Remembering Home
It sounds strange, but after spending a week in San Francisco, with its cosmopolitan and determinedly liberal -- some would even say libertine -- spirit, I kind of forgot what it's like here in the Land of Zion. Fortunately, as I've been catching up on my blog and newspaper reading from last week, I've found plenty of items that remind me of those finer details that make living in Utah so very special.
There is, for example, the story of an organized band of prudes who last week bullied a state park museum in southern Utah into moving a sculpture of Kokopelli -- a sculpture that has happily occupied the same spot for 19 years without causing a problem -- because they were offended by his, shall we say, masculine attribute. (Kokopelli, if you don't know, is an Indian fertility god whose abstract image is a ubiquitous motif down around the Four Corners area.) Now, you'd think people from a state that proudly boasts of having the highest birth rate in the Union would be totally down with a fertility god, especially since he's usually rendered in a way that's no more graphic than a well-fed stick-figure, but, well, this is Utah so you would be wrong.
(Incidentally, the same bluenoses who got all fluttery at the sight of a completely undetailed phallus that looks for all the world like a stick also wanted the park to remove a certain plant from in front of the museum because it's known to have hallucinogenic properties and they feared having it right there by the entrance might encourage people to use it for recreation. This same plant happens to be indigenous to the area and grows pretty much all over the place.)
Then there was the item in the New York Times with the unexpected dateline of "Riverton, Utah." That's my hometown, you know, a one-time rural community that's now a bedroom suburb to Salt Lake. The article describes the reaction of a crowd gathered at the Rock Creek Pizza Co. (less than a mile from the fabulous Bennion Compound!) as they watched the Palin-Biden debate last Thursday. Let's just say I'd have felt more pride if, during Riverton's moment in such a large spotlight, there'd been a somewhat less, ahem, uniform point of view being expressed. I'm tempted to write to the Times and let them know we're not all marching in lockstep out here in Deseret.
Moving along, I was amused by this item (found via this), which points out that even Mormons who live in other states think Utahns are weird. Although the writer here purports that "some of the stereotypes about us are essentially true, and some are based in fantasy," I have to say that I've seen all of these examples on display at one time or another during my 39 years in this state.
Lastly, the following list, sent to me in an email and supposedly attributed to comedian Jeff Foxworthy.* My out-of-state readers may not see the humor of these and may not even believe they're for real, but trust me, they are:
- If your local Dairy Queen is closed from September to May, you live in Utah.
- If someone in a Home Depot store offers you assistance and they don't work there, you live in Utah.
- If you've worn shorts and a parka at the same time, you live in Utah.
- If you've had a lengthy telephone conversation with someone who dialed the wrong number, you live in Utah.
- If "vacation" means going anywhere south of Salt Lake City for the weekend, you live in Utah.
- If you measure distance in hours, you live in Utah.
- If you know several people who have hit a deer more than once, you live in Utah.
- If you have switched from "heat" to "A/C" and back again in the same day, you live in Utah.
(I actually did this on Sunday, the first day Anne and I were back from SF.)
- If you install security lights on your house and garage but leave both doors unlocked, you live in Utah.
- If you can drive 75 mph through two feet of snow during a raging blizzard without flinching, you live in Utah.
- If you design your kid's Halloween costume to fit over a snowsuit, you live in Utah.
- If the speed limit on the highway is 75 mph, you're going 80, and everyone is still passing you, you live in Utah.
- If driving is better in the winter because the potholes are filled with snow, you live in Utah.
- If you know all four seasons -- almost winter, winter, still winter, and road construction -- you live in Utah.
- If you find 10 degrees "a little chilly" you live in Utah.
(Another related anecdote: everyone in San Francisco was wearing jackets and scarves and apologizing to us for the chilly weather. Anne and I were comfortable in t-shirts and thought it was gorgeous.) - If you actually understand these jokes and forward them to all your friends, you live in Utah.
Yeah... I'm back home all right...
* For the record, I don't believe Foxworthy really authored this list; it's just written in his familiar "you might be a redneck" formula. I frankly would be amazed if he'd ever set foot in this state, although his folksy humor seems to be immensely popular here.