1. Prelude
I’ve lived all my life in a small town in Utah called Levan. Levan is located right in the center of the state, and people from the town like to joke about how Levan is ‘navel’ spelled backwards - “We’re the belly button of Utah,” they say. Not very distinguished I know, but it seems to help people remember the name. Generations of my family have lived in Levan - all the way back to the first settlers in the late 1860’s, when the settlement had the nickname ‘Little Denmark.’ Those first few families that settled the town were Mormons, trying to find a place to finally call home and be left alone, to raise their families and worship in peace.
Most of the people in the town were descendants of the fair-haired Danes. My Jensen ancestors were among those early settlers from Denmark, and my hair is still a pale blonde all these many generations later. My mom, with her rich brown hair, was the only non-blonde in the family, and she had no chance against a very stubborn Danish gene. My dad, my three brothers, and I all share the same fair hair and sky blue eyes as my great, great, Grandfather Jensen who crossed the plains as a very young man, settled in early Levan, built a house, and built a life.
Many years ago, Levan was a thriving little town, or so my dad said. Along Main Street there was Shepherd’s Mercantile Store and an ice cream parlor where the ice cream was homemade from the blocks of ice cut and stored during the summer months in a big ice pit covered with earth, salt and straw. There was a healthy elementary school and a town hall. Then the new freeway was built, and it bypassed Levan by a few miles. The town had never been built to draw attention to itself, but it began a slow death as the trickle of new blood slowed to a stop. The ice cream parlor was long gone by the time I was born, and then the mercantile had to close its doors.
The grade school fell into disrepair, shrinking to a one room schoolhouse as the younger generation grew up and left without anyone to fill the desks they vacated. The older kids rode a bus for a half hour north to a neighboring town called Nephi for junior and senior high school, and by the time I was old enough for elementary school there was one teacher for the kindergarten through 2nd grades and another for third through sixth grades. Some people moved away, but most of the families that had been there for generations hung on and stayed.
All that remained along Main Street was a small general store where the townsfolk could purchase anything from milk to fertilizer. It boasted the name ‘Country Mall.’ I have no idea why – it was the furthest thing from a mall there ever was. Long ago, the owner added a room on each end of the store and rented out the space for some locals to set up shop.
On one end it had a few tables and a little kitchen that served as a diner where the old men sat and drank their coffee in the morning. “Sweaty Betty” Johnson (we called her Mrs. Johnson to her face) ran the diner and has for longer than I can remember. She’s a one woman operation - she cooks, waitresses, and manages it all on her own. She makes fluffy homemade donuts and the best greasy french fries on the planet. Everything she makes is deep-fried, and her face has a permanent sheen from the grease and the heat – which is how she got the nickname Sweaty Betty. Even cleaned up for church on Sundays her face glows and sadly, it isn’t from the Holy Spirit.
On the other end my Aunt Louise, my mom’s sister, provided cuts, color, and good company for most of the women in Levan. Her last name is spelled Ballow, but it’s pronounced Ba LOO with the accent on Loo - so she called her shop ‘Ballow’s ‘Do’, but most people just called it Louise’s.
Out in front of the ‘mall’ there were a couple of gas pumps, and when I was younger, a snow cone shack called Skinny’s that Louise’s kids (my cousins) ran in the summer time. Louise’s husband Bob was a truck driver and was gone a lot, and Louise had five kids she needed to keep busy while she cut hair. Louise decided it was time for a family business. Skinny’s Snow Cone Shack was born. Bob built a simple wooden shop that ended up looking a little like a tall skinny outhouse, hence the name Skinny’s. The general store sold blocks of ice so they had a convenient source for ‘snow.’ Louise bought an ice shaver and some syrup from the Cola distributor in Nephi, along with some straws, napkins, and some styrofoam cups in 2 sizes. It was a pretty simple business model with a very low overhead. Louise paid the kid on duty $5 a day, plus as many snow cones as they wanted. My cousin Tara, who is the same age as me, ate so many snow cones that summer she made herself sick. She can’t stand them to this day; even the smell of snowcones makes her retch.
There was a tiny brick post office down the street and a bar called Pete’s right next to the church - interesting location, I know. And that was Levan. Everybody knew which skills each person possessed, and we had blacksmiths, bakers, even candlestick makers. My dad could shoe a horse better than anyone; Jens Stephenson was a great mechanic, Paul Aagard, a handy carpenter, and so on. We had talented seamstresses, cooks, and decorators. Elena Rosquist was a mid-wife and had delivered several babies who had come without much warning, leaving no time to make the drive to the hospital in Nephi. We made due by trading on our skills, whether we had an actual sign out front or not.
Eventually, a few new families moved in to Levan, deciding it wasn’t all that far to commute to the bigger cities. It was a good place to settle in and a good place to have and create roots. In very small towns the whole town helps raise the kids. Everybody knows who everybody is, and if something or someone is up to no good, it gets back to the parents before a kid can get home to tell his side of it. The town wasn’t much bigger than a square mile, not counting the outer lying farms, but as a child it was my whole world.