Oral History Program Shirley Smout Interviewed by Wess Marriott Circa 2019 Oral History Program Weber State University Stewart Library Ogden, Utah Shirley Smout Interviewed by Wess Marriott Circa 2019 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 Marriott-Slaterville City Oral History Collection was created by the residents of the town to document their history. Each participant was provided with a list of questions asking for; stories about their childhood, schools they attended, stories about their parents and grand-parents, activities they enjoyed, fashions they remember, difficulties or traumas they may have dealt with, and memories of community and church leaders. This endeavor has left behind rich histories, stories and important information regarding the history of the Marriott-Slaterville area. ____________________________________ 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: Smout, Shirley, an oral history by Wess Marriott, Circa 2019, WSU Stewart Library Oral History Program, University Archives, Stewart Library, Weber State University, Ogden, UT. Shirley Smout Circa 2019 1 Abstract: The following is an oral history interview with Shirley Smout, conducted Circa 2019, by Wess Marriott. Shirley discusses her life and her memories of Marriott-Saterville, Utah. WM: Okay so we have Shirley Smout here and we are grateful. We start out by asking your age. SS: I’m 84. WM: What’s your birthday? SS: November 15, 1934. WM: And where were you born? SS: I was born in a log cabin in Slaterville. WM: Okay, can you remember the roads at all? SS: Yes, now it’s called 2250 west. WM: Okay. SS: And in my lifetime, we were right on the bank of Middle Creek. The cross bars of the old Slaterville is in front of my house. WM: Really? SS: I remember three different bridges over the Middle Creek. At first, it goes down like this [uses arm motions], it makes me think that at one time the river must have come through there where the creek comes through there now. WM: Where the creek is there now. 2 SS: Because of the size of the creek bed. You know, it’s just big like this. Originally it was just a small bridge. Just up above the water but off to west of it, they had left a place where the teams and horses could go down and they would stop the horses and let them drink. WM: Really? SS: They’d stand there and let the horses drink and rest and drink and rest and then they’d pick up and off they’d go. WM: Oh my gosh. SS: I remember the horses pulling the wagons full of pea vines or whatever. WM: Right. SS: Sugar beets or whatever they were hauling hay. After that, they built the road up to some extent and put in another bridge and this one had rails on it because it was a little higher. WM: Yep. SS: Then some years back, to get to more modern times, they did away with that had just had a straight, flat road. So if you wanted to, you could fall off the edge and go over. We had a neighbor who pulled into our yard—facing west, and when they backed up, they had too much momentum going and the car fell into the creek. WM: Oh really? SS: Actually it hung by the front wheels. 3 WM: Oh my gosh. SS: So the mom was driving. She sent her boy in to call for some help because they had fallen into the ditch. WM: Oh my gosh. SS: Turned out to be the Middle Creek. WM: Right. SS: But they pulled that out and no one was hurt. The kids thought it was funny. WM: That’s such a great history. Very few people have given me that much of a history on something as critical as the creek bed. SS: Now of course, the sewer came along that street and it turns right in front of my house and comes up my farm driveway and along the bank of Middle Creek until it gets farther north and then it turns west again. I remember when that happened because we were torn up for a while. But I don’t… I remember a lot of the old families that, most of them don’t live here anymore. WM: Talk about them for a minute, go ahead. SS: Well, in the next house over, my dad being the oldest boy. He had inherited the old house. Then my grandpa and my dad’s younger brother built another house just down the street, not very far. The fence between them was kiddywampous like this. Eventually when my husband and I decided to tear down the old house and build a home, which is what we did. After time, I went to my uncle that still lived in the next house and I asked if he would mind if had someone survey that 4 and instead of the fence going kiddywampus, if we could straighten it out. No one gained any or lost any, it was just getting the fence line. The fence isn’t there anymore, we didn’t need it because we got along with the neighbors. WM: Oh good. SS: In fact, my daughter eventually bought that house and she was just in her twenties then. That house became vacant and so she wanted to buy it and did. She still lives in that house. WM: Still lives in it? SS: Uh huh. WM: Oh that’s terrific. So you mentioned the names that you knew a lot of the original people