Oral History Program Chuck Story Interviewed by Alyssa Chaffee 5 June 2017 Oral History Program Weber State University Stewart Library Ogden, Utah Chuck Story Interviewed by Alyssa Chaffee 5 June 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 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: Story, Chuck, an oral history by Alyssa Chaffee, 5 June 2017, WSU Stewart Library Oral History Program, University Archives, Stewart Library, Weber State University, Ogden, UT. Juana Bailey (Chuck Story’s daughter) 5 June 2017 1 Abstract: The following is an oral history interview with Juana Bailey conducted on June 5, 2017 in the Utah Western Heritage Museum at the Union Station, by Alyssa Chaffee. Juana discusses her father, Chuck Story, an inductee of the Utah Cowboy Hall of Fame. Sarah Kamppi, the video technician, is also present during this interview. AC: Today is June 5, 2017 and is 10:20 AM. We are in the Utah Western Heritage museum at the Union Station in Ogden speaking with Juana Bailey about her relative Chuck Story, who has been inducted into the 2017 Utah Cowboy Hall of Fame. My name is Alyssa Chaffee and I’ll be conducting this interview along with Sarah Kamppi. So first of all I’d like to ask, how are you related to Chuck Story? JB: He’s my father. AC: Oh, he’s your father! That’s good to know. Where was he born? JB: Ogden, Utah, in 1904. AC: What was his childhood like growing up in Ogden? JB: He had a hard childhood. His family was not wealthy. He was one of the older ones, and a lot of them were put into like a foster home, or a welfare home. He was able to not have that happen because he worked selling newspapers and things like that to get money to help his family and to help provide meals. His Dad was a steelworker, and he was just raised in a hard home. He went to school till eighth grade, and then dropped out to help provide money for his family. AC: What did he do to help provide for his family? 2 JB: Anything and everything. If you asked him, “Can you do this?” He’d say, “Yes,” whether or not he had done it in his life, and he would do it. He sold newspapers, he hauled coal with a team and wagon for Farr’s Coal Company, he worked for lumber companies, he was a fireman, he was an appraiser, and a real estate salesman, so just a lot of different jobs through the years. AC: He was very talented then? JB: Very self-confident and talented too. AC: How many siblings did he have? JB: He had four brothers and two sisters. AC: Okay, and you said a lot of them were fostered out? JB: They were all put into more like a welfare home, so they stayed together as much as possible. It was just for short periods of time, when there was not means to take care of them, but they always got back together. AC: Do you feel that these experiences built his character? JB: I think it did build his character. I think it built his integrity and his ability to be a hard worker and take care of his circumstances, no matter what. He was able to work through those things. When he was a steelworker he fell off and broke his back, and that was when he was a young married man. He had a cast on his back for a long time, but still worked and did things. He was very dedicated to his family. There was a lot of alcoholism in his family, and he was blessed to not have that, but he tried to help others overcome it of his family members. I’m the youngest of our family so I missed a lot of that, but he was always trying to help 3 his family, even when he was older he tried to help them overcome things that were difficult. AC: That’s impressive. What year did he get married? JB: Let’s see, he was married in 1928. AC: 1928. Alright, it said in the bio that after he was married he hauled coal for Farr’s Company. Would you tell me a little bit about that? JB: He always loved horses. He bought a team of horses and a buck wagon, they called it, and he would haul coal, because that’s what most of the people burned. He would just haul loads out to homes, and that was a way to make money. AC: Was he by a coal mining area? JB: No, they just brought it in, and he would haul it to the homes from the coal company. Farr’s was right here on 21st Street, so he just would go there, pick it up, and deliver it right to homes. AC: Interesting. How far would he usually travel? JB: That’s hard for me to answer, because I don’t know. I know it was the whole Ogden area, up above Harrison and all around. AC: You said he always loved horses; did he have horses growing up as well? JB: Not when he was young, but as soon as he was old enough to have them on his own. He lived on 32nd and Tyler and had a little bit of land there, and had a horse or two. After he moved to Liberty, then he had a lot. AC: How did he meet his wife? JB: