Oral History Program Scott Lee Broschinsky Interviewed by Lucianne Broschinsky 22 April 2008 i Oral History Program Weber State University Stewart Library Ogden, Utah Scott Lee Broschinsky Interviewed by Lucianne Broschinsky 22 April 2008 Copyright © 2012 by Weber State University, Stewart Library ii Mission Statement The Oral History Program of the Stewart Library was created to preserve the institutional history of Weber State University and the Davis, Ogden and Weber County communities. By conducting carefully researched, recorded, and transcribed interviews, the Oral History Program creates archival oral histories intended for the widest possible use. Interviews are conducted with the goal of eliciting from each participant a full and accurate account of events. The interviews are transcribed, edited for accuracy and clarity, and reviewed by the interviewees (as available), who are encouraged to augment or correct their spoken words. The reviewed and corrected transcripts are indexed, printed, and bound with photographs and illustrative materials as available. Archival copies are placed in University Archives. The Stewart Library also houses the original recording so researchers can gain a sense of the interviewee's voice and intonations. Project Description The Weber State College/University Student Projects have been created by students working with several different professors on the Weber State campus. The topics are varied and based on the student's interest or task for a specific assignment. These oral history assignments were created to help Weber State students learn the value and importance of recording public history and to benefit the expansion of the Weber State oral history collections. ____________________________________ Oral history is a method of collecting historical information through recorded interviews between a narrator with firsthand knowledge of historically significant events and a well-informed interviewer, with the goal of preserving substantive additions to the historical record. Because it is primary material, oral history is not intended to present the final, verified, or complete narrative of events. It is a spoken account. It reflects personal opinion offered by the interviewee in response to questioning, and as such it is partisan, deeply involved, and irreplaceable. ____________________________________ Rights Management All literary rights in the manuscript, including the right to publish, are reserved to the Stewart Library of Weber State University. No part of the manuscript may be published without the written permission of the University Librarian. Requests for permission to publish should be addressed to the Administration Office, Stewart Library, Weber State University, Ogden, Utah, 84408. The request should include identification of the specific item and identification of the user. It is recommended that this oral history be cited as follows: Broschinsky, Scott Lee, an oral history by Lucianne Broschinsky, 22 April 2008, 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 Scott Lee Broschinsky. The interview was conducted on April 22, 2008, by Lucianne Broschinsky, in Lucianne’s home. Scott discusses his childhood and growing up in the Sugar House area of Salt Lake City. LB: What is your name? SB: Scott Lee Broschinsky. LB: Where and when were you born? SB: I was born in what's Holy Cross Hospital in Salt Lake City, Utah, on October 31 Halloween of 1954. LB: Where did you grow up? SB: I grew up in the Sugar House area of Salt Lake City, on a street called Kensington Avenue. Which is approximately about 16th south and I was just above, 16th East. LB: Do you have any stories of your childhood mischiefs? SB: Oh yeah, I got quite a few stories. I was born and grew up in the house from the time I was born, so I lived there my whole life until I got married. So I basically lived there other than two years I was on a church mission. I lived there until I was almost 22 years old. And I was the youngest in my family, and it was I guess my parents first home. We kind of had a unique street because we lived on what we called a dead end, and that just meant that the street ended it didn't go any further. Kensington actually went further up onto the mountain side went further East. But the coolest thing about where I grew 1 up was the reason it was a dead end. There was a gelly or gully of however you say it, I've been told I have a funny pronunciation for that word so I'll probably call it a gelly. Some people may think that's goofy but uh that the street ended there because it went down and the reason the gully was there because Immigration Creek, uh, comes down. Of course that's the little creek that comes out of Immigration Canyon, it goes down by the zoo and now it goes through Bonneville Golf Course, and works its way down through this gully. That our street ended on and of course it's created a big ravine and it's quite a large area. Uh, it goes down and crosses underneath 17th South and it heads its way actually goes down into Sugarhouse and as it gets down further closer to Sugarhouse then it tends to get funneled into an underground piping. Although when we were youngsters we use to spend a lot of time on that. In fact we could get in the creek we would put on our shorts and get a pair of tennis shoes in the summer and we could follow it all the way to the golf course up to the zoo. We couldn't get into the zoo because they had fences, and that so they wouldn't let into the zoo. But we could follow it all the way up and you would have to cross a street now and then. But uh I have some stories we can tell you about that but that's kind of what made my street unique. SB: Yet in probably only had about probably not really a full block long it was about half a block long maybe. So we had about 1,2,3,4,5,6,7 houses up one side and about seven up the other side. And uh about halfway about 3rd of the way we had alleys. Because when my parents first bought the house they didn't have garages under the houses or driveways, all the houses had alleys behind the two houses where the backyards came together. There would be an alley and people would go up the alley and park behind their houses. When my parents first moved into that house and even when I was first born that the 2 way it was you would come up behind your house and park there. But I really don't remember those alleys because before I was old enough to remember they got rid of them and everybody's backyards were just made bigger. But we still had alleys between