Oral History Program Loni Wilde, Jo Thompson, and Sunny Thompson Interviewed by Tanner Flinders & Lorrie Rands 17 May 2016 Oral History Program Weber State University Stewart Library Ogden, Utah Loni Wilde Jo Thompson, and Sunny Thompson Interviewed by Tanner Flinders & Lorrie Rands 17 May 2016 Copyright © 2016 by Weber State University, Stewart Library iii 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 The Utah Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum honors men and women whose lives exemplify the independence and resilience of the people who settled Utah, and includes artists, champions, entertainers, musicians, ranchers, writers, and those persons, past and present, who have promoted the Western way of life. Each year, the inductees are interviewed about their lives and experiences living the Western way of life. ____________________________________ 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: Wilde, Loni, Jo Thompson, and Sunny Thompson, an oral history by Tanner Flinders & Lorrie Rands, 17 May 2016, WSU Stewart Library Oral History Program, University Archives, Stewart Library, Weber State University, Ogden, UT. Jo Thompson, Sunny Thompson and Loni Wilde May 17, 2016 1 Abstract: The following is an oral history interview with Loni Wilde, Jo Thompson, and Sunny Thompson, conducted May 17, 2016 by Tanner Flinders and Lorrie Rands. In this interview, Loni, Jo, and Sunny discuss Norman “Shorty” Thompson and his life. TF: Alright we’re good. LR: Okay, it is May 17, 2016 we are in the home of Loni Wilde talking about Norman “Shorty” Thompson. We are also with Sunny Thompson and Jo Thompson and Tanner Flinders is conducting the interview. I, Lorrie Rands am just here. So go ahead. TF: When and where was Shorty born? JT: He was born in Farr West, Utah. TF: What year? JT: May 18, 1928. LW: Tomorrow’s his birthday. TF: When did he move to Pleasant View? JT: He bought his ranch in, he was eighteen. What year is that? LR: Hold on I have to do that math, 1946? TF: What made him choose that area? JT: Well it was available. They used to play cards, the old boys, in the house that was there and this gentleman that was sitting there, he said, “Well I think I’m going to sell this place.” Shorty says, “Okay, I’ll buy it. How much you want?” So he decided that he was going to buy it and he did. His dad told him he was crazy, 2 but it was the best place in the world that was available and he could’ve afforded at that age. So that’s where we started and I’m still here. TF: When and where did you guys meet? JT: We met at his sister’s wedding. I’d say it would probably be about 1952 approximately. TF: Okay and when did you guys get married? JT: 1954. LR: Okay let’s back track a little bit. Shorty grew up in Farr West. JT: Correct. LR: Where did the nickname Shorty come from? JT: Well I guess everybody had a nickname in Farr West and I guess at that time he was a smaller kid so he got the name “Shorty” and his brother got the name “Trigger.” Everybody had a nickname and his was “Shorty.” LR: So growing up in Farr West where did he go to school? JT: When he went, because in the first grade and in kindergarten they’d go talk to the mother and say, “How come your son’s not going to school?” She says, “Well he goes every morning.” They said, “Well he’s not hitting the school.” So they decided they had to follow him after he left home the next day to see where he was going. He was going to the park with his dog and they would go down the slides and just have a wonderful time and when school got out he’d go home. ST: It’s where he got his education. JT: He and his dog, so they had to correct that just a little bit, because he knew everything. About the same thing happened when he went off to college. He was 3 smarter than the professor so he quit that too because he loved the cattle and the horses. LR: Do you know what prompted that love of cattle, the love of horses? JT: Well he had a, was it a steer? Like with the FFA, he raised one and showed it at the Farr West Animal Fair. They would have to groom their cattle and teach them how to walk and follow and keep them spotless clean. I’m going to turn over to him because he knows so much about it, but he won a ribbon there and they always had a horse and five kids could ride it at the same time. When one fell off they all fell off of it, but they had a horse and that was his growing up years, was always with animals. LR: Did he have someone teaching him or was it something he just knew intuitively? JT: That was him. LW: Well his dad rode horses, I mean grandpa rode, but dad always loved show horses and anything that did with a horse he loved it. He bought and sold horses and cows and he was a trader. That’s what he was doing when he met mom. So he just traded horses and sold them and made money on them. LR: So this started when he was just a young