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Show WASATCH MOUNTAIN TIMES Used to Be a Funny Thing About Park City There was plenty to do then. Each spring, when The Runoff also referred to who had runoff with whom after the long winter. It also meant the streets saw the pot holes blossom long before the lilacs By Teri Orr W: laughed a lot. That’s what miss the most. Long before there stickers encouraging form random Parkites were were bumper people to per- I acts of kindness committing random We took to naming the holes and once we planted a geranium in one acts of outrageousness with a certain predictable, unpredictable [ll be damned frequen- if it didn’t last there cy. Lots of things But boy, did we love a parade! They would Main left all that was familiar = Eddie Schneckloft expresses his community spirit in Park City’s 1995 4th of July Parade. were young, eager, willing to work hard, play hard and not suffer fools. Which isn’t to say we weren't often foolish. The Very Best Town Park City was in transition from mining to skiing and we saw opportunities. There was a general sense of inclusion — if you went to the DownUnder bar on a Thursday night after, say 6:33, you could expect to see the mayor, city manager, police chief, city attorney and the justadjourned city council gathering for drinks. They’d be joined by a couple of film producers from the local movie company, the ski area in Come borrowed spring, convert April Fools from watching walk. Once the parade was short, we turned the kids that were around sid s at the Swede Alley, and all came down again Crazy Darrell from the Alamo Saloon would dance in the middle of the street for most of these events, dressed in full western gear with his bandoleer filled not with bullets, but with mini-bottles. here. mining town most of us had visited on vacation and didn't want to leave. As a rule, we high bottom of Main Street, went up California and a bad marriage Funny thing was, most folks I met had pretty much done the same thing in the late ‘70s. Left the east coast, left the South, left D.C., left L.A., left businesses, marriages, schools, family; the Parades always had more and dogs in the parade old and my seven year old ina battered Subaru wagon and left and risked it on a little funky Street ibles. have life over again in the fall when would parade through town dressed in costumes that were extreme for skiing. The Fourth of July and Miner’s Day (Labor Day) changed in the nearly 20 years since I packed up my five year to start my start school Home Coming floats and royalty would honk their way down owner, a handful of real estate people and an occasional news reporter. They would, long into the night, laugh and tell stories and then mix in a discussion about fixing this or that problem. Everybody had a different means but the collective end was always the same — how do we make this The Very Best Town. More Bars Than T-Shirt Shops Yes, for weeks. The photo I took as a young reporter for the old tabloidstyle ten-page Park Record newspaper of the kid fishing in a pot hole was, perhaps, a bit of an exaggera- there were more bars than T-shirt shops on Main Street at one time. The original Cozy at the bottom was no tony oak and brass fern bar. Hell no, you could get pickled eggs, Historic residence surrounded by new development Williams were the Trout Brothers, and their bar, Ryan's, named after a friend, became the lonely trout in our stream of consciousness. In those days the library was on Main Street with just a dusty books. But handful of old, Ryan’s had two walls of paperbacks they would loan to customers. The annual fish story-telling contest, were patrons lined up six-deep at the bar for a chance to eat smoked trout and hear a story, was as close as we came to a salon evening, and so what it was in a saloon The fledgling theater company had a fund-raiser where you could buy a pie-hit on some unsuspecting soul. For weeks there was a shortage of whipped cream at the Mount tion. Over at the school, the principal glided through the halls of the old Marsac Building (now city hall) on roller skates. The bus driver understood on the day the kid had contest. It cost anywhere much in money just a quarter town. to ride Nobody working at politicians and proletariats alike B: when tragedy stuck, the town a spe- cial pet to bring to Show & Tell, and he let the boy ride his pony right on the bus. The city park had more sagebrush than grass but they ran a great day camp for kids with pet shows and drama workshops and overnight trips to the Uintas. The city’s bus system — used vehicles painted in true ‘70s hippiestyle — was named Mountain Metro, the winning entry in a name-the-bus made anything then, but nobody seemed to care. rallied. PAPE os Old house in Park City’s former red light district. stale chips and tough beef jerky. Girls in faded flannel shirts with faded ribbon pony tails were looking for a chance to cue game around. Up the street, up for the oldest Dana and It was more than just Evan department and volunteer EMTs for heal People DAILY BREAKFAST PAGE 7 who took emergency calls in the middle of the night — found the address somehow on the unmarked Old Town houses, and grabbed the vicContinued on page 14 Food A.M. - the church ladies bringing supper: It was the banker, saying the loan could be rolled over. It was the spaghetti dinner to raise money for a child who had fallen ill with cancer. It was a car raffle to raise more money for those hospital bills. It was the volunteer fire ~ Mount Ait Cafe rH Air Market. The Thespians, too, formed a singing telegram service that spent days coming up with the right words and costumes to slightly embarrass SPECIALS ° LUNCH ¢ DINNER |