The cockroach crunching under your sneaker goes skittering down a stormy sewer drain. Faceless steel buildings tower up, blacking out the orange haze of polluted streetlight-tinged clouds. From some dark alleyway comes the sound of a sad moan. Under a pile of rainy blankets a wretched homeless hand reaches out to you, clawing the asphalt. A voice cackles, “Got any sugar? Gimme summa that shuga…”
Far off in the distance, the wail of a siren and the pop pop pop of a gun. Another hit and run? Another dimestore robbery?
The smoke from your cigarette makes curls around acidic raindrops. You sigh, drawing yourself into the shadows of the City that Doesn’t Sleep In On Sundays.
You think to yourself – Just another night in Logan.
It’s a rough town. You grew up on the East Side, where Johnny Nametag and the 3rd Ward kept things calm for a while after Hootie strung up that kid for using the Lord’s name in vain – but it wasn’t long before Big Ezra and the Relief Squad came up hard from across the tracks. They were packing sugar cookies (real sugar cookies!) and everybody in town wanted a taste. They called those the Bake Days, and you don’t want to remember them. Thinking back hurts too bad.
Logan’s a sugar town. Everybody wants a taste of the sugar. There’s always a drug war going on somewhere – whether it’s the 8th Ward with their Oatmeal Squirts or Don Ephraim importing ice cream from Hyrum (it keeps the Aggie Ice Cream crew up at night). The stakes are high, and don’t be surprised if you run across some poor kid with a bullet wound headed for outer darkness. Just walk on by – just walk on by.
The cops are nowhere to be found – they gave up or sold out a long time ago. The town’s too rough, and the State has given up on Logan (I hear the politicians are calling it “The Jungle” up here) and we only have one, maybe two cops left. Sometimes I think about leaving this place, but there’s nothing for me out there. Once you leave Logan, where can you go?
Seriously, though – Logan is a rough town for a non-believer. Every Sunday, a black and white stream pours out of the churches by the thousands, and the empty dystopian city appears to have been eaten by zombies. A massive majority of people are LDS – these are the people you work with, the ones you date, the ones you order your Baconator from, the people signing your checks and teaching your classes.
What brought you to Logan? Did you grow up here? What experiences have you had with the pressures of living within a very closed community with rigorous (ridiculous) divine moral standards, from which not even our gas fumes can escape?
Logan has a veritable army of churchgoing police officers with their eyes out for anyone in a black T-shirt. Is this a good thing or a bad thing? Would you prefer to live in a secular city with a higher crime rate? What about the influence the church has on gender roles, dating and relationships?
How has such an environment shaped you and your experiences?