boy and it developed as he grew. So he never really had a formal education is that correct, because he never really went? LW: He went to school. JT: He graduated, but it was college he tried out and he figured he knew more than what they knew at Utah State, so he decided he’d just keep doing what he was doing. He could make money buying and selling and he was excellent at it. 4 LR: So when did he go to Utah State roughly? JT: Well you figure twelve years of school and when he got out of high school, the next semester or whatever they’re called. LR: So right after high school, and where did he go to high school? LW: Weber High. Down at the old Weber High on Washington Boulevard. ST: He went there the first year it opened and I graduated the last year it was there. LR: Really? That’s kind of cool. So did you go to Weber too? LW: I went to the old Weber one year and I went to the new Weber for two years. The first year it was open I went there. LR: So he’s older? LW: He’s older, yeah he’s two years older than me. LR: Okay I actually didn’t know who was older. ST: Thanks I needed that. LR: You’re welcome. That could have gone wrong either way. ST: No, don’t be sorry. I like you more all the time. LR: Well thank you. So I’m trying to understand this concept of just knowing how to take care of animals, it’s very foreign to me. ST: Let me tell you when these kids, he was in a tight group in Farr West. When these kids were old enough to walk they traveled in groups. It was Dale Chugg and Doc Taylor and my dad and all these kids at the same age. They all wore coveralls and they raised a cat and then a dog and puppies and that’s all they knew. So as they grew and grew everybody got a little bit more interested in a dairy cow and then a beef cow and what about a horse? There was lots of 5 property and land around and they develop each other’s interests and some of them turned into dairy men, some of them turned into cowboys, some of them turned into ranchers, some of them farmers. There’s that little group that played baseball together in coveralls and just learned from one another and took each other’s interests. LR: Okay that makes more sense. So he’s eighteen years old, the war has just ended and did he just save enough money to buy the property over there? JT: He got a loan. LR: Did he? Okay. ST: But he was up for a challenge. It didn’t matter if it was calling you on a bet, flipping you double or nothing. “Well you can’t afford that.” “Well the hell I can.” You know the challenge is what brought him to most all of these deals. Somebody would look at him and just throw out an idea or maybe an amount of money or maybe a, “You can’t,” and he’d call them out on it. I think that’s how the ranch kind of got started besides he was really tight with Art Chandler, the guy that owned it. They were pretty close and besides that it was slew. There was a lot of wet ground and everybody thought, “What the heck does he want with that?” The challenge, that’s what I think. LR: Okay so he bought this when he was 18 and you make it sound like it was going to be rough making it into a profitable piece of land. How long did it take him? ST: A lifetime, we’re still working on it, we’re still adding, we’re still filling. We’re putting in wells, drains, buildings but its taken his lifetime, her lifetime, Loni’s lifetime on this side of the road and my lifetime on that side of the road. 6 Everything is developed around us from golf courses to subdivisions to I-15, the big road down here. This road just got widened two years ago, just a lifetime, several lifetimes. Mine and his and what, Queen Veneva here. LW: You know after they bought it there was a cabin on it and you know how she said they played cards and they did trap shooting back there. I mean there was a lot of goofing off going on. ST: They played a lot. LW: Yes, they had a great time. Mom did you guys live in that cabin for a while? JT: No. LW: Didn’t you? JT: No. LW: I couldn’t remember, and it was just a small place and then they obviously built the home and then the trap shooting and the partying and all that grand stuff that went on, and then soon Sunny came along. ST: Yeah. JT: I got to tell you one thing, he was a riot. The funniest guy you’ll ever meet. His personality was he’d do anything that was crazy. For instance, it was the vice president of the bank, commercial bank, so he gets a little baby goat. ST: Frank Francis. JT: Yeah and took it in the bank in a box to give to him for his birthday. So here he opened it up and he thinks it’s a camel, Frank does. Of course Shorty already told him it was too. He would do things like that. He took a goat up to granny’s pantry and sat it down and ordered it ham and eggs. He took a turkey into Key 7 Bank without a box and (sound effect of turkey) and all this was going on and people were coming down off the elevators