Oral History Program Jayeson P. Vance Interviewed by Lorrie Rands 10 October 2013 Oral History Program Weber State University Stewart Library Ogden, Utah Jayeson P. Vance Interviewed by Lorrie Rands 10 October 2013 Copyright © 2014 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. The working files, original recording, and archival copies are housed in the University Archives. Project Description Business at the Crossroads - Ogden City is a project to collect oral histories related to changes in the Ogden business district since World War II. From the 1870s to World War II, Ogden was a major railroad town, with nine rail systems. With both east-west and north-south rail lines, business and commercial houses flourished as Ogden became a shipping and commerce hub. After World War II, the railroad business declined. Some government agencies and businesses related to the defense industry continued to gravitate to Ogden after the war—including the Internal Revenue Regional Center, the Marquardt Corporation, Boeing Corporation, Volvo-White Truck Corporation, Morton-Thiokol, and several other smaller operations. However, the economy became more service oriented, with small businesses developing that appealed to changing demographics, including the growing Hispanic population. ____________________________________ 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 This work is the property of the Weber State University, Stewart Library Oral History Program. It may be used freely by individuals for research, teaching and personal use as long as this statement of availability is included in the text. It is recommended that this oral history be cited as follows: Vance, Jayeson, an oral history by Lorrie Rands, 10 October 2013 , WSU Stewart Library Oral History Program, Special Collections, Stewart Library, Weber State University, Ogden, UT. iii Jayeson Vance Leading Tour at Alcatraz 2012 Abstract: The following is an oral history interview with Jayeson Vance. The interview was conducted on October 10, 2013, by Lorrie Rands. Jayeson discusses memories of Ogden and 25th Street. LR: Today is October 10, 2013 doing a phone interview with Mr. Jayeson Vance who is currently residing in San Francisco, about 25th street and Ogden. My name is Lorrie Rands and I will be conducting the interview. Jayeson, I, again, appreciate your time and your willingness to help us out with this. Let’s begin with the simple basics of when and where were you born? JV: I was born at the old St. Benedict’s hospital on 29th and Polk in Ogden, on June 26, 1947. LR: Where did you reside, where was your home in Ogden? JV: Our home was, when I was a boy, we were, first we lived in a post war housing, emergency housing for the GI’s. My dad was at Hill Field as an Air Force Sergeant, an Army Air Corp Sergeant. That was at the old Bonneville Park, as they used to call it. It was an old cinder block, post war or emergency housing that, I don’t know who paid for, probably the federal government. Then they, at some point around 1950 or 51, they destroyed those homes and we, my dad was able to get a home on 1362 Hudson, between 5th and 6th on, at just above Harrison, and we were just a quarter block below Polk. That’s where I spent my early years and then we later moved to 108 Harrison, at first and Harrison. LR: So was Harrison at that time, was it paved all the way through? 1 JV: Yes, Harrison was paved, Hudson was primitive, it was unpaved, thank you for asking. We actually did not even have a phone in the house and my mother had to walk to Hudson and Polk, to a little phone booth as did all the neighbors in order to place a phone call. Actually, it seems funny now, and the street was dirt and it had a curb and gutter but it didn’t have the sidewalks and it didn’t have, you know, it was very primitive. It was like living out on the frontier in a way, and my grandfather used to say, “You can hear the coyotes at night up there where you live.” He lived on 256 Harrisville Road which is still there, that structure is still standing. LR: You grew up then in that part of Ogden? JV: Yea, on that northeast bench, I went to Ben Lomond High and then my dad had gone to Weber and my mother, actually my mother was a USU graduate. I just said, “Well,” I couldn’t decide what to do after I graduated from Ben Lomond, so I decided on Weber, which was a great choice. I was pleased with, I always thought it had the best—a lot of people say about Weber that we had better professors than bigger schools because you didn’t have teaching assistants teaching classes, you had Ph.D.’s teaching classes quite often and so I think in some ways we got a much better education at Weber than people maybe at the University of Utah had in some ways, so anyway, it was a good time to go to Weber. I briefly was the sophomore class president for a brief while, filled in for Mike Howe I believe was his name, cause he couldn’t finish his term. My name at that time, I changed my name in 1982, and my born name was Clark Walker. So that’s always strange, and I have to explain that, that I 2 changed my name. I was one of those kids that had kind of an identity crisis and so my legal name is Jayson P. Vance. I don’t know how much you want to know about my personal life, but just to explain, if you look me up, you’ll find me under Clark Walker. Weber State records, well, except I changed my diploma reads Jayeson Vance now, so I had that changed. LR: So, I’m just curious, why did you choose Jayeson Vance? JV: It was just one of those things that I had a friend who was a counselor, which said, “It’s time for a change.” I had just left a federal job and I wanted a new start in life and she said, “This would be a good time to change.” She had done this to, she had changed her name and she said, “I don’t know, it’s great,” and she was able to persuade me that I should do it. Then once you do that, and we’d had a house so we