You may remember that in May, Terrill Johnson, interim mayor of Colorado City, was arrested during a town council meeting for fraudulent vehicle registration.

Apparently, skipping over the border to register vehicles may not be the only way a few residents in the polygamous community at the Utah/Arizona border try to avoid paying state taxes.

A couple of residents apparently have bought membership in the so-called "Little Shell Pembina Band of North America" in an attempt to gain protection from state laws under its "sovereign nation" claim.

In the past 14 months, Hurricane Police stopped two residents of Hildale who were subsequently found to have fraudulent registrations issued by the sham tribe -- which is not to be confused by the similarly named, legitimate "Little Shell Band of Montana."

The Anti-Defamation League describes the "Little Shell Pembina Band" as an anti-government movement that claims ties to the Chippewas. The federal government has rejected its appeals for recognition.

But that hasn't stopped the Pembina band from offering, for a fee, fake license plates, driver licenses and vehicle registrations.

During traffic stops, the Hildale residents read from a printed card that declared their sovereign status, said Larry Ball, southern region investigator for the Utah Motor Vehicle Division.

The statement includes the following: "I give myself all rights entitled to a sovereign, including but not limited to the right to drive and travel. Anyone wishing me to give them my license for making any legal determinations for me are hereby declared to be incompetent by me and are now FIRED from making any legal determination for me."

A similar verse is read in court appearances.

These so-called sovereign citizens have become more scarce since a few were packed off to jail or had their vehicles impounded, reports Hurricane City Police Chief Lynn L. Excell.

My husband paid his first visit to Colorado City, home of the FLDS, on Saturday.

It was a shock.

Yes, he's heard me talk about the community and the icy silent treatment residents give most outsiders. But there is nothing like experiencing it yourself.

While I met with the Centennial Park Action Committee to talk about media coverage of polygamy, he went for a trail ride on his motorcycle.

Then he stopped in at the local gas station in Colorado City. He didn't know any better, since I hadn't pointed out the Border Store on the highway.

As he filled his truck with gas, none of the people who'd stopped to fill their vehicles would meet his glance. Inside the store, he held a door open for two young women. They didn't look at him or offer a word of thanks.

He was hungry, so he checked the shelves for a snack. At the counter, he tried to make small talk with an older woman working the cash register.

Silence.

"The feeling I got is I don't exist," he told me later. "I am not a human. I'd rather they call me names. At least they'd be acknowledging I am alive."

He couldn't get over it. "That is the weirdest thing I've ever seen. It's like the Twilight Zone. I can't believe people will be like that. Poor souls."

You get used to it, I told him. But I remain perplexed. I can't understand the FLDS view of strangers that leads them to abandon basic kindness and civility for such un-Christ like behavior.

His experience was ironic, too. During my meeting in Centennial Park, the women told me that during the past year, as polygamy moved to the media forefront, they have been snubbed more than once while visiting stores and restaurants in St. George.

One woman said a restaurant refused to serve her group. Another told of sitting in a classroom and hearing two women behind her whispering.

Fear of "otherness" often brings out the worst in us, I guess.

Eight men are supposed to stand trial later this summer on allegations they engaged in sexual conduct with underage girls in the FLDS community of Colorado City, Ariz. But gathering evidence and testimony to make the cases is a challenge.

Investigator Gary Engels has used birth certificates and other documents to build cases against some men. In at least one case, a young woman has testified before a Mohave County Grand Jury. Engels also has searched some of the men's homes to gather evidence, including saliva samples, photographs, etc.

It's an age-old hurdle to make these cases. Consider this exchange from the 1887 trial of John Adams, who faced a charge of unlawful cohabition with Elizabeth Cleveland, as reported by a Utah newspaper (likely the Tribune):

Margaret Clevand, the mother of Lizzie Cleveland, the second wife, who apparently would not hesitate to tell the grossest falsehoods and was, judging from her evidence, an accomplished perjurer, swore that she was the mother of Lizzie Cleveland. Her daughter has two children.

