Oral History Program Michael Nash Interviewed by Melissa Johnson 26 July 2013 Oral History Program Weber State University Stewart Library Ogden, Utah Michael Nash Interviewed by Melissa Johnson 26 July 2013 Copyright © 2014 by Weber State University, Stewart Library Mission Statement The Oral History Program of the Stewart Library was created to preserve the institutional history of Weber State University and the Davis, Ogden and Weber County communities. By conducting carefully researched, recorded, and transcribed interviews, the Oral History Program creates archival oral histories intended for the widest possible use. Interviews are conducted with the goal of eliciting from each participant a full and accurate account of events. The interviews are transcribed, edited for accuracy and clarity, and reviewed by the interviewees (as available), who are encouraged to augment or correct their spoken words. The reviewed and corrected transcripts are indexed, printed, and bound with photographs and illustrative materials as available. The working files, original recording, and archival copies are housed in the University Archives. Project Description Business at the Crossroads - Ogden City is a project to collect oral histories related to changes in the Ogden business district since World War II. From the 1870s to World War II, Ogden was a major railroad town, with nine rail systems. With both east-west and north-south rail lines, business and commercial houses flourished as Ogden became a shipping and commerce hub. After World War II, the railroad business declined. Some government agencies and businesses related to the defense industry continued to gravitate to Ogden after the war—including the Internal Revenue Regional Center, the Marquardt Corporation, Boeing Corporation, Volvo-White Truck Corporation, Morton-Thiokol, and several other smaller operations. However, the economy became more service oriented, with small businesses developing that appealed to changing demographics, including the growing Hispanic population. ____________________________________ Oral history is a method of collecting historical information through recorded interviews between a narrator with firsthand knowledge of historically significant events and a well-informed interviewer, with the goal of preserving substantive additions to the historical record. Because it is primary material, oral history is not intended to present the final, verified, or complete narrative of events. It is a spoken account. It reflects personal opinion offered by the interviewee in response to questioning, and as such it is partisan, deeply involved, and irreplaceable. ____________________________________ Rights Management This work is the property of the Weber State University, Stewart Library Oral History Program. It may be used freely by individuals for research, teaching and personal use as long as this statement of availability is included in the text. It is recommended that this oral history be cited as follows: Nash, Michael, an oral history by Melissa Johnson, 26 July 2013 , WSU Stewart Library Oral History Program, Special Collections, Stewart Library, Weber State University, Ogden, UT. iii Michael E. Nash July 26, 2013 Michael E. Nash at 271 25th Street ca. 1966 Michael E. Nash at the Ogden Bus Depot Abstract: The following is an oral history interview with Michael Nash. The interview was conducted on July 26, 2013, by Melissa Johnson, in Kaysville, Utah. Michael discusses his memories of 25th Street. MJ: This is Melissa Johnson and it is July 26, 2013. I’m here in the home of Michael Nash in Kaysville, Utah and he is going to talk with us a little bit about his memories of 25th Street as part of our Business at the Crossroads project. Recording the interview today is Jordan Chavez. So, just to start off a little bit, tell us about where and when you were born. MN: It’s nice to have you guys here, thank you. My full name in Michael Earl Serpa Nash and I was born on the 7th of May of 1947 in Ogden at the St. Benedict’s Hospital at the top of 30th Street. The address that I grew up was 451 15th Street in Ogden. It was not too far from the Lorin Farr Park and the Ogden Stadium. MJ: Tell us a little bit about your family as well. MN: My biological father’s name was Lembert (Lindy) Joseph Serpa. He and my mom divorced when I was fairly young. His family lived in Oakland, California. I’d see him once a summer until I got a little older through junior high and high school. One unique thing about my biological father, in his younger days played for the Ogden Reds baseball team. As a matter of fact, at Iggy’s Sports Grill at the junction in Ogden, they have a picture of the 1939 Ogden Reds and his picture is in that group of the baseball team. He also played some Western Canadian baseball and served in the Navy. He. was aboard the U.S.S. Alabama during 1 World War II. My stepfather, William Leslie Nash Jr. and my mom married in 1957 and is from Aurora, Missouri. He was in the Air Force at Hill Air Force Base when they met, and got discharged from there. His line of work after the Air Force was in construction. He started at Waterfall Construction in Ogden, then worked for Gibbons & Reed Construction Company, which is now Granite Construction. My mom, Barbara May Lamb Serpa Nash, is from Ogden and was an LPN, a licensed practical nurse at St. Benedict’s Hospital for a while, but the majority of the time she was a stay at home mom with me and my brother, Roger. My half-brother Roger Scott Nash, was eleven