Oral History Program Ruth Sitton Interviewed by Crystal Schmidt 06 March 1998 i Oral History Program Weber State University Stewart Library Ogden, Utah Ruth Sitton Interviewed by Crystal Schmidt 06 March 1998 Copyright © 2014 by Weber State University, Stewart Library ii 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. Archival copies are placed in University Archives. The Stewart Library also houses the original recording so researchers can gain a sense of the interviewee's voice and intonations. Project Description The Weber State College/University Student Projects have been created by students working with several different professors on the Weber State campus. The topics are varied and based on the student's interest or task for a specific assignment. These oral history assignments were created to help Weber State students learn the value and importance of recording public history and to benefit the expansion of the Weber State oral history collections. ____________________________________ 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. 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It is recommended that this oral history be cited as follows: Sitton, Ruth, an oral history by Crystal Schmidt, 06 March 1998, WSU Stewart Library Oral History Program, University Archives, Stewart Library, Weber State University, Ogden, UT. iii Abstract: The following is a partial transcription of an interview with Ruth Sitton. Unfortunately, the audibility of the tape is poor, so interesting excerpts that are clear have been transcribed for this oral history. 1st excerpt: CS: What was your experience of being a parent? RS: I wasn't a good mother. I look back on it now, and I was not a good mother! I whipped my children a lot, I shouldn't have done it. Until I started going to Relief Society. I learned there was a different way to correct children besides whipping them, but I didn't know that. That's the way I was raised. Only one way to correct a child. {Unclear} not just smack them, whip them. I whipped my children a lot. One of them I didn't hurt. Threatening was enough for her, and she minded. The other two didn't mind and they got whipped, and I mean whipped! I can look back on it now {unclear}, but I didn't know that then. CS: Do you think you'll be held accountable for something you didn't know? RS: I think what the Lord went through for forgiving everybody their sins, I am forgiven for committing the sin. They say no punishment will come, but I don't believe that. I mean I'm going to have to pay in some way. {Unclear} what I'm going through now, I think that's payment for what I did or didn't do. CS: And what you’re going through now is pretty difficult because you have lost some of your independence. 1 RS: And I can't turn back the clock now, it's too late. Don't put off until tomorrow what you should have done day before yesterday. CS: What did you do for family fun? RS: I got a little help from the government. I never got any help from my husband. He told me he would never pay child support. He said "If you ever sue me, I'll never give you a penny," and he didn't either! CS: Is this your first husband? RS: That's my first one. He never gave me any support. He promised a lot of things. If you make this deal, I'll make this deal and I'll give you so much money and it never came through. He never got that deal. I asked for ten dollars to get the kids something and "What do you want all that money for?" He made bootleg beer, and bootleg stuff like that, and I got in trouble over that, too, because I sold some of his bootleg stuff to a cop. They arrested me, and were going to put me in jail, and he said "I'll let you go on account of your little kids.” Later on I was asked a question like that when I wanted a job from the government. They said, "Have you ever been arrested?" And I said "Yes". {Unclear} couldn't wait to tell me you can't get a job from the government if you've been arrested, anything like that or put in jail. I was pretty sassy with the police, too. All the ones that were on the police force were child rapists, men chasing around girls. In fact those were the only ones we had on the police force. CS: Was that the police force in Idaho? RS: Yes. Twin Falls. CS: So it was pretty corrupt? 2 RS: Yes. I think they were all doing things they shouldn't do. Arresting people for doing the same things they were doing. I know at the time I thought if one of my girls were missing I'd never send a policeman after them. Because if they were all right, they would get raped or something before they got them home. I didn't trust any policemen, and they knew it. They knew I didn't trust them. I just plainly told them right out why I didn't trust them. They picked up our car, they said my husband had been going over the boarder to get his illegal liquor and bring it back. I went out to get the car to take it home, and it wouldn't go. I went back in and said "Well, it won't start, which one of you stole the gas out of it?" They didn't like that too well. I was sassy to them. Told them just what I thought of that. They didn't like that but it was the truth. CS: I didn't know anything about that story, but what kind of jobs have you had in your life? Have you always worked in the home or did you work outside the home? RS: Oh, I worked in the laundry dry-cleaning place. The boss, he was one of these kind that took advantage, and he wondered about buying my washing machine, so I couldn't do my laundry at home, I'd have to bring it in to the laundry and have it done. I wouldn't sell it. Only thing he wanted was to take advantage of me, of course I couldn't see it at the time. CS: Take advantage of you financially? RS: Yes and physically too. He did make it look like it was all right. CS: Do you think if you would have been a man working at the laundry matt it would have been easier? RS: What? 3 CS: Do you think if you were a man working at the laundry matt it would have been easier? RS: Well, I didn't know of any of the men that was getting into trouble. I knew things about them, so did everybody else. {Unclear} if I had known then what I know now, I wouldn't have paid any attention to them anyway. . . 2nd excerpt: RS: I made twelve dollars a week, twenty-five cents an hour. That was my check, he wouldn't spend a nickel before I'd spend all mine. {Unclear} I couldn't see all of that then. I can see a lot of things now that I didn't see then. CS: What did he use his wages for? RS: What? CS: What did he use his wages for? RS: {Unclear} going back and forth. He used to drive the laundry truck on every trip. . . 3rd excerpt: CS: Ruth, you say you attended Relief Society— RS: What? CS: You say you attended Relief Society? RS: Yes CS: Did you have any assignments in Relief Society? 4 RS: At that time? CS: Any time through your life? RS: Yes. I was a visiting teacher {unclear}. CS: What did visiting teachers do? RS: {Unclear}. What these people needed and the Gospel. CS: Did visiting teachers talk to women mainly? RS: Yes. Husbands would get up and leave when we come. They didn't want to sit and listen to heckling hens. First woman I taught with had something the matter with her legs and almost fell down dragging me with her a number of times on these icy streets. Always afraid she was going {unclear} time when I got up years and years later, I was talking about visiting teacher companions and I said, "They're either too old or too young". Some of them are too young to go around. I said "They're either too old, too young, too pregnant or too busy." The last one I had, I had her for ten years. They were just begging to not release us {unclear}... 5