had to change the mortgage records so then and I had to go to court, to district court and officially change my name by law. I can’t ever use the old name again and legally, so anyway, I have, for better or worse, that’s my name. So I just have to accept that. In some ways I felt shouldn’t be changing that because it’s my family history, but then as I researched my family history, I found out that my father’s father, who was an English immigrant during World War I, which is kind of odd, how do you get to where my father was born in California? It’s a long story, but his father deserted the family, his name was reputedly, Sylvester Hodgson Walker. He deserted this mother and this infant boy, who was my father and said, “I’m a British subject, I don’t want to have a kid.” And he ran off to Canada, and he said, “You can’t touch me, I’m a British subject.” I don’t even really know the man’s name, I never saw a picture of him 3 and it’s one of these great mysteries of life that I would love to see at least what he looked like and how did he end up in California during World War One. The British would have wanted any young man to be in the Army or something and so it’s a—was his name really Walker, you know, all these mysteries like that. I didn’t feel troubled about dropping the name Walker, so that’s, anyway, we got off on a tangent. LR: No, that’s great, I asked so, let’s go ahead and go back then. You said that your dad worked at Hill Field as a sergeant in the Army Air Corps, what did your mom do? JV: My mother was a teacher in her later years, well, when they were first married she was a school teacher, then she dropped her job as a teacher to be a house wife and about 1959 she went back to Ogden public schools, worked at Edison school teaching second grade. Her name was Bonnie Ruth Murphy Walker and she passed away this month, just earlier this month, ten years ago the start of this month, she’s been dead 10 years now. The family is all gone, my brother, my father and my mother are all gone and my wife and I live here. LR: You’re kind of cutting out on me. JV: Oh, maybe if I hold the microphone up closer here. LR: I’m not sure if it’s you or if it’s me. That seems to be better, okay. I hate it when I get off on my flow. As you were growing up, what were some of the things you liked to do for fun? JV: I used to draw maps of the city actually. I loved history form early on. I read Land Mark Books, I was a boy scout. I got an Eagle Scout Award, I was an Eagle 4 Scout. I was very interested in police and crime, the FBI. I wanted to be an FBI agent at one time and I studied the history of, I was reading adult literature written for adults about the FBI, you know like the FBI story by Glen Whitehead I think it is, when I was twelve. I was trying to—it was not easy to read—but I was trying and I was just obsessed with that stuff and I saw the world very black and white, in a very black and white way. I remember giving—I had some really conservative, very, very conservative opinions about law and order and I wanted to—we had some milk stolen and I wanted my mother so badly to call the police department because I wanted to look at a real policeman in the face and we hardly had any crime in that area. I was so excited that was my amusement, anything to do with law and order or police, any TV show, Texas Rangers or Broderick Crawford, who starred in California Highway Patrol or anything like that. The Lone Ranger and all that stuff, I just loved all that. We played Army, it was post World War Two so we had, almost everybody I knew was the son or the daughter of a GI or a sailor from World War Two or a Marine. We had tons of Army Men and toys about World War Two and I had a whole Army and Navy set of toys that I just spent hours with. Then we would—the little kids in the neighborhood—we’d organize into tiny army, little army training things. Then I would build little model cities in the back yard with rocks and build a highway. I had a lot of fun doing that. I made a model of Ben Lomond peak at one time in my back yard out of clay and rocks and so I had a lot of fun as for Mount Ben Lomond and all that. I tried to make of Ogden out of rocks but it was a little over whelming. 5 LR: I’ll bet. So did you ever have the chance to meet any Ogden Police officers when you were younger? JV: Yea, one of my friends, Gary Greenwood, became a police officer in Ogden and he and I were golfing buddies for quite a while, and I met him, just before I moved out of Ogden—I got married and moved away, I remember seeing him in his uniform with his shoes all polished. I was so proud of him and I so wished that I could be like him, be a policeman, but I never became a policeman, I became a park ranger. Not quite the same, but he was just kind of an inspiration when I saw him standing there with his highly polished shoes and his nice neat uniform and he was very proud of it, rightly so. I lost track of him, I would like to talk to him again but I tried to locate him on the internet and he was a probation officer for a while and I couldn’t find any more about him. I haven’t, if you know him or anybody knows him, I would love to talk to him. He was a great guy. I’m just joining the auxiliary law enforcement team here for the San Francisco police, I just applied to join that. It’s a volunteer position, but my fantasy, my interest in crime and law and order has been lifelong. I guess it’s no wonder I ended up on Alcatraz. LR: Did you ever hang out downtown? JV: Yea, we did, one of my stronger memories, my father would take me, well my father was a—after he left the Army Air Corps, he became a postman at the main post office and then later Gorder’s station as they used to call the post office over there on the bench. He was, his route was the businesses along 25th and along Washington. He was the downtown postman, and he would drive all the 6 packages, they didn’t have