Oral History Program Colleen Lane Interviewed by Charles Trentelman 15 November 2013 Oral History Program Weber State University Stewart Library Ogden, Utah Colleen Lane Interviewed by Charles Trentelman 15 November 2013 Copyright © 2013 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 house flourished as Ogden became a shipping and commerce hub. After World War II, the railroad business declined. Some government agencies and business 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 small 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: Lane, Colleen, an oral history by Charles Trentelman, 15 November 2013, WSU Stewart Library Oral History Program, University Archives, Stewart Library, Weber State University, Ogden, UT. iii Colleen Lane November 15, 2013 Abstract: The following is an oral history interview with Colleen Lane, conducted on November 15, 2013 by Charles Trentelman. Lane discusses her family history and her memories of 25th Street. Colleen’s children, David and Carolyn, are also present. CT: Now what we are doing is the Union Station and Weber State University are doing an oral history of Ogden. They started out on 25th Street and said we want those other streets around here too. As you can see there’s many excellent books written about 25th Street and I like to just talk to people about the whole town and their experiences in the town. You mentioned Armstrong Sporting Goods. I just got done interviewing Ward and Claude Armstrong. CL: Oh my heavens yes I knew both of them. CT: You know those guys? Oh good we can double check on them to see if they were telling me the truth. They talked a lot about life in general and 25th Street. CL: I used to deliver pictures from Armstrong’s down to the Depot Drug and walk past all the… CT: All that fun stuff down the street? You’re what, 90? CL: 90 on the 23rd CT: I don’t believe it. She doesn’t look ninety, come on. CL: Strong like a bull. That’s because I have two sons that are chiropractors that take good care of me. CT: So anything you saw is history, anything you experienced is history, and everybody knows the bankers and the railroad magnets that built this town. The 1 people that did the work were folks like you. Those are the stories we’re trying to find. CL: Well I knew Lena Bossarelli. She lived on 25th Street with her mother I think and I went upstairs in one of these places past all these doors and I’m sure that was possibly a house of ill repute. CT: Could’ve been. Where would that have been? CL: Well it was probably between Wall and Lincoln on the north side of the street. Her name was Lena Bossarelli and she was one of the officers at the Ogden High School too. I can’t remember if she was vice president or something at the school when I was there. I got to be her good friend and she let me come down and see her down in this place. I didn’t realize, I was such an innocent little babe at the time I didn’t realize that that’s possibly what that was. CT: When would that have been? CL: In like 1939, 1940. CT: Back when 25th Street was a roaring boom town kind of thing? CL: Oh yeah and I have to tell you too, my dad had a younger brother, bachelor, and he liked his drink and he worked at the railroad. When he didn’t come home my grandmother would call up and she’d say, “Jim hasn’t come home you’re going to have to go get him.” If my dad wasn’t there my mother would go and she’d go down and start looking in all these beer dives trying to see Jim. Boy as soon as he saw her he’d come out and march right out and get in the car. We had that experience like that with 25th Street. Then when I started working for the railroad I would walk up 25th every day to go to Keely’s or Dokasis’s to have lunch or one 2 of those places. A lot of the women would be sitting on their little stools out in front of the dives where they’d go upstairs. CT: Where were you born? CL: 1923 in Ogden. CT: Who were your parents? CL: Leo John Carney and Grace Gertrude Hancock Carney. I was an only child. CT: Where did you live? CL: Well at first when I was born they lived down on Lincoln Avenue and 26th Street. Then they moved from there to 3508 Ogden Avenue and from there we moved out to Chimes View Drive. CT: So you moved around a bit then? CL: Well really not that much for that many years. They didn’t ever want me to go to county school, so everyday my dad would bring me to my grandmother Carney’s house on 31st and Washington. Then I’d go to Washington Elementary, Washington Junior High, and then I went to Ogden High School. That’s where I met my husband. I hadn’t taken geometry and he wanted to get a better grade so I met him at summer school at Central Junior High School. He would ride his bicycle from 27th and Brinker out to Chimes View Drive to see me. CT: Good for him. That’s a nice ride. It’s interesting you mentioned 3508 Ogden Avenue, when my wife and I got married we lived at 3518 Ogden Avenue. CL: Well Mendrink’s lived next door to me and he was a tailor. He had a tailor shop down on, where was it? 25th or 23rd Street, some place there. That was another thing, when we moved from Ogden Avenue out to Chimes View Drive, one of 3 their kids came out and he got into our house and he stole my piggy bank and he stole the lunch meat that was in the refrigerator. Many funny stories. CT: Now I see you’ve got an article from the paper. What’s that all about? That’s just a book? CL: This was 25th Street in WWII. CT: The good things during WWII. At some point you may want to mention Poll Patch. CL: Oh yeah. CT: You know going up to Huntsville on the hay wagon in Ogden Canyon. So tell us. CL: My great grandmother Rice came across the plains blind as a polygamist wife. They ended up settling in North Ogden and Poll Patch, where the poll cats were I guess. That’s where my grandmother Hancock was born, and I don’t know how she met my grandfather Hancock, but they came down into Ogden and they lived at 21st and Jefferson just south of the cemetery. He was a dray man or something for the city, he took his team of horses and went around and did kind of work like that I guess for the city. CT: What did you tell me, that when I came here today that you got all excited about? You said I have to make sure that I tell him about the, was it they made booze out there? CL: Oh yeah my dad. It was hard to get booze in those days so he had two vats down in the basement and they’d bottle their own beer. It got kind of warm in the summer and all of a sudden the beer bottles would blow up. They’d blow the lids off the beer. We’d hear that down in the basement. 