| OCR Text |
Show Little Scandinavia 165 to the prohibition against hot drinks. When Old Okerman was brought before a bishop's court to be tried for habitual drinking, he was raked over the coals and humiliated. When asked at the end of the session if he h a d anything to say for himself, he replied sadly: "Vel, Biscop and brodders, you haf all de time asked me how much visky I haf drunk, and scolded me for drinking it; but you nefer did ask me how tirsty I vas." 49 Perhaps the greatest struggle of all was the struggle to overcome self. T h e Mormon church demanded a perfection of its members that few, if any, ever reached. Thus, many of the stories treat humorously the failures of frail human beings to do what they know to be right. One example will have to suffice. Shortly after Salt Peter's wife h a d died, a local sister said to h i m : "Well, you had a wonderful life and a wonderful wife, a wonderful w7ife and a wonderful life w7ith her. Maybe you ought to look around and maybe you can find another woman your age. There are a lot of widows in town that maybe you could find to marry that's about your own age, and that you could have quite a bit of companionship with." Salt Peter replied: "Yas, yas I guess if I was goin' to consider marryin' it'd be the smarrrt think to loook and find somebody in my own age; but ya know, the young 'uns are so temptin' ' [spoken in a slow drawl]. 5 0 People from Sanpete have enjoyed these stories for years. Unfortunately, many of them have hesitated to share them with others, fearing the ridicule of outsiders. This is most unfortunate. T h e genuine affection I feel for people of the area comes in large measure from my acquaintance with these stories. In them I find something of myself. As a Mormon, I have had to struggle with the same issues the characters in the stories struggle with; and as a h u m a n being, I have had to admit, with Salt Peter, that my actions often fall short of my ideals. When we outsiders laugh at Wheat Sack Olsen or at Shingle Pete or at Salt Peter, we really are not laughing at t h e m ; we are laughing at ourselves, at the same h u m a n foibles we share in common with them. As a result, life is a little easier for all of us. T h e Scandinavian dialect stories, then, are at the same time the most distinctly regional and yet universal of the Sanpete-Sevier lore. CONCLUSION O n the hill where Sanpete settlers once fought with rattlesnakes in their dugout homes, the Manti Temple now stands, dominating the land49 50 Thomson, "Ephraim Stories," pp. 13-14. Susan Peterson, Provo, U t a h , 1972. |
