Community Oral History Gene Nopper Interviewed by Alyssa Kammerman 11 September 2023 RootsBridge LLC Mission Statement RootsBridge cultivates connection in communities and families through the transformative power of storytelling. Our mission is to compassionately record life histories, honor unique experiences and promote empathy through shared narratives. By encouraging individuals to step into another's shoes, we cultivate deeper bonds between storyteller and hearer. In the communities we serve, we foster a sense of unity and compassion. We are driven by our passion for providing a platform for marginalized voices to ensure that every story is heard and none are diminished. We believe in a community where everyone feels connected and finds a sense of belonging. Project Description The Union Station Centennial oral history project is a companion to the Museums at Union Station’s “Heart of Ogden” exhibit, which commemorates the 100-year anniversary of the opening of the current Union Station building on November 22, 1924. In honor of the centennial anniversary, Ogden City contracted with oral historian Alyssa Kammerman of RootsBridge LLC to collect fifteen oral histories from community members who shared memories associated with the Union Station in Ogden. The interviews encompass the 1930s to the present day, thus documenting the period when Union Station was actively functioning as a train station and its subsequent transformation into a museum and cultural center. Community members interviewed included former railroad employees, Union Station employees, residents of Ogden, city employees, and museum volunteers. The diverse range of interviewees reflects the diversity of Ogden and provides a comprehensive view of Union Station’s impact on the community as a cultural hub and a place of shared history. ~ Oral History Description ~ An oral history is the spoken account of historic events in one’s life from the unique and partial perspective of the narrator. It is a primary source and unique interpretation of one’s lived experience. Rights Management This work is the property of RootsBridge LLC and The Museums at Ogden Union Station. It may be used freely by individuals for research, teaching, and personal use as long as this statement of availability is included in the text / as long as credit is given to RootsBridge LLC and Ogden Union Station. It is recommended that this oral history be cited as follows: Nopper, Gene, an oral history by Alyssa Kammerman (RootsBridge LLC), 11 September 2023, Centennial Oral History Project, Museums at Union Station, Ogden, UT. Oral History Interview September 11, 2023 Interviewee: Gene Nopper Interviewer: Alyssa Kammerman Abstract: This is an Oral History Interview with Gene Nopper, conducted September 11, 2023, for the 100 year anniversary of the Ogden Union Station. This interview was conducted at Ogden’s Union Station by oral historian Alyssa Kammerman of RootsBridge LLC. During this interview, Gene shares his memories of Union Station from his childhood in the 1940s and from his time employed in Union Station’s laundry room, baggage room, and commissary, as well as Union Pacific’s dining cars in the 1950s. Gene discusses 25th Street, World War Two, segregation in Ogden, and “hobos” on the trains. He shares stories of celebrities who visited Union Station, and his time volunteering in the Museums at Union Station years later. AK: Today is September 11th, 2023. I am in Ogden’s Union Station, interviewing Gene Nopper for the Union Station Centennial Exhibit. My name is Alyssa Kammerman and I'll be conducting the interview. And also in the room with us is Gene’s wife, Helene Nopper. So, Gene, I just want to start out with your background. Were you born in Ogden? GN: Yes. AK: Okay, and what year was that? GN: 1934. AK: Helene was telling me that your dad worked for the railroad. Is that correct? Could you tell me a little bit about what he did? 1 of 43 GN: He worked in the dining car department. He was a superintendent. It was his position to supervise the dining cars that were operating out of Ogden, and the commissary, which supplied food for the dining cars, and the laundry, which supplied linen for the dining cars. AK: Oh, fascinating. So did he work for Union Station? GN: He worked for the Union Pacific Railroad. He was a railroad employee. AK: So growing up, did he ever bring you down here to Union Station? GN: Many times. AK: Tell me about that. GN: Well, he would return to the Station sometimes to check trains and to visit with the crews on the dining cars, and he'd let me come down and sit in the commissary and watch the trains come in and out of Ogden, and notice the food and everything that was being stored in the commissary. And it was fun. It was in the evening because I didn't come down during the day. I was in school. AK: Where did you go to school? GN: Ogden High School, Central Junior High School, and Polk Elementary School. AK: And when you talk about the commissary, where was that exactly? GN: It was the next building behind, to the south of this building. However, there was a Rail Express building in between this building and the commissary. The Rail Express building is no longer there, and the commissary is no longer there. AK: So did you ever want to work on the railroad, growing up? GN: Oh, yes. I wanted to work for the railroad from the day I was old enough to work [laughs]. 2 of 43 AK: What was your dream job? GN: An engineer. Locomotive engineer, or a passenger train conductor. AK: And what are some of the memories you have of what Union Station was like in the evenings? GN: Union Station was where it was all happening. It was the activity part of town. 25th Street was on the end of it, or started from it, and all the action in Ogden was on 25th Street. And if you wanted to know what was going on in town, you came down here to the station or 25th Street. AK: So do you have any memory of Union Station during World War Two? GN: Oh, yes, many memories. There were troop trains through here every day. There was military people getting off the trains, coming into Ogden, and getting back on the trains. There was a liquor store over on the corner of 25th Street and Wall Avenue, and a lot of the soldiers went over there to buy liquor if they had enough time between the trains, between when they arrived and when they departed. [Chuckles] I remember that very well. AK: I don't know how often you were down here or if you're old enough to remember, but there was a Red Cross canteen that was set up for the troop trains coming through. Do you remember anything about that? GN: I remember that very much, yes. AK: Okay. What are your memories of that? GN: Just the soldiers coming through to get a cup of coffee and a donut. I never got a cup of coffee, I didn't go to it, but the soldiers coming through on the trains were, were... It was popular for them. 3 of 43 AK: How old were you when World War II started? GN: I was six years old. AK: So you were still really young. Do you happen to remember anything about hobos riding the trains? GN: Yes, I remember the hobos riding trains, but don't remember anything about 'em. I know they were camped out over there, the other side of the river, or near the river, and I know you could see 'em walking around town, but that's all I remember of the hobos. AK: So was 25th Street during the 1940s a place that you were told to stay away from? GN: Not really, but we knew that it wasn't a very desirable place to go alone. So when you went down there, you usually went as a group. AK: So if you were six in 1941, then high school for you would have been in the 1960s, is that correct? GN: No, I graduated in 1952, so high school would have been 1949, '50, '51 and '52. Those years. AK: Do you remember anything about segregation in Ogden? GN: Oh, yes. The colored people, who I should call the African-American people, lived pretty much below Washington Boulevard. They lived pretty much south of 25th Street, out on Wall Avenue, Grant Avenue, Lincoln Avenue. The south side of 25th Street was segregated into the point where it was mostly African-American people. And that's where they had a club there: the Porters and Waiters Club. And that's where the colored people, or the African-American 4 of 43 people were. And the other people stayed on the north side of 25th Street. It was segregated, yes, but the schools were not segregated. We had classmates of African-American people - not through elementary school - but all the way through junior high and high school. AK: That's interesting. Are there any other memories about Union Station as a train station that you remember from being a kid? GN: I always thought it was fun to come into the station and see the people. And I always enjoyed the train coming into Ogden because you would stand out there on the platform and wait on the train and the locomotive would come in. And it was just so much fun to see the people coming and