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Show I - What a Few Years Will Do Jj A REMINISCENT VIEW OF SALT LAKE, AND A FEW SALT LAKERS ' By BEN H. ATWELL, Business manager for Al Jolson and the New York Winter Gcrden company com-pany in "Robinson Crusoe, Jr." THE sun was sinking, far nway over Salt lake, in a golden ball, and its reflecting rays, fallhijl on the prison tamp that 1 was observing, caused me to lift my gaze. The panorama that unfolded itsclt smashed home full realization of something some-thing that had been creeping into my mind all da the eitv spread before me was not the Salt Lake of years ago. it was just seventeen rears since I had stood 'on that spot the little Idnl l projecting out beyond the Fort Doug-las'paraile Doug-las'paraile ground toward the city. On that occasion I had sought solitude, there to plan ways and means of evading evad-ing the alert guards about the unpretentious unpre-tentious structure where the Kgan court-martial was in progress, anil which 1 had been assigned to ''cover", for the Salt Lake newspaper that then employed me. Now ail thought of solitude soli-tude was out of the question, vand I was one of a throng looking down, at a respectful distance, upon' the prisoners pris-oners of war quartered on the spreading spread-ing shelf of land below. But I saw more than my fellow curiosity cur-iosity seekers, and all things that were new' to me the great university spread out straight ahead, the vast high school to the lelt and the chaste, classic clas-sic dome of the capitol at. the right, with towering skyscrapers breaking the skvlino of the are of vision. Each was quite as new and unfamiliar as the mighty army of "rookies" swarming the wooden cantonments that surround and augment the straggling ancient brown-stone buildings of the Fort Douglas Doug-las I kueW. Fancv a coyote lurking anywhere about there now! And I smiled grimly at the recolleetion of plaintive protests pro-tests that UBed to be set up by Al Reese, Dick Cannon,' Race Whitney, Gene Palmer, Joel Priest, myaelf, or any of the reporters of those days who had the misfortune to be sent by his city editor seeking light from a major or ' captain or somebody at the post concerning some item of military news that had come over the wire at midnight. mid-night. There was a legend in those days that the hills and canyon were full of wolves. Once, when I trudged out on such a mission in the wee small hours of the morning, long after the last car, some coyotes dogged my steps, back at a considerable distance. 1 thought there was fully a thousand, judging by the way they howled. Afterwards, Af-terwards, "when I weighed the subject in a calmer moment, I was convinced that there could not have been more than two, for their joint efforts were as nothing compared with the howl emitted by the post commandant when I pulled him out of bed to propound some silly question. But, anyway, there wTere wolves, and that is the point! Standing at Fort Douglas, anyone who has been absent from Salt Lake for a number of years can realize in a flash why the city does not look the same to him. It is not the same city. The last touch of the primitive has disappeared and Salt Lake stands a great teeming metropolis, with modern hotels, up-to-the-minute newspapers, banks of astounding wealth, alert merchants, mer-chants, manufacturing industries formerly for-merly unheard of and unthought of, and great resideutial districts, like Twelfth East street, that would be a credit to any city, am'where. The only word of regret that springs to the lips of the returned wanderer is conveyed in the warning suggestion to guard against too much sacrifice of the old, the picturesque, ,;and those tilings of tremendous historical value in the rush to make Salt Lake a modern metropolis. me-tropolis. It is gratifying that the traditional tra-ditional local love of the ornato and picturesque in architecture has found expression in the fine new structures that have sprung up on every side, where adobe buildings used to be. It is possibly w-ell to remember that the adobe dwelling, too, has its usefulness. use-fulness. How many residents of Salt Lake, who pass most of their lives in the city, have any knowledge of or appreciation of what a vast asset the city enjoys through its appeal to the tourist? Travel of the latter jort is greater today to-day than it ever has been in the history his-tory of the country, and in the ordinary or-dinary course of events it will long remain re-main at its present high