I’ve been asked countless times
over the last few years why I am not content to simply walk away from Pinesdale
and leave well enough alone. After all,
I am no longer religiously affiliated.
The answer is quite simple…I still care about a town I consider
mine. As a youth I thought it was the
religion of polygamy that made it all possible but I now realize it was not a
religious belief although that is undeniably part of it. Instead, what made Pinesdale special to me
was a community full of people who were committed to providing a safe
environment for children to grow and explore.
The community is currently being ripped to shreds over a religious split. That split, I would argue, is a good thing
because it is ultimately a split over the safety of the environment in which
the next generation of Pinesdale children will be raised. It certainly involves a religious and
doctrinal component but in the end the choice is not about who holds the priesthood
or about correct line of authority. The
people of Pinesdale are faced with two choices.
One choice on the surface might seem like it keeps the community
together but at the cost of ignoring sexual deviancy and honesty. This choice if followed will lead to more
behavior that is detrimental to women and children as the AUB covers up and
protects their priesthood line of authority... which is not unlike the scandals
that the Catholic Church has faced in recent years. The other choice facing the
people of Pinesdale is scary as well because it involves splitting and walking
away from generations of thought and practice.
If the newly nicknamed “3 O’Clockers” group that has emerged can focus
on safety for their children instead of building another authoritarian based
religion then just maybe there is a chance for the community to make it through
this crisis. If they can focus on
building a unique community that is accepting, loving, tolerant, and even
inviting of differing religious thought and practice then the community can
still be a place which can provide the next generation of Pineys with an
experience that will shape their future in a positive direction.
Pinesdale was the perfect setting
for me growing up. It was like living the adventures of Huck Finn and Tom
Sawyer. There were hot summer afternoons
of running through the fields, climbing trees, hiking the mountain, fishing,
swimming in the ponds and skinny dippin’ in Sheafman Creek. There was always something to do and somebody
to do it with. I don’t remember having
many toys (although my mom would probably disagree) but I had plenty to play
with. Sticks and rocks were enough to
soldier with, a spoke-less bicycle hoop or uprooted tree could entertain for
hours, and absolutely nothing beat the white-butterfly hatch each summer. We would spend all day “whackin”
butterflies. The butterflies came every
year and as kids we believed they ruined our trees and saw it as our civic duty
to organize platoons of young boys armed with badminton rackets to save our pine
trees. Summer also meant the Pioneer Day
celebrations around the 24th of July weekend. That was “Conference” weekend for the Allred
Group. Uncles, Aunts, cousins, and
friends all came up from Salt Lake for church meetings, dances, softball games,
basketball games, and a community barbeque.
I looked forward to it every year.
Summer was also the season for work projects. There was always something being built in
Pinesdale and as a natural result all the young men learned the building trades. Work projects were organized by the men while
the women would put together the noon meals.
Pot-luck community dinners were held monthly and movie night at the Blue
Building was always something to look forward to.
As summer gave way to fall, the
changing of leaves and the nip in the air meant winter was just around the
corner and there was never a better time to be alive! I couldn’t wait for the first snowfall. I would stare out the classroom windows in
anxious anticipation of that first flake floating down. Winter meant tubing in Bob Burt’s field,
ice-skating on Wissenbach’s pond, and sledding down Bud’s Hill. Hot bread and a hotter fire nearly always
greeted us after our adventures in the snow.
The melting of snow each spring meant
more fun such as flying kites in the fields, biking, horseback riding, and of
course the long awaited last day of school so that we could rush off and
re-create if not out do the magic of last summer. Time meant nothing to us and it seemed the
days would never end. Even though we
didn’t have much we had everything. As I
grew up, summer adventures gave way to summer jobs and winter meant chopping
and hauling wood, however, the magic of being a boy in Pinesdale never quite went
away. As teenagers we still found time
to hike, fish, swim, float the river and to this day I still haven’t outgrown a
good toboggan run on the wintered hills of Pinedale. As teenagers, basketball on the slab in the
summer and in the gym during the winter filled most of our free time and once
again time seemed to stand still so we wouldn’t have to grow up.
As I mature and experience life, I
now recognize the town I grew up in wasn’t exactly the way I remember it.
Looking back through adult eyes I can see a community that struggled and in
many ways is still struggling. I can see families that didn’t have enough,
failed businesses, people that didn’t always get along, teenagers that
rebelled, and families that split apart.
Pinesdale was and is a community whose members experienced stories of
triumph and disaster, love and even hate, of coming together and falling apart,
hope and tragedy. The people are genuine,
manifesting a strong work ethic, moral convictions, and flaws.
I fully realize that my experiences
are biased, idyllic, and seen through my rose colored glasses of being raised
by incredible parents with great brothers and sisters, but nonetheless that is
the way it was for me. My parents were
able to give me the safety and security that had eluded them as polygamist children
in the 1940’s and 50’s. My mom got to
experience through her children the magic of her own childhood on 13th
East before it was so callously ripped away from her family as they were forced
underground in 1955. My dad got to raise
his family without threat of police raids and prison bars. The memories of my father touching his Dad
through the prison fence and my mother waving goodbye to her father as a young
girl were finally put to rest in the hills of the Bitterroot Valley.
I moved to Pinesdale when I was
three years old and moved away to college when I was seventeen. I joined the LDS church at twenty leaving behind
the polygamist religious practices of my family but have never left the sense
of community that was Pinesdale. It’s a feeling
that runs deep in my veins and has given me my sense of place and identity. Pinesdale is my dot on the map. The smell of the pine trees and the evening shadow
of the mountain still take me back to my youth, forever frozen in time. I had the best of what Montana, a small town,
and a great family had to offer and regardless of where life takes me, I will always
be a Piney.
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