Oral History Program DeLoss M. Eggleston Interviewed by Lorrie Rands 17 September 2013 Oral History Program Weber State University Stewart Library Ogden, Utah DeLoss M. Eggleston Interviewed by Lorrie Rands 17 September 2013 Copyright © 2014 by Weber State University, Stewart Library Mission Statement The Oral History Program of the Stewart Library was created to preserve the institutional history of Weber State University and the Davis, Ogden and Weber County communities. By conducting carefully researched, recorded, and transcribed interviews, the Oral History Program creates archival oral histories intended for the widest possible use. Interviews are conducted with the goal of eliciting from each participant a full and accurate account of events. The interviews are transcribed, edited for accuracy and clarity, and reviewed by the interviewees (as available), who are encouraged to augment or correct their spoken words. The reviewed and corrected transcripts are indexed, printed, and bound with photographs and illustrative materials as available. The working files, original recording, and archival copies are housed in the University Archives. Project Description Business at the Crossroads - Ogden City is a project to collect oral histories related to changes in the Ogden business district since World War II. From the 1870s to World War II, Ogden was a major railroad town, with nine rail systems. With both east-west and north-south rail lines, business and commercial houses flourished as Ogden became a shipping and commerce hub. After World War II, the railroad business declined. Some government agencies and businesses related to the defense industry continued to gravitate to Ogden after the war—including the Internal Revenue Regional Center, the Marquardt Corporation, Boeing Corporation, Volvo-White Truck Corporation, Morton-Thiokol, and several other smaller operations. However, the economy became more service oriented, with small businesses developing that appealed to changing demographics, including the growing Hispanic population. ____________________________________ Oral history is a method of collecting historical information through recorded interviews between a narrator with firsthand knowledge of historically significant events and a well-informed interviewer, with the goal of preserving substantive additions to the historical record. Because it is primary material, oral history is not intended to present the final, verified, or complete narrative of events. It is a spoken account. It reflects personal opinion offered by the interviewee in response to questioning, and as such it is partisan, deeply involved, and irreplaceable. ____________________________________ Rights Management This work is the property of the Weber State University, Stewart Library Oral History Program. It may be used freely by individuals for research, teaching and personal use as long as this statement of availability is included in the text. It is recommended that this oral history be cited as follows: Eggleston, DeLoss, an oral history by Lorrie Rands, 17 September 2013, WSU Stewart Library Oral History Program, Special Collections, Stewart Library, Weber State University, Ogden, UT. iii DeLoss M. Eggleston September 17, 2013 Abstract: The following is an oral history interview with DeLoss Eggleston. The interview was conducted on September 17, 2013, by Lorrie Rands, in Ogden, Utah. DeLoss discusses his experience with 25th Street. LR: It is September 17th, 2013. We are in the home of DeLoss Eggleston in Ogden talking about 25th street and surrounding Ogden. Caroline Olmstead is doing the camera. So DeLoss, I appreciate you allowing us into your home for this, a lot. Let’s start out simple, when and where were you born? DE: I was born at the old McKay-Dee or the Dee Hospital on 24th and Harrison in 1926. LR: Okay, and where did you grow up? DE: I grew up in Eden. That’s up in Ogden Valley. You have Huntsville, Eden and Liberty and then you go over the mountain to Paradise. LR: So your family would commute over into Ogden to work and go to school? DE: Well, we had a farm. My father hauled the milk from Eden and Liberty, down to the Weber Central Dairy. That used to be on Ogden Avenue between 25th and 26th street. LR: Where was Ogden Avenue? DE: Between Washington and Adams. So, it’s a half street. LR: So kind of like Kiesel. 1 DE: Yes. LR: It’s not there anymore, is it? DE: Yeah. Oh yes. LR: Where did you go to school then? DE: I went to Eden Elementary School until I got to the fifth grade and then they closed that school and transferred us to Huntsville. So I went to Huntsville for junior high and then Weber High School. Which was at the time on 12th and Washington, where the market used to be, it’s not there anymore. LR: So, you mentioned last time that you had a job on 25th street. So, what were some of your jobs and experiences on 25th street growing up? DE: Well, actually, we ran the milk down there and I would run down if we got a chance to go down to Ross and Jack’s for a bowl of soup. They would always give us plenty of crackers, so we would crack up all the crackers and put them in the bowl of soup and this would be our lunch sometimes. After I was a junior at Weber High School, I got a job at Walgreens drug store