standard. Few tourists care to make a visit to the west without looking over Salt Lake, and few indeed stop over, if only for an hour, without contributing to Salt Lake's growing wealth. doubt that the valye of this is generally gen-erally understood. Tlta whole subject is so closely akin to my own business that it grips me savagely, and 1 could groan whenever T hear of the demolition demoli-tion of one landmark that has an appeal ap-peal to the visitor. I feel willing to wager that from a cold-blooded, mun-dano, mun-dano, commercial standpoint the temple, tem-ple, the tabernacle, tithing house, Beehive, Bee-hive, Lion house and Fagle gate, the old "White house" and their associate attractions have attracted more money to Salt Lake City, through their appeal ap-peal to the tourist, than any manufacturing manufac-turing or commercial institution in tho city has through its productiveness. Only within the hour George D. Py-per Py-per has spokeu glowingly of the ultimate ulti-mate prospect of a new theater to replace re-place the old Salt Lake theater, and thereby lost some of the great esteem I hold for him. All who sincerely believe be-lieve in the slogan, "It pays to advertise," ad-vertise," will instinctively rise in protest pro-test against the thought of such a procedure. pro-cedure. That ancient pile, with its adobe walls, shedding strata of paint that wero spread over it before this generation came into being, its w-on-derful traditions as the outpost of art and culture through decades of the long ago, and its reminiscent continental continen-tal architecture, of a period that, has gone forever, stands unique in the history his-tory of the theater as an institution. Every performer who plays the Salt Lake theater, from star to humblest, chorus girl, writes letters at. the time, and talks forevermore of his or her privilege in having trod the boards hallowed hal-lowed by the footsteps of all the great- est artists that American stage fitera-tnre fitera-tnre boasts. , I The primitive has gone from Salt Lake Ihty; the coyotes that I dreaded as a youngster, and the good fellows that 1 named in connection with them. Poor Knee Whitney, a genius who was not give ntiino to develop, has gone lo his eternal reward, and with him Frank Cusack, Jackson and Love. Dick "' Cannon and Al Reese, who will he remembered re-membered by many an old timer, aro working on Portland newspapers ami more than making good.'' Palmer in a prosperous broker in Salt Lake, aiwi McKenzie is here, too, following lines less precarious that satisfying the -flickle readers of a newspaper. Joel " Priest 's name loomed up large as a sore thumb on a huge package 1 recent-ly recent-ly encountered in a way station, marked to be returned to the "general agent of the Oregon Short Line, Boise, Idaho." As for myself, I am a wan' . derer on the face of the earth, as much ' at home in Loudon or Paris as I would he in my old stamping grounds, and at present 'flitting across America shrilly" shouting the virtues of Al Jolson, the. j "black streak of joy." I One old timer 1 have overlooked, and mention of his name will recall ' many a pleasant hour for many an old timer Eddie Carruthers. He presided i over the box office at the old Gram! I Opera house in the days when Martin' ' i Mulvcy divided his attention between promoting art in that, institution, promoting pro-moting old vintages from war-stricken Rheims and promoting- the interests of the community as a member of the common council. In lilOU Eddie went forth from Salt Lake as treasurer of . the Wilbur-Kirwin Opera companv, which had been "interned" for months' at the Salt 'mlace because of inc'ient smallpox in the organization. AiiS quit my perfectly good position to dasi out as business manager of the organization. organi-zation. Before 1 get back to the New, York Winter p-arden I shall play two theaters that Eddie controls at Janes- j ville, Wis., and Torre Haute, Ind. No one knows how many others in the middle west are on his list, and in addition ad-dition the former Salt Lake treasurer is probably the most extensive manager of open-air "fair-date acts" this side of New Vork City. He has extensive offices in the Garrick theater building, Chicago, and is reputed to be a near- ' millionaire. Thus moves the world along! Is it any wonder, in view of the changes that have come over the young fellows who used to record the history of Salt Lake City in the making, that equally drastic changes have swept over the dear old Garden City of the westi : |