They met at Lagoon. She was there with a friend, he was there with a friend and they met. Tent on the roller coaster, and he stood up on the roller coaster and 4 fell. She’s in the car behind him, and fell back into her lap. When he was in line to get on, he told his friend, “That’s the girl I’m going to marry.” My mom was fifteen and he was twenty, so they got married pretty young. AC: You think he fell back into her lap on purpose? JB: Oh yes, very much so. AC: Sounds like he had a good sense of humor. JB: Yes he did. AC: How old was she when they got married? JB: Sixteen, But they kind of stretched the truth and said she was eighteen when they got their marriage license. AC: Where did they get married? JB: In Farmington. October 10, 1928 by the Justice of the Peace there, without telling her parents, then they had to go home and tell the parents. AC: How interesting. JB: They went with their two friends and they were both supposed to get married, but when they got there their friends chickened out and didn’t. So it was just them, and he had to go home and tell her Dad that he had married her. They must have been okay, because he didn’t get shot or anything! AC: That’s a great story. Did they have a pretty good relationship with the in-laws after that? JB: Yes, they did. He worked with his father-in-law he taught Chuck how to be a steelworker, and taught him a lot about carpentry and things like that. My mom’s 5 dad was a carpenter, and they worked a lot of jobs together. So it worked out well. AC: Both his father-in-law and his father did steelwork, was that pretty common in that area? JB: It was common in that time. They would have to go away on jobs for a lot of things that they built, like buildings and such. AC: Do you know if he enjoyed that kind of work? JB: He said it was very, very hard work, but you did what you did to make money. He was a hard worker. AC: How long did he work for Farr’s Coal Company? JB: A lot of those things I can’t give you answers too. Don’t know. He just changed jobs as needed, as he could find better ones. So as far as how many years at each of the places I don’t know. AC: That’s alright. In his bio it says that he built a home in Ogden in 1945? Is that when it was? JB: No, it was before that. They built their home in Ogden on 32nd and Tyler probably about 1935, because they collected rock. They had a little home there but it burnt down, and they lived in a railroad boxcar. One of their friends, when their house burnt down, they somehow towed this boxcar onto their land, and they lived in that while they built a home. They just collected rocks, piles and piles and piles of rocks, so it was a rock home and it still stands at the corner of 32nd and Tyler. They built that themselves, and it’s cool. That was the home that they traded when they moved to Liberty. 6 AC: Okay, and that is where his ranch is, and he called it the Diamond-S ranch? JB: That was what he called it. AC: Do you know why he called it that? JB: It was his diamond in the world and the S is for Story. AC: Did he live on that ranch for the rest of his life? JB: Yes. AC: So what kind of things did he do on the ranch? JB: When they first went there, they had 135 acres and he had some cattle and some horses and they just raised crops. He was still working as a fireman, and he just started building things. He had a herd of Guernsey dairy cows from 1942- 1954 or so, and milked cows, and just things grew and progressed as they went. I have six older brothers but one of them passed away. They were the ones that got to milk the cows and that. AC: Do you have any memories of the ranch when you were a child? JB: Oh yeah, lots. We had registered cattle and horses that we raised. I started riding horses when I was three. He brought an Arabian stallion from India, and we had a big corral out in front, they called it a paddock, and that’s where the horse was most of the time. I could go feed it carrots. It would come by the fence and I would give it carrots and then climb on bareback and ride it around without my parents knowing, but they discovered that one day. I have lots of memories, that’s where I learned to ride horses, we fished, we played, and everything was done pretty much with teams of horses. We didn’t have tractors for quite a while when I was young, so I got to drive the team of horses. They did more than what 7 I did, but I thought it was driving them, because I thought I was aiming them. We put hay in our barn by pulling the big fork up with a horse into the barn to where we wanted to dump it. I was on the end with the horse. I have lots of really good memories. It was a good place to live. AC: It sounds like you were very active in helping with all the chores. JB: Yes, I was the