Shawn Mullins Salt Lake City 1973
Ok Salt Lake City in 1973
Mormon's are everywhere
Battalions of bicycling bachelors
With dark suits and well cropped hair
We're Mormons too have been since '72
I'm riding between my brother and sister
In the back seat of a '67 Buick station wagon
With red vinyl seats and we stick by each other and to those seats
We've been eating cheese and bacon sandwiches
Our mother made for thirteen days straight in the August heat
And both my siblings are walkin' on those eggshells
As I soon will learn how to do myself
They play their quiet silly games with their peashooters
As I sip luke-warm Sprite from a tin can
Sold to me by a hunchback silly bastard old woman
A hundred miles back
Who is probably the only person with good sense
In this part of the country
I still don't know what to do with this
God-awful bacon and cheese sandwich
But your body is your temple God tells us so
So drink up your milk and reap what you sow
I mold the cheese and bacon sandwich into a ball in my hand
It kind of reminds me of play dough
I look around to see who is watchin'
And stuff it between the red vinyl seats no one will find it
At least not for a couple of weeks
We're in this big place now
It's kind of like one half of an blue plastic Easter eggshell
And there's a hole in the top where the sun cuts through
And lights up the room and I hear all these male voices
Telling me that black people are inferior
And it's ok to have more than one wife
And as the dry, dry breath of the Utah sun warms me
I stand before a statue of Jesus that is far too big
And has held these folks hostage for so, so long
And I gaze up at the nostrils of the sandstone savior
And wonder if it can smell all this bullshit
'Cause I sure can and I'm only 5 years old
In Salt Lake City in 1973