a UPS, and he would do all the package deliveries all over downtown. He was a gun lover, he loved guns and there was a gun shop on 25th that he loved to go to. He knew 25th very well, he knew the Porters and Waiters Club, he took me into the Depot Drug and there was some girly magazines one time. Oh, it was a little embarrassing, I was going through puberty. Oh we looked at those girly magazines a little bit, but that was among little things like that that I remember. Depot Drug was a hive of activity. It was scary, it was frightening, but it was exciting also. They had these barrels of toys. I loved anything with a plastic army man, or army soldiers like that, and they had just piles of that stuff. Even in the front window, or I think it could even have been on the sidewalk, I could remember my heart just pounding about it, and I only got to go in there a couple of times, but it was a just a hive of excitement. There was also a fear about 25th of course, the legend of all the possibility of heroin and prostitution and all those things that were going on around there. I could even I guess sense it in my father that he was a little bit on edge, but he never had anyone bother him or threaten him in any way while he was delivering mail. He had some rude business people that were pretty rude to him, you know, kind of abusive, but he didn’t ever have any threats. He was very close with the black community in Ogden, he knew a lot of the black folks and he was very pro civil rights and he felt that they had gotten the bad end of the deal. The Porters and Waiters Club was famous, of course, for the railroad porters that worked on the Union Pacific that brought Jazz to Ogden. 7 It was also a street of sin certainly. Later in life, my best man at my wedding was Arnie Jacobson and his father was chief Jacobson of the Ogden police. Arnie told me some stories, but these are now second hand stories that he got from his father, so I don’t have direct access to that information but it came through Arnie. His father put on black face because they didn’t have any black police officers and went down onto 25th to purchase heroine, because the dealers on 25th were black. They did make some arrests and the Ogden police were known as the toughest police in Utah because of the street, because of patrolling 25th street they had to be tougher than the Salt Lake police, according to Arnie anyway. They would have this annual football, I believe football game between the Ogden Police and the Salt Lake police and the Ogden police would always win because they had to be tougher, even though it was a smaller department by far than the Salt Lake department. It really had quite a story there, I mean you could write a lot of, I could easily see someone writing a novel or a historical novel about it. Maybe that’s what I should do, I don’t know. Then my mother told me about working at the Union Laundry but she did all that Union Pacific linen as a young woman. She was a pretty young brunette and her father, Clarence Murphy, would warn her, he was a Union Pacific engineer. “Now Bonnie, you get down to Washington Boulevard and get on that street car and you run to Washington Boulevard,” or somebody told her, or she told me that she was so scared on 25th that she ran all the way from Wall Avenue to Washington Boulevard as fast as she could run to get to Washington Boulevard to where she felt safe, and then get on the street car to go north to 8 Harrisville Road where they lived. She had a palpable fear of that street but she again never had anything happen to her so it just, there’s a lot of stuff about that street. I’ve seen that, I don’t know you’ve probably seen that DVD that that fellow put out about the history of Ogden I imagine. Are you aware of that one? LR: Yes, The one that was in 2007 or 11, not too long ago? Yes. JV: They explained that, I guess they alleged that Al Capone may have been on 25th, which I’ve never found any—I tried because I studied Al Capone quite a bit having been on Alcatraz where he was locked up for about five years, and I’ve never found any evidence, have you? To support that he was ever there. LR: I haven’t, the only thing I have heard about are the rumors. JV: Yea, it’s just legendary. When I worked on Alcatraz we’d have people from Canada and Saskatchewan Province was a place where he was reputed to have been. Oh, Al Capone, you hear this all the time, in Wisconsin he went to honey lodges and it is conceivable that he may have been in Ogden that he was really on, and it was called Little Chicago at one point. It was one of the nick names of Ogden, of that area of Ogden as you may know already. Of course, today, it’s a very different street than it was and I’m looking at a picture of it right now, a modern picture. I guess there were some movies made there with that famous noddle parlor sign? LR: Yea, the Star Noodle, the one with the dragon? JV: There was a little China town there too of course, from the Chinese workers on the railroad. My grandfather, as a boy, his mother died when he was a youngster and his father was of course a railroad worker too, an engineer, and he was 9 basically raised himself on the streets. This would have been about 1900 or 1905 around in that era, used to run opium on a bicycle around China, the little Ogden, and helped these opium dealers. It was legal at that time to sell opium, and he would, as reprehensible as it sounds now, would sell opium to the Chinese, and make a little money that way, because they didn’t have much money. He and his sister and his father, no mother, were kind of, you know, they had some kind of rough edges in his early years, and he remembered being pretty mean to some of the Chinese as a teenage boy, pulling there queue’s. They used to wear their hair in queue’s on the back of their head, doing some mean things like that and of course the Chinese were abused everywhere. Out