Oral History Program James D. Ritchie Interviewed by Kathryn MacKay 30 July 2003 Oral History Program Weber State University Stewart Library Ogden, Utah James D. Ritchie Interviewed by Kathryn MacKay 30 July 2003 Copyright © 2024 by Weber State University, Stewart Library 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 Special Collections. 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 and Davis County Community Oral History Collection includes interviews conducted by Weber State University faculty, staff and students, and other members of the community. The interviews cover various topics including city government, diversity, personal everyday life experiences and other recollections regarding the history of the Weber and Davis County areas. ____________________________________ 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 Special Collections 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: James D. Ritchie, an oral history by Kathryn Mackay, 30 July 2003, WSU Stewart Library Oral History Program, Special Collections and University Archives, Stewart Library, Weber State University, Ogden, UT. Abstract: The following is an oral history interview with James D. Ritchie conducted on July 30, 2003 by Kathryn MacKay. James discusses his recollections and experiences with 25th Street in Ogden, Utah during World War II. Also present during the interview is James’ daughter, Barbara Bassett. KM: Today is July 30, 2003. My name is Kathryn MacKay and I am here at the Utah State Historical Society with Mr. Ritchie. Would you please give me your full name? JR: I'm James D. Ritchie, born August 7, 1925, a long time ago. KM: Actually, a point of fact, you are two years younger than my parents, so I am delighted you are of that generation because you folks did a lot of things and it is good for us to talk about them. Mr. Ritchie, your daughter is also present in this interview, and I wonder if you would also give me your name? BB: Barbara Bassett, and I am the fourth daughter, born in 1955. KM: Mr. Ritchie, the purpose of this interview is to have you talk to me about your experiences with 25th Street in Ogden. I wonder if you would give me some context for this interview. That is, I was told that you are a native of Ogden; is that correct? JR: I'm a native of Ogden. My parents, my grandmother was good LDS people until I come along. Before I started working, I found out that everyone referred to 25th Street as Two-Bit Street. KM: Right, I've heard that expression. JR: Good old Two-Bit Street. I understood there were tunnels underneath the street and a lot of the buildings to get underground connections. 1 KM: Did you actually ever see a tunnel? JR: I never saw a tunnel. I couldn't prove it, that's just rumor. KM: In point of fact, the rumor about the tunnels persists, but there is no evidence of any tunnels. There are a couple of buildings where there are connecting basements, and they suspect that may be part of where the rumor [started]. JR: I have no proof of that. This is just rumor that I had heard. KM: Let me clarify the chronology a little bit, and then I do want you to talk to me about the street. Growing up in Ogden and living in Ogden in the late 20's and the early 30's, Ogden was then a railroad town and some manufacturing. Hard-hit by the depression, of course, as was most of Utah, and I suspect that affected the businesses on 25th Street. Did you, as a child, still think of 25th Street as the commercial district? Is that where you went to buy soda pop? JR: No, Washington Avenue was the main street. That was the main drag in Ogden. I wasn't involved with Two-Bit Street until about age 25, when I went to work at the Utah State Liquor Store on 25th and Wall Avenue. KM: Yes, a lively place, no doubt. JR: That's where I got my education. KM: Well, let's see. Let me understand the chronology. This would be in about the early 1950's then, so this would be post-World War II? JR: Fifty years ago,1950-something, post-World War II. It was a big railroad town, and the servicemen all stopped at 25th Street; it had quite a reputation all through the United States, and traveling with the Air Force, I realized that Two-Bit Street and the San Francisco area—that area down there? 