Oral History Program Ray Dean Interviewed by Reva Brittain 13 August 1971 i Oral History Program Weber State University Stewart Library Ogden, Utah Ray Dean Interviewed by Reva Brittain 13 August 1971 Copyright © 2012 by Weber State University, Stewart Library ii Mission Statement The Oral History Program of the Stewart Library was created to preserve the institutional history of Weber State University and the Davis, Ogden and Weber County communities. By conducting carefully researched, recorded, and transcribed interviews, the Oral History Program creates archival oral histories intended for the widest possible use. Interviews are conducted with the goal of eliciting from each participant a full and accurate account of events. The interviews are transcribed, edited for accuracy and clarity, and reviewed by the interviewees (as available), who are encouraged to augment or correct their spoken words. The reviewed and corrected transcripts are indexed, printed, and bound with photographs and illustrative materials as available. Archival copies are placed in University Archives. The Stewart Library also houses the original recording so researchers can gain a sense of the interviewee's voice and intonations. Project Description The Weber State College/University Student Projects have been created by students working with several different professors on the Weber State campus. The topics are varied and based on the student's interest or task for a specific assignment. These oral history assignments were created to help Weber State students learn the value and importance of recording public history and to benefit the expansion of the Weber State oral history collections. ____________________________________ Oral history is a method of collecting historical information through recorded interviews between a narrator with firsthand knowledge of historically significant events and a well-informed interviewer, with the goal of preserving substantive additions to the historical record. Because it is primary material, oral history is not intended to present the final, verified, or complete narrative of events. It is a spoken account. It reflects personal opinion offered by the interviewee in response to questioning, and as such it is partisan, deeply involved, and irreplaceable. ____________________________________ Rights Management All literary rights in the manuscript, including the right to publish, are reserved to the Stewart Library of Weber State University. No part of the manuscript may be published without the written permission of the University Librarian. Requests for permission to publish should be addressed to the Administration Office, Stewart Library, Weber State University, Ogden, Utah, 84408. The request should include identification of the specific item and identification of the user. It is recommended that this oral history be cited as follows: Dean, Ray, an oral history by Reva Brittain, 13 August 1971, WSU Stewart Library Oral History Program, University Archives, Stewart Library, Weber State University, Ogden, UT. iii Abstract: The following is an oral history interview with Ray Dean. The interview was conducted on August 13, 1971, by Reva W. Brittain, in Dean’s home. Dean discusses his childhood and growing up. He also talks about the railroads and the mailing system he grew up with. RB: This is an interview of Mr. Ray Dean at his residence at 648 Kershaw, in Ogden, Utah for the Utah State Historical Society and the Weber State College and the California State College at Fullerton Oral Historical Societies, by Reva Brittain on August 13, 1971 at 1:25 in the afternoon. Mr. Dean would you like to tell us about your early recollections? RD: Well, I can start at the turn of the century that's when I started. RB: That's the place to start. RD: Of course, the first few years I didn't know much but, uh, I was raised in a good Catholic family and got my Catholic education hard way, at home and weekly Sunday school. Mother was too poor to send me to parochial school at that time so I had to get my education in the public schools... at Lewis School. There was possibly three or four hundred students about one percent, there wasn't even one percent, only about half a dozen Catholics in the school. So we were more or less a minority breed in the school. And we got the usual roughing up and pushing around on that account, which is characteristic of kids. I wouldn't say it was the Mormon influence, it was just kid influence. Some of it was pretty rough to take and some of it even extended in to the teachers. It wasn't just the kids but some of the teachers took exception to some of our ideas but I weathered through it and kept the faith. At that time the old Saint Joseph School was located on Twenty-Sixth and Washington where the Continental Oil Service Station is now. They owned a 1 piece of property there about, oh, about three hundred feet on Washington and about three hundred feet on Twenty-Sixth Street. There was an old building in there; I don't know the origin of that building, they called it the Lawrence Hotel. I think it got its name, the Lawrence part of it, from Bishop Scanlon; I'm not sure as to that. That was his first name. I don't know why that building was built. It looked like it was built to be a school or something. It might have been the starting of the old Sacred Heart Academy they found out it wasn't big enough. RB: Down on Washington? RD: Yes. Then they had the little grade school that was a little long two story building just west of that, between there and Kiesel Avenue and they ran through the eighth grade down there. They had two teachers, two sisters. They had the lower grades on the second floor and the upper grades on the ground floor. They separated girls from the boys. There was a screen down through the middle of the room and the girls on one side and the boys on the other. That was characteristic of all parochial schools at that time. Boys and girls were kept miles apart all their lives. It was the thing that was done and nobody paid any attention to it. Most of the kids that I ran around with as a kid went to school down there, so I had pretty good knowledge of what went on. And, uh, oh The Sacred Heart Academy was up on Twenty-Fifth Street; that was a girl's boarding school. It's where that big long medical building is up there now. They have that whole half block. RB: I recall. RD: And, uh, that was quite an institution in its day. They sent girls in there to school from all over the West around here...to boarding school. And of course they had their rules and regulations up there practically all the girls had to live like the nuns. That was pretty hard to do sometimes. RB: As a young man were you able to call on the young ladies there? Was it permitted? 2 RD: No, uh, graduation time, when the girls were ready to graduate, they would, uh, have their graduation dance and, uh, they'd go to the pastor here and get a list of names of eligible young men. And then the girls at the school get to select a name from that, and then she had to invite that young man to the dance at the school and then the sisters all the way around watching every move you made. So it was quite a, it was quite an honor to be invited to that dance, but, uh, most of the girls were from out of town so they left town right after graduation so you never saw them again, so there was no great friendships develop there. RB: Well it probably improved your standing with the girls of the town though, don't you imagine? RD: Oh, yes. I don't think it hurt me. I got in; I got in on two of the dances. That was the big social thing of the year, it had to for the girls, they went, they went haywire over it. Didn't mean much to me because there were lots of girls were I was. I didn't have any problems. RB: Uh, have you always lived in this area, this little school district? RD: Yes, I was born down there in the corner of Twenty-Eighth and Washington. You know where the China Nite Cafe is? RB: Yes. RD: Well, right behind that there's a big two story house and you can see the roof sticking up behind the China Nite. RB: Still there. RD: And, uh, the Real Estate Office on Twenty-Eighth Street, well, that used to be our front yard. That's where I was born. 3 RB: Uh, do you happen to recall, uh, I read, in the history book on Washington, uh, off Washington on Twenty-Sixth there was an old horse watering trough. RD: Oh yes, yes, I remember that. RB: Well it isn't there now, is it? RD: No. RB: Well- RD: I don't know whether they salvaged the one down there by the, by tabernacle, the one down on Twenty-Second and Washington. There was some talk of salvaging that one and keeping it as a historic marker. Now whether they did or not, I don't know. The one on Twenty-Sixth that was, oh, that's been gone for years. RB: Well that's what I thought. I felt, gee, do you remember how long it was there? RD: Well, I, I can't remember when they took it out, and I can't remember when it wasn't there before that, so…Yes, we used to go down there uh, when they had a circus in town; they'd have that on the City Hall Square. They'd come in with their tents them set them up there on the City Hall, what's the City Hall Park now. RB: Well, where was the City Hall then? RD: Huh? RB: Where was the City Hall at that time? RD: There was a street, well you'd know out there on Lake Street, between Twenty-Fifth and TwentySixth. The little street that runs west…to the, to Grant, behind the fire station there. 