The shrinking gene hot tub of Spanish Fork: the good & the bad

Lily Mott once referred to my hometown of Spanish Fork as my "gene hot tub." I doubt there's ever been a more true statement in regards to me and The Fork. {Luckily my dad married someone from Minnesota, so I come from a gene kiddy pool.}

The closeness in relations in Spanish Fork while I was growing up has led to lots of great things. For example, I often knew part of the families of my uncles' wives. In fact, one year for Thanksgiving we went to my Aunt Bonnie's dad's house for dinner, and I just called him Grandpa Orr anyway. It was no big deal because small-town Spanish Fork is like that. {And to be honest, in a lot of situations, a lot of us were probably distantly related.}

Grandpa Orr died last week and his funeral was this last Monday, and my Aunt Bonnie gave an amazing--I mean AMAZING--talk about her father and the strength of family. I sat in a pew next to my mom and my Aunt Dana, who is married to the youngest uncle, Lynn, who was next to her, and, at the end, his mom, my Grandma Swenson. None of us are related to Grandpa Orr, but in a way it doesn't really feel like that. In Spanish Fork, the relations of your relations are thus your extended relations. I love it.

It's sad that this connection is being lost in large part because of the influx of people. SF doubled size in the 90s from 11,000 to 22,000+ and it now how about 33,000. This is good, though, because it means that the next generation of Spanish Forkers probably won't have 5 eyeballs and a genetically-mutated superfluous third leg.