This article by was originally published in the Spring 2018 Newsletter
Michael Gailey, Former Mayor of Syracuse City
A product of the 50’s my brother and I were quite literally of the Stone Age. We built with rocks. We hit rocks with slats ripped from the bottom of tomato crates. We flung them with flippers and slingshots at birds and old out-buildings; often at each other. We had no TV at first, but then an old tube-type, black and white emerged. We were at first inquisitive. But for us, it could not hold our attention compared to outdoor exploration.
We were just barely a year apart. We were both presented with new bikes in 1956. His was red. Mine was blue. That began the pattern. We were often presented with the same gift on birthdays; his always red and mine blue. On those two bicycles we explored every inch of rural Syracuse located on the western shores of the Great Salt Lake in north Davis County.
In that day, the roadways in Syracuse were little wider than car-width. We rode down the middle of the road mostly. But when challenged by an automobile, we were forced into the rutted, sometimes dangerous shoulders.
In the late 50’s we began our Cub Scout careers. Our leader, Nora Payne, lived right at the edge of what we knew as the “Salt Flats”. In the late 50’s those fats provided a pristine canvas for the explosion of boyhood imagination. Mrs. Payne lit the fuse.
We camped on those flats. We learned to cook in foil over small fires we’d ignited with flint and steel. The creation of insect and bird egg collections was a common practice in the day. My brother’s butterfly collection was priceless.
Mrs. Payne led us to Howard Slough to collect swallow eggs that we gathered as we dangled from ropes over the clay cliffs of large drainages. In the day, most boys had a bow with arrows. Mrs. Payne would brood over us as we held archery competitions to see whose bow shot the farthest, something one could never do at home. We played night games in the blackness that was Syracuse at the time. We listen to ghost stories only recorded in oral history.
What I remember most about those flats, however, was the private exploration of miles and miles of open land by two brothers on two bicycles, one red and one blue. We’d heard stories from the past about the Mormon Meteor on the other side of the Lake. For two boys on two bikes, the Syracuse salt flats became our speedway. We raced each other incessantly. When bored with speed, the rare sagebrush became a buffalo that we would lancet from atop of our red and blue trusty mounts.
I close my eyes today and can still see the imprint of my brother’s red bike on the surface salt of those flats as we weaved without obstruction or care on that shoreline. Finally realizing that we’d probably overstayed our allowance, we’d rush for home. Mom would be demanding an accounting!
My brother became my best friend on those flats. Those days’ explorations are priceless to me. Some say nothing grows on those barren, salt encrusted flats. My brother and I prove them wrong! On two bikes; one red, the other blue, we proved them wrong! Salt has always been a preservative. And so, it remains.