years younger than myself, but we still had a lot in common even though we were a bit separated in years. He was also born in Ogden. My grandmother, Hattie May Gail Lamb was a stay at home mom. She came from a fairly large family and they settled in Riverdale, Utah. My grandfather, Earl Ogden Lamb, was from Iowa. During Vaudeville, he was stage manager when they had the Vaudeville shows at the Orpheum Theater. When they converted to the talking pictures, he was a projectionist at the Orpheum Theater. It was the Glassman family that owned the Orpheum and the Paramount theaters. When my grandfather died, they gave my grandmother a pass for her and one other person to the Orpheum and the Paramount movies and only had to pay the tax. MJ: Just really quick, do you know what position your dad played on the Reds? MN: Catcher. MJ: You mentioned your mom being an LPN, was she trained here in Ogden? MN: Yes, she trained at the St. Benedict’s Hospital at the top of 30th Street. 2 MJ: You mentioned to us before that your uncle had owned the Lyceum building and at that time had been converted into the liquor store in the bottom and apartments above. MN: Right. My uncle, Harold F. Gail was my grandmother’s brother and he worked for The Standard Examiner for a while and then he had his own business, Gail Printing Company. When my grandmother sold our house on 15th Street, she moved to 271 25th Street in 1957. My mom, stepdad, brother and myself ultimately ended up moving to the apartments in approximately 1959. The Lyceum faces north and south, so Grandma actually lived in apartment number seven which was in the southeast corner of the building on the second floor. My brother and I, my mom and stepdad lived in apartment number one, which was the north end of the building that overlooked 25th Street. There was approximately seven apartments on the second floor. The first floor was the Utah State Liquor Store. A partial third level had just two apartments. MJ: Do you know how or when our uncle purchased the building? MN: I’m not sure. MJ: Okay. You said your grandmother moved there in 1957 and you guys moved there. MN: We ultimately moved there in 1959 and we lived there from 1959 to 1968. MJ: Okay. Before we talk a little bit more about 25th Street, what were some of the things that you did for fun when you were growing up? 3 MN: You know, it was probably just the normal things as a kid, I guess. Of course, having moved quite a bit when I was younger, I met a lot of people and had a lot of friends around the Ogden area, but never got to stay in one place for a long time other than on 15th Street. I stayed there from 1947 to 1957 then we moved to 25th Street. I went to a lot of movies, of course, at the Orpheum and the Paramount. There was also the Egyptian Theater on Washington Boulevard and the Ogden Theater. I didn’t go to the Ogden very much because it mainly had adult movies. When I would walk to Madison or Central up to 25th Street, sometimes they’d have some pretty risqué pictures of the movies that were playing but a curious kid as myself you had to check them out. I had some good riends who were employed at the greyhound bus station and the coffee shop next door to the east. I remember a lady and her two daughters that managed the Helina Hotel for a while. I did just normal stuff, if you want to call it normal on 25th Street. Let me just say that even though we lived on 25th Street, we weren’t necessarily of the street. There were a lot of different types of people that would come down there—people from the Ogden business district and people that hung out on the street all the time. MJ: All kinds of people. MN: Right. Exactly. MJ: What was 25th Street like when you guys lived there? MN: Wow, well there was a lot going on with the various establishments and I remember the Broom Hotel on the corner of 25th and Washington. Before even the federal building, there were a lot of different businesses and bars in that area. 4 Of course, there was just a wide variety of establishments from hotels to bars and cafes. It was just interesting. MJ: Did you see a lot of trouble? MN: A lot of different things. When you live in an area like that, you do. You see a lot of different people like husbands being abusive to their wives, especially sometimes when their cars were parked in front of the liquor store. I don’t know if they were even partially intoxicated when they were there, or had an altercation of some type, but when your apartment, like ours was, facing 25th Street, you do see a lot. With everything going on you’re bound to see all kinds of stuff. On a positive note, one thing that stands out in my mind are the buses— the greyhound buses that were coming and going. There was also the Lake Shore Motor Coach Lines, which was a local commuter bus from Ogden to Salt Lake and all points in between. I vividly remember one of the Greyhound routes that would be announced as follows: “All aboard the north bound car. Loading in lane number two for Brigham City, Snowville, Stravel, Burley, Twin Falls, Boise, Baker, Pendleton, Walla Walla, Lewiston, Spokane, Portland, Tacoma, Seattle, Vancouver.” Just to the west of the Lyceum, was the labor temple. This is where a lot of the labor unions had their offices and where the members would meet. I can’t remember the exact time when the labor temple caught on fire, nor the circumstances why, but it was late one night or early one morning and it was a fairly cooler time of the year. The fire department came and woke us all up, everybody