Well, we went to Salt Lake City to go to the Great Salt Lake but even the tourist information people said it wasn't worth going to. So we didn't go.
Walked around the Temple Square area of town, found a cheap pizza place to eat and put two rolls of film in for developing. We then did a tour of the Mormon (the official title is something like Church of Jesus Christ and the Latter Day Saints) temple aided and abetted by our French guidess. Our awe was not at all inspired by a pretty dull temple (and it was covered in scaffolding) a couple of big organs (don't....) and a statue to some some seagulls. Even polygamy is out nowadays so it didn't seem much different from your average common or garden religion.
"I wonder how subtle they'll be in trying to sell it to us ?" asked Oz. Ever been run over by a truck ? The tour ended with a big screen advertisement aimed at good-looking, white, middle-class unbelievers who would be simple enough to be taken in by all the crap. Thanks, but no thanks. We weren't interested. But we did decide that Chris, Graham, Howie and Edders might be.
Next we decided to trace our family trees but there can't be much mormonism in our families as we seemed to completely evade the the computer and it's cd-rom. I think it spotted our skepticism as it kept crashing out. We walked up to Capitol Hill and looked around. A few beehive statues, a statue to someone who was supposed to have invented TV and not a lot else. Next stop the planetarium where we soundly thrashed two American girls on the geography of Europe and the US. Ate in the Rio Grande Mexican cafe at the station.
2011
We filled in names and address for Chris, Graham, Howie and Edders and dropped the cards in a box. Apologies boys if someone came knocking on your door.
Americans seem to quote Philo Farnsworth as the inventor of television even though we all know it was John Logie Baird. The research I've just done seems to show Farnsworth transmitting pictures in 1927, two years after Baird. Typical American re-write of history. Apparently Shakespeare is from Stanford, CT.
Apology accepted. A charming, wholesome, clean-cut American girl did visit my Bristol flat a few months later. It seemed too good to be true, and indeed it was. You have to admire their follow-up routine, though.
ReplyDelete