on the corner of 25th and Washington, in the main floor of the Broom Hotel. And that Broom Hotel was one of the best ones. The Ben Lomond Hotel was on the other side, or across the street from us and we had a lot of business there, in that drug store. LR: How long did you work there? DE: Oh, about six months. LR: So, what was one of the reasons why you quit? 2 DE: I had a little disagreement with my father and I went down to live with my sister who was living in West Ogden and her husband was in the service and he was transferred to San Diego. So she decided to go down there and that left me all by myself there at her place. And I couldn’t get up early enough to go to school and I wanted to graduate from high school. So I moved to California to live with my sister, Alice, down there and graduate from a high school down in El Monte, California. LR: So, while you were working there, did you see any interesting things that would occur on 25th? DE: Oh, lots of interesting things. During the war, and this was in ’43 or ’44, there was a lot of soldiers and they invariably would walk up 25th to Washington and usually stop in for refreshments where we could serve drinks and malts and things of that sort, and we had plenty of pie. We would compete with Ross and Jack’s down the street. LR: So you would see a lot of the soldiers coming in. Would you ever have an opportunity to walk down the street? DE: Oh yes. I would walk down the street there, 25th to Lincoln, or, 25th to Grant. There was the Grey Hound Bus Station. I would walk that way and once in a while would go down to the railroad station. It was interesting to watch all the soldiers. LR: It wasn’t something that was common practice then to just walk up and down the street. 3 DE: Yes, it was. LR: Why do you think that was? DE: Well, I was just a kid. LR: Okay. You mentioned last time about a friend you had that knew about the tunnels on 25th street. DE: Oh yes. This friend of mine who taught school with me actually, he had business down there and he would go down to stores to get the rent, he owned the buildings and then would rent them out. So he would go in to collect rent and things of that sort. And he talked about the several hotels that had tunnels going from one to the other. So that if anything that happened to one they could just go to the other and close the door and hide themselves. Then once in a while, we would walk down behind the hotels. There was an alley way that we would go down there and it was interesting to see various things and the windows and apartments that were on that street and the red lights. LR: So walking behind in those alleys, did you notice the little cribs they had, behind those buildings? The little shacks. DE: Well, yeah. I always thought they were just storage unit. But they may be. LR: So in 1943, ’44 you enlisted correct? DE: I was drafted. When I went to California. I tried to enlist in the navy and they turned me down because of a scar on my shoulder and so I thought I was 4F. So when the army came along, they drafted me. LR: So the story of the bus and… 4 DE: Oh, gas was rationed and there was no automobiles being sold. So automobiles were old. And transportation was a real problem. At the bus stations, the war effort, they told the drivers of the buses that they had to let the soldiers get on the buses first because of their scheduling and such. So soldiers and their wives could get on the bus first. The soldiers who were not married would come up there and there would be a group of young ladies watching them. Well, not necessarily young ladies, but ladies watching them and as soon as they came up and as soon as they realized they were single, they would come up and ask them if they could be their wives, for the purpose of getting on the bus and making the trip. When I was in the army, I went on my 30 day leave before I went overseas, I went to California and I rode the bus from Los Angeles to Baltimore, Maryland, which is a long ride. I had five wives on that trip going there. When I got to Maryland, I went to get my haircut and I didn’t realize but it was a long ride and I hadn’t had a bath. I went in to get a haircut and the barber looked at me: “I gotta wash your head before I cut your hair.” LR: So after the war you, you came back to Ogden. DE: Yes, I came back to California. Then I went on a mission for the church to France and then came back and went to Weber College to get my education. LR: So, while you were at Weber College, did you ever just walk down the hill a little ways? DE: Yeah, I did. There were stores down there that, oh, a couple of them had interesting things, loan shops and such and I used to go down to them. 5 LR: Can you remember any in particular? DE: Well, the one down there, just up the street from Wall Avenue, Ogden. LR: The Gift Shop? DE: Yeah, the gift shop there. LR: And what about that did you find interesting? DE: See, at that time the train station was a big station. They were doing a lot. They had underpasses up there to the various lines that could go out. It was kind of fascinating to watch people. I enjoy people. LR: That seems to be a common thing. A lot of people going on 25th street just to watch. DE: Yeah, yeah. LR: So would you do that often? DE: Not too terribly often, I was too busy. LR: But when you did, it was always fascinating? DE: Yeah. Before, when I was going to Weber High School, this friend of mine had a car, actually it was his dad’s car but we drove it and we would run the boulevard and also go up and down and watch people going in there. Once in a while you would find a drunk that was laying on the curb and you’d look at him and wonder what to do with him but we never did anything with them. LR: So after you graduated from Weber College, what did you decide to do as a career? 