Oral History Program Addie Blodgett Interviewed by Lorrie Rands 14 August, 2017 Oral History Program Weber State University Stewart Library Ogden, Utah Addie Blodgett Interviewed by Lorrie Rands 14 August, 2017 Copyright © 2018 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 World War II "All Out for Uncle Sam" oral history project contains interviews from veterans of the war, wives of soldiers, as well as individuals who were present during the war years. The interviews became the compelling background stories for the "All Out for Uncle Sam" exhibit. The project received funding from Utah Division of State History, Utah Humanities Council and Weber County RAMP. ____________________________________ 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: Blodgett, Addie, an oral history by Lorrie Rands, 14 August 2017, WSU Stewart Library Oral History Program, University Archives, Stewart Library, Weber State University, Ogden, UT. Earl and Addie Blodgett circa 1940s Addie and Earl Blodgett circa 1950s Addie and Earl Blodgett circa 2000s 1 Abstract: This is an oral history interview with Addie Blodgett conducted August 14, 2017 in her home in Ogden, Utah, by Lorrie Rands. In this interview Addie discusses her memories of World War II. Also present are Alyssa Chaffee, the audio technician and Addie’s husband Earl. LR: It is August 14, 2017 and we are in the home of Addie Blodgett, in Ogden, Utah. We are talking about her life and her World War II memories for the World War II in Northern Utah project at Weber State University. I am Lorrie Rands conducting the interview and Alyssa Chaffee is with me as well. Addie, thank you for your time and willingness to sit here and talk with me, I appreciate it. Let’s just start with when and where you were born. AB: I was born in Tetonia, Idaho, September 7, 1926 LR: Well, it’s almost your birthday. I’m assuming Tetonia is a small town? EB: I don’t even think it’s a town; a stop in the road. AB: Well, a railroad stop kind of. Just a little tiny place when I was there, now I don’t know. LR: How long did you live there? AB: Till I was about four, probably. LR: Your dad, did he work on the railroad? AB: No. LR: What did he do? 2 AB: Anything he could to support the family. I asked my brother if my dad was a gypsy because he lived so many places. He said, “No, he was just trying to support the family.” EB: You had a big family. LR: What are some of your memories of growing up during the Depression? AB: Yes, 5 kids. The only thing I really remember is how excited my dad was when Roosevelt got elected. LR: Did he ever say why? AB: No, I think it was because Roosevelt was a Democrat. My dad was a staunch Democrat. LR: That makes sense. When you left Tetonia, where did you move to? AB: We moved twenty miles north of Idaho Falls to a farm there. LR: Was it associated with a town? AB: No, it had one of those tiny grocery stores. It was called Annis, Idaho at the time, and it had just a little tiny grocery store and a school there. LR: Is that where you went to school? AB: That’s where I went to school, two and a half miles away from where we lived. LR: Were you bused there? AB: Oh no, in the winter we had a covered wagon, a sleigh because the snow was so deep. In the summer we walked it. LR: How many siblings did you have? 3 AB: I had one brother, eleven years older than me, and then my dad had three children; his wife died. My mother married him and raised those three children and had my brother and me. Five kids. LR: What was it like growing up on the farm there in Annis and going to school and living with your family? AB: It was a great life. I really can’t complain. It was hard work because we had our own crops and we worked hard in the summer on them and of course my mother canned everything. We had big gardens. LR: What would you guys do for meat? AB: We always got a lot of chickens every spring and raised them. We didn’t kill a lot of meat because we were poor farmers. LR: So you lived on chicken and then the vegetables that you grew? AB: Ya, and we had other meat, but it wasn’t a big thing. LR: What are some of your memories of just growing up in Annis? Do you have any favorite memories? AB: Well, when I was five years old, our house burnt down. We sat out on the lawn and watched it burn and I cried because my doll buggy was in the house. My mother went in that burning house and brought it out to me. How would I know how dangerous that would have been for her? LR: I know, as you look back you can go, “Wow, what was I thinking?” But you were just a little girl. AB: I was five years old. LR: That’s interesting, any other memories that you have? 4 AB: Well, in the winter it was kind of funny, because the covered sleigh had a tarp over it. We had a stove in it and when we hit a drift on the road the driver would say, “Everybody on that side so we won’t tip over.” Then of course I had Rheumatic Fever when I was about twelve. I missed a year of school. I came down in November so I missed the entire year. I had to learn to walk over again. That same sleigh driver, I’d be so cold when I got home he’d carry me to the house. LR: Where did you go to high