4 CT: Bottled it a little too early it sounds like. CL: Yeah. Every Sunday, because my dad was Catholic and my mother was Mormon. The only little darling, I’d go to Catholic Mass with my dad and come home and go to Mormon Sunday school with my mother. Then my dad’s mother had two sisters that were Catholic Nuns and two brothers that were Catholic Priests. They didn’t live here, they lived back in Wisconsin I think it was or someplace like that. I remember Sister Dominique and her companion came to Ogden once to see us. I had this old picture some place of me standing by her and I’m looking down at this habit like this, I’d never seen a lady with this thing around her head. CT: Yeah one of those black habits they used to wear. CL: She was a very sweet lady and she’d always send us these little religious cards, my cousins and I. Whenever I got mine I would rip it up and throw it away because I didn’t want to be a Catholic I wanted to be a Mormon. CT: Well maybe that answers my question. Which did you end up then? CL: I wasn’t baptized until 1975 and then my husband… CT: As a Catholic or a Mormon? CL: In the Mormon Church and then in 1976 Jack and I went to the temple and were sealed in the temple and had our worthy children sealed to us. Mike and Dave weren’t one of them. CT: Was does that mean? 5 CL: Oh, well that we could have them go into the temple with us. The kids that were good Mormons, we could have them sealed to us then. So he wasn’t and neither was Mike, but she was. CT: Oh I get it. So you were kind of a mixed marriage and that follow through with your children? That’s the Utah version of a mixed marriage. CL: Our son Michael in Salt Lake, he had a kid that was an altar boy down at the Cathedral of the Madeleine so that was really cool for me too. Michael’s wife was from Chicago and she was Catholic, but Michael didn’t go to the Catholic or Mormon Church then either CT: Well you grew up being able to appreciate both. CL: Yeah. CT: What was that like being from a mixed marriage, if you want to call it that, in Ogden in the 1930s, because you had both? CL: My dad’s one sister, her name was Catherine Junk. I don’t know if you knew the Junk family. His father was the principal of Washington school, and he was really an awfully nice man and always got along well with him. My aunt Catherine, my dad’s sister, she’d get me over in the corner and she’d say, “You know you’re a Catholic don’t you Colleen?” I’d go like this you know because I really wanted to be a Mormon. So that was it, every Sunday Catholic Mass and then come home and go to Mormon Sunday school. I wasn’t baptized in the Mormon Church until 1975 and then Jack and I went to the Mormon temple in 1976 and had our worthy children sealed to us. Barbara and Mike were not there, but Nancy and 6 Cindy and Bob and John I guess were the ones that were there. Nancy hovered over them like she was the mother. CLC: Make sure that you show him these and you get to explain what they are. CL: Oh yeah, this is when I worked at the regulating station. It was in the R. R. freight house. CT: At Union Station? CL: Teletype operator yeah and those are the fellows that worked there. It was over in the freight house. CT: So you went to work at Union Station, when would that have been? CL: Well I wonder if there’s a date on any of these. 1941-1942, that was when I was at the regulating station. Right after that was when I got the job, and this was the teletype operator there. I guess that’s the same as that other one was. That’s when my dad got me the job as the stenographer in the OUR and D R.R. baggage room. CT: So that would have been in the early 1940s then during the war? Yeah. CL: Yeah. CT: What was it like down there during the war? You know you’d walk in the station… CL: Oh boy full of sailors and soldiers and Marines. There were bags up like this up on top of the baggage carts that would come through there all the time. That really was neat, and my dad, I was living at home, and he would bring me to work with him. He was the chief clerk of the Ogden Union Railway and Depot Company at the time. I’d come to work with him in the baggage room then. Every lunch time though I’d walk up 25th Street to go to Ross and Jack’s Café to eat, or 7 to Keely’s that was up on Washington, and Dokasis I think was over by the Orpheum Theatre. I would go to one of those places for lunch and then in the Woolworth’s store they had a bar that you could come and sit there and have food. I’d go to that place sometimes. CT: Where was the Woolworth’s? CL: It was between 24th and 23rd Street on the west side of the street. There was Grant’s and Woolworth’s and Newberry’s. There were three of those stores right there. Boyle’s Furniture was north from that and that’s where my mother bought all of her furniture was in Boyle’s Furniture store. CT: So Ross and Jack’s, now I’ve had several people tell me about Ross and Jack’s. That was west of the Broom Hotel wasn’t it? CL: Yeah. CT: It was pretty much where the Key Bank is now. CL: Yeah. CT: What was Ross and Jack’s like because I’ve had several people tell me about that? CL: Oh it was just a regular old restaurant. It had barstools up to a bar that you could eat. Then it had just regular restaurant booths to eat. They had good food there too. CT: I’m told something about mashed potatoes there. It was a special there, something about mashed potatoes? CL: Oh I can’t remember that, I