4 RB: Still there? RD: Well, that used to run clear through- RB: Yes, I know. It's in the parking lot now, isn't it? RD: It used to run clear through to Washington. Why, it would go right through the middle of the City and County building. So that the block was cut in four sections like that and the City Hall was in this one little quarter up here, and right behind it was the jail. RB: Was that the Northeast quarter? RD: Yes. And, and down on, uh, Grant just off of lake Street, between Lake Street and Twenty-Sixth was the fire station. And all horse drawn vehicles in those days. RB: Oh. RD: Well they still use that as a fire station and after they motorized too, that’s right. RB: Uh, can you recall any fires that that damaged? RD: What's that? RB: Can yon recall any outstanding fires and- RD: Well, I guess about the biggest one that I can recall was, uh, the old Utah Loan and Trust Building, it's, uh, where the…Building is now. That was about a five story structure and it started to burn oh, about eleven o'clock at night. I know they got word to me, I was just a kid at the time, we got word that it was going to completely go... if I wanted to see a big fire, why, get down there. So, my older brothers, they got us all up and we all went down and stood around and watched the fire. That was really a, really a fire. Of course in those days all of the interior of your buildings 5 was all wood. They didn't have cement and steel and stuff like that to build with, so everything was wood and then they'd, uh, have the outside wall around the building and then you’re (offset) and everything around that outside wall and a skylight and a top with a vacant space in the middle, clear down to the ground floor. RB: All the, from the top of the building. RD: Yeah. So that just made the chimney. RB: Oh, dear. RD: When that fire got started down on the bottom, why right up the chimney she went. RB: Uh, at the time of the fire, how many fire engines were there? Could you tell us about the fire engines and how they fought the fires? RD: Well it was all horse drawn vehicles at that time. And they had, uh, two hose wagons and ladder wagons set up in the fire station at all times. And in the shed in the back they had another wagon or two for extra hose so they had to if they didn't have enough hose on the first two wagons they’d go back and get another wagon and bring the extra hose wagon out. RB: Now, at that time they didn't have a fire hydrant. RD: Yes, they had fire hydrants and they, uh, they had steam pumpers. Steam engines instead of your gasoline engines like we have now. They'd have a steam engine and they'd hook them up to the fire plugs or pump her in the ditch or whatever. RB: Do you know if they kept up steam in the engines all of the time, or did they, uh- RD: No, no they were, uh, they would fire them up when they left station if they knew they were going to use them? 6 RB: Would, would they be ready in time? RD: They'd have to fire all day and by the time they got to the fire she'd start generating steam. It wasn't nearly as fast as when we get this now where you can go clear across town in five minutes and you're almost there. While then it might take you almost thirty minutes to get across there with a team of horses. RB: Oh. Was there a lot of excitement when a fire engine went down the street? RD: Oh, yes, yes. It's a thrill that I often wish…was to see those horses lay in that…and…to work. I don't know what there is about seeing those horses work the way they did. It's, uh, really, really interest! And they were well trained. They were big horses, great big ones, great big fellows. RB: Do you know what kind they were? What kind of horses? RD: No, I don't. RB: Probably just a horse big enough, big enough to pull? RB: I wasn't too interested in horse breeding at that time. RB: Well, was there a lot of confusion along the street with other vehicles and horses getting out of the way? RD: Well, there weren't any other vehicles, only horse drawn vehicles. RB: Well, I know, but were the horses on the street, were they frightened when the fire engine came by? RD: Not ordinarily, no. Of course they had a bell on the wagon they kept ringing the bell let, let everybody know that they were coming and they were supposed to make way for them. If they 7 had a jittery horse why they'd (stand) by his head and hold on to it. Another oddity in the fire department, I just happened to think of it now, they had a team of horses that were trained by the fire department, and they answered a call someplace, I don’t remember where it was unless it was down at the old gas house what they called it where they used to convert coal into cooking gas and also for the gas lights in the stores and that kind of stuff and they had a fire down there and in converting it into coal, why, into gas why, there developed quite a bit of tar and there was an explosion of some kind and they pulled these horses over that hot tar and they thought that the horses were done, they didn't think they'd ever be any good anymore, but they done the best they could to save them. They weren't satisfactory for fire horses after that, so the city kept them on the job for street work and, uh, but they, in the summertime all of their hair was, uh, pretty well burn off so they had to keep them covered to keep them from sun burning because they didn't have any hair to protect their skin, and of course in the wintertime they had to have blankets on them. But, uh, those horses, even years after they were off the fire department, if they heard those fire wagons coming those drivers had to be right there to hold those horses down or they were going with the fire wagons. RB: Hm. Well, you've seen horses recover, were they different, were they different color, could you see this color on their hair? RD: There was white blotches on them where they'd been, uh, where the scar tissue was just like if you get a scar on your head, you get a white spot of hair or something like that. RB: Like a saddle mark. RD: Yeah. RB: Uh-huh. 8 RD: They had a lot of those scar tissue marks. RB: How old were you about this time when you witnessed the fire that you spoke of? RD: Hm. If I remember correctly, that was about 1908, so I'd have been eight years old. Just a youngster. Of course I might be all wet on that date, I don't know. I don’t remember that definitely. RB: Now you were going to tell us how different things were downtown and how things looked different when you were eight years old. RB: Well they had the streetcars then, the electric trolley cars. RB: Oh, yes. RD: And we had a double track through town. RB: Down Washington Boulevard? RD: Down Washington Boulevard and then go north on one side and south on the other, and when you got out to twenty-eight street they had a single track out to thirty-six and, uh, then going north they, uh, I think they got on the single track about seventeenth street and with north out to the city limits and then they had another branch line from there that went out to the hot springs, circled around through North Ogden out along the side of the hill to Pleasant View, and then down to the hot springs. And they had another line up twenty-Fifth Street...and usually it went up, uh, just about to Harrison and that was that was quite a ways up. Harrison was just about out of town and oh, uh, this SP Reservoir on twenty-Fifth Street just below Filmore where that park is over these- RB: Uh-hum. RD: Well that reservoir, my dad worked on that when they were building it. And it was part of my boyhood chores to take his lunch up to him, and that is a long hike out in the wilderness. 9 RB: From this part of town it would be. RD: Yeah. So, and of course it cost a nickel to get on the street car to go up there and there wasn't any nickels. RB: Oh. RD: There wasn't any nickels to be had as long as you had features that need nickels. So, I used to take his lunch, up oh we’d make an expedition of it, maybe three or four of us would go together. And maybe he'd get his lunch at noon, maybe he wouldn't, but he'd get it. RB: Uh, excuse me, can you tell tis about the building of the reservoir? RD: Well, I didn't know much about that because, uh, all I'd do is his lunch up and he'd say to get out of there so- RB: Oh, you couldn't stay and watch through a peep-hole- RD: No, they couldn't allow the kids around there, there were too many teams and scrapers; they didn't have power shovels then, everything was done by teams and scrapers. Excavating with teams and scrapers and- RB: I remember that. RD: Solved the situation that way. RB: Did they pour concrete? RD: I don't know. There wasn't, there wasn't too much concrete here at that time, not like it is now. That, uh, well it was just possibly coming in at that time. Now I don't know whether you've noticed on the sidewalks around here, in a lot of places you'll see the name JPNL contractor- 10 RB: Right. RD: Well, he lived right over here; you know where the Ames place is over here on Anderson? RB: Yes, I do. RD: Well that was his home and down in back of there, clear down around that hill in back of there, he's got a bunch of, uh, cement stables where he kept his horses and, uh, boy, he kept, he got a hundred head of horses there at one time. RB: Hm. RD: And he put in an awful lot of the sidewalk work around town here or any other concrete work. He was one of the first, uh, concrete workers that I can recall around here. Him and, uh, Bucher. BU-C-H-E-R. And then later on, why, Wheelwrights gone in the business, so you'll see some of the Wheelwright brands on the- RB: Sidewalk. RD: On the sidewalks here and there. And, uh, O'Neil over here, he was a Catholic and I think, I think Bucher was. Of course the Wheelwrights, they were all, they were all Mormons. And, uh, another one that I was acquainted with, show you how history changes and how fast, uh, you've probably heard of the Utah Construction Company. RB: Yes. RD: Well, they're a pretty…developed into a pretty big outfit. Well right through here on twenty-eighth street there's a house that cut up into apartments where the doctors’ offices are here on the corner. RB: Yes, yes. 11 RD: Just below it there's a big kind of a white house it used to be, they've cut it all up into apartments. Well, that was the old Wallace home. And the Wallace's were the founders of the Utah Construction Company and well, Paul Wallace and I, we went to school together practically all of our lives. Paul just died here just a few years ago down in San Francisco. He was the son of the founders of the Utah Construction. And, uh, if you want history that has nothing to do with the Church, but, uh, the Browning family, John M. Browning, the gunman. RB: Oh, yeah. RD: He lived on twenty-seventh and Washington; there where that car lot is, uh, (its vacant now)right next to where the First Security Branch Bank is. And, uh, he had a big home there and then there was another Browning on, uh, twenty-seventh and Adams where the YMCA is now... he was another one of them and then on the other side of Adams across the street was Ed Browning; he was the brother of John M. Now this other brother I think, uh, I’ve never got their relationship straight, there’s, uh, a little polygamy in that family, that is, some of the brothers were halfbrothers, and some of them were full brothers, and some of them got along with the rest of them and some of them