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Show Monti Mnwngtr, Thursday, Novombor 22, 1984 Pag 7 Manti flood damage repairs bogged down byPatMellor Repairs to flood damage done by the high water of the spring and early summerof 1984 appear to have stalled out in Manti City, and residents are evidencing mounting concern, particularly along the Manti flood channel, that this years restoration and repair will become a case of too little, too late in the spring of 1985. Jack Steck, whose mothers property lies on the flood channel between First and Second West, says the flood channel in that area used to run several feet to the south of its present banks which were widened first by dredging crews and then by the high water itself which caused tons of earth to fall from the banks into the channel and wash away. Mr. Steck can point out property line markers on the opposite bank that formerly delineated the north bank of the channel. It needs to be put back, and in some places more than 18 feet need to be filled in on this side. Another year will wipe out that much more if the channel is allowed to curve at this angle through here again." Loose rocks and boulders throughout the bottom and sides of the channel appear to be lying in wait for the water of Spring, 1985 to move 2 Vi 3 2 2 2 by Erma Olsen Happy Thanksgiving to everyone. The November monthly dinner will be held on Wednesday, Nov. 28 at 6 p.m. at the Senior Citizen Center. The politicians who have been elected can stop praying. Now the rest of us can start praying. It is easy for some people to keep their word nobody wants it. Pecan Tarts cups butter, no substitutes please 1 pkg. (8 oz.) cream cheese 1 Vt in place before next spring. The council did approve at its last meeting a proposal that the family of Carl Bown be permitted to contract repairs on the waterline servicing their homes, which was washed out where it crossed the flood channel last spring. City Recorder Bill Mickelson said the City has not dampened its efforts to obtain the necessary funding for all the necessary flood control work prior to next spring: items of mitigation work and Emergency Management Agency approved items will be submitted to the States Disaster Relief Board for The State generally assistance. wants funding participation on non-Feder- the project, however, Mickelson noted, and were not sure whether that will be the case with this request from Manti. If it is, our flood mitigation effort will be seriously hampered. Theres just, not much money left on the local level for this sort of thing; we just got last year's disaster paid off. 50-5- 0 City personnel speculate that the may be holding off on dredging problems until they decide whether to invest in a track hoe of a size capable of handling the large rock and gravel, which would cost the city between Council cups flour TB butter, melted eggs, beaten cups brown sugar, well packed tsp. vanilla V tsp. salt 1 Vi cups chopped pecans Manti Senior Citizens them downstream, a resident of 500 South observed glumly. The flood channel at about 260 East 500 South even contains some sort of concrete headwall or divider which has washed out and moved downstream from some unknown source. Although individual members of the City Council have recommended priority repairs which have included dredging of the debris basin, channel clearing, repair of an ominous curve near the property of Jeannie Davis, and repair of the Canyon Road waterline, none of the problems has been tackled at all, to date. Mix thoroughly butter, cream cheese and flour. Form into 40 balls. Press each bail into tiny nut cups or muffin tins. In mixing bowl combine butter, eggs brown sugar, vanilla, salt and chopped pecans. Spoon pecan mixture into shells, filling three-fourtfull. Bake at 350 for 30 minutes. Menus for the coming week: Frl. Nov. 23: Holiday! Mon. Nov. 26: Split Pea SoupHam, carrot & raisin salad, cheese stick, fruit crisp, bread, butter, milkjuice. Tuea. Nov. 27: Meatloaf, mushroom gravy, steamed rice, glazed carrots, jello parfait wfruit, bread, butter, milkjuice. Wed. Nov. 28: Pork chops, whipped potatoes, gravy, peas, fruit cup, gingerbread wtopping, bread, butter, milkjuice. Thun. Nov. 29: Hamburger patty wonion, whipped potatoes, gravy, sliced beets, pears, oatmeal cake, bread, butter, milkjuice. Although more than $200,000 worth of work has been approved by the Federal Emergency Management Agency for repairs, to date the City has received only about $27,000 in cash toward the work, which city fathers say is a drop in the bucket in view of what is needed. Of particular concern to the council has been the repair of bridges and culverts currently torn up on primary city streets. A box bridge installed on 500 West last year which withstood the high water cost about $10,200, and the council points out that was a relatively uncomplicated installation. Several weeks ago, the Council agreed to call for bids on the repair of two streets on the west