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Show i A-14 The Park Record WedThurgFrl, June 30-July 2, 2004 SUNDAY IN THE PARK By Ten Orr When does it fit, just right? I GET THE VALUE OF YOUR HOME ONLINE. Li Simple, Discreet, No obligation. 435-901-0300 Mike Mazzone Mi f? li n SiKl ilil? .10 :' In -? .i Mi I II 3 t:( iiij "7 1 I ilu 11 i in im i W ifi t m n two ' nn r rtoj it i ii 'tciiini I-- r m 0 ' i' iiii ' flits 8 i , a: tin lit "tn 'i I in 4 i iluiiil . miri v, 0' 11 '' llllflt' I'!); NOW SHOWING I N A NEIGHBORHOOD NEAR YOU t f 13 "jtK frf' M.'' 6j S-Wft t I3S-JS l- ,iWR WJ-wfay p(f t 5 3500 W. White Pine Une - $5,650,000 4 ' -r-f ?574 Fairwiy Vilkge Dr. - $4.85,000 I """ii hi 'I""" ii mbmhh ItM-m miiir ir iImmiT 11 .jrl" j j 2408 Iron Mountain Dr - $1,750,000 138a Meadow Loop 3 - $285,000 ' aAca 1 I'-- vr-i.f j 3478 Silver Cloud Dr-$849,000 j i7q LWop Court -Racquet Oub - $359,000 Mi CD 6g Cove at Eagle Mountain - $635,000 "Mtltiti 1 t iMV -I . I'. i n iiis?iav5isu! REAL ESTATE T Tonestlv. I can iust make myself crazy over the stu- JTlpidest things. Take the sliding screen door in my dining room There is a big hole there, compliments of a neighborhood dog that wanted into my kitchen. There had been a little rip, and early one morning he tried to crash through. But he was the wrong shape. I have told myself fof weeks now I would go to the recycling center and see if one of the many doors they have would fit Myself has not yet responded. Then there is the matter of the convertible. I was fairly fair-ly certain I would reach this stage in life and be driving a convertible. I grew up in California where such cars could be driven year round. I could turn in my trusty, not yet rusty, Subaru for a convertible any day of the week. It wouldn't be practical or good fit year round, but I could So this time of year, I see people in topless cars, and my envy factor crosses over the meter to the jealous side. This was the depth of my inner dialogue a few weeks ago when I received an e-mail from Jay, a colleague in New York City about the tragic death of his business partner (and my business buddy) Ted's daughter. She'd been hit by a car in front of her own house in the middle of the day. An 1 1-year-old girl Gone. I sat in front of my computer frozen for I don't know how long. Then I responded, asked how Ted and his wife, Sophia and their older daughter, MJ were doing, what did they need, when were the services? Jay said they were holding up as well as could be expected, the services were the next day and they were receiving, as you might expect from people who are beloved in both the entertainment and nonprofit worlds, a great outpouring out-pouring of love and support. I told myself I would make contact after the emotional week was out But I didnt One week became two. I rationalized we were only business buddies. In three years we had seen each other three times and while our bantering, spirited, e-mail exchange was always one of the highlights of any day it occurred, it wasnt like we were old friends. I told myself I would write a meaningful note over the weekend. The next weekend. And I started. But what do you say to a parent who has endured such a loss? Trite, stupid, overused over-used Hallmarky phrases kept appearing on my page. I thought about sending a small tree that could be planted in Hallie's memory. I thought about a piece of art from Park City. She had loved her trip here - taking her first sleigh ride, visiting the set of "Everwood," playing in the snow. That was it. I would look for a print, maybe in August, at the Art Festival. That would be the fit Then Jay called me on the pretense of business and I asked him how Ted was. Jay said very carefully, "Are you asking my advice on what you should do?" Oh those New Yorkers, so bold. "Um, yeah, sure," I said uncomfortably. uncom-fortably. "Pick up the phone right now. He considers you a close friend. He's been waiting to hear from you." I hung up the phone, stunned and rather defensive. A close friend? Sure, we shared stuff about our work and families, and yes, I had met his family, his witty wife and his beautiful, talented, daughters and yes, he had met my beautiful, talented daughter and followed the saga of a painful funding process I'd been mired in for months. I knew of the reality series he was filming and pitching to, the network and we shared a mutual business acquaintance acquain-tance who drove us crazy and yes, we both loved the theater the-ater and books and liberal causes and shared new thoughts as often