"Come to the Cullen"

GHOSTS

(Or The Night I was Mugged)

“Come to the Cullen, the Cullen, the Cullen,
Crockery floors and lights in bottles!”

The first words that my grandmother heard
As she stepped onto the train platform
In Salt Lake City in Eighteen Eighty Four
Were sung by a man in a tall hat from a carriage.

For the young Irish girl fresh off the boat,
The crier’s call defined what it meant to come to America,
A place where all manner of wonders were possible.
There, with the backdrop of the Wasatch Mountains
Looming above the new city, the man was
As strange as something out of Xanadu,
But he offered a world of promise and progress.
She remembered the moment,
And later taught the rime to her son, my father
Who decades later would teach it to me.

One snowy winter day,
While doing research at the Utah History Library
In the old Denver and Rio Grande Railroad Station,
I came across an advertising flyer for the CuIlen Hotel.
The ad called it “The City’s Newest and Finest.”
A photograph in the Society’s archive
Revealed the Cullen to be an impressive five story building.
Occupying most of the south side of Second South
Between Main and West Temple.
Colorful Flags and streamers flew from her roof top,
And directly in front stood a large carriage
Drawn by beautifully matched horses.
Across the top of the carriage’s fringed fabric canopy
Were emblazoned the words: “The Cullen, the Cullen, the Cullen.”
In the carriage sat a thin man holding a whip.
He wore a tall silk hat!
My grandmother’s magic singer had physical form once again.
And after more than a century of stony silence
His ghostly chant was united with his image.

When they closed the library late that afternoon
And I stepped into the swirling wind driven snow
That howled about the old station,
I imagined that I heard the ghostly chant of the crier.
But across the street, in front of the Rescue Mission,
The long lines of huddled homeless were sullen and silent.
Voiceless witnesses to unfulfilled promises.
Behind me other specters circled menacingly.

O’Hozho