here. What names do you remember? SS: Well there were Wheelers. There were quite a family of them. Marilyn Draper would be a descendant of the Wheeler group. WM: Okay. SS: And I can’t remember first names. My memory is not as good as I’d like it to be. WM: It’s okay, not a problem. SS: But there was the bishop of the ward at one time was a Wheeler and he lived down Pioneer Road now. WM: Uh huh. 5 SS: A little way. There was a Fryer family, there was Wardle family that lived down just where the road—when you get at the west of Slaterville, you kind of lose some elevation and then it turns. A lot of people, I can see their faces but I can’t remember the names. WM: It’s okay. No problem. SS: The Dickmore family lived west of us. They were on—let’s see we are on 2250 west and then there was a subdivision built west of us. I think that’s 2550 west. I don’t know if that’s a through street. I’ve never tested it out. At one time, half of it was the subdivision and the other half I never got acquainted with. The next road, was what we called Dickmore street because that’s where the Dickmore people lived. That one is a through street. If you drive down, what was it? 200 South, then you can turn and go north and you come up to the sewer plant. The roads have developed as time went on. We’ve had some large homes built. Across the street from us was—at the time I was little, the Barrett family. I don’t think that they were native to the… they were not among the original settlers. Someone else had maybe built that first. I’m not sure about that. But the house is gone now because it’s been—we have neighbors across the street of The Grant family. They are very wealthy. Their home that they have there is immense. It’s beautiful. It took them two or three years to built it because they added a pool house and all kinds of stuff. If you drive into the subdivision it would be the Spencer subdivision. If you drive in there and go to the west of that, you can look into the backyard of the Grant estate. But it’s a very beautiful home and the neighbors are nice. We like them. They are very nice people. 6 WM: Good. SS: We don’t have any neighbors that are not nice. They are all nice people. WM: That is a great statement about a community. SS: Well that’s… WM: Because the people is the center of the community. SS: As far as I know, that I know, we’ve had once in a while I hear stories about somebody’s kids were hoodlums but I don’t remember that. They would have been teenagers just having a good time I guess. WM: Right. Now growing up in a log cabin, what was that like? SS: Well, they tell me I was born on the kitchen table. I was just a little girl then. My family split up. My mother left because she didn’t like the Pioneer setting. WM: Okay. SS: She was much younger than my dad. My dad didn’t marry until he was in his 30’s. She was much younger. So eventually she left and we survived without her. Years later, we kind of reunited but she lived in Texas I think when she finally dropped back into our lives. But I have cousins that live here and there are a lot of folks in the ward that are distant cousins. I had a funny little thing happen. I came here for the senior lunch one day and I was standing by Myron Stevenson and then Mel Myerhoffer came along. Mel is a fun person, he is. He said to me, “Now you want to watch out for this guy here.” I said, “No he’s okay, he’s my cousin.” “No he’s not.” Yeah he was. So I says, “Well my grandmother 7 was Charlotte Ann Field” And he said, “My grandmother was…” And he told the name and I can’t think of it right now. They were sisters. WM: Oh you’re kidding. SS: It was funny. But that’s the way it is. They say out in the country, you can’t throw a rock without hitting a cousin. WM: That’s exactly right. Well what was it like though living in a log cabin? Can you remember? SS: Well… WM: Was it too far back? SS: I don’t really remember too much of it. I was just a little girl then. WM: Yeah. SS: My dad died in a hunting accident when I was nine. WM: Oh really? SS: I didn’t know where my mother was. So I ended up living with my dad’s sister, Blanche. She had married a Smout. Later in later life, I married a Smout too. WM: Okay. SS: Anyway, all I did was move down the road a little bit. I grew up there and of course that wasn’t a log cabin. WM: Right. 