By Jeff Barrus
EDITOR
When I heard the Handy Corner in Grantsville was becoming a Circle K last week, I couldn't help but feel a bit sad. Then I had another think about it. Did I care if a Circle K-style convenience store actually became a Circle K? Not in the least. What I was missing was the old cinderblock Handy Corner where my grandma used to send me with a dollar to buy candy when I was a kid. And what I really missed, if I dug a bit deeper, was not the tiny, dark store itself, but the independence of being allowed to walk in a place of business at my tender age, plop my money on the counter and walk out with a meticulously calculated 100 cents worth of candy.
That's the problem with nostalgia. It hovers out there like a mirage on the desert, and if you don't have a second think about it to remind yourself it's a trick of light, you will start to get thirsty.
These days, I often hear people wistfully recall the golden days when Tooele Valley was largely fields and vast tracts of empty land. Some longtime residents talk about moving out to Vernon or Callao to escape the crowds. I don't want to discount those sentiments, and admittedly my memory of the valley only goes back some 30 odd years, but I too remember a time when it was more empty than full -- and it wasn't all that great.
I spent a lot of time in Grantsville as a child, but my family didn't move there for good until 1983. Even then, the mental geography of the valley was very different from what it is today. There was no Wal-Mart or Home Depot, and Tooele might as well have been Stockholm for how often we went there. Most people I knew worked locally, commuters were rare, and an excursion to Salt Lake City was still an event. By and large, you were locked into your place.
Then, as now, Grantsville had no swimming pool, movie theater, public rec center or place for kids to gather besides the inside of a convenience store. My friends and I tried to stay out of trouble by playing basketball day and night, or tried to find trouble by dragging Main. Sometimes we just shuffled around the town waiting for something to happen and hoping we would be there when it did. Few of us with even modest ambitions could imagine a life for ourselves in Tooele County after high school.
When I returned to the valley after about 19 years away, I felt a bit like Rip Van Winkle. Most people remember the classic short story by Washington Irving in which Rip drinks some grog and wakes up 20 years later to find his world changed. But what many people forget is how happy Rip feels upon returning to a world that is, to his mind, better than he left it.
There's diversity in the valley now. People from all over the world want to live here. Your doctor might be Armenian, your dentist Vietnamese. The possibility of those friendships alone is a terrific enrichment to life. Also, the shopping's better and more convenient. Say what you will about the big-boxers in our back yard, but I don't miss coming back from Salt Lake like Marco Polo returning from China, stocked up on locally scarce goods and hoping you didn't forget anything. The food, too, is better. Casa Del Rey has been a godsend to the people of Grantsville. You can get a great steak at Applebee's, homemade tacos to go from Zacatecas Market, even tofu with Penang curry at the Thai House. There are good gyms to join in Tooele, Grantsville and Stansbury Park. First-run films play at the multiplex in Tooele. High school kids participate in soccer, water polo and golf. Deseret Peak has one of the best swimming pools anywhere. There's even free live entertainment at Veterans Memorial Park during the summer.
None of this existed when I was a teenager. So, although like most people I'm worried about the pace and course of development in the valley, you won't hear me pining for the good old days when it was mostly empty. I'm happy to be living here in dynamic times. It sure beats shuffling around town, waiting for something to happen.
jbarrus@tooeletranscript.com