Salt Lake City 1973 Lyrics - The First Ten Years - Shawn Mullins

Ok Salt Lake City in 1973 

Mormon's are everywhere 

Battalions of bicycling bachelors 

With dark suits and well cropped hair 

We're Mormons too have been since '72 

I'm riding between my brother and sister 

In the back seat of a '67 Buick station wagon 

With red vinyl seats and we stick by each other and to those seats 

We've been eating cheese and bacon sandwiches 

Our mother made for thirteen days straight in the August heat 

And both my siblings are walkin' on those eggshells 

As I soon will learn how to do myself 

They play their quiet silly games with their peashooters 

As I sip luke-warm Sprite from a tin can 

Sold to me by a hunchback silly bastard old woman 

A hundred miles back 

Who is probably the only person with good sense 

In this part of the country 

I still don't know what to do with this 

God-awful bacon and cheese sandwich 

But your body is your temple God tells us so 

So drink up your milk and reap what you sow 

I mold the cheese and bacon sandwich into a ball in my hand 

It kind of reminds me of play dough 

I look around to see who is watchin' 

And stuff it between the red vinyl seats no one will find it 

At least not for a couple of weeks 

We're in this big place now 

It's kind of like one half of an blue plastic Easter eggshell 

And there's a hole in the top where the sun cuts through 

And lights up the room and I hear all these male voices 

Telling me that black people are inferior 

And it's ok to have more than one wife 

And as the dry, dry breath of the Utah sun warms me 

I stand before a statue of Jesus that is far too big 

And has held these folks hostage for so, so long 

And I gaze up at the nostrils of the sandstone savior 

And wonder if it can smell all this bullshit 

'Cause I sure can and I'm only 5 years old 

In Salt Lake City in 1973