6 DE: As a career? LR: Yeah, as your career. DE: Well, I went down to the Y and graduated from there. Weber was a two year college and I had been over in France and after I had finished my mission I went to Sorbonne for a quarter. So when I came back to Weber, between military and that language, I could get through a little faster. So in reality, I got through four years of college in three years. Not counting the quarter I did in France. But then I went into education and weird things happened. I was at the Y and I was married. My wife was expecting and I needed a job. So I kept hounding the employment office and one day I was in there and their phone rang and I waited until she answered the phone and then she says: “Have you ever taught driving. Driver education?” I said: “Well I haven’t done it but I could do it.” “Well they want somebody at Provo High School for adult driver education.” So I went down there and got the job, did a little class work to help out. After I graduated I was looking for a job and I would hit the employment office every once in a while. Anyway, one day I was in there and I came out and I was thinking about what they had done, I was concentrating. I came out and I ran right into the superintendent of the Ogden City schools. I didn’t really know him but anyway, I somehow got to talking to him and he said well give me an application. So I made out an application and then I moved up back up to Ogden after graduating and graduated from the Y. So I came back up here and I was living with my in-laws, looking for a job. And he came up to the house, this is funny, and I wasn’t there but he came up to the house where I was staying and knocked on the door. My 7 wife, who was pregnant and barefoot, greeted him. Anyway, he offered me a job and I started teaching driver education at Ben Lomond High School. I was on the original faculty at Ben Lomond. I got involved in the National Organization for Driver Education. It was just beginning and we went through the legislature and got permission and funding for driver ed. and when you get a driver’s license, you give them an extra dollar for driver’s education and we got that bill passed. Here in Ogden, they started building automobile driving rangers around the country and so I went to the superintendent and asked him what we could do and he said that we had a location for an elementary school but they were building the elementary school in another place. I asked, “Can I have that land and build a driving range on it.” “Yeah go ahead.” So, I built the driving range that is used by both Ogden and Ben Lomond High School down here on Mountain Road. The elementary school, Horace Mann, was the one they were going to build down there but they decided to build it up here. LR: So, what year did Ben Lomond open? DE: ’53. LR: And you were on the original faculty? DE: Yeah. There are three of us left, of the original faculty. LR: You said Ogden City uses the driving range. Do they use it? DE: Ogden High School, just Ben Lomond High School. Just the high school. LR: Just the high schools. I thought you said the city. DE: No. 8 LR: Now you mentioned last time that you were on the committee to help change the speed limits here in Ogden. DE: I knew the fellow who was the Mayor at the time and he asked me to serve on a traffic and parking coordinating committee that the city council had established. There were about, well it varied, but around 10 to 15 on that committee. As far as I know, I’m the only one still alive of that group. There was a judge that was on there but he passed away last year. And we worked the kind of parking problems that they’re still concerned about in town but you’re never going to solve all of those. But at the time when the automobiles first started out, the state legislature said that all speed limits in cities would be 25 miles an hour. Now this is the ‘50s and ‘60s and cars were much better than when they set that limit. So with the use of radar, which was new, they just started using radar, we could measure the rate of speed which traffic was going and we would use unmarked cars, we would always note the time, location, the weather, and anything else that was important on the streets. We found that in the majority of streets, traffic was going much faster than 25. Personally, and I believe and I persuaded the others, that 85 percent of the drivers, are pretty good drivers. You may want to argue that but anyway, we came to the conclusion that the speed should be set at about what 85 percent of the drivers were driving. So we raised a lot of the speed limits in a lot of the streets. East, west, north, south streets, main streets, we raised that to 35. After we raised that to 35, I have to say there are two streets where