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Show Page A6 - fffrc l3Itmgg-(3lttftgpgttftg- -- Thursday, March 3, 2005 nt Idle Thoughts from Mt. Waas Many Trails by Adrien F. Taylor ECHOES Council would like to undertake a visitor survey on the subject, but our first obligation at the newspaper is to the local folks. So, okay. We could have asked simpler and more direct questions, and we will try to do so in the future. I am constantly amazed at the huge pool of talent available here in the Moab area, people willing to volunteeer their time and expertise for such work as this polling. A group of people, including former Times staffer Franklin Seal (now with the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance) and me, worked on the questions in this first poll. poll. This week, with the help of a group of interested volunteers, weve conducted our first scientific poll. will qualify that by saying that this is our first foray into new waters. Some things about I it s? role. Maybe the Travel thats not the newspapers We're stepping out of the old mold around this place in more ways than the spiffy new website www.moabtimes.com. Among other things there you will find a weekly informal poll. That's a useful thing, and we're going to keep it up and let you know what people have to say. But its not a real worked great, and others need some fine tuning. Please bear with us. What we are trying to do is learn what people think, not change what people think. Maybe need to put that in bold face capital letters: WHAT by Ollie Harris See results of the first Times-Independe- nt poll on page B7 I Craig Hibberd has pointed out several flaws in preparation of the questions. In retrospect, agree with him, but dont think it would change results much to revise the questions and redo the poll. You will find the results across the way on page A7. am fully aware that some people will not be happy with the results they read. Insofar as they reflect the questions asked, believe the results are valid. And especially stand by the method with which the poll was conducted. We would like to do more of this in the future, and welcome suggestions of relevant topics on which to take a poll. And, anybody who would like a copy of the exact wording of the questions is welcome to one. Just stop in and ask. Or we can email them. WE ARE TRYING TO DO IS LEARN WHAT PEOPLETHINK, NOT CHANGE WHAT PEOPLE THINK. This first poll included four basic questions on what local residents think about aspects of tourism and motor sports. Therein lay the first pitfall. We are learning. I 1 I We have learned that it may not be a useful thing to ask locals what they think visitors think or feel. It is more useful to ask them what they think or feel. And in considering this poll, it seems to me that we, as a community of residents, are most interested in our own quality of life, so it makes little sense to poll visitors about what they think about tourism and motor sports. At least I The way it . . . Sam Remembers by Sam Taylor got in free, a deal between Mrs. Clark and my Dad. Our fee entry into the Ides was in exchange for advertising. spent countless hours there, in bike the little alley between the theparking my think always behaved. store. ater and the drug of Mrs. The thought having Clark come down the aisle with her flashlight during a show threatening dire consequences if offenders didn't shut up, kept us all pretty good. also worked at the Ides for a year as janitor, and found Mrs. Clark to be a strict employer, but watched the last hour of Academy Awards Sunday and enjoyed it very much. It was made more interesting since Adrien and had seen two d films. Ray and of the he Aviator." also enjoy watching Clint Eastwood accept two Oscars. always like to watch Clint, even if have seen the film before. Now, his film, "Million Dollar Baby" is set to play at Slickrock Cinemas. It was the big winner Sunday, and we plan to see it later in the week. Even though see only a handful of movies on the big screen in a year, have always enjoyed going to the picture show. My first memory of attending a moving picture was in the 1 930s, screened at Woodman Hall (later the Grand County Ball Room, later the Arches Ballroom and now Center Street Square). It was a silent film. The first talkie saw was in the Ides Theatre on Main Street. According to Grand Memories, the first movie in Woodman Hall was shown in 1912, by theater pioneers Robert Clark and his wife, Elberta. Later the two showed the first talking picture, featuring Al Jolson in Sonny Boy." Following the death of her husband, Mrs. Clark carried on the theater business, building the first modern theater building in town. She, with the assistance of her daughter, Neva Kirk and granddaughters Dorothy and Janice Kirk operated the new Ides Theater until the late 1 960s when she sold it to Max Day who renamed it the Holiday Theater. It was located where the Wells Fargo parking lot is now located. was told the Ides was named after the Ides of March, when it first opened. never missed a movie when was growing up. particularly never missed a continuously running matinee on Saturday afternoons. One primary reason never missed a show was that I I I I I I fair. I My duties included sweeping up the popcorn and candy wrappers, vacuuming the carpets, mopping and cleaning the restrooms and tending the heating and air conditioning units located in the basement. The furnace was coalburning. had to open the furnace door and lift out the clinker with a set of tongs, and then fill the stoker with coal. The air conditioner was a huge (probably home-madcollection of which and nozzles pipes sprayed water over a in of a big fan. The front screen