Do people in Utah really have good times?

Utah is always getting criticized for the restrictive alcohol laws or the fact that stores want to be closed on Sundays. Those Mormons are all a bunch of fuddy-duddys who wouldn't recognize a good time if it was staring them in the face. They even have the old fashioned notion that you ought to get married before you have sex. Well many people in the world may believe those wild stories but I am here to tell you that there are good times to be found in Utah and you don't have to get drunk to find them either. How many places can you live where you can golf in the morning and go skiing in the afternoon? Personally I don't do much of either but still manage to enjoy a good time now and then. Here are just a few of the better ones that still stand out in my mind.

- Driving up the canyon for a cool picnic under the pine trees when it is 100 degrees in town
- Did I say that I didn't do much golfing? Well there was a time when I enjoyed that diversion on a regular basis and working afternoons provided the perfect opportunity
- Living close enough to go pick fresh raspberries from my grandfather's berry patch
-Living close enough to walk to church again
- Finding out from my Dad (the banker) that I would qualify for an interest subsidized home loan on a brand new home.
- Also finding out that the house payment would be less than the rent I was already paying
- Following my new best friend Norm from Wasatch Foundry to United Precision - a new job, better pay, more hours and a chance to learn how to operated new machines.
- Dropping by every few days to see our new house take shape from the ground up.
- Stopping by the gas station and filling up for 30 cents a gallon
- Watching the carpenter set up his table saw and build our kitchen cabinets on the spot
- Packing up our belongings and heading for the cornfield in West Jordan-that is what it was before they started building our subdivision.
- Following Norm again from United Precision to Hercules in Magna-if only I had stayed in the new house in West Jordan and continued to work for Hercules I could have retired by now!
- By this time I was earning a whopping $5.00 an hour.
- Discovering the Salt Lake Golden Eagles hockey team at the old Salt Palace
- Making all of the extended families Christmas gifts by hand out of leather
- Getting together with Eldred Bills (my neighbor across the street) and watching Monday Night Football with Howard Cosell, Don Meredith and friends
- When football season ended, getting together with Eldred to build a doll house for his daughters and a model train layout for my sons.
- At 5:00 in the morning finally getting the new train set I had bought for Christmas to work
- Dealing with my addiction to water skiing by ordering a new jet boat with a 455 olds engine
- Hooking up my new boat and heading for Utah Lake or Deer Creek Reservoir before either was a state park
- Watching the poor fellow at Utah Lake who had unhooked his trailer from the truck instead of launching the boat from the trailer try to figure out how to recover his BOAT & TRAILER!!!
- Finally mastering slalom skiing and buying my own Connelly wood ski
- Building a new two car garage to house my new boat and the car
- Calling work to take the day off when I woke up and discovered 4 foot drifts everywhere
- Working 12 hours a day for seven days straight before being laid off from Hercules
You may have noticed by now that the good times are almost inevitably a two edged sword. The interesting part is that there is no set order to when the lows and the highs occur. We seem to have plenty of both but it is usually the highs that are worth remembering. But then any event we survived and can look back at with a certain amount of satisfaction or amusement can usually be considered one of the good times. As I have said before, many times they only qualify to be on the good list after a considerable amount of time has passed Hopefully you are not only taking time to "smell the roses" as you journey through life but are picking a few of them to share with those you care most about.