royal pain in the tuchus. The fun little small-town event that used to bring us closer together has metastasized into an overblown, stress-filled competition in which inconsiderate jackasses will do whatever they can to ensure themselves a seat, because there are now so damn many people living in this town and everyone wants to bring their kids to the parade for that free candy, but the route is still only a mile long, and seats are a precious commodity. People start staking their claims with chairs and coolers and yellow caution tape days before the parade — this year, they made their appearance a full week ahead of timet — and people just leave them there all up and down the road, unwatched eyesores, to mark their territory. The competition doesn’t end there, though; I’ve personally witnessed soccer moms jump out of their SUVs, toss aside someone else’s chairs, and set up their own in the same spot. The whole sad, sorry spectacle makes my stomach turn. It’s just a damn parade, people.

I don’t remember when this whole thing became such a BDD. It’s come on slowly, over the space of a couple decades, like that tired old saw about the frog in the pot of water that’s gradually heating up. I only know that for at least the past decade, I have been obligated to set out my own chairs at the first sign that the land-grab is beginning, or risk having squatters we don’t know and didn’t invite plant their crap in my park strip for seven days. Because they would, without a second’s thought. It isn’t that I mind sharing my frontage with others — hell, given my work and commute schedule, I don’t even get home until the stupid parade is half over, so somebody may as well use the space — but I do mind the way people don’t even bother to ask. They just swoop in and drop their junk and expect you to put up with their placeholders sitting on your property for a week, and then they and their rambunctious little carpet monkeys show up for the party you didn’t want to throw, and they get huffy as hell if you ask them to make room for you and your own invited guests, or request that they not make a hellacious mess with their Subway wrappers and Super Big Gulps and juice boxes. And inevitably when it’s all over, they leave behind a pile of garbage that I have to pick up and put in my bin, because these disrespectful freaking slobs apparently don’t see anything wrong with expecting strangers to clean up after them.

And I guess that’s the difference… in the ’70s, most everybody in town knew each other, or at least knew of each other. There weren’t that many people here, and we interacted with each other pretty regularly, so you couldn’t really get away with being an ass. Today we’re all mostly strangers, isolated in our cul de sacs and our hermetically sealed vehicles, and our hermetically sealed lives that mostly happen far away from the places where we cook and sleep. Nobody really cares anymore about inconveniencing somebody else, because they’re not likely to bump into you at the grocery store, and even if they do, they won’t recognize you. With a population count of nearly 40,000, how could it be otherwise?

The ironic thing is that the damn parade isn’t even any good anymore. It’s degenerated into little more than a long line of politicians in convertibles and jacked-up 4x4s with the names of businesses on their sides, and wave after wave of military and law-enforcement vehicles. It’s almost enough to make me want to stay at the office and put in some overtime…

Feb242012

I Don’t Even Know What to Call This One

Does everybody remember that episode of The Simpsons in which Homer and Flanders go to Vegas, get completely devastated, and wake up married to a couple of vulgar, gold-digging floozies? And then Flanders actually tries to live with his new “Vegas wife,” only to have her give up on her find-a-sugar-daddy scheme and run away because she just can’t take any more of his saccharine piousness? (The second part may have been a separate episode… I don’t remember for certain anymore.) As I recall, Flanders’ Vegas wife flees in the middle of the night, Amityville Horror style, yelling back over her shoulder something to effect of, “Just stop being so goody-goody all the time!” Does that ring a bell?

Yeah, that’s how I feel a lot of the time living in Utah. I mean, honestly, is there any other place in the known universe — or at least a place that doesn’t have a minaret in the middle of town — where this outfit would be considered immodest?

The young lady in the photo is Brittany Molina, a 21-year-old student at Brigham Young University, who experienced a moment of Internet fame last week because this unremarkable ensemble of a sweater, dress, leggings, and knee-high boots evidently proved too provocative for the tender sensibilities of some anonymous bluenose. As recounted on the Salt Lake Tribune‘s Movie Cricket blog, Brittany was on the BYU campus, minding her own business, when a young man she didn’t know walked up, handed her a note, and then scuttled off before she could read it. She thought at first it may have been a Valentine from a shy admirer, but it turned out to be something very different. The note read:

“You may want to consider that what you’re wearing has a negative effect
on men (and women) around you. Many people come to this university
because they feel safe, morally as well as physically, here. They expect
others to abide by the Honor Code that we all agreed on. Please
consider your commitment to the Honor Code (which you agreed to) when
dressing each day. Thank you.”

Now, I should probably explain for some of my Loyal Readers that BYU, which is owned by the Mormon Church, expects its students to follow a rigid set of rules — the aforementioned Honor Code — which regulates everything from attire and grooming to where students are allowed to live (BYU has to approve off-campus housing) to sexual behavior. Especially sexual behavior, which not-too-surprisingly seems to be the pitfall that trips up most Code violators, at least in the cases that come to the public’s attention. So just how strict are these rules? Well, believe it or not, they were a major factor in determining which local college I would attend following high school. Yes, yours truly applied to the Y back in my college-application days. And lest you think that seems, well, odd, I’ll be honest and admit that I was incredibly naive, knew little about the place, and chose to apply there largely because it was close to home and I wasn’t interested in going too far away for school. I even got accepted, on a provisional basis pending submission of a letter from my Mormon bishop or other ecclesiastical leader (this was a bit of a problem for me, given that I’ve been indifferent to religion since I was a small boy; I briefly considered writing my own letter and signing it “Master Yoda of Dagobah”) and, of course, my signature on a document promising I would obey this precious Honor Code of theirs. A handy rule book accompanied the acceptance letter so I could familiarize myself with the Code. I dutifully read through it, becoming more and more convinced with each new line of text that somebody, somewhere, was putting me on. It all seemed so… unnecessary.

