Preface

re: Remembrance of Things Past

      I don’t know how this book could’ve been written without my good friends Journal Black and Journal Green.  There are things I can bring up that otherwise, I would have totally forgotten.  Just flipping though my journals mere months later at the outset of this book revealed many incidents that had vanished from my cranial creases.  For instance, it had fled my memory that my roommate suddenly and inexplicably came down with poison ivy.  Or that all us guys went out early one Saturday morning and helped the missionaries floor a new home for the mission’s horses.  I had forgotten how I often woke up in the morning at the foot of my bed, light on, pen in hand with my journal entry for the previous day unfinished, the end of the entry looking like this:  ([illustration scanned from journal of line going down and away]).)  (Unless you count a jagged line down and off the page as a “finish.”)  But even the things I remember with epic clarity lack details.  Would I, for instance, be able to recall with certainty that Lloydel, SaraAnne and Brieanne were the people on my handcart team without a journal’s help?  No.  I wouldn’t.  I just had to look it up.

      (Which reminds me—Lloydel, we were planing on doing that again sometime, 2 guys, 2 girls, out on the lone prairie.  We still need to do that.)

      Already, I’ve mentioned four people you most likely have never met: my roommate (whose name is Jared), Lloydel, SaraAnne and Brieanne.  And the book hasn’t even really started yet!  But for every interesting person I’m pleased to introduce you to, others go unmentioned.  That is according to the nature of this book.  If I was writing a 6-volume definitive history called JOSEPH SMITH ACADEMY: WINTER SEMESTER 2000, I could include everything concerning everyone.  I could spend more time in Modern Nauvoo talking about Duck’s and the Post Office and the virtues of the different hotels, but this is not my goal.  What I want to do is introduce you to a time and place that is already past, but not quite gone.  Winter 2000 will never return.  But Nauvoo remains.  Nauvoo continues on, steadily marching through time.

      And we all love Nauvoo!  That’s why there are so many books written about the place.  But strangely, no one (to my knowledge) has written a book on modern Nauvoo (except one novel).  Sure, it’s easily argued that interest in Nauvoo Today is rooted in Nauvoo Yesterday, but it is Nauvoo Today that receives tourists from the world over.  It’s Nauvoo Today that people spied on daily via webcam, watching the Nauvoo Temple’s progress.  (Which webcam a handful of students tried to appear on, but they were so bitty as to render their accomplishment meaningless.  Even knowing exactly where they were, it was still the devil to locate them, big HI MOM sign notwithstanding.)

      When I arrived in Nauvoo, the temple was little more than a nicely geometric hole in the ground.  When I left, the foundation was in and you could see where the font was to go, but above ground it was merely a sentry of skeletal rebar.  Well, not exactly a sentry, but there was some rebar!  Sticking up!  In the air!  That rebar was history in the making.  Nauvoo is happening now. And this book, really, is just the story of some lucky kids caught up in the middle of it all.

      Necessarily, I couldn’t include everyone in this book.  So if among the real Nauvooans, Jerry gets mentioned while Tuesday, Sarah and Dr. Joe Smith don’t, that’s no reference on their individual worth.  Heck, Joe Smith and I nearly share a hometown!  This same principle works for local businesses.  If Blimpie’s is sore about not getting mentioned, I’m sorry.

      Similarly, if it ends up that both of the JSA’s Emilies get mentioned, but neither of the Heathers, nothing is meant by this either.  In fact, among the Heathers is found one of my best Nauvoo friends.  Books have a way of writing themselves, and inclusion or exclusion is no reflection of my personal esteem.  I want my friends to please understand that I love you all.  Just enjoy the book and don’t stress about what’s stuck in and what isn’t.  Don’t hate me; blame the book.

      I chose not to publish the telephone numbers, email addresses, social security / credit card numbers or shoe sizes of anyone in this book, not even in a special appendix.  In fact, for privacy, I generally used only one name for a person.  Exceptions to this rule exist and include such people as Larry Dahl and Milt Backman—whose names are a matter of JSA record, whose celebrity is inarguable (if not blinding) and whom I don’t feel I am imposing on by using their full names.  Besides gentlemen, mention could be construed as free advertising for your books!  Feel free to so construe.

      I have not tried to write some sort of Stop-the-Presses, scandalicious tellall, just a joyful (Gal 5:22, 2 N 2:25) foray into a place called Nauvoo. 

      I hope you enjoy. 

      Eric W. Jepson