Oral History Program Lois Harlin Interviewed by Teddy Griffith 21 August 1971 i Oral History Program Weber State University Stewart Library Ogden, Utah Lois Harlin Interviewed by Teddy Griffith 21 August 1971 Copyright © 2012 by Weber State University, Stewart Library ii Mission Statement The Oral History Program of the Stewart Library was created to preserve the institutional history of Weber State University and the Davis, Ogden and Weber County communities. By conducting carefully researched, recorded, and transcribed interviews, the Oral History Program creates archival oral histories intended for the widest possible use. Interviews are conducted with the goal of eliciting from each participant a full and accurate account of events. The interviews are transcribed, edited for accuracy and clarity, and reviewed by the interviewees (as available), who are encouraged to augment or correct their spoken words. The reviewed and corrected transcripts are indexed, printed, and bound with photographs and illustrative materials as available. Archival copies are placed in University Archives. The Stewart Library also houses the original recording so researchers can gain a sense of the interviewee's voice and intonations. Project Description The Weber State College/University Student Projects have been created by students working with several different professors on the Weber State campus. The topics are varied and based on the student's interest or task for a specific assignment. These oral history assignments were created to help Weber State students learn the value and importance of recording public history and to benefit the expansion of the Weber State oral history collections. ____________________________________ Oral history is a method of collecting historical information through recorded interviews between a narrator with firsthand knowledge of historically significant events and a well-informed interviewer, with the goal of preserving substantive additions to the historical record. Because it is primary material, oral history is not intended to present the final, verified, or complete narrative of events. It is a spoken account. It reflects personal opinion offered by the interviewee in response to questioning, and as such it is partisan, deeply involved, and irreplaceable. ____________________________________ Rights Management All literary rights in the manuscript, including the right to publish, are reserved to the Stewart Library of Weber State University. No part of the manuscript may be published without the written permission of the University Librarian. Requests for permission to publish should be addressed to the Administration Office, Stewart Library, Weber State University, Ogden, Utah, 84408. The request should include identification of the specific item and identification of the user. It is recommended that this oral history be cited as follows: Harlin, Lois, an oral history by Teddy Griffith, 21 August 1971, WSU Stewart Library Oral History Program, University Archives, Stewart Library, Weber State University, Ogden, UT. iii Abstract: The following is an oral history interview with Lois Harlin. The interview was conducted on August 21, 1971, by Teddy Griffith. Harlin discusses railroading and town development in Corinne, as well as some discussion of Ogden, Utah. She also describes various duck clubs that operated near Corinne. TG: Mrs. Harlin, I just learned that you lived in Corinne as a young girl. Would you just start talking about some of thing things you remember? LH: Well, we moved to Corinne in 1898, and I was three years old, and that’s about it. TG: You grew up and went to school there? LH: Got my schooling there, all except what I got in Logan. I don’t remember the town when it was real old, you know, but I seen pictures of the mule teams going out of there, six and eight of them on a wagon, parading up into Montana and Idaho and Oregon. TG: Well, I would like to know what you remember about the school. You were showing me a picture of the school... Just tell me about it. LH: Well, we had a small, two-room schoolhouse and from about the fifth grade on, it was called the Big Room, and the lower classes were called the Little Room. There were great big boys going to school there, you know, 16, 17, 18 years old that were still in the 8th grade, not graduated from the eighth grade yet. It seemed to me like my brothers were awfully big and tall and about that age when they were still going to school, but then they didn’t have to go to school... Nothing compulsory about it, you know. They just went if they wanted, and if they didn’t want, they stayed home. One would get a job and 1 not go to school. They did, so they would take it up later. Naturally they would be older then, see? TG: I see. LH: It was that two or three years working and then