COLUMN: Old Main festivities allow Easter mysteries
Flying saucers? Big Foot? Weapons of Mass Destruction? All these mysteries pale in comparison to the Old Main Hill Easter seagull food fight that happens every year right here in the thick, chewy air of Cache Valley.
Just because there hasn’t been a mini-series or Weekly World News cover story on it doesn’t mean the people who take part aren’t wackier than a piñata. Something weird is going on up on that hill and it is more shocking than someone flushing the toilet while you’re in the shower.
But, don’t take my word for it, pack a picnic basket with some pink hard-boiled eggs and check it out for yourself. Try to blend in and don’t make direct eye contact with anyone. Zombies hate tourists.
Every Easter weekend otherwise normal people are drawn to this site like the undead in the Dawn of the Dead to perform an arcane ritual, the significance of which has yet to be reasonably explained. Even the natives who have lived in the valley long enough to know the meaning of “water rights” draw a blank. Esteemed local historian and Mark Hoffman mentor A.J. Simmons took the secret to his grave. Others have refused to speak even “off the record.”
This is the scenario. Hundreds of revelers take their baskets of festive eggs and fling them down the hill as their festively dressed children chase them in festive chaos. The operative word here is “fling.” This is not an Easter Egg “roll,” it is not the White House lawn and it is not sanctioned by the Pope or any other religious governing body. The eggshells, of course, burst as they tumble down hell hill. Parents, of course, tell their children not to eat food off the ground. So, of course, pretty soon the place starts to look like an egg salad sandwich without the bread. By Sunday evening, it gets really weird.
Like some sort of Stephen King version of “The Swallows‚” “Return to Capistrano,” this ritual attracts a flock of Utah’s garbage-gulping state birds preordained to eat the aftermath of the hard-boiled egg huck-fest. The ignoble seagulls, never adverse to a free meal, start swooping, diving and squawking their way through the debris for the next three days.
As an amateur bird dietitian, I used to worry about their cholesterol intake, but nowadays I guess you could just conclude that they are eating an Atkins-approved snack. By midweek all evidence of this insane ritual is gone like campaign promises are in December. The seagulls fly back to their landfills and Mormon cricket buffets for another year and the valley settles in for another sleepy summer.
Dennis Hinkamp’s column appears every Friday. Comments can be sent to dhinkamp@msn.com.