Ah, Gee, Ain't It Grand?

The summers of 1966 and 1967, I worked at the North Rim of the Grand Canyon. When conversing with Limes through comments, I mentioned that these were some of the best times of my life. She said she wanted to hear more about this. It got me digging around in my dusty photo box and mind.

The first summer I was hired as a cabin maid for the astounding sum of $.74 an hour - plus tips. Oh, and we got dorm rooms and food too. The second summer I worked as a waittress in the dining room and the Soda Fountain. One of the famous people I served was Gregory Peck.  I have to admit that the memories all merge together in my head as to what happened which summer, but these are the highlights:

Water fights between the boys and girls dorms -

outings to the other resorts and Las Vegas -

singing the tour buses away - we all had to be moderately talented as one of the requirements was to put on shows at night for the guests - (is it starting to remind you of Dirty Dancing?) one of my numbers was "I'm The Greatest Star" from Funny Girl -

hanging out with crazy roommates who couldn't decide if we should go smoke with the wild girl from Omaha, or go door to door teaching from the scriptures which were sometimes tucked neatly under our arms -

We all tried to form summer romances -

One of the strangest experiences of my teen-age life occured when these two men rode up to the lodge mid-season in a car that looked something like this:

Hank and Joe were hired as cooks and they worked hard and mostly kept to themselves. Joe was a little friendlier than Hank and I used to hang out with him on breaks and watch him smoke his Camel cigarettes. He was roguishly intriguing, especially to a naive girl from Salt Lake City. When he mentioned he might be selling his Chevrolet, my ears stood up. I was already fascinated by funky old things and this certainly was that. I agreed to go on a test drive after work.

My roommates thought I was crazy, but I really wanted that car so I drove all around the canyon with him. The interior of the car was shredded and there was a big hole in the floor. We joked that I could put my foot through it and scoot along to increase speed. After we got back to the dorms, I told Joe I couldn't buy his car. During the drive, I had become vaguely disturbed about something I couldn't put my finger on. Perhaps it was the smokey smell in the car and all my Sunday School warnings. I was also nervous about spending my hard-earned tip money.

Shortly after this, Hank and Joe left suddenly in the middle of the night and two weeks later, someone read in the paper that Hank had murdered Joe with a shotgun after a drunken fight.