and everything else to see what the heck was going on. Shorty handed it to Frank on his desk and papers went flying and everything so Frank decided, “What am I going to do with it?” So they take it over to another real estate gentleman, I can’t say his name right now, and they took it in there and just left it. I mean they were always pulling something on each other like that. This gentleman that they put it in his office loose and left, that guy had a place and he took it home after all the crazy things and left it on his farm. So that’s where that turkey grew up, but they did take it down Washington Boulevard in the back of an old station wagon and Shorty would always honk because it would make more problems. More crazy things going on and here’s this turkey riding in the back. But that’s part of his…. ST: Sense of humor. JT: Just a riot. LR: Sounds crazy. ST: Yes, absolutely. LR: What I’m trying to do is follow a progression of his life so after he bought the farm or the, it’s not a farm. ST: Ranch. LR: Okay after he bought the ranch he met you, but what drew you to him? Was it his crazy personality? JT: We met at his sister’s wedding and after that we just really liked each other. He didn’t have a car, he had a big cattle truck so that’s the way we would go any 8 place was in a cattle truck, if you could find a place to park it. We just hit it off and I got rid of all my other boyfriends and he was the main guy because he was such a joy, a lot of fun. LW: She was from 28th street in Ogden, a city girl in high heels and a dress. JT: 27th street. LR: That was going to be my next question, where did you grow up? JT: I grew up in Ogden. I went from a Cadillac boyfriend to a cattle truck. That was a big thing then, but he was a lot of fun and he was raised properly. His parents were, well his dad was a bishop for twenty two years, so he was raised to have good morals, except that he’d have a snort every once in a while if he didn’t get caught. He was a joy to everybody, if you were with him you were just going to laugh, that’s the way he was. LR: So was it strange going from the city lifestyle to the ranch lifestyle or did it just seem to fit? JT: Well it fit so well and when we’d go to my grandma’s, which was a place where we’d be in the barn with pigs and all the things we did. So it was just really natural for me other than I learned the only place you’d wear your three inch high heels is to church, because you had to wear Levi’s and try to build a home and raise kids and do property that we were still fixing up. It’s a show place, it’s lovely and it’s just taken a lifetime and we will be forever trying to improve, trying to keep up. LR: You said show place, what do you mean by that? 9 JT: Well everybody knew him, and he had a big barn with a eagle on top that was about this tall and we still have the eagle. But everybody knew him so we tried to keep it nice. We used to let people come in buses with children in them and walk them around to see all the animals and to touch if it was something that was touchable and learn a little bit about farms and cattle and little goats and little calves, and that still goes on. Now what else did you ask me? I’m sorry. LR: No it’s okay I probably have five questions in one. Well my next question is was there any other ventures that he did besides the cattle? Could you talk about that a little bit? LW: Well after they got married and we were pretty young, you guys started building a rodeo arena right? Had the rodeo come before the dude ranch thing or about the same time? JT: About the same time. LW: He built a rodeo arena down the field and they had the first high school rodeo down at our arena that there was ever in the Utah High School Rodeo Association. They built an arena and mom and dad peeled every log. I mean they worked endlessly, hours to build that arena, that’s where we grew up spending hours and hours. About every kid in Pleasant View that had a horse spent their time at Shorty’s Arena. I can guarantee you in those days when we were kids, there were just numerous people and they’d ride bucking horses and we’d rope steers and we rode calves. Every night you’d see the lights on down there. LR: So where was this arena? JT: On our property. 10 ST: Right, straight across the street almost. LW: South, just south a little bit past mom’s. LR: So it’s where the first high school rodeo in Utah… LW: Correct? Okay I was always told that… JT: No, they used to have it up in maybe Tremonton area, but after we got our arena done it was really nice and there were bleachers, so people could come. It was the first one there that was from the high school, it was the state high school. They picked their queen and they pick their champion cowboys. So it was a regular rodeo but it was the state finals. LW: Okay so the first state finals then right? JT: Not the first. LW: But in our arena. JT: In our arena. LW: Okay all that stuff I said was wrong, but it was a rodeo arena. LR: Do you remember what year that was? ST: 1960-61 right in there. LW: Wouldn’t it be a little more than that because I remember them and I’d of only been three because I was born in 1957. I don’t know, it would be 1960 right in there, but I was little. ST: Yeah it’d be 1961-62. TF: So what was it like growing up on the ranch? LW: Awesome! 