I Heart St. George (Part 2)

Shortly after my fight with Ken Broadhead, I was at a party in Provo. The most beautiful girl I had ever seen bounced up to me and, with a really pretty smile, said a bunch of stuff in a hurry. Though I had no idea what she was talking about, I did notice that after a few exchanges she was calling me “Sid.”

I said, “My name is Steve.”

She said, “I like Sid better.” And she kept calling me Sid. Now, I’m not sure if it was love at first sight or post-concussion syndrome, but I thought, if I had to, I could get used to Sid. It’s as good a name as any.

After she left, my friend asked, “What was that?!”

I said, “I have no idea, but I think I might be in love.”

Skipping most of the details, Sara and I dated that year. An added bonus was that she was from St. George. I was always eager to travel down with her – to get to know the family (though, not meaning to criticize them, they could have reached out a bit more, if they'd really wanted to get to know me, and spent some time with me on the golf course).

Sara and I happened to get married on the same weekend of the Washington County Fair. Her father thought it would be great if I fought at the fair. Her mother thought otherwise. I learned, those Stanley women are tough negotiators.

We were married in the St. George Temple, where Sara’s grandfather, Lloyd Pack, worked as a sealer. We had our wedding breakfast at Andelin’s Gable House – where Sara worked in high school. And where she briefly worked a few years after we graduated – while I figured out what, other than a lawyer, I was going to be. Again, I don’t mean to be critical, but it didn’t really stimulate the creative job-hunting juices, when she’d come home dressed in her Andelin’s wench/waitress get up, slap her tips on the dresser (in the basement of her parents’ home where we (Sara, me, and our baby) were living – in fact, the very room where she had grown up: full circle!), and ask – in a something less-than truly supportive voice – “Have you figured out what you want to be when you grow up?”

I was somewhere between astronaut and race car driver, when “we” decided lawyer would be good.

I got ahead of myself there. While we were at BYU, between getting married and passing the bar exam, working at one of the best law firms in the world, and – then – moving into her parents’ basement, Sara informed me that we could live anywhere in the world – except St. George, Utah – the one-stoplight town where she grew up. When I asked why, she gave some lame reason, like we’d end up living in her parents’ basement.

Like that would ever happen.