go back to school... TG: They didn’t keep them out if they were older. They’d let them go. LH: Yes, they’d let them go. Sometimes they were as large as the school teacher, and he had quite a time reprimanding them. TG: I’ll bet. Do you remember some of those teachers – their names or what they were like? LH: Oh yes. H. B. Arnold and Albert Shaw, and Cody, I think, and Scarburrow, and Mrs. Barnes, and Nellie Roach. That big building on the opposite side of the pool hall I was telling you about is the old Roach building. She and one or two of her sisters taught school. Nellie just happened to be my younger grade school teacher... TG: Now, was that Dr. Roach’s wife? LH: Yes, yes, Dr. Roach’s children... He had about like we had – he had a big family like we did. TG: Gee, that’s something. Well, now your father came to Corinne because of the railroad, didn’t he? LH: Yes, he came there from Wells, Nevada, from there to Promontory – old Promontory where the Golden Spike is. But when we went there, I remember W. E. Johnson was the agent, and my dad had to take a night job because I remember him sleeping days. 2 So he wasn’t really the first agent there, but I think by the time I was maybe 12 years old, why he went in as agent. He was agent there until he was pensioned when he was 70. I can’t tell you what that year is. He was born in about 1852. TG: And what was his full name? LH: Arthur Clarence Murphy. TG: And there still some Murphys in Corinne now, aren’t there? LH: Dor was a Murphy. She’s my brother’s daughter... Where you had the hamburger? Well, that’s Boris Snickley, but she was Doris Murphy... And then I have a niece in Tremonton, Mrs. Darrel Shaw. She’s my oldest brother’s daughter, and you should have seen the old Brey home. They can hardly go up there, you know. It was razed, torn down, beautiful stairway. TG: When was that? Do you remember? LH: They moved to California in 1958, and it was maybe two or three years after that the Daughters of the Utah Pioneers were going to buy it and move it down on that museum grounds. They couldn’t afford to buy it – the house – and pay for the moving, too. So they didn’t buy it. It was torn down, and the people who bought it from Mr. Abney – that’s where he lived, you see – tore it down and built the new one. TG: Mr. Abney came to Corinne from Oregon. Can you tell me about him? I’ve read a little bit. LH: Well, I have heard him talk about being something at this Rapid Transit Company when they were putting in streetcars here in Ogden , and he’s been dead several years now. 3 I could have told you all about it better, but they moved to California in 1958. He used to tell about things that happened when they put the streetcars in. He had quite a bit to do with that. TG: Now, why did he go to Corinne? LH: To buy some farm ground and to raise white-faced Hereford cattle. Then he was connected with the Ogden Livestock Show. He was one of the instigators. There was quite a piece in the paper about him being the one that really was at the very start of the Ogden Livestock Show. TG: This Abney home, was it right down in Corinne? Downtown Corinne? LH: Yes. From the schoolhouse, you would just go out the back and right straight down to where you see that kind of old barns out there, out in back – used to ...have milk cows back there. There’s a new home there, but they left the home on the corner, the Abney home, until they got theirs built. But definitely that corner is the place where they should have put their home. TG: Well, what did he have to do with irrigation canals? I read something... LH: Well, they suggested to – they thought if they drained all of that ground west of Corinne that it would be fit for farming. So they started the tile plant there in Corinne and made their own tile and tiled all that land west of Corinne. Mr. Abney was the president of that, and my sister Jenny, his wife, was the secretary. You know, she was the typist. So she did all that work for him. TG: Now, about when was that when they did this tiling, do you remember? 4 LH: That was before, or around, 1920 because I was married in 1920. It was before that. Maybe from 1917, 1916, 1918, in along there, I guess. TG: Do you remember – that looks like really nice farmland now. LH: It is now. It’s all, the alkali, see the alkali washes down in this tile. There are some wonderful farms out there. You’ve driven out there. Isn’t it pretty out there? TG: Beautiful. And is this why, do you think, because of the tile that it was a success? LH: Absolutely. It was good, it was just full of alkali. So they tiled it, and hired so many men at the tile factory, in there, too, you know. People came up from Salt Lake and stayed right there in that old hotel. I know Milt Tremon was up there from Salt Lake and worked in the office part of it with Mr. Abney and his wife. Mrs. Tremon was one of the secretaries of – I don’t know if it was the tile plant or not, but she was a secretary up there. But they were Salt Lake people. TG: Which hotel are you talking about? LH: The picture I just shows you. TG: The Central Hotel. LH: The Central Hotel, aha. TG: Do you remember that? LH: Oh, so well, so well. I had a good friend, Evelyn Holmes. Her mother ran it for a while, ran that hotel, so I’ve been up through those old rooms fighting bedbugs. That’s all we used to do, you know, in the olden days, fight bedbugs. 