didn't. So, I never, I never got the family history straightened out on them, but Ed Browning and John M. Browning were brothers, I know that. And Ed was the mechanical mind when they done business and John M. was the business head and the one you should call the scientific mind, but, uh, they're as different as two men could be. All Ed wanted was his Shop with plenty of tools and plenty work, that's he wanted. Be didn't care for anything else in the world. And John M. why, he was, he was the big wheel in the business. He done right well too, the Brownings all done right well. 12 RB: Well, when they leased that prominent homes down on twenty-eighth and, uh, the area of twenty-eighth and Adams, uh where the fine homes up on Jefferson that block in Jefferson north of twenty-sixth, had they been built yet? RD: North of twenty-sixth? RB: Yes, there about the Ec-, Bertha Eccle Hall, and that block of beautiful homes. RD: Yes, well there was, there were a lot of homes up in there. I don't, uh, I don't remember too much about them. Well the Pingree home that's where the Methodist Church corner is. RB: Yes. RD: That was Jim Pingree's home. Now, he used to live down twenty-eighth street just above Lincoln and, uh, I went to school with the Pingree kids when they were down there, then he built this this home up here. Of course when they moved up there, well, that was quite a ways away from where I lived, and they went to a different School, so I more or less lost track of them. RB: Do you suppose they went to Madison? RD: I imagine they went to the Madison School. RB: I think it was established in 1892. RD: Yes, well the Madison was going then yes. And, uh, and then there was the Quincy School too. Could be they went to the Quincy. That was on twenty-sixth and Quincy, where they, uh, store you know, the Food King, that's where the Quincy School used to be. RB: Well. 13 RD: And, uh, but Jim Pingree was, uh, he was polygamous. And he had one family out here on, uh, Washington, about where Patterson is out in that vicinity. RB: Yes. RD: And I knew better those kids, though, that all went to school, I knew all of them. And I knew the kids from the other family. And when he came in he'd spend two weeks up here and two weeks down there or a week in town and a week around or whatever. But that was common knowledge and was thought nothing of it. But, uh, he was polygamous before the federal law was passed that…so they couldn't make him ditch one of them. He had to keep them both. RB: It would have been inhumane. RD: How's that? RB: It would have been very inhumane to- RD: Yes. But, uh, there was quite a few of those polygamous families that I can recall now, uh, the Eccles family, old David Eccles, uh, he had two or three wives right here in town and there are rumors that he had several others in different parts of the country. I know after he died there was a big lawsuit about illegitimate son of his up in Wilming. But, uh, in settling the estate, why, this kid's mother wanted the boy to get his cut out the David Eccles estate. Which was a big estate. And she won; she won quite a considerable amount of money. I don't know whether she got enough or not but, uh, being a kid at that time, if you wanted to get any of that information you had to read it in the newspaper and kids don't read newspapers too much. Not that kind of stuff anyway. 14 RB: No, no. Speaking of kids, you mentioned the circus downtown. Were there other things like that for kids to go to. What did you do for amusement? RD: Oh, yes there'd be two or three circuses in the area here and, uh, and they had the fair grounds that was down on seventeenth street where the, uh, the church, Ellias Church storehouse is, down on seventeenth and Wa- RB: Yes. RD: Now they had a big fair grounds down there; with exhibit buildings, and race tracks, and ball fields, and stuff like that; we used to go out there to ball games. Of course they were strictly amateur ball games and, oh, of course every town, every town had a team. Ogden would have one and Huntsville and Hooper and all of them, and they played somewhat of a schedule; we all knew when there was going to be a ball game anyway. And you had to have two bits to go to the ball game, so we'd go right there and stand out behind the grandstand until somebody would foul one back over the grandstand, and the kid who got the ball, he'd get to go into the ball game. Had to turn the ball in though. RB: Yeah. RD: And that's the way we got into the ball game. It was either that way or walk way out around the far side of the ball field and crawl under the fence. We always made it. RB: Uh, was the ball, where was the ball park at that time? RD: Well that, that was the main ball park the one out here at Loren Clark Park it is now. Glenwood Park in those days. RB: Uh-hm. 15 RD: They had one out there and, uh, and after they dismantled the fairgrounds, after that folded up, why, then they enlarged this one and it was right in the same area where the, uh, the rodeo business is now. But, uh, they used to have a small grand stand, there and livestock place we pretty near got as much u here in Monroe Park, to see the ball game. RB: That's, when you went out to the ball game, did the whole family go? RD: No, no, just the kids would take off and- RB: Hm. Walk over there. RD: Oh yeah, how else? There's only one bridge across the river and that was Washington. RB: Oh, well I didn't know that. Were there, were there any occassions for family get-togethers during the year? RD: Oh yes, there were many church picnics and things like that that we'd get into. Now the Knights of Columbus used to gewt together with the Salt Lake Council and the two councils would meet at Lagoon, and that was the family outing. RB: Huh. How long did it take you to go down to Lagoon in a wagon? RD: Uh, we went on the…then. The electric train was running between here and Salt Lake then, and, uh, it took about thirty minutes on that, and the fare was twenty-five cents, and that admitted you to the park. Ben Burger owned the park down there. RB: All the lagoon complex? RD: He owned it. All the whole lagoon outfit down there. So he'd run his train back up to the door in there and let you out and your train ticket was good to get you into the park. 16 RB: And I suppose he did the same thing for the Salt lake people. RD: Yes, and, uh, oh, everybody would pack up a big family lunch and go down there and meet whoever they knew in Salt Lake. They never knew very many down there, but it was a, it was a day to go down there and go swimming and ride the rides, watch the ball games. RB: How much did they cost, the rides in those days? RD: I think they were a nickel and dime rides. Most of them. RB: That's reasonable. RD: And another thing we used to do as kids, it wasn't so much of a family affair, but we used to call it the sanitarium. RB: Hm. RD: Up where El Monte, they call it El Monte now, the place right off the canyon with the swimming pool up there? RB: That's the golf course of El Monte, Rainbow Gardens. RD: Rainbow Gardens yeah. Well the spring is El Monte too, for a while. RB: Well that's interesting. RD: And, uh, so they had quite a hotel up there at that time. RB: Hm. RD: And people used to come up there and bathe in the hot mineral waters for their health. RB: Oh. 17 RD: I got to thinking about that afterwards, and I think about the only ones that went up there for their health is the ones with a big hang-over go over there and water it out. But they…we'd get a, we'd get on a streetcar down on twenty-fifth and Washington and ride up there for a nickel. RB: Hm, good. RD: And go swimming for two bits, and they'd furnish the suit and the towel. RB: Well good. RD: And when we'd get in there, if we could get some guys who had a little extra beer or two to flip nickels out in the pool for us to dive for them. If we're lucky, why, we could pick up enough money to get our fare back home and maybe enough to go next week. RB: Oh, that's pretty good. RD: We had a lot of a lot of little ideas like that. Picking up nickels, and pretty, pretty hard picking. I lost my dad when I ten. RB: Hm. RD: And I was the bottom end of eight, so it was pretty tough going there. I had to, had to hold some kind of a job delivering papers and mowing lawns and stuff like that all my life. So I never was out of work, but I didn't get in on too much play. RB: Yeah, that's bad. RD: I used to, I used to deliver the Deserite News. I tell my grandkids about that now, but, uh, I used to get the papers down at the old (Ben Burger) depot on twenty-fifth and Lincoln and go out over the viaduct- 18 RB: Hm. RD: And up on West Twenty-fourth Street, then back down into Wilson Lane and clear out to the sugar factory. RB: My goodness. RD: And then I'd have to go about half a mile each way out after I out of the sugar factory in order to go south. RB: Did you ride a bike out there? RD: Yeah. RB: Is it the present sugar factory? RD: Well they're not making any sugar out there anymore, but then they still- call it- RB: There's still a site isn't there? RD: Uh-huh. But, uh, I got a dollar six bits a week for that. RB: Golly. How long did it take you? RD: Oh about an hour an hour and a half. RB: That's quite a long way. RD: Oh, I was pretty handy on a bicycle then. RB: There weren't any ten speeds at that time were there? RD: Oh no. No no. You're lucky to have a coaster brake. RB: Now, uh, how d i d the coaster brake work? 19 RD: Well, uh, you could push it in so you didn't have to pedal all the time. RB: I see. RD: Some of them just had what they call, we used to call it a straight sprocket and you had to keep turning all the time, there was no coasting on them. There was no brake, only what you could hold back on your pedals. But, uh, the lucky kids had a coaster brake; they could coast, and if they got a long ride down a hill, why, then they could brake a little bit if they got to going too fast. RB: Now that's the same principle of a two speed isn't it, the same principle? RD: Well, uh, they can, they can coast and, uh, the only thing they can shift gears on that, why, like in an automobile. If they're climbing a hill, why, they can drop down into the low gear and drive right up the hill. If we hit a hill, why, we just had one gear and we either had to get off and walk or pump harder. RB: Uh, did you ever go up the canyon to, uh, to the artesian thing? RD: Oh yes, yes I've been up there lots of times. Yeah, they used to run the… in later years they run the streetcar line clear through to Huntsville and, uh, if used to go right down through the bottom of Pineview Reservoir and the highway was the same way. RB: Hm. RD: Goes right down through the bottom of it, and that's where the wells are. Yeah, I remember when they drilled those wells up there, and I remember seeing the water gushing out of them. RB: Well, how'd you go before the streetcar? RD: Ride our bicycles. 