11 Video fades out and opens to interviewees discussing a different topic. We were so interested in the stories that we did not notice the camera had turned off. JT: That’s what he did, the Calgary Stampede. Shorty’s mother and father just happened to be there and they were announcing the person that was most influential in the different states to help the children, the younger cowboys and the cowgirls. If somebody told me this I don’t know if I would’ve really thought that was true, but when they happened to say the most influential cowboy that has helped the young people in Utah, his name was Shorty Thompson. So they actually were there, which was the Calgary Stampede, which he was well known all over. Just whether it was buying cattle or horses, helping kids learn how to load their horses in a trailer. Shorty could do it even for grown men, they would have to come or he’d go to them and try to teach them how to load a horse, because the horse got loaded whether it wanted to or not. ST: He had a knack you know? LW: He had a team or horses like Clydesdales, a matched team of horses that he would be in the parades with. He’d haul the dignitaries and they’d call him. I mean it didn’t matter he always found a way to get the team and wagon to the parades. He always had a team up until the last four years before he passed away, he had a team of Clydesdales. That was always fun, we had a good time. We’d always feed everything. Everything he did he’d have to use with a team of wagon because you couldn’t get in there with a tractor. “You’d have to use the team,” he’d say because my brother always had tractors. We always had to do it 12 the hard way. He loved his horses, he loved his team. He’d hook them up every day in the winter without fail to feed. I mean it could be a blizzard and that team would be hooked up and he’d go out and feed his animals with that team wagon. JT: He was also Santa Claus. He knew him real well and about a week before Christmas I made a wonderful suit and Santa Claus would get on his team and then you could do it with a bob sleigh and he’d go around Pleasant View and all the kids would be running and following him, saying, “Santa!” His sleigh bells going and it was a wonderful time because you could go where you wanted because there just wasn’t that much traffic and his white beard flowing and it was wild, but all the kids knew Santa Claus. Especially the ones where he’d go peek in their windows and scare the hell out of them. So Santa was well known and he could run fast too. LW: That was the best, fun part of Christmas because doing all that. Just seeing all the kids faces when he’d run up and down the streets with his team, it was fun. ST: Another thing about the rodeo deal is when they had rodeos my dad was a gambler. When they’d have rodeos during the lull of the rodeo they’d have foot races in the arena in the dirt. These women and these men would gamble on the guy running like a horse race and dad could outrun most deer in the sand, in the dirt. They set him up one time with a guy that was quite a track athlete. There were four or five guys in the arena and guys were betting on them and I’ll never forget this guy kind of sandbagged the foot race for a little while and then boy did he shoot fast. Everybody wanted to know who this guy was and where he was 13 from. That was a big highlight of the rodeos. Every Saturday they’d have a foot race along with the rodeo inside the arena. JT: Shorty would win. ST: Yeah he’d win consistently but they set him up with this guy. They brought him in and he wore a cowboy hat so when it came down to foot race time everybody was betting on Shorty except for the one guy that’d brought him and boy this guy lit them up down that thing. Everybody went, “Wow, where’d he come from!?” LR: How long was he associated with high school rodeo? LW: Well we rodeoed, we roped down there for years. He’d have team roping down there when we were kids when we were with the rodeo. Then I started high school rodeoing and he was rodeoing, and we did that at least four, six years and then college after that. He was always the arena director and he’d help with the livestock. ST: Up clear through 1976. LW: Yes. JT: Loni ended up winning the Utah High School Rodeo Queen and was second attendant with the United States. ST: National competition. JT: Yes out in New Mexico, but she could rope fantastic. Better than most of the guys, but