5 TG: Didn’t have sprays then... Well, what was the hotel like? Can you describe it, like if you walk in the front door, or starting from the outside? Can you just describe it because it’s gone now? LH: Yes, you went in the front door... and there was quite a good-sized lobby and a tall stairway, and just the halls with the rooms off to each side. Then on the southeast corner was a great big kitchen. She served meals then along this side of the dining room. Mrs. Holmes served meals also, and before that, a Mrs. Drake. The first one that ever owned it was Mrs. Drake. She had a daughter, Alicia, that was a friend of mine, so I got to go in the hotel that much more. They used to keep a great big kind of a barrel of warm water all the time... It wasn’t so deep, pots and pans and things, they would just submerge them in there, see. I always thought that was so funny, submerging those pans, cooking pans in that barrel of water so they would soak up and they would wash easier. TG: That’s a good idea. I think I’ll try that... Well, was it a fancy place in those days, would you think? LH: Yes, it was quite nice in those days. That was before – some of it was before automobiles, you know. Drummers would come up there, and they would have to come in the evening on the train and stay the night in that hotel and go back the next morning on the train down here. TG: Drummers? LH: Drummers, yes. They were always known as drummers, men who came from the 6 wholesale houses here in Ogden and would sell the merchants their groceries and their, oh, drugs. Another very prominent character up there was W. House. I worked in his store for three years. That would have been about 1916... That tiling was right then because the people used to come in the store, all those people who were working in the tile factory and on tiling the ground, you know. They would come in the store. I must have worked in his store from 1916 to 1919, and it was just a roadway from the – there’s a hotel on that corner and the roadway. His was this big building on this corner that’s gone now. TG: Gone. Now, was he a descendent of Henry House? A son? LH: Yes. Henry House was his uncle. TG: So, Hiram House must have been his father? LH: And his home is still in Corinne, a lovely old home. You must go over and see it. TG: Where is it? I need to see it. LH: It is in the northeast part of town. Anyone there will tell you where the old House residence is. TG: Now this was William, W. F. House’s home... LH: Now, at one time these Sperry’s in Tremount sic lived with him. TG: Is that right? LH: Mmmhmm, and he owned those springs at Little Mountain. You’ve been out there? TG: Aha. 7 LH: He owned those springs, all that property that’s standing. At one time, I understand, he left all of that to this Vesta Ferry in Tremount sic . TG” Did you used to go out to the springs when you were little? LH: Oh, go out there and have breakfast. My dad had a motor car. I have a picture of him on that motor car, and he would take two or three of us on that motor car and make the rest of us go in that horse and buggy, and take our breakfast, and build a fire, and make our coffee, fry bacon and eggs. That was common on Sunday morning for us to go out there. They were health springs, you know. We had a friend who came there. It seems to me like his name was Simpson, Stimpson or Simpson. He went out there on crutches, naturally in a sheep camp, two horses, to spend a few weeks soaking up in the springs. He put a chair right down there and would get right down and sit so that he wouldn’t have to stand. After six weeks – he went on crutches – after six weeks of bathing in those springs, he took his gun and walked over these mountains to see if he could find a rabbit to shoot. They’re a pretty sure cure for rheumatism. TG: People still use them, don’t they? LH: Yes. Then there was only one house over them for a while, one bath house. The Japs got busy and made a cement block over the other one bath house, so there are still two, I think, but the Japs sic go there real often. You know how clean they are, and I guess they depend mostly on their bathing over at those springs. TG: Now, is this Conner Springs? LH: No, Conner Springs is on west. They go to Conner Springs goose hunting and duck 8 hunting in the