I Believe in Stories
by Christine Frazier

The question was the typical icebreaker. Who from the past would I ask over for dinner and conversation? 

My answer came quickly. 

I would invite Utah women who could tell me about everyday life in extraordinary times. I believe their stories would be more fascinating than those told by women carrying more famous names. I want to hear them.

I would go far back to the time of the Anasazi, barring language barriers. I would invite an African American pioneer and a cowgirl from Brown's Hole during the days of Butch Cassidy.

Women like Susanna Bransford, Martha Hughes Cannon, and Juanita Brooks led lives history records. But I want to hear from women who lived an earnest life despite the odds and never got much attention for doing so. They would add a dimension, a depth, the stories written on pages can't begin to tell. 

Most of the time, their stories aren't told at all.

The Anasazi comes from my love of the central Utah desert. 

Not too long ago my husband and I visited the Buckhorn Wash, which cuts into the center of the San Rafael Swell. While on our way to the River we stopped to hike up a sandstone ridge that led to several granaries. A cave, blackened inside from I imagine centuries of smoke and fire, was tucked in close by. I want to sit in that cave alongside a woman who was there 2,000 years ago. 

Oh, the questions I could ask.

  How many hours a day do you spend grinding corn for meals? 

  The pottery, it's beautiful. Is that a family design?

  Can you tell me about the images, we call petroglyphs, pecked into the rock wall? 

I believe her stories would tell me about a past so little recorded.

I also want to talk to an African American pioneer because not many of these stories are found in the Western books I've read. I want to know how Martha Crosby raised livestock, garden vegetables, and fruit on land in south Salt Lake Valley, just like it says on a web site about Utah's early African American farmers. 

  What is it like to be an African American living among the early Mormons?

  Who are your friends?

  Where do your children play?

I believe her stories would tell me about a past not talked about.

I'd ask the cowgirl about her wild days among the outlaws.

  Did she ever visit Robbers' Roost?

  Was Butch Cassidy the gentleman Paul Newman portrayed?

  Do you think Butch made it back from Bolivia?

Homesteading is equally fascinating.

  How do you survive?

I believe her stories would lend some truth about a past Hollywood made celluloid.

These are the stories I want to hear. These are the type of people I want at my dinner table, or to join them at theirs. I believe that in hearing their stories I will learn more about my own.

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