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Show TT' , 0 i fr 2Li i VC.3 fW byTeriGomes A soda pop symbol glows in Park City In English classes in high school and college I was J taught to carefully look for symbolism in what I read. I i remember during a reading of All The King's Men the teacher asked us to go through the book and i look for the word yellow and how it was used. Yellow, she I pointed out, in literature did not symbolize sunshine and 1 daffodils. Yellow, she said, was the color of pus and urine and generally yucky things. ! To this day, I never wear yellow. 1 She had a great influence on me, that high school i English teacher, and I continued to look for signs and J symbols that could explain the great meanings of life to me. Marion Thurlow had taught me those signs are i everywhere. And last week, driving home late at night, I saw a symbol that had such a deep meaning for us as a town I that I knew I had to write about it. I had just passed the Top Stop market on the way out of I town (or on the way to Park Meadows, depending on your J perception ) when I was a strange white glow coming from i tne dirt tieid just beyond Kick Barnes' dentist office. Although this area is constantly under construction to date, no buildings have gone up. There are huge piles of ! lumber stacked in the field and there are giant machines that take on eerie shapes after dark. But I could not, at ! first, make out the shape from which the white light was glowing in the night. As my car got closer, it was not just a white light, I but a red, blue and white light. Upon closer inspection, ' there was even a singular word glowing from the light. It said Pepsi. I pulled my car off the road, overcome by the light and i confused, utterly confused by the meaning. Why, in the I middle of a dirt field in Park City-in Park City, ' UTAH would such a strange and intense symbol j j manifest itself? "PEPSI!" I tried shouting the word, "pepsi," I M whispered. But no clear meaning came to me. I thought about myself, a confirmed Coca Cola drinker for years, and wondered if this was perhaps a sign I should change my soda pop drinking habit. My mother, I knew, if she were here would point out the all-American red and white and blue of the glowing machine light. So I tried to focus on the patriotic aspects of the message. Even though mother might see something strangely Republican about the light, I confess, I could not. In fact, it made me think of Geraldine Ferrarro . . . I thought about my children, who are part of a new generation, a new age, new thinking. They are part, as the commercials would have us believe, of the Pepsi Generation. Then in the stillness, I thought I saw a young man dressed in a sequin jacket doing the moon walk on top of a stack of plywood. But I think it was just the way the wind the wind and the car lights played against the machinery. A Pepsi machine, glowing in the dark, in the middle of the night in the spring of '85, in Park City. Whatever does it mean? And it struck a vein with me that maybe this machine is here and now for the sole purpose of providing us, as a town, with something singular to focus on now that most of the tourists have gone for the season. Perhaps the library and the Kimball Art Center will host discussion groups to share thoughts about the Great White Light in the field. Certainly, the crowd at Ryan's will give it great and serious thought. And at Sneakers last Sunday. I heard two women talking about the light and wondering what it symbolized. Perhaps it is premature to share my feelings now, but in your groups this weeks, chew on this ... I think this machine, located now in the dirt will remain after the hotel is built, and its location will be in direct opposite relation to the hotel's ice machine. Maybe that is too elementary a conclusion. |