Oral History Program Ray J. Forbes Janice Dawson 18 August 1976 i Oral History Program Weber State University Stewart Library Ogden, Utah Ray J. Forbes Interviewed by Janice Dawson 18 August 1976 Copyright © 2012 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 Special Collections. 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. It reflects personal opinion offered by the interviewee in response to questioning, and as such it is partisan, deeply involved, and irreplaceable. ____________________________________ Rights Management All literary rights in the manuscript, including the right to publish, are reserved to the Stewart Library of Weber State University. No part of the manuscript may be published without the written permission of the University Librarian. Requests for permission to publish should be addressed to the Administration Office, Stewart Library, Weber State University, Ogden, Utah, 84408. The request should include identification of the specific item and identification of the user. It is recommended that this oral history be cited as follows: Forbes, Ray, an oral history by Janice Dawson, 18 August 1976, WSU Stewart Library Oral History Program, University Archives, Stewart Library, Weber State University, Ogden, UT. iii Abstract: The following is an oral history interview with Ray J. Forbes. The interview was conducted on August 18, 1976, by Janice Dawson, in East Layton, Utah. Forbes discusses his childhood and living through the Depression. JD: Ok, Ray would you like to tell us where you were born and a little bit about yourself? RF: I was born in now what is known as East Layton, it, years ago it was considered Little Scotland because so many Scottish people moved into this area. I was born in the home1 that is owned by Sylvia Childs and Orville Childs and is occupied by their daughter and her husband, the Warrens. I moved into the house that is occupied by Eldred Forbes2 and when I was one year old. I started to school in the Dawson Hollow when I was six years old and I was the only one that was in the first grade, so I was moved up with the rest of the fellows into the second grade. We had to walk to school all the time. The school that we went to was built years ago, my father attended this school in 1887 and many of the old timers of this area went there. Later there was what they called the Maggie Green school house and that was built and that is the home of Roger Nalder now. Then there was what they called Steve Nalder School which is on the other side of the creek. When I went to school the area covered from where almost to Parl's 89 Cafe, used to be, to what is considered Rene Walton's home on the east boundaries and the west was David Greens over to Vida Roueche's home. There was about thirty-five to forty that went to school when I did. The first year that I started I was the youngest in the school and Alex Dawson, I think, was the oldest. There were eight grades in the school, all in one room. My first year was, I was taught by Edwina Whitesides Knowlton and then we had Sarah Jane Humphrey Adams. When we were 1 going to the hollow school, I think the first Japanese person that I ever remember seeing was a girl, that, they lived in what we call the Walton place now, they moved there and her name was Chill Nakathema4 and as I remember that is the first Japanese person that has ever moved around here. The school that we went to was the center of most of the activity in the community, many dances and always Christmas parties, and sometimes it was used even for church. There was, we always had a beautiful Christmas tree that we'd go up in the mountains to get. There was, you had to make your own decorations, popcorn balls and pasting pieces of red and green paper together to make all your decorations and candles was on the trees. They were, would always have food there for the Christmas party. We, on our, that was the center of our culture there you might say. The rest of our recreation we made ourselves. We'd go to the show down to Layton and that was on foot. We would walk down there once and twice a week to what was known as Laytona Theatre operated by Lige King. You see all kinds of western Tom Mix and Bill Hart shows. In them days we had to make our own recreation, no radios, television and that. We gave, at Christmas, we gave a few presents to each other. I can remember having the scarlet fever and we were quarantined for two months and I sent Mattie Green a present which was a muskrat’s tail, and that caused a little stir in their family, but at that time we were quarantined for two months. Seven, had, seven in our family had scarlet fever and all of their family. It, in later years when we went to Layton, we seemed to have had as good as an education as they did down there. We held our own when we moved into the larger school. JD: Would that be Layton Elementary? 