mounted large I I e) cooling and heating were carried throughout the Ides via a spooky tunnel beneath the floor. The units kept the theater warm in the winter and chilling cool in the summer. It took several hours each day to do the job, and was not encouraged to invite any of my friends to visit with me during the cleaning. If we were beginning a new movie, had to carry the big aluminum cans from in front of the theater and put them near where the projectionist could find them. Moab Garage Company delivered them several times a week and picked up the old movies to ship to the next town. held a lot of jobs during my growing up years. Being the janitor at the Ides Theater was probably the most glamorous. I I I I I I I I ije 8 ISSN (UPS) 6309-200Entered as Second class Matter at the Post Office at Moab, Utah under the Act of March 3, 1 897. Second class postage paid at Moab, Utah 84532. Official City and County Newspaper. 1538-183- 0) Published each Thursday at: 35 East Center Street, Moab, Grand County, Utah 84532 435-259-75- Member P.O. Box 129, Moab, UT Times-Independe- or FAX 84532 435-259-77- an(j PRESS ASSOCIATION Samuel J. and Adrien F. Taylor, Publishers Adrien F. Taylor, Editor Sadie Warner, Assistant Editor Tom Taylor Zane Taylor Lorinda Applegate Carrie Switzer Lisa Church Jeff Richards Marjorie Miller V Circulation Manager, T--l Maps Press, Production Manage Advertising Salesr Staff Writer Contributing Writer Contributing Writer Contributing Writer wrap-aroun- d, rifle. At that site the canyons are several hundred feet deep with sheer walls on all sides. You can fire a rifle up Butts Canyon, down Arch Canyon, or toward the far talus slope across Arch Canyon. The echo of a single shot rolls up and down the canyons for several seconds, creating thier own echoes, piling layer upon layer of rumbling sound until the whole thing dies out and its time to torch off another round. Another great spot for winter echoes is near the Goosenecks of the San Juan Fiver. Few people are in the area during winter and Ive never cracked a cap when people I didnt know were there. The deep, serpentine canyon with the river more than a thousand feet below makes great echoes. The first time I was there there in 1956 with Tim Martin. All we had was a .22 rifle and it was summer and hot. The echo was small but full of promise. Not long ago I was out in Comb Wash upstream from the crossing near Bluff. It was early morning and cold. As the road goes up the wash it swings farther and farther away from the Comb. We turned around about where the road turns toward Cedar Mesa. I fired a couple of rounds from my .40 caliber pistol. It took several seconds for the echo to return from the Comb. A couple ofweeks ago we were poking around along the Johns Canyon road beneath the towering ramparts of Cedar Mesa. Before we headed back we stopped and fired the pistol, trying to count the number of times the report bounced came back to us from the high, curving wall. It was all one big, continuous roar to me but Steve Lovell insisted that he could count five distinct pops of the pistol in the echo. Maybe this persistent ringing in my ears is simply a continuing echo of all that shooting. High Country News Writers on the Range The Far East yearns for the Wild West . by Josh Garrett-Davi- s When my friend Kevin passed through y road trip a few South Dakota on a I did the decent back, thing as a host and years took him to see Mount Rushmore. Why pass by the ninth or tenth wonder of the world and not at least stop by? Still, it's one of those things I can only bring myself to visit when a guest is involved; I'll bet the people of Pisa avoid their cockeyed tower like the plague. Since the vast majority of Americans have no idea even what state holds the huge busts of Washington, Jefferson, and Lincoln - or even who that fourth guy up there is, anyway - it's a patriotic duty to set the record straight. (Teddy Roosevelt is the one everyone forgets.) Kevin has been living in Tokyo, Japan, for three of the four years since that trip, and I finally visited him this winter. I followed eagerly to the sites around Tokyo he chose, but made one request: that we visit Imaichi, sister city of Rapid City, S.D. Imaichi is home to the replica of Mount Rushmore, and to the Western Village theme park. As we surfed the park's website, Kevin and p I prepared ourselves to mock this We our honed "Howdy, pardner" as spectacle. Kevin sounded out the phonetic katakana characters for Restaurant Chuck Wagon and Cowpie Cafe, which turned out to be the Cowboy Cafe. We figured Western Village would epitomize Japans awkward karaoke imitations of American pop culture, like the Japanese heavy metal band that calls itself "Loudness." But as we carried our Confederate-dollar-bi- ll e tickets through the gate, my chuckle faded. After downtown Tokyo, which is like Times Square to the nth power, Western Village was disappointingly modest and disappointingly familiar. It was like driving across hundreds of miles of farmland in South Dakota reading signs for the alluring, enchanting, s Wall Drug, as mentioned in Time, and The Wall Street Journal only to arrive at, cross-countr- one-third-sc- over-the-to- well, Wall Drug. NATIONAL NEWSPAPER ASSOCIATION UTAH Echoes can be purely recreational, too. When we were boys my friends and I used to go a short distance up the river from Moab to a place where the canyon wall on the other side of the river curved in such a way as to focus the echo and throw it back at us. Thats the place where Tim Martin and I took one of Moabs loveliest girls and his old .45-7- 0 rifle. We were firing it just to hear the magnificent, clapping roar of the echo. Thats where she