going. And the best memory I have of the Union Station is leaving on a train and arriving on the train. And I can tell you that you could buy a ticket to just about any city in the United States in the Station. Now, you didn't get a three hour trip to it. Sometimes it was two or three days to get to that city. You had to maybe change trains and change railroad companies. But the official railroad guide had every city in the United States listed in it, and there was a train serving it, pretty much. Not complete, but pretty much. I liked to come down to the station with a suitcase, with my dad, and get on the train and go somewhere. We would come down to the station and you would get on the train and get out and spend the day in Salt Lake. And we would get on the train and go up, spend the day in Pocatello, and we would get on the train and go up to Yellowstone, and spend a day in Yellowstone, and come back on the train. I think that the sad thing about Yellowstone National Park is now the only way to get there is by car, whereas back in the olden days, you could go up 5 of 43 there on the train and get out of the train and reach Yellowstone, and you could spend a week driving around the park in a big yellow open-top bus, and you could get on the train and come back to Salt Lake City, and you could get on another train and go back east to New York City if you wanted, or San Francisco, or Los Angeles, and you could see Yellowstone Park without driving through it. That was, I think, one of the nicest things I can remember about Yellowstone Park. AK: So as the child of a railroad worker, did you get discounted rides on the train? GN: Yes. I always rode free. AK: Oh, nice. And were there ever trips where you stayed overnight on a Pullman car or anything? GN: Yes, we used to go to Pocatello on the Pullman car, and they'd wake us up about three o'clock in the morning and we got off the train and go to the hotel. That was a long ride. Today, it's a three-hour car drive. But Pocatello was served by train. It stopped at Brigham City and every little city along the line, picking up milk and stuff, and it took about, till about three or four o'clock to get up there. AK: That's amazing, wow. So how old were you when you started working for the laundry building out here? GN: Well, I was 20 years old. It was 1953 when I worked... I only worked in the summers. I did not work full-time because I went to college in the winter, spring and fall, but in the summers, I had the summers off, so I worked in the laundry in 1953 and in 1954. I worked in the commissary in 1955, and I went to Denver and worked on the dining cars in 1959. 1958, I worked for Lagoon. 6 of 43 AK: For Lagoon? GN: Lagoon, yes. The amusement park. AK: Oh, okay. What did you do on the dining cars? GN: I was a steward. I seated the patrons and gave them the check and supervised the waiters and the cooks. AK: And the laundry building that is just south of here was new in 1950? Is that correct? GN: That is correct. AK: Was there a laundry building out here before that? GN: No, it wasn't a building, it was in the basement of the commissary. They did the laundry in the basement. They had the laundry equipment down in there, and the volume got so huge that they built another building. They built the laundry building, and they took all of the equipment---well, they took some of the equipment. Most of the equipment in the new building was new. But they took some of the equipment out of the basement, I guess, and sold it off, or some of it went into the new building. AK: What exactly did you do in the laundry building? GN: I had three or four jobs. I was a janitor at night. Some of the time, I worked on the washing machines, loading and unloading them and spinning them dry. I worked in the dryers, loading and unloading the dryers. I worked on the sorting belt, and I also worked on the tractor, taking laundry shipments to the trains. I drove a tractor with a wagon behind it, and I would take the tractors out onto the platform 7 of 43 and load the laundry into the baggage car or the dining car when it came through town. AK: What was the process for the laundry building when it first came in from the trains? GN: Okay, the laundry came in on the trains, and it came in on a wagon that was pulled by a tractor, which I drove some of the time. They would unload the hampers or the linen bags, and they would move them up to the sorting mill. At the sorting mill, they would dump them on the sorting belt, and there was about four or five men that would sort the laundry into bins. Now, the bins were for tablecloths, table tops, napkins, cook coats, waiter coats, and aprons, and sheets, and pillowcases. It was for linen on the dining car, including, in a lot of the dining cars, the crew slept in the dining car after the dinner hour and before the breakfast hour. So there was those. There was the sorting, the washing, the drying or the pressing of the laundry, and then there's sorting it out, and binning it for shipment out. So laundry came in and went through the process. The towels and certain other things went through the dryer, other things went through an ironing machine which was called a 'mangle', and the 'mangle' would iron the sheet as a whole sheet at a time, or it would iron and fold napkins in one pass. And then there was a bunch of steam presses like they press clothes with. There was about, I think, six women worked over there, and they pressed the waiter coats. The cook stuff went through the dryer, and then there was a sewing room in the laundry. There was probably ten women in there that would repair sheets and pillowcases and tablecloths, tabletops and napkins. Anything that was 8 of 43 damaged and could be repaired by sewing, it was sent to the sewing room and the girls would try to repair it. AK: I've heard that the laundry came from all over. Was it from the full Union Pacific rail line that you got the laundry? GN: It all came from Union Pacific commissaries throughout the system, including West Yellowstone and Sun Valley. And it usually came in in a baggage car, in a hamper, or lots of times, it was just in a laundry sack. And we sent it out sometimes in a laundry sack, and sometimes we sent it out in a linen hamper. So there were commissaries in Omaha, Denver, Ogden, Los Angeles, Pocatello, Portland... I probably missed a few, but that's the main ones. AK: How many employees were there in the laundry building? GN: The exact number? I can't tell you. Let me just go through it. There's probably three or four on the sorting line. I think there would be four on the washing machines. There would be probably ten women in the pressers and stream press. There would be one person in the dryers, and there would probably be... In the big iron, or what we called the mangles, there was probably three or four women on each end. There was one woman that tied it into bundles, and then there was another woman that would put it in the bags. So if you could add up all those numbers I told you, I think it was probably a hundred, maybe. I don't really have a good count, but I told you where they were all working, so if you want to add that up, you'll get the total number. AK: That's fair. I should have written it down so I could add it up while you were saying it. 9 of 43 GN: There were two shifts, but the second shift consisted of washing and drying and ironing. There was no sorting there because the day shift did all the sorting and all the packaging and everything to be shipped out. AK: That's helpful. So since the laundry building is closed right now, a lot of people are curious about what it looks like on the inside. Would you tell me a little bit about how it was set up? Is it two stories? One story? GN: It was one story. It had three elevations. There was two elevations that were rail wagon height. That was the linen floor, the linen check-in floor of the dock, and the front of the laundry, where the wagons were loaded. That was the high elevation. The lower elevation was where the washers were at, and all the ironing and the presses, the dryers and everything were on another elevation. There was another, there was a basement, and the basement had what's called 'steam generators', they call them 'boilers', but they were steam generators. They generated steam on demand. They did not boil water and have a pressure tank, they were called steam generators. And when there was no call for steam, they were not generating steam. And the steam was used in the ironers and in the presses and in the washing machine, and I guess in the bathrooms. AK: For cleaning? GN: Well, it had to heat the water. AK: That makes sense. You said that they weren't boilers. Do you know how the steam was generated, exactly? GN: Well, it was generated by natural gas. And it worked somewhat, I guess, like today's... What do they call those today? The steam... where you don't have a 10 of 43 water tank, you have a hot water...? Ours is