youngest, so as everybody else got married and moved away or whatever, I did a lot of farmwork. I ran the equipment, I could cut, bale, and rake hay. All those kinds of things. AC: That sounds like a lot of fun. Did you enjoy that as a child? JB: I loved it. We were involved in things like the Junior Posse, my Dad had a saddle with a lot of silver on it. It was my job to polish the saddle and have it looking beautiful when Pioneer Days came. AC: Tell us about the junior posse. JB: He and Earl Jones started the Junior Posse in 1955 because they just had a love of horses and a love of kids, to keep them out of trouble. They wanted them to learn about horses and to take care of them and to do things with them, so they started the junior posse. It grew throughout the communities, most every small community had a posse, and they would teach them about horsemanship and things. They would do activities, barrel racing, pole bending, and other kinds of races, like egg race, water races, those things that you could do on horseback mainly just to give the kids something to do and be involved. Then every year, just before the Ogden Pioneer Days, they would have a jamboree at the Ogden Stadium, and all of the teams from all over would come and compete. They were 8 in charge of that, and did all of that stuff. There were trophies and ribbons, things for who won and who did whatever. So it was very involved, it really grew to a big thing, and the kids would barrel race at the beginning of the rodeos, and they would be in the horse parade, all of those things. It was a lot of work, but it was a lot of fun. He loved that. AC: What were the ages of the kids involved? JB: You could join when you were eight and you could stay until you were eighteen. AC: So he was really involved in teaching the kids those skills? JB: Right, and teaching leaders in the communities, in anything they needed help with in teaching these kids what to do. They would do trail rides, all kinds of different things with them. AC: Was this a year round thing? JB: I didn’t do as much in the winter, but they would have their meetings and elect officers, just like any other kind of a club, but more of it was in the summer. AC: Were you a part of those as well? JB: Oh yes. I started right when I turned eight and was in it until eighteen. It was great. AC: What did you specialize in? JB: Barrel racing, mostly, that was my favorite. I had a little mustang horse that my Dad brought in from off the desert, then I graduated to a bigger one that I loved to barrel race on. So it was fun. AC: Would you tell me a little bit about your Dad’s Weber County Sheriff’s Posse that he was a part of? 9 JB: The Weber County Sheriff’s Posse was organized in 1942, and it was a group of men that got together and they were really interested in good horsemanship when they started out, and they created this Posse which was also a search and rescue kind of a group. If someone was lost in the mountains, they didn’t do the helicopter or four wheelers to look for them, they did it on horses. They did a lot of that, but they also had a drill team that they practiced, and they were very particular when it started. Your horses had to be well-taken care of, your equipment, your saddles, everything had to be inspected. I’m not positive how many started right at the beginning, something around twenty-five to thirty, and they were just good, down to earth, strong men, who had a great dedication to horsemanship. They were part of the Ogden Pioneer Days, they performed their drill and that forever. They have a fairgrounds, it’s out in Harrisville, they still have that, and they have a clubhouse. They would meet every week and practice their drill. They had their officers, they, they did Pony Express races, and during the Pioneer Days they would do the reenactment of a shootout on 25th Street. They were a good will group, I think, for the area of Ogden. They would promote good will and horsemanship, and were just there to serve whenever they were needed. I can remember when I was little, there was a big, black man who got lost somehow up in the mountains. I don’t remember the whole story because I was probably only about five, but I can remember that they searched for him for about three or four days. When they found him he was barefoot, just really had been lost. We have pictures still in our books of when they brought him down, and 10 helped him, and got him back to where he needed to be. They did a lot of search and rescue, and just helped, wherever they could. AC: Was it ever scary when your Dad would go out and look for those that were lost? JB: No, it was sometimes scary when they would do their drills on Pioneer Days, because they would ride full blast around the arena, and