some of the streets it was kind of fun to go through. But so it was kind of a small street which in a way made its own kind of unique little community. Everybody on the street just uh kind of knew each other really well, and my best friends all lived on that street. Uh best friend was about four houses down on the street; my other one was next to him and then one kind of across the street. And uh because it was a dead end it provided kind of some fun opportunities. We felt safe to go out and play in the street; we didn't have very many cars coming up and down it because there was no through traffic, so it was just the people who lived on the street. So we use to have football games all the time out there on the street and uh just touch football games. The street was just long enough that at the top of the street you had one goal line and the bottom the other goal line. The we had there's a tree just huge trees on this street that I remember cause they were planted so long ago there these huge I guess maple trees. And I mean so in the summertime when they blossomed it was almost like a canopy over the street. We use to play football out there all the time, and we would get about ten kids and just run up and down it. It really seemed big then, but when I go back now it seems the street wasn't that big. But uh like every street and neighborhood it had its unique quirks. For some reason the two houses on the corners at the bottom of the street had what we kind of thought were strange people living in them. I remember the one on the one side was Mr. Heirs uh and he was married and I never remembered much about him, except he had the most manicured lawn in the world. But it was almost over manicured almost 3 like a moss. I mean it was finer that what you'd see on a golf course putting greens. It was just a fine moss. Then he had these real nice brick wall, that kind of went around it and we always worried about it; he watered it so much that this brick wall was always wet. It was always this kind of cool you'd walk down and it was like walking into a greenhouse, because it was so moist the temperature would change. I remember my best friend Craig got bit by a Black Widow Spider that was on his wall once when we were sitting there. He got really sick, he was sick for about a week or two with a fever and everything. So after that we never wanted to sit there. We really didn't spend much time by his house because he was so fanatical about his lawn. I mean if we spent or lingered to long there he would come shoo us away, and you could never step on his lawn, that was a forbidden sin. So we were always kind of scared of him and I think he was probably a pretty nice man. I never really got to know him. But uh across the street on the other corner. I can't remember their names but it was a couple of spinster sisters that we use to view them as witches. And we were always afraid of the two. So it was like the two houses at the beginning of our street were just I don't kind of scary ones. So we didn't spend too much time around there. It was funny cause their house across the street where his was perfect manicured, theirs was just kind of not kept up very well. And they had these huge pine trees, I mean they covered and hid the house away. And all the houses on the street were basically brick but these two kind of had a stucco over them and so they were kind of dingy looking, and dirty because the stucco was a white stucco. And so I always just remember it as a gray house. It was kind of funny that those two houses at the bottom of the street were always kind of thought as the evil. And I guess that probably the imagination of a kid doing that. And then of course you 4 went up the street and had different neighbors. My best friend he lived about three houses up the street, and he had next to him the only guy who smoked, but only smoked cigars. And you could always tell when he was out, because cigars had a specific odor. But uh probably the coolest thing about growing up on our street was the fact it had the gelly in it. And uh so obviously that just became you know it was like a huge playground for us. And I think people back then weren't as worried about their children. Because we would disappear in that gelly for hours I think, just doing all kinds of stuff. And uh it was just the greatest place there was, I mean it was a pretty large area. It actually went from we were above 16th East and the next street you went across the gelly and up and over you were probably almost to 18th East. So it was probably almost two blocks going across, and then it kind of angled and started over maybe around 14th south and then it went all the way around down to 17th south. So it stretched over a pretty big area. And uh right at the top of our street there was Mrs. Wooten I never knew her husband. Apparently they were rich from oil. She built this big house that kind of hung over the edge of the gelly, and had these nice big windows you could look out over the big area. But when her husband was alive they owned this big property right below our street down into the gully. And so they had gone down and groomed it and planted grass and put a swimming pool in it, but it was never was working when I was there. But it was down there and it had grass around it, but they planted a number of fruit trees so there were cherry trees, apple trees, plum trees and she had grape vineyards. She had two trails that went down and one was right at the top of the street and it was a grass trail that went down and she planted. She had this area where there were these four huge pine trees with big grassy area between it. And 5 she had fruit trees there. The other one on the other side of her house and it went down where the swimming pool was. But uh in the winter it was a super sleigh riding hill, especially the one that was at the top of the street. It started out it would go a little ways and then it would go sharp left hand turn right to the bottom and then make a sharp right hand turn and you would go right out in to the trees. So it was a lot of fun and we use to use the old sleighs you don't see so much anymore, the wooden ones that had the steering handles on them. So usually you could make the first turn no problem but you would get going really fast around the last part. It was always a challenge you would have to try to make that last turn without sliding and missing it around. We use to make trains where you would get about four or five sleds you would lay on your bellies and hook your feet