don’t know. I would either go there or I would go across to the west side of the street to Dokasis’s that was by the Orpheum 8 Theatre or to Keely’s that was on Washington between 25th and 24th. My mother, at first she got a job in the photography department at Checket’s Five Hour Photo Service and that was just across the street from the Egyptian upstairs. Rushmurr’s eyeglass place was just below that and then you’d go up these stairs and then to the Checket’s Five Hour Photo Service. They had windows that were about as big as that doorway there. When they had the 24th of July parade, boy everybody would come and sit up in those rooms so they could look out and see the parade go by. That was another thing, oh this is naughty. CLC: Oh come on now! CL: They didn’t have a restroom where my mother worked, you had to go out in the back. So sometimes we’d go in where they developed the films and there was a water trough and you’d pee in that thing so you wouldn’t have to go next door. CT: Oh come on. It all goes in the same place. CL: Oh this is cool. Look at who this is. CT: Oh my goodness! CL: That’s May Man, I think her name was. I think she interviewed him. CLC: Mom said that she worked for the Standard. CT: Oh, May Man? CL: Yes. CT: I have to look that name up and she’s interviewing Clark Gable. CL: Oh yeah this is on 25th Street. CT: So what was Clark Gable doing in Ogden? 9 CL: I don’t know, he was probably just traveling through here. CT: Traveling through? That’s quite the car he’s got there. Looks like he’s signing an autograph for her too. These are amazing pictures. CL: This is Phil Ravel. This is out in front of Armstrong’s and I don’t know where that animal came from, but I think because of being a sporting goods store they had all kinds of stuff that came out of that place too. CT: Now who’s Phil Ravel? CL: He was a good friend of my husband’s. They used to have an apartment place on 25th and Monroe where my husband lived as a young kid, the Ravel Apartments, and there was a drug store on the west side and I forget who, Dokasis? No, I forget the name of the people. Well Ravel’s, I guess they had that and they lived upstairs. My husband lived in the Holly Rue apartments across the street and that’s how I got to know this kid. I met Jack when I went to Central School and that was on 25th and Monroe. CLC: Geometry is that what it was? CL: Geometry yeah because I hadn’t had geometry. I met him in that class and he would ride his bloon tired bike from 27th and Brinker out to Chimes View Drive to see me. CLC: So yeah do you recognize any of these store fronts? CL: Let’s see this is the old city hall right here. CT: That’s an old picture. CL: The Catholic Church is over in there someplace. 10 CT: Right, yeah. The interesting thing about this picture is that it looks like he’s holding what looks like an ocelot or a small cat? CL: I think that’s what it is. I can’t remember. That sporting good place, they always had people bringing in trophies of some kind or doing something. I mean it was alive. CT: That looks like it’s alive, but the thing I wonder, is there was a lady across the street who ran the Rose Rooms, which was a house of ill repute, she had a pet ocelot. CL: Maybe that’s it. It might be it. CT: That’s interesting. Yeah this picture, I think we’ve got something similar to that at Union Station. This is the old city hall over here. There’s Broom Hotel and the city park as it was back then. I’m not sure what this was over here, more of the city park I guess. This has got horses and stuff in it. That’s before your time. CL: Yeah. CLC: This is Washington Boulevard and you can see Ben Lomond down at the end. CT: Oh yeah, these are cool pictures. Now are these in the family? CL: My mother was a photographer. CLC: I picked them up from an old desk at the grandparent’s house. CT: Do you still have the negatives or just the pictures? CLC: Nope just these, they were in a desk drawer. CT: This is turn of the century here. It’s got the streetcars in it and Blackman Griffin Company. I’ll have to look that up and see when that was over there. Adam Brother’s Photography, we could probably date this fairly closely with the city 11 directories. Washington Avenue, they changed it in 1939, I think, it became Washington Boulevard. Now you worked at Armstrong’s or your mother did? CL: My mother did. CT: Your mother did. So you went down there and visited her? CL: Well I worked at the railroad too. I went there when I was going to school. I’d help her deliver pictures down to the Depot Drug past all these bars etc. CT: Depot Drug was way down on the corner opposite the hotel; the Healy Hotel was on this side and Depot Drug was on this side of the street right? CL: I had an uncle that was a tattoo artist and he worked in the Toastmaster was it? I think it was. A beer dive there, but he did the tattoo stuff. This is a cute picture too. Now I don’t know what year this was, but this was a float they had with the Reede School of Dance and that’s me right there. CT: Are you the one whose face I can see? CL: Yeah and Maurice Richards, his grandmother was my teacher. His mother took dancing with me. CT: Now he’s the attorney right? CL: Yeah. CT: Now he’s still around. He’s written several histories of the times and stuff down there. That’s interesting, so what would this have been, Pioneer Days? CL: I think it was. They used to have the big parade and have all the floats and everything. So my mother would get me all dolled up and stuff to go and do these things. CT: Wonder what year that would’ve been? 12 CL: I don’t know. I look like I might be about five or six years old. CT: Yeah it might be in the first or second one. CL: I used to be able to do stuff like that. CT: Oh good heavenly days, that hurts just to look at. CL: I don’t know if I told you, we did this dance at Berthana Ballroom once and it was for the Lion’s Club or somebody. Anyway I did this flip and I came down and I hit my head and I started crying. They started