♫Salt of the Earth, Straight from the Bosom of the Mormon Church...♫

[captainsblog]

I was supposed to meet a new client last week, which I think is now going to happen tomorrow.  The who's not relevant to this discussion (not to mention being confidential and all); it's the where that's of interest.

At first blush, Palmyra is no different than any of a dozen other canal towns in the economic doldrums of Upstate New York. East and West Main streets meet at the crossing of a major north-south state arterial. Shadows of a once-prosperous downtown still lurk, with the long-lost pillars of manufacturing and retail now taken over by government offices and the oddly out-of-place Happy Yummy Chinese restaurant.  There's a bank or two, a VFW Hall, and probably a dollar store somewhere along the storefronts- most of the real economic action having moved to the Wal-Mart out in the strip plaza three miles outside the village. Yep, totally indistinguishable from any of the others, except for the major world religion that got founded there 180-odd years ago. THAT has resulted in a small shop on the East Main Street side with publications and such, and a much bigger and world-class Visitor Center at the site of Smith's discovery in the dirt of Hill Cumorah, all those years ago.

The other thing making it different, for me at least, is how Kevin Baconesque the place gets. My last trip out there, to meet with another client, was in late August. She was a referral from a Rochester lawyer friend of mine; nothing unusual there. But when she gave me the address, I had to laugh. She's in a building owned by another client of that lawyer who I've also worked with (which neither I nor even he knew before I went out there), and it's one formerly owned by yet another, in this case former, client of mine.  All of whom the new client knew or knows.

If this keeps up, I may just have to rent a satellite office out there to meet the demand. It might also give me the chance to pre-plan the dream LDS Weekend I was actually almost able to pull off this past July: of seeing the Hill Cumorah Pageant outside Palmyra, and The Book of Mormon on Broadway, within two days of each other.  And I'd better act fast, because after 2012, there's a good chance that President Romney will shut the latter right down:P

Least I know where the place is, from years of drive-bys on the 90. Late in his life, my late sister's husband didn't do so well. He'd gotten stuck in Salt Lake City on a business trip and, with not much else to do there, wound up using the (quite excellent) LDS genealogy records that are open to visitors. Needless to say, he got schmoozed by the white-starched-shirt crew and, while never converting to the faith, did take enough interest in it to want to check out Hill Cumorah when he got back home to Long Island. Imagine my other sister's confusion (she lives near Binghamton, well over two hours to the south and east of the spot) when she got a call from Jean-Pierre, trying to figure out how he'd managed to get so lost. Asked where he was, he replied, "Oh, I am not far from you!"

He'd driven to ELmira.

Comments

[firynze.livejournal.com]

Well, while he was there, he could at least pick up a nice purple beanie from the college?

[captainsblog.livejournal.com]

Or at least take a dump in the Mark Twain National Historic Outhouse.

[angledge.livejournal.com]

Do you really think we're going to have President Romney?

[captainsblog.livejournal.com]

If someone offered me an even bet of him versus Obama, and winning, as opposed to Obama versus any of the Really Crazy People (pretty much, the rest of the current field), with no guarantee of who'd win?

I'd think long and hard before deciding how to play that one.

[mayiwrite.livejournal.com]

This made me smile. I'm not entirely sure why. ;)

[captainsblog.livejournal.com]

Well, I was thinking of you pretty much the whole time through the stake/ward/whateveryacallit.

But only a little;)