20 RB: Hm. That's eight miles, isn't it? RD: Yes, I rode up there…rode to the old Power Dam we'd call it. That was where the filtration plant is. RB: Oh. RD: And, uh, oh well I think part of the old power dam is still in there right up, I think the filtration plant is built right up against it. RB: Did it generate electricity for Ogden? RD: Not up there, no, they piped it down the side of the canyon and down to the Pioneer Station down on the twelfth street. RB: Well then the water came all the way from the filtration plant- RD: Yeah. RB: Down to the- RD: Down to the- RB: To the power plant. RD: Uh-hm. RB: Hm. RD: On twelfth street, but they had that dam that was just a little thing, didn't, oh, back the water up maybe three quarters of a mile or so. RB: Hm, that, that's a nice little lake though, isn't it? 21 RD: Well yeah, at least go up there and go boat riding and fishing. RB: Hm. Well that's interesting. That's a nice lake. Uh, how was the road up the canyon in those days? What did they have to do to-? RD: It was, uh, it was mekanon they called it, crushed rock and, oh, to pieces of rock about that big. RB: About an inch, an inch and a half? RD: Yeah, maybe larger than that, I don't know. But they'd, uh, mix a certain amount of soil with it. RB: Uh-hm. RD: And then roll it with the steam roller. RB: Was there any asphalt in that mixer? RD: No, no there wasn't any asphalt. RB: Just rock? RD: Just the rock and the- RB: And the soil. RD: And the soil, and they they rolled it and it was it was hard you know, it was heck awful hard. They used a little moisture with it to pack it. RB: Probably a clay based soil. RD: Clay, clay soil of some kind, and, uh, it would, it would make a pretty hard, pretty hard surface road. Of course in the wintertime, when teams and wagons get to going over it, why, they start digging chuck holes in it; especially in the spring when the frost would come of the ground and- 22 You asked me another thing that might be of interest, uh, yeah, I guess it was at my retirement party. When retired, oh a good bunch of us, they had a party for the whole gang; somebody sitting next to me wanted to know… she said to me honey, remembrances that still stick in your mind that you saw as a kid-- And I said yeah; she said what? And I said I saw a hayrack loaded with about two ton of hay and a team of black horses on it stuc in the mud in the corner of twentyfifth, uh, twenty-fourth and Kiesel. RB: About how old were you then? RD: I don't remember. RB: A, a boy? RD: Yeah, I was just a kid. RB: Hm. RD: But, uh, Kiesel wasn't open through north of, well it wasn't open either way, there was an alley way through there, just an alley. And, uh, back in the twenty-fourth street between twenty-fourth and twenty-third, they had, uh, feed yards they called them uh- RB: Cattle, horses? RD: No the farmers that come in from the country to bring their produce in or do their shopping, well the horses they had had to have a place for the horses and the horses had to eat, so they'd take them down there and put them in these feed yards, and, uh, they had water and feed them and everything there. RB: They'd want to feed? RD: Well some of them would bring their own feed and some of them would buy it there. 23 RB: Then, like a parking lot was it actually? RD: Well it would be comparable to a parking lot, yes. But, uh, it was for the horses. RB: Uh-hm. RD: And the old Nelson and Bill livery stable, why, they, most of the high souiety people, kept their horses-everybody had a horse then. They didn't have a stable at home, but they'd keep them at the livery stable. RB: Uh-hm. RD: That was down on 24th street, uh, just east of where Cam Meyers is now, and they used to keep their horses in there, and well, I don't know how many horses they had in there. I used to drive a horse that was kept in there for a store downtown-deliver boy kept their horse down there. And, uh, of course they had the parish priest here. You wanna get the church tied into this history. RB: Uh-hm. RD: He kept his horse down there. Of course he, that was his mode of getting around. RB: What kind of rig did he drive? RD: Well he's had a, what did they call them? They had a name for them- the buggy. They were more or less alike in those days. They didn't, uh, they had two or three different designs that they had names on them, but I don't remember now what they were. RB: Did you just project your memories on a screen. RD: And, uh, he kept his horse down there and then there was another livery stable, uh, I don't know whether they tore that off when they put in that what was it, Gold Stripe Stamp business on 24 twenty-sixth and Washington. And I don't know whether they tore that out or not. But there was another livery stable there, that was Quarry's. And, uh, Quarrys, they, uh, specialized in, uh, hearses for funerals and, uh, cabs for the mourners to ride in. RB: Hm. RD: The black covered-over cabs with the doors on them and windows and so on, and the driver sitting way up on a high seat, high up in the air. Did you see the Pioneer Day Parade? RB: Uh, not this year. I saw it on television. RD: Well they had one of those old hearses in the parade. One of those horse drawn hearses. And, uh, of course, they had to have drivers for them, and they always had two men up there on the hearse. I don't know why, and, uh, oh they wore a high stove pipe hat and a light tan linen duster, and they'd sit up there very dignified, and I thought that was kind of pretty, seeing them fellows up there, and I got a little older and found out that all they were was just a bunch ofold bar flies; just lay around and wait for somebody to die so they could drive the hearse. RB: Oh dear. RD: Just lay around the saloons. Kind of took some of the dignity out of the job. In funerals, why, everybody had a fraternal organization connection. Some of them three or four. They had the Woodman of the World, the Modern Woodman, and the Macavies and Oddfellows, and the Elks and the Eagles, oh dozens of organizations like that. If the man was prominent in one of those organizations, why, the whole lodge would be out and with their regalia on and march in the funeral, and they used to march all the way out to the cementery too. On foot. RB: Is this the city cementery? 25 RD: City cementery and the old Mountain View out here. RB: Now, where did this end? RD: And, uh, used to go up to thirty-third. You had to go out Adams. RB: Uh-huh. RD: To thirty-third and up thirty-third to just about Jefferson. We got in there then, that's part of the…rest now…rest took it over. RB: That's a long way. RD: Yeah. Then they put the street car line in out there, that come up in twenty-eighth street and down here on the corner you can see where the street car line turned, come around the corner there, and went out Jefferson. RB: Is the reasonable evidence metal rails? RD: There's a piece of rail right in the southwest corner there. Where they...the other track now, that track was put in with a wide curve in it so they could, uh, bring coal up to Vick Yard. Vick was over here just at the other side of the county line, and they had brick kilns there for burning the brick, and they burned coal and metal so they had to haul in coal by carloads, and they pushed that up there with the on the electric line. RB: Why the wide curve? RD: Uh, the coal cars couldn't make the short turn that the street could. RB: Uh-hm. Were they larger, heavier? 26 RD: Oh yes. They were larger and heavier and longer. And they couldn't make the short turns, and then when they got the brick made why they'd run box cars up here and fill the box cars with them and ship them out. RB: Hm. RD: Save hauling them down to the freight house and . . . . and then they run that street car line out to thirty-third street so it wasn't such a long walk to the cementery then. RB: Well, and of course everyone went on a streetcar. RB: Oh yes. You either rode the streetcar or walked. Of course most of the people out in this end of town worked down at the railroad or downtown. So, they'd get on the streetcar and this one used to, see, it went down twenty-fifth street to Waugh and over to twenty-fourth and up twenty-fourth and then back out this way. He made that loop around through town. And, uh, when they had the twenty-fifth street car, it went down and made the scene a little and back up on fifth street, twentythird street, and twenty-first street. They…had a lot of streetcars going in my days. RB: Yes. Uh, you mentioned the railroad, did your father work for the railroad? RD: Yes, uh, when I was just a little tiny shaver, why, he worked down here at the railroad, at the shop. See his work was heavy construction bridge building and that kind of stuff. So, uh, he was on the move an awful lot and, uh, he wasn't, he wasn't home very much. RB: Uh, do you recall the bridges that he built, do you know? RD: Well there's that, uh, reservoir up there on twentjr-fifth and Filmore. There used to be a bridge across the cut-off, well I gue he built the one across the Waver River down here where the UP crosses the Waver River and goes through the Sand Hill. 27 RB: Yes, uh-hm. RD: I think he worked on that bridge down there, and then when they got through with the cut-off, when they dug out all of that sand out of that hill there, they put a bridge across the top of the cut clear out; pretty near to the to the west end of that cut they built a little wagon bridge. It was just a little narrow thing across there. RB: Yes. RD: And, uh, he built that and his last work was up in Twin Falls. They were building a big dam up there and they worked up there. At that time, that Twin Falls country, that was all bare desert country…nothing…jack rabbits used to tie a bale of hay behind their ears to run from one clump of brush to the other. RB: Cause they got so hungry? RD: Huh? RB: Because they got so hungry? RD: …but they put that dam in up there and diverted the water around for irrigation, opened up that whole Twin