Mr. Dickson, addressing her, said: Do you know who is the father of her children?
A. No sir.
Q. Can you swear that you don't know who the father of her children are?
A. Well, I don't like to swear. It is a bad thing to do.
Q. Mrs. Cleveland, do I understand you to say that you don't know who the father of your daughter's children are?
A. Yes sir.
Q. Don't you know whether your daughter is married or not?
A. No.
Q. Do you care whether she is married or not?
A. Yes.
Q. Her children were born under your roof and you did not know who the father of them was?
A. No.
Q. You did not question her about it?
A. No.

Talk around the towns -- Hildale and Colorada City -- is that FLDS teens have bestowed a new name on Bruce Wisan, the court-appointed fiduciary overseeing the community's United Effort Plan Trust.

He is known as the "state-ordained bishop." Yep, that's an SOB, which makes Wisan laugh.

Sam Brower, a private investigator, is known as "Sam Sour." And officer Gary Engels is "Harry Pringles."

Those wacky FLDS! Too funny.

Here is an interesting quote I came across on Friday:

"All my life that I have been living in Colorado City and as a woman, you
don't speak out. You were taught that you just don't. You don't talk against
any counsel . . . you don't do stuff like that. You don't go to the law . .
. if you do, why, you are cursed from here to eternity. You are going to
lose all of your salvation. If you try to go to court and bring up these,
all this stuff, try to tell the truth of what happened, then, you know, you
are going to be in trouble. You just don't do it. You just take it and try."

-- Cora Fischer Stubbs, in a court document, about then leaders of the FLDS
church evicting her from her home in Colorado City, Ariz., in 1982. Her
statement was included in the 1987 lawsuit filed against the UEP Trust.

Tribune photographer Trent Nelson and I were in Hildale/Colorado City Tuesday for a story that appeared in today's paper.

Life seemed to be going on as usual: There were women filling up their mini vans at the Sinclair station. There was a family working the community garden just down the street from Hildale City Hall. Children were outside playing despite the fierce wind that was stirring up the red dirt.

Our main objective was to get a photo of Richard Holm and his children, who spend every other week with him during the summer. Richard recently moved back to Colorado City, nearly three years after he was exiled by FLDS leader Warren S. Jeffs for some unnamed transgression. Richard appealed to Bruce Wisan, who is overseeing the FLDS property trust, to be allowed to return to the home he built in the community. Wisan agreed and told the family that has occupied it since to move out.

It is bittersweet to be back in his sprawling home, Richard said. The first night back in the vacant home, which at that point had no furniture, was a long one. He spent hours sitting on the floor of a bedroom, crying.

But living in Colorado City makes it easier to see his younger children who still live with their mothers. And he is slowly turning the house into a home.

Holm had given us the OK last week to come take a family photo. He introduced us to three of his children as we passed through a family room, where they were watching television. The children glared at us. We stepped briefly out onto a deck adjacent to the room and by the time we turned back around those three children had fled the room. They avoided us from there on. They would not be photographed with their father, though his two 12-year-old sons (who are just months apart in age) agreed.

The experience really drove home the difficulty faced by fathers like Holm who are trying to hang on to ties with their children and get them to interact, however infrequently, with the outside world.

I received the following e-mail from a woman who wants to be called "happywriter." She asked me to post this to my blog as part of the "Big Love" discussion. She is a member of the FLDS faith. Her post:

I do not have a blog account and have no desire to have one; but I would like to add a few comments. You can use it in your blog section if you want. Say it is from "happywriter."

Anne is right. However, mental perception of the world is never black and white. There are a lot of grey areas.

I live in Hildale and am married to a man with plural wives. We all live in the same house. Not every family in Hildale is the same, just as not every family in Seattle is the same. Communities are made up of individuals and we are not all cut from the same cloth.

What can be said of one family is not always applicable to another.

As to being led blindly -- or by brainwashing -- this is not the case. I have traveled extensively. I lived out there for ten years before returning to my hometown. I worked a job -- $150,000 a year. I know
my options and have very marketable skills. Many ladies here do.

This is a very global world and you can do a lot of things at a desk with a computer. And does being a "stay at home mom" make you any less valuable to society? It doesn't. I have chosen this life and
allow you to choose yours.

I have never felt pressured into obedience. I feel nothing but love in my life now. I cannot say the same of my years in New York before I returned here and was married. Violence begets violence in any culture.

"Big Love" is just a show. Good entertainment...but true to life? Not the life I know. Not all polygamist groups are the same.