8 SS: When my dad died the log cabin just became vacant. It was just vacant. WM: Okay. SS: Years later, after I got married, I had an older brother that—we talked about it and he didn’t want to live in the country. So we bought his share out. It was his suggestion, we didn’t have the money but we borrowed it and bought his share out. Along with the house was a little farm. Probably about ten acres. So we still have that. So after I was married and we had bought the farm and the house from my brother—he didn’t want much money for it. He didn’t want to farm. We bought it and that’s where I live now. My husband passed away 19 years ago. WM: Oh wow. SS: He had colon cancer. That’s ugly, that’s a hard way to go. Anyway… WM: Tell us about your family. How many kids? SS: I have four children. The oldest one, Susan lives in the little house that was built next door. The second one is Jana. My husband was tall, he was 6’ 3” and I’m not. But anyway, the second daughter ended up being 6 feet tall. Which is good, I envy her. The older daughter is not much less than that. Our third child was a boy, that’s Rob. Actually, he has his dad’s name, Ronald Robson Smout II. My husband said, “I don’t want a junior, let’s let it be second.” So that’s the way it is. My husband was called Ron. The boy was called Robbie. Rob is on the city council here. WM: Really? 9 SS: Then the last child was a girl. We named her Jana. We had know a Regina Slater who was a very prominent person. She lived down 200 South. That was called Slater Road by our family. She was a lovely person, we really liked her. So our last child we named Regina. She still owns property out here. She owns—what does she call it? Green Barn Gardens. She has turned that into a wedding reception area and such as that. It’s pretty quiet in the winter of course. Of course people don’t have outside weddings in the winter. Starting about in May she’ll have weddings there. She runs that plus she works. She works at Weber State University. She just recently got a promotion up there so now she’s a supervisor. But I can’t tell you exactly what she does. It has to do the finances, the student financial aid and that type of thing. She I have the four children. They are all healthy except my second daughter. Yeah, the second daughter, Jana. She has one problem after another. She’s diabetic, she’s way too heavy. Yesterday, in fact, this morning she called me and said, “Mom, I’ve got a problem, my glucose is way up.” Yesterday I had gone and bought a glucose testing stuff for her. So she had the testing equipment and I said, “Well, I can’t come right this minute.” I told her I had this appointment and she said, “Well let me get on the phone.” And she called somebody and they came and helped her. I talked to her later and she said that she was okay. That they had sent a nurse to come check on her. So I’ll go up and see her after I’m through here. Just to see if she’s alright. But the other three children are Hale and Hardy and going strong. So far I’ve been okay. I had a couple of knee replacements. 10 WM: Wow. SS: And such as that. But I’m healthy and strong still. WM: Well you are doing well. SS: So… WM: I appreciate your answers. SS: I can’t complain. WM: You mentioned something about a flood. SS: Well we’ve had a couple of them. In the years that I’ve been here. But in 1983, I think that was the worst one. I remember standing out behind my house and looking west and I could see water. It was along what we called Dickmore street. It’s the one that comes out on the north by the sewer plant. Actually it was the river that flooded. That was the year that we just had a lot of snow. If you drove down the road it looked like you were going through a tunnel almost without a roof… WM: Really? Because it was so bad. SS: The snow banks were up like this and so there was no way to go off to the side. You’d go straight ahead. Of course, the Middle Creek runs right through my property actually. But it goes right through because we have the house on the south side of it. Then up the road, that’s where my aunt lived. We bought that property so now we have, like I said, the stream goes right down through our, 11 past my house and through the field and down yonder. Twice, I’ve seen that up to the point where you wouldn’t want to cross it without a boat. WM: Really? How deep do you think it was? SS: I’d be guessing a little. It would only last two or three days. It would be the result of quick thaw or a massive rain storm. I remember one rain storm when I trained—the storms just kept trailing over top of our head, over our house. You couldn’t cross it. We had a place where we would put a plank across or a little bridge. Normally, we could cross it. But those two times we couldn’t. It was a few days where the water was so high that it was coming up near the houses down the street. WM: Wow. SS: No one was hurt or anything. It was just a matter of waiting it out. WM: Right. SS: Until the water came back down. Back in the olden days, this was before my time even, my dad played a violin. WM: Oh really? SS: He had a little dance band. The wards would have dances. In the old ward building, which was on 2250 West, they would shove the benches back against the walls and then they would sprinkle corn starch on the floor so that you could dance and your foot would kind of slide on the corn starch. Then they would have dances. The benches would be pushed up two or three deep along the 12 edges. The ladies would lay their babies down in the—they couldn’t fall off because there was another bench holding them in. WM: That’s funny. SS: So they’d lay