Falls area up there. It's beautiful farming country out there now. RB: That's the Magic Valley now, isn't it? RD: Yes. He took sick while he was up there; he didn't, uh, the job wasn't finished when he had to quit. That was in 1910, I remember that he died in 1910, so I can remember that. Of course he came, he came west working with railroad construction and clear across Wyoming and Utah, and then up in Park City; when Park City was born he was up in there; doing heavy construction 28 work up in there. And they got some and another job he did here. It's gone now, the old coal shoots down that SP shops. RB: Hm. RD: They used coal on those steam engines. They had this big, old, high coal shoot they used to run a car of coal up in there and dump it into the hoppers, and then they could, they could run their engines on there and fill the tenders from those hoppers. See those ( coal shoots ) that's been gone for years…because it doesn't use any coal they converted over to oil early in the game, and so they done away with their coal shoots down there put in an oil pipe, oil tank, pumped oil into them. And of course now they done away with their steel engine all together. It's all diesel and they done away with their roundhouse and everything else that they used to use for the steam engines. They have a diesel shop down there now to work on the diesel engines. I've seen that transformation in railroading, it just, it just don't seem possible. When I went to work down there in 1921, we had three trains a day, four trains a day, going west out of here; six going east and four going north and two going south every day. That was every day. Sometimes there'd be two or three sections of those trains. RB: It's like sixteen trains. RD: That, that diesel could be a mighty busy place down there. And now go down there and nothing. It just just don't seem possible that there could be such a transformation of such a tremendous big industry in such a short period of time. And a large percentage of that, uh, of course, the airplanes done away with a lot of the passenger trains, but, uh, the diesel that cut down their freight trains to beat the band, why, they used to take a sixty, eighty car freight train from here up to Ellingston. They'd put two or three engines on it and, uh, you have to have a fireman and an 29 engineer on each one of them. And now they have one fireman and engineer with the diesels and take a hundred and twenty cars up there and do it in a third of the time. RB: Are they more powerful? RD: Oh, yes. RB: They must be. RD: More powerful and faster. Yeah, they very often, well practically all of their helper engines were on the back end of the train. So they'd push them up there rather than pull them because if they got too much pull on the front end on a long train, it'd break in two. RB: The train would break in two? RD: Yeah, pull the drawbars out; they'd break in two. So they'd put these pushers on the back to take up that slack. Now they've developed drawers that will take it. And of course they, uh, with the diesels they can give them a steady start. While with the steam engine they had to back up to get all the slack in those cars and then it would runs like that and as the slack is took up, why, it would slow him down almost to a stop. RB: Uh-hm. RD: But he would still pull them. That would give all of those cars a yank that went right hack through the train; give them an awful yank. And toward the tail end, why, they'd get about a twenty foot yank. RB: Oh, my. RD: And, uh, with the diesel you can't do that. If you try that with the diesel now you'd pull that train all apart. So they pulled the trair out tight, easy, and then lay the power on and take off. So there's 30 no jerk. Just a steady, steady pull. And it used to be to pull on a passenger train now, why, the rail brakeman, he had to catch that last car; oh I'm afraid he had to catch the caboose to get on and they'd be moving. But the old steam engine, why, they wouldn't be moving fast enough to make much difference, but the diesel engines, why, you're doggone lucky to get on that last car. You've got to be pretty close and grab quick, or you don't get on. And of course, with the steam engines, when they'd bring them in, they'd have to when they go into town; they'd have to go to the roundhouse and be serviced and the tires cleaned and around the wide heading the other way for going back, so they could, oh, it'd take them two, two to three hours. To get a steam engine after got into town, oh, at the roundhouse and servicing before it got back it'd be two to three hours lost. With these diesel engines, why, they just cut the diesel engine off and put it over on another track and run it back there and hook it on the front end of another train and take off. RB: And they'll go? RD: No sir, everything, well you didn't have to turn them at all because the engineer can work from either end of it. Controls on either end. Well if they got a heavy train, why, they can put more power units in between. And one engineer, he handles the whole doggone train. RB: That answers your question doesn't it, what happened? RD: They have a fireman on there. The union rules and the Interstate commerce rules insist that they have a fireman those diesels. That is they did, I think they have eliminated them off the freight trains now. But, uh, the only thing he can do sit there and watch one gauge. If anything went wrong with that gauge there was nothing he could do about it. That gauge just isn't working. That's all the fireman could do and look at the scenery. Of course he was supposed to watch the…and see that the engineer obeyed all of the lights, everything is on lights now, uh, all of their 31 controls they don’t have to get out to throw a switch or anything anymore. Used to be if a train is coming from opposite directions, why, one of them would have to get out and throw a switch and pull the train in the side into let the other one by. Now when he gets to that switch, why, he'll have an amber light and the switch will be thrown for him. It's all handled by a dispatcher here in the yards. RB: Oh. RD: He just throws that switch, they call it CTC, center traffic control. And, uh, the engineer and the brakeman, they don't have to worry about them switches at all, they don't even have orders anymore. They used to get train orders that, uh, train so and so waited such and such a side until such and such a time for a train coming from the other direction. And, uh, when he got to that side in, he'd check each time and if he was ahead of that time, why, he'd have to pull in the side of him and wait. RB: That's why railroad watches had to be so accurate. RD: Oh yes. And that's the reason they had to be right on the second. And, uh, of course now they come along to those places, the switch already thrown for him and he goes in there and sometimes they can get by each other with neither train stopping. RB: Hm. That's- RD: That's all right. RB: Yeah. RD: That railroading has sure changed. RB: Have you spent your whole life at it? 32 RD: Well I started out when I was twenty one. No, I wasn’t quite twenty-one, I was just twenty at the time, but I was twenty-one in a couple of months after I started, and I was in the mail service. I was riding the mail cars all the time. But you get around railroading, why, there's a certain amount of the other rules and regulations that rubbed off on you. RB: Were you ever, did you ever think about a robbery or see one, a mail robbery? RD: Well I've thought of them yeah. There was one in Huntsville therein the early twenties. There was a fellow who worked up in Wyoming or Montana. I can't think of his name now. And, uh, he'd write a letter to the railroad company telling them that he was going to rob the mail car, such and such a train, but he wouldn’t tell where. RB: Oh my goodness. RD: Or when, but he'd get it so that was the time when they armed all of us fellows on the road; we all had to carry guns. Prior to that we never carried a gun. RB: Uh-hm. Now that was in the twenties? RD: Yeah, that was in the twenties. And, uh, they dug up a bunch of those World War I forty-fives. About that long, and you had to have somebody to help you lug it along. We had to wear them, but I never, uh, he never, never done that thing, done, uh, I think he got up one up here out of Pocatello some place. And he got some up from Wyoming and there was another one up in Wyoming, but that was an inside job. I knew the guy on the inside of it. Worked with him and-- RB: Did he get captured? RD: Huh? RB: Did he get captured? 33 RB: Ohyeah, yeah. They got the whole works on that one. That was, oh, there was eight or nine of them in on that. And, uh, this fellow, we worked together down here in the terminal. RB: Uh-hm. RD: When I first started in the service, he went out on EUP and I went out to Nevada. So I didn't, uh, didn't see or hear anything of him much until the news broke, and I was sure surprised to hear that because I didn't think that he was in on that kind of a deal at all. I just, well, it never entered my mind that he would be, uh, the least bit interested. But he, uh, he set it up, he left the door open in one of the storage cars where there was some, uh, registered mail. And, uh, his cohorts on the outside, they went down there and shorted the block signal and threw the red block against the train. Oh, the engineer, he got to stop when that block's red he, he don't go by that at all, until he finds out why it's red. Of course when they shorted out the block signal, he stopped and these guys were back there about where this car would be; they were on the road out there with an automobile. They just got in there and unloaded a few of those sacks and got away with it. And so they just thought that was a clean getaway for a while. Then the next thing I heard, why, they'd caught my buddy and all of his cohorts. But, uh, the reason for the delay, they had everybody under their thumb, but one they couldn't find that one man. Everybody else was covered. They watched every move they made. And they finally, they found this one gang—one man and down they come on the whole works. So he did a little time for that. I don't know whatever happened to him afterwards, I never did hear. RB: He didn't get back on the railroad? RD: Oh no, he, not after…service anyway, he didn't. 34 RB: Well whatever happened; whatever became of this, uh, Black Bart type bandit that