JOSEPH SMITH and his MAGIC FLUTE

1. Pleasant Hills, PA 1972

The Pleasant Hills Middle School Choir Concert had just finished the Spring Concert. The masses of parents and siblings had scurried out of the gym, leaving a jumble of chairs and crumpled programs behind. The eighth-grade Mini Singers had been assigned clean up duty. The boys handled the chairs. They kicked them with their shoes so the seats banged closed, then they lined them up on big wheeled dollies while we girls gathered up the garbage. We bent at the knees instead of our waists, on account of our mini-skirts being so short, and boys being in the room and all. We were that age when we still believed it was cool to be picked to clean up. We were the oldest in the student body, and for sure the coolest, since only sixteen of us were chosen to be Mini Singers and we got to wear matching dresses and real true panty hose and high-ish heels. When you’re that cool you start thinking you have privileges and rights, so you just grab the knob on the janitors closet and saunter on in, checking out the stacks of supplies while you look for a broom. You run in and out of the choir room and down the empty halls, laughing and singing full voiced harmony with your best friend. There is a sort of liberating freedom that comes around that age anyway, if you’re lucky and loved, which I was, in general. 

Libby had stayed to help me clean up, and by the time we got to the last garbage can we were the only ones left in the gym. I picked up one last printed program and aimed for the garbage can, but of course, I missed. So when I ran over to pick it up and drop it in, I noticed a shiny metal pipe sticking up out of the garbage. I pulled at it, and out came a long silver horn, with a slender leadpipe and a simple wide bell at the end. It was slightly bent, with a little dent in the side that had rusted a little. I wondered to myself why someone would throw something so groovy away. I leaned over to put it back in the garbage, then paused, looked around and walked right out the door with it in my hands. Lib and I walked home that night, under the early Spring moonlight, and pursed our lips in all sorts of maneuvers, wriggling what few tones that old horn had to offer adolescent girls with no embouchure.
Besides my siblings and my memory, that horn is one of the few portions of my youth I still carry with me. I keep it stored up with the Christmas stuff. We bring it out every Christmas Eve for the Angel of the Lord to blow in our family nativity. Kate, except for her very first Christmas Eve, when she was required to play the role of baby Jesus, was always our Angel of the Lord, seeing as she was our Christmas child, and also partly because Sarah always wanted to be Mary.
Now the job of Angel of the Lord / Horn Blower rotates between the grands.

2. Salt Lake City, UT 1982

We had just moved from Pittsburgh to Salt Lake City. We were driving through the city, checking out the sights in our yellow Toyota Corona. Four-year-old John sat in his booster seat next to his little sister, Sarah. The Utah Capitol seemed to float over us on top of that hill, a halo of light glowing over its dome. Down in the valley, behind a rock wall, the Salt Lake Temple glistened, massive spotlights sending out rays that reflected sparkles in the granite. 

“See that Johnny? Do you know what that is?”

“It’s da temple,” he answered. Then he gasped and squealed: “And there’s Joseph Smith with his magic flute!”  

He referred to the golden angel perched atop the highest spire. Angel Moroni, blowing his golden trumpet, proclaiming the restored gospel of Christ to all the world. Most of our temples have this iconic symbol.

“No Johnny, that’s Moroni and his trumpet.”

3. March 20, 2020

Two days ago, the earth under Salt Lake City rattled and rolled. We’ve known for years that we have built this metropolis on a fault line. An earthquake is inevitable, and overdue. We’ve been reminded yearly to be prepared, this might be the year… this might be the year. But it never was. Until now.

The world has gone so crazy lately, what with plagues, pestilences and famines. I suppose it should be expected that Mother Earth would shudder. In the wake of the quake the temple shook, too. When it was over, poor Moroni had lost his horn. It dropped clean out of his hand and ended up all bent out of shape in the apron of the steeple. I saw a picture of it on the news and texted Johnny: “Guess what? Joseph Smith has lost his magic flute!”

No worries, Moroni, we have a spare up in the attic.