Tracy and I left around 11 and took a quarter mile walk from the Comfort Suites, under the I-80 overpass, and to the Bus 50 stop. The weather was comfortable.
Salt Lake City is clean, beautiful and homogenized, or so it would seem. But even here, diversity reaches out in protest of comformity. Salt Lake City, besides being the Jerusalem of Latter Day Saints, is also a Mecca of punk sub-culture.
Interestingly, just like in NYC, public buses here require exact change, which was $1.25 a person. The best I could do was a $5. Tracy, being a woman, had no money, only a credit card. After a few minutes of fumbling, the bus driver let us on with a promise to pay double on the way back.
Letting us out downtown, the bus driver informed the passengers that due to the convention, Bus 50 is using the route of the night Bus 150. We should not go to the usual Bus 50 return stop, but get back on the bus in the same place that we were just left off. Concerned about getting home, I was the last one off the bus and asked the driver a number of times exactly where the bus stop was, pointing at a bus stop sign across the street and asking, "There?", to which he answered, "Yes, there". He did not sound too sure, so I repeated the question three more times, and got affirmative answers.
Downtown Salt Lake City is immaculately kept, small, clean, free of traffic and pleasantly manageable on foot. Pretty flower gardens, fountains and scupltures sprinkle the downtown with loveliness amid a backdrop of gorgeous snow-capped mountains.
There is a one-price, all-you-can-ride-for-the-day trolley called Trax, starting at the Union Pacific Station. The Union Pacific was the eastern builder of the trans-continental railroad, the greatest engineering feat of the 1800s, which met the western leg 50 miles north of SLC, and transformed the United States into the greatest country in the world. One of the big four owners of the Central Pacific, builder of the western leg was Leland Stanford, Governor of California.
In the heart of downtown is a perfectly maintained, air-conditioned information center, with friendly staff eager to help, lots of brochures and most importantly, clean restrooms and a water fountain.
The place to go is Temple Square. To the Mormons, Salt Lake City is Jerusalem, Temple Square, surrounded by a wall, is the old walled-city, and the Great Mormon Temple is the Beit Hamigdash, the Big House, the Great Temple in Jerusalem.
Twice a year the Mormons have a huge convention. 20,000 people were there from around the world. We got to Temple Square as they were let out for lunch from the Convention Center, seen in the background of the picture. The people were all dressed nice, holding hands, pleasant faces and quietly well-behaved. There were a fair number of people from eastern Asia.
A Taiwanese young woman, with a tag reading "Sister" something asked us if we would like a tour. She was on the fifth month of her 18 month mission. She put us with two other young Sisters, serving their missions. The younger one was 22, had been on her mission longer, was more knowledgeable and the leader. The redhead was 23 and had only been there a couple of months.
All these young women were very sweet and nice, yet something did not seem quite right. Too good to be true perhaps. Gabe said something a few days later, that maybe applied to these women. Gabe was relating native American spirituality and the need for balance, balance of the mind, balance of the heart and balance of the gut, representative of intellect, faith and the physical. When we look at these young people, we see faith, we see physical wellness, but the intellect has been repressed.
Within Temple Square, besides lots of Mormons, there are a few major structures: including the Assembly Hall, the Mormon Tabernacle Choir Hall, the Great Temple and the Information Center. Our tour guides pointed out the 5-pointed stars on the Great Temple, some facing up and some facing down, symbolic of the aspiration to rise to heaven and the reality of earthly needs.
The Assembly Hall, the original Mormon Chapel, is to the left of the South Temple Street entrance. Tracy asked the meaning of the large, prominent Jewish Star above the entrance. Our tour guides did not know the meaning, or if the did, were not saying. They explained the star as decoration. Everything done on Temple Square was done with the utmost intent and meaning. I suppose the Mormons see themselves as the heirs to the tradition of the Chosen People, perhaps as the true Jews.
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At the end of the tour, and I wish I could remember their names, the redhead fruitlessly tempted Tracy's faith, being encouraged by the knowledge of Tracy's sister's conversion to LDS and Tracy's interest in the roll of women. I inquired of my young guide the nature of her religion, her background, her mission and her future, all interesting.
The official name is the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Our guides refered to themselves as Mormons, so I felt fine, PC or not, in doing the same.
They accept the Hebrew Bible and the Christian Bible, plus The Book of Mormon - Another Testament of Jesus Christ, of which I availed myself of a lonely copy sitting abandoned on a coffee table. This copy must be a collectors item, being hard-covered and embossed with the words "Temple Square" in the lower front cover.
The first page of the book is interesting. Here it is.
Moroni is the last prophet, namesake and compiler of the Book of Mormon, which he, and maybe others, wrote, on golden plates. The story, as far as I have made out, is Nehi, around 600 BCE, had a vision of the destruction of Jerusalem, which happened by the Babylonians in 586 BCE. Nehi took his followers across Africa and sailed to South America. After the crucifixation, Jesus came to visit them and gave them the updated faith. Sometime later Moroni buried the golden plates, in New York I guess. More than a thousand years later, in the 1880s, Moroni visited Joseph Smith, and showed him where the plates were buried. Joseph Smith dug the plates up, and eventually, through a divine gift, translated them into the English version of Book of Mormon. Do not know what happened to the plates.
Tracy and I ate in the food court in the mall nearby and then toured The Beehive, Brigham Young's house, which also functioned as the Governor's Palace. Brigham Young lived there with his third wife and about 8 of his kids. Nice tour, free and well-worth the time.
Next door, at The Lion's House, lived the rest of his 19 wives and 56 children that were still living.
We walked back to the bus stop, and many nice Mormon families, streamed along South Temple Street in the same direction. We passed by a spot where some undesirables sat smoking under an overhang. One of them, heckled the nice people, and in a loud, clear, intelligent voice, shouted, "Your prophet is false. Moroni, baloney. Maroni, baloney."
We waited under the sign where the bus driver had told us. The bus only comes once an hour. I was a little suspicious because the sign was for bus 80 and 89 and not 150.
The bus came about 20 minutes late. It did not stop. Bummer. Rather than wait an hour, we decided to walk and see how far we got. The walk was straight down North Temple Street.
At one point we crossed the Jordan River, After their thousand mile journey, the Mormons probably saw themselves as the new Israelites, and named the river upon crossing into their land of promise. This river is about the same size as its namesake.
Took a little over an hour to get back. Nice to walk. Temperature started getting cold.
About a dozen of the group, our first gathering, went back downtown to a salad and meat (for those non-vegetarians) buffet. The waiter came around and sliced meat off skewers. Kind of gruesome. Fun place, good food, and a chance to meet some of the people.
Had a meeting back at the hotel about the plans. Stragglers came by our room afterwards to get caught up. The plan was to get up at 5:30 am, be downstairs with our bags at 6, eat breakfast, load the bus and be on the road by 6:30.