Off the seat of a bicycle
Chapter 51) Salt Lake City

After Florida I took my second ‘out-west’ journey via car. Ten years earlier, with Se’s brother, we drove to San Diego to visit Se in the Navy and I was awe-struck by the barren rough look of Utah. I wanted to find a life out there.

My family came from Kansas where the barren landscape from our year in Scott City compelled me at five, in one of my earliest memories, to leave and wander alone in the wilderness.

I never left my family but it made me wonder about this desire ‘to live apart’ from others. Was it my hopeless family situation or an in-born need to aimlessly wander about? I wanted to be alone, yet in odd paradox, loved my family and would miss them dearly.

I was a hermit but needed a level of social contact, yet decried commitment to group norms. Norms seemed so arbitrary, but likewise so coercive that I devoted my entire life to studying how they work.

Moving from school to school across Kansas let me understand that people act markedly different everywhere you go. Scott City was nothing like Wichita and Wichita not like Emporia or Hutchinson … the social expectations were different everywhere … but that’s true from Singapore to London to Nuevo Laredo … and how the birds fly depends on which flock you fly with.

I used my wanderings to watch social interaction …. and I was able to see why people join groups and churches … people need ‘absolutism’… they need square edges so they ‘know’ how to talk to people and what others think and exactly what to teach their kids.

This explains why the code-of-locals was forever in opposition to my actions. My behavior, both as a recluse and an activist, rip twice sideways across the people who demand absolutism and abhor change.

To the locals, it makes no sense to allow change. And strangely I find myself thinking the same way, so I guess we all carry around our bags of cement.

My car found its way to Salt Lake City where I got an apartment and a job at Color Tile. Complete strangers came up and asked if I moved there ‘to join the church?’ I have never been asked that question in my life … but didn’t take equal offence to them asking as they did to my reply, ‘no.’ 

I didn’t snort-laugh their question, it just seemed irrelevant.

Why does anyone need to be a Mormon anyway? Religion is mostly about codifying behavior under the pretense of appeasing a higher being.

But the only person stopping me for being different seemed to be other people … God never reached down from heaven and said anything … it was always people, it was never God.

God never seemed to mind if I rode a bike after dark without a light. So how does anybody know what God really cares about?

Maybe God talks to these people after they’ve consumed two quarts of bourbon and a hit of peyote. At least that’s my theory.

And another thing bothers me about religion; doesn’t it seem strange that God always speaks to people in the exact same dialect they speak? Why no intermittent Mandarin or Japanese?  … and what about those people who can’t talk or hear?
 
Forget the church, I was drawn to the nearby desert flats … and marveled at the ancient lake-shore carved on the mountain slopes above the city.

Much of Utah and all of Salt Lake City lies in the Great Basin which was once filled with immense Lake Bonneville. Two different lake levels are visible on the slopes above the city, and the size of that history overwhelms you. No wonder the Indians worshiped the earth … it was powerful to see yourself standing on the bottom of a giant lake that could swallow whole the chock-full Mormon temple and every building in the city.
 
Lake Bonneville reveals the true power of God … and with the shore-line way up high on the mountain slopes; I could see that man’s rituals had nothing to do with the meaning of God’s universe.

The marks on those mountains humbled me, yet I felt neither special nor fearful. God was the ruler of something much larger than mankind, and I thanked him for the glimpse, and for providing a touchstone which was the beginning of a private spiritualism.

Bicycle riding was a breeze in Salt Lake. The founders wanted the streets wide enough for a horse and wagon to make a u-turn. So the boulevards were wide and the safety factor goes up a thousand fold since bicyclists have more room and more time to react.

The single bike hassle from Salt Lake came when I was riding through the courtyard of the imperial temple. Two guys quickly surrounded me and told me to leave … and I asked them if wheelchairs got thrown out too? LOL.

One day off-work, I drove south on a road that twisted up in the mountains above Provo, and found a pull-over spot and got out for a hike. It was invigorating leaving the car and climbing up the steep pastured hills.

Every square inch of ground, was a deer hoof-print. I saw deer running off in all directions, and their power to bound-up one hill and slash around the brush was astounding. They strode over in seconds what it took me several minutes to climb.

It was a beautiful day and no matter how far I climbed, another slope loomed above, so I called off the hike and soaked in the view instead. What a magnificent landscape. Below me was my tiny car, sometimes hidden by the clouds, and off to the right was the remarkable desert stretching until the detail fuzzed out in a mix of sand and cloud.

It was one of those days you remember your whole life, and I regretted having to go back to my apartment.

Working at Color Tile was a gyp. I made four dollars one day working a 10 hour shift. Don’t get me wrong, the Century Supply paycheck hadn’t spoiled me. No sir, I lived cheap, but now the only bone the owner sported was a nickel for each quart of cove-base adhesive you pushed out the door. And if you gave the customer ‘contractor price,’ then you got three cents.

See, the whole idea was to bleed the salesmen until they became managers. But if the managers were making so much good money, why were they getting replaced so often? Anyway, forty cents an hour wasn’t making it, and nothing was going to change since the big ‘purchase orders’ were handled at the regional office.

Color Tile had the buying and selling power of a Lake Bonneville, but the only water-hole for the workers was the trickle running down into Salt Lake … and both left a brine-pool taste in your mouth.

The regional manager flew in and said ‘sales had fallen’ and the figures told him the clerks ‘no longer had a heart for the job.’ He was right on target. I was bad-mouthing the job and so the most honorable thing to do was quit.

I was mostly there to explore the countryside and now it was a yawn to walk out and see the Wasatch Mountains. Wherever you are, you still have to get up and face yourself, so after three months I packed up and moved to Las Vegas.

Chapter 52) Vegas, LA, and back to Indiana
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