fall. TG: Did you ever see the springs there? LH: No, my husband used to go there hunting, but I think you can drive right by it now. But there’s nothing to it now. It never was a bathing resort. Nobody as I know ever – and my husband was born at Balfour Siding, and his dad was section foreman. So he was section foreman at Balfour, and so that’s where my husband, Jim was born. There isn’t a thing there now, kind of a little dugout. You can see where the cellar used to be. TG: Well, what did he tell you – what did any of your people tell you about the early days on the railroad, or the early days of Corinne? Can you remember? LH: On thing I remember is that they never were paid by check. They were always paid in gold and silver. The day the pay car came, which was once a month – it wasn’t until later years, you know, they got more pay days – twice a month, and once a month everybody would gather around the depot waiting for the pay car. They would go there and stand at that car, hand their check up, or their time, you know. Maybe they had it all figured out. Naturally they would there. But they would know what was coming to each section man, section foreman, and my dad, the agent. They were all paid in gold and silver, never a check. TG: Somewhere I read that there was a conflict, you know, a Mormon-Gentile conflict. Somewhere I read that the cash market in Corinne was important to the Mormons because so often they didn’t deal in cash. But they needed cash. Do you remember anything of that? Did you ever hear anything of it? 9 LH: No. TG: They could sell their goods there, their farm goods in Corinne... Maybe this was in the earlier days, and get paid in cash because the people in Corinne had cash, whereas if they sell it to themselves – to each other– they used it as barter. LH: At one time Corinne was strictly Gentile, no Mormons there. Somebody, Brigham Young, he went through there and put a curse on the town, and so it was just strictly Gentile. Then, after they quit the town, why the Mormons started moving in. They didn’t have a church thee until, as I recall, my niece – I stayed with Mrs. Jones. She was born there about 1915, I would say, or 1916. The first Mormon Church was – not this one. There was a Mormon church. There used to be an old opera house there... TG: Did you used to dance? LH: Did I? I danced many a night ‘til midnight in that old opera house, and the floor would kind of spring with us, you know... Yes, I really remember that old opera house, I certainly do. So the Mormons, when they started to move in there to farm this ground that had been tiled and free of alkali, why then they started going to church in that old opera house. I guess they bought it for a church, maybe... but that’s where they held their services. Then where the Masonic Lodge is, that used to be a bank. It was one of our... Corinne’s banks. TG: Do you know which one it was? Do you remember? LH: Well, I don’t, but S. N. Cole... now them and Ferrys were very good friends, and he was the banker, I guess, of the first bank in Corinne. Well, that was in my time. Now, they tell 10 us that at one time, there were 57 saloons and eight or 10 banks. Maybe more than that, I don’t know...at the time of that freighting out of there from Montana, Idaho, and Oregon. TG: Well, that was way before your days. Do you remember anybody talking to you at that time? Describing what it was like in the trade days? LH: Well, I heard it talked about as I got older, you know... TG: What was I going to ask you about? – Oh, the churches. When you were younger, what churches can you remember, and what did the people do about that? LH: There was the church there that stands there, was the oldest Protestant church in the state of Utah. It’s 100 years old, and – last, 1969 I guess it was – they had a dedication, rededication, a 100-year-old dedication of that church. My goodness, the people that we met going up there. TG: You went out to it? LH: Yes! But farther down was there a residence now – there used to be a Presbyterian church. The minister used to – Presbyterian minister. I’ve attended both churches... We used to drive from Brigger Mountain in horse and buggy. We’d hold church in Brigger in the morning and come to Corinne and hold services there in the afternoon in the Presbyterian. Then the minister would hold his services in Tremonton in the morning and come down to Corinne in the afternoon and hold the services in the Methodist church. TG: So that’s Methodist and Presbyterian. 