side, including the installation of box bridges, but to date no activity has taken place. ymASAFeW! Your pregnancy should be a safe and happy journey. Call your March of Dimes chapter for a free booklet about good prenatal care. dL b support... March of Dimes guess everybody is waiting for somebody else to take the bull by the horns," a resident along the flood channel opined. "They saw so much stuff washed out in this channel this year, 1 guess they're afraid to put anything back in. But we stand to lose at least one house, if repairs aren't engineered properly and put I I BIRTH DEFECTS FOUNDATION I Is there life behind the Wasatch front? Correction: A typographical error In last weeks Installment resulted In a change In meaning. The 4th paragraph, 8th line of the story should read . . . This Is the locution usually reserved for . . . in numbers. The Welsh came a few years later to dig coal, which the Ute, The Tabinaw, called Heap-Burn. Dan Jones, Welsh prophet, preceded the main contingent of Welsh by 3 years, and he became Manti's first mayor with incorporation in 1851. A few some Swedes, and a Norwegian or two came somewhat later by individuals and families. For a time Danish was as prominent among the people as English, and there was some cultural friction. The Danes were considered by the Anglos to be more plodding and dumber. Manti's South Ward became predominantly Danish. Such abrasions lasted for about 20 years, but after that things improved socially. While the older folks jabbed at one another, the younger ones did the loving, and interlingual strife and bias was wiped out through intermarriages. The Danes thus became smarter and the Anglos more plodding. The Welsh mixed everybody up. As usual. Brother Brigham also had something to say in the matter, and he advised that everybody forget where they came from and speak Swiss-German- (This article is continued from last weeks paper.) The Mormon pioneer was mostly monogamous, contrary to popular belief. Only 10 to 15 of the men were polygamous, a situation to which their doctrine and an overabundance of women contributed. The white man knew who he was in 1849 in the Sanpete Valley. He understood his problems, and few of them had heart attacks. He had no comforts, but neither was he confused. According to his bad spelling, the and deceases He was susceptible to dises. yaller jaunders," inflammation of the bowls," bad lungs, "canker," and at least one of them perished from bad health. Many children were lost in infancy, and it was not at all uncommon to lose a woman in childbirth. Those who got beyond the common perils of the day, however, were apt to live to ripe old ages. Apparently, when left alone by medical science and art, the human being experiences survival of the fittest as well as the animals beneath him. A significant number, however, died with Indian arrows in them, and of course they had experience with lead bullets, settler died of courtesy of trading posts. If somebody broke a leg, he lived with it one way or another. One of the Danes in Manti complained in the 1860s that life was becoming presumptuous when a doctor sent down to the Sanpete forts by Brother Brigham to tend their ills also opened a drug store. He feared a loss of character among the saints would follow such luxuries, encouraging a lack of faith in divine heajing. Some pioneers were kind and others were cruel. Most were somewhere In between. They suffered from one another almost as often as they did from disease, accident, and combat. There were the generous and there were the greedy. Some were short in personality and some were attractive. Gallantry and the Golden Rule survived lust and avarice. The art of survival was a game they all played well, and they played it to the hilt. All of the earliest settlers in Sanpete were of descent, both American Anglo-Saxo- n and English. In 1853, the Danes arrived s, ;HX. . D.&R.G. people thought it over and decided that 30,000 people inf Sanpete and Sevier were not so important after all, and like the, Sanpete Valley Railroad they left their rails to hang from washouts and to grow weeds between the ties. But there are still sheep and cattle around, and there are turkeys by the galore. So as of 1983 Sanpete discovered again, and the only difference between now and 1883 is that the iron horse has become extinct, instead of on the rise, and the historic freight wagon and the drover have been replaced by the diesel truck. They learned their geography the hard way, and it was not an academic test to them. If one thinks like the early settler did, he is soon impressed by the strategic necessity e of keeping a open in the Salt Creek bottleneck in and out of Sanpete. If one is thinking and looking at the land defensively ( as all early travellers did), the need is obvious to erect a guard post or two at both ends of Salt Creek, in Nephi Canyon.' The Nephi fort was nothing but English. Because established in 1851, and in 1859 everybody