On the Back Roads (24 page)

“I think it was in the twenties,” Ben recalled, “or maybe the thirties.” Anyway, whenever Prohibition was. Kemmerer was where the really good shine came from. They called it ‘Kemmerer Moon.' It kicked like a bull. You could get it anyplace in Wyoming, Montana, Colorado, even in Chicago. Back there it was Al Capone's favorite drink.”

The fellow sitting next to Ben interrupted. “You know the saying ‘I'd kill for it'? Well, it was Al Capone who said that, and he was talking about Kemmerer hooch.”

Ben gave him a side-glance and continued. “Corn sugar came here by the trainload. So did the big whiskey vats made somewhere back east. The revenuers would wheel in here, raid a few stills, and bust things up. One time they split open 15,000 gallons of prime, uncut shine. There were some tears shed that night, I tell ya. Another thing, unemployment was unheard of. Anybody who wanted a job could be a driver.

“The sheriff put guys in jail now and then, but he let them out a couple of times a day to go home to stir their mash. He didn't want it to spoil, either. The used-up mash, they would feed to the animals. It was good for ‘em. Nothing funnier than a drunk chicken, except maybe a plastered pig.”

We finished off the Kool-Aid and said our good-byes. Ben stepped into the other room to play pool.

I had that mournful feeling again, that certainty of the roads I travel. Good-byes are frequent. Most always, they are permanent.

Heading back to the Riverside RV Park, I walked over a bridge, under which runs the Hams Fork River and the tracks of the Union Pacific Railroad. A path runs off the end of the bridge, by a riverside bird sanctuary, and to a road that took me home.

Rusty seemed only moderately interested in my return. She looked exhausted. Be fore I left, two neighborhood kids asked me if they could take her for a walk while I was in town. I told them they could. I think they walked her while they rode their bikes.

This RV park shows years of hands-on care, obviously a family effort. It is tidy and very comfortable, but has no amenities, not even showers. Shower stalls are here, but a sign said that they did not work. Frankly, I didn't believe it. It appeared that the likable couple who run the park were appropriately enjoying the short summer here with their eleven-year-old grandson. After many years of cleaning up after strangers, they were probably sick of it.

There are times—and a Wyoming summer is good one—to say the hell with it and hang up an Out of Order sign. But never a sign that reads Back in 15 Minutes!

G
ray and hard, the morning light reminded me of old concrete. It moved on the dirty sky with as much agility. Being held hostage by a cold rain was the good news. The bad news was it would soon turn to an even colder snow.

Inside my motor home, though, it was as warm as I wanted it. I had plenty of coffee. The TV worked on four channels. I was plugged into Yogi Bear's Jellystone Park in Manti, Utah, population 2,200, elevation 5,500 feet. This was the only RV park in town, and a really nice one. Again, that was the good news. The bad news was, I was the only one in it, and Yogi Bear would shut down for the winter in another couple of days.

Rusty liked it because she had the run of the place. Rollicking in the fallen leaves was a new experience for her. I watched her, wondering what she will think tomorrow if the leaves are all under snow, which would be another first for her.

Yesterday, under low clouds, their serrated edges clinging to the mountains of the Manti-La Sal National Forest, I drove through the middle of Utah on U.S. 89. The sun peeked out now and then, like the opening eye of a doped patient. The
brief beam showed pine trees covered with fresh snow high in the mountains.

Manti's distinguished landmark, built over a century ago, is no less prominent or magnificent than the castles of Europe. It overlooks—no, dominates—the Santepe Valley from a promontory higher than the town's tallest trees. Built of white oolite limestone, the Manti Mormon Temple rises to 179 feet at its highest point, its elegant east tower.

I saw it from five miles out. On a clear night, they say, it is visible at distances four times that. It is awash in electric light from dusk to dawn. With that, this Mormon temple and the six others in Utah part comparison with the castles of Europe. Castles settle for moonlight.

