The Book of Mormon

Apr 3, 2025

Now, if this all gets too much, watch this excerpt from the musical Book of Mormon – it’s one of my favourites https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OKkLV1zE8M0

Had a reasonable night’s sleep, with a few fits and starts as our bodies struggled to cope with the 12 hour time change. Woke up to a cool morning, and as we sat and ate our breakfast at the hotel, it started snowing gently. We’re not in the Philippines any more Toto.

First stop of the day was a local supermarket to stock up a couple of things we couldn’t replenish in the Philippines, or we couldn’t carry on planes. Then it was off on our self-guided walking tour to see the sights of beautiful downtown Salt Lake City.

You know those movies where the hero wakes up to find that everybody has disappeared without trace? Well, Salt Lake City is like that. 7 lane roads with hardly a car on them. We walked through a large department store and couldn’t find any staff. We had lunch at a Starbucks and were the only two people there. The large rental car hall at the airport only had occasional people wander in. We reasoned that, as a ski resort (Winter Olympics in 2002 and 2034), the season had finished and everybody had gone home, but there was still a feelling of emptiness. It’s lovely. Pristinely clean, spacious, modern, easy to navigate – just empty.

And then when we got downtown, we found that pretty much the whole central district (known as Temple Square) was closed, wrapped and under renovation. By the time you couldn’t get into the Temple, the convention centre, either of the two visitor’s centres, the Beehive House, the Lion House, and a number of other buildings, it felt like a movie set on a completed production that was being closed down and stored away.

However, we viewed the buildings from the outside and read up on their history. The Tabernacle was open – not at all what I had envisioned – and there was an organ recital at noon, so we stayed and listened for a few minutes to take a break from the cold outside.

OK, some notes. The Temple is the centre of it all, but only the elect are allowed inside, so the wrapping only affected your ability to view it. The Tabernacle, however, is where the great unwashed can enter, and is the home of the famed Tabernacle Choir and the famous organ. It looks ugly from the outside, but is world renowned for its acoustics. Even the organist performed the regular party trick of dropping a pin on the lectern which could be heard at the back of the building 52m away. It’s often referred to as the Church of the Holy Turtle, and Oscar Wilde described it as the most purely dreadful building he ever saw (it is!). However, Brigham Young, who approved the design, reportedly said that the design was inspired by “the best sounding board in the world … the roof of my mouth.”

Talking of Brigham Young, the Beehive House was one of his two official residences, and the Lion House next door was a residence for some of his wives and children. The ground floor had sitting rooms for wives with children, and the upper floor had 20 bedrooms for children and childless wives. The basement had a dining room for 70 people. Wonder why! Young had more than two dozen wives, fathered 57 children, as well as his many step children. Presumably the bedroom in the Beehive House had a roster drawn up.

The beehive became the local icon of the city, no doubt because of the industrious nature of the residents. It was just that some were more industrious than others. A beehive is now on the state flag.

The building housing the staff offices needed 28 stories to accomodate all the Mormon public service when built in 1972, but now can’t cope and there are at least two more buildings around.

The conference centre seats 21,200 people in the main auditorium and you can fit a 747 on stage. If that’s not enough, there is an attached theatre that seats 850 people.

One of the attractions of this location when Joseph Smith looked out of his covered wagon into the desert and proclaimed that this the place for their city, was a fresh water creek that they subsequently named City Creek. Good for drinking and baptising. Over the years as the city grew, the river got built over and driven underground, till the city had a big flood in 1983 and the waters couldn’t flow away. Now they have uncovered the creek, and it flows through the main shopping mall of the city.

After finishing the walk, we had a late lunch at a local Starbucks, and ended up back at the hotel mid afternoon for a rest.

We had intended to go to the open rehearsal of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir that happens every Thursday night, and had even planned to be in town on a Thursday night specially, only to find that this weekend is the church’s General Conference, so the choir is having a special rehearsal at the Conference Centre, hopefully minus the 747, but it’s not open to the public. Sigh!