in the building, to evacuate. So, we had to leave the building, but the 5 greyhound bus station closed at approximately 11:30 p.m., and it was after that that the fire happened, so we went over to the Trailways terminal which was just north across the street on the corner from the Greyhound bus station. We were all in our robes and pajamas and night gowns, and had to stay until they got the fire put out and until they deemed it safe to go back in. I remember for a long time afterwards you could smell the smoke from the fire at the labor temple. Another thing that stands out in my mind was, especially on Fridays and Saturday nights, there would be, just to the south of the back of the apartments was the Elk’s Lodge. The Elk’s faced east and west, but they would always have a live band usually there on Friday and Saturday nights and a lot of people and a lot of parties going on. West of our building was the Acapulco Club and they had a live band too so it was kind of a battle of the bands on Friday nights and Saturday nights. They’d have music during the week, but nothing like the live bands that would be there on the weekends. It was loud and pretty noisy, but it was fun. There were things going on at the park sometimes, different things at the park, which was just to the east of Grant Avenue. MJ: I think it’s really interesting, a lot of times when people think about Ogden, they think about the railroad and that end of 25th Street, the hustle and bustle over there, so it’s interesting to hear the hustle and bustle at the other end of the street with the buses. MN: Yes, that’s exactly true. The old silver sides and scenic cruiser buses. Fred Holden, who was the ticker agent, had two of his sons that worked there, Terry and Tom Holden, and then there was a gentleman by the name of Gerald 6 Perkins. Oliver Albertson sold pillows on the buses when they’d come in, and there was an African American gentleman whose last name was Coleman, but they called him Coley and he would shine shoes in the men’s restroom of the bus station. Good people. Really good people. MJ: They had a lot going on down there. You said that you worked at the coffee shop there in the bus depot, how did you get job? MN: Exactly. Well, living there and working close, or being there a lot, I knew Fred Holden and his boys and he basically ran the whole operation. Don Mueller was the first operator of the coffee shop. Then there was Welling Zundel who ran it for a while after Don Mueller left. June Barker was one of the waitresses at the coffee shop. Her husband, Tom Barker, was a Lakeshore bus driver. When Welling Zundel took over, he had a couple of his granddaughters, Mary and Jane Holmes that worked there. So I got to be really good friends with all them. MJ: Where in the depot was the coffee shop? MN: It was on the northwest corner of the building. MJ: What did the rest of the interior of the depot look like? MN: Restrooms, of course, but I remember they had similar waiting benches that the train depot had. There was the ticket counter, an area where people would put their bags to be checked because they had to be loaded on the buses or off-loaded when the buses came in or left. Basically, the exterior now pretty much looks like it did back then. 7 MJ: We talked a little bit about the theaters before and your grandfather working there. Any other memories of those downtown theaters? MN: The reason we went to so many movies is because of the passes my grandmother got, and the theaters were so close. I remember when they had, “20,000 Leagues Under the Sea,” playing and the big marquee out front. Adjacent and pretty much connected to the Orpheum Theater was the Dokos Candy Company, and the proprietor there was a gentleman by the name of Johnny Dokos. We would go in and get a few little refreshments and some candy. A lot of times Johnny would take me down to where they were making the candy in the basement. The Paramount was on Kiesel Avenue between 24th and 25th on the west side. I remember the old movie tone news that would broadcast before the movies. MJ: You had mentioned to us before the Mr. Softie truck. Did you work in the Mr. Softie truck? MN: Fred Holden got this franchise for Mr. Softie and it was actually a fairly large ice cream truck because it had an ice cream making machine. It reminded me of some of the larger post office trucks. We would park it over at the gas station on 27th Street and Grant Avenue and would plug it in at night to keep the batteries charged. During the day in the summertime, I would bring it over to the Greyhound bus terminal and park it on the furthest west end to get it out of the way of the buses. In the storage room on the southwest corner of the building is where they’d keep a lot of the supplies, so we’d load it up from there and then would go to North Ogden, the central part of Ogden and then to South Ogden. 