they would do crisscross, horses across the paths, four horses, and you had to have perfect timing. You had wrecks once in a while, a horse wasn’t fast enough or a horse was too fast. They were just good men, they took care of each other. Every year they would go on a weeklong horseback ride somewhere like the Uintah’s or the Wind Rivers and take all of their families. It was a very family oriented organization. That was great fun; a lot of great rides. AC: Would you camp overnight during these excursions as well? JB: Oh yeah, you would camp out in the mountains for a week. Some had trailer houses, some had old mobile homes, and some just had tents. That’s what you did, and rode, and went fishing, and all that fun stuff. AC: So did he have any other policing duties other than search and rescue? JB: Not really, that was really the main thing that they did, just to help out. AC: Do you know how they prevented getting lost, because they didn’t have cell phones or anything back then to communicate? JB: Nope, they just stayed out in a group. AC: They just stayed together? JB: Stayed together within shouting distance or shooting distance. If you found something, you would fire your gun three times, and they would listen to where 11 that came from and know something was found there. They didn’t have all of those luxuries. AC: Was he self-taught with all of his extreme horseback riding and everything? JB: Very much self-taught. I started to have an interview with him not long before he passed away, and he would say that he went to apply for a job at Anderson Lumber, and they said, “Can you drive a big rig truck?” “Oh yeah,” and he had never driven one, didn’t have a clue, but he’d just do it. Self-taught, pretty much. AC: Do you feel that rubbed off on his children, too? JB: I think so. I think a lot of his work ethic, his confidence, and his determination to be good. AC: What was his favorite thing to do on horses? Yours was barrel racing, did he have a specialty as well? JB: Anything. He loved to ride horses in the mountains, he loved the Sheriff’s Posse, he raced cutter horses, he had a team that he would hook up even well after he had tractors and stuff. He’d hook up his team of horses and feed his cattle out in the field with those rather than pull a tractor out there because it was more fun. Even clear into his later years, not many years before he passed away, he had a team of Shetland ponies, small horses, and a little wagon. We lived about five miles, I guess, from him, and he would hook them up and drive up and get the kids and take them for rides. He was a horse trainer and he worked with the horse sales. That was another thing that the Posse did, they had a horse sale on Friday nights, and he worked that. AC: He’s extremely busy it sounds like. 12 JB: As much as he could be. AC: Was he away from home a lot? JB: Not really. His other hobby that he had was animals, and he started out mostly collecting like different kinds of birds: geese, pheasants, any kind of birds like that, and it just grew and grew. That kept him pretty confined, because I could never add up how many animals we had, but we had a lot. I was raised with a bobcat that would get me out of bed in the morning. They would bring it in the house and tell it to get me up and it would get into the bed and mutilate me until I’d get up. We had every kind of animal you could think of, coyotes, deer, elk, moose, and buffalo. We raised a buffalo on a bottle, a couple of deer, and the elk on a bottle, so they were pets. They were just like big pets, and they got really big. We had a bear, we had a lion once, just about everything. People would come because it was like a little zoo, and people would come and walk through, like tours. Kids would come by the busload, and a lot of those kids had never seen an animal, not even a cow or a horse, let alone some of the strange ones that we had. That took a lot of his time. He loved the animals as much as he loved his horses, and he could go out and pet the bear and the elk would come right up to him and eat out of his hand, as well as the deer. They were his friends because he was their friend. AC: So you were saying a lot of those kids had never seen an animal. Were they bused in from the cities? JB: From just around the Ogden area. Most of the animals were quite tame, you could pet the bobcat and the monkeys and things like that. A lot of the deer, we 13 had pellets so the kids could feed them with their hand, just like going to a petting zoo. Thousands of kids would come every year, and just go on tours, it was fun. AC: Where would you find all these animals? JB: Some people would just bring to them because they knew he would take care of them. He went everywhere to find them. He