throwing money out on the floor so I was crawling all over everywhere picking up these pennies, nickels, and dimes. CT: I need to scan these pictures then give them back to you guys. The picture that made me go oh my, so they know what we’re talking about on the transcription is a picture of her I’m guessing five or six years old doing a contortionist move where she’s laying on her stomach and she has her legs over her back touching her ears. CL: That’s a chest roll. CT: Oh, it hurts just to think about. CLC: Then you took dance lessons with Rose what’s her name? Roseann Peery King. CL: Yeah from the time I was five until I went into the 7th grade with school. Right when I was able to get in the Pep club I got Rheumatic Fever and I was thrown in bed for three months. I couldn’t get up and go anywhere. Then I could only go to school for a half a day and I couldn’t get into like I said gym to take any of that kind of stuff, or the pep clubs. That was really a drag and then I married a man that didn’t like to dance anyway. My son, Mike Lane is the one that can dance. He and his brother, David Lane, can really shake a rug. 13 CLC: How did you meet Rosemary Peery King? CL: Oh yeah she went to school with me, Rosie did. She took dancing with me too from Mrs. Reede so I know Rosy from a long ways back and every time we go to the garden I’ll say, “Is Roseann here?” So I get to go in and say hi to her then too. CT: She’s a nice lady. I’ve always admired her dad Mayor Peery, he was a crook there’s no two ways about it, but he was a nice crook. Say what you will he did more to promote this town than anyone else ever has. I’m going through a lot of old newspapers down at Union Station and I found someone who saved up back in the 30s. One of the things that I found was the front page from the paper of the first Pioneer Days Parade in 1934. So you would’ve been what? Five or six for that. It’s got a picture of Mayor Peery on his horse right there on the top of it and Mrs. King may be in the picture too. I think she was riding horses for his parades. CL: Yeah I took dancing with Rosie and Artie Veetus Green. Veetus’ used to have a grocery store on 28th and Washington on the east side of the street. I used to take dancing lessons with her and a lot of the notorious people in this city had their kids go to Mrs. Reede’s for dance lessons. CT: Oh really? Now when you say the notorious people in the city what do you mean? CL: Well the people that had the money and the cash that could blow out easily I guess. Scowcroft’s, she took dancing with me and oh what were some of the other names? I can’t think right now. Like I said we’d be asked to go out and dance at the LDS wards and the Lion’s Clubs and all those different things at 14 night too. Then because of that and I was maturing in the seventh grade that’s when I got rheumatic fever from all that stuff. Oh boy that was terrible. CLC: Did your Uncle Jim? CL: Oh yeah my Uncle Jim. CLC: He talked about his escapades on 25th Street. CL: My uncle was a drunkard. He was my dad’s youngest brother and he was a bachelor. We’d always get this call, “Jim’s not home and you’re going to have to go get him.” So if my dad couldn’t go then my mother would go and I’d ride down the street with her. She’d go along and look and she’d go in and out of the bars to see if she could see him. Boy as soon as he saw her though he’d come out and get right in the car. CLC: Did he ever ask you when you were a little girl to go to the grocery store? CL: Oh yeah and then he would say, “If you’ll go to Mortensen’s Grocery Store,” now that was on 32nd and Washington. I think the Vacuum Villa or some place is in there now. “If you’ll go down to the store and buy me a sack of Bull Derm Tobacco and a package of papers I’ll give you a penny.” So I’d go down to the stores and get this stuff and I’d sit in front of this candy thing and decide if I wanted a stick of licorice or a puff that came like this and had a little nigger baby inside of it or something else. CT: Hey that’s what they called them back then. We’re going to come to that in a minute. Now this was during the depression, what do you remember about that? Course you were a baby when the depression started so it was normal for you. 15 CL: But my mother and dad were the benefactors to both my dad’s family and my mother’s family. My mother was always taking food up to my grandma and grandpa Hancock’s. They lived up on 2045 Jefferson, just north of the cemetery. My grandfather was a drayman for the city. He’d go out with his horse and his wagon and do ground work, I guess, or stuff for the city. He would dig the graves for the Ogden City Cemetery and fill in… They had this big barnyard out in the backyard and they also raised rabbits. They would kill the rabbits once in a while and eat the rabbits. My dad would never like rabbit but if my grandmother could throw a couple of wings in there he’d think he was eating chicken because he’d say he wouldn’t eat the rabbit cause, “I could always taste the fur in it.” CT: I’m not sure how, usually you skin them first. I assume that your grandparents needed the food because there was no social security back then. CL: So they were the benefactors of taking food there as well as to my grandma Carney. Even though like this drunken uncle he didn’t provide very much for the family. My aunt Agnes worked the Continental Bakery Hostess Cake place there, she was a contomater operator. She worked there and she didn’t have a car. My dad finally taught her how to drive and he helped her buy this little two door Chevy I think it was, or a Ford. She’d go from 31st and Washington back out of her drive way, go down in front of Washington to 32nd Street, down to north Grant to the Continental Bakery and that’s about as far as she went, other than when they would go the Catholic Church. That was about as far as she ever drove that car. She was glad that they had little old, I think it was a Ford, two door. 16 CLC: A Plymouth. CL: Oh, a Plymouth. I