Two items stand out in my memory as particularly insufferable: men were required to be clean-shaven (mustaches were allowed, although the Code’s phrasing on this point made it sound like they were grudgingly accepted at best, but beards and stubble were absolutely verboten), and you had to wear socks with your shoes. Leaving aside the fact that this was 1987 and I was still occasionally emulating Don Johnson’s Miami Vice look at the time, I couldn’t understand why a university, an institution of higher learning, a place whose mission is to educate and whose informal role is to help you learn how to be an independent adult, ought to have the slightest concern over whether I was wearing socks. I admittedly have something of a knee-jerk anti-authoritarian streak — I reflexively resent being told what to do, especially when I think I’m being told to do something stupid — but this was nothing short of insane micromanaging, as far as I was concerned. I was utterly repelled. However, I can thank my brush with the Honor Code for one thing, at least. It made a big life decision very simple for me. A week later, I was enrolled at BYU’s crosstown rival (and complete cosmological opposite), the University of Utah.

It’s probably also relevant to note that BYU is located in Provo, Utah, the seat of Utah County, which comprises the geographical area called Utah Valley. (It’s the Utah-iest place in all of Utah! In more ways than one, actually…) Utah Valley lies directly south of the Salt Lake Valley (and Salt Lake County), which is where I live. Things are different down there. Seriously, almost mind-bogglingly different. Non-Utahns tend to think of Salt Lake City as repressed, uptight, and highly conservative, but SLC is practically San Francisco’s Castro District compared to the UC. I actually try to avoid going down there, as my beard and ponytail instantly brand me as an outsider, and I’m not exaggerating when I say people do stare. Honest to god, I sometimes feel so out of place there, I expect a bunch of the locals to surround me and start up with the Body Snatcher scream. Even some of my Mormon friends report feeling less than worthy when they’re visiting Provo.

Anyway, given my complete alienation from the BYU/Provo mindset, I have a hard time grasping what’s so terrible about Ms. Milano’s outfit. The consensus among my friends seems to be that her dress is too short to meet the Honor Code’s standard, as it falls well above her knees, and I suppose that makes sense. But still… this is offensive to someone? Really? I mean, it’s not as if she’s dressed like one of the girls in a ZZ Top video, or like Julia Roberts in the beginning of Pretty Woman (not, just between you and me, that I have a problem with either of those looks; I guess I lack the gene that codes for moral outrage as generated by displays of feminine anatomy).

A couple of people have pointed out that it doesn’t matter whether I, personally, see anything wrong with her outfit or not, she was in violation of the rules she agreed to follow. I suppose there’s no arguing that. Brittany presumably got a chance to read the rule book same as I did, and she had her chance to make a run for it, the same way I did. But instead she willingly entered into a contract with the Y to follow their wretched Code, and she’s got to face the consequences if she doesn’t live up to her obligation. And really I know this whole story is just a tempest in a teapot, probably already forgotten by everyone who read about it last week. Nevertheless, it sticks in my craw because, regardless of whether she actually did anything wrong under whatever standard you want to apply, this incident encapsulates so much of what I really, truly hate about my home state. The pervasive, heavy-handed moralizing; the sanctimony and intolerance for anyone who strays too far off program; the nosy preoccupation with what your neighbors are doing and how “cleanly” they’re living, along with the misguided belief that you have the right to say anything about it; the casual misogyny that blames a young woman’s clothing for a young man’s sinful feelings; and, of course, the passive-aggressive behavior. Good lord, this place must surely be the passive-aggressive capital of the world. People who grow up here have it pounded into their heads from an early age to always be polite and agreeable, so few willingly engage in a direct confrontation if they can avoid it. (I’ll admit I’m guilty of it, too, for what that’s worth.) Instead, they find other, less direct — and less honorable, in my opinion — ways to attack: sarcastic jibes that are excused as good-natured humor, or intense competitiveness in sports and other social activities, or talking about people behind their backs. Or handing someone an anonymous note and running away before they can read it. Frickin’ coward. I have to say Ms. Molina apparently handled this situation with far more aplomb than I could’ve managed. I would’ve chased the punk down, pinned him to a wall, and told him that if he’s got a problem, he’d better tell me to my face. And then I would’ve impressed upon him how much better it would be for him to mind his own damn business…

(Ed. Note: For the record, I am not accusing every Utahn, or even every Utah Mormon, of behaving like this. Nor do I want to hear the usual defense made whenever a non-Mormon starts griping about how things are here, i.e., “if you don’t like it, leave.” This is my home, too, guys, and I have no intention of moving away. Nevertheless, there some aspects of life here that are… difficult… if you don’t happen to belong to the majority faith. And Provo is just plain weird, no matter how you slice it; it’s the world as designed by Ned Flanders, and that’s no bull. If I had to live down there, I think I probably would end up fleeing in the middle of the night, Amityville Horror style.)