8 MJ: You mentioned before too, the woman and her daughter that ran the Helina Hotel. MN: There was a lady and her two daughters that managed the Helina Hotel. They would come up to the coffee shop and would visit. I wish I could remember their names because they were really good people. MJ: We’ve got the Polk directories at the library, I wonder if we can look up the hotel at that time and find out their names. MN: The Helina Hotel still has the Helina Hotel name on the front of it. The Lyceum, that name was not, on the front of the building other than recently whenever they started redoing that whole area. MJ: That’s good to know because I figured that it was original to it. MN: No, and from what I can recall, it was not. Even though it was the Lyceum Theater, that “Lyceum,” was not painted on the building. On the north side there was just a small entrance to the apartments that you could go upstairs and we could lock it at nights or anytime. We’d usually leave it open during the day so the mailman could deliver the mail because there were boxes right at the approach. Then you’d go up the stairs into the hallway. A couple of the inner apartments didn’t have windows and were used for storage, but the ones like my grandmothers and ours that had windows and some of the others along the east side were occupied. MJ: You had mentioned too, the Great Wall Café and Grill Tavern. 9 MN: You could look out our front window and just to the north was the Grill Tavern and just a little bit northeast was the Great Wall Café. In that same area was the Depot Drug. Also there was the Kokomo Club, which is still operating. There was Poncho’s at 25th Street and Lincoln Avenue and the Marion Hotel on the one hundred block. We were in the two hundred block. There was Star Noodle and next door there was a little Judo or Karate place, they would teach Judo or Karate and you could go down in a basement area and actually sit and watch them do their practicing. Also, on Lincoln, between 25th and 26th, I believe it was on the east side of the street, they had the Sundowners Motorcycle Club hangout and then, of course, I remember Wonder Bread. That had been there for a long time, plus the thrift store and that was on Grand Avenue, a little bit south of the Elk’s Lodge. I also remember the library. When I was going to Central and Ogden High School, if I needed to, I’d just go over to the library on the corner of 26th and Washington. MJ: The Carnegie Library, right? MN: The Carnegie Library, exactly. That was there for a long time, but I would go in and study and do whatever. It was a short walk home so it was pretty convenient. MJ: You talked about the park there and you said that you would sometimes walk over for Christmas Village. MN: Right. During Christmas time, they’d have it all set up like they still do to a certain extent. Since my brother was a lot younger than myself, when my grandmother and my mother would set out Christmas, Roger, myself, and my stepdad would take him over to the park and would just walk around and look at things and 10 spend about as long as we could, about a half an hour or 45 minutes until we figured the presents were all there under the tree. The apartments weren’t very big, so we didn’t have a huge tree, but we would go back and it was kind of special to Roger because Santa Claus had come. The park did a very good job in the Christmas village with the decorations and music. There were a lot of people there every night during the Christmas season. MJ: It’s interesting doing this project because some people remember 25th Street as just rough and tumble and crime this problem area, other people remember it as being this very vibrant and alive kind of place. Where do you think your memories fit? MN: A lot of it kind of intermingles with everything you said because living there on a full-time basis, you see some good things and you see some bad things, but overall, it was just the area at the time. You could go not too far north, south, east, or west and be in the business district of Ogden. You could be over where they were doing all of the bread making at Wonder Bread. The post office was not too far. Before they built the federal building and when the Broom Hotel was there, you had more of the same kind of situation there so it was more extended before they tore that 300 block down where the federal building is now. So, there was still part of the, “red light alley.” I got a book that I was reading on it called, “The Historic Two-Bit Street,” and that brought a lot of memories back about the red light district. I remember that area. I don’t remember exactly, but I think probably they had a lot of that cleaned up fairly well during the time that we were there. Maybe not totally, but I don’t remember so much the negative things. It 11 was just the spirit of the time more or less. There was just a lot of stuff going on and just a lot of things happening. There was never a dull moment basically there. You had to be careful, of course. We would lock our door to the building at night and hopefully people in the apartments would remember to do that, but every so often you’d have different people come up for whatever reason if somebody forgot to lock it and they were drunk, or whatever by mistake or maybe they were just coming up to visit one of the tenants there. One thing I can remember in the building is on the partial third level, you’d go up right before you got to the two apartments, apartment 8 and apartment 9, you’d make a 180 degree turn and there was a little entrance that you’d have to bend down to go into a locked door, but you’d open the door with out key and go in. I remember there were closets, or dressing rooms that they had used at the time when it was a theater to store things. My mother’s uncle would let the tenants store things there. That partial area where the storage closets were, was fairly large, but then actually you could look further north up in the attic area and could see all of the open beams. It was very dark. You had a light in part of the area where the storage closets were. They weren’t a small closet. They almost looked like things where you could store wardrobe