when two of them are going to rope, team rope, it was usually two men, you know, two guys. The first guy that finally gave in, asked her if she could head or heel, whichever one, because she could catch. He needed to have a better partner so he asked Loni and they got teased a lot, but they won. They’d win 14 because she could head or heel. Catch the head if he missed one she could pick it up and then somebody else you know? So she was excellent at roping and queening. She was really good, he was the bull rider. LR: Really? ST: Yeah, that’s why I walk like this. LR: So did your dad encourage you to rodeo or was it just something that you wanted to do? LW: Oh it was just something we wanted to do. ST: Support is what it was. It was support. LW: Yeah if we wanted to do it he’d encourage us. ST: No matter what it was, if it was farming, rodeo, raising a calf, puppies. JT: Parents were happy to have their kids down at our place because they were supervised. They were not behind the barn doing all things kids do unless they got caught. ST: You got a sweat rag? LW: But really, they knew where their kids were because we were down there. When the lights went off they knew their kids better be home in thirty minutes and they’d ride their horse home. There’s a kid, Bart Cragun he says, “Your dad saved my life because I had somewhere to go every night and I had something to do. Take my horse and go ride.” ST: He works for Pleasant View City today. LW: Yes, he does. 15 LR: So it sounds like he created a place where he loved what he did and he found a way to draw others to share in his love of what he did. ST: Exactly. JT: Nobody was charged anything unless they had a big rodeo and then they had a little twenty five cents at the entrance, but these kids had somebody that knew what he was doing and then he would try and teach them. Whether they were coming out of the bucking shoot or team roping or roping, he was there to advise them and a lot of them won because they had some good help. Parents knew that I was there and watching. We did have a final rodeo and we did have a young boy, on the best bull we had, he was a spinning bull. We called him Peggy, and he was riding for the belt buckle and the bull was spinning around and it got him in the main artery to his heart and he died. The parents lived right close to where Shorty grew up so the parents were there to take him to the hospital in the ambulance, but that broke our hearts. ST: Sad time in the arena. Yes, that was a sad time. JT: One of the big rodeo companies bought the bull because he was good, but we did have the horns cut off. In fact I’ve still got them because he would spin and sometimes a kid would fall off, but he’d fall into the horn. ST: They’re real sharp horns. JT: So that was a tough one. We had a few wrecks and parents didn’t support them like they do now at soccer fields. So I would be the one that was taking them to the hospital or doctor or whatever needed to be taken care of because things happen. The kids, I was grandma to all of them, still am. 16 LW: You weren’t grandma then, you were mom. You’re grandma now. ST: We had fun growing up. LW: We had the best. ST: Everybody that come down had fun. LW: We might not have had everything everybody in town had, but nobody had more fun than us. Nobody and we kept it clean. ST: It was clean fun. LW: Yeah it was good. ST: From dissecting frogs to… LW: Baptizing rabbits. We used to baptize rabbits too. ST: We baptized rabbits, we disected frogs. LW: What was it? Holy Ghost and in the hole you go the rabbit said. JT: I caught them and I would say, “What are you saying?” They were baptizing these rabbits for heavens sake and if you’re not LDS you don’t know what it is but they were saying, “We baptize you in the name of whatever…” LW: Holy Ghost. JT: Yes, and in the hole you go instead of the Holy Ghost, it was in the hole you go. They all survived but I don’t know how. They wouldn’t if I had gotten them. LR: Sunny, I kind of want to talk a little bit about both of your experiences in rodeo so I’m going to start with you. Can you talk us through your experiences with rodeo? ST: My experience started when I was young, down here riding dairy cows and then I went on to do a little high school rodeo and then I rodeod at Weber State 17 University for three years. Then my luck was really good so I retired from rodeo at least in the bull riding and the rough stock events in 1974 maybe. LW: No, he went to college for three years, 1978, because I went to school with him for a year and I was 1976-77. ST: Yeah something like that and so my interest changed from traveling around with Kelly Wahlen in an El Camino to raising black cattle and John Deere tractors. LR: So did you go in with your dad then and work with him or did you do something separate? ST: Well I really did something separate. I helped him, but