11 LH: That’s all there were that I ever remembered until the LDS people started to hold services in the old opera house. TG: Well, do you remember, was there ever any conflict as far as you remember when the Mormons came in, or did they all just start...? LH: No, they just moved in and...One at a time and...They were in the country, most of them, farming. There is about 99 percent of this now. TG: So they... but you went to school with them and – I mean they all went to school together. LH: Yes! TG: ...This General Connor was supposed to have been out there in the early days. Did you ever hear any talk about him? General Patrick Conner. Does it ring a bell? LH: ...Was that where Conner Springs was? TG: I think that’s probably it. I’m trying to find out for sure. LH: I don’t know, but Mrs. Sperry could tell you. TG: Of course. That was in the very early days, at the time of the Golden Spike. When the trains came through, did they get people off in Corinne? Do you remember, was it a big stop? Did people get off there when you were a young girl and stay for any time at all? LH: At that time... we didn’t live right there until my dad was agent. He bought a little farm over in the northwest part of town. It’s still there, of course... this house I mean. We lived over there. We moved over to the depot house. The agent got his rent free, and we 12 moved over to the depot house... My youngest sister Enid was born there in that depot house in 1907. So I don’t remember whether the... people got off the train. It wasn’t a historic thing...you know? Time has gone on like this and the time has ... come historic Corinne. TG: Well, there are some people around who are interested in restoring Corinne. I know I talked to a fellow up in Brigham who said he was restoring what they called city hall. Remember that building? LH: Oh, it’s still there, is it? TG: Yes, and what was that when you were young? I mean, what was that? LH: I think it was always a city hall. My brother – oldest brother – was the city recorder there. TG: Do you remember the building, the way it looked in the front? LH: Yes! I was just up there driving around whenever we’d go up there. Then, at one time, the young boys used to – young folks, boys – used to gather there for a little evening of nitty cards or pool or whatever it was, I don’t know... Let’s see, what else – Bill House’s home, of course... TG: Now is Will House, is he the W. F. House? LH: Yes. TG: Well, am I remembering right that – you say he owned the area where the springs were? LH: Yes! TG: Somewhere I read that he bottled that water and boiled it down and sold it. It’s used for 13 medicine or something. Did you ever hear of that? LH: It seems to me that at one time he did... TG: You don’t remember ever selling it, though? LH: No, I don’t. I do remember one time over there where you’ll see his home, if you ever go up again, a grape arbor. Oh my, I used to love to go over there. Some men came up because they heard that W. House had quite a bit of money, which he did at one time, and when he died he was a pauper. They said he couldn’t even buy a loaf of bread. He was awfully good to this ... My sister Juanita who lives up here now, she and I, after I’d worked there for a couple of years, then he told me that business was better on the farm. People come in... And bring maybe only one pound of butter and give it to us to sell, and we’d give them what that was worth in sugar. He did a lot of that, or two dozen eggs, and then you’d give them what those eggs was worth in whatever they needed. Maybe bread or salt, or whatever they needed. TG: Now is this, was that sort of the way people were doing in those times, or where the times sort of difficult then? LH: That was really quite common. Yes, they’d have more butter than they needed, or more eggs, so they would need something that was stored and got disgusted making the trip. TG: Do you consider that, at that time, Corinne was mostly agricultural, supported by agriculture or the railroad? LH: Well, I could say the railroads because agriculture has grown since they tiled that ground, and that wasn’t tiled until, I’d say about – I was working in that store of Mr. 14 House’s, at that was from 1915 or 1916 to about 1919. All the time I know those people were staying from Salt Lake at this hotel, see. TG: I see. Well, you were working during the years of World War I, weren’t you? LH: Yes! TG: Was there any difference in the freight or the railroad traffic in the war years then? Did it make a difference? LH: No, there would have been in the main line. But one train there went to Malad, and the trains all used to go through there, you know, before they built this cutoff. The cutoff was just being built... completed as my husband started as a brakeman. That was in 1930 (?). No, there was nothing to ship to the war. We didn’t ship things to the war then like we have been in later wars... Then the other one went clear through and... The train got running from Brigham to... just to Kelton. You haven’t been as far as Kelton? TG: Not yet, no. LH: Have you been out to the Golden Spike spot? TG: Yes. I’m going out there today. LH: Well, Kelton