Beautiful area, no wonder Brigham Young supposedly said this is the place, or words to that effect. John M. Browning's dad was gunsmith to the migration of Mormons and of course his famous son created tools for our (waterfowlers) kind of migration. And a few other famous ones as well
I really enjoyed my pilgrimage to the Browning museum where I viewed the prototype A-5, my favorite duck gun of all time. Downtown had a marvelous ice cream shop!
Something I wrote the first time I saw Salt Lake:
Salt Lake City, 1973
In the modern parlance, dis must be the place, as Brigham Young reportedly was first to remark. Perhaps not exactly in those words. A Florida Game and Fresh Water Fish Commission public relations guy told me the Great Salt Lake has the best duck hunting in the world. I don’t know about that and may never know. But Utah certainly has everything else on view. When we came out into the Salt Lake region and saw the marsh land, the vast body of water in the distance, snow still on the mountains above the city—and seagulls flying in the sunset—I knew exactly what Brigham Young must have meant.
We stopped for dinner at a Sambo’s Restaurant on State Street, the name of the place making me wonder if Salt Lake City had even heard of the civil rights movement of the sixties. The decorations would argue that that they hadn’t. The waitress was friendly and helped us understand the peculiar scheme by which the city streets are laid out so we could find the Coleman repair shop for our ailing camp stove. She liked it that we were on a long road trip, imparted that she once traveled the nation with her father in his big semi-rig, and envies us.
We were here for the day, trying to decide what to see. The vagabond house of my dreams, like that of the poem, will be decorated with photos and mementos of places I have visited.
The Mormons put on a good, tasteful show of their religion around Temple Square, with only the slightest touches of grotesquerie. Each article of faith gets its own special spot in a gallery. Paintings of sturdy, muscular Biblical-looking characters with big honest hands and yeoman’s feet beneath the hem of rough robes are depicted as prophets, which Mormons consider necessary still, according to a footnote. And who’s to say they’re wrong?
Another footnote asserts that their articles of faith are a product of one inspired mind, not arrived at laboriously over the centuries by translations by scholars—a nice touch. Everything speaks to the uplifting of mankind. They included a quote from Paul, one of his best, about believe everything, hope everything, have endured much and with God’s help will endure. A statement of faith about all people’s right to worship; that intelligence is the true glory of God. Banks of colorful flowers are everywhere. The big temple, the iron seagull poised in flight above the street, the state capitol, all remarkable.
For counterpoint, a conversation overheard in Sambo’s, women very dissatisfied with life in this city, “snow as high as your house last winter, and now this, the second day in a row of 104-degree temperatures!”
“I wanted to live in Hawaii,” one confides, “or anyplace but here.”
“I was in Arizona last year when it was 120, so some places are worse,” her friend says but doesn’t sound convinced. The other didn’t act as if she believed it.
They hide out from 104-degree weather in the air conditioned restaurant and look at the snow on the mountain tops and heartily doubt this is the place, contrary to Brigham Young’s assertion.
“My kids aren’t coming back to Salt Lake for Christmas anymore,” one says ominously. “Come next year I may not be on the payroll either.”
Heaven is always just a little farther down the road.
