It wasn’t until arriving back in the Heber foothills after celebrating Park City’s 125th birthday up along the Mirror Lake Highway that the magnitude of the event really hit home. Other species were even getting into the act, and I don’t just mean those with a penchant for polishing honky-tonk hardwood with Justin Ropers.
Only a few blocks from the humble digs, my mates and I interrupted a quartet of red fox kits partying the holy bejeezuz out of it near the banks of the canal. I’ve always felt, as far as the Heber Valley goes, that their habitat of choice played out mostly along the upper fairways at Wasatch Mountain State Park. Never had I seen them in our neighborhood.
Years ago, a mountain lion appeared in my headlights, crossing the road fully stretched out in flight and closing the gap with his menu item of choice, a madly-hopping freaked-out snowshoe hare. But, other than that, we don’t get much more than mule deer and the occasional missionary up in these parts.
Actually, although I never made it to Park City proper to partake of its quite significant birthday bash, the once-small ski town that set the hook as far as getting me to put down roots in the Utah mountains has been much on my mind of late.
Recent weather patterns have had a lot to do with it. Mornings have, for the most part, been sun-splashed and inviting, while, as the afternoon beckons, cloud formations begin to build up and fold back upon themselves. Monsoonal moments notwithstanding, it is from within these folds that reflections of the past are triggered. Trust me on this.
Most especially, it’s the shenanigans pulled by us newcomers to Park City during the first half of the ’70s, when I lived there in fact rather than in spirit. We were the “illegal immigrants” of the day. We looked different and we spoke differently. We ate strange foods, wore strange clothes, and smoked strange cigarettes.
The days when 50 bucks a month could get you a “ski-in ski-out golf-in golf-out” cinderblock pad behind the cohabitation-rich rooming house at the Miners Hospital (later to become the “Palace Flophouse”) may have been coming to a close, but it didn’t get much better in those days than living at the base of the Treasure Mountain Resort.
What I loved most about our “hood” out there at that time, however, might well have been the two strip joints strategically located within walking distance of where I hung my hat, ski paraphernalia, and 8-track player. The bartender gig, just a short amble across the parking lot to the Rusty Nail Lounge, was just icing on the brownies.
Thoughts of seat-of-the-pants rodeos, demolition derbies, Clown Days, and “Sagittarian Drag Balls” also play across the memory bank like raw footage from a lost Fellini flick.
Chartered bus trips down Parleys Canyon to the old Salt Palace, once for Merle Haggard (one bus) and another for the “Outlaw Tour” with Willie & Waylon (two buses), remain in memory due, for the most part, to the survival of uncensored documentary photographs.
Recollections of more solitary endeavors from back then have also been popping up fairly regularly. A sound check featuring the piano-bass duo of George Shearing and Brian Torff in the nearly empty ballroom at, if memory serves, the Holiday Inn before it became The Yarrow, gives me chills to this day.
Much later on, there would be another memorable sound check when Teri Orr invited my brother McGee and myself into the brand spankin’ new state-of-the-acoustical-arts Eccles Auditorium to witness the great contemporary Irish band Solas first align themselves with a venue they would come to love.
Not all of my recent spare moments have been stuck to the ribs of Park City nostalgia, however. With the 105th anniversary of “Bloomsday” looming the day after I write this and the day before it sees print, I’ve also had to budget time to get all my James Joyce “Ulysses” ducks in line.
Each year sees a different variant in protocol raise its head for analysis. Commemorating at least some part of the novel’s June 16, 1904, single-day-storyline is quite mandatory in my circle of one.
Duplicating Leopold Bloom’s lunch of washing down a Gorgonzola sandwich with a glass of burgundy at Davey O’Brien’s Pub will, this year, be performed by a few slices of sharp cheddar and a snifter of Laphroaig, a quite-peaty Islay single-malt, out on the back deck. Hey, it’s as close to that early 20th-century Dublin ethic as my current pantry can provide.
Besides, if I learned anything from my days in Park City, it is that proper improvisation can wash away the sin of foresight!
Jay Meehan is a culture junkie and a free-lance writer with a background in commercial and community radio, among other pursuits. He has been a columnist and feature writer for various Park City publications going back to 1973.