Oral History Program Jane Venable Interviewed by Ben Reeves 01 September 1971 i Oral History Program Weber State University Stewart Library Ogden, Utah Jane Venable Interviewed by Ben Reeves 01 September 1971 Copyright © 2014 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: Venable, Jane, an oral history by Ben Reeves, 01 September 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 Jane Venable. The interview was conducted on September 1, 1971, by Ben Reeves, at the location of 5661 South 2700 West, Roy, Utah. Mrs. Venable discusses her personal experiences as well as historical events that she witnessed during her life in Utah. BR: This is an interview of Jane Venable by Ben Reeves on September 1st, 1971 at her home, 5661 South, 2700 West, in Roy, for the Utah Oral History Project. The interview is taking place at approximately three o'clock in the afternoon. Mrs. Venable, can you tell me a little bit about your background, where you were born, who your parents were and information such as this? JV: Yes. I was born at four o'clock in the morning on New Year’s Day, in 1904. And my mother was Lettie H. Stoker.1 I was born at home, and they had not been able to reach the doctor in Ogden. There was no doctor, but my grandmother was there. And my mother said that on the track which was near our place, she could hear people that were celebrating the old year out and the New Year in when I was born. I have lived in Roy practically all my life. I began school when I was five years old and went one year to kindergarten before I went to first grade. And I completed eight grades of school in Roy, and I attended Ogden High School in Ogden, where I completed three years of high school. I had many important events when I was a girl. I saw the construction of the old First Ward church house on 5600 in the year 1910, across the street from what was then known as the county infirmary or the Poorhouse2, as we called it. I walked one half mile every day to school and home except for some very stormy days when father hitched up the horse and would take us if it was too severely cold. He'd take us 1 sometimes in the buggy. But for the most part we walked to school and back. We had an old round pot-bellied stove in the schoolroom for heat and many times the school teacher, which was Vivian Holland, who was my first school teacher3, had a wash basin with snow and she'd help us warm our hands in the snow so that we could get the chill out of our fingers without our hands being frost bitten. And we gathered around the old stove to get warm when we first got to school. Sometimes we had the first hour of our classwork around the stove. We wore in them days woolen stockings that were home knit that came up above our knees, and we had leggings that buttoned up the side. We stepped into the bottom of them and then they buttoned up the side or else laced up the side, extra warmth for our legs. There were no snow shovels or snow plows in those days to plow the roads, we just took it as the horse and wagons had broken it. We traveled that way most of my life. By the time I was about eleven, I remember the first automobile that come up the Roy road. And we could hear it coming and we went out to the front of our house and had a great deal of fun in watching it go up the street, but the road was so sandy it had a hard time to go up the street. The roads, there were not paved roads, not even shale roads then. There was many chuck-holes and mud, and the sand in the summertime was real loose and sometimes they had to put on two teams of horses to pull a wagon up the hill in front of our home. We had access all my life to the railroad which was not too far, about two blocks from our home and we traveled on the train when we went into Ogden, often rode the train. Took us about an hour by horse and buggy to travel from Roy into Ogden. I attended church and Primary and religion class when I was a girl.4 One time we were having a tug-of-war in the Primary class and I fell to the floor and had a sliver that ran through my arm and I had to 2 go home and it was necessary for father to get the horse and buggy and take me into Ogden. There, they had the sliver taken out of my arm. It went clear through my arm and came out on the other side. But father and mother couldn't pull it out, and I had to go to the doctor and have it cut out. We had a lot of good times. Our home was always open and welcome to the neighbor children and we had a big yard and we had a lot of fruit and we had open access and free range to all the fruit we could eat and plenty for the neighbors. And father and mother opened their home continuously to the neighbor children. We always had an abundance of boys and girls in our yard. Now are there any other questions? BR: Yes. In the early days of Roy, what type of activities did they have, to have fun, like parties and things like this? JV: Well, we used to have a Bowery over on 2500 West and 6000 South, and every Saturday afternoon they had a ball game and Roy used to play with Hooper and Riverdale, and Clinton, and all the competing teams around. Everyone got out and went to the ball game. Occasionally we had ice cream and popcorn with paper toy fans in it that was sold at the ball game. We all joined in it. They used to do well. Hooper