my dad was a team and wagon farmer. He couldn’t start a tractor, but he could farm with horses and mules. As I got a little older I thought, “This is the 20th century. We’re not lighting the fire with a flint and a rock.” LW: This isn’t survivor. ST: So I expanded my deal with some of my acquaintances thinking what I could do better. I could get into farming, I could double my cow herd, I could buy more equipment, try to accumulate a little more ground, build a custom farming business, raise my own hay and grain. Dad, he supported me through it all, it’s just that he was kind of the team and wagon horse guy. LR: I think so. Let’s move over to you Loni. Can you talk a little bit about your… LW: I was always daddy’s little girl and wherever he went, I went. So if it was on horseback I was with him and junior posse. We had junior posse down at his place and then I did the trail rides with him and stuff like that. I’m going to get 18 emotional over this. High school rodeo he had me mounted on a really good horse and they knew my horse, the whole state of Utah. He was awesome. ST: Little scoot. LW: Scooter. The first year I only went to a few rodeos because we didn’t have a truck and trailer. I’d always jump in with somebody else, but I loved it. I lived rodeo and I, we’d work down there. I’d goat tie, I did seven events on the same horse which is really kind of unheard of. He was always there to support us and my senior year mom bought a horse trailer and we bought our motor home and we all went. I qualified for the national finals twice. Once when it was here in Ogden and then when it was in Gallop, New Mexico. We went down there for seven days and it was just a death trap in Gallop, New Mexico. They first started the arena and it was just soot and sand. They had a parade one day and somebody had to drive the truck and the queens would stand on the back of the truck like they do. You know all your contestants, your friends are supposed to ride in the back. Well he’s driving the truck and I’m supposed to be sitting on the hood. Well he’s going like this with the truck and hollering out the window, he was just crazy. I mean he was just that kind of guy that everybody knew him. But he, total support, him and mom both. Mom made all my queen clothes, made sure I was always dressed to the hilt. Then I went on to rodeo for a year, college rodeo wasn’t nearly as fun as high school rodeo. Even when I got out of college I still have rodeod and roped and you know being involved with my horses my whole life. They’re my life, I love them. 19 LR: Correct me if I’m wrong, but it almost sounds to me like your dad was the behind the scenes kind of guy who’s always there to help, but wasn’t out to, how do I? ST: He wasn’t the Donald Trump of today. LR: Thank you. It sounds like if anyone wanted to learn, if anyone wanted to grow in rodeo he was right there and he’d teach them. LW: Oh yeah. LR: Did people come from all over to learn from him? ST: Just this area mostly. JT: Sometimes from Tremonton. ST: I mean within Salt Lake to Tremonton. LW: It wasn’t as big then as it is now, you know what I mean? LR: Right, I do. LW: I mean to announce him at the Calgary Stampede had to have meant that somebody out there knew what kind of person he was. JT: Yeah he didn’t need a badge. He wasn’t one who I did this and I did that. He’d be the last person that would do that. ST: If somebody done good he’d say, “God, what do you think of that? How do you do?” You know what I mean, he liked people to recognize that that kid done good. Not drawing attention to himself, but “God, wow! Wasn’t he something?” LR: So is this something he did through his entire life? JT: Yep. LR: Always out working, out helping with, well teaching I guess. ST: He was a good mentor, he was. 20 LW: Always had a horse. The last few years he had a mule, loved his mule, Festus. He always had a horse up until the day he died. He had Festus and another horse. LR: So he never learned how to use a tractor? ST: Well he did, but wow just very, very…. LW: You would never see him on a tractor. ST: Never see him on one. He’d come look around and maybe get on it to move it or something. LR: Make sure no one sees him. ST: He’d always say, “Hey, get that tractor and come over here or something.” Yeah he was old school right from the letter. JT: When he was in the 24th of July Parade and the County Commissioner’s, they wanted somebody that was part rodeo and that. So Shorty met them in there and there was a big wagon I guess I’d call it that had seats on it so I guess the commissioners, the three commissioners could sit in there with their names on the side of the thing. What was awful was it kind of made me laugh because as he’d go in the parade everybody knew him. I mean everybody knew him, that’s all there was to it. So instead of saying the commissioner’s name and that everybody’s yelling at Shorty. Let’s see, one time they gave him a trophy, I believe it was a mule trophy for being best something or other. He hit a lot of those parades whether it was North Ogden, Pleasant View or Ogden City. He always had a team in there. 