Like all towns in Utah—Salt Lake City included—Manti is laid out like a checkerboard. All corners are square. Streets run to the four points of the compass. There is always a ground zero, usually at Main and Center Streets, from which street numbers begin. This very logical and simple system started with the early Mormon pioneers, as directed by Brigham Young. Nobody is about to change it. Ever.

Manti's main street, also U.S. 89, runs north and south. It's so wide, every block has a sign in the middle prohibiting U-turns. Easily, six motor homes could be lined up abreast, with room to open doors, drop window awnings, and deploy a few pull-out barbecues.

Driving into town, fall colors were still in the trees, but most of it was on the ground. Carved pumpkins decorated the windows of tidy homes and businesses. A stubby limes tone building topped with a steeple displayed two signs. One told of the present: American Legion Post 31. The other, a historic marker, told of a Presbyterian Church that had given up here thirty years ago.

The home of the Central Utah Ballet School also has a historic marker. Built in 1873, the building was once the oldest city hall in the state. When the city fat hers moved out, they effectively tossed this old building in the trash, along with its heritage. It's in sad disrepair. But the ballet school goes on anyway. What are a few broken windows to kids, ages seven
to nineteen who spend their evenings and weekends sharpening an athletic skill? Kids make choices with their free time based on what's around. Few towns offer a fine ball et school. But they all offer that of which tragic headlines are written. Someday, soon I hope, Manti's city fathers will wake up to the positive choices some of their kids have made and make a few of their own. This school deserves better. In the meantime, everyone will enjoy the
Nutcracker Suite
performed by these kids during the week of Christmas.

At the end of Main Street is the temple. It's awesome. It certainly has the ornate beauty of any classic cathedral or synagogue, but it does not have the same function. It is not a gathering place for communal worship. In fact, it is not even open on Sundays. A place of prayer, yes, but it is essentially a place for important religious ceremonies, like wed dings and baptisms. It has no stained-glass windows, no bell tower, no pipe organ, no altar.

With its buttressed stone walls, three feet thick at ground level, it took an uncounted number of volunteers eleven years to build. Donated food and clothing were their only material compensation. Site preparation alone took two years, using horse-drawn scrapers and dynamite.

The temple shows no sign of age or weather. The lawn, which could sod a couple of football fields, has no brown spots. Obviously, its keepers care for it a great deal.

I knew the temple was closed to me and even to some Mormons. But the glass, revolving door showed a tastefully decorated foyer that had an inviting look about it.

The sun had just set and the lights were on inside. Other people were going in, so I did too. I was greeted warmly by Mr. Greenhalgh, a soft-spoken, retired schoolteacher, immaculately dressed in a white suit, shirt and tie.

We sat in a quiet corner. {I am sure the temple has no other kind.} Mr. Greenhalgh told me that 560 volunteers run the temple. It's open five days and evenings a week. After it closes, an eight-person crew works all night scrubbing, vacuuming, and polishing.

So much for what happened yesterday. Now that I have thawed out my water hose in Yogi Bear's shower again, the news is looking good. The snow has gone elsewhere. The sun is shining this morning.

“It's easy to find. Follow the feathers along the side of the road. They blow off the turkey trucks. And if the wind in right, just follow your nose.” The cook at the senior center was giving me directions to a turkey farm.

She was right. White feathers line the roads wherever the flatbed turkey trucks have been. The trucks all go to Moroni, twenty miles north of here, where the birds are made oven-ready. This county produced 4.4 million turkeys last year, or 72 million pounds.

Pulling into the Shand farm in a little truck on loan from Yogi Bear, a tail-wagging sheepdog greeted me along with a million frantically gobbling turkeys. I learned later there was only 14,000 birds. They came hopping, running, half flying to crowd the fence. None of them faced me head on. With their heads cocked, they all stared at me, each using just one eye. More than have ever stared at me before.

A hawk flew over. Silence, for a few seconds. Then the gobbling began anew, but with a higher level of twitter.

Eighteen-year-old Travis Shand stuck his pitchfork in the ground. He appeared happy to stop what he was doing and talk with a stranger. He and Jeremy Keller, age nineteen, look after turkeys on two adjacent farms that belong to Travis's dad and his uncle.