the people on those streets, really argued that’s too fast, you’re going to kill our kids. But anyway, we, after we gave people time to use to driving on the 35, we check 9 the speed they were driving on every street in Ogden but on, the traffic was going slower with the 35 mile per hour speed limit than it was with the 25. Now the next question you ask is what that other street is. The 24th street viaduct. LR: And how fast were they going there? DE: Just slightly over 35. LR: That makes sense. It’s a long stretch. DE: Yeah. But the two streets that people objected to, we measured that several times in the driveways of the people who were objecting and found that traffic was slower at the 35 mile an hour speed limit than the 25. Today, the city council has lowered the speed on those two streets and watch out. Because they can set up a road block and give tickets. LR: And those two streets are? DE: 16th Street and Collins Boulevard. LR: And remind me again where Collins Boulevard is? DE: As drive out on Harrison and come past 2nd street, 1st street, there’s Collins Boulevard goes down and circles and then goes onto North Street. So if you’re going down to Walmart, you out there on Collins Boulevard down to Walmart, or, Lowes, which is on the corner there of North and Washington. And you can also go down to D.I. from there. LR: So being on this committee of parking, did you ever have the opportunity to look at the parking on and around 25th street. 10 DE: Yes. LR: And how did that change? DE: Well, we went from angle parking to parallel parking so that you could have more traffic lanes. LR: Okay. DE: Now they are back to angle parking. LR: Which do you think is more effective? DE: Well it depends on what you want to do. The reason they went to angle parking is because they’d have a lot of people that wanted to park there. But for every person who pulls in and backs out, they block traffic, because there is only one lane. So with the two lanes, our philosophy was, traffic would flow smoother but there wasn’t as many parking places. So it’s a ball game, there is no answer to those. LR: So did you enjoy being a part of that? DE: Oh yes. LR: Why was that enjoyable to you? DE: I interviewed people after we raised the speed limit and I said: How come you’re going slower? And people would say: I don’t know, I didn’t realize I was. I’m thinking more about traffic and the traffic controls and I don’t worry about the speed. Where the speed limit is lower, you’re watch your speedometer all the time to watch out and see what is happening. 11 LR: Kind of going back in time a little bit. You mentioned that you would take hay, I assume from up in Eden, down to the POWs during the war. DE: During the second World War, out where the fair grounds are out in the DDO, out in the north area there, approximately where the fairgrounds, the race track and such, that was a cavalry unit. I mean that’s cavalry with horses. Just south of that was a prisoner of war camp where the Italian prisoners of war were. We did have a few Germans but the Germans were put up into Idaho. When we were hauling milk for the dairy, we had two trucks. One truck we’d pick it up in Liberty and the other we’d pick it up in Eden and then put it all on one truck to bring it down here, so we’d have the other truck available. So I would use that truck to haul straw from Eden down to the cavalry unit there. The Italian prisoners of war would come over and unload my truck for me. Then so, those Italian prisoners of war were used for the cannery, for beets, sugar beets, if you know what sugar beets were, they were work. To pick the beet up, cut the top off and then throw them in the bin. But they made sugar out of that, the sugar beets. They worked in those areas too. There were a bunch of those after they went back to Italy, they returned here and if you found out whose those names are, there are some prominent names from those Italians who came back. LR: Do you remember some on those? DE: Well, the one had a store, a restaurant, on the corner of 27th and Washington, on the northeast corner. And If I remember right, that was Rigo. I think the Marconi’s were involved there too. 12 LR: Were you even able to communicate with these POWs or were they able to communicate with you? DE: I couldn’t understand them and they couldn’t understand me. No. Although some of them knew a little bit of English. But they were busy doing the work. LR: So, have you been on 25th street in the last 10 years? DE: Oh yes. I go down there, that pawn shop down there at the bottom. I’ve dealt with him a bit, yes. LR: Do you think it’s changed for the better? DE: Yes. They have some real nice restaurants there and this farmer market bit down there on Saturdays, that’s big. See, the original building there on 20, well the city and county building that was there, that was built by the WPA. Do you know what the WPA was? LR: I do. DE: WPA, PWA. LR: I couldn’t tell you what it stands for but I could tell you what they did. DE: You know what buildings they built here? LR: I do. They build the city and county building here, Ogden High and the Forestry building. Les Hobson designed them. DE: Now, the CCC Boys. Up in The Valley, they had a CCC boy’s camp. Actually, the lake covers that location right