their babies down here and the kids would run and play and slide on the corn starch. They thought that was great. The old church eventually was torn down. I should mention that along that same street, which was 2250 west where I live now. That used to be the cross bar of the town. That’s where the activity was. There was a school with a well that was dug. The school was torn down before I came into the picture. But, there were still remains, bricks and things that would let you know that something had been there. They said that’s where the school used to be. But you didn’t go to school or twelve years like you do now. They’d go till maybe 8th grade or something. Then especially the girls that would be the end of school for them. So there was the old school and then the ward chapel was next and that had—it was the center of activity. There would be plays, people in another ward would put on a play and they’d go around to the different wards and put them on. I remember when they built the bowery, they built the bowery where the old church used to be. They had a fellow, if I can think of his name—his name is on the bowery—Vernal Wardell. He was a great person. He was the custodian of the church. He said one time that he’d become aware that someone was breaking into the church. WM: Wow. 13 SS: Just for a while. Maybe if he went in they could see if they could find anything worth stealing or whatever. So we were kind of watching for that. It was on our street, but it was far enough that we wouldn’t see it necessarily. But anyhow, the way that they did their thing on Saturday was that he would go over there in the winter and get the furnace. The furnace was downstairs and he would get the furnace going. So that then late in the evening or maybe even when it was really dark outside, he’d bank up the coals so that in the next morning being Sunday, he would be able to go in there and spread those coals out and get the building warmed up fast before church started. He was meticulous. He was a good custodian. Then they started to be aware that someone was breaking into the building. I have no idea who in the world it could be. So he was there one night, on a Saturday night, doing just what I was describing, banking up the coals in the stove. Some of it he could just go in early the next morning and get the building warmed up before. Because everybody came at the same time. It wasn’t like staggered church meetings now. It was everybody came at about ten o’clock in the morning and that was when church started. So he was over there the night before and he heard a car pull up. He got thinking, “Hmm I wonder if that is who has been coming and going through the building breaking in.” So he walked back—there’s a flight of steps that went up and then another flight that went to go up into the other building or to the top of the building. And he stood there and watched as an arm came down that and tried to open the doorknob and come in. So what he did was he reached out and shook the guys hand. 14 WM: Oh no. SS: He said that before he gathered his senses he heard the car speeding down the road. That was a funny story. WM: That is a funny story. SS: A true story. Orville Holly told us about it in church but I already knew I had heard about how he did that. WM: That’s terrific. SS: The guy never apparently came back because he had been discovered. WM: That’s interesting. SS: So I don’t know who it was. I don’t know if anyone every figured out who it was that was breaking into the church. WM: So he played the violin in the dance band. So they used to have dances and he would play? SS: They had dances in the church building. Like I said, they’d push the benches back against the walls and sprinkle corn meal. WM: Was that for the reunions? Or was that for anything? SS: They just had ward dances or ward parties. They’d set a time and everybody could come. The kids would run and slide. It was fun, you know? The kids would run and slide and the grownups would dance and the teenagers would congregate over here. It was just a fun night. Sometimes they’d have plays and 15 they would travel. They would put on a play and then they’d travel to the other wards. Sometimes we’d have a play put on by Marriott or Farr West or whoever. WM: One of the different wards. SS: Yeah, they kind of trade things like that. But that was a long time ago. Things have changed a lot now. WM: What happens now a days? SS: Well for one thing, the church building was taken down. Now we have the Slaterville Park with the Bowery. The bowery stands where the church used to stand. WM: Okay. SS: Now of course, we have ward buildings that house not one, but two or three wards. So that’s different from what it used to be. WM: What happens at the bowery? The old bowery? SS: The bowery? Well the bowery is not that old actually. I mean I remember when it was built. I can’t tell you when, but it’s been there really quite a while but it was not put there until after