2 KM: Oh, the Mission District in San Francisco, down by the railroad? There is a Union Station. JR: That was kind of a bawdy, bawdy place, but they had good reputations. Goodbad reputations. KM: Places where citizens could buy a drink and perhaps have a bit of fun. JR: Well. Remember the old Rose Rooms down Two-Bit Street? Yes, they could have some fun. I think that was owned by Rosie Davis, as I remember. Then in the early ‘50s, I went to work at the Liquor on Wall Avenue and graduated, I guess you could call it, to the night manager of the store. We closed at 11 o'clock in those days. Now, this is with the Utah State Liquor Control Commission. KM: How did you get that job? Were you just looking for a job and this was what you landed? JR: No, this wasn't a big-time job. I was working at Hill Air Force Base. This was a moonlight job. KM: Then you were working as a civilian on the base? JR: I was a civilian, yes. I went to work at the one on Washington and about 27th Street initially. That was the guy that got me involved in it. Then I transferred to 25th Street, then Wall. I worked there for eight or nine years, then I transferred up to the one by the bus depot on Grant. I worked there for a few years as the night manager. KM: Twenty-fifth street in all senses was still a very, very viable downtown, don't you think? 3 JR: Yes. From Grant on down it got a little livelier, and a little more rough, but lately it has been cleaned up. In the old days, it was a little rougher. KM: Yeah, it was. There used to be some pretty lively bars, particularly down by the train station. One of them used to be called "The Club," owned by an Italian family, I think, and they had secret parties for the building. JR: The Club was owned by Tom and Harry Pappas. They used to come over and buy a few half-pints of liquor periodically for—I wouldn't call it bootlegging, just for people who happened to be caught high and dry. Two or three cases of it. KM: Oh, just for contingency. JR: Yeah, just for people that had a long dry spell. KM: Just listen to the question that I'd really like to ask you, and that is: since you were in the State Liquor Store, it wasn't just about individuals coming to buy liquor, it was about bar owners and restaurant owners and probably lots of others. JR: Restaurant owners didn't come to buy. KM: That's right, they couldn't. JR: Yes, we had a few businesses like The Club. A nightclub was up three or four doors from the Liquor Store at the time, and was operated by a good-looking black man. He used to come in and buy his liquor for the illegal club, I guess, but he invited me one night to go into his club after closing hours, which I did. This was around all the racial strife time, and I told him I'd be there about a certain time, and he was there waiting for me, sat me down. He had a black nightclub and there were about 10,000 eyes looking at me, and I kind of puckered up for 4 just a little while. Finally he sat me down at a table, and immediately there were about four girls sat down at the same table. I thought, "Uh-oh, I'm not staying here too long.” KM: This wasn't the Porter's and Waiter's Club, was it? JR: No. I remember the Porter's and Waiter's Club. I forget the name of the club. This club was part of an international ring, I think. There was this tall, good-looking gentleman, a black man around for a while, and then they had a little Japanese fellow that run it for two or three years after that. KM: Were they still playing live music in some of the clubs on 25th Street? JR: Well, this one I was just talking about, all the front was a little greasy-spoon restaurant. I don't think they sold much coffee through that, but it was a front to this nightclub—quite an exclusive nightclub. Yes, it was a nice nightclub. Yes, the Porters and Waiters, they used to come by once in a while to buy liquor. KM: How is it that in Ogden, many of these businesses were owned and operated by immigrant families? That was a way that they could get into business, so there were lots of Greek families that were involved in businesses on 25th Street, Italian families, Japanese families, because it was a sort of an access plan into the larger economic communities. Did you have a sense of that on 25th Street that it seemed to be where there were more…? JR: They called it the melting pot of Ogden, Utah. KM: I do have a sense that where they could start a restaurant maybe, or start a bar, or in another situation, a boarding house—things connected with the railroad in some ways, but also running small businesses in that area. 5 JR: There were a lot of foreign-descent people running businesses down there, and I worked on the—get my memory a little better—Federal Drug Store. We used to go over for coffee breaks over there. It was Italian-run, the Pappas boys in The Club. KM: Were the descendents running the two different divisions? Wasn't there a descendant of the family that ran a... JR: They ran quite a lot of things, yes. They had fruit stands. They were nice folks, all nice people. KM: A big, thriving Italian community. Some of them were farmers, but some were in business in Ogden. JR: A lot of them down in that area were colored, African-American, and worked at the railroad. KM: Of course the railroad was still running that big laundry, too. It was the main laundry, I understand, for the whole line, so thousands, hundreds of pounds of laundry. JR: When I first went down there, the railroad was quite active doing that, and then right after that it started slowing down quite a lot—a lot of the cooks, engineers, porters, everything. KM: Sure, and oftentimes they had residences, particularly on the west side, past the railroad track, communities over the viaduct now. JR: Yes. Well, we lived down in the Marriott area originally, about seven miles southwest of there. 