now but it was right next to where David O. McKay’s farm was down there, which is under the lake. The CCC Boys built the 13 road up to snow basin. The reason that old road was so nice and curvy is because they had the maximum of man power and the least amount of equipment and so they took the easiest way and curved that road. You’re too young, you don’t remember that road. It’s closed now, but it was the old road that went up to Snow Basin. This friend of mine worked with the CCC Boys, now they had two scrapers that they would use with teams of horses to pull the scraper. The Fresno was a lower one and I can’t remember the name of the other one but it had a big boom on it and you’d raise that one up like this and dig down to get a load of dirt in there and pull back on it to lift the blade so that you could haul that and then dump it where ever you wanted. So this one friend of mine, some of those CCC Boys were not familiar with that kind of work, so this one young man told this one boy: “Always hang onto that bar, don’t let go of that bar.” Well, what’s going to happen if you’re digging in there and you hit rock, that blade is going to flip up! And this kid hanging onto that bar hit a rock and sailed over the top of the horses. But anyways, that was a big project for the CCC Boys. They also did a lot of terracing. In 1937, they had a real lot of rain like this and they had floods coming down the canyons. If you go along the highway 89 headed for Salt Lake, you can see some rock figures where they blocked that off. Up in Willard, that flood is so bad that it raised that road and you’ll notice that the houses on the west side of Willard are down lower because that mud came down there and they have that one rock fixture for run off of that canyon. That was a wet year. Consequently, the CCC Boys would go up into Willard Bay, in Monte Cristo and terrace, so that the rain wouldn’t come down. This is what some of 14 those people need to do with these fire zones, is to go in and terrace those so that the water will not go in an wash down and fill their houses with mud. LR: That would be a smart thing to do. So you were starting to talk about going into the gift shop. DE: The pawn shop. LR: Yeah, in recent years, have you dealt with Scott, the owner of that. DE: Oh, I just know who he is. LR: So you actually went into that shop earlier, right? Do you think his shop has changed much or do you think it’s kind of stayed the same? DE: The one part of it had pretty much stayed the same. But he has enlarged a little bit there. He’s an interesting person. LR: Yes, he is. I agree with you. So you think 25th street had changed for the better. Do you think there is anything else they could do to make it a better street? DE: I don’t know. I think they got the right idea. I think they’re going the right direction on it because some of those stores are doing good, of course, they could make museums out of a couple of them. LR: Well, I have pretty much asked all of my questions but I wanted to ask if there was anything else you wanted to add? DE: Well, just that I enjoy this area. I lived in California, down in the Los Angeles area and I’ll tell you one story there. This was back in ’45, ’46, no couldn’t have been. ’46 or ’47. They had just laid out the plan for the freeways and they had a unit 15 down there in Los Angeles where they were showing this and I went in there and I looked at that map of those freeways and this friend of mine, well there were four of us there, and I said: “This is going to be the biggest traffic jam this area has ever seen.” And I went to describe that, not realizing that the guy who designed it was standing right behind me. Well, anyway, he didn’t change anything, he didn’t believe me. Later I went down there and that was the biggest traffic jam down in that area. In fact, we had a convention down there and it was going to be in the big stadium they had at the time. As I got onto that freeway heading in there I was with other people who were going with us to that same location and I took one look at the traffic on there and I jumped off because I had driven around there, because I knew the area, so I used the other streets and I got there to the convention. I was there for an hour and a half before those other people came. LR: So did that experience help you with, I know you didn’t design streets, but did that help you with when you were trying to figure out speed and what not? DE: At the time I was on that committee, they built Harrison, the road from Harrison and 21st street to 12th street coming down the hill there. They built that and it was real nice, that’s a good street. Our debate, what should the speed limit be on that street. So we put radar up on that street to measure the speed what traffic was going and debated, we had an argument. But I won out and that speed limit was set at 50 miles an hour and today you’ll find people going a little faster than 50 miles an hour coming down that hill. But coming down that hill you’ve got to 16 watch out for deer because the deer will go across there. But anyway, that was one yes. LR: Well, thank you so much for your time. I appreciate the interview you have done with us and we’ll wrap up. DE: Well, it’s been enjoyable. LR: It has been. DE: Thank you. 17