The Lost Continent - Bill Bryson [117]
For a few moments the colour would be pretty fair – not accurate exactly, but not too disturbing – and then just as Mr Sheitelbaum placed his butt back on the sofa it would all go haywire and we would have green horses and red clouds, and he’d be back at the control panel again. It was hopeless. But having spent such a huge amount of money on this thing, Mr Sheitelbaum would never give up on it, and for the next fifteen years whenever you walked past his living-room window you would see him fiddling with the controls and muttering.
In the late afternoon, I drove on to St George, a small city not far from the state line. I got a room in the Oasis Motel and dined at Dick’s Café. Afterwards, I went for a stroll. St George had a nice old-town feel about it, though in fact most of the buildings were new except for the Gaiety Movie Theater (‘All Seats $2’) and Dixie Drugstore next door. The drugstore was closed, but I was brought up short by the sight of a soda-fountain inside, a real marble-topped soda-fountain with twirly stools and straws in paper wrappers – the sort in which you tear off one end and then blow, sending the wrapper on a graceful trajectory into the cosmetics department.
I was crushed. This must be just about the last genuine drugstore soda-fountain in America and the place was closed. I would have given whole dollars to go in and order a green river or a chocolate soda and send a few straw wrappers wafting about and then challenge the next person along to a stool-twirling contest. My personal best is four full revolutions. I know that doesn’t sound much, but it’s a lot harder than it looks. Bobby Wintermeyer did five once and then threw up. It’s a pretty hairy sport, believe me.
On the corner was a big brick Mormon church, or temple or tabernacle or whatever they call them. It was dated 1871 and looked big enough to hold the whole town – and indeed it probably often does since absolutely everybody in Utah is a Mormon. This sounds kind of alarming until you realize that it means Utah is the one place on the planet where you never have to worry about young men coming up to you and trying to convert you to Mormonism. They assume you are one of them already. As long as you keep your hair cut fairly short and don’t say, ‘Oh, shit!’ in public when something goes wrong, you may escape detection for years. It makes you feel a little like Kevin McCarthy in Invasion of the Body Snatchers, but it is also strangely liberating.
Beyond the Mormon church things became mostly residential. Everything was green and fresh after the recent rains. The town smelled of spring, of lilacs and fresh-mown grass. The evening was creeping in. It was that relaxed time of day when people have finished their dinners and are just pootling about in the yard or garage, not doing much of anything in preparation for shortly doing even less.
The streets were the widest I’ve ever seen in any town, even out here in the residential neighbourhoods. Mormons sure do love wide streets. I don’t know why. Wide streets and lots of wives for bonking, those are the foundation stones of Mormonism. When Brigham Young founded Salt Lake City one of the first things he did was decree that the streets be 100 feet wide, and he must have said something similar to the people of St George. Young knew the town well – he had his winter home there – so if the townspeople ever tried anything slack with the streets he’d have been on to them right away.
Chapter twenty-four
HERE’S A RIDDLE for you. What is the difference between Nevada and a toilet? Answer: You can flush a toilet.
Nevada has the highest crime rate of any state, the highest rape rate, the second highest violent crime rate (it’s just pipped by New York), the highest highway fatality rate, the second highest rate of gonorrhoea (Alaska is the trophy-holder), and