type stuff. I remember going up and just looking around seeing a lot of different things. When I went to Ogden High School I’d catch the Ogden City bus at the corner of 25th and Grant Avenue. I’d ride it all the way to Ogden High School and then catch the same bus back and it would drop me off on Washington and 25th. It was kind of different to ride the city bus line to school every day. The brief time I went to Madison and Central, I walked 12 there and back home in good and bad weather usually. It was a workout, but I made it okay. I remember the Topper Bakery which is still on Monroe between 25th and 26th. MJ: How come your family ultimately moved from there? MN: I’m not really sure because when they moved from 25th they moved to Gramercy between 25th and 26th. I joined the Air Force during the Vietnam timeframe and I went in 1966 and went to my basic training and tech. school and was stationed back at Hill for two and a half years, so when I was in the Air Force for part of that four year time, I actually just lived at home and drove to Hill. Then I got orders to go to Thailand from 1968 to 1969 and that was when my grandmother, my mom, dad and Roger moved from 25th Street to Gramercy. When I got back from Thailand, they had already moved. Why? I don’t know if maybe they just needed a little bit more room. The apartments were fairly small and you had to put stuff in storage, so I think they just wanted to get a home and just press on from there. Grandma lived with us until her passing in May of 1969. MJ: I just have a few more questions for you to wind down. How do you think Ogden and 25th Street have changed since you lived there? MN: All that they’ve done to make 25th Street historic. Times change and you just go with the times. Especially where the Junction is now, there used to be a lot of small stores and stuff. Wow, because I grew up in Ogden a lot of big changes have taken place, most have been for the better. The inner city has taken a bit of a downturn. There are still a lot of old beautiful homes in the inner city. The buildings and the structure all seem to be, a lot of them are really still there. A lot 13 of them have been put on registers for the historical society and whatever. I know the Egyptian survived. I was kind of disappointed for the Orpheum, but I think when they were doing some construction there on that part of Ogden, somehow something fell on the roof there and it caved in and they had to demolish it. For the most part, the old city and county building is there from when I remembered it. Of course, I remember the jail being at the top there. I call it the city and county building referring to it as that because that has pretty much stayed in place. Overall, just with progress and different things, but I’m glad that a lot of the building on 25th Street, the bus station is still intact structurally and the Lyceum Theater. I think, I believe, that the apartments…well, let me back track a little bit, when I went down there and they were doing a little bit of the remodeling to the Lyceum building, when they were putting the Wiseguys and what’s there now, I was talking with my Uncle Herold’s son, Brent, who I believe is still living. Gary Gail, his other boy, died a few years back. He was an attorney in Ogden. Brent still lives up on Weelocken, but I was talking with him and I asked him if it was okay, and even the construction workers, if I went and just went through the building a little bit. Actually, I got a brick that I still have of the remodel of the building. Upstairs where the apartments were, initially I think they were going to turn that into office space because when I went up there, of course, they hadn’t done it yet, but there were still a lot of mattresses and furniture in the different apartments. It was neat to walk through them, it brought back a lot of memories. 14 It was neat to go back through the Lyceum buildings when they were remodeling it for the Wiseguys play house downstairs. Probably back in the 1970’s, Herold Gale had his printing company in there for a while where the liquior store was. I remember working for my mother’s Uncle Herold when he left The Standard Examiner and had his printing business. It was initially in the old Ogden Utah Knitting Mill building just north of the old post office on Grant Avenue on the second floor. Then he moved from there to Ogden Avenue between 25th and 26th Street on the west side of the street. There were some buildings there and he occupied a small warehouse where he had his printing facility. Facing the entrance was a parking lot behind Glen Bros. Music Store. MN: We’ve covered a lot, haven’t we? There are just a lot of things. I appreciate the opportunity to share some of these experiences because for the nine years or so that I lived on 25th, even though it was fine for me, you get labeled, “Oh, you live on 25th Street? Oh my gosh, you’re living in a pretty rough part of town,” which it was, but you dealt with it. I knew so many people that I wasn’t really picked on as a kid. I mean, you go through different things, but I knew so many people from different parts of town that they pretty much left me alone. So, I was immune to a lot of the bullying that maybe went on. Thank you for this opportunity, it’s been great. MJ: Thank you. Was there anything else you wanted to share? Did we get it all? MN: I think we pretty much covered most of it. 15 MJ: Good. Thank you very much for letting us come here today. We really appreciate it. MN: That’s great. Thanks again. 16