guess it was yeah. CT: So I get the feeling you all lived close together or even in the same house? CL: Well my folks lived out on Chimes View Drive. My folks, when I was born, they lived on 26th and Lincoln in a little old house in back of another house that was there. Then my grandmother went from Lincoln up to Binford Avenue, and that’s a little street between 26th and 27th Street. What was his name? He had the snappy service hamburger stand right there. Lancaster, Carl Lancaster, and anyway grandma lived up in this little street up there and we’d go upstairs to where her apartment was. In the summertime, because there was no electricity for air conditioning, we’d lay out on the screened in front porch and they could sleep there. I’d always be afraid of going up those stairs at the nighttime because it was so dark. Then they ended up moving out on 31st and Washington and because my family didn’t want me to go to the county schools they’d always bring me there. I went to Washington Elementary, Junior High and then from there to Ogden High School. I graduated from Ogden High. CT: What year did you graduate from Ogden High School? CL: I don’t remember. I don’t know I think I was probably eighteen then. CT: In the mid-1940s, 1946 or 1947 probably? CLC: It was before that. CL: No it was before that because I was married in 1945. CT: Oh you’re ninety that’s right? I’m just trying to do the math backwards. I like to flatter myself that I’m old. 17 CLC: 1940 or 1941, something like that wasn’t it? CL: Probably because mother had the car to go to Hill Field. She was a photographer out there, and she’d bring me pictures that she’d take, 8X10 pictures of all the planes and stuff and I’d get to have those. Gave them to him when he was little. He got all these pictures of planes and stuff. Then she went from there to the Naval Supply Depot and she worked there, and didn’t she retire from there? CLC: From Hill Field, she was the base photographer at Hill Field. CT: So they probably still have all her negatives out there? CLC: Probably and she did classes at Weber State too, but they would have a lot of her stuff that had the bombers and everything else. Stuff they used to work on at Hill Field. After that it was the Naval Base which is Freeport Center I guess. CLC: Before that then it was Armstrong’s. CL: And the Checket’s Five Hour Photo Service. CT: Did she do the photography stuff at Armstrong’s too because I know they had a photo service there? CL: Yeah she was the one that printed and developed all those pictures. That’s where this one with this guy. CT: She probably made that. CL: Yeah Chuck Ravel. CT: It’s interesting. CL: She bought me an Ivor Johnson’s bike, about the best you could ever have at the time with bikes. On Saturdays I’d ride that bike from Chimes View Drive down to about 34th and Lincoln I guess, where I took piano lessons from Mrs. Roseaveer, 18 which I hated. Then I would take the bike and ride down past 25th Street, go up and in back of the alley and in back of Armstrong’s and take my bike inside and leave it in there. She’d give me a nickel for a hamburger and a dime to go to the movies at the Paramount Theatre. I could go and sit there all afternoon through the Popeye Club and all that stuff. CLC: What was his name though? Was it Popeye? Do you remember? CL: Oh yeah what was his name? He was the one that would be Popeye at the club. I can’t remember his name. CLC: Used to talk like this, even I saw him down there. CT: So what was the Popeye Club? You have to tell me. CL: That was just like the Mickey Mouse Club or something that they’d have at the show. It wasn’t at the Paramount was it? CLC: Yes on Ogden Avenue or on… CT: Kiesel. CL: Kiesel yeah. CT: So they’d have cartoons and Popeye cartoons for the kids in the audience? CL: Oh yeah all afternoon. CLC: They played the organ and that there too didn’t they? CL: Oh yeah that was at the Egyptian where they did the organ. CLC: Yeah but I think they still had one or maybe not. CL: Yeah, my mother, she’d give me the money to buy the hamburger and the dime to go to the show. I’d sit in there all afternoon. 19 CLC: Can you remember the story you told me about when you were on the train and what did you have on the train? What did you smuggle on the train? CL: Oh yeah. We went to my mother’s mother married my grandfather’s sister. Anyway they were double cousins and the cousins lived out in Sparks, Nevada. They raised fantail pigeons and we went out to visit them on the train. So what do they do? They give us these four fantail pigeons to bring back. So here we have these things in the train and I think they were either up in the baggage section or the upper compartment. Every time they’d coo or scratch you would have to cough or wriggle the newspaper or something so they knew we weren’t bringing contraband on the train. CT: You’re not supposed to bring animals on the train? CL: Yeah. CT: Oh my goodness. How often did you take the train? CL: Well we went to San Francisco to see my dad’s friend, Henry Williams he was called, and he originally was from Ogden. He was in the navy with my dad and they ended up moving to San Francisco and he worked down there. I forget what his occupation was, but we’d go down there every once in a while to visit them, on the train at Christmas time. They got this little compartment thing, suitcase thing and a doll that had a white rabbit fur skin coat. I took that thing and all that stuff and went to California to see these people. CT: Did you get a sleeper car or did you just…. CL: No at the time we just had, well I don’t know maybe we did then. CT: Like a Pullman car? 20 CL: I think we just did coach when we went then. We went another time with my mother and dad when they took me back to Indianapolis after David, my baby, was born. I think we had a sleeper birth. Then I think I slept up in the upper birth and my mother and dad, and we had David up there with me or something, I can’t remember. CT: So this would’ve been