Jim Weaver - A Good Guy

Jim Weaver passed away last month, almost 90 years young, and I went to his funeral.  It was a full house at St Mary’s and a who’s who of old time Park City people, possibly with some old miners and big landowners, natives, and interlopers.  

Jim was born in a small house above Main Street in 1932 and lived there his entire life, except for a stint in the Navy and a few fishing trips in the Uintas.  He worked his early years in the mines at many jobs and shifts and eventually for G.E. for many years. He was the silent Sacristan at St Mary’s for countless years, shoveling more snow than god.  He was a fixture up on Main Street and a pillar in this community.  He was a good guy.

I attended the entire funeral Mass for Jim because he used to bust me for trying to leave church early, back in the day, and would say it was ‘amateur hour’ whenever I did attend.  He would stand away from me, off to the side, holding an imaginary lightning rod, ‘just in case’.  

I liked sitting there at the funeral in the warm February sun looking up at the snow and terrain in White Pine Canyon as his son Clint told a story of Jim getting stuck up there one winter and having to walk home in the dark, uphill, both ways.  It was a long way to Main Street back then and White Pine was the wilderness.

I imagined the Park City that Jim grew up in and told us about while drinking beer with him next door to his house on Peter Marth’s porch above Main Street.  Jim’s aunt and cousins originally lived in Peter’s house, so it was a family affair for them up there for many years.  They visited the old homestead last year and cried when Peter invited them inside for a nostalgic look around.

 I could imagine him walking past the Egyptian Theatre, China Bridge or the Cat houses in Swede alley on his way home from school, or skinny dipping or fishing in the lakes above Gaurdsman’s pass.  He loved to fish and he knew all the names of Uinta lakes and he knew Utah water and who the big irrigators were.  He also loved Utah, BYU and Notre Dame Football and loved to talk about those team’s past and futures.

I imagined how much change Jim had seen in Park City, being born in the second or third Silver Mining boom, only to have silver devalued and the boom turn to bust once again.  Growing up here with barely dependable water or electricity or heat when the town stopped at Squatters Brew Pub and the ride to SLC was an adventure.  Jim said they would only send snow plows up from Salt Lake or the County once a week back then and it piled up higher than a man on a horse.  There was limited skiing in Deer Valley but it was not with Epic Passes or epicurean delights.  There were times when the town was listed in the Ghost Towns of the West and things got pretty bleak. 

But Jim was a sticker and he stayed here to raise his family.  Things started to turn in the 60’s with the new ski resort and the hippies moved in and did battle with the miners for a few years before a truce was reached.  Jim was conservative but loved the new people and he laughed at the hippies and the skiers in their funny clothes.  In the 70s and 80s the yuppies came and started Park West, Deer Valley and bigger development.  The 90s brought the millionaires and 02 brought the Olympics.  Jim welcomed them all with open arms.  By the 10s and 20s the billionaires were pushing out the millionaires but Jim kept his simple house on top of Main Street and watched it all go down, reserving judgement with fascination and humor, enjoying the changes and the new people as they came.

Jim was a good example for us all; to step back and away from our historical, personal perspective and appreciate this place and its people for what it is.    We do what we can to keep it good but welcome new people with different ideas on how to make it great.  Who knows who is right and wrong, the unintended consequences of our decisions or how things will work out in 90 years.  Someone asked me recently, ‘how long have you lived here’, and my reply was, ‘who cares’.  Jim didn’t and that’s what made him unique.  He was a good guy.

Evolution

We saw some great advertisements during the Beijing Olympics and there was one that showed 2000 people on one slope that made us laugh.  We said that Vail must be working in China.  Then we thought ‘OMG what if Vail does go to China’.  They could sell 100 million Epic Passes and all those people would come here for Christmas.  Then we would be in real trouble. 

Seriously, I must admit that I had been skiing a few times this year and it was fun as hell.  Of course, it was early on Tuesday and Thursdays, it was cloudy and below zero, and we went up at 800 AM for parking and coffee first.  We went over to the Old Mountain at Park Worst (Canyons) and skied the Ironhorse chair (Condor).  Stampede and Ambush (Aplandez and Boa) were rolled to perfection and empty, so we skied non-stop runs, doing a million turns or no turns at all, and it was a blast.    

With all our negative bitching and moaning lately, about traffic, parking, crowds, grooming and run closures, we forget how much fun skiing is; going fast with family and friends in the forest and bright blue sunshine with pine scented fresh air all around and a mama moose and calf watching us from the bushes.  It is an incredibly indulgent, elite activity but there are worse things to do and I believe it can help make us better people.  I took my dog Eva for a loop in the Snyderville Meadow to check out the great new ski track on the Osguthorpe’s farm (no dogs) and the County’s Willow Creek pond hockey rink, and to look up to the mountains to remember why we live here.

It reminded me of the 70s, when they invented Earth Day and we all became Environmentalists.  That seemed safe since everyone is really an environmentalist at heart and no one really wants to wreck the planet.  Some people took Environmentalism too far by burning and blowing up things, so we were all mislabeled Radical Environmentalist and it became a negative thing.  So we rebranded and we all embraced Sustainability.  That was safe since no one wants to be Un-sustainable, but every University created a Sustainability Major and every corporation created a Sustainability Department (right next to the Social Media and Data Networking Departments), and Sustainability became a sordid punch line.

Then we introduced the concept of Resilience that indicated a willingness to accept responsibility and adapt to some of the problems we have created.  That was fine until we were then expected to ‘meet you halfway’ and everything from the environment to health care became a political negotiation, a risk assessment.  So now we are finally in the age of Discontinuity, where the future looks nothing like the past and we are expected to change our perspective and expectations.  We are now having a 100 year storm every year, for example, or there are suddenly 2000 people skiing sideways on the same slope with you.  Your perspective on how it used to be doesn’t really matter to anyone but you.

Park City Still Doesn’t Suck, as the bumper sticker says.  It is not what it was, but it is still great.  Maybe we have to be smarter and zig when they zag, or just avoid the Resorts at 1000 AM and the Junctions or liquor stores at 500 PM. We are smart enough to adapt, improvise, accept, and evolve.  Maybe our new word should be Evolution.  It is natural and it is what most species do to improve.  Or else we should find someplace else to over-hunt and over-graze, over-ski and over-develop.  The choice is ours.  Should I stay or Should I go.  Evolve or move on.

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