is just a little farther... So my husband would go out to Kelton Monday morning and be back by the night. No, he’d go clear through to Montello Mountain and back Tuesday. Then Thursday he’d go to Kelton and back to Brigham, and Saturday to Kelton and back to Brigham. We went up there because his mother lived there, and she was getting elderly and kept running away. The neighbors told him it wasn’t safe to leave her, and so Jim and I rented this house to my brother and moved to Corinne. We were 15 up there three years. TG: Well, did this new cutoff make any difference to Corinne? Make it hard? LH: Yes, it deadened Corinne. There were no trains like there were. One to Malad, Idaho, I don’t know, seems to me like three times a week, and that one through to Montello, and the Kelton the other days. Yes, it was bound to make a difference. TG: Did a lot of people move out then, do you remember? Or did they hang on? LH: Well, I just think the population has always seemed about the same, you know, because it wasn’t a terminal. Had Ogden as a terminal, and so the trains would go through and no trainmen would have to live there until this little jerkwater train went to Kelton... But I was going to tell you about these people from up in Salt Lake. They told, asked, Mr. House if they could drill for oil behind his house there. So he said yes, all just so proud that they were going to drill for oil under there. So they salted it a little bit. He drove over there and would see little bits of oil where they put it there, and he’d put that much more money in there, see. But they never struck oil, and they got all of his money. TG: Is that how he lost his money? ...The people from Salt Lake? LH: Yes! TG: Seems like this happened to a lot of people in Corinne, they lost their money these different ways. Alexander Topines, I guess, had a...he must have had 100,000 acres at one time, and how he lost it, nobody seems to know... But it seems like he was rich one day and poor the next. LH: Did he have something to do with this freighting in and out? 16 TG: Yes, that’s right. He was a freighter and...Pony Express rider when he was younger and quite a character. But did you know any of those people? LH: Yes...Not as well as my older sister did. But now, this Dave House is a cousin of Will House, and his wife lives over here on the corner. TG: Is that right? LH: Yes, if you want to know about the Topines or some more about Henry House, she lives about ...two blocks, half a block up. They lived in Ogden quite a while, but...her husband’s dead...I would see her if there was anything about the House family you wanted to know about. One time in Corinne, we had a family named Church, Gates, House, Barn, Wood, Cole... TG: Now, those names are familiar. I think the Cole was the banker, wasn’t he? LH: S. N. Cole, yes... TG: You were saying that you went to school with several sets of twins. What were their names? LH: Eddy and Freddy Bradford, Minnie and Mabel Pesh, Willy and Walter Bosley, and Irving and Mervin Cling. TG: That’s amazing! I met a Mr. Bradford out there the other day... LH: Fred! TG: Yes, he was out by the cemetery. LH: Yes, it was his twin. 17 TG: Is that right? LH: He died of diphtheria right there while we were going to school. TG: ...Gee, he was a nice man, the one I met. LH: Fred is a wonderful person. TG: He said the house he was in – I was taking a picture of it– do you remember that house? LH: Yes. TG: He wasn’t sure whose house it was when it was first built, but he said he’d lived there a long time. Have they always lived there, the Bradfords? LH: ...No...His mother used to babysit in those days. So a woman wanted to make a little money, she would come get your clothes and wash them and dry them and bring them back all folded for about 25 cents a dozen. I think that’s what Fred’s mother charged... She lived in...Well, let’s see, there’s the Methodist church, and then...there’s a row of houses there...and a row of houses here, and she lived in this one right here. It was one of these corner southern houses with a little porch on it, and I believe, at that time, unpainted. She had a big family, too. TG: I wonder if it’s still there. LH: I have no idea if it is... TG: ...You were telling me about Mr. Cole, and I was going to ask you – he was quite a bit older than you are... LH: He was 80, maybe around 85. His birthday is around the eighth of August... Inaudible 18 discussion, apparently of Cole’s wife. She’s over with... mother... crippled up with arthritis, and she cans everything in jars from the start of the season until the last tomato is frozen. But when she came to visit me, and she lived in New York, but she was...visiting her stepsons. She married another man after her husband died in New York. This was his son that ran a motel in Wyoming, and she went to visit