like on a Pullman car? CL: Yeah a Pullman car. CT: So now have you been on Amtrak or have you been able to compare? Because I’ve ridden Amtrak a few times and I usually go coach and the seats fold back on Amtrak and they’re actually reasonably comfortable. Now did they fold back or how comfortable was it to ride the train back then? CL: Well you could move the seats a little bit. Like I said we’d had this compartment but then too you could have births. I think it was just a curtain that came down over those. CT: Now did they have air conditioning and heat or was it just whatever it was outside? CL: Yeah I don’t think there was any kind of air control or anything in those. CT: Heavens so it must have been interesting in the winter time. Were they cold? CL: Oh kind of sort of I guess. Now do you know George Garwood? CT: You know that name rings a bell. CL: Black George, was the mayor of South Ogden. Well he’s a good friend of ours too. He knows Nancy Waterfall and Scott and myself. So George has always 21 been a really good friend. I’d go to get my driver’s license and he’d say, “Can you read this?” and he’d pass me for my Drivers License. CLC: Did you ever go to the old mill? I’ve never asked you that. CL: Once in a while, Peery’s old mill. CLC: Do you remember much about that place? CL: Yeah I think we gone there and gone eating. That was a long time ago. CT: He got into trouble there serving booze to minors, or beer to minors at that place several times. CL: Oh that was my dad. He did bootleg beer. He made beer and they’d put it down in the basement in the bottles and we’d just have corks on it. All of a sudden you’d hear this brew that was boiling and the lids would start coming off I guess. CT: I made beer for a while and I had one or two unfortunate experiences. Quit doing that. Now one thing I wanted to ask you about was racism in Ogden, black people white people, because as I understand it on 25th Street especially you had the blacks on this side of the street and the whites were on that side of the street. Did you notice anything like that? CL: I didn’t ever know that. CT: No? So you never had any problems walking down the south side of the street? CL: Nope. I was such an innocent little babe I guess I wouldn’t have known if anything was happening. CT: That’s entirely possible because when I was talking with Claude Armstrong who is just a little bit younger than you I think, he was telling me about Marshall White who was the black officer who was killed in the line of duty. He said he’d talked 22 with Marshall once and was telling him he says, “Boy we don’t have racism around here,” and Marshall just about dropped his teeth. Apparently you were just not allowed on that side of the street if you were white, but apparently you never figured that out. CL: I never heard of that. CT: That’s the way life was back then. Ward was telling me these signs you’d see around town that we reserve the right to refuse service to anybody. That was so they could tell black people nope I’m not going to serve you. CL: Oh no I didn’t ever hear that or know that either. CLC: Did you deal with any of the blacks at the railroad that were porters on the trains and so forth? CL: Yeah and then the lady that was the matron in the ladies restroom she was black too. She was always really nice to me too. CT: How old were you when you worked down at Union Station? CL: Well probably nineteen or twenty. No well I first started working at the regulating station probably when I was about twenty I guess. Then I went from there to the baggage room. CT: Now what was the regulating station? CL: It was an army run place. They kept track of all the troop trains and everything that came through here. So I used, oh I can’t even remember the name of the, it wasn’t a typewriter. CLC: Teletype, telegraph? It’s not the teletype? 23 CL: Yeah it was the teletype. That’s what I was, the teletype operator. Worked with these army guys in that and then my dad was able to get me the job in the baggage room because he was the chief clerk. He got me the job in the baggage room because they hadn’t had a stenographer in there before. I never had to use my shorthand which I was grateful for. He’d always write down what he wanted me to say and I’d just type it up. I would help Bill Fife. He was the clerk that was in there too. He would have to keep track of all of the time cards and everything, the amounts and stuff for the guys that worked there, so I would type up a lot of stuff like that. They’d have all these great big trucks with the barracks bags on them and guys would come in with the barracks bags. CT: They were coming into the station and changing trains? CL: Yes. CT: Wow, that must have been amazing. CL: A lot would come to Hill Field or leave from there on the train. Then they’d go to maybe I think 2nd Street too, I’m not sure. I can’t remember for sure. CT: Now what was 2nd Street? Oh that was the Army depot. Now did you ever stop in and visit the Red Cross Canteen that was located there? CL: Not that much really, but I knew it was there. They had something like that there. CT: There’s a young lady up at Weber State who just did a study of that because they kept a very good log book at the canteen. They kept track everyday of how many donuts they served and how many cups of coffee and all that. For a year or so they were even asking everybody that got some coffee or a donut from them to sign in until army intelligence says you can’t do that. It would be a way to keep 24 track of which soldiers were going where of course. That’s just a precious relic now. All those boys that came through here going off to war or coming home from war. I’ve got, she’s done a really interesting study of all that. Some of the more prominent women in town were running that canteen. CL: My husband was in the Army. I can’t remember just what he was. He went to camp Roberts. He had an explosion when they were heading maneuvers there, oh how did it bother him? Now I can’t even