called a Rinnai. If you've ever heard of a Rinnai, it's hot water on demand, it's no tank. When you turn on the water, it heats up the water as it goes through the pipe, and you got hot water at the tap. That's what those were, only they generated steam and not hot water. AK: Interesting. Okay. GN: And I think there was about eight of them down there, but I'm not sure how many. It was a place that we didn't go into because there was a lot of high-tech stuff in there. In the 1950s, you know, that was pretty high-tech. The laundry had a full-time engineer, to keep all the equipment running, including the steam generators. And so his full-time job was just making sure everything ran, everything worked. And there was a manager, of course, and that was the number of employees that were in that laundry. AK: That's super interesting. Do you know why Ogden was chosen as the big laundry hub for the Union Pacific? GN: It was a central location, 'cause it's in between Portland and Los Angeles and Denver and Omaha. It's pretty central. AK: That makes sense. GN: That's why they call it the Crossroads of the West. AK: That's fair. And then in 1955, you went on to work in the commissary? GN: Yes. 1955. AK: Tell me about your working there. What did you do? GN: Our job was to fill orders from the commissaries and from the trains. When we would get telegraph reports from trains coming through Ogden that wanted 11 of 43 laundry or wanted linen and food. And it was our job to meet the train, provide them the food that they wanted, and anything else that they needed. The dining car ranges worked with Presto-Logs. The ranges were fired, they weren't electric or gas, and the refrigerators were cooled by dry ice. So we provided, pretty much, Pres-to-Logs and dry ice for every dining car that came through Ogden on all the trains. Because, you know, two or three meals and you need some more Logs. And maybe an hour, maybe half a day later, you need another dry ice packet. I think they were blocks, about like this [shows size with hands]. So we would provide the dry ice, and it was our job to meet the dining car as it came through town, and put that food and that stuff in the dining car. Now I have a really funny story, if you'd like to hear it. I was working the night shift, and it was my job to go over to the telegraph office and pick up the telegraph from the city of Los Angeles, out of Los Angeles, coming to Ogden through Las Vegas. So, the chef on the train got off and sent me a telegram from Las Vegas, and when it got to Ogden, I went over to the telegraph office and picked it up. And on the telegraph was an order for six strawberry pies. P-I-E-S. Now, this is one o'clock in the morning, and I'm thinking, "Where in the world am I going to get six strawberry pies?" So I called the Wonder bakery and I got the foreman on duty. I ask, "Can you make me six strawberry pies and have them down here by nine o'clock?" And he says, "Well, that's going to be tough, but I think I could do it." So along about eight o'clock, the Wonder Bread truck came in, and they handed me six strawberry pies. So we took the six strawberry pies out to the dining car when it came in, and the chef says, "I didn't order six 12 of 43 strawberry pies. What are you talking about? Don't put those in my car." So I hauled 'em back to the commissary, stacked them up in the cooler in there, and everybody looked at the telegraph and it said, "Six strawberry pies." Well, the telegraph operator had replaced the 'pies' with P-R-E-S instead of P-I-E-S, which would've meant 'six strawberry preserves' . So we all enjoyed strawberry pie that day [laughs]. They couldn't blame me for that, I followed the directions of the telegraph. If there was anybody wrong, it was the telegraph operator upstairs that typed in P-I-E-S instead of P-R-E-S. AK: That is really funny. It was a good experience after all, right? You got your strawberry pies out of that, so. GN: Well, it was, you know, it's what I remember. One of my goofs [laughs]. AK: That's great. The commissary mostly worked with the dining cars, then, you were saying. Is that correct? GN: That is correct. But they also worked with private cars, and we had a very nice liquor warehouse, and we of course put alcoholic beverages in the lounge cars on the trains and on the private cars of the railroad executives. So we had a lot of liquor, or a lot of alcoholic beverages, beers, and wines, for those cars and for the private cars. And we also provided food for the private cars when they came through town. A lot of railroad executives all traveled by private car or railroad train, and they would get their food from the commissary unless they were, you know, some place like Cheyenne, or they would get it from the store then. But we would provide that, and we would also provide dishes. We had a good 13 of 43 assortment of, good assortment of dishes and pots and pans that they could stock the... And of course, we always stocked. There was a number of dining cars that were based out of Ogden, and they would come in, and we'd clean them out, remove all the food, throw away everything that's perishable, and we'd restock them to go out again on another train. And I don't know, I don't remember exactly what trains were... I think the trains that went up to Montana, the dining cars on them were based here in Ogden. And I think the dining cars on one steamliner was based here in Ogden, but the car didn't stop here. It went to the end. But, they were based here with most of their supplies, if I remember correctly. I'm not sure I remember all that too detailed. AK: And were there any times where you had VIPs riding the trains through here? GN: Oh, yeah. They came through here all the time. Yeah. AK: Who do you remember? GN: Herbert Hoover. They came through on a train one night. The train was called the Gold Coast. It was going to San Francisco, and I think he was going to Stanford. I think he was from California. And he got off the train and was walking around the yard, and I walked up to him and I said, "President Hoover, could I have your signature?" And I had a pad and a piece of paper and a pen, and he wrote, "The best wishes of Herbert Hoover." Now, that's the only really important person I remember, but I also remember Harry Truman and Thomas Dewey making a campaign stop here in Ogden. I remember when Harry Truman came through, the whole town was 14 of 43 surrounding the depot. You couldn't hardly get anywhere near the place. I think we ended up somewhere over on Wall Avenue, and there was just a mass of people listening to Harry Truman. Well, sometime a little bit later, Thomas Dewey came through and I said, "I'm gonna go down and see him." There was hardly any people here, nobody here. He was talking to a very few people, and I walked him out through the depot to his private car on the train and said goodbye to him, along with a couple of other people. But nobody paid any attention to Thomas E. Dewey. And that shocked me. Here's the man running for President of the United States, and Ogden is just kind of quiet about it. AK: Yeah, well, I guess he knew what Ogden's opinion was of him, unfortunately. GN: That didn't seem to faze him a bit, the fact that there was hardly anybody here. And I guess, I think it was during the day, and President Truman came through in the night, so probably everybody was working when Thomas Dewey came through, but everybody was not working when Truman came through because I remember it was night. AK: Was Herbert Hoover the one who did the whistle-stop tours as well? GN: Yes, I think... well, I'm not sure, but that was the only way people traveled in those days was by train, so it was whistle-stops. There were no planes, no trucks, no train, or no big limousine cars or... There were busses, of course, but that was the way politicians met the American people, was through whistle-stops. Or the train to go into town, and it would stop and they'd get... They always had a big private car. I can tell you the name of that car; It was the Ferdinand Magellan, and it was a huge car. It was a heavy car, because we were always told that 15 of 43 when the Ferdinand Magellan was on the back end of a train, you had to have more than one engine up in the front because it was so heavy. It was bulletproof and everything, I guess, but it had a huge porch on the back of it where they could go out with a speaker thing and a loudspeakers and everything. The train'd pull into town and it'd stop there, the candidate, or whoever it was, would go out and stand in there and people would float around the train and then he'd pull off and go to another town and have a whistle-stop. AK: That's really cool. Do you still have the paper that Herbert Hoover signed? GN: Yes, somewhere, but I can't find 'em lately. I've moved about 12 times since then [laughing]. But I think I have them. Yes, I think I do, because I really like that. I was impressed that he would stop and