Downtown Alliance - Salt Lake City, Utah

The phone rang.

It was a reporter for USA Today on the line who wanted to talk to me about Salt Lake City and the people who live here.

The phone rang again.

This time it was a writer for the Los Angeles Times who asked to interview and profile me as a part of a larger feature in the newspaper’s magazine about Salt Lake City, its residents and its culture.

That’s when the side effects of the 2002 Winter Olympics became clear and personal to me. The Games were going to bring all kinds of eyes and interest here. And examination. And maybe even some self-examination.

Judges seated alongside the ice at the women’s figure skating events wouldn’t be the only judges looking on and in. They would be visiting Utah, making their judgments and drawing their conclusions, on the top of mountains, in restaurants, at halfpipes, on city streets, at the opening and closing ceremonies at Rice-Eccles Stadium and everything in between. They would be watching from their sofas, checking out the images beamed back home via NBC.

Salt Lake City was in the fight for a medal as much as any skater or skier or bobsledder, and the fact that the whole endeavor got off to a rough start with the bid scandal added to an overall critical view.

A friend of mine, a Chicago columnist, had told me that Salt Lake City wasn’t going to be perfect in these Games, and that just like with the bid scandal, Utah’s capital should do what he said the Second City had always done — acknowledge and embrace its flaws and imperfections, and, in fact, wear them like a badge of honor. Place them like a trophy on display in a public hardware case for all to see.

“Put a potted plant on them,” he said.

Well. The world — and its attention — was coming to our funny little town and there was no denying that our town was a little funny.

More than a few of the questions during the interviews seemed to be probing to determine whether we lived in some sort of Amish village here, whether we did regular community barn-raisings and squeezed off containers of foamy-fresh milk in the morning and rode horse-drawn carriages to work.

My response: Only on odd days. On even days we stole one another’s identity, screwed grandmas out of their retirement portfolios, and drove ill-gotten Porsches and Ferraris.

One of the writers told me when he came to Salt Lake City, he noticed that almost every neighborhood had a church in it, and that the churches looked like office buildings. Another asked about a lack of diversity and monolithic thinking. He said the population looked like an extension of the Osmond Family.

I told him that, yes, there were many God-fearing people here, a lot of Mormons, as well as followers of other religions, and some of no religion. There were a lot of Caucasians and a growing number of people of other races and ethnicities.

And that with any luck in our community, there also would be growth of understanding and tolerance, all around. But I admitted that it doesn’t always work out that way, that sometimes there are rebels who will never be satisfied and zealots who forever attempt to transform ecclesiastical law into political law.

Beyond that, I had found out the hard way as a columnist that many of us here didn’t like divergence of opinion, even as it pertained to sports, and that criticism of institutions such as the Utah Jazz, BYU and University of Utah athletics, even if they deserved it, was often met with forceful and automatic push back from the ever-faithful.

I said more “free thinking,” though, was on its way around here, more general cooperation and accommodation, and I believe that has, in fact, arrived, bit by bit, in many realms in subsequent years.

Did the Olympic experience further that cause? Did it bump us along in that evolution, if not revolution?

I don’t know about that.

I do know that Salt Lake was vibrant and alive during those Games, with visitors and residents alike interacting and enjoying one another in a promising way. The thousands of helpful local volunteers were as much the heroes of Salt Lake’s Olympics as the athletes who competed in them.

The Games weren’t perfect, but they were pretty damn good.

The people who lived here, who freely gave so much of their effort and time, were even better.

And those who visited and who watched from their sofas from afar got a strong sense of that. In the aftermath, nearly everyone celebrated the achievement and toasted the place that facilitated it. Even my friend from Chicago called to say the Olympics were a real hit, a badge of honor … no, no, really, he said, a trophy Salt Lake City could display with great pride.

And, so, it did.

GORDON MONSON hosts “The Gordon Monson Show” weekdays from 2-6 p.m. on 97.5 FM/1280 AM The Zone. Twitter: @GordonMonson.