fired the rifle, melodramatically fell to her seat and dropped the rifle in the sand. Tim and I were more interested in rifles than girls at that time and in our ignorance rescued the rifle instead of the girl. It was one of the best places Ive known for making a great echoes. Winter is the best time for echoes. The frigid air seems to conduct sound better that the heated air of summer. One winter morning in the 1960s Dale Slade, Steve Lovell and I were out to Indian Peak, near the Nevada border west of Cedar City. A single loud whoop produced fourteen distinct echoes. Ive never heard that many answers to my voice since. The best echoes are produced by firing large caliber rifles in the proximity of high cliffs or deep canyons. Some of the greatest echoes you will ever hear are at the confluence of Texas, Arch and Butts canyons. It is difficult to access now. The road is much deteriorated. We went there once for the purpose of making echoes. There was a young couple from out of state world-famou- address: editormoabtimes.com Postmaster: Send changes of address to: The echo. fort-styl- imes-(3lttiepenb- mt ail bat-lik- camped there. I walked over and introduced myself I apologized for the intrusion and told them that we wouldnt be long. I also told them not to be alarmed when we began firing the I I I I e add a quality to my sense of where I am and what is around me. Sooner or later, in most any canyon or in the proximity of any bluff, I have to give a yelp or a whoop and carefully listen to the echo. It may come quickly and sharply or there may be a wait of several seconds for it to return weakly from afar. It may be muted by vegetation. It is always enhanced by water. Sometimes there is no perceptible I I highly-favore- It is contradictory for one such as I, who treasures silence, to seek after echoes. Echoes Just an hour and a half north of Tokyo, Imaichi appeared worlds away: quiet, subtle and middle class. The theme park itself was a bit shabby; or as Kevin put it, returning from the restroom with a crinkled nose, "Despite their claim to being a Western Village, they don't really have Western toilets." . . Western Village is a destination in an area without many destinations. It's a good place to take the kids over the New Year holiday. They'll see Japanese actors portray a shootout scene (using a bit more kicking than American actors, Chuck Norris excepted). They can see a talking John Wayne robot and even a real gaijin foreigner sauntering around in a Wyatt Earp getup. And across a creek dubbed the "Rio buildGrande," there's a Mexican mission-styl- e ing and some shrubs pruned into the shape of a mariachi band. As much as I had anticipated ridiculing the park for all the things it got wrong, I had to shrug and accept these folks' amusement. We laughed at the Model T full of human-size- d teddy bears, but the laughter felt forced. Sure, it's funny to see a robot John Wayne talking in Japanese, but not as funny as it sounds like it would be. And then there was Mount Rushmore, looming four or five stories high and facing away from the rest of Western Village. Made of fiberglass, it was more weathered and darkened than its granite ancestor in South Dakota. Ind explicably, a dozen fiberglass Dalmations, German Shepards and Collies sat around the base of the "mountain." The Black Hills and western South Dakota kre covered with attractions every bit as kitschy and bizarre as Western Village. We've got Reptile Gardens, Bear Country U.S.A., 1880 Town and, of course, Wall Drug. These 1950s-er- a theme parks, in their various states of disrepair, entertain those of us from the Imaichis of the United States who are not rich enough or brave enough to see the metropolises of other continents. But the real mountain, faced or defaced by Gutzon Borglum, eclipses any karaoke version here or in the Land of the Rising Sun. An old man on the train back to Tokyo bought us beers just for being American; maybe he was on to something. He held our hands warmly but only knew enough English to say, life-size- "I love American." I guess imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. Josh Garrett-Davi- s is a contributor to Writers on the Range, a service of High Country News (hcn.org). He is a South Dakotan temporarily displaced to Brooklyn, New York. Letters Policy The does not necessarily endorse the opinions published in letters to the editor and guest editorials. The T--l welcomes opinions from Its readers concerning any subject pertinent to Southeastern Utah. Letters should be to the point and must include the writers name, address and telephone number. Letters may not be used to replace advertisements, or to list and toank sponsors or participants to a particular event Letters to the edtorwil be not be accepted from any candktete who has filed tor political office or from anyone writing in support of a filed candidate. Anything unsigned, of a Nbelous nature, or containing defamatory statements win not be considered for publication. AJ letters must be typed or legibly written, and be 400 words or less. Letters are subject to editing. Mail to Tetter to the Editor, P.O. Bgk 1 29, Moab, Utah, 84532. Deadline Is Monday, to editorOmoabtimes.com or submitted on the website: www.moabtfmes.com. The 5 p.m. Letters may also be sent via may not accept letters from persons who write more frequently than once every four weeks. Changes to letters to the editor after submission will be accepted only in the most extreme circumstances. nt Jeannine Wait Dorothy Anderson Jose Santana, Jed Taylor Ron Drake Ron Georg Oliver Harris A.J. Long Contributing Writer Mail Room Supervisor Backshop Castle Valley Columnist Columnist Columnist Distribution J V |