wrote the letters? RD: I think they finally caught him. RB: You don't remember his name? RD: No, I don’t remember his name; it was common, so commonly used because the papers were making quite a scene of it you know. Those headlines in the papers where he was going hit again. Gardner? No, I won't say it was Gardner, but, uh, it was that name just popped into my mind. Well a name along similar to that, but he, I think the-"" finally caught him. But he didn't get very much. Most of the stuff he got was, uh, little or no use to him. This tremendous amount of mail you can get a whole carload of it and still not have anything to be worth anything to you. Valuable to somebody else, but to you, nothing. So, that’s what he got he got, a bunch of nothing. He couldn't sell it if he tried to sell it; well most of it there's no market for it in the first place. If he tried to sell it, why, he's tipping his mitt so. No I learned very early in the business that there's enough of that mail mine. Just don't touch it. RB: Hm. Well, was it ever, were there things that you could see of value? RD: Oh yes, yes. I've handled a lot of bales of currency and stuff like that. RB: Ooh. RD: Gold bricks and things like that, why, you know there's value there. RB: I should, say so. Did they ship gold bricks without a guard? RD: Well, they were registered mail. RB: Hm. 35 RD: And, of course, the mail clerk, he had to sign for them, had to get signature for them when he turned them over to the other guy so they were guarded. RB: Yes. That's what the forty-fives were for. RD: Uh-hm. And when they transfer them from one train to another down here, why, there was an armed guard with them. We used to have lots of, lots of money shipment, hills of currency and lots of silver, and my last assignment down here used to run from here down to Caliente, Nevada. I don't suppose you ever heard of that. That's where we got off; it was just this side of Las Vegas. RB: Hm. RD: Do we, uh, we handled a lot of silver. Down in Las Vegas they used all silver dollars down there, you know, and half dollars much before they got scarce. We used to handle a lot of that. We'd get fifty or sixty bags of that stuff, a thousand dollars in each bag. It'll wear you out shoving them around. RB: I guess. RD: But, uh, another interesting thing, uh, during World War II they closed the mint down at San Francisco to get it get all that stuff inland because they was afraid that the Japanese coming in on the Pacific coast. So they had all that gold and silver down there and they moved it into Denver. And, uh, they wouldn't trust the ordinary mail clerks for that, they had to have the supervisors for that, and they rode right through from San Francisco to Denver with that. They didn't, uh; they had enough of them on there so one can sleep and the other is awake and go to the diner to eat and that kind of stuff. 36 RB: What did they carry that kind of money in? RD: They have it in metal pouches. And, uh, they have rotary locks, they called it, on the pouch and, Uh, the lock has a number engraved on the outside of it and then a little window on the edge of it with a rotary number like your speedometer in the car. RB: Yes. RD: And it registered every time the lock was opened. So they could put all kinds of stuff in this one pouch. The bill describing what was in it, lock it up in there with that lock number. Then all they had to do to ship it across the country every time it changed hands they just change that, uh, or just use that lock number as their billing number. RB: Hm. RD: Instead of all the individual pieces. And they put that money in those rotary lock pouches and just transfer them on those lock numbers. Now the way they handle registered mail, hm! RB: I think there's been a lot of changes in it, hasn't there? RD: Well they, uh, when I was in the service up until the last few years of my service, you, your life was on those registers. You didn't let anybody touch those registers without a signature. Uh, even if you're top boss kind of wanted to take one of these over and put it on that train. No sir, you don't. Not till I get, not till I authorize it. And, uh, now they ship those registers around, here, there, and every place. They won't even put the numbers down or a description of them at all. They just broke fifty-six pieces. RB: Of registered mail. 37 RD: Registered mail, put it in a pouch, ship it clear across the country without any protected. And I asked one of the bosses onetime what the, what the idea was for doing that, he says well he says they got their pencils out and Sharpened them to a fine point, and they found out that it was cheaper to pay for the losses of the registered mail than it was to pay for the time and expense of handling them properly. And I don't know whether you've been, uh, following it in the papers or on the television News, but, uh, the bad guy giving testimony now how easy it's been to rob the mails at the airports around the country. RB: I heard about that. RD: And, uh, what a, what a big thing it is that these crooks have not gone. They're just millions and millions of dollars in, uh, negotiable stocks. That's all on account of not, not taking care of it. You don't get the post office department to say that, though. They're saving, they're saving money. Cheaper to let, cheaper to pay those claims than it is to pay the guys to handle the property. I don't know, it might be good business. It don't look good to me. Another family here that was quite a contributor to the church was the Danny Smith. We used to call Smith it but, uh, they've changed it to Smyth now. They spelled it Smyth. RB: Oh. RD: And, uh, he had a saloon and a gambling and hotel and cafe and everything down twenty-fifth street. About midway in the block between Grant and Lincoln of course. That was pretty busy country down there in those days, and he made more money than he could put in two piles. And his old home is on twenty—fifth and Orchard. There's an art center in there now, it's just around the corner. RB: Yes, is it called the Gallery? 38 RD: The Gallery or something of that nature, yeah. RB: Uh-hm. RD: That's the old Danny Smith home. And he used to have an automobile with a chauffeur, a Stanley Steamer. RB: Hm. RD: And, uh, he had a rack built up on the front of it and a parrot with a long tail about that long would sit up on that rack and ride. RB: At the front of the car? RB: In the front of the car. And, uh, of course, most of his business down there was Irish. The Irish community, the UP brought the Irish in, and the SP brought the Chinamen in. SP was built by Chinese labor and the UP by Irish labor. And, uh, of course Danny, he was down there getting all the money from the Irish labor. And right across the street, uh, I know there isn't much of it left there now, but, uh, you know where the liquor store is there just below the bus depot? RB: Yes. Yes I do. RD: Well that used to be the old Lyceum Theatre, and then from there down almost to Lincoln, that was all Chinese, uh, a hotel or rooming houses and stuff like that for the Chinese who'd be working out on the, on the labor jobs out on the railroad and come to town through a party or a week-end or something like that, why, that’s where they’d go. So, on Saint Patrick's Day, Danny Smith had a great big Irish flag, the green flag with the gold harp on it, and he'd string that across the street down there from his place to the Chinese place over across the street. He had permission to do it. He was patriotic and a good old Irish man. So somebody with a sense of 39 humor or a sense of tragedy or something went over and told the Chinaman that it was holiday, and they ought to have their flag up. So they went over there and hoisted up their yellow flag. The Irishmen thought they were Irishmen over there and they went after them. RB: Oh no. RD: Same, same kind of a battle that they got going on in Ireland right now. The Irishmen and the Irishmen. I didn't get to see that, I was just a kid, but I heard about it. RB: Hm. RB: Of course I, I didn't get down to that district very often. That was no place, no place for kids to go. That was practically off limits, you had to be pretty big and pretty tough to go down there. Pretty wild place. Old Danny contributed quite heavily to the church here. And what become of them boys, one of them died. It’s funny how you forget these kids that you knew. We didn't talk about who's living in this neighborhood, uh, when I was a kid there was one house just above Jefferson over here on twenty-Eighth Street and one just about through here on twenty-eight street. They were the only two houses on this block. RB: Hm. RD: Clear over to Thirtieth Street. RB: How were the trees in those days? How the, how was the land wooded before the town was built? RD: Well there was, uh, lots of box elder trees and the Lombardy Poplar was quite a popular tree. RB: Those were planted in the town? 40 RD: Oh yes. Well the box elder is native to this, to this area. They, they were here when the pioneers came. RB: Uh-hm. RD: And they, of course, they'd be along the stream, stream beds, because they had to have water; the country was too arid away from the stream beds for any kind of a tree outside of junipers and that stuff that can get along without water and to… as I remember as a kid, along the river, down along the river all cotton woods and willows, different types of willows but, uh, most of the trees out in the residential area were planted and, uh, of course the big old Lombardy poplar; if you wanted a tree all you had to do was break a limb off, stick it in the ground, it would grow, and a lot of times, a lot of those trees, uh, somebody would want to put up a tent stake or something like that, use one of them things for a tent stake, come back in a few years to make camp and there's a tree growing out of their tent stake. They grew quite a bit that way. A lot of those kind of trees around the country, now they're just about all gone. I can't think of any right around in town here at all. But there used to be lots of them on twenty-seventh street, from Washington down to Grant there was a row of them down in there just only about eight or ten feet apart. Then they went across, uh, twenty-seventh north on Washington; they went over there quite a ways. And on the west half of that block there below Washington that (Diesel) to Grant that was a Chinese garden. The Chinaman had garden down in there. RB: A Vegetable garden? RD: Vegetable garden. And he raised vegetables and put them on his pull over his shoulder with the baskets on and hike around town and peddle them. And then he finally developed enough capital to get a horse and wagon. 