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Show 1 T I I I v'"iu by Teri Gomes I Another death in the family that I felt safe and happy in the shadow of the little building. When I began working for the old Park Record and we needed a cover for the Arts Festival issue, I suggested we use mime artist Greg Goldston and photograph him in various poses around the depot. My suggestion became my assignment and in the late afternoon sun, Greg and I played with and in the shadows of the depot trying for just the right spot. My new husband in his capacity as Arts Festival director used the depot for the check-in party for all artists that year. A lively band played on the loading dock and people wandered in and out of the charming old building as their introduction to the town. Later I would attend Madeline Smith's wedding reception there. And I would shoot dozens of photos of friends sitting on the porch under the fancy carved eaves laughing and talking in the late afternoon sun. And just a few years ago, when the owner of a lady's dress shop asked me to take some brochure photos for her in interesting locations around town, I suggested the depot. I think my love of the building was obvious when I saw the prints. The model looked good, but the two-story front of the depot with its cut-out half-circle upper porch looked terrific in the late-day light. After I got the facts Sunday morning, I went on home but I felt unsettled, restless. How do you mourn the loss of a building? I drove back uptown Sunday afternoon just to take a few more shots, I told myself. And it struck a vein with me, that this time, for the first time I could remember, there was no afternoon sun shining on the depot. It was cold and I shuddered in light snow. I stood for a long time in silence next to Debby Fields, co-owner of the building. Finally she reached over and brushed a tear off my cheek. , "It just makes me sick," Debby said. I could only nod my head. I still have never learned to deal with grief very well. f I was 16 the year my grandfather died and my mother made me parade past his open casket at the wake the night before the funeral. I don't remember a lot about the funeral, but I'll never forget that night and the pasty too-pale skin that covered the features of the man who once was a big-hearted, big league baseball player. I remember feeling a king of morbid curiosity as I leaned over his satin-lined, mahogany casket. I wanted to touch his cheek one last time, but I couldn't bring myself to do that. . The man who used to arrive every few months at the town depot to visit me was gone forever, like his son, my father, who had left six months before him. There was a strange hush early Sunday morning as I watched cars round the corner by the Kimball Art Center and then slow down, as the drivers shook their heads and sometimes even stopped and got out of the car. It reminded me of all those people parading past my grandfather's casket those many years ago. We lost all that mattered of the depot building early Sunday morning. And even though it was "just a building" the loss feels very much like a death. It was in my reporter's capacity that I was there Sunday morning, but it felt more like a friend-of-the-family capacity. I had driven into town on the belt route, and from that angle the damage looked bad, but perhaps not fatal. It was when I rounded the corner that I felt sick somewhere in the pit of my stomach. Where once had stood the gingerbread blue-and-white Victorian depot was now a blackened, charred, gutted building. Like a rib left too long on the grill, it left a taste in my mouth of all that was burnt, of the charcoal and the ash. If one can be friends with a building, the depot and I were buddies of long standing. When I visited Park City so many years ago and decided to move here, I sat on a flat rock in the sunshine in front of the building and wrote a few postcards. Maybe it was because I associated train depots with my grandfather, my friend. |