The Fork (as my friend Ms. Geekins would say)

I once wrote:

I’m obsessed with lists these days (my professors Dr. Huntsman and Sister Peay would be proud). It seems like everything I write about is in some form of list or another. Today will be no exception. If you’re absolutely opposed to lists, feel free to pick up this document from my secretary S. Eliason in paragraph form anytime during normal working hours.

Today I would like to write about that great city Spanish Fork. For those of you who don’t know, I went to junior high and high school in Spanish Fork so it holds a tender spot in my heart. However, you should know that the following list does not, I repeat DOES NOT, apply to my hometown Salem. They are very different (and thankfully so) So, without further ado, these are four things (in honor of my high school English teacher whose favorite number was four) you should know about Spanish Fork—

1. In order to live in Spanish Fork, you must, absolutely must, own a truck. Really. I’m not kidding. In fact, in city ordinance III, article 2, it states:

Whereas a truck is absolutely indispensable to the formation of a healthy and vigorous community life style and

Whereas if you do not own a truck you cannot go hunting,

Be it hereby resolved that no person may purchase a house within the city limits of this community without prior having purchased a truck of respectable quality and performance.*

*I should note however that the city council has made an exception. It is that if a truck can’t be afforded, a four wheeler may be substituted until sufficient funds can be secured (kind of like that whole swapping a pigeon for a dove thing in the Old Testament).

2. Life in Spanish Fork revolves around baseball/softball. Yep, if you don’t play baseball/softball, you’re not really a person, more like half a person. As I think back on my high school experience, I think there was one person who hadn’t played on a baseball/softball team growing up and he was the foreign exchange student from Russia (parenthetically, if you want to know my personal opinion as to it’s popularity, I think it’s because in baseball the players are allowed to chew tobacco, which is actually, according to the official Spanish Fork High School curriculum, one of the five major food groups).

3. If you go to Spanish Fork and say “we were,” they probably won’t understand you. It’s “we was.” Along those same lines, it’s not “we saw,” it’s “we seen.” It’s not “hunting,” it’s “hu’en.” It’s not “mountains,” it’s “mou’ens.” For example, a regular sentence in any normal elder’s quorum lesson might run as follows, “We was in the mou’ens hu’en and we seen a four point” (we’ll talk about the point system maybe at another time). So just watch out for that, and don’t try to correct them because that will probably confuse them even more (really, it will).

4. And finally, never, ever underestimate the spiritual intensity of the intellectually disinterested. But you still probably shouldn’t expect them to make it out to church during hunting season, boating season, and the Super Bowl.