41 RB: Oh yeah. RD: And down where Saint Joseph’s School is now, that was a Chinaman’s garden. And, uh, A.R. Heywood donated that property to the church for the school down there. His wife was active in the church, but Heywood, he was he was a big Mason. But, uh, his wife got plenty of money from him to help the Church along, and he donated that block down there, it's about a quarter of a block. He donated that to the Church for the school. Of course, at that time, that wasn't such a bad place to live. There's a lot of our prominent families lived down in that area. RB: Really. RD: There's Dave and Jim Pingree, he lived just about straight across the street from the central city, what do they call it down there, the new building they just put up to the west side for the people, the gymnasium- RB: Yes, White Center. RD: White Center. RB: Uh-hm. RD: Yeah. Jim Pingree lived right across the street from that and he owned the bank and the packing house down here and lots of other things. So, he was quite prominent. And all of the cashiers in the bank lived on Lincoln and…I know his daughter, she's still alive around here about my age. And 1 was thinking the other day I had my two grandkids with me and we come into Lincoln from, oh up the north end of town and come clear through Lincoln, and they were remarking about the shabby homes and stuff down there, and I started naming off the people that they might know from another generation that used to live down in there...that was a pretty good, pretty good place to live. And they just couldn't think that those things could happen. 42 RB: They knew the people and they couldn't believe it, huh? RD: Uh-huh. They just couldn't think that the city could go that way. RB: I suppose the people at that time couldn't believe the city would go the way it has gone. RD: No, no well even, uh, now I come in here from Nevada in '39, I was out there sixteen years and all of that north side of the canyon out there north of the river, up on the hill you could have bought all of that ground you wanted for ten dollars an acre. I was out to a party the other night, a friend of ours is building new home out here on some property that he inherited from his dad. It’s on, uh, Conby Road about a block above Harrison out there. Now his dad bought that whole section in there about sixty acres or so for seven thousand dollars and farmed it and raised his family there, everything else. Of course that was he was up in the remote part of the country, I remember hiking almost up there when I was a kid; up to Ponds, that's up there in back of Weber College; that road that goes around back of Weber College and the pond out there. That was one of the…Ponds, and we used to hike up there, or go swimming, or just go on a hike and Boy, you took a lunch with you, and that was a day’s hike up there and back. And up here, uh, where Saint Benedict’s Hospital is now, just, uh, south and west of there, you know there’s a street that kind of curves around the hospital up there. RB: Yes I know. RD: Well, just behind those houses down the hill from there was the old university. Now, I don't know the full history of that but there was some church in the 1880's or '90's somewhere there about, uh, it wasn't…it wasn't Catholic, I don't know what it was. RB: Could it have been Methodist? 43 RD: It could have been. I, I don't know. I never, I don't know that ever heard what it was, but they were going to build this big school up there, a university. And they, uh, they started and, uh, they got part of the building up. A red brick and sandstone building. And, uh, they got part of it up and then the panic, they called it those days, the depression now, or some such a thing, anyway, the everything went boom, nobody had any money or anything else that they, if they had a way to get out of Ogden, they got out. And that’s that—some of the sandstone in Saint Joseph’s Church was salvaged from that old university. They’d haul the sandstone in there, never completed the building, and, uh, some that was brought down and used in Saint Joseph’s Church. Then there was another wealthy person, I don’t know who it was, he built a new home up on twenty-fifth and Harrison, and, uh, he went like the old university. He unloaded sandstone up there so they got that too. RB: Hm. RD: Oh, somebody's tough luck was Saint Joseph's good luck I guess. Anyway, they got the sandstone; I assume they had to pay for it or make some kind of a deal on it, but they got it anyway. Of course they used to cut a lot of that sandstone around here in different parts of the country, but Morgan Way, I'm afraid, used to cut a lot of it up there. But it's quite, it's quite common through these western countries it isn't hard to find. They can cut it up and shape it without much trouble. A lot better than getting granite or…plus this granite is much harder rock, much harder to shape up, so they just use the sandstone. And a lot of these around here with sand, only they cut that with a saw. RB: Hm. RD: And shape it most any way they want to. And it's, uh, it's good building material if you keep it dry. 44 RB: Sandstone? RD: Uh-hm. But, uh, in the wintertime, in stormy weather, the, uh, it's porous. When the water gets, it'll soak up a certain amount of water and it'll freeze, crack off, and flake off. So you will notice all of the old sandstone buildings are- RB: I've noticed that. RD: Have flaked off. Around the art center, over here that wall around there, uh, along the sidewalk— RB: Yes. RD: They just replaced it last summer. That was all crumbled. That's all sandstone, it all went that way from the weather. If you can get it on a vertical wall where it don't get any water and don't get any frost, why, it will last as long as anything will I guess. And, uh, that's mainly what the church is built. Built that over there of course it was easily bought, easily obtained, and not too expensive, and in those days it was good business to use it. RB: That's beautiful. RD: Now they don't use it anymore at all because they go in for steel and concrete now. Well just about run out of aspirinI guess. RB: You need a break. RD: And after the railroad construction was over, there wasn't much for them to do, and I guess most of them drifted back down to California and some of them went back to China or wherever. The few that stayed here, they had Chinese laundries, and restaurants and gardens and that kind of stuff. The old Won Ton Cafe was down there where the new federal building is now. RB: I didn't know that. 45 RD: In that section of town. And you could go in there and get a complete dinner, everything from soup to nuts for a quarter. RB: Really? RD: I was, I was a grown kid and I had an awful time eating all they'd bring to you for a meal. I could eat pretty well in those days too. But when you stop to figure too, that, uh, the man, the laboring man, his wages were around a dollar a day or maybe a little more or a little less, and deliver boys for grocery stores and meat markets and those things, they'd start out on that they’d get tentwelve dollars a week and, uh, of course, that wasn't eight hour a day or five day weeks either. Around ten, twelve, fourteen hours and it wasn't many of the stores operating, there wasn't much doing on Sunday, RB: Uh-hm. RD: The stores would all close on Sunday. But Saturday night grocery stores and even, uh, dry good stores downtown would stay open as long as there was anybody on the street; sometimes it’d be ten, eleven o'clock before we'd ever get the stores closed. During the week, why, they'd try to close up about six o’clock. Be open from about eight in the morning till six in the evening. But they didn't know much about an eight hour day in those times. And a five day week, that was, that wasn’t even heard off. Of course, on the railroads and those kinds of services, why, they run seven days a week. Everybody, everybody works seven days a week. They couldn't afford to lay off, they lost too much money. RB: Well, uh, what about vacations and fringe benefits? RD: Oh they didn't have any of that stuff at all. And they, uh, the railroads had their doctor. There was fifty cents a month taken out of their pay check to pay for their doctor and, uh, I don't know 46 whether there was any truth to it or not. I never had any personal experience with it, but all the rails would say that the doctors they get are not worth a hoot and they wouldn't go them. But the minute they got sick they couldn't afford to go another doctor they had to go to the railroad doctor and switching back and forth like that, they all went to the railroad doctor and none of them liked him. But, uh, I don't think they had any hospital then. SP had a hospital in San Francisco and UP had one in Omaha. And, uh, if you were able to travel, why, they'd send you to one of those hospitals. But if you weren't able to travel, why, you'd have to go to the hospital here. And I think you paid your own hospital here. Of course that wasn't very much, it was quite a bit in those days. I had an experience with little D hospital when I was about seventeen, and I had a ward bed. There were about eight or ten of us in the ward. I got that for a dollar and a half a day. RB: That was the old D Hospital? RD: The old D, yeah. And, uh, there for a while I was in a private room and that cost three dollars. That was, that was a terrific amount of money. Three dollars a day. Wow! Right here in Saint Benedict's. The first time I went, got into Saint Benedict’s, I got a room for eight dollars. I remember that because, uh, I had hospital insurance that paid nine dollars and, uh, I, uh, made a dollar a day on my hospital insurance. RB: Well. RD: And Saint Benedicts is new, comparatively speaking. RB: Uh-hm. RD: And, uh, now you, they won't let you in the front door up there for less than thirty dollars, I don't suppose. The Chinese have alldisappeared from here and most of the Irish have disappeared, and then, so far as the Church is concerned, after the railroads, uh, switched over, uh, to oil and 47 coal, they shut down all the coal mines up in Wyoming, and most of those people were Italians and Austrians-coal miners and a lot of them moved