OCR Text |
Show averred. But he said he didn't mind Nada, just as he didn't care if people called him "pickle." "what's the difference?" he said laughingly. "Nada is going places in a hurry, no matter what it's called. Why, Salt Lake is too close to Nada ever to amount to anything!" Being ready with extravagant exaggerations and jokes, he tickled Father's sense of humor and sold him many items in the day he spent with us. Some were salable but some, such as the glass case full of cuff links sparkling with glass diamonds, didn't appeal to homesteaders on a small budget or no budget at all. But we put his proposal, Algo, into the hopper along with the rest. We finally came back to Nada. It was in the timetable of the SP, LA and SL as a whistle stop where you could flag the local and where freight could be delivered. It was a place where freight trains could wait on the "siding" for lordly passenger trains to hoot at them and roar by. We had that much of a start toward recognition. As soon as possible, therefore, lacking a consensus on another name, Father inscribed Nada on the application forms and hurried them in, accompanied with a petition signed by everyone urging utmost speed. We assumed that such important documents would receive prompt attention in the nation's capital. So we waited . . .and waited. . . and waited. Washington, D.C., did not shake itself to pieces in haste to satisfy our need. Meanwhile, every day except Sundays Father hitched Frank to the surrey and drove 14 miles of bumpy wheel track to Lund. A straggling hamlet of a few score persons, Lund sat in a "d^y lake," a clay flat which could quickly become a mudhole in a shower or melting snow. But it was the railroad station for a vast back-country, the Iron County seat of Parowan, Cedar City, and Utah's Dixie. Auto stages took off from there. Freighters loaded their wagons and trucks from the "docks" at Lund and set off for the interior. |