July 11: Day off, Cardston, Alberta
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IF YOU'RE GOING to pick a day off, choose wisely. I'm not sure we have. To be in a Mormon town on a Sunday, when barely anything is open and there's nothing stronger than tea, isn't wonderful for a wild time. On the other hand, a wild time isn't what we want. We wanted quiet relaxation and that is what we are getting, having moved from the motel to a charming, clean, quiet and friendly campsite down by the river.
From here, a bike path leads the short distance to town. It emerges close to the cottage that
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Charles Card, after whom the place is named, built when he arrived from Utah on a wagon. He left because of a disagreement with America over the seemliness of having more than one wife. His house stands
beside the road, curiously unsignposted in a town that is 80 per cent Mormon, and the neighbouring building has a mural depicting his journey north. A big white block of a Mormon temple overlooks the town but we weren't allowed inside.
The town's other celebrity is the actress Fay Wray, who wriggled in the grasp of King Kong. Or on the posters she did, anyway. I'm not sure the scene was ever in the film. Or was it King Kong climbing the Empire State Building and taking a swing at aircraft that wasn't in the film?
Fay has a grubby fountain in her honour, not so far from Card's cottage. It is full of cigarette ends and
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a few drink cans. Nothing on it names it after her. The metallic sign pointing to the fountain, or dribble of water, is better than the thing it indicates. It shows Kong looking Konglike.
Maybe Cardston doesn't make more of her because her parents moved across to the USA shortly after she was born on a ranch outside town. Frankly, to have done nothing would have been better than a half-hearted trickle of water into a tobacco-stained pool.
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