had a band and it used to travel in a wagon, the old band-wagon, and we'd hear it coming a long time before it got there, but always for the Fourth of July or any big occasion, the Hooper band got out and paraded and went up and down the streets and played tunes. We had other games that we played like Kick the Can, and Ginnie and Run, Sheep, Run; all types of games that youngsters like to play. Steal Sticks; I think our favorite sport, though, was baseball. We used to get more kick out of that than anything else.5 3 BR: Did you have any type of activities along the line more cultural, like music and drama, and this type? JV: Yes. We had many one-act plays and it seemed like we all took part when we were asked. I was a little girl one time in a play called Ten Nights in the Bar Room, I was a little girl who got hit in the head with a broken glass. I took part in one play which was Mrs. Tubbs of Shantytown, the Three Old Maids on Green Street, the Professor's Daughter. We had all kind of drama, folk songs and also dances. There was a dance once a week in every community. On Wednesday night there was a dance in Clinton, on Friday night there was a dance in Riverdale, Hooper on Saturday night, and quite often Roy had a Friday night dance. And we danced in Mutual.6 Everyone learned to dance. We did square dancing and folk dancing. The waltz was the biggest part of it. And on the Fourth of July we had community entertainment. And we used to have a program, a patriotic program and there'd be singing and speeches of the day, and they'd have bunting put up with the colors on it, red, white and blue; and the whole community got out. Occasionally they hitched up cows and had a race with cows, and something that was quite entertaining--a greased pig race. Quite often relays of all kinds. I've seen my mother win several prizes. She used to be quick on foot and she won a picture in a frame, she won a teapot, several things that I saw her win when she ran races. We had kids' races. That's about it. BR: What type of school system did you have when you were a child? What type of subjects did they teach, more or less? JV: Oh, we had reading and writing and arithmetic, I guess was the main studies. We had geography and a nature study, we had art. And we learned history. We had ancient 4 history which was the Old World and modern history and United States history. We had algebra and we took sewing in school when we got older in the 9th and 10th grade. But for the main part we read stories and played games and we went to school we had to line up and march in. We always had someone play the piano or the drum and all the grades at school had to march and we marched in school and then we lined up and marched out for recess and when the bell rang we went and got in line again and we marched in. It was always in an orderly manner and there was strict discipline in the school room in my day. We paid attention to our books and the teacher was the only one that talked. It was not noisy like I've seen some schools. But the groups were not as large either. There'd be maybe fifteen or twenty of us in a room, would be all that would be in the room. But we played on the same playground with the older boys and girls and we learned from the older ones. Sometimes we joined in and sometimes we watched them play. And we played all kinds of games on the playgrounds. BR: You've worked quite a bit in the canning factories around. Can you tell me what the canning factories were like? JV: Well, the first job that I had was in the canning factory. The canning factory was the main industry for employment for the young people when I was a girl. There was four canning factories in Roy. I went to work at the Craig Canning Factory, I think first when I was about nine years old and all we did was roll cans. They had a chute that we placed the cans on with the open ends all one way, and there'd be four or five of us about the same age that did what we called rolling the cans. And we'd take the cans and put them in the chute to roll down to the fillers. Then when I was eleven years old, I coaxed the manager of the factory to let me peel tomatoes and I was too little to reach the table so I 5 stood on a box by Rose Hammon who was the same age. We used to have the tomatoes brought to us in a tub and then we had buckets, one slop bucket that we peeled in and a bucket behind that we put the tomatoes in and we only made about four cents a bucket for peeling tomatoes and we thought we'd done very good if we done twenty-five in a day because we'd made a dollar. The going wage was only about twenty-five cents an hour for women and fifty cents an hour for men was top wages. So when we'd made a dollar we'd done pretty good. And some girls that were older and got professional at peeling tomatoes would peel a hundred buckets and figured that they'd made a real good wage when they'd made four dollars. But the average couldn't do that many; it took a skilled person. We had a straight- blade knife that we learned to peel tomatoes with and very often we got bad cuts on our hands and had to have them wrapped. Then later they manufactured a type of spoon that would peel tomatoes that had sharp edges on both sides and that was much nicer to peel tomatoes with after we got the