There is a lot of misinformation out there. Don't believe everything you read -- especially in the papers. Lies spread easier than the truth. As a writer, you know that.

-- happywriter

I have a story in yesterday's paper about the family of polygamist Winston Blackmore. Here's a little background on how that story unfolded.

Tribune photographer Trent Nelson and I traveled to British Columbia to cover a press conference the Blackmore family held about the deportation of three of his U.S.-born wives.

That same afternoon, we spent about three hours with Blackmore. I've been hounding him for a face-to-face interview for two years.

The next day, we returned to Bountiful, the family's compound, to visit with one of those American wives: Edith Barlow. We spent the morning with her, talking about her life, her decision to come to Canada, how she came to be one of Winston's wives, etc.

Edith joined us for lunch in Creston and then we returned to Bountiful, where Edith and her daughter Dolly took us through Mormon Hills School.

It was during that tour, as I watched Dolly, that the idea came to focus the rest of the afternoon on the children. I think I caught Edith by surprise when I asked her if we could do that: just sit and talk with and watch the children. She was too polite to say no.

So that's how it happened. It was an impromptu, unscripted event. For the next three or four hours, Trent and I wandered around the Blackmores' huge yard, observing and talking with the children.

I'd never been allowed this level of interaction with children of a polygamous family by any of the groups -- Kingstons, Apostolic United Brethren, independents, etc. -- because they fear exposure of their illegal lifestyle and persecution the children might face.

What is left uncovered, then, is what day-to-day life is like. This was a chance to shed a little light on that topic.

I suspect we were pests; we stayed and stayed and stayed. At one point, a mother asked if we had everything we needed. Not yet, we told her.

We hoped to catch Blackmore upon his return home, but as dusk fell we learned he had stopped at another home to watch a hockey game. Finally, we were finished.

What did you think of the finale of "Big Love?" I thought it was pretty gripping and is bound to lure back a big audience next season. I have heard raves about the show, both from those who believe in fundamentalism and those who don't. Even my 80-year-old Catholic dad in California is a fan.

Now that the show's first season is over, it's time to compare art to real life. Here are some things in "Big Love" that are drawn from real life -- and feel free to add your own:

1. Barb's red station wagon: Anne Wilde, a co-founder of the pro-polygamy advocacy group Principle Voices, drives a 1994 maroon Buick Century station wagon that is similar to Barb's car.

2. Henrickson's Hardware Store: The current leader of the Apostolic United Brethren, one of Utah's largest polygamous communities, owns an independent hardware store.

3. The Primer: The Utah Attorney General has created a primer, which I've referred to in other posts.

4. Mother of the Year: Real, real, real!

In 1999, Shauna Lynne Darger was to be recognized as one of Utah's 25 "Remarkable Mothers" by then-Governor Mike Leavitt and his wife Jacalyn. She was nominated for the honor by one of her sons, who noted that after his father died Darger had started a successful catering business to support herself and her family.

She was named a finalist and her picture appeared in a full-page ad in The Salt Lake Tribune.

Someone noticed it -- and alerted the governor's staff. The day of the ceremony, held at the governor's mansion, staff confronted Darger about her polygamous background. She acknowledged it and then left -- out the back door -- accompanied by three grown children.

Vicki Varela, then spokeswoman for the governor, downplayed the situation, saying it was Darger's decision to leave.

5. Nikki's credit card problem: Many members of the FLDS community at the border of Utah and Arizona racked up credit card debt around 2000-2002 as leaders predicted the end of the world was near. The free-spending attitude seemed to be based on the belief they wouldn't ever have to pay the money
back since most of the world would be destroyed -- or at least, Salt Lake City and its banking institutions.

6. The opening sequence: The veil that Bill Henrickson and his wives move through is representative of the LDS Church's temple ceremony and teachings that men will call their wives through the veil into the afterlife.

Also, the scene showing Bill and his wives sitting at a table on top of their own world, with other worlds drifting in the background, is in keeping with LDS teachings that those who make it to the highest heaven will be Gods and Goddesses of their own worlds.

Anne N., a member of the FLDS faith, has posted comments on this blog on occasion. I appreciate her perspective -- and was interested in discovering a blog she started to offer commentary on current events involving the FLDS.

You can find her observations here.

Anne has made only a few entries, but hopefully more are to come.