Watch Out !!!

My parents seemed to always take vacation breaks on the spur of the moment. As I remember the vacations were more of a break from routine rather than a bona-fide planned vacation. Dad was self employed so I guess he was free to decide when he could be away from his work.

On one occasion however I remember a vacation to Salt Lake City, Utah was planned well in advance. We were going to visit my mothers brother who lived there. So we departed on schedule and made our way across Kansas, into Colorado, and then into Utah. I really don't remember much about the vehicle excursion but I do remember some of the things we did in Salt Lake City. I remember driving out to a hill-top and viewing the great salt lake from a distance. It was pretty cool to see but also very boring for a youngster of my age (about 9 years old). We visited the Mormon Tabernacle and listened to the choir sing. It was awesome. We took a tour of the place and I remember the tour guide standing at the front of the auditorium and dropping a pin on the floor. You could hear it hit the floor from any point in the room because the acoustics are architecturally perfect. I remember going up into the mountains outside of Salt Lake City to a state park for a picnic. A mean cousin of mine put me up to hiding from my mother who promptly concluded that I was lost in the wilderness and she wanted to call out the National Guard to help find me. She was convinced that I would never be heard from again. My mean cousin had hid me in the back seat of his familys car and when he saw my mother crying and panic stricken, he confessed and I was found. He was in big trouble and so was I. My mother made me promise I would never do anything like that again. At the time I thought it was funny to hide from mom and dad but I soon learned by the heat on the seat of my pants that it wasn't.

When we were driving around the streets of Salt Lake City I kept seeing a sign that read: WATCH OUT FOR PRESBYTERIANS. And since we were in the heart of Mormon country it made perfectly good sense to me to watch out for those heathen Presbyterians. I kept seeing the sign and seeing the sign. I finally asked my dad: How do you tell a Presbyterian from anyone else? He said, "What?" I asked again "how do you tell a Presbyterian from anyone else?" Well, he went into this long explanation of what he thought the theological beliefs of a Presbyterian were. He said you couldn't really tell if somebody was a Presbyterian just by looking at them; you would have to talk with them. He asked me why I wanted to know anyway. What was it that intrigued me about Presbyterians?

After many more times of seeing the sign that read: WATCH OUT FOR PRESBYTERIANS, I pointed it out to my parents. I said, see, look, there is that sign again. When my dad saw it he began to laugh and laugh and laugh and then laughed almost uncontrollably. Finally I asked him what he thought was so funny. He told me.

He told me the sign read: WATCH OUT FOR PEDESTRIANS. (Not Presbyterians).

I was thoroughly embarrassed.