spoons than the straight-edge was. After I got seventeen years old I got a job and worked at the county infirmary. I went down there and started out. I was going to act as a maid and the matron wanted me to come in the kitchen and help cook, so I soon learned to take over and I cooked for about sixty people from then until I got married. I didn't get married until I was twenty but I worked there. With the matron's help, I cooked for sixty people three times a day. BR: What was the infirmary like? JV: Oh, I don't know what to tell you about what the infirmary was like. There was people there from all walks of life, mainly because they had nowhere to go and the county provided a place for them to live. And they were brought out there from Ogden. The 6 staff consisted of a superintendent and about three girls that cleaned the rooms, a cook and a nurse. The nurse took care of those who were ailing, but for the majority anyone that was able to do anything at all was required to work a little bit. There were some of the men that were there that helped farm a little bit, they had raspberries and a garden and they picked fruit and worked in the garden. They had chickens and one man tended to the chickens and gathered the eggs. They had others who milked cows and brought the milk in. The bread was all made by hand; also the butter and fruit was canned in the summertime. The girls, and the cook and the matron, we all worked in the fruit. We used to put up about two thousand quarts of fruit a year. And they had a large cellar that was fixed with lovely shelves and the fruit looked very nice when it was bottled and mostly in two quart bottles, and it was kept in the cellar. We had a storeroom where stuff was bought almost like a grocery store. It was bought in case lots--raisins and coconut. We had fifty-pound cans of shortening, hundred pound sacks of flour, hundred pound sacks of cereal; things were bought in bulk for the most part. But all the cooking was done there. Sometimes meat was butchered there on the farm and other times was brought in from Ogden, but everything was prepared there. BR: Do you remember what it was like here in Roy during World War I? JV: Yes. When World War I began, the boys began to go. The first two that I remember that left was Emmet Hedman and Jeddy Hammon, and they had been picking tomatoes in the field for my father and they decided that they wanted to join, so they went to Ogden and joined up. It wasn't long after until Newel Neilson joined, several of the other boys in Roy. I remember when they left. Charlie Dalton was another one that joined up. We asked permission to leave school, Rose and Lela Hammon and I. Their brother, Jed, 7 was the one that, he and Wallace Hammon, enlisted with Emmet Hedman, and we asked permission to leave school and we went into Ogden to see a movie when they were mustered in and left.7 A lot of the boys went to Fort Lewis, Washington, first and then went over into the war in France. During the war my father took three newspapers a day so he could keep track of where the boys were and what they were doing. And we got one in the morning and two in the evening and he read the news and followed the boys wherever they went. Everyone seemed very patriotic. The whole community was concerned; but all of Roy only consisted of about four hundred people then. And whenever the boys were in a deep battle like the Aragon Forest over there everyone prayed for their welfare and we were all concerned about them. Very much concerned. And when the boys returned home. I'll never forget Newel Neils on, when he come home he couldn't stand still. He was so shocked with it that he paced up and down across the stage while he talked to us to give his talk, but he couldn't stand still. And there was a great day, November 11, 1918, when the Armistice was signed, we took our horses and buggy and drove into Ogden and everyone and everything stopped. They stopped the trains in the depot and tied the whistles down. All employees stopped work and come out onto the streets. People just paraded up and down the street and sang and yelled. There was a big commotion, everyone was so happy that the war was over. It was a great day. That was when the Armistice was signed. It was some time before the boys returned home, but to know that the war had ceased, we were all patriotic while they were gone. We worked in the cannery then we got a player piano and it had records on it such as Goodbye Ma, Goodbye Pa, Goodbye Mule with Your Old He Haw. And then we sang Over There, Over There, and Johnny Get Your Gun, and all kinds of 8 inspiring songs. And everyone sang, everyone joined in. We were all very patriotic. “Over there, over there, send the word, send the word, that the Yanks are coming, the Yanks are coming, drums drum drumming everywhere.” Everyone sang. A lot more patriotism than there is now, I'll tell you! BR: You mentioned earlier that you lived close to the railroad most of your life. Do you remember any experiences of the railroad? JV: Well the railroad used to come through a cut from Ogden and come out and I'll never forget when I was a girl. There was a hold-up on the railroad. And when the train come through the cut it was stopped by some bandits that had red bandana handkerchiefs tied around their