6 KM: Isn't that the area where the Depot was? What am I thinking of, the military that was out in the Marriott area? JR: Yes, that was DDO. KM: Yes, there we go. JR: Later on they put the IRS Center down there also. We were down a little further south and west on a farm. KM: Your family farmed? JR: Yes, our family farmed. KM: How long did they farm? JR: They farmed clear up until about 60 years ago, and then they sold the farm there and moved up to Idaho and bought another farm. Then they were up there for a while and then moved back to Ogden. KM: How long did you live in Ogden? JR: Well, I stayed all my life, except for the two years I spent in Idaho. KM: Did you continue to work for the base? JR: Well, at this time I was still working on my Dad's farm. I was still 20 years out there. We moved to Idaho when I was about 20 years old. When I was 22, I moved back to Ogden with my Dad, and then about six months later, got married to my current wife, which is the best thing I ever did. About three years after that is when I started having a family, and the family was needing shoes and clothes and milk and food and stuff, so I was working at Hill Air Force Base and thought I'd better supplement my income just a little bit more. So then I'd come home from the Base, have a light meal, and go down and work until about 11 o'clock. 7 KM: Let me ask you this, about what kinds of businesses you remember on 25th Street? If you wanted to buy, say, a really nice pair of shoes, could you find a store that would sell you a really nice pair of shoes on 25th Street or Washington in the 1950s? JR: Oh, yes. KM: Where would you go? JR: We went to Levans quite a lot. Levans was a men's store—you know where Bingham was there? We could find what we wanted in Ogden. KM: Did you think that you had to go to Salt Lake to go shopping, or did you feel like you found what you needed in Ogden? JR: Oh, we could get most everything out of Ogden. KM: Did your family also buy farming equipment in the Ogden area, when they farmed? JR: Yes. Maw Brothers had an implement company. Of course we didn't go to implement companies all the time. We used to buy from other farmers that were selling out; did a little bartering here and there. KM: That's right. But you really did feel like Ogden had all that you needed, that it was a thriving city and that you could buy what you needed there? JR: Yes, it had most everything we needed. I'm sure it didn't have everything there was, but I didn't know that I needed anything more. KM: Where did you go to high school? JR: Weber High School. KM: Did you have some college experience too? 8 JR: Ah, a little bit. Not much. Iit was the draft days, if you remember. No, you wouldn't remember. KM: I don't, but my folks do. JR: I was on the farm, but that got me deferred till we moved to Idaho, and then I was on the farm. KM: When you told people you were from Ogden, did people have a reaction to that? Do they know where it is anymore? JR: Ah, it depends on who you are around when you are talking. The name Ogden doesn't mean so much. It is the state of Utah that has the reputation, the Mormons and so forth. KM: Sure. But Ogden didn't have a reputation as a Mormon town. It had a reputation as a non-Mormon town, don't you think? JR: Yes. It had a world-wide reputation through servicemen where 25th Street was quite a place. Barbary Coast is what I was thinking of before. They were two of the places that most servicemen knew. They either went to, or away from. KM: Your daughter told me that she had done an interview with you previously, and I'm going to ask her if she can solicit, perhaps, a story that you know that he knows, that we could capture on this tape. BB: The one story that meant the most to me at the time—and I was so very young— but I remember hearing that he had been held up when he worked at the liquor store. KM: Oh, I definitely want to hear that story. BB: I think that is a great story, especially for a little one growing up in Ogden. 