as we could But a friend? I am so protective pro-tective of that word of that responsibility. The relationship relation-ship may not have passed the test of time, but I had to admit we shared a special camaraderie. I was parsing words now. I picked up the phone. In my life, it ranks as one of the top 10 most difficult calls I have made. In true Ted form, he told me he knew how difficult such a call must be to make. Then he told me about Halliels last moments. Of him cradling her and them talking, of her mother singing to her in the ambulance. ambu-lance. The service where folk legend Odetta sang along with Peter Yarrow and of all the tributes to his daughter. But then we came home, he said and Hallie wasnt there. She was still dead I told him I couldn't imagine the pain. It is the worst thing you can imagine, he said, and then, itt so much worse than that Yes, he assured me, the family fam-ily was in grief counseling. He had spoken several times to the woman who hit Hallie. There were no skid marks from her car because Hallie stepped out between two parked SUVs. The woman wasnt drunk or speeding or talking on . a cell phone. There will be no charges filed Her life forever marked as before and after The Accident. Ted is trying to help her though that. Ted talked about the foundation he was starting to help feed children with AIDS in Africa, something We have this illusion as parents, he said, that it is our ultimate job to keep our children safe and that we are somehow capable of that And we try. Safe from drugs, from stranger danger, from falling off the monkey bars, from mean kids and bad influences. influ-ences. But we really can't keep them safe. " Hallie had worked on. He is getting ready to send me journals Hallie wrote, in her funny, bright, spirited way. A project he hopes to launch called, Love, Hallie. He was a man filled with grief and love and a desire to make some sense out of the senseless. And he just wanted to talk. We have this illusion as parents, he said, that it is our ultimate job to keep our children safe and that we are somehow capable of that. And we try. Safe from drugs, from stranger danger, from falling off the monkey bars, from mean kids and bad influences. But we really cant keep them safe. My religion tells me Hallie is now in a better place. But I cant go there. How can she be in a better place than here... with her dog and her friends and her sister and her mother and me, who love her so much? After nearly an hour, we hung up. I sat thinking about a sermon Mark Heiss, former pastor of the Park City Community Church, gave more than a dozen years ago. He talked about the God-shaped hole. How we can try to fill it with a new couch or a new car or an affair or a pair of shoes but it never works. Only God fits in the God-shaped hole. The screen door remains ripped. And there is no convertible con-vertible in the driveway. But connecting, really connecting with someone despite a preconceived notion about what a friendship is, can be a perfect fit The shape of friendship isnt something you can draw. It is about connecting when it isnt easy or measured by witty repartee. Being a friend . is sometimes just about listening and loving. Picking up a phone can start out feeling like barbells and end up like feathers, any day, even Sunday in the Park. . . mmmmm CORE SAMPLES Diggin' it! She'd been off-road and if she wasnt exactly flaunting flaunt-ing it, well, she wasnt exactly hiding it either. She kept her mud flaps trimmed-back just enough so as to allow for continuous application along the doors and the rear quarter-panels and she also had this way of "gunning it" as she approached a mud-hole so the front-end would-nt would-nt feel left out. 1 She's a mudslinger and as they say over Heber way, she'd been out "diggin'." There was rain in the forecast and that's a good thing for her kind as long as it didnt wash off any of that beautiful hard-bake she had so painstakingly nurtured. "Whatever spins your wheels" is another oft-turned phrase in these parts. With only moderate disdain she had taken over the pilots seat the first time the "he" slowed for what was obviously the most glorious quagmire she had seen since the snow morphed into water and began to have its way with clay. He was OK with that The bruises would go away - the physical ones, anyway. From the relative safety of the passenger seat it was fairly obvious that most all the "diggers" "dig-gers" on the Lake Creek-Center Creek loop that day were of the female persuasion. And woe was any "he" who