I paid my respects to the Tabernacle yesterday on the next to last day the building will be in business.

      Like the old Hotel Utah building across the street, the Tabernacle will still be around in the future but with a different, more subdued job description.

      I attended the afternoon session of LDS Conference and bid adieu to the city's second most famous structure in the only way possible: With perfect posture.

      Even people who slouch habitually, like me, must admit defeat in the Tabernacle, with its 132-year-old wooden benches with backs that curve in the shape of a typical human back . . . of a person who lived in 1867.

      If you are over five-foot-four it is virtually impossible to sit any way other than ramrod straight for any longer than, say, two minutes.

      The amazing thing about the benches, besides the way they make you sit up straight, is how good they look after 132 years. There may not be anything in America that looks this good at 132. Including Dick Clark.

      Pine trees everywhere can stand up and take a bow. The Tabernacle's benches are pure Wasatch Mountain pine that was stained by the early Pioneers to look like more expensive oak.

      Pine wasn't as cool then as it is now.

      My personal feeling is that we haven't changed all that much in 132 years. I base that on the instruction from the pulpit. A hundred thirty-two years ago, church leaders stood up and talked about the importance of controlling your thoughts, the dangers of procrastination, the necessity to repent and accept Christ's redemption, and the need to have faith and never, ever, give up.

      Yesterday: same thing.

      As I sat through the various talks, I could only imagine the thousands who have sat in the very spot I was sitting, hearing the very things I was hearing.

      People reflecting, like me, on the meaning of life, the value of discipline, the virtue of good living — and wondering how they could get their hands on the guy who designed the benches.

      Venerable old structures have been biting the dust all around the country this year, making way for the new millennium. Sports shrines, in particular, have been falling like flies. In the last month alone, Fenway Park in Boston, Tiger Stadium in Detroit and Candlestick Park in San Francisco have seen their last big league baseball games.

      At those places, people have been buying chunks of the field or pieces of the grandstand to save as souvenirs.

      None of that at the Tabernacle, however. No souvenir stands selling actual pins dropped by Temple Square guides from the Tabernacle pulpit.

      And even though the demand for seats to this weekend's "last" conference was unprecedented, there was no ticket scalping.

      As I was waiting to go in yesterday at door six, I told the usher checking tickets about a World Series I once covered at Shea Stadium in New York where a ticket-taker at one of the gates would let you in on two conditions: Give him a ticket, or give him a hundred dollar bill.

      It was the last game that usher ever had to work — and Shea Stadium had a crowd 3,000 over capacity that night.

      "Never happen here," said the usher.

      But he did think about it for a few seconds.

      As I left the meeting I felt inspired, lifted up, edified, optimistic even.

      Once again, the Tabernacle had worked its magic.

      Life is what you make of it. Adversity and challenges are good. Endure and be happy. Everything has an eternal purpose.

      I resolved to be perfect. Again.

      But then I blew it as I left.

      I looked at those benches, and I thought of a nice bonfire somewhere. A nice, big pine bonfire. That looks like oak.

Send e-mail to benson@desnews.com, fax 801-237-2527. Lee Benson's column runs Monday, Wednesday, Friday and Sunday.