9 JR: I had gotten my friend, Dean Taylor, a job at the store there. He would usually check out one cashier and I'd check out the other cashier. At 11 o’clock, the manager went over to lock the door and two guys burst in with revolvers, ski masks over their faces, and proceeded to hold us up. Immediately the cashier that I was starting to check out—we had rubber hoses about that long and about that big around and filled with lead, kind of a "pacifier" for people that got out of hand, really—she pulled that out from under the cabinet and give it to me and said, "Go get him." I quietly put it back under the counter. I wasn't about to go get him. There were two revolvers pointed at me. I'm lucky I didn't get shot with that episode. But my friend had a friend waiting for him who saw all this happening, so he immediately went over to the Depot Drug Store and called the police, which he did. In the meantime, on the inside, they told all the employees in the store to lay down on the floor, face-down, and told me to get all the money and put it in the sack so he could take it. I was busy putting it in the sack, slowly, kind of consuming some time. I guess he figured I wasn't going quite fast enough, so he clicked that hammer and said, "You lay on the floor." He finished filling the bag. I lay on the floor, and to keep my clothes clean, I kind of laid on one shoulder. I heard that gun click again and he said, "Flat on the floor." I went just as flat, very flat. I knew he wasn't playing around, so I laid flat on the floor. Right after that, I heard a little commotion out in the lobby. The next thing I heard was, "Get up." I looked up and there was a big black man with a revolver to my head who said, "Get up." So I obliged the guy, and I got up. There was the 10 policeman; his name was White, a big policeman, and he was the one telling me to get up. He didn't know if I was part of the robbers; they have to be careful. So we got through that deal, and we had to call the auditor to have him come up to see how much had been taken. I guess it was a state auditor, which kept us there. I called my wife and said I'd be a little while getting home. I wouldn't be home tonight, we'd been held up. She said, "Yeah, you've been held up. What's her name?" The manager and I stayed there waiting for the state auditor, and he took the top off a pint bottle and threw it back in the warehouse, and we had a little drink to calm our nerves. We were a little shook up. KM: I bet you were. Did you have to testify against them? Was there a trial? Were they arrested and tried? JR: They caught the one guy in there. The police caught the one guy, and that's what all the commotion was when the police first came in. They couldn't make him tell anything about the other guy. The other guy was the one that had the money. Because they couldn't get anything out of him, and I asked them if they'd let me go and interview him and get some information, but they didn't go for that. A little while later Sheriff Wade—Mack Wade, he was a County Sheriff— he called me one day and wanted to know if I'd come into the Sheriff's Office and bring Dean Taylor with me. So I said, "Sure, I'd be glad to." We went in, and he kicked his big cowboy boots up on the desk with horse manure on the heels and everything and proceeded to show me a bunch of pictures of mugshots. When I saw this guy, I pointed him out. 11 He said, "Okay. Now you can send Taylor in." This was me alone. So he sends Taylor in and he did the same thing, went through and identified the same guy. We got a quick look at him before he pulled the ski mask down, but that was the guy. We asked if they thought Utah could get him to prosecute him and they said no. He had just been let out of prison about a week or two before then, and in that time since he was let out of prison, he was wanted for Denver, Phoenix, Pueblo, and robberies all over. KM: Oh, dear. So you were just one of many that he had robbed? JR: I was lucky I didn't get shot when the cashier pulled that hose out. KM: But then you went back to work at the same place. It did not deter you? JR: Oh, yeah. I went right back. KM: You said the Depot Drug Store was a place that you went and sat and had a cup of coffee every once in a while. JR: Yeah, we'd spend our coffee breaks over there. KM: Were there other places in Ogden that you liked to visit just to have a cup of coffee or a soda or something? JR: Well, that place because it was close, and when we were working up at the one by the bus depot, we'd go over to the bus depot to get coffee or a little lunch or something. Convenience, I guess, is what we were looking for. KM: You know, the bus depot building is still there, and they are hoping somebody will open up a restaurant there because the counter is still there and the kitchen is still there. JR: At the bus depot? 