sign the thing for me, because I was working that night. I was loading linen in a train car, and I had a little aluminum container where I had forms that I would fill out when I would put some stuff in a coach or something like that and I'd fill it out. And once I saw him, I just turned the page over and there was a pen there and I just said, "Can I have your autograph?" He just took it and he just wrote on there. I was really impressed with the man. AK: That's a good story. So how long did you work in the commissary again? GN: Just one summer. I went back a couple of times when we were out of school, over the holidays. I always worked over the holidays with the railroads, mostly in the laundry or in the commissary. But one Christmas season, I worked up in the baggage room, and I worked from eleven o'clock at night until seven in the morning. And it was our job to unload mail train cars, and it was cold and it was a 16 of 43 hard job. And I would come home eight o'clock in the morning and sleep all day and I never felt rested. And I'd go back to work that night. Oh, that went on over the entire Christmas holidays. AK: That does not sound like fun. Did you ever work with any of the African-American porters? GN: Oh, yeah. When I was on the dining car, it was all African-American waiters and cooks. I did have one white chef on the City of Denver, when I was running on that train. But most of the time, they were all African-American people, cooks and waiters. Sometimes I was the only white person in the car. AK: That's fascinating. And I've heard, when talking about dining cars, I've heard some people say 'chef' and 'cook'. Was there a difference between the two? GN: Yes. The chef prepared the food, and I think they said there was a second or third cook, I can't remember which; their job was to wash the pots and pans, and to do things that the chef told them to do. But there were the chef and there were cooks, but the cooks were primarily to wash the dishes [laughs], the pots and pans. It was the chef that made the food, or prepared the food. And that, you know, in those days, that food had to be prepared. We didn't have microwaves. Those people were cooks, and they were good cooks, too, because we took raw materials out to the dining cars, not microwave stuff. I remember we used to take a halibut out, and it was a halibut, it was like this big [shows with hands] and it was the whole halibut, except the head was missing. The tail was even there, they were frozen. And I used to think, "How does anybody ever eat this stuff?" 17 of 43 AK: That's amazing. And I'm actually just going to ask you: do you remember what the menu was typically like? GN: You bet. We always had three or four entrees, we had appetizers, and we always had desserts, and we had beverages on there. One of the items that was always on there was a steak. You could order a full 16-ounce New York steak that we would serve. I have a lot of menus that I saved, and it's really interesting to see the prices we used to charge. Because, you know, you could get a steak for five bucks. You can't even buy a hamburger for five bucks today. But it was well-cooked food. And I even remember the salads. We did not serve salads like you do today. We served what's called a 'salad wedge', which was a head of lettuce, cut in a wedge, and put on a plate. And that was the salad. AK: That's all that it was? Just a head of lettuce cut in a wedge? GN: That's all it was. It was called a salad wedge. AK: Any dressing or anything? GN: Yeah, there was a dressing for it. I don't remember what it was. I saw it go out to the table, but I never ordered a wedge of lettuce. When I was in the dining cars, I always ate breakfast after the meal was served, lunch after the lunch was served, and dinner after the dinner was served. So my eating hours were always late, always after breakfast, after lunch, and after dinner [laughing]. AK: Did you eat the same food as the patrons? GN: Yeah, I ate from the menu, unless the chef prepared something special. Sometimes he would prepare something special for the crew, and I ate with the crew, because when the meal was over with, we all sat down and had dinner, we 18 of 43 all sat down and had lunch, and we all sat down and had breakfast. And then we cleaned up the car and set it up for the next meal, and it was a long day. I started out at six in the morning and it was usually ten o'clock or eleven o'clock at night before I got into the bunk. AK: And it sounds like the passengers had a six-course meal? Is that what you said? GN: They always had an appetizer, they had an entree, and they had a dessert, and a soup or a salad. That was the menu, if I remember correctly. There was an appetizer and a soup and an entree. There was always a potato, and then there was a dessert. And we had some strange desserts. We had those fancy cheeses, you remember: Liederkranz and Limburger cheese. And I remember when a person would order those, we would all say, "That doesn't smell too good." But we served it. If a patron wanted a Limburger cheese or a Liederkranz cheese, we had that cheese aboard for dessert. Then we had cigars in the lounge car. And we always serviced the lounge cars too, from the commissary, with alcoholic beverages. And I think they had some cigars on there, but I don't remember cigarettes on there. AK: Tell me a little bit more about when you worked with the baggage. Do you remember how many suitcases you would process through every day? GN: I didn't work with suitcases. AK: Oh, okay. GN: I didn't handle passenger baggage or passenger luggage. I was strictly with the mail cars, so I didn't handle luggage... I didn't handle anything for passengers. We just provided them with food and beverage. 19 of 43 AK: Gotcha, okay. I misunderstood, then, sorry. How long did you work for the railroad? GN: My railroad days ended when I graduated in June of 1960. Then I left the railroad. I didn't work for the railroad anymore after that, but I worked in 1953 to 1960 on the railroad, with the exception of two years when I was in the Army, and one year when I was a payroll clerk at Lagoon. AK: What did you do in the Army, just out of curiosity? GN: I was an administrative clerk at Fitzsimmons Army Hospital in Denver, Colorado. I worked in the Army Enlisted Classification section. And our job in that section was to provide enlisted men to the hospital and all the buildings and everything surrounding, all the function of the hospitals. Our job was to find the enlisted men to fill the enlisted positions. We didn't have anything to do with the doctors or the civilians. But there was a lot of enlisted men positions at Fitzsimmons Army Hospital. And our section was, we processed them in and out of duty in the hospital. The enlisted people in the hospital were mainly orderlies and dental tech, or medical technicians, laboratory workers, kitchen work. There was a military police detachment. We had to provide them with the enlisted military policemen. And we also provided the general with an orderly and we provided the chaplain with a... What do they call 'em? Altar boy? And that was full-time position for an enlisted man; an altar boy at the Catholic church. He and I were really good friends, and I was a good friend of the general's orderly too. I really enjoyed my term in the Army. AK: Did you join because of the Korean War? 20 of 43 GN: Korean War was pretty well over when I volunteered. If I would have went in the Army when I graduated high school, I'd have been in Korea. But Eisenhower became president, and he got a ceasefire going, and the draft was going on, and in 1955, I got tired of going to school. So I went to the draft board and I said, "If I quit school, you get to draft me in." And they said, "You bet. You'll be goin' within two months after you quit school." And I said, "Well, why don't you just draft me now?" And she says, "You got it." And so I said, "Bye bye." I went in the Army [laughs]. AK: And did you leave for the Army from Union Station? GN: Yeah. Well, I went to Fort Douglas, Utah, and processed in up there, and they took us down to the Salt Lake City station and put us on a train to Ogden, and then they put us on a Pullman car in Salt Lake City. And then when we got to Ogden, they put the Pullman car on the back of the train headed for California, and off we went from Ogden to Oakland, California, and we ended up in downtown San Francisco. AK: So I've heard that in World War Two, a lot of troop trains came through here, but then I've also heard that a lot of times, people were processed in Salt Lake and then went through the Salt Lake Station. Was the Salt Lake Station the main place where everyone started, and then the troop trains just passed through the Ogden Union Station? GN: They just passed through the Ogden Union Station. AK: Okay. 21 of 43 GN: Fort Douglas was an Army base, and it had a lot of military there. And that was where you joined the Army or you were released from the Army. And, of course, everybody that was drafted in Utah went through Fort Douglas. And of course, there was only one way out of Fort Douglas, was by train. So that's the way we went. We went on a train. AK: So after you graduated college in 1960, what did you go on to do? GN: I went into Thiokol Chemical Corporation and I worked for them ‘till 1964. Then I went to work for a trucking company in 1964, and I worked for trucking companies from 1964 until 1997, when I retired. AK: So tell me about how you got involved in volunteering with the Museums at Union Station. GN: Well, when we retired, we were living in Iowa, and I didn't want to retire in Iowa because there were no mountains. So we moved back to Ogden and our family home was available. My brother and I had inherited when our parents died, and so we moved back into the old family home, and I didn't have a lot to do, and Helene kind of bugged me to get out of the house [laughs]. And she kept saying, "You ought to be volunteering down at the station." So I came down, I came down to the station and met with Lee Witten. He said, "Yeah, I could use you." So I volunteered and I worked with Lee Witten in the, in the research library, which is on the second floor. I worked there, I think, for probably ten years with him, maybe even longer. HN: Longer. 