Where the Deer and the Antelope Play

Ah ha! Dad identified the mutant deer for me! It turns out that they are not mutant deer after all--they are antelope. I should have known that but I didn't even think of antelope. They're cute little guys. Dad solved the mutant deer mystery!

Today was an interesting day at work. As I have mentioned before, my latest assignment is to create some wayside exhibit signs to be placed in front of Stagecoach Inn and the old Fairfield schoolhouse. So today I gave my drafts of the signs to Mark, but he had mixed feelings about them. He said he liked them, but he was acting kind of strange. He was questioning all of my dates and some of the information I put on the signs. For example, on the school sign it said that the state of Utah acquired the building in 1977. He said, "I'm almost positive that it wasn't until 1987." So I had to pull out the newspaper article from 1977 entitled "Utah Accepts Gift of Fairfield Schoolhouse." Then, on one of the photos of the inn, I had the date listed as 1961 and he said, "That photo is actually from 1964--I'm almost sure of it." So, I had to dig through the photos to find it, and written on the photo was "August 1961." It was weird--it was like he didn't trust anything I had written! The weirdest part was when he questioned what I had written about the Fairfield school closing in 1939. I had several references to said closing date--including newspaper articles, etc. He said, "I have always understood that it closed in 1937." I asked him where he got that date, and he pulled out an old binder that had a survey in it that said the school closed in "circa 1937" (circa meaning "sometime in the neighborhood of"). And it didn't have a reference for where 1937 came from. Hmmmm, it seemed pretty darn clear to me that 1939 was the correct date, but he still made me spend the afternoon looking for other sources to back up my findings.

Later in the afternoon he said, "Are you absolutely positive that Mark Twain never wrote about the inn?" I said, "Yes, Mark. I have read through everything he wrote about his trip through here, and he did not mention it."

Speaking of the inn, I had titled the sign: "Stagecoach Inn ~ Carson House" because these days it is known as Stagecoach Inn, but back in the day it was called the Carson House, Carson Inn, Carson's Hotel, and the John Carson House. Of course it wasn't called Stagecoach Inn back then because that would be like calling a hotel today "Car Hotel"--and that's a lame name. As Mark was reading through my text, he said, "Why do you keep calling it Carson's Inn when we need to be consistent and just call it Stagecoach Inn?" I said, "I referred to it as Carson's Inn because that's what they called it in all of the historical writings." He gave me kind of a blank stare, then he said, "Then when did they start calling it Stagecoach Inn?" I said, "I don't know; probably when the state acquired it." Then he was all distraught because he wanted to be historically accurate and call it Carson's Inn, but he thought people would be confused if it was referred to by different names. He was quite upset and was wondering if we would need to change the official name of the park from Camp Floyd/Stagecoach Inn State Park to Camp Floyd/Carson Inn State Park. (But that would cost the state a lot of money to do, so that would be a bad idea.)

Anyway, he seemed kind of mad that I had discovered that the inn wasn't always called "Stagecoach Inn." Basically, what Mark wanted me to tell him all along was, "Hey Mark! I found a page from Mark Twain's journal where he says: 'Tonight we stopped at Stagecoach Inn in Fairfield, Utah Territory, and I enjoyed one of the most pleasant evenings of my life.'" But said page does not exist--and that's not my fault! I was very confused today because Mark is more than happy to go along with the legend that Mark Twain stayed at the inn--which has no historical proof, but then when I was presenting him with the facts today, he demanded proof of everything I had said and seemed upset when I could prove the validity of my facts.

So, in the end, he made me go clean the bathrooms :-( That was nasty.