LDS boys should go t BYU. They and their families will be better off, more content knowing that their sons are on the correct path to becoming successful young Mormon men. My own son grew up with close LDS friends in our little town. It was great for him to have LDS buddies for several reasons. They never came over on Sundays. And on those days they did come over, they didn’t drink my beer. One point of contention I had with the LDS boys was their springtime Friday night ritual of meeting down at the stake house and getting armed with 3 or 4 irons, then going out the hayfields and launching the heads off of gophers and baby cottontails. This always seems rather ungodly to me. I was always a shooter or trapper ($.15 per gopher) in my youth. Not the wanton slaughter of little squealing fur balls. It seemed as there was never any remorse, just Nikes that were grass stained and blood stained. Badges of honor that showed you were on the ‘rabbit drives’. Maybe I am slow to change.
I lived and worked in Evanston in the late 80’s and went to Provo for the WAC BBall tourney games in 1988. Wyoming repeated as conference champs by beating UTEP in the final game. It was cold, snowy and we had a difficult time getting there going down thru Provo canyon that first day session for 2 games, then 2 more in the night sessions. We were in the parking lot, having last smokes (yes, at one time it was cool to smoke, and I was cool, albeit stupid) and slamming a few beers before the first session. Our group of 5 was walking, sliding and wind skating on patches of ice across ten acres or so of parking lot with a howling wind at our backs. I was sucking down one last smoke when a spinster looking professor type did an about face and tried to keep up with us shouting at the top of her lungs that ‘this is a non smoking campus’. ‘Sir, BYU is a non smoking campus!’ ‘Sir, sir…..
Like my smoking was hurting anybody but me, at that moment, in a raging March gale. This hen pecking harassment went on for several vehicle rows when ultimately the nagger upended on a patch of ice, and landed hard. Above all the howling wind noise, I heard the howling ‘whoopsy daisy’ remark of one of my friends.
We left her lying there, disheveled and moaning some slight non perceptible utterances. Hat knocked off, skirt and coat a flapping in the breeze exposing her neither region, her sheath of papers being scattered to the wind. It seemed fitting and just not to offer her any assistance. After all it was near tip off time and I had to pee.
Later that day, between the day and night sessions, we looked for some place where we could drink a few and eat a little. In the eighties, no such place to be found in Provo as you can imagine. One of the guys with us was a Elks club member from Evanston, so we went to the Elks club in Provo with visions of cocktails and bar snacks for sure. Got in the club nearly at happy hour as I recall….they had no bartender and were setting up to have a meeting of Elks leaders so the bar would not be open….can you imagine? Can’t get drink in an Elks club!!
I have always hated everything about Provo since that day…and BYU too. Everything that was good about the boys going on a little road trip (the Cowboys winning the WAC Championship), hanging and just doing guy stuff, mature or not, was buzzed killed and the fun tempered just because we were in Provo. Fuck ‘em.
Go Pokes, down a different road!