2 RF: That would be Layton Elementary; it would be across from the Tanner Clinic now. I'd like to tell a little thing or two that happened in the school. My father spoke to me when I was just a boy about him going to this school and there was a teacher by the name of Mr. Lewis and he was aggravated with someone and stomping down the center of the school house and he went through the floor. I guess it had rotted and they had to help him out. When I went to school there, we had what we called a pot-bellied stove to heat with. Many of the older boys, Bill Forbes and Milton Forbes, and some of them would go to sharpen their pencil and while they were sharpening their pencil they would open up the stove door and throw a handful of 22 bullets in and hurry back to the seat and then we'd wind up with ashes and soot all over the building which had to be cleaned up. There was an incident with this here water in the bucket and the dipper. One of the fellows went out to get a drink he noticed that the water was just a little off color and come to find out one of the boys had gone out and used it for the latrine, while no one was looking, and that required a new dipper to drink with. We had to, I was thinking lots of times of the times we had Sister Sarah Jane Adams there, we were a mean Bunch of kids I guess, we were-had the poor woman out to the back of the school house crying more than she was inside sometimes, because handling that many children and all different ages and some of us had a streak of outlaw I guess in us, and we really caused her a lot of trouble. I remember Mrs. Adams shaking me once and shook me up against a coat hook and cut my head. And then she cried for a half a day cause the blood run down the side, Course if the teacher did that now they'd have him hung to the nearest tree. We had to mind then, the teachers used a stick, the short end of a rawhide buggy whip, and it was nothing for, not an unusual thing, to have that brought down on 3 your back, and I'm glad we had to mind. It—in later years, Sister Dawson wants me to mention about our living and that during the depression. This was a very difficult time, no jobs. I have stood in line to get a job for hours before it came daylight and you would, if you got a job it would maybe be 25 cents an hour and you would work sometimes ten hours for $2.50. But I learned a lot about the value of money through this. I hate to see the young people go through a depression, and yet it is very educational to know and to understand the value of having a job and having food and clothing. We never did go without food, but sometimes your diet wasn't exactly what you would want. We worked very hard to make a living at that time. JD: Were you married at this time—during the depression? RF: Yes, we, Ada and I were married on the 11 of April 1928 and shortly after that the depression started. It was kind of a rare thing if you had money to go to a show and get a hamburger over and the Kramer's Bow-Wow. But we enjoyed that and we were not the worse for having had that experience. We would know how to handle things if we ever got to this point again. We hope we never do, but it could come. We had to make our own recreation during this depression. In the winter we'd get in bobsleighs and go from one place to the other and haul meat there and play cards and have a very joyous time and take, each one take, so much food and have a nice supper and really enjoy ourselves. But that's the only recreation we had at night other than a show once in a while. During the daytime they started Softball teams all over the country and for the women. The women were playing and this team up here was considered the Oakbrushers. We really enjoyed those softball games. There was also a hardball team for the men. They played up in a diamond there where the Weber Basin Water 4 Conservancy district is now. We had a diamond there and played different teams around the country. It’s unfortunate that a lot of the young can’t go through just a little of this here depression to really understand what we had to put up with. I have worked in jobs where I thought that I was really making money. I got a job at an hour to help a carpenter and I worked with blisters on both hands so bad that I've—every time I would hit with the mallet I would shut my eyes to keep from yelling. You, the work at that time was hard. I'm not sorry that I had to work hard, because it's good for the body and it's good for the mind. We had, shortly after that time we had floods on the upper highway. There was two of them. One just before we were, I was married. It was around the 26 or 27—1927 and that came down and covered a large area where some of the main part of it is Clark's Rocky Gulch. All in that area where Max Moss lives5 north and it was months before we could go over the top of it with anything but a saddle horse. Many people tried it in automobiles and we would have to pull them out with saddle horses and our lariat rope. After we were married we had another flood and it cut all the road which was by Parl's 89 Cafe and it was a long time before they was able to fill that so the road could be used again. JD: Did any of these floods damage your own property? RF: Yes, there's about two acres of ground that I had in a meadow that brought gravel and rocks, rocks that would weigh two and three hundred pounds rolling down from the mountain to there and it damaged about two acres, but it has since kind of filled over and is ok now for pasture ground. JD: Did you actually see any of these floods? Can you describe them to us? 5 RF: No I didn't see either one of them come down. Many have told me about them, about a wall of mud coming down. It