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Show On the edge... subtitled These are the best of times and the worst of times. (A Dickens of a way to start this column.) It's been a tough few months in Park City-former fat cat realators more closely resemble scruffy whiskered alley cats of late. Investors, speculators, and gamblers are taking off their Brooks Brothers blazers and blowing on the dice. And the young and the old, the angry and the proud are standing in line for surplus cheese. If this isn't a depression, these are at least depressing times. . :' A friend of mine, who I considered rather well-heeled, snapped his credit card in half the other night while trying to scrape the ice off his care windshield. "Oh well," he laughed, "American Express asked me to do that to this card months ago." In Salt Lake thousands of depositors anxiously await news on the Murray First Thrift bank. Their bank has been closed for 1 months. - ; ' And just last week at the gas station I watched a Cadillac pull up to the self-service -pump and the owner put in just teiv bucks I worth of petrol. Does anyone brazenly 4 pull " up any more and say "Fill it up."? . Layoffs on the local level, while not keeping up with the national trend, are giving employees of a few large firms the feeling . . they are standing on shakey ground. ! . And yet... The Park City Ski Area is open and it's not . yet Thanksgiving. The long range forecast' is for a long cold winter; ; And folks, for c. people who make their living in a resort community-that's good news. While the rest of the nation may be looking at the winter ahead with dread, we can at least' look with aniticipation. There is a guarded kind of enthusiasm that we may have seen the bottom and are on the crawl upward now. I wouldn't break into a rousing chorus of "Happy Days Are Here Again" but perhaps a bit of a hum is in order. And hard as it may be to accept, next week starts the Holiday Season. Turkey time. And while we're on that terribly abused word let me make a short sermon here. A.) When I speak of turkey I am speaking of the bird. I like it stuffed with a crunchy golden skin. And I adore white meat turkey sandwiches on white bread with lots of mayo. (Oh God, my WASP roots are out now!) B.) I despise educated people-politicians, businessmen, and just general folks who refer to tourists as turkeys. Those "turkeys" who come into town and spend money on your goods, buy your house, or ride on your bus, could be the very reason you can afford to serve your family Its turkey this season. Next Thursday if you're searching for reasons to be thankful, try the fact that Park City has a lot of tourists who have already booked their reservations to spend part of their holidays here with you. "Amen. ' Park City has always been a composite of characters. And it has seen more than it's share of hard times. There have been good and bad times depending on what was happening to the metal in the mountain. But always, the city could count , on the , mettle of it's people. . Today when the : . economy depends on what is on top and not inside the mountain Park City is again testing it's own. As always, the greedy will be short term success stories. and the weak will move away. But the survivors have always paced themselves! found opportunities opportuni-ties without becoming opportunists,', and stuck together. ; I Well, Parkites, winter is on it's way and it promises to be long and snowy. I plan to be thankful for that.' . |