Awkward conversation with a pair of Mormons.

Out for a walk tonight, heading down through the sidewalk cafes of Peoria Heights from the Heights Tower, I was just finishing up when I encountered a couple of young Morman gents.

They were out on their mission, as any pair of young men in ties on a Peoria street tend to be, and were eager to talk to me about their faith. Now, not being an extrovert by nature, getting into a conversation with a couple of strangers on the street at night can be awkward enough. But with all the backstory running through my head at the same time . . . it got a little hard to have an open conversation through all the background chatter.

Enoch Drebber and Joseph Stangerson come quickly to mind, and I've been to Nauvoo, and even bought an old copy of A Study in Scarlet there, and I'm going to St. Louis this weekend where Jefferson Hope came from, and he killed a pair of Mormons in London, you know, but I don't think they were missionaries like the ones in The Book of Mormon . . . the musical, of course, and not the holy text, which I haven't read, but I did read One Nation Under Gods: A History of the Mormon Church by Richard Abanes, a fascinating historical account of the evolution of the church, but a lot of bad things happened along that route, which makes it much more uncomfortable than Drebber and Stangerson, who merely got to take poison pills after a nice trip to London . . . .

Not that religion is all that easy to talk about on the spur of the moment in any case, but having a bunch of A Study in Scarlet mental bits at hand to spark an avalanche of Mormon trivia that comes with profanities and castrations (not the Study in Scarlet part) . . . well . . . anyone want to talk politics?

We weren't thirty feet from a large bust of Abraham Lincoln in the park, so I suppose there was that politician at hand.

Though, J. Neil Gibson looked like him and Gibson's suicidal wi . . . oh, spoilers . . . and I disagree with Zeisler's dating of that "Thor Bridge" anyway . . . and . . .

It's no wonder fans are so often portrayed as socially awkward.

Anyway, if you want a copy of The Book of Mormon, the number to call is 888-537-2200 . . . I can at least help those young gentlemen out that much, even if I wasn't a good conversationalist this evening.