noses and eyes and they held up the engineer and went through the train and held the people up. And that was a stormy bit of news. Wed never had any hold-ups of any kind and to know that the railroad got held up. Our transportation, always to Salt Lake we went on the railroad. There was three railroads in Roy, the Oregon Short-Line and the D & RG and the Banberger. We rode the Banberger train a lot and we used to go to Lagoon on Saturday nights in the summertime.8 Lagoon was quite a resort and everybody went.9 There used to be open car s that had seats clear across them and we'd fill the seats and sometimes hang onto the sides of them and ride the train going down there, a whole crowd, everybody knew everybody and there were not cars enough for people to travel in. We all took picnics and went on the trains mostly. Most of the engines were coal fired, they had a fireman and an engineer and then later the dies el engines came in, the higher powered engines, and they didn't employ so many people. But the conductors on the trains were very friendly and the 9 men in the depot were very friendly and used to help people a lot with guidance in the depot when we went on the train they were very friendly. BR: Do you remember any political activities that were going on about this time? I think 1920 the women got the right to vote and things like this. Do you remember any of this type of activity? What effect it may have had if any? JV: Well, as a girl we used to like to go to the rallies and always before a campaign, political campaign or anything, the two parties, the Democrats and the Republicans, used to hold rallies and we liked to go to them because there was usually so much entertainment and fun that we got a kick out of it. So we used to go to both parties. We'd go and hear what the Democrats had to say and then we'd go and hear what the Republicans had to say, and the candidates and hear one of them run the other one down and then the other side run the other side down. When I first went to some of the rallies I think perhaps drink was there because there was some of them that would get quite loud and quite noisy and I think they'd participated in alcoholic beverages and they were quite loud. It used to seem to me like it was fair enough, the way that they acted, both sides did about the same way. Everybody used to try and get out and vote and those that didn't get out someone would take a buggy and go give them a ride if they needed a ride to the polls. I didn't participate much in it. I know there was quite a bit of talk around in 1920-21 or 2 when women rights come in. I had one uncle that didn't think they ever ought to give the women their rights. He thought that was a mistake right from the beginning, but he had to concede to it because it went over. The majority won and he didn't have his own way, but he never wanted women to have rights. I think that that had come in just before I was married and soon after I was married I was able to vote in 10 the 1926 election. I was old enough to vote so women hadn't had the rights loo many years before I was able to vote. BR: What about courtship during this time? When you went on dates, what type of things did you do when you were dating? JV: Oh, we had quite a lot of parties from the time that we first started school. We had surprise parties on someone about every Friday night when we were kids and we'd all take a picnic. We'd take a cake or sandwiches or something to help out with the picnic and then we'd go to someone's home and surprise them. We had round games we played, group games. We'd only hold the parties till about nine or nine thirty at night and then we'd go home in a group. I can't remember that we paired up very much. But everyone that went up the street all walked together and we used to sing as we went home from a party, usually, so I guess people would know we were coming along, because we sang as we went. As we got a little bit older we dated in groups. Four or five boys would come and take four or five girls. We'd go on group dates. A lot of times our sisters or our brothers would be with us and we got together on a Sunday afternoon quite often on people's lawns. Wherever someone had a big enough lawn to have us we were there on an afternoon and we'd sit around, talked or played games. Then, come church-time we usually went to church and then back home. We had watermelons and cantaloupes and fruit when the fruit was on and other times we had homemade ice cream or cookies and cake that someone had made and given us when we were on the lawn. We had quite a lot of fun. Some of the boys one time decided they wanted to be blond so they took peroxide and peroxided each other's hair. They came out whiteheaded after they'd bleached their hair with peroxide. But for the most part we went to 11 Sunday School and then gathered afterwards after we'd had dinner. We'd be to someone's place for the afternoon and then go to church in the evening. We had dates, yes. We went to the dances. A lot of times we went with our brother to the dance, though, and we'd dance with different partners in the evening and sometimes come home with somebody else. If we got asked to come home we'd come home, usually two or three of us, like I said, in a group. In a buggy there was