now speaks a kind of another was settled near the English in Sanpete, all that is left of canyons head, at both Moroni and Scandinavian and Welsh culture Fountain Green. Nor was the today are surnames, some droll gateway from the Sevier Valley left stories, a certain amount of Danish unattended long, for Gunnison was nostalgia and some occasional also settled in 1859. folk terms that survived Despite such careful attention to intermarriage and the advice of still Brother Brigham. A setting hen, for strategic geography, there were of between miles trail 10 unguarded instance, may be called a skrnk, and ' there is a cut through a hill in Nephi and Uinta Springs (Fountain in But 1849 nobody thought Ephraim Canyon named Kanore Green). Toms Dugway. Tom was a grouch, about safety as meaning absolute and in banish the verb Imnne means security. What God would protect, not to growl, to grouse, to grumble. If He would protect. What He did to ask useless was divinely provide fire to be wants a doused, somebody it is not impossible that a person for. from Sanpete ask that it be slukkt. Manti muddled its way through ' Domestic life was complicated for Walkers little war during the 1850s, Black war and drums beat against of the male adults in about 15 Manti after 1882 when federal Hawk (who attended Jesse Foxs marshals sneaked in to enforce the school in Manti) in the 1860s. In the Edmunds Act. Whenever a man was 1870s the Indians became peacearrested for having a superfluity of able, and that was the era for the ; wives on his premises, the Manti growth of the livestock industry. The Home Sentinel reported that he was stockmen from near and far began . usual causes. wars with each other for dominion arrested for u.c. the also It domain. was over public Plural wives were cut loose without bread or roof, and all too often with era when everything God created through nature on the Wasatch too many children. It was the law. , Plateau was abused and ripped-ofThe railroad arrived as soon as the Despite dislike of the federal Welsh began to dig coal at Wales, and the rails were active for almost a government over the Edmunds Act, Manti found out after 1889 that they hundred years. The Sanpete Valley came up Salt Creek from Nephi and needed Uncle Sam to protect them g went all the way to Sterling for the from the ravaging effects of of head black diamonds. Later, the Denver by nearly a million and Rio Grande laid their rails over sheep on the Wasatch Plateau. They the hump from Thistle to beyond in called on him to regulate things and establish grazing limits and competition with the Sanpete Valley allotments to users through the narrow-guag- e line. But in 1983 there was a flood at Thistle that washed creation of the MantiNationa! Forest out the junction to Denver, and the Reserve in 1903. Otherwise, their life-lin- non-Engli- f. over-grazin- farms and gardens would have washed away with muddy cloudbursts on top" every June, July, and August. Those floods were severe enough to wash a few Manti families clear to Oregon, where they founded Imbler, near LaGrande, at the turn of the century. Imbler is the farthest settlement to be founded out of Manti, and certainly the last. The Great Depression of 1929 was hardly noticed in Manti, as that state has been traditional and normal, so far off the beaten economic path. Manti has always claimed a form of depression of its own, but, that, despite nobody can say that cither in the county or in any of the Sanpete towns that anybody ever starved to death. Small communities are sometimes narrow in their philosophy and they, do gossip. But they also care when a neighbor is distressed. William Fowler, the author of the lyrics of the Mormon hymn, We Thank Thee O God for a Prophet," came the closest to starving of anybody in Manti, but Brother William was unable to work much for chronic ill health, and his neighbors fed him. The pioneers were as mortal as all of them who came to Sanpeetchs valley 100 years ago have by now shaken off their coils. Some of their names still abound, but not all of them. You can see them these days only in the remains of the visible things they created in their prime and left behind in their decay. The most recognizable remains are of adobe, stones, logs, and some brick, and there may even be a few things left over from their endeavors created in shops and mills. their descendants, and For instance, within 40 years after their primeval arrival, there was already that oolite "white dove standing on that dry, sterile hill, paying tribute not only to God but to their own immortality as well. Nothing can surpass an edifice made by the labor of love of materially poor and rather common people. That was their miracle. They were always seeing to things, even when they didnt know too much and never asked questions. They who pass by here today and see what there is to see have to struggle to think 19th century. Not that there is much traffic bustle in Manti to distract