school? AB: Midway High. After I moved down here, it burned down. All of our trophies and everything went. It was in Louisville, Idaho, I had to walk about a mile to catch the bus to go there. LR: You started high school about 1942? AB: Maybe 1941 or 1942. LR: Let’s talk about your memories of Pearl Harbor day. AB: Oh, it was awful. We were without electricity for years and we finally got electricity and my brother had the radio on and when that came over it was shattering. We couldn’t believe it. LR: When you say it was shattering, what do you mean? AB: Well, it just tore you apart, somebody attacking us. This country was so naïve. We were the big country in the world and we were so naïve that that really hit us hard. LR: You had just turned fifteen, still a teenager, so what were some of your feelings? 5 AB: Everything was rationed. You were allowed so much sugar, so much shortening, so much butter and things. We were farmers, we had animals, so we had our own milk and we made our own butter and everything. But you were limited on sugar. We learned to make cakes with syrup. Mother had a great recipe. I wish I could find that recipe, but I couldn’t find it when she passed away. LR: Everything was rationed, did you make your own clothes? AB: Oh, heavens yes. My mother was a very good seamstress. I’d pick out something in a catalogue that I liked and she could make it. She could make it looked tailored and everything. LR: Wow, that’s really cool. AB: We had a Treadle Singer Sewing Machine, and she was a good sewer. LR: Was fabric rationed? AB: No, but yarns and crochet thread were. I left home and moved into Rigby, Idaho when I was about sixteen. I ran a store there, a five and dime store. My boss and his wife owned it and they would take off and leave me with the store all alone. We rationed crochet threads, yarns, all that was rationed. When you got a supply in you would ration it out to the customer because some customers would want to buy a whole box of it and you didn’t have that. This one lady came in and she wanted to buy more yarn and I said, “I’m sorry, I can only sell you this much.” She was angry. I said, “You know what, I don’t care if we ever get another skein of yarn in, if my husband comes home from overseas safe.” LR: That makes sense. 6 AB: I turned around and my boss lady was there and I thought, “Well, I’ll get fired today.” She said, “Good for you.” LR: Would they need ration stamps to get the yarn? AB: No, we just rationed it out because we were only allowed to buy so much, so all of our customers could have some. LR: That makes sense. You said you moved away from home when you were sixteen. Was there a reason for that? AB: Yes, I wanted to make some money. Money was important. On the farm, you didn’t make money. We had everything, mostly, that we needed but you didn’t make much money. I guess I just got tired of working out in the fields in the summer, thinning beets with a short handled hoe, and hoeing beets. Me and my girlfriend picked up potatoes in big wire baskets and dumped them in the sacks for all the farmers around. I guess I just got tired of doing that. LR: I can understand that. Did you have to have your parents’ permission to go to Rigby? AB: Not at all. LR: Where were you living? AB: One of my cousins was working in Penny’s over there and living in a little apartment house, upstairs over one of the stores, so I moved in with her. LR: Were you still going to school at this point? Or did you quit high school? AB: No, I quit school. I finished my junior year and that’s when I went to work. I only had one credit left to finish high school, but it was biology and I could not bear the thought of biology. So, I never really finished. 7 LR: When did you meet Earl? AB: When I was fourteen, down here. My half-brother lived down here one summer and worked on Second Street. I came down and lived with them one summer and he worked with my brother. I guess he brought the car out to have Leslie work on it. EB: I was working down there with Leslie, and I bought a mustang in California the junior year and I put musical horns on it, Ford Tune Horns. I got them all on but I couldn’t figure out how to hook them up so I was working with him and he said, “I can fix it for you if you bring it out to where I’m living.” So on this one fourth of July, I took it out to him because we were off work. He hooked it up so it could play “Mary had a little lamb” and all that other stuff on it, and she came down to visit with him during the summer. So, for him fixing my car, I took them to Lagoon. She was fourteen then. I was eighteen. AB: First time I saw him I had curlers in my hair. EB: So anyway, she went home and I didn’t see her again after that until the following winter I took up a thing for her, women’s stuff. You have that box with the comb and the brush and all that in it. They still have them. I took that up for her for Christmas. She was fifteen then. AB: In the winter when he came up, he was so cold when he got there. EB: My hands were frozen. AB: My mother had to help him out of the car. EB: On the roofs, they just had canvas then, it was ice cold. LR: When you started working in Rigby, were you two writing? 