Of Moths and Miners

If Gary Kimball’s new book “Of Moths and Miners” had the customary advance praise from reviewers on its back cover, the comments might read something like this:

“Engaging and fun!”

“Kimball captures life in the ‘camp’ with wit and witlessness.”

“I learned about an era in Park City

I could never have imagined.”

Kimball is the great grandson of William Henry Kimball, who started the Kimball Brothers Stage Line that operated between Salt Lake City and Park City from 1872 to 1890. Kimball has written about his great grandfather before. He’s also the author of “Death & Dying in Old Park City,” a record of the deaths of early Parkites.

“Of Moths and Miners” is a collection of stories written for Lodestar before it became Park City Magazine. Kimball tells funny stories from his youth in the 1950s and 1960s when the “camp,” as he calls it, was as depressed as could be. “It was a time when there was a large community of winos, derelicts and old-timers who were way out of proportion in size to the rest of the community,” he explains.

Kimball’s characters become larger than life. He describes one Greek bartender this way: “Mike Sofinades had the nickname of Siderod. On steam engines, the massive steel-bars that connected the drive wheels together were known as siderods. Watching an engine build up a head of steam and start to move was like watching Mike. Slow at first, he would build up momentum until he completed the task.”

The author’s droll anecdotes are a delight. Reading his stories, you feel like you’re there, watching the hapless teenaged Kimball trying to score the stuff of maturity before the age of 21. “Emmett, can I get a pack of Phillip Morris for my brother?” asks the brash young Kimball at The Cozy, a bar of legendary reputation. “I don’t know,” the bartender replies, and then turns and shouts, “Hey Gib! Is it okay if I sell a pack of smokes for you to your little brother?”

Kimball describes a time when conniving was as quirky as it was transparent. “Pick up a dozen seven-penny nails at the lumber yard,” a friend tells Kimball over the telephone. This “secret” code meant, “Buy a dozen bottles of Seagram’s Seven at the liquor store.” Why the lumber yard? At the time, the Utah Coal and Lumber Company on Heber Avenue had the franchise for the state liquor store!

In the Park City of the 1950s, Kimball says three out of five homes were vacant. Speculators bought houses for back taxes and moved them to Salt Lake City to make money. Mines closed and ski resorts were still a vision of the future. Parkites turned to vice for sustenance.

One hundred years ago, the Reverend Henry Ward Beecher wrote to his sister, writer Harriet Beecher Stowe, “I prefer the oddest infidels to hypocritical Christians.” So it appears, does Kimball. Kimball’s rendition of the Big Sin Raid of 1955 when state and federal lawmen descended on Park City makes one feel sorry for the booze handlers, the girls and the gamblers who were arrested. The way Kimball captures Park City’s maverick characters so vividly on the page makes them appeal to the reader for their common sense, their comedy and their humanity.

Of these long-lost Park City characters, Kimball says, “It was prosperity that did ’em in.” When pressed to explain, Kimball continues. “They survived the mine closings, the boarded-up stores, the sin raids and all the hypocritical piousness from Salt Lake, but they couldn’t survive prosperity,” he proposes. “The resorts brought all the rich newcomers, and that was the death knell [for characters].”

It’s a sad fact that today’s real estate boom is making property taxes rise in Old Town. The Kimball family faces a doubled property tax bill that worries the author. Gary Kimball has self-published “Of Moths and Miners” to supplement a fixed income. He might write a cookbook next — on rhubarb — because it’s the only thing that grows like crazy here.”

Gary Kimball’s literary offering could be bitter. It could be self-righteous. It could be angry. But it’s not. This kind, humble, humorous man has put together a volume of funny, charming and incisively written stories that will keep you chuckling. It’s a slice of yesteryear that goes down beautifully, just like a piece of buttery-crusted rhubarb pie.

Writer Lola Beatlebrox is married to Zafod, the owner of the Music Taxi, the mobile performance venue that continues Park City’s traditions of revelry and irreverence every night of the ski season.