22 of 43 GN: Longer? I don't remember. I worked with him in the library, but when I worked with him in the library, I was converting pictures and slides into digital images on the computer, because my last 20 years in the trucking industry was working with computers. So I have a good background in computers because I worked with them when they were brand-new and until 1997. And I'd already started to get interested in doing photographic image enhancing and converting old photographs to digital image. And I worked with that section of the Station until I got all of the photographs converted. And when we got done, we had about 96,000 pictures that we had converted to digital and we've put them in a software program called PastPerfect. And I don't know if that's still working today, I hope it is. I hope the 96,000 pictures we had---and there was probably a lot more than that. I hope they haven't disappeared, because that took us over ten years to get done. I worked two days a week, all afternoon, and I just scanned and converted them into the digital image, and then I ran all of them through a digital enhancing program, so that I sharpen them up. Changed the lighting and made it look a little better. I ran them all through a program called ACDSee. And I've done that at home too. I've got pretty close to 23,000 pictures on my computer right now that I've converted into digital images. So. And our kids are not really enthused about that, and I don't know why. But they're pretty happy with their cameras and taking pictures, you know. They'll look at them occasionally [chuckles]. AK: They will. So I actually just interviewed Lee this morning, and he mentioned how many negatives you guys had. Were you working with photo negatives, too? 23 of 43 GN: I was working with the photographs. I don't remember doing any negative conversions with Lee, but I worked with the prints, and, let's see, did I work with slides? I don't think the scanner he had up there... Nah, my scanner at home worked with slides. My home computer equipment handled slides, it can handle VCR tapes, and it could also handle CDs. When my uncle died, he was an avid photographer, slide photographer. And when he died, I told his kids, I said, “Let me convert all his slides to digital image," and so I did, and he had 20,000 slides. HN: 23,000 GN: 23,000, was it? I converted all of those to digital image, and then when I got it all done, I called them up and I said, "Now, I'm going to give the actual slides to the Union Station Library," and I gave them. They should still be upstairs. So they each came down and I told them, "Bring a little flash drive, or a thumb drive, or a little hard drive, external hard drive, and I'll give you a copy of them." Then they all came over and took the whole set up, took a copy of all of those pictures home. And I broke them into four categories. I took everything that had the family in it, I broke it in the family category. Then he loved to take pictures of flowers, and then he loved to take pictures of scenes, or, you know, travel. I can't remember what the fourth one was, but anyway, there were four groups of photography, four groups of slides. And he had more pictures of Ogden in the olden days than you can imagine. He even got pictures of them tearing down the old town up there, tearing down Washington Boulevard to build that awful mall. I hope they're still upstairs. I don't know whether they're still there or not. I might just walk up there when we're through and see. I'd like to know if they're still 24 of 43 using PastPerfect, because I thought when we were doing that, I thought the goal was to have those pictures available on an Internet program or an Internet URL on the Internet, so that if anybody wanted to browse through the old pictures of Ogden, they could access that file and look at those pictures, because we have pictures from people all over the city that gave us these photographs, this historical records, this is Ogden history. Well, I think PastPerfect was such an all-encompassing program that it was hard to thread your way into what you wanted, because there's so many different paths to go, and you think, "Well, why am I going down this path, and what's that going to do?" Or, you know, all I really wanted to do is to scan the picture and make a JPEG image of it, and put the JPEG image in a file, and give it a file name with some sort of a description. And that's what I did for more than ten years. AK: That's amazing. HN: He volunteered here for about 17 years, 'cause I did 13. GN: But when we got those pictures all done, I said to Lee, "Now what do you want me to do?" And he said, "Well, I'm not sure." And I said, "Well, why don't I go down and volunteer in the museums?" And so I came down and I volunteered and I worked every museum: the cars, the guns, the railroad. I worked in the gift shop. I worked on the information desk, and I worked in the gift shop. I sold admissions. I’d give people a little sticker on them when they bought admissions to let them walk through the place. Yeah, the museums were fun. 25 of 43 The hardest one for me was the guns because I know guns. I know how to operate a gun, I know how to shoot them. But that Browning Museum is world-renowned and they got guns up there that're worth a fortune. And people would ask me questions about gun stuff that I couldn't answer. But the guys that were really behind the guns, like Ward Armstrong, they knew those guns real well. But I was just occupying the desks; I made sure they had a badge to get in. Somebody wanted me to tell them about this gun and what kind of bullets it used and what its firepower was. I couldn't answer those questions. But I did study enough to know how Mr. Browning developed the automatic rifle. I could explain that. The cars, I didn't, I just... When I was sitting in the... [Regarding Helene] She worked in the car museum for four years. HN: Longer in the ticket office. GN: We left the station as volunteers in 2019 when the COVID virus closed the place up and we didn't come back. So I don't know what they've got. HN: We left before everything closed down. I think it was January and February. GN: Well, we left just before. HN: Yeah, just before. GN: Yeah, we could see there was trouble coming and so. HN: It was fun to see people. The last day I volunteered, I volunteered in the guns. I had three men come through different times. They were independent manufacturers. They created their own guns and they were fascinated with Browning. 