the church building was torn down. The bowery, you just rented it out if you want to have a party, family reunion. That’s where we go for family reunions. WM: Oh is it? 16 SS: It’s the Smout Family. The Perry Family used to meet there and that kind of dwindled. But the Smouts still have a family reunion there once a year in the fall. People come from Idaho or wherever. WM: That’s great. SS: See how their old cousins are doing. WM: What other things have changed in your lifetime about the community? SS: Well of course we weren’t incorporated. The communities Marriott and Slaterville were rivals. Which they would have baseball or softball games and it would depend on who the referee was as to who won the game. WM: That’s funny. SS: It really was true. And Marriott and Slaterville didn’t get a long at all because if there was any irregularity they’d claim that it was rivalry. But now we get along pretty well. When the place was incorporated, the problem with incorporating was Marriott had lost a lot of its land due to the fenced depot. WM: The war. SS: Yeah, it took a lot of their property. But they had being as they were on 12th street, there were a lot of businesses that came along and so the way that it turned out was that Marriott had the money and Slaterville had the people and neither one could incorporate without getting together. WM: Sure. 17 SS: Eventually they decided that they weren’t bitter enemies after all. They were some pretty nice people that lived in Marriott. WM: Well I’d say that’s a pretty good story that they would learn to get along and they had united their forces. So was it a hard thing to get the cities to work together? SS: No, I think that the people who were doing the planning were just far sighted. We’ve had some good leadership. Keith Butler was one of the best. WM: Oh Keith Butler. SS: I’m sure now that he’s retired, I haven’t been… I used to come out to the senior lunches all of the time and then as I got older it just turned out I couldn’t leave that much. So I don’t come anymore. But I’d still like to see the people. What I could do is just take half of it home I guess. It was nice to come. They’ve done some nice things here. You could come here and get your flu shot in the fall. Various things like that that are good. I have no complaints with how the city is run or anything. My son is on the city council so if I didn’t like it I guess I could complain to him. WM: You can mention it to him, right? Well what has changed about Ogden in the time that you’ve lived here? You’ve lived here a long time. SS: Well, it’s altogether different. I remember the penny store. That was the gathering spot there on the corner of Washington and 24th. You’d bring your family and you’d need to go here and somebody else would need to go there and then the meeting place was the candy counter in pennies. So at two o’clock come to the candy counter at Penny’s and we’d each separate and do our thing. 18 We used to go to the Pioneer Days rodeo. My oldest daughter would set up a place for us to meet. We’d get up on the second floor of one of the buildings. I can’t remember now where it was. But we had a bird’s eye view of the whole parade. WM: The whole parade? SS: That kind of went its own way too. As you get older, there are some things that don’t appeal to you as much as they used to. WM: Sure. SS: Like watching the horse parade. WM: Well the parade is a big thing still. So that’s nice that it still continues. SS: Like I said, things are a lot different. When you go—I got to the Walmart in Riverdale every once in a while and that’s okay. But the thing that amazes me is the airplanes. They are so loud and it rattles the building and you think, “What’s this world coming to that you can’t step out of your house but you’ve got airplanes and they are loud.” They rattle the rafters. I can remember when I was just a little girl, my dad would take us outside and he’d say, “Just listen and see what you can hear.” We’d hear pheasants, and we’d hear coyotes maybe, live animals like that. You could hear frogs from the creek and there were carp that lived in the carp. I don’t know that you’d want to eat them. WM: No, I wouldn’t eat a carp. 19 SS: But they were there. The things have changed, now when you step outside, what you hear is the roar of the traffic on the I-15 and 216. Is that the number of it? WM: I’m not sure, but go ahead. SS: But anyway, the roar of the traffic is altogether different from what it used to be. I go every morning over to my daughter’s property. She doesn’t live there but that’s where she has her wedding. WM: Her business. SS: I go over there and feed her kitties. She didn’t get married until she was a little older in life. Someone had dropped cats off. They were Ferrell cats that lived in that old barn. She’s kept the barn pretty much as it was. Other than she goes over it Linseed oil, paints it actually to preserve the wood. But there were cats that had gone in there, Ferrell