remember. CLC: Concussion and unconscious for a few days I guess, shell shocked. CL: Anyway he was able to be released from the service then and came home. That was down at Camp Roberts, California I guess where we were having maneuvers and anyway some explosion went off where he was and he was somehow or other wounded or something from that. Then he was sent to the hospital and then was released and came home. CLC: What do you remember the most about Union Station? I mean I have memories of Union Station but I was really little though. What are some of your favorite memories of Union Station? CL: Well I used to always go over to the magazine place and every week they’d have a magazine that come out with all the popular songs and all the words to the songs. Every week I’d make sure to go over and buy that. Then on Saturday night they’d have a Lucky Strike Hit parade and I would lay under our radio at home with all this and this numbered down with songs and because I had I could sing the words to all these songs. 25 CT: The Hit Parade every weekend? I remember watching that on TV when I was a kid. CL: Lucky Strike Hit parade. CT: Did you ever eat in the, I know they had a restaurant or café in the station did you eat there? CL: Once in a while, but usually I would go up 25th Street and go to Ross and Jack’s or go to Dokasis’s or go to, I forget the name of this other one that was there. Even in Kress’s, and that was my first job was in Kress’s after I got out of high school. In the front it was a Christmas time where they had all the poinsettias and gardenias you could buy. So I’d stand up there and hock all this. Come buy your poinsettia for your girlfriend or something! CT: Now wasn’t Kress’s right next to the Egyptian theatre? CL: Yes. CT: That’s right, yeah. I’ve seen pictures of drug stores back then. They always usually had a soda fountain of some sort. Did they have one in those there? CL: Yeah and Mrs. Leanhart that used to have a drug store on 28th Street and then one on 21st on the west side of the street just across from where the temple grounds are. They had a drug store there and she ran the one on 28th Street. They never had any children so she was always giving me stuff. She gave me a compact, I remember, I thought that was so cool, different stuff like that. They were our neighbors then when we lived on Chimes View Drive. There were very few people there and no kids. McFarland’s lived on the hill across the street up from us and they had a little girl that was just a year younger than me. Course 26 she went to county school and I went to city school so I would never see her in the winter especially because of the snow. In the summer time I’d see Ramona McFarland. She lived up there and I could play with her a little. CLC: Your dad was one of the first city councilmen of South Ogden. CL: Oh yeah he was one of the first city councilmen for South Ogden City. Leo J. Carney. CT: How long was he on the council? CL: Oh quite a few years I guess. CLC: Didn’t they name some street after him? CL: Oh yeah and there’s even a Carney Street there and I forget where it is. It’s above Washington up in through there somewhere. It wasn’t very big, but it was named after him. CLC: The house is still there too. CL: Oh yeah the house on Chimes View Drive. CLC: Do you know where the Subaru place down… CT: Young Subaru down there? CLC: Yeah if you look north just up, there’s a house still there that’s yellow stucco now. CL: Oh they got this great big barn of a thing that they built on the lot next door to it. CLC: Big garden and fish pond. They had a monkey and chickens. CL: Oh yeah my mother had a monkey. CT: Really? What did you have a monkey for? CL: This guy came through when she worked at the Naval Supply Depot, and he had this monkey. Didn’t know what he was going to do with a monkey and my mother 27 says oh Leo always wanted a monkey so we took this monkey. So we had Jimmy the monkey. CLC: This place you used to go there it was a food store. CT: That was the grocery store she mentioned. CL: Yeah mother got this monkey. Oh my goodness this navy guy didn’t know what to do with a monkey so we took this monkey. We had him chained out in the backyard in the summer and the kids would all come and she had him chained up to the weeping willow tree. They’d get the willows off the tree and then they’d throw them at him and he’d jump at them. That made him kind of mean then, because the kids would tease him. Eventually who did she give that too? CLC: I don’t know it was still there when I was a kid living there. CL: I think she gave it away to somebody. This was the grocery store, Mortensen’s grocery store that I went to as a kid, from where my grandmother lived on 31st and Washington. CT: Yeah there’s a guy who works at the library that’s done a whole study of all these small grocery stores around here. I like to tell people at Stimpson’s over there on 26th. That was the first supermarket. That was the big thing, pretty much all these little local stores was where you got your groceries. That’s where you came with your nickel to get a candy bar. CL: I’d sit in front of the candy counter at Mortenson’s and couldn’t decide if I was going to buy a licorice stick or a little marshmallow thing, chocolate coated, and you open it up and there was the little nigger baby inside of it. CT: What was that? Licorice inside of it? 28 CL: Yeah. My uncle, Jim Carney, had to have a sack of Bull Derm and a package of papers. So I’d get that for him and then I’d sit in front of this candy counter and couldn’t decide what I was going to buy with that penny. CT: How long did you work down at Union Station? CL: Well let’s see, two or three years I guess, before Jack and I were married. They we went to Indianapolis and that’s where he went to chiropractic school. Oh that was scary to me too. First time I’d ever been away from home in a big city. We didn’t have a car, we had to walk everywhere we went. Then we had David and he was a baby and we lived