LAS VEGAS TO ST GEORGE - In Nevada, even gas stations have slot machines; in Utah, it’s as though the apocalypse has already occurred
Daphne Bramham, Vancouver Sun, Saturday, December 02, 2006
Some countries come with travellers’ warnings: Expect culture shock. There should be one for people travelling the route from Las Vegas to southern Utah, a drive that might be called From Sodom and Gomorrah to Purgatory and Beyond.
The name suggests itself because it follows the route Warren Jeffs, the prophet of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, took on his last trip.
Jeffs, who was also one of the FBI’s 10 Most Wanted, was arrested on a hot night in August with the lights of Las Vegas shimmering in the rearview mirror of his red Cadillac Escalade.
He was heading north to where he is now imprisoned at the Purgatory Correctional Center near St. George, Utah, awaiting trial on two charges of rape as an accomplice in that state and six counts of sexual conduct with a minor and conspiracy to commit sexual conduct with a minor in Arizona.
The polygamous prophet’s journey spans the yin and yang of modern America from hedonism and schlocky materialism to conservative theocracy.
When you’re flying into Las Vegas, one of the first views is of a black pyramid and sphinx. Inside the terminal, there are flashing, clanging rows of slot machines, the silent scream of posters advertising the Thunder from Down Under (male strippers from Australia), magicians, Celine Dion and the strangely blaring strains of one of Vivaldi’s four seasons.
I don’t know whether Jeffs, the polygamous prophet, stopped to go to a show or to gamble. But that wasn’t my plan.
On the way toward Interstate 15, there’s a two-storey lion, a massive replica of the Statue of Liberty and a larger-than-life version of the Disneyland castle, which itself is a cartoonish take on Neuschwannstein in Bavaria.
Saturday night in the last-chance gambling town of Mesquite, Nev., at a garishly lit casino-hotel, scarcely a slot machine didn’t have someone hunched over it smoking and drinking beer or watered-down cocktails.
Too many had oxygen tanks beside them. They punched away without seeming to notice whether they were winning or losing. When gamblers weren’t stuffing tickets into slots, they were grazing the buffet or gorging on gargantuan portions of prime rib.
The going rate for a hotel room is $29 a night to service gamblers who lack the funds or fortitude to drive the 90 minutes to Vegas.
There’s a "family-friendly" casino with a movie theatre, bowling alley and a kids’ arcade to get them primed for graduating to the real thing. But this is Nevada, where even gas stations have slot machines, right next to the beer.
Yet here on the edge, Utah’s influence bleeds in. Wal-Mart sells liquor, but it has a whole section of DVDs and CDs bearing the LDS seal of approval. LDS is what Mormons prefer to be called. It’s an abbreviation of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
But outside Mesquite, as you’re driving across the desert and through spectacular Virgin River Gorge, it’s easy to conjure images from old westerns of good guys and bad guys, whose states of grace were apparent by the colour of their hats. Following a modern prophet, I also couldn’t help but think of the biblical one who wandered 40 days and nights before hearing God’s voice.
It’s no wonder Mormons feel at home here. The LDS dominates the state’s culture and society, just as the white temple seems to glisten as you approach St. George.
It is the oldest temple in Utah, predating Salt Lake City’s by more than 20 years.
At the temple visitors’ centre, a young Japanese missionary shows me photos of the interior. If I were a Saint, I could see the real thing, but I’m not.
She points out a genealogic chart linking Winston Churchill, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford and George W. Bush to Joseph Smith, the church’s founder. The message? We are all one, linked to God through the Saints. Even Jews. Posthumously baptizing Holocaust victims has landed the LDS in some very hot water.
After the noise and bustle of Nevada, St. George feels abandoned. Brigham Young, who led the Mormons out of Illinois, spent his summers here on the cusp of the Grand Canyon. When the cities were being built, Young decreed that streets should be wide enough for a man to turn his oxcart. So main streets are wide, too wide to feel comfortable on.
It’s as if the apocalypse has occurred, the Saints have been lifted up and only we few gentiles and apostates remain.
It’s common here for strangers to ask if you’re LDS. I embraced the practice, doing it defensively to prevent offence. But waitresses seem to know that I’m not one and bring me coffee unbidden at breakfast. Caffeine isn’t part of the Mormon diet, nor is alcohol. "Jack Mormons" like Eddie, the truck driver, do indulge. Strangely, he apologized to me for imbibing vodka and orange juice in the hotel bar. But state law induces guilt. To serve liquor, the bar is a private club that sells $4 temporary memberships to passersby.
Unlike the bountiful buffets in Nevada, Mormons stockpile food in preparation for the end of world. Both the state and the church have the beehive as their symbol.
At Deseret Books, there are Mormon action figures, but nothing about polygamy. It’s been part of Mormon doctrine since the 1840s, although it was banned in 1890.
Warren Jeffs’s ancestors and others broke with the mainstream church over that. Over the years, they have distilled the beliefs into a tyrannical form of fundamentalism. The arranged marriages of under-age girls has put Jeffs in Purgatory as he awaits his earthly trial.
No current cultural references can prepare you for this slice of the American heartland. CSI or Las Vegas don’t begin to portray Nevada any more than Big Love provides any useful insight into ordinary Utahns.
Yet no other two states more vividly illustrate what French philosopher Alexis de Toqueville described as Americans’ warring desires for individuality and religion.
They crystallize what de Toqueville warned of. Too much individuality can lead to decadent, libertine materialism, while too much religion can lead to zealotry and fanaticism.
dbramham@png.canwest.com
© The Vancouver Sun 2006
