Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
one was coming on, and it was always the same-people with orange faces and clothes that
kept changing hue. Mr. Sheitelbaum kept bobbing up to fiddle with the many little knobs
with which the thing was equipped while his wife shouted encouragement from across the
room.
For a few moments the color 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 con-
trol 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 Cafe. 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 person on the next stool to a 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
alarminguntilyourealizethatitmeansUtahistheoneplaceontheplanetwhereyounever
have to worry about young men coming up to you and trying to convert you to Mormon-
ism. 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 de-
tection for years. It makes you feel a little like Kevin McCarthy in Invasion of the Body
Snatchers, but it is also strangely liberating.