here in San Francisco they were abused even more. The word Chink was frequently passed around. It was a racist time it was not fun to be black or Chinese in those days. It was rough for a lot of people. LR: So did you ever witness any of that discrimination in that part of Ogden? JV: No, that was way before my time. I think it went underground, I’m sure there was a feeling that Asians were odd or you know, they were kind of a curiosity. I don’t remember. We used to eat at the Utah Noodle Parlor a lot and have the other—I forget the other noodle parlor name on Grant there. We used to, and we enjoyed all the food, the chop suey and all those things. So you’d hear little remarks like that, that were racists but it was, and of course it was. My grandfather had actually been a member of the Klan when he was a youngster. He had no education, he was brought up on the streets and he picked up whatever he picked up, and he picked up a lot of racists attitudes. I remember he, as a young 10 man—he wasn’t that in his older years—but as a young man, there was a Klu Klux Klan Chapter there in Ogden. The Klan was all over the United States if you study the history of the Klan and it was very powerful in the early twenties and that’s about the time he was starting his family. My grandfather was out there on Harrisville Road, but he I guess they had some Klan meetings up on the foothills in the early twenties where they burned crosses and stuff up on the foothills above. You can imagine how it must have felt to be a black person and see that going on, especially a tiny minority, there in that part of the world. A feeling, you must have been pretty much an emotional, a very unpleasant emotional experience anyway for a black or an Asian too. I think they were pretty mean to Asians, the Klan was, as well. He never said much about that, he did express racist attitudes which were part of that generation, occasionally. I had that wonderful contrast in my father who just really loved the black folks in Ogden. Marshall White, the police officer who was killed there, who was a hero of the police department. After they finally got a black officer, and then he got killed, but it was a rough town. There was somewhat open prostitution, if I remember, right along parts of Grant Avenue and Lincoln Avenue. Even in my early years, even as late as maybe 19, probably about 1970 even, there was still open prostitution going on, it was very limited, but it was there. As I’ve studied the street I know there was a back alley that ran heroin and a tunnel that ran heroin from the depot all along, I think on the north side of the street. Maybe that tunnel is still there, I’ve seen 11 some references that indicate that the tunnel went all the way to the Ben Lomond Hotel apparently. Are you aware of that? LR: I’m aware more of the rumors. JV: I saw something online about historic tunnel tours of Ogden and they, if I remember correctly were going into the basement of the Ben Lomond Hotel and somebody was leading a ghost tour or something like that. They were able to go under Washington Boulevard possibly and they said, “Well, who knows.” Of course they want to enlarge everything and make it more exciting so they bring in Al Capone and all that. The danger of history is always that somebody tries to enlarge things or exaggerate things. I was never able to see that myself and I didn’t even know, I’d heard rumors about it but I’ve never been in it. LR: Well I know that most of the businesses now have closed up there tunnels, so most of the people we have talked to, yea, it’s possible, but now they’re all closed up so. But yea, we’ve had a lot of references to them, a lot of people that remember being down in them, but none actually going form Ben Lomond to the depot. We can’t actually verify that, so. It’s fun to hear about though. JV: Well that was the big fancy hotel, I guess the Ben Lomond was built about 1927, and being a big, the highest building in town and anybody who wanted a prostitute probably would have wanted to bring them in underground into the hotel or something like that, or wanted maybe drugs and happened to be at the hotel. It does kind of make sense if you were in the, in the world of vice and you had money enough to stay in a nice room there and you wanted something, knowing the hotel business as I do, because I worked with it for a while here, 12 there are people in the hotels are bribable a lot of times, and if you want—they want some cash and if you have the cash, they’ll find a way to get you what you want. Who knows, I wouldn’t be surprised, I don’t have any evidence of it, but I wouldn’t be surprised if there was something like that going on. LR: I wouldn’t be surprised either. Do you remember any of the people that used to live or work on 25th street? JV: Yes. Well, my mother worked at the Union Laundry I guess it was called as a— this would have been—she was born in 1919, so it would have been roughly around the time she graduated from Ogden High in 1938. So she was working at the Union Laundry, and that’s where that tale about running down the street as fast as she could run, her heart pounding came from, that era. And then my grandfather, Clarence Patrick Murphy, a real Irish name, half Danish, but in fact his mother was Danish. He was working there from about age 16 and he was born about 1885 I believe, so he would have been there about 1901 and he was already working as a fireman as a teenage boy. He couldn’t finish school, at Sacred Heart School on upper 25th where he went. He would bend over all the way to Wyoming shoveling coal. He told a tale later that even as a 16 year old boy of working with his back bent to shovel coal all the way from Ogden to Evanston and back just almost constantly shoveling coal to get up that grade to that high plateau in Wyoming. It was not the life that any of us would want to live I am sure, to spend back breaking