21 ST: I was with him one time and he was coming through the parade and the PA guy said, “Here comes Shorty. Hell I don’t know who’s with him. Oh it’s the commissioners.” It was the county commissioners, I’ll never forget that. Right in front of the Commercial Security Bank. I’ll tell you who it was, it was Len Allen that year. He said, “Well here comes Shorty I can see Shorty and hell I don’t know who’s with him. I believe it’s the commissioners.” JT: She’s so young that she wouldn’t remember those things. LR: Well I know who Len Allen is. JT: Through radio yeah. LR: Yeah I’ve learned who he is. I’m not as young as I look. So we’ve kind of been talking for a bit, but are there any other stories you can think of your dad that you’d like to share before I ask my final question? ST: They used to shoot traps. He had a trap shooting club behind mom’s house and god there’s guys that would come from the intermountain area to shoot traps. One of his oldest buddies that still helps us today gave me one of the trap shooting trophies about a month ago. It was, that’s been a long time ago, in the early 1950’s. That’s about the only thing we haven’t talked about was the trap shooting club they had back there. JT: Well there’s just so many things you couldn’t tell that were just a riot, but it was always so much, the highlight of everything. ST: Every parade he was in it with a horse. Whether he was riding a horse, there were a year or two where he was Ben Hurr in the parade with all the chrome and 22 the helmet and all that. Mom made him an outfit as Ben Hurr. He was wild, he liked to have fun. LW: Oh and he always did the cattle drives with the Golden Spike. Remember when the Weber County Fairgrounds did the cattle drive? He always had a team in that. Yes he always had a team and wagon in that. LR: What was his name? Favaro. JT: Bud. LW: Bud Favaro. LR: He’s the one who started that. LW: So he was always up there with them and I think they did that, what three? How many years did they do that? ST: At least two. LW: Well I think they did it three or four, I don’t know. LR: I didn’t ask, but what was the name of your dad’s ranch? JT: El Rancho Cost a Plenty. LR: Oh that’s nice. JT: El Rancho Cost A Plenty. LW: Yeah it is, it’s hanging on the barn. LR: Okay did any of his other, like the dude ranch, did it have a name? ST: Shorty’s Dude Ranch was on the yellow flyer… LW: I used to have one of those. I wonder what I did with it. ST: I’ve got one in my scrapbook, but it was a flyer the Chamber of Commerce had. 23 LW: Sherry Cunningham she was the Queen of the State of Utah. She was on that little flyer. LR: Gotcha. JT: On his horse. Yeah he let the girls ride his good horses in the 24th of July queen contest. He had a horse that could do anything. It was a registered quarter horse. LR: So I’m going to ask a final question and it’s kind of a hard question because it’s very encompassing. What do you think his legacy is? LW: Happiness. He was just…. ST: Probably I would say put a smile on somebody’s face, reaction. LW: I mean look what he’s left us. JT: Total joy. LW: How many kids would still live like this after their mom or dad died? How many people would stay doing what we do and work as hard as we do if she wanted to sell this. How many people would stay doing this versus take the million dollars and say I don’t want to do that anymore. JT: Money hasn’t been a big thing for us. The big thing for us was you always left with a smile. You’d laugh, we’d remembered things he’d done and it just cracked you up. It’s just all of us have such a great, we love life and he did too. ST: Appreciate life, appreciate the smile, the laughter. JT: The total joy, but he was always at church on Sundays and he’s here holding her hand and she’s dressed up and off to church they go. LW: And my daughter too, my littlest one. 24 JT: His whole life was his family and his friends. At his funeral it was massive. Everybody knew him from the rich to the poor. Whether it was the banker or the little guy that swept the floor, they all knew him. That guy was just as important as the one with all the money and he knew them all. They all knew him too. We loved them all and so did he. We don’t have any bad memories .We have a few wrecks that were bad in the arena, but and still our life is full of joy. At my age when I wake up I’m just so thrilled you know. ST: Well look at what you’ve got to show for it. Hell almighty talk about diamonds in the rough! LR: Alright well I really appreciate you guys and your willingness to talk about your dad, share with us things we don’t know so I appreciate that.