him, and she went to Oregon to see her sons... Martha. I got right up and told her, “You don’t go to either place until you see me.” And in the meantime, I talked to ...and I says, “Jim Cole, I told you...and so by golly, I think...” The first night she came was Tuesday, and the following Tuesday, my son and I, they wanted us to stand up with them at the Episcopal Church and they would be married. TG: I think that’s wonderful... LH: And my son, he had a Cadillac, and my son drove them... Then he bought two beautiful rings, and...It’s just been wonderful. They’ve been married about 19 years. TG: I’ll try to meet them. Can I tell them that I talked to you and...? LH: Do that. They only...two minutes a day to eat their breakfast and they eat again around one or two. They’d just love to have you. They used to live out here on 17th Street, that last little house next to that glazing place on 17th Street...They came from all corners of the world to go to Corinne for the bird...the Duckbill Gun Club... Well, people used to go down there and get jobs setting ducks because these millionaires that came there...The Millionaire Duck Club, that’s it...and they’d have Europe stickers all over their suitcases. My dad’s agency...he was in there getting these ducks ready to ship. Then every once in a while, on account of the new express uniform...he’d wind up with 15 or 10 boxes of 19 ducks to ship and all they had then to keep them cold was ice, you know, no refrigeration like they have now...That’s another day I used to run and get a piece of ice off the ice wagon. It’s kind of nice to be 76 years old, in a way. Well, and so then every once in a while, my dad had a box of ducks. Usually they were teal, for Thanksgiving, for his troubles, you know. My goodness that was a busy place in the fall. TG: Well, where did these people stay? Did they have places for them to stay? LH: I think they had...yes, right down there. TG: Did you ever see any of these duck clubs? LH: Oh yes. They ran excursions. If I just had my pictures all sorted out right, I think I have some of those excursion boats where they went down to the Millionaire Duck Club in the back of... One of them, you can still drive down to. Yes, I guess it’s the Duckbill Gun Club. Yes, one of them you can still drive to but, I think the other one, you had to go in a boat... That used to be one of the most popular things about Corinne in the fall was that duck club. Oh, the cooks would come from all different places to cook down there, and people used to get off the trains to go down there and pick ducks, and hire their ducks off of it, you know... It used to be exciting for us. There was so many people around the depot and made Dad a lot of work... And then Mama knew we’d always get our fill of ducks in the fall because once every 10 days or two weeks, they’d bring Dad a nice box of them, oven ready. TG: Oh boy, that sounds delicious... Well, it’s still good duck hunting country, isn’t it? LH: Well, the pheasants...there’s pheasants out there, too, you know... But everybody it used 20 to be that’s going places, where they was shooting too far and killing a cow, and then they all got permission to go in. That’s when Jimmy Strop over at Conner Springs, hunting geese and ducks and... TG: It’s really some country... Now, I was going to ask you about what they call the oxbow, or do you know where the river south of Corinne, south of the school, there’s quite a little farm there. Do you remember that? LH: That’s Mr. Andy’s property. Yes, that’s what they call the bottoms. They take their milking cows, maybe a dozen cows, and there’s old barns back there. There’s one old brick one, and that great big old double-log chicken coop– that Mr. Andy had built. At one time chickens were... you know, everybody was building a chicken coop and selling eggs. I can still remember the... but anyway, Jennie and Mr. Andy... we always knew him as Mr. Andy before he married her. Now, instead of calling him Clarence, we call him Mr. Andy still, but we always did. TG: ...Do you know that I think I know where their house must have been because there is an old red brick building– LH: A barn! TG: – and behind to the west there’s a long-like coop, like you described. LH: That’s it. Right over here is an old garage, and then right here is the gate that takes you down to that horseshoe. It freezes over in the winter... We’d spend our whole winter evening down there skating... You see, it was just in the shape of a horseshoe. That’s why we called it Horseshoe Slough. Mr. Andy owned every bit of that all down there... 