hours to make a living. He was a devoted member of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineman and Firemen throughout his life and was a lifelong democrat of course, because of the 13 Democrats alliance with the labor unions. He was also one of the shop stewards of the Union Pacific in his later years. He also worked on the old Oregon Shortline Railroad, which was, he fondly would say, “Oregon Shortline," and his eyes would drift off as he thought about it. I guess the Oregon Shortline was, ran from Ogden to Pocatello, if I’m not mistaken, and didn’t obviously it didn’t go all the way to Oregon. He was the switching engineer which would be, he would build trains by bringing cars from one train and hauling them to join another train and then back and forth all day in the yards of Ogden. He’d go over those yards, and of course today, there’s even I guess some activity there, but back in those days the yards were just a hive of energy and the sound of the rails and the squeaking of the iron against iron and you would hear all the noises associated with all that. The station where I went as, this would have been approximately 1955. My grandmother, my California grandmother, my father’s mother, would come up from across the Lucin Cutoff across the Great Salt Lake on the Union Pacific from Promontory Point to West Weber and she would, we’d meet her at the Union Station whenever she’d come to visit us. That’s where I got to see the Union Station quite a bit as a boy. There would be three or four taxi cabs, several cars coming and going and people were dressed—in those days the women wore gloves and hats and high heels all the time and the men wore business suits and big fedora hats. The railway express, REA railway express agency had a large outlet in the foyer of the station. 14 Just going in to the foyer of the Union Depot was to me, one of the most exciting things of my childhood because I would go in there and look around and seeing people coming and going, people making orders and carrying tickets, porters carrying baggage and porters with red caps on and white uniforms and white jackets. All black men, the only black people I had ever seen at that time in my life were down in the depot. Sorry, I get a little emotional sometimes when I’m talking about these things. I have to take a breath here for a moment. There was a very busy barbershop with an old fashioned striped aprons that, or whatever they called those things that they, smocks, that they would put around people being, having their hair cut. They had the talcum powder brushes and the barber clipping away furiously, and people in a hurry to get on, “I don’t want to miss my train,” and all those things. The station itself, getting inside was just, it seemed like the biggest building I had ever seen in my life at that time, probably was, and it, the big chandeliers and it was just, in its heyday was just packed with passengers and train schedules and the public address system announcing what was going on. I didn’t even know what the people were doing as a boy, I had no concept of what riding a train was because we didn’t actually get on the trains, so we never went out on the platforms and so all I saw was just the results of all that. What I observed was a little confusing because I didn’t put it together that these people are coming from California or Chicago or wherever it may be. This really was the junction city of the Mountain West and it really was a big deal. It was so sad to see the old down town, as I’m sure you’ve heard from a 15 lot of people, to see what happened to that wonderful downtown on Washington Boulevard. Again, that’s another subject for a book you could write about, Washington Boulevard in its heyday. Beuhler Bingham and B and B Clothiers, the Blue Door and all those fabulous clothing stores and Fred M. Nye that were able, because the economy was so powerful then with Hill Field and the Army Depot and the Naval Supply Depot and all those things, and then the railroad. Everybody was making money and it was sort of the golden age of Ogden. I guess from about the end of World War Two till roughly the time I graduated from Ben Lomond, about 1965, for about those twenty years that downtown district was just thriving. There was Watson and Tanner and 24th street was almost equal to Washington and its level of commercial activity and it was a really nice feeling to the town. There wasn’t a lot of crime for the most part, you didn’t hear about a lot of—we had, my mother had a friend, Officer Keith Burkdahl, who was a policeman. I remember she got—I guess one of the early beat nicks, there were a handful of beatniks I guess, in Ogden, that maybe were smoking marijuana and this guy hit her at 25th and Monroe. It was at night and he had dark glasses on, and he had sideburns and this would have been 1955 or 56 around the time Elvis was big. We just thought that was so bizarre that this fellow was dressed in this leather jacket and he had sideburns and he had dark glasses on and it’s nighttime, you know, why are you wearing—it is kind of odd even now. Keith Burkdahl investigated this because my mother happen to. His wife was a good friend of my mothers and he was a patrolman and so he said, “Yea, we caught 16 this guy and arrested this guy.” They finger printed him and everything. I was excited by that. It was, there were some rough characters in Ogden and who knows maybe he was using heroin or something too, or maybe he was associated with 25th street, but we never found out. Whenever I would encounter the Ogden police, I can remember in 1956, the Ogden Police had four brand new blue Fords that they got and they all, they had no markings, anywhere on the car. They were painted, I think, if I remember correctly they were a dark royal blue and they had just about the size of a coffee cup, maybe a large coffee cup, on top was a red, just a red light, and