just happened that there were no homes in the path of these, if it was the way it is now there could be very destructive with the homes that are in that area right now—could kill a lot of people. JD: What did they feel like was the cause of the floods in those days? RF: Well, it could be some overgrazing, but it was a right fast rain, it hit— even though you don’t graze the ground down that much—if it hits that much water, it can start, there was trees and brush and everything else that came out with that. So it's, I hope it never happens again in those two areas, but it's the same time that it was flooded so bad in Farmington and also in Willard. Many lost their lives in Farmington flood because they were camped in the mouth of Farmington Canyon. JD: Do you know anything in particular about those people that were killed? RF: No, there were some of them that were never found. Their bodies were never found. They found some because after it warmed up why it—the flies gathered around some areas and they dug down in a little ways and found decomposed bodies and—but it—I never did know who the people were that lost their lives in that. JD: Do you feel like these floods could happen again to us now? RF: Yes, every time it comes a hard rain here I always look to that mountain to see whether part of its coming down again. It may never. I don’t want to be an alarmist, but I like to be careful too. I don’t want to see that happen to people. 6 JD: That's true. One thing I was wondering about when there was damage to the roads or people's property, did everyone get together to help clean it up or did each person just kind of take care of his own problem? RF: Well on mine, Mr. Dawson, Mr. Alex Dawson Sr. and his—Dick and Jack's father— helped me plow in to get the water back down into its proper channel. But as far as the flood in the road was concerned, it just had to remain that way until it dried on top enough to make a road over the top of it. JD: Then they never did attempt to remove the debris. RF: Never did, and it took months before it was, you could go—walk over the top of it or go over it with a horse and it would be just spongy like jello. It was months before that really dried out enough to make a road. JD: Now were the roads paved at that time? RF: No, they wasn't even graded. They were—you in the old T model cars you bounced from rock to rock. JD: Then there really wasn't too much repair to do to them anyway. RF: No, all it was, wasjust go down around the flood till it dried enough to go over the top of it again. JD: Now this was where Highway 89 is now. RF: That is where Highway 89—and there it is in the area of just north of where Max Moss lives and right where Clark's house is. 7 JD: That's interesting. Let's get back to entertainment for just a minute. Now was Lagoon part of your life in your younger years? RF: Well we went occasionally. The thought of it was a lot. We went down there occasionally and I looked forward to having a hot dog and a bottle of strawberry soda pop and that was, it was kind of unusual to go down there. We'd have to go with a team and a white topped buggy down to Layton, unhitch them and tie them to the buggy and to—with hay in it and then we would get on the Bamberger, which we called at that time the old dummy, and travel to Lagoon and when we got through down there we would come back on the Bamberger, hitch the team up to come home again. JD: Would this be a family affair? RF: Yes, that was a family affair until we got to be big, grown up adults. It was a family affair and maybe some of the neighbors would go too and we'd have a picnic down there. But I'd heard a lot about Saltair, but I was— never when it was operating—I never did go there. My sisters did. And speaking of school, when I went to high school, my sister and Leone Green were both going and I would hitch up the horse in the morning on a buggy and we would drive down to Layton and unhitch it and go to school on the Bamberger and then come back and hitch the horse up and come home. When I first went to Layton school that's all we had was our, it wasn't a school bus, it was a school wagon, and in the summer you'd have one team of horses on it, and during the muddy weather you'd have four horses dragging that wagon up the road in maybe in a foot of mud. It was quite an effort to get to school. There was, I remember a lot of the old school bus drivers, was George Talbot, for years George drove a team and sometimes two teams to— down the road to take us all down to the old Layton schoolhouse which would be 8 down below town. It's been—it was a struggle to get any education then and I guess you can tell by my English I didn't finish first place in English class. JD: Now how many grades did you attend at Layton High? Is that about the same as it is now? RF: Yes, I didn't finish school, high school, because my father died when I was eighteen, or seventeen, and I quit at that time. JD: And what grade were you in then? RF: I was in my last year of school, but I didn't finish. JD: Oh, in high school. Now would you go right from Layton High6 to the high school or would you have an intermediate school like they do now? RF: No, they had the first and second, that is freshman and sophomore classes at Kaysville Elementary school—that is, it was an old part of it. It's an elementary school entirely there now, but we—in the back of it we had there was the old part of school and we went to two—the first years of high school there before we went to Davis. JD: Now that's the elementary school that's still standing? RF: Yes, and for several years that's how we got to school was horse and buggy and then the Bamberger. JD: Then when you went to Davis High there was just what—the junior and senior class that was held actually there? RF: Yes, there were just junior and senior classes. 