into the front of the steering of the other one behind you. So you would hook them all together and make a train and go down and it not too often you could make it around that corner without everybody just flying. But she was really nice Mrs. Wooten, I think we were always a little weary of her but once we got to know her she was always really nice. She had a dog uh named Barren, and my older brother always got called to go and take care of Barren. It just meant you would go in and feed him in the morning and take him for a walk. He'd get paid for it and I would just tag along, but he was a really nice dog but big dog. The neighbors next door had a dog once. The Cannon's they are really big related to the Cannons in the church. But my best friend once we were out there and I don't know why he did this, but the dog yawned and he stuck his hand in his mouth, so he closed his mouth and woke up and clamped down on my friends hand and my friend afraid of dogs ever since then. It was crazy thing it was just like why did he stick his hand in his mouth I don't know. He was probably seven or 6 eight at that time, but he just ever since then wouldn't go close to a dog. Back to Mrs. Wooten in the gelly. She was really nice if you want to go down and have some cherries that's fine, she'd give us a sack and just bring me a sack up. But we'd go down there and pick cherries; it wasn't like today where you get those dumb worms in them. But back then you never had to worry about worms. We use to be able to go up there and climb into the cherry trees. She probably had six or seven cherry trees spread out across the property. So we'd sit in these cherry trees and eat all we wanted, and we didn't always ask if we could pick cherries, but she usually didn't care. So every now and then we'd ask and wouldn't but that way she never got mad if we were down there, because she couldn't do it. And we'd sit up in the trees and have cherry pit spitting contest to see who spit the cherry pits the furthest. We'd use to eat apple but we'd eat the apple green, because the apples would get wormy and weren't very good when they got bigger, but that was a lot of fun. She had this grassy area and around the swimming pool. She had four rain bird sprinklers, and we would go down there and make two teams and one team would have the sprinklers and the other team would try to take them away from them. And of course you would turn the water on you'd spray the guys as they try to come in and you would get the guy off his sprinkler and move him around so. But uh like I said that gelly was just a great playground. Again the Immigration Creek came through it and since it came through the golf course. Balls I mean the golf course was a ways up there, but the balls from the golf course would come down. So we'd put on our shorts and old pair of shoes and we'd wade up there and would look up all the nooks and crannies and we'd go down there for a couple of hours and maybe find twenty golf balls. So what we'd do is go up and get on our bikes and ride up to the golf 7 course and we'd stand out by the clubhouse and sell golf balls to these golfers for twenty-five to fifty cents a ball. So it was just kind of a fun way to make a little bit of money, and the same time we had fun climbing around in the creek up there. I don't know if my mom ever liked it too much, because you'd come home all smelly and wet from being down in the creek. But we'd play in it all the time. Uh, we use to build dams across it there is one area we called it the swamp region. Because the creek came down in one area instead of being in one stream and spread out and created a marsh. And there were a lot of willows and everything that grew up thorough there and had a little island in the middle of it. It had this little tree in it and one time we built a tree hut in there. We'd spend all summer collecting wood and built a tree hut with walls and roof on it and the whole works. And it was our secret little hideout. We'd build a different lot of huts down there. We had two or three different tree huts. My brothers and then me and my one friend we built underground huts too. We called them underground I guess they were. We built actually what we'd do is dig a big hole, once we got the hole dug big enough, we'd find a whole bunch of boards over the top of it and put dirt over the top of it and grass on there. You'd have to crawl into it and you couldn't stand in it, you just had to sit in there. LB: Is it where Brandon got his idea from? SB: That's probably where Brandon got the idea from for building his. But ours were bigger than his was. We'd built some big underground huts; I mean we could sit about five guys in there. We could dam up the creek sometimes and kind of make it so it would dam up and then have a kind of swimming hole so it we could just swim and splash around in there. Down in the gelly there where the creek went the gelly kind of came 8 down and leveled out. And then the creek in some places was about another six or seven feet lower and it kind of dug its way through. So we could get a good spot dammed up we could get a rope and we'd use to swing over and kind of drop into it that was kind of a lot of fun. But what we did more than anything for fun in the creek is what we call bum sliding. We use to where the creek would go under the roads, probably the best place at 17th south where the creek went under the road. It would get kind of mossy in the tube, and these tubes were about maybe about five feet. I remember as a kid I could stand up and walk through them with my back bent over at least four to five feet in diameter. So we'd go there but because it would get mossy and was at an angle downhill you could get in there and just sit down on the bottom of it, and it would be just like being one of these water slides not that steep. It would just push you right through and out the other end. Sometimes we'd start at 17th south and we'd go all the way down to Sugarhouse. Because the creek was opened above ground all the way to Sugarhouse back then. It crossed under three or four different tunnels you could go through and slide down and that was a lot of fun. Surprising none of us ever got hurt. The part right down below our street had oaks in it. Oak trees and uh the one gal planted pine trees and the fruit trees and if you went northeast you stayed with a lot of the scrub oak. But if you went south it just opened up into a big field. We use to do one spot one year well lots of years we use to make a baseball diamond down there. 9