visitors, but there is quite enough of 20th century and jeeps, pickups, charging motorcycles on and around U.S. 89 to take living minds off everything older than Ronald which is old enough. All Reagan the young girls wear and the same things as their counterparts do in Boston, Bcthesda, and Cincinnati. un-we- Passers-bmust Ignore ranch-styl- e houses, mobile homes, and prefabs. They should also set aside a few local signs of social rebellion, though neither booze, nicotine, nor marijuana runs the place yet. They will not be distracted either by a wealth of public accommodations. Nobody around here goes out of his way to develop tourism. There is some western American history, but neither the movies nor the TV have caught it yet, and Sanpete (Manti included) has not as yet learned how to insist that their forebears earn an honest life after life. y Realize that Manti is western," but it is not cowboy. Nor is it a e mining ghost. The d farmer, by nature, and the mortal Moroni, his ghost misty behind a veil, are the historic heroes here. Grandfather was more likely to have packed a shovel than a shootin iron. The cowboy hats and boots you may see in Manti arrived after 1870 as a result of some romantic influences out of the American Southwest. They raise beef critters in these parts, but we aint the Staked Plains, pardner. Brigham Young from Vermont, Isaac Morley from Massachusetts, John Patten from Indiana, Dr. Foster Ray Kenner from Kentucky, James Cook from merry olde England, Hans Peter Olsen from Jylland, and David Llewellyn Jones from Glamorganshire, Wales, pasted by here, not anybody out of Louts LAmourland. The Wild Bunch in Robber's Roost, just over the ridge, were all a bad dream. last-chanc- battle-scarre- h Perhaps you can get the century feel if you go to the sentimental act of feeling the stones of John Patten's house. John went through the Mormon suppression experiences in Missouri and arrived in Manti (the "Sanpete forts") in 1851. He was then a Mormon, but beginning in the 1880s he began to hear other drums beating, and late in that decade he joined the Presbyterian Church. Both convert and apostate, John is now in the cemetery with his contemporaries, probably neither more nor less dead for either his conversion or his apostacy. His house, now over 130 years old and the product of his mind and hands, still stands, owned by the City of Manti and managed by the Daughters of the Utah Pioneers. It was a gift from the Utah State Bicentennial Commission in 1976 and of a descendant of John Patten, the late Dr. Ruth Graham. mid-19t- "dyed-in-the-wo- There are some interesting folks in the Manti Cemetery besides John Patten. Stand at the graveside of Sarah Seeley Wilcox, who was bom In 1780, for instance, and ask yourself if there Is any American history here. Sarah was bom in Rhode Island before there was a United States of America and II years before the inauguration of George Washington. Fourteen presidents came and went before she died in Manti in 1856, having lived nearly her entire adult life in the American wilderness along the Mohawk Valley, Upper Canada, and the Oregon and Mormon trails and into the remote Sanpete Valley. She lies next to her daughter Mary, bom in Upper Candad (Ontario), a lobstcrback, daughter of a Redcoat." Ask yourself if those who finally laid down their lives here in one nook of the American Great Basin, "Where Nothing Is Long Ago," were not poured out of American history. Forget the perpetual care now obvious in the cemetery. It deceives. This was also ancient Ute burial grounds, and both Christian Sarah and her daughter were laid to rest in unperpetuated graves, wearing calico and wool, amongst wild sagebrush and surrounded by native, pagan dead in trading post blankets and buckskin. Manti has changed since 1856, but it is somewhat population-wis- e smaller than it was in 1900. Nobody is bom here anymore, since nobody is bom at home these days, and the hospitals are in Gunnison and Mount Pleasant. But people still come here. About 100,000 arrive annually to see the production sound-and-lig- called The Mormon Miracle on n the and watered temple hill. They return in large numbers for Memorial Day and for high school class reunions, and some return to retire. The city boundaries are the same as they were when Jesse Fox surveyed them in the summer of 1850, but the cemetery has grown a few acres north for those who desire to return for good. Back to Andy Rooney. What do Isn't there you mean, Andy, anything in Utah but Salt Lake The next time you are on City? Temple Square rent a car with your to Nephi senior's discount, take (about 85 miles), make a left there, drive up Salt Creek, and after 10 more miles or so, voBal The trail ain't wide, pardner, but these days Never mind traffic. it's well-useBut look out for the deer! now-gree- Why, theres even some talk at the Main Auto Parts about somebody building a condominium at Palisade Park Heavens-to-Bets- next? THE END whats |