Pioneer Day

July 24th is a state holiday in Utah, but it passed with nary a comment here in Oregon. The Twenty-fourth of July is Pioneer Day--the day that Brigham Young and his entourage (and by entourage I mean entourage and not a veiled euphemism for all his wives--they came later after the Conflict Resolution Center was completed) first entered the Salt Lake Valley back in 1847. The entire state holds celebrations, reenactments, parades, floor-length calico dress fashion shows, and non-alcoholic and non-caffeinated beverage swilling in remembrance of the event. I remember the very first 24th of July I spent in Utah. I was only 8 and we were visiting my great-grandparents in a tiny farming town in central Utah. The town had just gotten paved roads and they were anxious to show them off with a grand parade--a parade in which my brothers and I were especially eager to participate. The night before the parade, my great-grandfather helped us make a covered wagon with a little red wagon, willow branches, and a bed sheet. The sign printed on it read "Three Crows bound for Idaho." We were so proud of that wagon and couldn't wait for the big day to show off... not only the cool covered wagon but also our fancy new school clothes that we'd bought in Salt Lake on the way down to Emery. It was the 70's, so obviously we'd picked out ringer t-shirts and extreme bellbottomed jeans. And since I was on the "husky" side, my shirt and jeans looked like they were painted on they were so tight. (Can you believe that jeans manufacturers didn't make husky fancy pants?) We just knew we'd wow all those small-town hicks with our fancy clothes and big city ways--and by big city, I mean a large town in Wyoming.

After a night of fitful sleep, haunted by dreams of crossing the plains in a tie-died covered wagon and disco ball hanging over the campfire, we rose and scarfed down our breakfast and rushed out to get the wagon out of the barn. To our horror, we found the white bedsheet COVERED with brown specks--flies had landed on the clean fabric during the night and left little gifts to let us know they'd been there. We were pretty grossed out--not enough to not want to be in the parade, mind you--but still! We made our way to the staging area--about a block away (which is easy, since every point in the town was only "a block away" from every other point). We got in line and noticed that the kids in front of us were dressed up as Indians on rocking horses with wheels attached! That was in the days that my brother and I had long hair--so I'm sure it looked ridiculous that the blonde kids were dressed in buckskin on horseback and the brown kids with long hair were dressed in 70's disco wear pulling a covered wagon. My little brother was supposed to ride in the wagon while my other brother and I pulled it. Well this didn't sit well with him--he screamed the entire length of the parade and made our trip as miserable as our pioneer ancestors' trip across Nebraska. At the time, we thought he just wanted to pull the wagon with us, but now, years later and knowing about his OCD and germaphobia, he was probably having an anxiety attack being surrounded by all those fly droppings.

After the parade, there was a town picnic and a greased pig contest--featuring a pig greased with MOTOR OIL!! My brother insisted on participating in that, and despite his flowing jeans, somehow caught the little piglet and wouldn't hear of leaving it with my great-grandparents. We ended up putting it in a crate and bringing it back with us to Wyoming in our van--a van that smelled like motor oil until the day we sold it. We ended up eating that pig when it was full-grown, and with all the motor oil it surely absorbed through its skin, the meat never did stick to any of our pans.