8 AB: We were writing all the time. LR: When was it you decided to get married? EB: 1944 when I came home for my grandmother’s funeral. AB: Yes he said, “Let’s get married now.” We didn’t have time because it was a three day waiting law at that time. EB: I only had three days off. AB: So, I came down here and spent the time home with his folks. LR: Okay, where did you get married? AB: Mount Clemens, Michigan. LR: Okay, will you tell it from your point of view? AB: Okay, I collected my mother and his mother and we went back to Mount Clemens, Michigan. He said, “I’m going to be here for a while if you come back we can get married.” So, I collected the two of them and we went back. We got there on a Saturday night, the government opened the courthouse on Sunday so we could get a license. They gave me lunch with all the G.I.’s. Took me in a Jeep to the little chapel. I had my blood tests at the base too. It was amazing what the government can do. I have two marriage licenses. I have a state of Michigan one, we used his mother's wedding ring, and an Air force one, which we bought the next day. EB: Then tell her about us shipping out. AB: I couldn’t have gotten married when I got back there if I hadn’t had my mother because they had the three day waiting law. LR: So it’s good thing you took your mom. 9 AB: Yes; I wasn’t thinking about taking her but she said, “I always wanted to see my only daughter get married.” I said, “Then come with me.” LR: You’re in Michigan. You’re marrying this guy, you have both of your mothers there. How long were you able to stay with him until he left? AB: Practically nothing at all. Was it the next day they pounded on the door? AB: Oh ya, I got my ring. I used his mother’s ring because we didn’t have a jewelry store open back there. EB: Then we had that day and the next day I was gone. AB: Ya, the next day they pounded on his door and said, “You’re leaving.” LR: So you got one whole day with your husband. AB: Well, yes. Then there was some other army wives that had the same problem, so they collected me and we went to North Carolina. I stayed down there for about a week before they said, “Send your wives home, you’re going overseas.” LR: Okay, so you followed him to North Carolina? AB: Yes I did. LR: Oh good for you. AC: I’m curious, did you have time to pull together a wedding dress or anything? AB: Hell no. I said, “Why pack one, I’ll get one back there,” but I didn’t know. We didn’t have time for things like dresses. AC: So you just packed your suitcases and off you went. AB: Ya, I just wore a nice suit that I had. LR: You follow him to North Carolina, you’re there for a week and he gets shipped off, so what did you decide to do? 10 AB: I came right home to my job in Rigby Idaho. He said he would call me just before they shipped out, and he did call me but he couldn’t tell me anything. LR: Right. AB: “Where are you? Where are you going?” “I can’t tell you, I can’t tell you.” Although we had a code set up so I knew where he was at. LR: Do you remember what that code was? AB: Yes, capital letter of every paragraph in the letter and they didn’t find it. AB: My letters when I got them were shredded. They’d take a sentence out here, and a sentence out here, and a sentence out here. They were just pieces when I got them and we’d be talking about nothing but personal items. They thought they were destroying any message that he could possibly send to me. LR: But you had your own system? AB: And they never figured it out, so I knew where he was at. LR: So, you’re working in Rigby, and I know you wanted to work, but was there anything else you wanted to do to be involved in the war effort? Did you feel like there was something else you could do? AB: No, because there was no war effort up there really, other than the rationing, and all young guys were gone. We didn’t know much except for the prisoners that came in. They brought truckloads of Italian kids in. Beautiful blonde boys and I think, “How did they get over here?” They brought them to the farmers because all the fellows were gone. They helped take out crops and stuff. LR: Did you ever interact with any of those prisoners? 11 AB: No, I didn’t, because I was in town, so I didn’t get involved. My mother did. She said she had to fix them a meal, but she was not even allowed to go out into the field to take the meal to them. One of the guards had to come in and take the food out to the kids. AC: I want to go back a little bit to when you would sell the yarn. I’m curious, how would you ration the yarn? AB: They were in skeins, and you just told them that they could only buy so many. AC: Okay, so you didn’t have to cut the skeins apart? AB: Oh no. AC: Okay, that’s much easier. LR: Okay, what was the date of your marriage? AB: March 18, 1945. EB: We just celebrated our seventy-fifth anniversary here a while back. AC: Oh congratulations, that’s great. LR: Wow, I know you said you wrote letters to one another, how often would you receive those letters? AB: Well, I had a lady that would come into the store and she’d look at me and say, “You didn’t get a letter today, did you? You’ll get two