might have taken it upon himself to slip-and-slide upon the unpaved ridge- lines with the notion that the uphill-downhill, right-of-way was gender neutral. It was, as they say, every man for himself. It's not that there is a whole new ballgame out there -- the rules of the off-road have long tended toward the matriarchal. The western migration probably wouldnt have made it past Peters Rock-N-Rye saloon up in Evanston had the matter been left up to the gentry. Actually, she seldom really gets off the road IVs just that the roads she travels are off-roads, like in "off-white." "off-white." She the kind that sticks to "jeep trails," and her guns for that matter. And then there her stack of road tunes and her cooler cool-er of "road cokes" with "sammich" fixinls and a tub of "ready-made-'ritas" stuffed in there somewhere. It almost unfathomable that such a piece-of-work doesnt chew and spit or puff something while she bounces and careens at elevation, but if there one thing that the same about mountain women drivers, it that they're all cut from different cloth. This particular model can flat-out go into a zone when Hank or Merle or Miles or Coltrane are comin' out of her speakers. After a few miles of such ambiance she has been kntwn to forget mat there is another carbon-based being in the next seat and when her peripheral vision triggers trig-gers a surprised synapse into alarm mode, it can get real loud in a real short spell. The last time he had the cajones to go along on one of her "outings," he found a way to misplace the entire By Jay Meehan With only moderate disdain she had taken over the pilot's seat the first time the "he" slowed for what was obviously obvi-ously the most glorious quagmire she had seen since the snow morphed into water and began to have its way with clay. " Uinta Mountain range - the whole thing. The two of them were perched atop the world with a 360-degree view of the Intermountain West, when, with a shrug and upraised hands and a "go figure" expression, he tried to talk his way out of it. "They were right here a minute ago. Honest!" He couldnt have lost one of the other visual grandeurs. Not Mount Nebo or Timpanogos or the American Fork Twins. No, they were all right where they were supposed to be. He remembers the search as if it were yesterday. "They've got to be around here somewhere. How far could they have gone? Where is there for a 150-mile-long, 13,000-foot high, mountain range to hide?" Just one glance in her direction told him that she had a spot in mind His blood curdled. With a quick jerk of her thumb and a look that said she thought she had seen it all, she slowly turned her body and his bearings more toward the north. And, low and behold, there they were: huge glacial basins receding into deep canyons lost in the jumble jum-ble of Englemann spruce, subalpine and Douglas fir and, finally, lodgepole and ponderosa pine. Relief spread over him like a bark-beetle infestation with a pitu- mmmmm itary problem. He was off the hook - as were the lynx, bear, cougars, owls, eagles, bighorns, moose, elk and native cutthroat trout that called the Uintas home. It a primeval jungle out there. This time around she caught him keeping the high-wilderness high-wilderness area in his visual cross hairs as soon as they broke over the final ridge. There would be no repeat of his last performance although it was comfortably nestled within their running-gag folklore and could be called upon during any moment when ridicule was in short supply. sup-ply. There comes a time each summer when the combination combina-tion of heat and altitude obliterates even the smallest snow patch up on the loop and from then on rain becomes the sole source of water - a mandatory ingredient ingredi-ent in the making of mud. Not that it would be beyond her to pack and mix her own. You do recall the cooler? There are other options from the top of the loop, however, how-ever, but heading down the Strawberry or Current Creek ; or the West Fork of the Duchesne just isnt the same. Those routes are much more about eco-blissing than "diggm'." They are concerned with the interior and exterior exte-rior limits of your transfer case, performing "crux" moves around beaver ponds, and bonding with woodpeckers. Not that the heroine of our tale would be outside her element in those climes, but, as mentioned previous, she a digger and crawling up-and-over aint her gig. Getting up a little speed and storming the bog with mud-a-flyin' is what turns her crank - not that she would ever flaunt it 1 M i im 1 |