The idea here is that if you hang the dream catcher up in your bedroom, the catcher will catch the bad dreams, the dreams that are not helpful in your daily life. The worry doll was a half-inch tall stick figure with a tiny shirt and tiny pants or a skirt. Logically, I asked Nancy if the worry dolls ever sort of fill up with worries, or what would happen if you gave a worry doll to a friend. Nancy diverted her attention to other customers. I was at Tooele's annual festival this weekend because it is one of the best attended, most colorful gatherings of its kind in Utah, and Tooele puts on three events at once seamlessly.
Locals here call the three-day festival simply the festival of the Old West, and for good reason.
Inside the Tooele City Complex was the gem and mineral show, where people were talking about cut rocks as though they were lovers, and back out on a thick green lawn was the pow-wow, where people wear feathers, dance around in circles and wail. More or less. For Carl Timmerman, who was here representing the Murray, Utah-based Western Military History Association, the Old West festival was more than simply a good reason to dress in funny clothes and get away with it. The festivals, Tooele's and those that take place across the West, are a practice in digging into history, dissecting it, and putting it back together. Timmerman was playing the part of his great-grandfather, a Confederate soldier from Virginia.