tomorrow,” and I usually did. LR: Okay, so those letters were kind of like a life line, you looked forward to those? AB: They were a life line. I knew that at that point he was okay. LR: That makes sense. So were you working in that store in Rigby the whole time while he was gone? AB: Yep. 12 LR: I’m curious, I realize that Rigby is a small town, but you never really felt or saw much of the war effort up there? AB: No, not really, because we were just totally out of it, a tiny town up there. I wish, now looking back, that I’d have move down here and gotten a real job, because I would have made more money. But at that time it wasn’t that important. LR: So when he comes home, what did you guys do? AB: He said, “I’ll be in Salt Lake this time, meet me there.” LR: So did you just quit your job in Rigby? AB: Yes. LR: And you just came down to Salt Lake and met him? AB: Yes. LR: And where did you guys go? EB: We stayed out behind my folks. AB: Ya, we fixed a little place out behind his folks’ house, because you couldn’t buy anything. We couldn’t buy a refrigerator, you couldn’t buy anything at that point. You had to put your name in and wait until you came up. Actually, we were criminals because we swiped two or three pieces of silverware. At that time they didn’t have plastic, so we swiped a couple of forks, and a couple of spoons. EB: From where? AB: I think it was the old Walgreen drug store on 25th street and Washington. That’s terrible, and it’s the only thing I’ve ever swiped in my life. LR: Spoons? AB: We had to eat. 13 LR: Right. That’s interesting. So where did you live in Ogden then? AB: It was out on his farm. We live there for about a year, until I had had it. Then I said, “Get me out of here. Buy me a tent, rent me a trailer, but just get me away from here.” EB: We bought a house on Adams Avenue between 27th and 28th. AB: Well, it was 470 Doxey. It was a little old house. EB: It didn’t even have any switches or plug-ins or nothing in it, it was so old. AB: I was so nervous buying somebody else’s house because she had a cat that she hadn’t taken care of. So we went and sprayed it with formaldehyde and an insect spray and closed it up for three days before we’d even do anything. LR: Well that makes sense. AB: I said, “This is going to be germ proof before I walk into this house.” LR: I don’t blame ya. So, when you moved into this house, did you decide to stay home and raise a family or did you want to keep working? EB: You worked. You worked downtown. AB: I worked the only place I could find a job: I worked at the canning factory. I worked anyplace. Finally, when we were out on the farm, I got a job at Woolworths because I was used to working and I can’t sit there all day and do nothing. I’ve worked my entire life. EB: Even while she had children she still kept on working. AB: I had a babysitter in my home for fifteen years, the same babysitter. She was their second mother. I’ve always worked, very little time did I ever take off. 14 LR: I like that. Did it ever occur to you that you were kind of setting a trend because you were working and not staying home with your family? AB: No, I was working because that pay check helped my family to get better things and have nice things. We moved into a new home and we had a trailer, we had a truck, we had things and we took the family everywhere we went. Our kids went with us. I never left my kids except while I was at work during the day. Evening, I was home all evening with my kids. AC: Where would you work, what jobs would you do? AB: At Woolworth’s he said, “If you want to work I’ll get you on at Second Street,” so he got me out there temporarily for a year. Then I worked at the tailoring mill and put sleeves in stuff with the big power machines down there, and I worked there until I was called out at Hill Field. Then I worked there until I retired from there. Then I went to work for Monroe International for five years until the job moved to Salt Lake. Then I worked for Backus business machines for fifteen years, and ever since then I work on Christmas socks. I make quilts, I always work. EB: She makes a dozen quilts. AB: I’ve never been idle. I don’t do well idle. EB: She’s got a 91 inch one laying out in the middle of the floor. AB: Well, no, it’s folded on a hanger now. The top of it. AC: That’s great. LR: So, what would you do at Hill Field? AB: I worked in supply for a while and then I can’t remember the second, but as fast as I could advance, I advanced into other offices. At the last, I worked in 15 accounting. LR: You were there for twenty years? EB: No, sixteen something years. AB: I had cancer. I had surgery. While I was totally unconscious he retired me. EB: I had said, “Sign here.” AB: I would have had a good retirement from there. LR: I know, that’s why I thought you retired from there. AB: I can’t imagine I signed it. EB: Easy. You was completely out and I said, “Sign here,” so she reached out of the bed and she signed it. AB: I had a good job out there. EB: She had an excellent job. AB: They hired two people to do my job after I left. EB: The doctor said she cannot work full time to me. So I said, “She’s retiring.” AB: So, I immediately worked for Monroe International for five years, then I just got home and he said, “Don’t go back to work. Take the summer off with the kids.” Then Backus business machines asked me to come to work for them. LR: Okay, so you literally have worked every day. AB: I’ve always worked. I wouldn’t know what to do if I couldn’t work. I get more tired when I don't work. LR: You know it’s interesting to me because during the time that you were working, it was more common for women to stay home with their families, so in a way, you were setting a trend. You were setting a precedence. 