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Show We had an unashamed delight in our freedom that resembled what immigrants felt in contrasting their former Old World slum or stony fjord-side farm with the New World promise of unlimited wealth and advancement. A historian wrote that "the two grand themes of American history" were immigration and the frontier. Although few of us had come from ghettoes we shared in whatever grandeur there might be in our adventure those early days. Nada seemed to offer the chance to thrive in the historic American way. A bench at the Big Barbecue-that was all we asked. And each fondly imagined he had found his seat. So we lived deluded. One mirage symbolized our myths about physical resources. Take, for example, an optical illusion common in deserts. Anyone has seen "water," a trick of light, flooding the highway ahead. Desert travelers have observed blue ponds and palmy islands installed in long-dry lake beds. One of our illusions was like those that people motoring across the Great Salt Lake Desert see around Wendover and the Bonneville Salt Flats. There buttes and mountain ridges appear to float on shimmering seas. With imagination and yearning we stole a mirage from the surface and installed it on subterranean levels. The ghost of vanished Old Lake Bonneville we resurrected and put in operation for us down in the depths. We began to lay a basis for this belief when we sank our first well. Father and his carpenters who built the store-postoffice before the rest of us arrived had rushed construction except to detail one man to haul water each day for drinking and washing. They didn't know how quickly the well could be accomplished until Steve Strmacek got to work. North of the store, Father rigged a tripod of cedar poles from which he suspended pulley and rope. A short, brawny Hungarian, Steve hurled himself into the task with a happy frenzy. He plied his short-handled shovel and pick to drive the three-foot hole down with amazing speed. After he had the shaft eight feet deep, he shoveled dirt into a bucket and Father pulled the load up to empty it. |