Every year, well over 100,000 turkeys grow up here. The birds arrive as day-old chicks, the first brood in February. {The farm is closed in December and January.} How a chick producer can get 20,000 or so eggs to all hatch on the same day is beyond my comprehension. But they do. It takes seventeen to twenty-six weeks, depending on how big they want them, before the birds are trucked off to Moroni.

“If a little thing goes wrong, you can be sure they'll make the worst of it. Turkeys are dumb,” Travis remarked. “I picked up a hen today that sat in a puddle and drowned. Maybe she fell asleep, I don't know. Anyway, she's history. They have
heart attacks and just plain die if life gets to be too much for them, like if a jet flies over or a siren goes by.”

The turkeys, the temple, and the nice folks of Manti were now behind me, where the winter winds blow. Rusty and I were on U.S. 89 again, headed south toward Interstate 15.

Now there I was, dead in the road, stopped behind a froth of bleating sheep. There must have been 200 of them. Three men on horseback and two happy dogs skillfully kept them tightly packed on the road and off the shoulders. The sheep, their woolly coats puffed up for the coming Utah winter, appeared to follow directions well. Ahead, they streamed into an open field.

Rusty perked her ears. She stood on the dashboard, taking it all in. Her tail wagged her body. She let out an occasional bark. I had to agree with her, it was a remarkable sight.

I guess sheepherders are a considerate bunch. Evidently, they did not want to del ay a waiting cement truck and me. They pushed the sheep to move faster than the sheep wanted to go.

“Take your time,” I said. Only Rusty heard me. “No hurry. Fact is, the cement probably has more important things to do today than we do.”

A
ll city and county employees here work on Columbus Day, a national holiday. But come to Beaver two weeks now, the first Monday of the deer hunt, and you won't find a government office open, except the post office. Even the schools will be closed.

Here in central Utah, as in small towns everywhere, people make trade-offs in their lifestyles—and their holidays—to get more of what they want. In fact, just living in a small town is a huge trade-off. Big-city amenities are given up: shopping malls, mail delivery, movie theaters, clinics, even the twenty-four-hour supermarket, access to which now seems an urbanite's birthright. In return, they get life at a slower pace, one filled with what is, to them, truly important. This may be as simple as knowing every kid on the high-school football team, not needing a key because you never lock your doors, making jam with homegrown strawberries, or just knowing the first name of every person you meet today. You better know, because they always know yours.

Much of what is important, of gut significance to the people here, lies in the Tushar Mountains just east of town. Peaks over 12,000 feet and places like Mount Holly, Puffer Lake,
Big John's Flat, Elk Meadows, and Merchant Valley give a map-reader's view of what's up there. A slick brochure tells of a “Mecca for recreation,” the “state's largest mule-deer and elk herds,” and “unsurpassed trout fishing.” But all that's just a hint.

The wild sounds and scents of the high country and the memories of the excited laughter of his kids are what the mountains mean to John Christiansen. He has never seen them. He is blind. But he knows what's up there, how beautiful it is. On many visits over many years, his family has told him what they see.

The popular county attorney here for thirty-six years, John now has a private practice at age sixty-nine. He was pecking at his typewriter when I walked into his one-man office. John asked me to sit while he finished typing.

Those brief moments, watching him type, brought a jarring revelation. For a person who does not see what he types, to interrupt John in the process could disrupt his continuity. You and I can stop at any point and pick up where we left off simply by reading our last thought. John has to remember not only his last thought but also the last words he typed.

I looked around his basement office. Two small windows were near the ceiling. They did little more than indicate whether it was day or night outside. For John, I suppose, they did nothing at all. A big fluorescent fixture lit his office.

John lives five blocks from his office and walks it alone twice a day. He does not use a cane, doesn't even own one.

“There are no sidewalks here for a ways, so I walk on the side of the street,” John explained. “What's under my feet tells me where I am. The road has a smooth, oiled surface, and it slopes to gravel. I can anticipate intersections pretty well.”

“Ever get disoriented?”