16 AB: I did set a trend, because I got all three of my daughters through college. I said, “You know, there might come a day when you have to support your family. So prepare.” All three of my girls have worked. Two of them are retired now and the other one will retire in two to three years probably. AC: How many children did you have? AB: Three girls. AC: Okay, just the three girls. EB: Guess what? They’re all born on her birthday almost. AB: First one was due on my birthday and she came three days early. The next one was due at the end of September and she came on my daughter’s birthday, so we have three birthdays within three days. The third ones Birthday is October second AC: How is that to have girls that have the same birthday? Is there a lot of squabbling? AB: It was great when they were little. When I threw a birthday part I had a lot of kids, but I got it over with one party. EB: They still do. As of the twentieth or twenty-seventh they’re going to have four birthdays, and yours. AB: They can ignore mine because I don’t want any more birthdays. I keep telling them, don’t live the age I’ve lived to either. LR: I don’t think we have much control over that. 17 AB: No, I wish I did. Because, at this point all of our friends are gone. We moved in here forty years ago and we were the new kids on the block. Everybody has died or moved. Most of them have died. So all the people are newer people. EB: We don’t know any of them. AB: Our card partners are gone. We used to play canasta or some kind of game. EB: Twice a week. AB: Once a week with our friends. We have no friends because we’re too old. When we moved into our new house over there we were all young with children. Didn’t have a telephone so we made the telephone company put a booth on the end of our driveway until they could get lines up there and get us set up. We had little kids, we had to have to have a phone. LR: That’s brilliant. AB: But we’ve outlived everybody we knew. We have one person that we knew from our old neighborhood that’s still alive. EB: He’s ninety-two. AB: The fellow that lived across the street from us, a marvelous neighbor, him and his wife are real good friends. She died a long time ago, but he comes to visit us at the holidays every year. We tell him, “Harry, we want you to come and visit us again,” and he’ll come. He’ll call up one day and say, “Can I come today?” AC: What year was your first daughter born? EB: Linda was born in 1949. AB: The second one in 1952 and the third one in 1957. LR: So you had three children. How many grandchildren? 18 AB: I have seven grandchildren and seven great grandchildren. AB: I have a granddaughter in Tennessee. She’s married to a doctor and has two children. In fact they’re going to be here in about a week. EB: Less than that, two or three days. AB: A grandson in California with two little boys, and they will be here for Thanksgiving. Of course Lara, the ones from Tennessee, will be here for Christmas, every year. Then Terri has three boys. One’s in Florida and he was here a month ago or so, and their other two boys live here. EB: One’s in North Ogden. AB: Her last boy is having a baby this month. First baby. They’ve got a brand new home in North Ogden. LR: Okay, so you’re older brother, the one who is eleven years older than you, did he fight in the war? AB: No, he was a farmer. LR: So, he just worked? AB: My dad was unable to do a lot of work because he had rheumatism and his hands were crippled really bad, so Lawrence was spared the war, and he was older with the war anyway. I doubt if they would have drafted Lawrence, because they were drafting kids my age. EB: If you were over thirty-five you never got drafted. EB: But every one of us when we walked out of high school got a draft card. Every boy. 19 AB: The boys still have to sign up when they leave high school. All of my family is gone, I’m the last one left other than my nieces and nephews. My nephew was just down over the weekend. He just left and went back to Idaho. LR: Alright. I want to end with my ending question. I’ve enjoyed this and you’ve told some great stories and I appreciate it. My final question is: How do you think your experiences during World War II shaped or effected the rest of your life? AB: I’ve never thought about it like that. I think it made us really, really conscious of what could happen to this country. We’re not as naïve as we used to be. LR: This is true. AB: We’re not the powerhouse of the world anymore either, and I worry about what’s happening to us. LR: Well, thank you for your time, it has been amazing.