in this beat up old apartment house where the Murphy bed would come out of the closet. You could sit on the toilet and get to the bathtub and anything else from the toilet. Then in the kitchen oh it was terrible. It was just this little cubby hole of a thing like that to here. No outside ventilation so we had a three burner old gas stove that the oven door would fall off, so we had a board holding the oven door up. You’d have to have to open the window to the bathroom so that any gas fumes would go into the bathroom and then there was a bathroom window there. You had to be careful when you were in having a bath in the tub that a cold glass of water didn’t come through the window at you. CT: Why would he do that? CL: I wonder. CLC: The kitchen was here. There was the wall but the wall had a little window in it and the fumes from the gas would come through the window and it could evacuate out through the real window, the outside window. The bathtub must have been 29 right here and so my husband would fill up a glass of water and pour it on me when I was taking a bath. CT: Oh your husband’s idea of a joke is that it? Then he got to spend the night on the sofa after that one. CLC: Was Uncle Vince, who was working at the railroad? CL: Yeah my Uncle Vin, he was an engineer too. Let’s see what did Vince do? CLC: He did the switch engine and that. CL: Well Uncle Vin but I mean Vinny. CLC: Uncle Vince he wore starch pressed pin striped overalls, jacket, a white shirt, a tie, and the hat to work every day. CT: Considering where he was working that was pretty brave. CLC: I mean you know he was an engineer just like a pilot down there. He took it serious. CT: A position of some note. Well I’m running out of intelligence on the questions. What else do you guys want to know? You got your mom here. CLC: Then you could take the subways to go out to the tracks. Did you ever go out there? CL: No. CT: Well when you got on a train to go somewhere you’d have to go under the tracks. CL: I didn’t even know that that was there. CLC: All the steam that was going on because they heat the cars with steam, so steam valves ran into the cars to heat them. CT: There was very rudimentary heat in cars. So tell us what you did David? 30 CL: Yeah, Dave worked there too. CT: When did you work there? DL: Right out of high school, 1965 I started. I was a carman, so I worked back and forth, and then a coach cleaner. I did everything down there. Her dad got me the job. Didn’t he have dad working with the Gandy dancers laying track? CL: Yeah. DL: Didn’t he end up in the postal office there? I think he was doing that sorting. CT: Working in the mail car? Oh really? CL: Who was this? DL: Dad, your husband Jack. CL: Oh yeah. CT: The guy you were married too. CL: Oh the guy I was married too. My dad got him a job down there too. DL: That’s where he learned to make dandelion wine with the Gandy Dancers. All that track, when you go over 31st Street if you look down and it circles, that’s what he laid, that track in there. So her dad worked for the railroad, he got her a job and my husband’s dad worked for the Missoura Pacific. The great grandparents came from Ireland and settled in Green River, Wyoming and then made their way down here. Most of it was related to railroad and working in mines I guess. CT: Whole family has been in railroads? CL: Yes. 31 CT: You guys built this town. Here’s a question I like to ask everybody just because it’s fun. There’s all this talk about tunnels under 25th Street. Did you ever see one? CL: No I think I went down into one of those places with this Lena Bossarelli because her mother was one of the madam’s, I really think, because she lived upstairs in this place. I think I went down in one of those places once, but I can’t remember for sure. I was so immature. CT: Yeah they had basements and things like that. There’s definitely a mixed debate on whether there were tunnels under the street or not, and I’m one who says no because they didn’t need them. The idea was that you needed to hide something and there was nothing to hide in that street, the fix was in. The cops were collecting graft and you know it was all as you saw. When you walked up and down the street you saw prostitutes on the street and that was just normal. CL: Well like my uncle he was a tattoo artist. At the Toastmaster Club, beer hall, he was a bartender there, besides doing the tattoo clerk I guess. CT: Now where did he tend bar? CL: At the Toastmaster’s Club. CT: Okay now where was that? CL: That was just above Wall Avenue on the south side of the street I think. The Toast Master was right there some place. CLC: Which club did Pappis’ have? CL: I think it was the Toastmaster. CT: Pappis, I think they had the club actually. 32 CLC: They had the club. So might be downstairs there. In fact you had to go through, what’s the one? Kokomo Club, you had to go behind the bar and go downstairs. They were boarded up, holes through the wall to go into the next place. Pretty low ceilings through those places. CT: I think the stories about the tunnels come from the connections between buildings. They didn’t go under the street. CLC: The railway up to the bank or up to Ben Lomond Hotel and that kind of stuff. Who knows about that? CL: Well Perry really set the place on fire didn’t he? CT: He did. Well he did a lot of interesting things. We’ve got a big file on him down at the newspaper. He got into wars over gasoline with Salt Lake City and he was selling gasoline at a nickel a gallon cheaper from the city pumps then what they were selling gasoline for in Salt Lake City because he wanted people to come to Ogden and buy gasoline. It was very interesting yeah. CL: Like I say I took dancing with Roseann his daughter. She’s up at Rainbow Gardens now and I always go in and talk to her when I go there. She and I both took dance lessons from Mrs. Sophie Reede many, many years ago. CT: Well like I said I’m running out of intelligent sounding questions so I’ll stop this thing here. 33