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 Happy Pioneer Day everybody!!!
On Monday morning, July 24, 2002, I woke up in Logan, Utah, at a hotel across the street from the Goodyear store. We had gotten a leaky tire the previous day while driving in Yellowstone and somehow made it down to Jackson, WY, for lunch with some friends, and then over the mountains and into Logan, Utah, by stopping and filling the tire every hour or two. We obviously needed a new tire. But it had been Sunday, and there were no tire stores open anywhere on a Sunday. When I got up that Monday morning, I walked across the street to get a new tire. Turns out... it was Pioneer Day and nothing is open in Utah on Pioneer Day. Not even the tire store. We limped along, southbound on Interstate 15, all the while talking on the cell phone to the warranty people at Chrysler/Jeep. They had me on hold for a half hour or so while they tried -- despite me trying to tell them it was Pioneer Day -- to find an open Jeep dealership. Eventually we got to the suburbs of Salt Lake City where, as we drove down the highway, out of the corner of my eye I saw what appeared to be an open door on a vehicle parked in the lot of a Chrysler/Jeep dealership along the highway in Layton, Utah. We took the next exit, backtracked, and found that a few people had come in to get some work done that morning in the body shop at Cutrubus Motors. The body shop manager -- John, I think -- walked me over to their main store and found a slightly used tire identical to the tires on my Jeep, gave the tire to me and set me up with a place called NTB, three blocks away, to have it put on the Jeep. And away we went. It ended up being a really positive experience. "What the heck is Pioneer Day?" you ask? Pioneer Day (also archaically called the Day of Deliverance) is a holiday celebrated on July 24 in the U.S. state of Utah, with some celebrations in regions of surrounding states originally settled by Mormon pioneers. It commemorates the entry of Brigham Young and the first group of Mormon Pioneers into the Salt Lake Valley on July 24, 1847, where the Latter-day Saints settled after being forced from Nauvoo, Illinois and other locations in the eastern United States. Parades, fireworks, rodeos, and other festivities help commemorate the event. In addition to being an official holiday in Utah, Pioneer Day is considered a special occasion by many members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. On Pioneer Day, some Latter-day Saints walk portions of the Mormon Trail or reenact entering the Salt Lake Valley by handcart. Even Latter-day Saints outside of the U.S. occasionally sing Mormon folk music around July 24 in remembrance of the pioneer era. Wikipedia.com
It's not a religious holiday, of course. That would be unconstitutional. If Mitt Romney becomes President, maybe we'll get to close all the tire stores in America in celebration of Pioneer Day on July 24th, a non-religious celebration of the Day of Deliverance when the Mormons came into the Salt Lake valley. We could use another holiday in July.
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