26 of 43 GN: Well, I'm enjoying this, so keep going until you're tired, because I could talk about this place for a long time. AK: Well, good. That's what we want. We want to hear all of it. One of the things I did want to ask you was, when you were converting the photographs into digital images, do you remember what kind of equipment you used? GN: Well, it was just a photo scanner, and it was just a regular desktop computer with, I think it was running Windows. I don't remember which version of Windows it was running on, but it was running one of the really older versions. And I just put the picture on the scanner and pushed the scan button, and when it came up on the screen, I'd give it a name, and on to the next one. Sometimes I would scan four or five pictures at a time and then frame 'em and edit 'em and frame 'em off so that they were individual pictures. But for the most part, it was just a simple scanner. I think it was an HP scanner, but I cannot remember exactly what it was. But it was just a simple scan. And the scan came up on the screen, and I'd give it a name and on to the next one. Put it in PastPerfect. PastPerfect was the program that was running the scanner. So the scanner was linked to the PastPerfect, and I would just... I think, if I remember right, he just told it to scan and give it the scanner, the machine in. Next thing you know, you had a picture. AK: You were just saying you have a lot of stories about Union Station. What are some of your favorite stories that you would like to share? GN: Well, what I liked best about the Station was it was where the activities were. This is where Ogden was. And it was so much fun to see the trains leave at night. Direct stories: One of the little mistakes I made on the platform was I didn't 27 of 43 secure the wheels on a baggage wagon and it went down the stairs into the subway, and fortunately, there was nobody down on the subway, nobody comin' up the stairs, because it tumbled away, rolled. I pulled it up, but I forgot to chain the wheel up, and I went off to drag another wagon over to hook it onto my tractor. I was really going to hook it onto the back end of the baggage wagon that I had left in front of the stairway. And when I got back, the wagon was downstairs. So we had to get a bunch of guys to drag the wagon back up, I think we had a chain and we pulled it back up with the tractor. And I thought I was going to get fired, but I guess it was an allowable mistake. AK: How many tunnels were there for the subway area out to the train tracks? GN: There were two stairways down from the platform to the tunnel. The tunnel went all the way out to the steam plant and every... The tracks were Track One, and then all the tracks were two tracks together out to the steam plant, and I think there were 13 tracks. And there was a stairway that came up between every section of two tracks. Track One, I think, came out from the... I'm not positive about that. I think it came out from the depot. There was a stairway between Track One and Two, then Three and Four, then Five and Six. So there were stairways that came up on both sides of that tunnel, and they came up to the platform, and each stairway and each platform served two tracks. And I'm trying to remember where Track One and Two were connected but I... Track Two had to have a stairway, because they never allowed a passenger to cross the tracks. They always came up and could go to the train that was alongside the platform. So Track One was, this is Track One out here [pointing out the window], and then 28 of 43 the next one was Track Two, and there's a platform. The platform is between Track One and Two, so there must have been a stairway between Track One and Two, and then the next one would've been Three and Four, and the next one would've been between Five and Six. So there would've been two stairways out of the tunnel for every two tracks, all the way out to track 13. But track 13 was primarily a storage... Those tracks way out to the steam building were primarily to store passenger cars. And I think they stored some mail cars out there too, baggage cars, too. But those kept the passenger equipment out on the tracks. They didn't take that over to the Roundhouse. They serviced the passenger cars from those tracks, if I remember rightly. Yeah. But that was the only way to get to the tracks from the depot, was down to the tunnel and up. So the only people that walked across the tracks were dummies like me. We crossed tracks. We didn't use the stairway [laughs]. AK: How come? GN: Well, because it was too much work. It was wicked. There was plenty of places to cross the tracks without stepping on the tracks, there were plenty of wooden crossing bridges. And of course, my job was to drive a tractor and to drive those baggage cars, those linen cars, and those commissary wagons up to the tracks, and I spotted those linen wagons and those commissary wagons all over the yard. When it was time for a train to come in and it needed to be serviced, there was stuff to put on it. I would drive the tractor out there and I would park the tractor wagon in such a manner so that they could pull it up to the side of the train really quick and not block the passengers. Dining cars usually were in the 29 of 43 center of the train. Lounge cars were always on the end of the train, and occasionally there would be a lounge car on the other side of the diner. So the Pullman cars were always on the back of the train. The coach cars were always on the front of the train, except for one time. One train, it was called the Challenger, it was a high-speed train between Chicago and Los Angeles, and they had to put the Pullman cars up next to the engine and put passenger cars on the last of the train, behind the diners, because they ran so fast that they could shake people out of the bunks at high speeds. And they didn't want to do that, so they put them up next to the engine and they let the coach cars sway like this instead of the Pullman cars. There's a neat story. Because the people were complaining, "We got shook out of bed." But in those days, the Pullman cars were bunks and you didn't have a door between you and the aisle, you had a curtain. If you were on the top bunk, you even had less curtain. So that train ran so fast that, I think it's speed limit was under 120 miles an hour in certain areas on the tracks. And those engineers would run it. And if that train went around a curve at 120 miles an hour, there was a sway. Yeah, and of course, there's always an amount of sway on a train anyway. So they moved the Pullman cars up next to the engine so they wouldn't shake the passengers out of bed that were sleeping at night. AK: That's an interesting memory. That's really cool. So just out of curiosity, do you have any memory of the post office building that was right over here? GN: Oh, yeah, sure. The mail center here? Yeah. When I worked in the baggage room, our job primarily was to unload mail sacks. And I would look in there all the 30 of 43 time and see them sorting mail. That was a big distribution point because they ran railway post office cars out of here all the time and they would go up north and they'd go south and they'd go west and they'd go east. There was a lot of sorting done there. I guess they would send mail into Ogden, maybe you wanted to go south, west and north, and it would be their job in there to build those those cars, fill those cars with mail, and then the railway post office cars had railway post office clerks, and they would sort the mail off, sort the mail out, while the train was moving. And they would sort the mail to cities that the train was going to go through, and when the train went through that city, the railway post office car would throw the mail out on the platform that was for that city, and there was a hook out there that they could hook outgoing mail and drag it into the car and bring it down. So they did that. One of the things that killed the railroad was when they lost the mail contracts. It went to the trucks and to the airlines. Before that, all the mail was moving by rail. AK: So was this mail building as big of a centralized building as the laundry building was? GN: It was this whole building here [Pointing to the Browning Theater]. This whole room here? That was the mail center. This was where we stored the mail, the wagons. This area where we are now was part of the platform. As you can see, that's the wall. That room there didn't have that theater there. That was the mail sorting building. It was just a part of the station. AK: Okay. And since Ogden was the central hub, did all of the mail from Union Pacific come through here as well? 31 of 43 GN: The mail came into here to be sorted for the North and for the South. I think the mail heading west just stayed on the train. I know that when a mail train would come in, and I was working in the baggage room, when the mail train would come in, there would be certain cars on the train that we would work. And we would pull up to the door of the mail car with, I think, one, two, three, four, five... with six wagons, and they would pull the sacks out of the mail car, and we'd stack them on those six wagons and the guy that would pull them out of the railcar, he would throw 'em to - there was one of us on each one of those wagons - and he would throw the sack to us if it was for our wagon, and we would take the mail sack down to the end of the wagon and start building a stack of mailbags. And so we would work that car and when all the mail sacks in that car were empty, then it would be all spread over those six wagons. And then the post office department would come out with a tractor and they'd pull all those wagons into this mail center here, and they had to load all those sacks in there, and I guess they sorted them then. I remember mail trains coming in all the time, especially at night, because we were really busy. I was working from 11 to 7 and we were always busy with a particular car on the train. t was so cold out there, I couldn't get enough gloves and hats and coats on there because it was Christmas, you know, the holidays, and it was the coldest time of the day because we were working from midnight till seven in the morning, and I was always cold, half-frozen. AK: Did they have a uniform that they had you wear? GN: [Shakes head]. 