cats. People say that you can’t tame a Ferrell cat, but that’s not true. She just started putting food down and she had a little group of kitties that she would feed every morning and then she went and got married. She lives up in, oh heck, I can’t remember the name of the place and I can’t think of it. It’s up Weber Canyon just back up the hill in Layton. She lives in Layton now. She has a nice home up there and she still travels down every evening that she can to check on her yard and see that things are okay. She stops to see me and see if I’m still among the living. But anyway, those cats, you can tame a Ferrell cat. She tamed them and I go up the road every morning and feed her kitties. I have some of my own that I feed. 20 WM: That’s great. Well there is lots of changes that occurred in these cities and in this area. Your husband was involved in what part of the economic structure of the area. SS: He worked at Weber State University. He started out in continuing education. He was a school teacher. He taught at Weber High in the history department for quite a long time. Then he had an opportunity to go to the Weber State University and he was in the Continuing Education Department. It was his position eventually—it took him a couple of years to work into it. But he would travel the state as a representative of the State Board of Regents. He would audit the books and see that they were following the letter of the law in giving out student loans. So that was his profession. He got to be in his 60’s and of course when you get that old you start to wind down a little bit. He hadn’t felt really too good. So he got an appointment with the doctor and told him where he was 62 and he thought he would take an early retirement. He had some troubles for years with his back. He had three back surgeries. So he retired. They had a nice party for him. He went to a doctor’s appointment and discovered he had terminal colon cancer. WM: Oh my. SS: He lived for almost two years after that and then died. So I’ve been a widow for a long time. WM: Yeah. SS: But my kids all live all close to me other than the daughter that lives in Layton. 21 WM: Right. How many? I can’t remember. SS: Four. One son and three daughters. WM: Right. SS: She comes out almost every night and checks her property and helps with this or that and checks on me and see if I’m being good. WM: That’s terrific. SS: Slaterville has been a good place to live and Marriott would be too. I have nothing against Marriott there are a lot of nice people that live there. WM: Well it was a nice combination that was made between the two cities. SS: It was made out necessity because neither one could incorporate without putting the two things together for it to work. WM: It was a great decision. So the leaders who did that were who? Do you know them? SS: I don’t really remember, I know Keith Butler. WM: That was the main name. SS: He was the mayor for quite a long time and I don’t know whether he was the first mayor or whether it could have been someone else before him. But until I retired and started coming for the senior lunch, I wasn’t so much aware of what went on here at the building. 22 WM: Sure. Well you’ve given a lot of good information so I appreciate that. So as you look back at your family, what are your fondest memories? SS: Well we did things as a family. We decorated the house. But the one daughter put lights all around the eves of the house. There they stayed. I don’t turn them on. Half of them don’t work anymore. But you know, we just had fun times like that. We’d go for rides and turns out I have agoraphobia so we don’t generally go to the high places. Unless I can shut my eyes and not even look out. It’s been nice, a lot of the people in the ward have known each other for years and years and years. I was talking about the cousin that was—we were standing in the line together. I knew he was my cousin but nobody else pretty much did. You know, because it was two or three generations back. My named changed from Perry to Smout and so forth. But it’s been a nice place to live. WM: I think that it’s cool that you started out in a log cabin. I think that the number of people like it that have had that experience would be about zero. So. SS: Well the old log cabin still stood there and I guess that my dad and his family were the last ones to live there and then when he was killed in a hunting accident, my parents had split. I was with my dad and I had a younger brother who got sick along about then. He died when he was six. So there were some sad things too. But there were the three kids. My older brother, he’s gone now too. So I guess you could say that the women are outliving the men in my family. WM: I think that’s right. That’s absolutely right. Well we thank you for your time. I appreciate your willingness to be with us, Shirley. 23 SS: Oh it was nice. WM: You have lived a great life and we honor you for all that you’ve done. SS: Oh thank you.