Getting there

Abstract

my husband questions the good historical centers like this do.Kids come every year on a field trip and leave thinkinghistory sucks because they don't want to touch a cow's hot udder.He did not want to touch the cow's udder and is rememberinghow the man dressed as a pioneer called them city slickerswhen they lived ten minutes down the road.I loved these field trips and saved babysitting money to returnin the summer. I made candles by running in a circle.Imagined I was Laura Ingalls Wilder. Churned butter in a skirt.The historical farm was his great great grandfather's.He says it's not like this is that farm. Half the valleywas somebody's farm a hundred years ago. When I was a kid herewe kept our eyes peeled for the adults working behind the sceneswho wore blue jeans and t-shirts like us. There are rulesabout what clothing volunteers wear on the farm.My husband did not know his great great grandfather had three wivesbut he isn't surprised. The first dead.The next two in polygamy.The second and third were sisters. They share one headstone nearby.The sisters and the husband. The oldest sister who is the second wife buriedbetween her husband and sister.They were both nineteen the years he married them.I can't stop digging up my dead men for judgment.My great grandfather who had an affairwith his secretary after his round-faced wife gave birthto nine-pound twins and lived. My mother remembers the skinon this grandmother's stomach hung over her aproned waistlike a long pancake. My third great grandfathermarried his stepdaughter. My second great grandfather alsomarried his stepdaughter after raising her from the age of eight.Tonight we do not enter the visitors center where the photographof my husband's great great grandfather hangs.We are walking to the open grass beforethe too-clean-to-be-accurate mercantile storefront selling honey and rock candysticks to listen to the state-sponsored symphony performin the 125th year of Utah statehood.We open our camping chairs above the earthmy husband's great great grandmother walked.The younger sister of her husband's second wifeshe married him in Mexicothree months before Wilford Woodruff's revelationrenounced the practice of polygamy publiclyclearing the way for statehood.Tonight the smoke from California's fires reddens the setting sununtil the only lights left on are the starsthe stringed bulbs of the mercantile storeand the half domes of light letting the players seethe song they have already began to play.