COLUMN: Cache Valley a bit too ‘happy’
The reason Cache Valley is sometimes referred to has Happy Valley is not because we really are all that smiley. I think we have more than our per capita share of road rage, cranky fast food service youth and disgruntled civil servants. We seem to be happy in an “oh, whatever” sort of way. We’re not sticklers for accuracy around these parts.
Take the Fourth of July, the celebration, not the date. Sure, it is arguably the most important symbolic holiday in a nation at war, but “oh whatever” we don’t really need to celebrate it on the actual fourth of July do we? July third is close enough isn’t it? The guy who wrote the Star Spangled Banner had to stay up through the night, but we need our sleep to go to work or church the next day. I’ve also heard there are under-the-table deals with rival fireworks displays that prevent us from competing but that just sounds like too much collusion for our city government to muster.
I shouldn’t complain about the Third of July Celebration too much because it is but one of a myriad of things we are “oh whatever” about. Summer Fest is actually held in the spring and the university’s Spring Semester actually starts in January and barely extends to the briefest glimpse of Spring. Oh, whatever; it’s just a calendar cooked up by a bunch of pagans and Romans. You just know they only made that way so that the sun would rise in the right spot in that crumbling Stonehenge thing.
Who knows what’s up with Easter here. All I ever see is an aftermath of smashed eggs on Old Main Hill that one can only surmise is some pagan fertility rite. That or an annual egg salad offering to the seagull gods.
The Gardeners Market is oh-whatever named as only has a small percentage of things that come out of the garden. It must be named in honor of Rulon Gardner because I don’t think bread, batik hippie dresses and pottery are really garden items unless your interpretation is “oh whatever we all come from and return to the dirt in some sort of elemental, reincarnation composting sense. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust and all that.”
I’m often corrected that the proper name of the mountain range to the West is the Wellsville Mountains rather than the Wellsvilles even through clearly there are more than one peak. Speaking of Wellsville(s), we call Wellsville Canyon Sardine Canyon because, oh whatever, and nobody can really explain why Mantua is pronounced as if it has several extra vowels in its name.
I’m not complaining. “Oh whatever” allows you to be late, early or just flat-out wrong about almost anything at will and people will just nod and smile.
Dennis Hinkamp wants to wish everyone a Merry Christmas.