that’s all, and a radio antenna, and not anywhere on the car did it say police, anywhere. It just is so funny to look back at that, we’d walk through City Hall Park and of course that was the police station back then. It was in the back of the city hall building, and you’d walk through city hall park and I’d see maybe eight or nine Fords with that bubble light on top, and maybe a couple of unmarked cars. That was the, such as it was, the Ogden police at that time. There’s another story, you could do the history of the Ogden Police because they must have some tales to tell if you come across one of the retiree’s from the Ogden police or somebody, the son of a police officer, I’d bet you’d get some great stories. Arnie Jacobson might be a good source because his dad. I don’t know what became of him, I haven’t been in touch with him in years, but his dad, I know was the chief about 1970, they had the police radio in their house because his dad was the chief, so he would hear all the radio calls in Ogden as a 17 boy. You get into some personal information sometimes, but he got run out of the house. LR: Well speaking of growing up, did you ever attend any of the theaters downtown? JV: Yes, the movies? LR: Yes. JV: Yea, we loved the Orpheum, thank you for reminding me. The Orpheum and the Egyptian, but the Orpheum even more so, it was sadly destroyed. The most exciting, fun thing we ever did I think was about 1959 and Ogden was just in its glory days at that time. We, there was a girl next door, Susanne Sylvester, who I had a crush on, and I forget who else. Anyway, we were all about 12 or 13 years old and our parents escorted us, and we got all dressed up and went to, I put on a tie and a sports coat and the girls were dressed up and we just, we just thought that was the most fun we had ever had. We went to the Orpheum and saw a movie, I can’t remember what the movie was now. It was just going to the theater down, either the Egyptian or the Orpheum was just one of the special things about that time in life when you are coming of age. I think for almost anyone who was there at that time would remember it well. LR: So is that the theater that had the Popeye Club? JV: I don’t know. You know, I don’t know about the Popeye Club. Actually when you said that it was the first time I’ve heard that term. LR: Oh really, okay. JV: I must have missed out. LR: It might have been Paramount. I get my theaters mixed up, I apologize. 18 JV: The Popeye Club, maybe the Paramount was, Popeye Copper Club, Ogden, or Popeye—it says here, I am doing a little web search. I remember the Paramount was where the Paramount Bowl was, is that right? LR: I’m not sure. JV: Where the river, by the river bridge? Where the Ogden sign, is that right? LR: I’m honestly not sure, I thought it was downtown myself. I know the Orpheum and the Egyptian were. I thought the Paramount was too, so. JV: Let’s see here, we had a friend who lived right by the Ogden bridge, the Ogden sign, where the Ogden sign in on the east side of Washington. There was this very interesting neighborhood there that reminds, as I got older and look back at it, I thought, “Oh my gosh, that’s a lot like big city’s back east." It reminded me of, in some ways. I remember the Paramount Bowling alley. When you said Paramount I thought more of a bowling alley then I did of a theater. Then there was a drive in too, and there may have been called the Paramount, there was the Riverdale Drive-in, and there was a drive-in on the south end of town was the Riverdale and going up towards North Ogden was, that Harrisville area there was a drive-in out that way, the North Point Drive- In. The drive-ins, of course, when you’re a teenager in those days, it was where all the necking and all that went on. Exciting dates or all the wishful thinking for boys mostly was going on. I know there was a Paramount theater, maybe if I put movie theater, Ogden Utah, my search engine isn’t generating a lot right now on that. Let’s see, as it opened on the, oh, here it says, “The Paramount theater opened as the 19 Alhambra theater, March 17, 1915 with a concert by the Ogden Tabernacle Choir.” There’s one reference there, its Cinema treasure. Oh, here we go, 2429 Keisel Avenue. LR: Ah, that’s right. JV: Oh, the Alhambra. So here is a, I vaguely remember this photo, I mean this store front. It’s located on Keisel, just off of, I think just off 24th, because that looks like the Fred J. Keisel building. LR: Yes, it would have been on the opposite, it would have been closer to 25th. It’s actually not there anymore, they tore it down. JV: Yea, I bet it’s gone. That’s my granddad’s era for sure, those old street lights and globe street lights and the old early automobiles. LR: What are some of your favorite memories of downtown Ogden then? JV: Well, to be honest, it was the pretty girls you would see. You would see very, very pretty girls, you’d see dozens of girls that would just you know, traffic stop kind of thing where you’d go, “wow.” It was also just the feeling that it was exciting, it was a pleasant city. There was a lunch counter near 25th and Washington, Keeley’s Café. You’d go in, it was a bustling café, downtown café—going in and having lunch there. There was also a toy shop near there, and my grandfather doted on me, I was his favorite, out of the five grandchildren I was the oldest one and he liked, I don’t know, he and I just bonded and he would take me in as a boy and bought me a pistol set, a cowboy pistol set from this store and I don’t know the name. It was a toy store near the Broom hotel and it had just all kinds of cowboy toys all 20 over the walls, and this was a pretty big, pretty large, you know, reasonably large toy store and he bought me this holster and toy gun and toy bullets and I think it was probably one of my happiest moments in childhood. Then going on that date to the Orpheum was another one. The Utah Noodle