down in here and went to farming around here. Oh around the outskirts of Ogden here there's a lot of those people farming, and of course they were all Catholic and they all went to church. So there was quite an influx of that race in the Church, and, uh, now they're dwindling down; the old folks are dying off and the younger people are moving and so on and so forth. And the Spanish are coming in now, Mexicans. So, we've got a tremendous influx of Mexicans and how I can remember that is, uh, looking over the lists in the Church for different things, uh, when I was a kid it was all Irish. If you didn't have a Mac or a No or something like that in your name, why, you didn’t have any business on that list, and when the Italians come in, their name didn't end in a No or something like that, why, you are out. Now it's getting all Spanish. So after I've seen thattransition through, just in my lifetime, why, when I was a kid we had two masses on Sunday, one at eight and one at ten-thirty. It was so crowded over there that you could go and sit just about any place you wanted in the church and wouldn't see, wouldn't be close to anybody. RB: Hm. RD: There were that few Catholics. And now they, well, they have four masses on Sunday here. Four or five, and they're all crowded. And they got, uh, Saint Mary's out on the hill and Saint James out North, and they've got it. So they, they've made a lot of progress in population here. We was talking about it at the Knoll family here the other day, why, the son's up in the hospital up there and they've got his room up to the…the mountain there, and I asked his wife if she remembered that (Father McGinnis) that was here for a while, he was a Jesuit, he wasn’t stationed here, he was just here visiting and got sick while he was over here and died, but he was raised here in Ogden and, uh, I knew him as a kid. The McGinnis family and the Dean family all grew up 48 together. They couldn't tell one from the other. The only thing the McGinnis's had some girls and the Dean's didn't. That's about the only difference. But, uh, I didn't get in on the deal, but he was, and, uh, one or two of my brothers were in on it; they were up there on the hill rolling rocks down. They were just kids and they were getting all the big rocks and watching them roll down off the mountain. Well there wasn't anybody here, well east of Madison here, nobody lived here, so rock throwing down won't hurt up there. But they killed a horse. RB: Oh my goodness! RD: They got caught andDale McGinnis’s dad was an attorney here, a judge. Judge McGinnis. So the judge had to pay for the horse. But, uh, my family wasn't supposed to know anything about it because he'd pay for the horse and my family, my mother wouldn't have to bankrupt herself to pay her share. So, we never learned anything about that, for years after it happened. RB: Hm. RD: And they used to laugh about that and how, how they slipped that one over on mother. About the only thing they ever slipped over on her. And of course (Dale) he was a very, very pious young man; he used to serve on the altar over there and, uh, they had confessions Saturday evening and Every time he'd go to confession over there, there wasn’t very many people bothered about that. They had over there this priest, Father Riley, a great big tall slender guy, he was the Assistant, so he got all of that undesirable work and between confessions he'd get up and march up and down the aisles of the church reading his breviary and this Dale McGinnis and my brothers, they were over there at the Church. They decided they'd have a little fun with Father Riley. So they waited till he got right the middle of the Church and turned the lights out on him. Left him right in the middle of the Church in the dark. 49 RB: My goodness. RD: Well after he stumbled and fumbled around and finally found his way out of there, he caught them. Boy did he lay the lawdownonthem. I was talking to Father McGinnis here just a few months before he died. He says, do you remember when that happened? I said, no, I don’t remember when it happened, I said, but I heard about it. But boy, I sure remembered. Boy, what Father Ryan done to us. Oh there was a lot of fun growing up in the parish too, as well as trials and miseries. He was, uh, I think he was the first boy from Utah to go into the priesthood. Now they, uh, give credit to Father Vaughn. I think he lives in Salt Lake. I know Father Vaughn. RB: And with the Monsignor McDoughal? RD: No, no it's way ahead of him. RB: Hm. Uh-hm. RD: Yeah. No he's the Archbishop up in Portland now, that's what he is. RB: Oh, a Utah boy? RD: Yes.They give him credit for being the first native Utah priest. But, uh, Father McGinis was quite a ways ahead of him. But, uh, Father McGinnis went into the Jesuits. RB: Uh-hm. RD: And of course he never was around here after he went in other than to come home and visit his parents. But he's been, uh, mostly down, well he was up in, um, what's their big college up in Montana? Gonzaga. RB: Uh-hm. 50 RD: He was up in Gonzaga for a long time, then he was down in Los Angeles that, uh, oh I can't think of the name of that one. Anyway it a big Jesuit school down there; they got a big college and high school. RB: Loyola. RD: Loyola, yeah that's the one. He was down there for a long time then he went to Santa Clara in California. But most of his life has been away from home. He never was, never was around here, only on visits. And during World War II he was, he got in as chaplain, in the service. And he was down in the Philippines right through the thick of it. RB: Hm. RD: And he sure got some weird stories to tell, or did have some weird stories to tell about when he was down there. And he got nicked a time or two down there too. But, uh, he never he never was well after he come back from there, he had trouble all the time. Of course he was getting on his years too. He was probably in his late sixties, early seventies when he died, and that's no kid. But, uh, he didn't, he didn't do much after the war, only just, uh, move around a little bit from one place to another. He was stationed in a parish down there in Santa Clara where my brother lives down in there. They got real chummy when they used to get together. Swap, swap some of their old time stories when they were kids. My brother was telling me of the fun time they had down there when Father McGinnis was sent back to Washington for some special studies or something and he was gone for several months, so they had a big party for him when he got back, a parish party and, uh, so they based it on the, uh, television program “This Is Your Life.” And my brother helped him narrate his whole life from a kid here right on up to where the adults in the parish knew him. And they took it on from there- 51 RB: Oh. RD: So they just took Dale right, right through his whole life there and he sat there…he couldn't imagine where they dug up all the information they had or him. Little personal incidental things that you forget about and they bring them up there and they said they just had a ball. I don't know whether Father Kushnahan was the first parish priest here or not. He, he baptized me, and he was here till after I went out to Nevada, and he died, oh, in 1925 or somewhere there about (’25 or ’30). Now at that time Eastern Nevada was part of the Salt Lake Diocese. Elco, and Bellmont, and Austin, Palisade and Eerie. Oh, I don’t know, I didn’t think they got as far west as Winnemaka, but, uh, all of Eastern Nevada was part of the salt Lake Diocese now. RB: Pretty far,isn’t it? RD: And, uh, and the Western part of Nevada was in the Sacramento Diocese. So they, uh, made the Diocese of Reno to take the whole state of Nevada, and then they...the priests that were in the eastern part Nevada come back in here and they went into this Diocese, so they came back in the autumn. And Monsignor Kennedy was out in Nevada at that time he was, he was out in Eerie where I was, and, uh, he came back in here and he was a pastor here for a while. Then he went to Salt Lake and was down there and then he came back here after Monsignor Drew died and he’s been here ever since. I remember him when he first come to this country from Ireland. Just a slip of an Irish lad, as he called himself. He, uh, he worked in parishes in Nevada, Elco and Austin and, uh, oh what's that now? Bellmont and Austin was one parish. See they’d do services in Bellmont one Sunday and Austin the next. And then Palisade and Eureka were the same way. And then Eerie was off to itself, and, uh, they took care of Ruth and Magill. They were, they were those three towns right there in a bunch. The other towns were, oh, quite far apart. Well it was 52 seventy-four miles from (Eerie over) to Eureka. And about the same from Eureka to Austin. And seventy-four miles in those days was quite a distance out across the desert. RB: Right. RD: Over the top of two or three mountains. The travel wasn't so good. RB: Well how did he commute? RD: Well, uh, in later years they had automobiles. When Father Kennedy was out there he had an old four cylinder Dodge and he got a sick call to go over to Eureka, it’s in the wintertime and the road from Austin…and Austin was supposed to get over there to take care of Eureka, but he couldn't, uh, he couldn't make it. The road was snowed in over there and he couldn't get out of Austin. So we sent Father Kennedy a telegram clear around the…to get into Eerie so he won't, uh, he had to go over to take care of sick call and he didn't want to go alone, so he got a hold of me to go with him, and it took us from about six o'clock in the evening till oh, it was after midnight before we got into Eureka. And that was a rough trip. But then a truck threw ahead of us and cut deep ruts in the snow, and he was a wider thread than we were so we get the wheels on one side in the rut and the other one was on the hill and then pretty soon you draw up in the other one and you just, you're just doing that all the way, all the way across. That was a hectic trip. RB: Well what year was that? RD: Oh about 1925, '26. RB: Uh-hm. RD: I recall. I don't remember dates very well. RB: Oh, that's close enough. 53 RD: And I guess he's not traveling very much now. RB: But his headquarters are still in Ogden? RD: Yes, yes I think he still stays over at the parish house. RB: Uh-hm. RD: Well I'm going to have to excuse myself for a minute. RB: O.K. that'll be fine. End of tape 54