God Whiskey Snow

“A wise man once said never to move to a town with more churches than bars.” Luke tells me this as we peruse the Salt Lake City yellow pages, looking for evidence of a liquor store location. “Well we sure blew it,” I say, throwing the phonebook across the room.

The listing of Mormon churches spans about 10% of our new phone book, but we seek spirits of a different kind. And in this capacity salvation seems unattainable, as the only thing listed under Alcohol is the number for Alcoholics Anonymous.

Moments like this I can’t believe I just moved to Utah. Luke, Clay and I, friends from school, had put our snowboards in the back of a station wagon and driven to Salt Lake City, braving it’s heavily religious atmosphere in search of it’s legendary powder fields.

“The snow is so fluffy it squeaks,” I remember Clay saying. Right now Clay is sitting across the room of our barren domicile looking like a grumpy stump, inanimate due to lack of beer.

None of us have jobs yet, and so we anxiously watch the snow fall without any way to ride it, and without any whiskey to soften the pain. Despite the religious tidal wave I appear to be swept up in, I find it hard to believe in God.

The next day, I get a call from Brighton, a small mountain frequented more by locals than by tourists. They tell me they might have a job for me.

I walk into Dave Farmer’s office, which also happens to be the lift service shop. The shop walls are covered with wenches and greasy tools, and the concrete floor with puddles and cigarette butts.

A small glass fridge filled with Pabst Blue Ribbon beer is semi-obscured by a piece of paper proclaiming, “NO BEER- WORK.” Somewhere from the back comes the cacophony of the 80’s English punk band Crass, playing loud over the drone of power tools.

Dave emerges from the back looking like an angry lumberjack terrorist. He’s got on brown scuffed steeltoe boots, grease stained jeans, and a red plaid shirt over his ample gut. His weathered face is largely hidden behind aviator sunglasses and a bushy cop style mustache.

With the hand not holding a shovel he shakes mine, saying, “lot or lifts, lifts get more hours.”

“Actually I think I’m going for lot,” I tell him, choosing to direct traffic and park cars every morning, the worst job on the mountain that, as a trade off, allows the most time to snowboard.

Dave raises his eyebrows at me, clearly surprised I would choose the job that gets no respect, not enough hours to feed yourself on, hasn’t employed a female for more than a week in the past two years, and requires a 6 am arrival five days a week. But he only shrugs. I smile back, employed.