I’m going to be there in April, and I suppose I will have to take my other children to the lake for a dip. I expect we will freeze in the super-cooled brine, but hey you have to go when you get the chance.

Second, I have been intimidated for years by a snippet out of the life of a “Mormon Wife” of this era (my great grandmother) which mentions Saltair. Here it is:

In the summer for several years, Monday morning she’d get all her clothes washing done, hung outside, dried, and brought in, folded and put away. That was using the system of three tubs and through the wringer three times before hanging to dry. Breakfast dishes done, lunch put up and two or later three children ready. We were put in the “Essex” and she drove to the Saltair Train Depot to catch the 11:30 train to Saltair, a large resort on the Great Salt Lake. Monday was free day at Saltair and a free ride on the train. The children would play: swing, play in the sand, watch people or seagulls, run up sixty steps to the dance floor, and play in the fun house for an hour if we were old enough or had a dime. There were three other families of friends to play with and eat with while our mothers played bridge.

Well, it looks like they weren’t actually bathing. Perhaps doing all that laundry by hand was their weight loss secret.

On the other hand, the promise of weight loss without dieting or the “fatigue of exercise” is just as fresh now as then, when you look at sites like this.

I remember postcards with those little bags of salt, Curt! Another bet: The post office with their mechanized systems would blow a gasket if anybody tried to mail one of them today.