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Show 192 town life."107 In a relatively small city like Salt Lake, such conceptions came closer to describing reality than in larger cities given the common cultural denominator provided by the LDS Church, and many gay men who came out during the postwar period could base their perceptions on personal experiences growing up on farms or in small towns. Significantly, Ben Holbrook and Allen Metcalfboth used the expression, "everyone knew everybody else's business" in their recollections, in Ben's case to describe the quiet farm community on the outskirts of Salt Lake where he spent his childhood; in Allen's case, to describe the clientele at Radio City Lounge. However, although Ben provided a similar account of the bar, he gave it a more favorable assessment. In contrast to the oppressive closeness and lack of privacy he associated with his childhood neighborhood, which echoed other narrators' accounts oflife in their LDS wards, Ben valued the "small town" aspect of Salt Lake's gay community: We were closer together, a more unique community. We knew just about everyone, we watched out for one another's backs .if it would be someone walking out the back door [at Radio City], we'd get in a group and walk .. them to their car because of the hoods back there waiting. If someone didn't show up for a party everyone was really concerned because they never missed anything. Everyone was included in everything. 108 Because of its small size and ability to remain unobtrusive, Salt Lake's gay community developed an overt political presence more slowly than gays in larger cities, who enjoyed sufficient numbers to create more highly articulated, geographically and economically self-contained communities which assumed many of the functions of traditional "ethnic" 107Kath Weston, "Families We Choose" in Social Perspectives in Lesbian and Gay Studies, 403. 108Holbrook, Metcalf interviews. |
