On Feb. 1, 1970, almost exactly 50 years ago, my family arrived in Utah from California. Just after midnight, we exited Interstate 15 at 4500 South, and headed east to our new home in Holladay.
It was a bigger house than we were accustomed to. Also more expensive. I was immediately suspicious. This time, the Old Man had purchased a house rather than rent one. Was it a clue to my future? Was he planning to make Zion our last stop?
But nothing stops. You might think it does, but in reality we’re all just perched in trees while the future whirls and drifts in a flood around us.
Proof is in the pages of the newspaper I bought that Sunday morning at the 7-Eleven just up the street. With a sullenness that only a teenager can muster, I hoped to find a cheap car in the want ads. There was no way my life was going to end in Boredomville. The newspaper that Sunday morning was 80 pages, a full dozen devoted to want ads. But none of the thousands of ads offered a car for sale within my price range of $16.53.
There was a boss ’67 Dodge Charger for sale at a place called Streator Chevrolet Used Cars, 465 Main St. Little did I know that in two short years, I would be washing cars there.
Another story announced the combat death in Vietnam of U.S. Army Specialist 5 Jack Dale Hanson Jr., 18, killed in Vietnam. The war still raged while I cleaned a car at Streator’s listening for my own draft number to be called. I almost died when it was.
Smoking marijuana might have gotten me out of the draft. In the paper was a story of someone getting arrested for having a bit of demon weed in his shoe. Today we actually have a medical dispensary for it.
But in 1970, weed was evil in herbal form. Right there in black and white was the story of a Salt Lake Police sergeant being dragged 50 feet and knocked unconscious by a drug-addled motorist.
Little did I know that hearing my draft number at Streator’s would result in my becoming a military policeman in the Army, which in turn resulted in me becoming a cop six years later.
Also in the paper was the death notice of Eleanor Fitzpatrick, widow of late Salt Lake Tribune publisher John F. Fitzpatrick, a newspaper I would end up working for 20 years hence after the cop thing got old.
The paper also contained the announcement of a new Canadian consul general for the Utah area, who hailed from Calgary.
I would eventually marry a woman from Calgary, but would first have to travel 6,000 miles to meet her in 1974, even though in 1970 she was going to LDS Business College just 7 miles away.
It’s a good thing that the distance between us grew, because in February 1970 I was only interested in loud music, hedonism and drugs.
“Easy Rider” starring Peter Fonda was playing. Since I was a big fan of Steppenwolf’s “Born to Be Wild,” I coveted the advertised $450 Magnavox Astro-Sonic stereo FM/AM Radio-Phonograph player the size of a refrigerator in order to crank up music that I now listen to on my phone.
I took no note that it was playing at the Redwood Drive-In, which is where, in another five years, I would first kiss the girl from Canada who I later had to journey 6,000 miles to meet after just traveling 700 miles to grumble about events that led me to where she was living only a few miles away at the time.
Streator’s, the draft, the Redwood Drive-In, the Vietnam War — they’re all gone now. But the girl from Canada and I are still here. Damn, I’m glad I didn’t make it out of Boredomville.
Robert Kirby is The Salt Lake Tribune’s humor columnist. Follow Kirby on Facebook.