32 of 43 AK: So you could bundle up if you needed to? GN: Yeah, I just wore as warm clothing as I could. I never wore a uniform in any of the railroad jobs I ever had. But I did wear a suit when I was a steward, a suit and a tie. AK: I heard that there was a restaurant in the building where the car museum is now. Is that correct? GN: I don't think so. Where the cars are now is has been built. I think that's an addition to this room here [points to the Browning Theater]. The restaurant was down at the other end. But the restaurant was gone. I don't think the restaurant survived the fire. I don't know, maybe it did, but I don't remember. But you could get sandwiches at the south end of the station, the southwest corner. There was a shop there, a curio shop and a news, newsstand, and newspapers and cigars and cigarettes, and there was food there, and coffee. They had a lot of coffee there. Then across the other side of the stairway was the girls for the, oh, what was it, the girls that provided coffee for the soldiers, what was that called? That was called the USO? Yeah, the USO girls were on the other side. But I do not remember a restaurant in this building. I think the restaurant pictures that we do have up there are from the old building that burned down. The south part of the building was occupied by what was called the Ogden Union Railway and Depot Company, and the upstairs was the Union Pacific Railroad portion. And then up above this side was the Southern Pacific Railway portion of the building. And then, of course, this part here was baggage room and bathrooms. There was even a barbershop and a beauty shop in there, too, at one time where the 33 of 43 Gallery 51 is now. And yeah, the two bathrooms: that was a restroom, one half of it was men, and the other half was women. And there was a barbershop, I think, and a beauty shop there. AK: Oh, Gallery 51? GN: Yes. In that area, that part of the depot, from Gallery 51, to where the entrance to the railroad is, to this wall here. This back wall here was restrooms, barbershop, and I think there was a beauty parlor in there and there was a shoe shine. The bathrooms were huge. AK: That's amazing. You have so many incredible memories. I appreciate you sharing all of them. I have just a few questions left, since we've been going for about an hour and a half, and then I'll let you go. One of the things that I've noticed you keep saying that I'm curious about is that you loved being down here at the station because this is where Ogden was. Would you tell me a little more? What do you mean by that? GN: A little more about that? AK: Yeah. What do you mean when you say that this is where Ogden was? GN: I just, because there are so many people. People are coming and going, and so many different people. It was so much fun to see people. And I just, you know, I loved the people were coming and going up the street. There was activities on both sides of the street. It was just an active center. And then, I loved to hear the trains and see them come in and go. And I went to stand out there on that platform and see how the ground shook when the big locomotives came in. That was what I loved about this station, was there was people from all over the world. 34 of 43 I was up at the ticket office one day, working on the ticket office, and I met a couple from Vienna, had come from Vienna to see the gun museum. And I thought, "That's all fascinating," that's, I'd just love to visit with them, but I sold 'em a ticket and told 'em where the gun museum was. That was, you know, I just, I just like to see. You know, that's the fun part about going to the airport is watching people come and go for a minute. And of course, you can't do that anymore, you know, they... Before the awful things happened, you could take your passenger right to the gate and sit there and watch the plane pull away. And now, the best you could do is just get up and take them to the, to the end of the parking place and say goodbye, and then they got to go through security and they gotta scan ya. That's why I don't fly anymore. I'm not going to get on another airplane as long as I live. At least, I think, maybe. I don't really want to. But I think the way they treat you now, they put you in an aluminum cigar, and you got about this much room for your feet and you sit there like this [cramps body up]. And after about three hours, I'm ready to go beserk. I just can't sit in a chair for that long a time with my knees up against something else, crowded in like this, you know. I think that that's the most awful way to travel. Anybody that's ever traveled on an old-time train like in the city of San Francisco, city of Los Angeles, and realized what a beautiful way it was to travel. But it wasn't fast. You didn't get there in two hours, but it was comfortable. It had, you could do things, you could walk around, and you could go to eat, you could go get a drink, you could just sit there and watch the scenery go by. But now, you get on an airplane and you've got a window about this big, and you put your face right in it just to even look out, 35 of 43 and all you see is clouds. But, you know, they've got to go. They've got to go two or three hours to get somewhere. It's really important, gotta be there within two hours. They don't appreciate what it's like to travel and see things, see the world and the country. That was one of the parts of my steward's job that I liked the most was looking out the window. I was on the city of Portland, and I served a breakfast as the train went down the Columbia River into Portland. I thought that was one of the most beautiful rides I've ever seen. It was also a beautiful ride through the Feather River Canyon and also through the Glen Canyon over Colorado. Those are just lovely rides. And, you know, it's just so, so beautiful. People just don't appreciate what it is to travel and not have to drive a car. AK: Sounds amazing. Well, I have just a couple more questions, and then I'll let you go. GN: Okay. Fire away. I'm really taking a lot of your time. AK: No, no, it was my fault. I kept asking you all these questions because you have so many memories, I'm amazed. One of the questions that I have been asking everyone is: In the exhibit text, there is a part that says, "Union Station's future was Ogden's future,” which is one of the reasons why they preserved this building." So why do you think that preserving the Union Station building was important to Ogden's future? GN: That's primarily because it’s the reason Ogden's here. If it wasn't for this station, there wouldn't be Ogden - at least not Ogden City like it is today. And the railroad built Ogden, and the war expanded it because of the Ogden Defense Depot and Hill Air Force Base and Naval Supply Depot down in Clearfield. Those things 36 of 43 turned Ogden into a big city. And the reason the Defense Depot was here, Hill Air Force Base was here, and the reason the Naval Supply Depot was here was because we were the central location for sending military stuff to Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Seattle. The Utah General Depot was huge with military stuff, and the Clearfield Naval Supply station was huge with naval stuff there. I went out there one time and found out there were 19 compressed hospitals stored at the Naval Supply Depot that they could have shipped by train and bus and boat to places where there was battles, and they would set up a hospital. And then, one of the things that most people don't know is that all of the huge guns on the battleship were made in Pocatello, Idaho. And guess how they went to the shipyards in the east and the west? They went by train. And up until about 15 or 20 years ago, you could have gone to Pocatello and saw one of those guns sitting over in storage. Maybe it was longer than 20 years ago, maybe like about 40 or 50 years ago, but that's where they made battleship guns: in Pocatello, Idaho. And one of the main reasons Ogden was a perfect place for the railroad was Taylor Canyon. There was an unlimited water supply and trains need water. The steam locomotives need, they got huge water tanks in them, and the cars, the cars need water. And when I was a boy, you could not walk up Taylor Canyon because it was secure to preserve the cleanliness of the water. And there was a guard at the mouth of Taylor Canyon, and there was a gate. And as a boy, I used to love to walk up there and visit with the guard, and if we were lucky, we would get him to raise the metal doors that were channeling the water down to the depot. And we could look down there and say, "Whoa, look at that water." And 37 of 43 the water came down to a reservoir on