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Show Having come from a number of states they could build their vanity by telling tall stories of their past achievements; who could give them the lie? And they could make ambitious plans for spring. In a youthful rhyme I tried to describe the scene, the loafers spinning yarns around the store stove: Long hours they sat and scorched their knees luxuriously, Nodded wisely at lies and lied back furiously. One might be planning vast cellars where mushrooms throve In visions frail as the filmy castles that wove Warm scents of tobacco and cedar around the stove. Another would breed big herds of cattaloes-- Blending the strengths of Herefords and buffaloes. And while they shone with splendor in their tales They looted Father's prune-box and candy pails,. Our other entrance opened into a spacious room Father had fitted for the Commercial Club and other meetings and for a library. With no public library we made our private book collections available: a ten-volume History of America, remnants of Father's medical library he couldn't bear to part with, Mother's "fireside poets" and others of her favorites, an encyclopedia, a dictionary and hundreds of volumes of fiction and history. From a Central Utah village library that had run into severe money problems and closed its doors, we'd bought, for a song, many novels and miscellaneous books. Among them were surprising choices ranging from the adventures of Kings Arthur and Alfred to such European heroes as William Tell and Andreas Hofer. There were standard religious books, including of course L.D.S. Church publications, although we had no Mormons among us for many years. We understood the popularity of romantic, adventure and detective stories. But we couldn't understand how quickly European immigrants or sons and daughters of immigrants hastened to cut off their cultural roots abroad. We were proud of our Norwegian-Danish-German-Polish heritages. |