21 They’d go down and get the cows out and open that to get to the back, see, and then we’d build a fire in the middle, two or three fires in the middles. Then we’d all go out to skating... Oh boy, we’d get all those expert skaters down in that Horseshoe Slough. TG: Is that part of the Bear River? LH: I don’t know. It must be. I don’t know what you’d call that Horseshoe Slough. TG: I can’t figure out how the water gets into it. Do you know? LH: I don’t. I never did think. If it was just from the river, it would dry up eventually because the river only gets high once a year. My brother drowned in that. He owned property way up north of Corinne... a farm... and he used to go playing in it, my oldest brother. One time I could see his wife was having a little bit of trouble – we just only guessed that because he was gone three days before she said anything to my second brother, Floyd. She saw Floyd going by once, and she said, “You haven’t seen Clarence, have you?” He answered no, and she said, “Well, I haven’t seen him for three days. I don’t know where he is.” So Floyd got in his little jitney then, and drove all around. That was in November. There was ice, I should have told you. It was starting to freeze. So we didn’t know what to do. The police were notified and people are coming in and out of town. But one day, there’s a big slough down there close to that there duck club, with toolies and everything all over it, you know. There was some men ...out there spearing carp. They’d speared a great big carp not especially to eat, but just the kick of it, I guess. They seen this body that had floated clear down that swift current, and this was May, the middle of May. So they came right up to Corinne and got my other brother, Kenneth, and took him down to see if he could identify him. His wife said he did have blue and white, he was a recorder 22 down here in Corinne. He had the keys to that whole city hall in his pocket. He was the city recorder for years... and a red sweater that was still on him. So we will never know. Never know! He was the kind that...he wasn’t the suicide kind. TG: Well, that river took a lot of people, didn’t it? I know other people have mentioned people drowning in it. Isn’t it quite deep at Corinne? LH: Yes, Roy House it took... TG: Yes, I heard about that. He tried to save somebody else, and he went out there and he drowned and the other man hung on. Did you used to go out in the river in boats at all, or is that something you never did. LH: Well, I’ve been to the duck club on that big boat. Those duck clubs are... places. Nothing was ever known about...motels or anything like that then, you know. But they’d have an excursion once or twice a year. TG: What were the boats like that went down there? LH: Kind of a great big boat, maybe as far as from here to the corner of my room there... It seems to me like that, and just seats all around it, and a cover on the top to keep the sun off us, you know. And a motor on the front, and I guess a propeller on the back... TG: Now, who operated these clubs? Were they owned by people in Corinne or...? LH: Well now, I think the Millionaires themselves owned the Millionaire Club. But Vince Davis in Brigham owned one of those duck clubs. I don’t know if there’s two or three or four of them. There was Duckbill Gun Club, and Bear River Gun Club, and the Millionaire’s Club, that’s three. But Corinne is a pretty lively place in the fall, just from the duck 23 hunters that come in. They’d camp all over... duck hunting down there. TG: Just these men. They didn’t bring their wives probably. LH: Some of them did, yes. Of course, I was only a teenager, and remember all those lovely ducks my dad would bring home from people. We lived on this side, and the people were over that at the Connerton House. It hasn’t been long since they tore those two buildings down. Oh, it causes the heart to bleed to see... Joyce and Betty and Jennie, my sister, when they’d come back, if they wanted to drive by there now – those two girls were just raised out there. TG: You see, Corinne could have been preserved as an example. LH: You know, it was to have been the capitol once. Did somebody tell you that? TG: What did they tell you about that? What do you remember them telling you about that? LH: That’s just about all. They said that at one time Corinne was to have been the capitol. And then you go down here, and it was Fillmore. .. When we came through there from San Diego, it says Utah’s first capitol. George A. Nolan – you don’t know George very well, he had... Fred J. Kestle– this is Kestle Avenue– Fred J. Kestle, who is a businessman here, they all got their start in Corinne. It was from Corinne that river boats went out into the lake. Instead that has become kind of a ghost town, you know. Well, not a ghost town, but boy, it’s gone to nothing. So Fred J. Kestle and George A. Nolan and all of them moved to Ogden, and started to stretch here in Ogden. But they all got their start in Corinne... TG: I want to thank you very much for letting me... Here, I’ll turn this off. 24