the top of 25th Street and Fillmore, and that reservoir fed the station down here, all the water it needs. But that was really the super reason that the railroad came to Ogden was that water supply, because there ain't no water in Brigham City, and up at Promontory Point, there's no water up there, and the railroads need water. And, of course, John Browning came to Ogden because there was so much steel here. He needed steel to make guns. Ogden's a fascinating town. It's a beautiful historical town. It's got more history than most people know. And they can't turn this into another mall. They've got to preserve it. Now, I realize now that it earns money as some sort of an event place where people can, where they have parties and stuff like that. They have meeting rooms and they have dances over here and there's a theater and everything, and it can earn money in that fashion. But it still should be a historical railway station. And they don't have near the memorabilia in the railroad museum that they could have. There's vaults downstairs filled with stuff that could be on display. The biggest display of the railroad museum is the model railroad for the kids. That's why they love that. Everybody loves that. They love where the little hand car is, and, and they can get in the little locomotive cab that's in there, but they don't have near the memorabilia that they could have. It's too bad. It's relegated to just one of the places instead of the main, which I realize that the Browning Gun is a worldwide attraction, and it's amazing. It was amazing that what happened with Mr. Browning changed history, when he figured out how to make a gun, shoot it automatically like that, he changed the world history, in warfare, and hunting, and the use of guns. He changed history. 38 of 43 AK: So, last question: What can the community do to keep Union Station relevant for future generations? GN: I think if they would run a tourist train out of here, I think it'd be a magnificent thing for them. But I doubt it'll happen. It's always gotta be history. And if it turns into an event center like the depot in Salt Lake City, it'll lose its character and Ogden will lose its history. Now Ogden had the greatest downtown, between 27th Street and 22nd or 23rd. The most beautiful downtown with stores and theaters and things, and they just ripped it all apart and all it's gone now. And it had the most beautiful courthouse and they tore it down. And the most beautiful hotel between Chicago and San Francisco was the Broom Hotel, and it's gone. And all of the beautiful old buildings are gone. And everything they built---they built that huge mall and it turned out to be a disaster, and then they had to tear it down. And what they've got in there now is okay. It's fine, but it's not history. It's just theaters and restaurants and activities. But if Ogden had kept its Main Street like Park City did, it'd have been an entirely different world, and that makes me sad. Because Park City is just amazing. People go there, I mean, that's a millionaire's place now. Nobody can afford to, like, it's like Aspen in Colorado. And Ogden could have been that way, I think. I hope. I wish. AK: Why do you feel like it's important to preserve Ogden's history for future generations? GN: Because if we don't preserve it, nobody will know anything about it. They won't teach it at the schools. The only way people will ever appreciate Ogden is to have this history. If you go to some of the big cities, they have preserved their 39 of 43 station there as an important part of the city with its historical background. I went to the Indianapolis Union Station. The Union Station in Indianapolis has a Pullman train parked next to the station, and It's like a motel. You can stay in a Pullman room like you got a motel. That was a beautiful station. Denver has kept their station unique. Of course, the Amtrak still goes through there, so that's a big thing for them. A lot of cities have capitalized on the historical nature of their Stations. Evanston, Wyoming has their roundhouse and turned it into all kinds of stuff. They appreciate the fact that there was a railway station here and a roundhouse and they have saved all that. I just can't see Ogden downgrading itself to this just being an event center. Now, they can buy all the land they want. I don't know what they're going to do with it. They're just, probably they'll turn it into retail and office buildings and hospitality buildings like motels and hotels. But that's not history, that's just commerce. Now, if we just want to be a commercial town, I guess, that's what they want to do. Somebody's, you know, all these people paying taxes, and you're not going to get taxes out of this place. You can't get any money to support the city out of this place, all this place can do is draw money. And I guess that's the current way of thinking. "Let's, let's go into something that makes money." AK: You said earlier you had a story about Burl Ives? GN: Okay, this was when we were in high school, and I don't remember what year it was or what grade I was in, but we would have assemblies periodically. And Burl Ives was on a train, and the train came in to Ogden and the train was delayed, and he had about four hours of layover. And he called, or somebody called 40 of 43 Ogden High School and said, "Burl is willing to come up and sing to the kids at Ogden High School if you want him." And of course, we all assembled in the auditorium, and they brought him out with his guitar. And he's a big guy. And he sat there, and I don't know for how long, for maybe an hour or so, and just sang us the songs, you know, like, I can't remember the song that he sang. 'Little Bitty Tear Let Me Down' and some of those songs that he sings, you know, I can't remember all of 'em right now. But he entertained us for I think about an hour, and then they took him back down to the station and he went on his way with the train. That was a neat event. AK: That's an amazing memory. That's so cool. We can end here, unless you have other stories you'd like to share. GN: No, I'm sure if I sat here long enough, things'd come back to me. I remember 50, 60 years ago better than I can remember yesterday and then two weeks ago and the last month. HN: The stockyards. Your dad would go and pick out the cattle. GN: What? HN: The stockyards. Swift and Company? GN: Yeah. HN: Your dad went there, you'd say, about once a month? GN: Well, my dad always attended the stock shows to see who he should buy beef from for the diners, for the commissary, and... We always, when I was in the trucking industry, we always shipped a car load of lambs from the, there was a Swift, there was a Wilson packing company across, over there. It's gone now. It 41 of 43 was behind Swift. And we would pick up a carload, we'd pick up a full reefer truckload of lambs just dressed. The lamb was dressed, it was skinned, it was eviscerated, and it was hung in a refrigerated trailer. And we sent that trailer to New York City with those lambs, and it went into the Jewish section of New York City with lambs. And that... I don't know who ordered it or who did it, but that truck trailer would pull into New York City in those specific places, I don't remember where it was, and those guys, he'd sell those lambs out of the back of that, or he'd sell---I guess he'd unload 'em out of the back of the trailer into his butcher shop and he'd sell it. And it was a one-week thing, we did every week. We sent a car load of of lambs to New York City, and we always had this saying: "The going price of lambs depends upon whether the truck arrives cold or warm." [Laughs] And he says, "If the truck wasn't kept cool, the lambs would get slick." That means they would start to, whatever they do, ferment or something. He says the price he'd sell the lambs for would go down. And if the lambs were nice and cold, the price would go up [laughs]. And so as a trucking company, we always put that truck on a fast track to get it to New York City just as fast as we could. You know, all those lambs were butchered right over across the, right over there, so. AK: In the Ogden Stockyards? GN: The stockyards were beautiful. There was more livestock over there. It was... That was amazing. It was as good a stockyard as there was in the West. Now it's all gone out there. AK: Would you go with your dad to the Ogden Stockyards? 42 of 43 GN: Yeah. My dad always took us down there, and we'd go through and we'd look at all the livestock. We never walked out in the pens. We always stayed in the livestock building where they kept the best, or the ones that were being shown for auction. My dad always wanted to see the beef and the lambs, or the pigs. But I don't know, I don't remember all the stuff that was there. I always remember it just smelled terrible [laughs]. AK: Well, thank you so much, Gene. I really appreciate it. [To Helene] And thank you as well for coming. GN: Alright, bye. 43 of 43