always room for four or when we came in a bob sleigh there'd be six or eight couples in a bob sleigh. We had quite a lot of fun in the wintertime. The roads were not scraped and when they packed down and the snow got icy we had a lot of fun with sleigh rides. You could hear a sleigh coming for quite a long ways because everybody had bells on their horses and you could hear a sleigh in the distance quite a ways off. But home parties and dances were our main entertainment. And later we dated and went to shows. We had some nice shows in my day we'd go to. We had open vaudeville and when I was going with grandpa (Mr. Venable), we used to quite often go to the show on Saturday night. It was great entertainment and it was a high type of a vaudeville. And then we saw movies two or three times. BR: There were immigrants which came to Roy from other countries. Did they have any problems becoming part of the community? JV: Oh I don't remember a whole lot of immigrants but we had some families that come from Holland. There was the Jenigay family that came. Anna Jenigay was my age. They come and lived up on the hill on Dalton's place. And one of their uncles got hit with lightning and killed when I was a girl, and made me remember that family real well. There was another family. It was the Fiet family and they were Dutch, but I can't 12 remember when they came. They were here when I was quite young. But it didn't make any difference, we were all one happy group. Once in a while on the Section or maintenance on the railroad we had some Greeks that used to work on the track and my brother and I used to take milk down to the Greeks once in a while. We'd go down to their place.10 I remember one time that they asked Herman and I to have supper with them and they had it prepared in a pan and everyone took a spoon and ate out of the pan together. I'll never forget that because that wasn't the style that we were used to and I'll never forget eating with those Greeks out of a pan, but for the most part they were nice. BR: Did they have any problems getting involved in the community and all? JV: Not that I remember. We seemed to live quite in harmony, one with another, and there didn't seem to be. I never remember when I was a girl of anything, only that train robbery. I never remember of a scare of anyone having anything taken or any kind of community strife or trouble at all. BR: Well, that's about all of the questions I've got. Anything else you want to add? JV: We really had a lot of fun when people used to get married. Everybody in the community turned out and we had a happy time and usually took gifts and had a wedding supper afterwards. Always felt that we gave the young folks a good time. We used to chivaree the young people sometimes, separate them for a little while and have a little bit of fun, but there was nothing that was ever led into any trouble of any kind. It was all done in fun, I guess that's it. Interruption 13 JV: Now when the electric lights came into Roy they came down the Roy road because of the canning factory and the infirmary. And my folks were able to hook onto the lights. Ahead of everyone else. My mother had the first electric washing machine and the first time she used the washing machine she made father stay- in out of the field all day because she was afraid of it.11 And when she found out that it was safe and that it did the work. Quite often the Relief Society brought a sick lady's wash and came quite often to our place and washed. Sometimes they washed several days in a week. And it wasn't long after the electric washing machine till we had an electric iron. Which simplified heating the irons on the old coal stove a great deal. However we had a gas iron that had a tank on it and we used the gas iron for a while. But the electricity was really a great thing when it came into the community and we had lights and didn't have to use lamps. That was reason I guess that we used to end our parties early because it was in lamplight and by ten o'clock we'd had the lamps on for four or five hours and it was time to go home and go to bed. End of Interview 14 FOOTNOTES All footnotes are references where more information can be found or an explanatory note. 1 Interview of Lettie H. Stoker by Ben Reeves in Utah Oral History Project. Copy can be found at Weber State College Library, Ogden, Utah. 2 See news clipping from Ogden Standard Examiner, January 26, 1972. 3 Interview of Joseph Anderson by Ben Reeves as part of Utah Oral History Project. 4 All references to the Church shall be assumed unless otherwise stated to be the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. 5 Interview of Joseph Anderson by Ben Reeves as part of Utah Oral History Project. 6 Mutual Improvement Association of the Church. An organization for youth, ages twelve through twenty. Which is activity part of the Church. 7 Rosella Hardy and Ida Draayer, Roy, Utah: Our Home Town (Salt Lake City: Deseret News Press, 1968). And news clipping. 8 Ibid. 9 Lagoon is a resort in Farmington set up by Governor Bamberger on his electric railroad line to draw people to use his line. 10 Interview of Evelyn Barnes by Ben Reeves as part of Utah Oral History Project. 15 11 Hardy, Roy, Utah: Our Home Town. Also interview of Lettie H. Stoker by Ben Reeves. 16