bought some from Mexico, Canada, and all over the United States and had them shipped in. He went to Kansas and bought buffalo, Texas and bought some different kinds. We probably had ten kinds of deer. Just wherever he could get them, he got them. People would bring them to him, because they’d buy a duckling for Easter, and all of a sudden this duck becomes big, it’s not cute and fuzzy and cuddly anymore. Things like that. AC: Did he travel to get these animals, or did he find them in his travels? JB: Both. He did funny things, like there was always a gunny sack in the trunk of his car. If he was coming over the divide, and there was a litter of raccoons, he would stop and scoot them into his gunny sack and bring them home and turn them into pets. Wherever he went, he always had a couple of cages in the back of the car. The buffalo and the elk and things he would travel and get, and some of the animal’s places would bring them to him. If they had an abundance, they’d ask if he wanted to buy them or whatever. He had to have permits, it wasn’t something you could just do. He had to do the paperwork and have permits for stuff like that. AC: What gave him that idea? JB: He just loved animals, always wanted to have an animal farm. When I was young, we had a big brick house, and in the basement, which wasn’t really 14 finished, he had one room where he put wire dividers, and he would raise small birds. We would bring them in the house in the winter. Like cockatiels and parakeets and canaries and finches, they lived in our basement. That’s where we fed them all winter. It’s a wonder we didn’t die of bird flu or anything like that. I guess we were immune because we lived with them. But that’s just what he loved. AC: That’s amazing. Where did he get the lion from? I’m curious. JB: Somebody called him, and they had found it, it had been abandoned or it got away from a shelter or something. We only had it for about two years, it wasn’t the tamest of all our animals. It was scary with the kids that would come. A couple of kids got bit because they would put their hand in, even though signs told them not to. So they finally had to have that put down, but that’s how he would end up with a lot of them. Some sad things, we had a big elk that we raised him from a baby, and he was huge. His name was Prince, a beautiful elk. He died, and they did the autopsy on it. It was back when Polaroid cameras were the big thing. You girls probably don’t even know what those are. They would peel off the back, which was the slimy part that came off your picture. Somebody had taken a picture and dropped that, and Prince had ate it, and it poisoned him. We had a few buffalo, one died, a couple of others were shot that didn’t die. We had a deer that we raised on a bottle that we called Bambi, and he, we had him long enough he was like a five-point, so that would make six years old maybe. My Mom and Dad went on a trip, and it was deer hunting season. I was home to take care of the animals, 15 and I was worried about him getting shot, because we would stake him out in our field on a big long chain. I took him and put him in the barn, and he broke on of his antlers. When my Dad came home he was really upset at me for tying him up. He said, “He wouldn’t have broke his antler if you had left him in the field.” I said, “But I didn’t want him to get shot.” My Dad said, “Nobody would shoot a deer with a bell around his neck and a chain on it,” so I led him back out to the field to tie him back up. A hunter drove down the road, seen him, stopped, and shot. He missed both me and the deer. We were about as far apart as we are. My Dad and brothers chased him down. The hunter said, “I didn’t see anybody, or a bell, or a chain, or anything.” All he saw was the deer’s head and shot. AC: So you were like, “I proved you wrong!” JB: I proved him wrong, and this was our pet and I was just protecting him. AC: Wow, that’s crazy. Were those deer wild, did he just kind of pick them up out of the wild? JB: Some, like that one, was brought to us as a baby. Someone had shot the mom and found she had a baby, and so brought the baby and so we raised him on the bottle. Most of the deer he bought from other preserves or whatever. I’d say we probably had ten or fifteen different kinds, and he’d just bring them in, and they would multiply, and he would sell some off. AC: That’s amazing. Were you ever afraid of any of the wild animals? JB: The buffalo were the scariest because they’re really fast. The big one that we raised, he was a pet, but he got big enough that his idea of being a pet and our idea of being safe was not the same. He was chained up most of the time. He got 16 loose a few times, and that’s kind of scary, because one time when he