Pioneer Day

Happy Pioneer Day. The 24th of July is NOT a national holiday, for anyone who may be wondering. It is a State Holiday in Utah and also my sister-in-law Charlene's birthday. When I called her and woke her up this morning to wish her a happy birthday she said the governor gives her her birthday off every year.

There must have been a parade down State Street today. There were fireworks this evening. But, if you aren't in Utah you will have to cause your own celebration. Tomorrow is Uncle Raym's birthday. He just missed having the governor give him his birthday off every year. Too bad Raymie.

My great grandmother was the last living Mormon pioneer to cross the plains to Utah in a covered wagon. The next season the train tracks ran through from St. Louis into Utah. (Remember that Golden Spike?) The summer that she was 100 years old and I was 4 she dressed up and rode in a covered wagon in the parade. I was too little to remember it, but I was still impressed.

My mother's cousin spoke in the Tabernacle on Pioneer Day in 1947--the Centennial Year for the settlement of Utah. His talk was called "To Them of the Last Wagon". (listen to original broadcast: http://www.mormontimes.com/ME_index.php?id=1545

I wasn't born yet of course, but the talk was printed up into a little book and I read it many times.

So you can see that for me the Pioneers and Pioneer Day were/are very real. Tonight I baked 12 loaves of bread. If I don't eat them all tonight I will take them down to the church tomorrow evening to go with the Pioneer Day dinner in Nogales, Arizona. You don't need to be in Utah to be a Pioneer.

When I was little, growing up in Martinez, California, we always spent Pioneer Day at a park in Pacheco. We had three legged races and played horseshoes. The boys pulled handcarts around the park and we--the girls--wore bonnets made out of wallpaper samples. But best of all, under the bridge in the creek that ran through the park you could catch the biggest bullfrogs I have ever seen.

I am sure that the park, the bridge, and the bullfrogs are all long gone. But boy, were they big!!