12 KM: Yes, at the old bus depot. JR: The Greyhound didn't work out of there any more? KM: No, they've moved their operation down to the new transportation building, so that building is vacant at the moment. JR: See, I haven't lived in Ogden now for 20, 30, 35 years. KM: A lot has changed since then. JR: Yeah, a lot of changes. I feel very lucky to be alive right now. There was a robbery. There was a fellow, a black man—I guess African-American—that came in one time and he was loaded, drunk to the eyeballs, and the cashier said she couldn't sell him any more liquor, and he got kind of belligerent. I was clerking for that cashier at the time and I could see he had a revolver under his belt. I quickly went out behind the counter and threw an elbow up under his chin and grabbed his revolver. Then we called the police. KM: That was taking a chance. JR: Yes, that was taking a chance. After the bus depot, there was no business and I was wondering why, so I went out the front to look. There were two guys, one on one side of the door on the outside, and one on the other side of the door on the outside, one with a knife and one with a broken bottle. They were going at it and I walked out there and found myself between the knife and the bottle. I had to think fast. [End of Side A of tape. Previous story was not completed.] KM: These are stories that only confirm people's worst suspicions about 25th Street. JR: Well, I could go on and on. 13 KM: These are the stories that maybe the city may not want to promote about 25th Street, but that’s how come the reputation is being a kind of rowdy place. JR: Well, I'm not the first one, I'm sure, that has stories like this. We used to go down there and work when I first started down there, and I'd see blood dripping all the time. It was a real unsavory place when I first went down there. KM: Do you think part of it was that there were so many people moving in and out of it, in terms of the railroad? Some of that is pretty unstable; you are getting kind of a moveable population, and a lot of it is male. Part of that is just that there are a lot of men, whether they are working on the railroad or whether they are men in the ‘40s, of course, in the military. That seems to be kind of a volatile situation oftentimes. JR: Well, 25th Street was kind of drying up in a lot of ways about that time. The railroad was losing out, number one, and a lot of railroad workers, cooks, hotels, were having bad times. It was just a slummy place. The liquor store didn't help it, I guess. KM: They seem to make decisions, and I definitely think these are planning decisions, that somehow it is okay to put the State Liquor Store in a more impoverished part of town rather than a more middle-class part of town. Part of that may have to do with available real estate, but part of it, I think, is also a sort of sense of, “Where do you put this kind of a place?” You don't put a State Liquor Store in a middleclass neighborhood. JR: Or an upper-class neighborhood because the neighborhood, I'm sure, would rise up against it. Rightfully, they should. 14 KM: They've still got the political power to do it. There is a poorer neighborhood that doesn't have, necessarily, that political power. JR: Well, the reason I'm not going to get into, but I would hate to have a liquor store right next to me. I have nothing against liquor stores or liquor itself, I just... KM: The challenge for the state system they have in Utah too, is that it has become concentrated so that if you are going to buy liquor, you have to go to one location where you can buy it. Other places, it isn't quite as concentrated. It is that concentration that causes lots of problems. JR: Well, if we are getting into the politics of legislation of the state, I think the days of state control is and should be over. If a state controls places like Utah, like Oregon, like a lot of the other state-controlled places, liquor is about twice as high as it is in the uncontrolled. I know Utah brags on their least liquor consumption of anybody in the nation. It sounds good for church politics, but I don't think it is the truth. I think there is just a lot of lost revenue there by people bringing liquor in from other states. That's only my opinion. KM: I want to ask your daughter if she knows of any other stories? BB: Just again, as a young one, I remember hearing stories, mostly from my Mom, about how frequently my Dad was solicited from other women down there. He was tall, good-looking, and you see a photo of him in those days and he was a strapping, good-looking [man]. JR: Well, it's late at night—Saturday night, or Friday night or something, and they go to the cashier and pay for their liquor, put it on a ticket; I'd go pick the ticket, get the liquor and bring it back and put it in the bag, and they'd leave. Take the liquor 15 and put it in the bag and give it to the lady, and she'd be standing there putting the change in her housecoat pocket and pull the housecoat open, and she was