Parlor was always fun to go to and having the big butterfly shrimp that they still make I think, I think they’re still there somewhere. LR: No, they actually closed down. JV: Oh, they closed down? LR: Yea, it hasn’t been that long, but Utah Noodle is no more. JV: Oh, that’s too bad. That was a great tradition, but I guess Jimmies Flower shop is still there probably. That was a great flower shop. I didn’t know the Glassman’s, I guess you’ve come across A L Glassman, the name A L Glassman, but he was the operator of the Orpheum it says. Have you come across the Name Ira Huggins? He was the great attorney, probably the most famous attorney in Ogden. LR: I’m not sure. JV: Ira Huggins was—my mother would speak of him very fondly. I found a URL here, its Cinema Treasures, and it has a lot about the Paramount Theater, 2429 Keisel. This might be a page you want to look at it. It’s Cinematreasures.org/theaters/26282, [some of the information that follows come directly from this website.] This is a lot of information I wasn’t aware of here about the publisher . Glassman, of course, owned the Standard Examiner and apparently owned this theater also at some point and one of its premier 21 attractions was Cecil B. De Mill, The Ten Commandments. In 1925 it was leased by Public Theaters and renamed Paramount Theater so it started as the Alhambra, I guess. Glassman also owned the Orpheum but he bought the Alhambra in 1923 and then, according to this web site, during the summer months, Orpheum Vaudeville moved to the Alhambra, so they had Vaudeville, wow, now that’s very interesting. In 1925 the Alhambra was leased by the Publix Theaters and renamed Paramount Theater, so that’s where they got the Paramount. It underwent a complete renovation and seating was reduced to 1900 one of its premier attractions was Ten Commandments. Not the one in the 1950s but the original. By 1927 the theater was under the direction of Brooklyn-born Louis Marcus, who also owned major theaters in Salt Lake, including the Capital and other theaters in Idaho. Fanchon & Marco “Ideas” supplemented the screen attractions at the Paramount. With the demise of the American Theatre in Salt Lake in 1929, the Paramount boasted being Utah’s largest theatre. Wow, I didn’t know any of this. In 1929 Marcus said he was selling his interest to Publix Theaters and retiring. He was elected mayor of Salt Lake from 32 and served four years and died in 1939. 1934 it came under the ownership of Paramor Theatres who also operated the Orpheum Theatre, Lyceum Theatre and Colonial Theatre. The local Ogden Theatre was an independent. So there is quite a story there of just the theater industry in Ogden. In July of 1954, Paramor Theatres completed renovations which gave it all new seating and a 42' by 21' screen. In time for Christmas 1954, a new marquee and Paramount vertical sign in addition to the Formica snack bar 22 was added to the interior. And that’s when “White Christmas” came out with Bing Crosby. So, you’ll probably want to look at that website for sure. LR: Yea, I wrote it down so I’ll be able to. JV: It’s not that much information but it has this one wonderful old photo of the Alhambra. LR: Hmm, that’s cool. JV: Yea, also, I would recommend to you to see UCR.edu. LR: Right, I wrote that down too. JV: Yea, and if you can’t—that website is a little obtuse—it’s something like digital newspaper survey and it’s California papers, but remarkably, like I say, especially the San Francisco papers, have lots and lots of Ogden’s lore and stories, especially around the time of 1890 to 1930, which would be of great value to anyone doing research at the university there. Then you can form a partnership with the UC Riverside, maybe the two schools could maybe get together on helping each other, because I know that educators always need support and they have to help each other and there is always the threats of budget cuts and things like that. I know he was, that fellow at UC Riverside was saying, “Oh we’ve got to prove to the regents of the university that we are doing something of value to the community so that they won’t shut us down.” I wrote, personally when I was a park ranger, wrote a couple of paragraphs saying how much value I’ve gotten out of it. You’re able to, or course with your printer on your computer, you’re able to print stories up if you want, or photos. They also have photos too, because you’re looking at the actual paper and you can see the old historic ads. 23 LR: Right, that’s fun. JV: Yea, it’s really fun. You sound like you’re a history lover too, so you’d have a field day with that probably. LR: I have two more questions if that’s alright JV: It’s been a lifelong love for me. ___________ being a park ranger, it was one of the great joys of being a park ranger was being able to give history tours, you know how it’s just limited to Alcatraz history, which has quite a colorful history of course. LR: I know it’s kind of getting, this has kind of gone long, but I have two more questions if that is ok. JV: Yeah, sure. LR: My first one is, you talked about your grandfather being involved in the Klan in Ogden, do you know much about that? JV: No, he was, I think he was a little ashamed of it. He, I know, it’s really unfortunate I can’t ask any of these folks any questions or maybe my aunt, who is still alive might know something about it. She lives in Portland, Oregon. I could ask her but she would have been embarrassed about it too. I know that he talked in racial terms about when he would watch the prize fights, Gillette Prize fights on television and he would, there was definitely a palpable racism present when he would—see a black man fighting a white man or something in a Prize fight. The only reason I know about the Klan was that my mother told me that, he didn’t tell me himself he was a member of the Klan. I think he was embarrassed. He was certainly not proud of it. 24 I