got loose he picked up the tractor by the tire, put his horn through the tractor and tipped it over. He was just playing, he was not being vicious. We could still get a bottle of milk and he’d follow you, but you’d have to get somewhere fast out of the way if you needed to get him back in. No, not really afraid of them. SC: You mentioned that your Dad ran drills with the Sheriff’s Posse at Pioneer Days. Was that the only event that got him involved with Pioneer Days, or was he involved before the Sheriff’s Posse? JB: Not that I know of before the Sheriff’s Posse, that’s what got him involved there. He was involved with several things, like they had a horse show at the stadium and he was the ringmaster for that. The parades, he was part of the 24th of July Parade, but they also had the horse parade, and he was over the horse parade for years when I was a teenager. He always was in charge of the horse parade, and got the participants in it. He lined them all up and did everything with that. Before that time I don’t know that he was involved with it. When he moved to Liberty was about the same time the Sheriff’s Posse was organized, so that was when he would have the means to have the horses and the supplies that he would need. They went and did their drill all over. I remember we always went to Jackson Hole, and they drilled at their rodeo. They would go to rodeos all over and perform. So, yeah, that answer your question? SC: Yes. AC: I wanted to ask about the Cutter Racing Association, what can you tell me about that? 17 JB: It’s a pretty fancy thing now, as Dave would know, it’s a big thing and you pay thousands for horses. But back in the day when he was doing it, people could just take a couple of their horses and train them to drive and have teams. He started up in the Valley, and we had a field, that ran on a dirt road, it was a long field. He would plow and create a track, and people could bring their teams and race. It was just a fun activity to do in the winter with your horses. He was usually the announcer or the judge with it, and that grew and they would race and then turn them into chariot races down at the fairgrounds. A lot of them went on to join the Wasatch Cutter Association. You can take your old work horses and race them. The horses started getting expensive and more fancier like they are now, but it was a start for a lot. There were a lot of men who enjoyed doing that that didn’t have any means of having fun with it, or to really take it somewhere. It was just another thing that he enjoyed. AC: Did he ever race in it? JB: He did. He didn’t drive much, my brother mostly drove the teams, but he trained the teams. AC: Did he race just like individual horses as well? JB: Not really, just the fun stuff. He loved to be the announcer to those kinds of things that was right up his alley. He was the ringmaster for the horse shows, it was his thing. AC: So you said he was a very social guy, is that correct? JB: Very, very social, yes. 18 AC: Also, would you tell me a little bit about his service in the Ogden Pioneer Days? It says in the bio that he served when it was first organized? JB: He did, with Harm Perry, when they first started doing the parades and things for the Pioneer Days, he was one of the ones that was on the committees. He helped get things organized and going, and the different activities that they did. AC: Do you know how he got involved in that? JB: He seemed to get involved in everything. That’s just what he did. He was friends with Harm Perry, and that was just an idea that come up, a way to get people involved and be able to utilize what they liked to do. AC: It says that he was the Grand Marshall of the Pioneer Parade of 1976. What does that entail, to be the Grand Marshall? JB: It’s an honor that they give, and they ride in a float at the beginning of the parade. They usually have them ride in the rodeo on the back of a wagon, it’s just an honor, honoring them for their service of what they’ve done to promote those kinds of things. AC: Was he voted in? JB: I’m not exactly sure, they’re voted in but I’m not sure how. Names are submitted and chosen by the rodeo committee or the Pioneer Days committee. AC: Interesting. I should mention we’re here with Dave Privedell, and your on? DP: The board for the museum here. AC: Alright, my last question is, what do you feel is the lasting legacy that he left behind for you and his grandkids? 19 JB: I think just a love of the beautiful world we live in. The animals, the horses, and just hard work and fun. I think if I asked my children, I only have two that really remember him, but they remember that he worked hard but he always made things fun. He was a good man. AC: I love that. Thank you so much, we appreciate it.