Saturday, October 1, 2022

[New post] Antimony, etc.

Antimony, etc.

walnutshademom

Oct 1

September 12, 2022, our 35th anniversary (in our 2nd Otter Creek site) - Day #14

Scott made us a delicious breakfast of hash browns, sausage, eggs, and cheese on the Blackstone. Then we donned hoodies against the cool wind and biked the 3.5 miles to Antimony to mail my postcards and buy some international stamps.

The Antimony, Utah post office is open 8:00-11:00 AM, Monday through Friday, and our experience there was just wonderful and really unforgettable.

**Big things come in small ~~packages~~ post offices**

For one thing, there's a community give-and-take produce shelf out front, and that day it sported three zucchini, one substantial enough to inflict bodily harm.

Inside, "Judy," a 70-something, very short (I could see only her head above the counter!), cane-wielding, fall-prone ("I topple easily") widow with a decidedly spunky attitude dropped my postcards into her outgoing bin, but when I pulled out my credit card to pay for six international stamps, she told me they only take cash or checks. Well, I only had $4.00 cash, and Scott's wallet containing our full cash stash was back at the camper. I had brought some checks from home on the trip, but they were back at the camper too, so I had to settle for three international stamps.

Judy seemed like such an interesting lady, and I do love a small town post office, so I tried to get her talking. She was a bit hesitant, but once she opened up, my, how the history of her 25 years in Antimony did flow!

She and her husband had sold a business in California and moved here after having vacationed in the area previously. She fell in love with the town, looked for land one day while her husband was out hunting, saw a property, put $2,000.00 down on it, and when her husband got back that night told him what she'd done. Spunky indeed. He liked the property too, so they bought it and put a double-wide on it. He passed away a few years ago, and she still lives there today.

Through the years, she'd worked at nearly every little business in town before becoming postmaster some fifteen years ago. She told us how nice everybody is and how they all take good care of her, even though she's not LDS. She told us who lives where and what they're like and all kinds of interesting details. When we asked if we could take her picture, she flatly refused ("Absolutely not. I take terrible pictures."), but eventually relented when Scott said he wanted a picture of the two of us. She opened the side door of the PO and let me into the inner sanctum for this two-shot.

Since we three were now standing around chit-chatting about all kinds of things while a few locals came in to pick up their mail—I think there were less than 100 PO boxes—and since our clean underwear supply was dwindling, Scott asked Judy if there was a laundromat anywhere nearby. We knew there was one in Richfield (of O'Reilly's in the night fame), but that was an hour away. Judy said, "Well, over behind The Merc [the "Antimony Mercantile," a small restaurant/store which is the main gathering point and business in town] is the RV park, and on the right side of the building there's a small laundromat for the guests. It has a couple machines and when mine broke down last year, I used them and they did fine. If you go over to The Merc and tell Ashley that Judy sent you, she'll let you use those machines.'

Gotta love small town friendliness!

Scott's next question was whether there was any place in town with wifi.

"Sure, we have wifi," Judy replied. "OK, I'll tell you what to do. Right over there [pointing] you turn and go up that street to the third house from the end. It's green… no, that's wrong. It's white with green trim, and there's chickens. You'll see it. The yard needs mowing, but never mind that. Then you put in [a password she gave us] and you'll get online. It works great and you can do whatever you need." It took me a minute to realize that she'd just given us directions to her own house and told us her own wifi password! Scott asked if it was upper or lower case. "Hell, I don't know. Try it either way."

We thanked Judy profusely, cycled uphill to the third house from the end, stood in her mostly gravel "yard," got online, took care of a few things, and rode back down to The Merc. We went around the side of the building and, sure enough, found the tiniest, grimiest, seediest laundry room ever. Walked back around to the front door of The Merc proper, went in and told Ashley (sitting at a table talking with a friend) that we were camped at Otter Creek State Park and needed to do laundry and that Judy at the post office had told us that she might allow us to use The Merc's laundromat, even though we weren't staying at the campground. "Oh, sure. It's right around the side. It's not just for the campground; it's for the community." Amazing.

We rode home and drove back with laundry and computers. Turns out The Merc has free wifi too, so while the wash washed, we sat out back at picnic tables under a pavilion and did some online stuff. In appreciation for the use of their laundromat and wifi, we bought a very pricey but huge and absolutely wonderful lunch there—chicken bacon ranch quesadillas for me; Philly cheesesteak sandwich and fries for Scott—while the dryers tumbled on.

I later looked up Antimony and learned that the town (unincorporated) was named for the metallic element that was discovered there in 1880 and mined in quantity during WWI. Antimony's population peaked in 2014 at 141, but by 2020 was down to 89.

I will always have fond memories of our time there on our anniversary, and especially of its spunky postmaster, Judy. = ) Oh, I almost forgot: In addition to its produce stand, the Antimony post office also has a "library" (book exchange) in the lobby that is currently overflowing its shelves. It was initially set up as "take one, leave one," but Judy urged us to PLEASE take as many as we could carry. Ah, so many books, so little time. With great self-discipline, since we had places to go and things to see and do, I resisted with a sigh and a smile.

Back at our campground, it was tuttish and super windy, so we raced to get our canopy down before it blew away. But then the storm bypassed us.

Scott drove back to Antimony to get online at The Merc and look for a YouTube video about how to get the DVD out, but he did not find one. = {

We played a game of Dominion for the first time in over a year and really enjoyed it. We had fun biking around the Otter Creek campground in between multiple storm threats that produced only smatterings of rain. For supper we had soup and my leftover quesadillas from The Merc, of which I'd only been able to eat a third at lunch. Their portions were huge.

We played more Dominion that evening but made one terrible mistake: In order to enjoy the wonderful breeze off the lake, we had the solid camper door open with the screen door closed.

Lesson #11: When camping near impounded water, failure to keep BOTH your camper doors tightly closed from dusk to dawn will create an indoor plague of biblical proportions. Little-known fact: Gnats are smaller than screen door gauge.

All you know what broke loose, and you cannot believe the agony we went through. First, we noticed some gnats zinging around our ceiling lights. By the time we realized we might have a problem, the ceiling lights were literally covered with gnats. As in, nearly black with gnats. Scott scrambled to slam the camper door, while I grabbed the flyswatter and went after them, but we quickly found that even well-wielded flyswatters that do indeed kill flies have absolutely no effect whatsoever on gnats. We remembered Josiah's frantic flapping and desperate exclamation years ago at Buffalo Point: "They're in my eyes, my ears, my nose, my mouth!"

We had gnats on the counter, gnats in the sink. Gnats swarmed the ceiling, gnats clung to the walls. Because both bathroom doors were both open, even the bathroom and bedroom were full of gnats.

I'd brought a can of Repel that's meant to be sprayed on skin and clothes, but we started shooting it at the light fixtures where it instantly killed thousands of the pesky creatures; whether by chemical means, physical assault, or drowning I don't know. Our intense battle raged for probably ten solid minutes, after which the living gnat population had been significantly reduced, but we were left with zillions of dead gnats to be cleaned up. All the dishes in the dish drainer and all the silverware in the little brown holder had to be re-washed. Virtually all the surfaces in the camper, both horizontal and vertical, had to be wiped down. And we still found gnats in many places that night and on into the next day.

We learned our lesson well, and we've now become adept at getting into and out of the camper VERY quickly, especially in the evenings.

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