heard, now, I’m trying to place where I heard the recollection by some, probably from my mother, that they had put some burning crosses up on, I think the north east bench, up around, somewhere around where Ben Lomond High stands today. Up on 7th or 7th street, upper 7th street probably or somewhere where it would be seen for miles around or hoped anyway. Just to terrorize the poor black folks a little more, and probably it would have been, I’m sure they didn’t like Asians either, or Jews of course. There were a handful of Jewish people too in Ogden so those groups would have been not too thrilled, I’m sure, to see that. I could try and ask Aunt Patty, she’s Jennings Olsen’s sister by the way, my aunt. He was the professor there at Weber for many years. She may know something about it also, and if you want, I could call you back if I’m able to find out more. The KKK was organized in all 48 states in the 1920s per public television documentary. LR: It’s just a curiosity. I will leave that entirely up to you. It was just a—really, someone who was involved, so I wouldn’t complain but I don’t want you to feel like you have to do that or anything. JV: Well, I’m always willing to help, it’s fascinating. What I have found with history and the more you dig, the more interesting it is. LR: Well this is true, I agree. JV: You reminded me of that little neighborhood around the Ogden sign there on the east side of Washington that, I wish I could relive that. Also there was something— I went to visit a friend who lived right there. There was a little alley that shot off of Washington and I think it said Paramount Bowl and it was across 25 from Bigler’s Desert Inn, which was an old structure that is no longer there either. We fished in the Ogden river briefly, just once, it only happened once, I went to see him and we fished in the river. It was kind of odd, it seemed like, because here it is almost like in downtown but also almost like out in the country at the same time. It was a really nice little district there that I haven’t seen any photos of, but I can picture it in my head as I close my eyes I can see it. There were store fronts right the river and I think a concrete fence or something against the river bank itself, but I’m sure it’s all gone now. All that’s left is the historic sign there now, but it’s fun to reminisce anyway. LR: Well, my last question is this, how has Ogden changed since you were growing up here, do you think? JC: It had that timing, you know, 24th and Washington was the heart of the city and it was the heart of Ogden, it really was like the heart. It was just like a human body has a heart, it was the heart of the city and it was a thriving heartbeat. I remember a young boy yelling, “Standard,” and he used to actually hold up the newspaper in his arm and wave it and people would run up and buy a newspaper. It was from the Bon Marché store which was at 22nd to about 26th or 27th along Washington, was just bustling with traffic, excitement. The ladies were dressed in their finest clothes and men were dressed in business suits, and not everyone dressed that way, but it was certainly a thriving place and then along 24th, almost the same scene. It’s just sad to see that, well it’s happened to many cities; it’s not just Ogden, that the core of the city got gutted and changed irreparably. It’s too bad 26 that it couldn’t have been like what was done with Trolley Square in Salt Lake where they at least maybe changed the buildings, but don’t gut every, just don’t tear everything completely. The W. T. Grant store was a big deal on 24th and Washington and there was the Kiesel building and the Eccles building and the First Security Bank building and it had this little sky line and it was just, I don’t know, it just seemed like a really, really positive. Overall, 25th kind of gave you the vice and a little excitement and drama, which was also kind of fun, and it just kind of was a really nice place to grow up. It sort of represented America, to me. I wrote a little article when I was a boy about it and I took a world book and I followed the outline they used to write about Chicago or New York and I just took every element, and Ogden had it all, in miniscule amounts. It had a little Asian neighborhood, it had a black neighborhood, it had everything in America and it was a, in a microcosm, it was the country. It’s sad to a, I’m sorry, LR: It’s okay. JV: Makes me feel bad to see that all that is lost. I know there is some of it there still. The Egyptian Theater is still there, but, LR: You’re right, most of it is gone. JV: We would get, to go down to Washington Boulevard was a big deal and we would put on our best clothes and we would, yea, it was just a big deal. Even when I started working at the highway department on 17th and Wall or near, just off Wall, at the Utah Highway, Utah Road Commission, we looked forward to driving along Washington Boulevard just for the fun of seeing people on the street and seeing 27 all the excitement that it used to represent. I don’t know, it’s just, thank you for letting me share all that, and if I can come up with some more goodies I’ll certainly call you. Also you’re always welcome to call me if you need any more that I can provide, and thanks again for what you are doing. LR: Well, thank you for being so willing to help us out, I appreciate that, and for your stories, they’ve been wonderful and I appreciate you’re willingness to work with us and to do this. We’ve been on the phone now for almost an hour and 20 minutes so I appreciate your time and your willingness, it means a lot. JV: Well great, Okay Lorrie, keep in touch, and any time I can be of assistance, who knows, maybe your or I or both of us may write books about it, who knows. LR: That would be fun. JV: It’s worthy of some good books, I can think of three right now that would be worthy books about that era. But anyway, have a great day. 28