standing there naked as a jaybird. You didn't know whether to reach over and pull the housecoat closed or whether to ignore the whole thing. I was a little ol’ farm boy, and it kind of startled you at the time. Then there was a hotel on Wall Avenue just north of the liquor store, and we had a restroom in the back of the store. I was visiting there one night, and I noticed on the second floor of the hotel there was a colored man, and a lady was playing all kinds of funny games. The bed was right about window-level and they were just having a good time. I never got fired over that situation by staying in the restroom. Ah, it was a liquor store. What else can you expect? It was a rough area. Yes, as I say, I am lucky to be healthy and alive right now. KM: I think so, absolutely. Just a couple of final things about 25th Street, trying to be thoughtful about this place and what this place means. Twenty-Fifth Street itself, physically, is one of the very few places in Utah where this is still this collection of buildings that represented businesses. We seem to have destroyed a lot of 25th Street. As a matter of fact, I think that one of the things that historians like myself are thoughtful about is that this represents a path, a tradition, a sense of place. I'm trying to get from you a sense of what you thought about 25th Street as a place that you knew, that you worked in, that you did business, and that you knew a lot about. You knew people who had businesses on the street; you were invited into that nightclub, a rare experience for a white man. What is your sense of this place? What was it to you? 16 JR: Two-Bit Street with all of its bawdiness and roughness was a place like any other place. High class, low class, whatever. I recently read in, I believe it was the Salt Lake Tribune, an article on Joe somebody, a colored entertainer who had a band. A sax player. KM: Oh, yes. He was an old jazz player and I've just forgotten his name, too, but I know who you are talking about. JR: Well, I knew him. A finer gentleman, I don't think, ever lived as far as I knew him. That was from the liquor store. I knew a lot of the colored people down there and really had a lot of respect for them. Nice people, very fine people from all I knew of them. Of course, I didn't know any of them very well. No, it was a place. Some good, some bad, and as far as the buildings, some of it needed cleaned up. KM: Since you worked down there—and you've sort of hinted at this a little bit—did you have a sense of community with other people that ran businesses in the area, that worked in the area? You would know people by sight and you had commercial dealings with them. JR: Oh, yes. There was the man who ran the curio shop next to the liquor store. He ran it for a year or two when I first started working there. I think he went out of business later on. He closed up. You got to be friends with them. Quite close with them: a community of people that I hadn't been used to working with, but found out they were to a degree, honest, decent people. KM: You were all part of the commerce of this area. JR: Yes, they all contributed quite well. 17 KM: Anything else that you would like to say for this tape? Is there a question that I haven't asked you that you would like me to ask you, or a story you'd like to tell? JR: Oh, I've been running off at the mouth quite a lot. KM: There are some good stories, though. I appreciate it very much. JR: I don't think I've told anything they can blackmail me on or sue me on. Yeah, there were times down there when I'd like to have run away from 25th Street. One fellow down there, a black man—we had turned him down, not selling him a bottle. He was asking me with a knife, so I did carry a knife for a while. He was waiting for The Club to open up one day, a Saturday. A week before I'd turned him down. We'd kind of been jockeying back and forth. Of course, I was on the other side of the counter all the time and nothing was ever said or done, but I knew things were a little bit tense and I was carrying my hunting knife. I noticed he was outside waiting for the door to open about a week later, one Saturday, and I got my hunting knife and put it in my pocket and stood over in one corner. I let people come in and made out their tickets and went to the cashier and I stood there, kind of watched him as he came in. He kind of looked confused for a while, then he made out a ticket for a lone bottle of wine and left the place. Then I went back and went to work. That was the end of that deal. There were times it was tense down there, so I guess I am just a lucky man. I should have been dead three or four times. KM: I very much appreciate your taking the time to do this. Thank you very much. JR: Well, I appreciate blowing off a little bit. 18