9 JD: Do you recall any interesting incidents about high school, any of the teachers there, or other experiences you had? RF: Well, nothing special concerning the classes, I remember that Samuel Morgan that just passed away was my agriculture teacher and we speak of a lot of the boys now wearing long hair, but I remember having my hair down going to my shirt collar square off at the back so I can’t kick much about the boys today wearing long hair. I remember a pair of—we started to wearing bell-bottom pants is not something new for today. We had the bell-bottomed pants then and I had a pair of corduroy pants that were blue, a beautiful navy blue with orange cuffs on the bottom, and I didn't have them very long, my bother seen them and he insisted that he have them and he bought them off of me so I had to go and get me another pair. So bell-bottoms are not a thing of just today. JD: Was that the going rate, with orange cuffs? RF: That—well the blue pants and the orange cuff wasn't exactly the going thing but you wasn't outgoing unless you had a pair of bell-bottomed corduroys at that time. JD: Did teenagers worry so much about styles in those days so much as they do now? Could they afford to keep up with the style? RF: Well I don’t think so much as they do now, course some of them the way they dress now, their trousers dragging the ground and looks kind of dirty clean up to the knee, I don’t believe we had, we went in for that fad. JD: That was more like for the barnyard time. RF: That was more barnyard time. I'd like to speak of our home here. I started to build before we were married and we—at that time most everyone was rather conservative, 10 they would only build what they could really afford. It wasn't a dream home but we were able to get by with it, and then we've built on a couple of times since. But we, with my lovely wife as conservative and helpful as she is, we have never paid a house payment, we have never moved, and we have never paid a dime of rent on a home. We—there has been a piece or two of furniture we have bought on time, but we made sure that we were able to pay for them before we purchased them. So I give credit to my wife to—for the wonderful she has kept our home and helped me to save all these years. I think it would be good advice for many of the young to—not think of the dream home of 350,000 house when they could do with something just a little bit less and not have the worry of such terrific payments and more going out than what they're have coming in. JD: Well, we all need to listen to that today. Then you probably got through the depression a lot easier than most people if you weren't making a house payment, but is there anything else you want to say about the depression time? RF: Well, we had plenty of food at that time, but you didn't have the variety that you can now. We had a farm and we raised enough to—that we got by fine and you—at that time if you didn't have certain types of food you could go to a neighbor and he did have and you could help him a little bit and you could get some of the things that he had and change back and forth and look pretty good. JD: There was a lot of barter then. RF: Yes, there was quite a bit of barter back and forth and exchange, so it wasn't all paid out in cash. JD: Now were you farming for a living at this time? 11 RF: Yes, I helped farming for my mother and we didn't have much money to go on but we had plenty of things to wear and to eat. I helped run the farm and my mother lived across the road and I had to help her too. JD: Now at the end, near the end, towards the end of the depression when Roosevelt came out with his new deal do you feel like this period had any effect on you personally? RF: Not very directly. It helped people in the city so that they could buy produce that came off of the farm and that eventually helped the farmer. It wasn't very much direct help in my opinion to the farmer. Indirectly it was fine. JD: Then you really didn't feel any influence during this period. RF: No, not a great deal of influence from that. JD: You mentioned earlier to me that you worked at Hill Field, now course this had a big impact on the economy of this area. Would you like to talk a little bit about that, when it first came in? RF: Well, I started up to Hill just before, in ’41, just before Pearl Harbor and I worked there a little over 29 years, and retired. And I was ready to get out of that place. It's ok to work there, but I had things I wanted to do here, me and my wife, to do things that we have always wanted to do here, me and my wife, do things we have always wanted to do, travel and have a camper and go fishing. JD: Do you feel like Hill Field has had quite an economic influence on this area? RF: Well, yes, it has. Sometimes I wonder if it's for, they say progress; I sometimes question exactly what progress is. I guess, I guess its progress in a way. It sometimes—it, the 12 more people you bring in, the more projects that you, and headaches you have within the town and cities. JD: Do you feel like this growth has been beneficial to the Layton area? RF: I'd have an awful time really answering that. I don’t know whether I like it the way it is or whether I like it back when there was only two houses on this side of the road between here and the upper highway—our house and Irvin Wall's. JD: Then you kind of enjoyed the good old days, didn't you? RF: I guess they say that you can take the boy out of the country but you can’t take the country out of the boy, and I guess we got some wonderful neighbors and that, but I still don’t know just how much improvement it's made to me. JD: Well, I've enjoyed talking to you Brother Forbes. Are there any other comments you'd like to make? RF: No, I think not. I appreciate the chance of saying these things and giving you what information I could and thank you for coming. JD: Ok, thank you very much. Footnotes 13 1. 1928 East Cherry Lane, East Layton, Utah 2. 1912 East Cherry Lane, East Layton, Utah 3. 887 East 1000 North, East Layton, Utah 4. Nora Williams recalled that they called her Utah. The other name seems more plausible. 5. 1675 North Valley View Drive, East Layton, Utah 6. This should have been referred to as Layton Elementary, not Layton High. ORAL HISTORY REPORT 14 The subject matter of this series of interviews was planned mainly around the floods which devastated Davis County during the 1920's and 30's. This was of particular interest due to the recent disaster in Idaho at the Teton Dam and also in Colorado. There was a curiosity as to exactly what happened locally under such circumstances, because of the limitations of this subject other items of interest were also included, particularly reminiscences of the depression years. The problems of this period are so remote to our style of living today that it would be well for current generations to be able to hear these people describe just what it was like during hard times. This was also a period when social life was moving from strictly home and church centered activities to more commercial types of entertainment. This proved to be a unique experience, especially from the vantage of today's commercial exploitation. As the project progressed I became aware of a number of people in Layton who had been connected with the sugar industry and planned to include this information in the interviews also. I soon discovered that the number of people who not only lived during the flood period but who had actually seen this phenomenon was rather limited. Several contacts were willing to discuss this period, but when it came to putting it on tape they flatly refused to cooperate. It was rather frustrating also when people were helpful only to reveal during the interview that they hadn't actually been present at the time of the flood but were relating what others had told them of the experience. However, some of the problems they told of related to the aftermath were very interesting and there was still some good information obtained. It was interesting to note that several of the people interviewed seemed to pass the depression era without undue suffering even though, as they related, they would not 15 like to live through it again. This seemed due to the fact that they owned their own property, were able to raise a garden, and had cows and chickens. This might hold a message for people of the present day who are concerned about disasters of one kind or another. Although the information gathered about this period was not particularly unique, it was enlightening. Unfortunately the interviews with people connected with the local sugar plant did not work out as planned. There was one man who had been active in this business from its very inception and had worked as a boy in Canada learning the business. His father established the sugar plant in Layton and he had been active in the plant most of his life. However he would not cooperate in the taping of the interview, probably due to a slight speech impediment. Several other contacts were either hospitalized at the time or were out of town. This is unfortunate as the sugar industry would make a particularly interesting chapter in local history. Although most of the interviews followed the general trends of the time there were numerous scraps of information that were fascinating which help to relate the broader view of history to the average people and give it a personal touch. The fact that East Layton was a stopover for travelers, especially those going from Morgan to Salt; Lake, was interesting; and the corporative isolation of the community until the more recent times of the automobile was difficult to realize. A background history of one of the old landmark homes of the area proved enlightening. Also there are still people who recall Indians coming through the area when they were children. An anecdote connected with the coming of the railroad through Weber Canyon was also interesting. 16 Discussion of early entertainment revealed other facts. For example, the first ice cream cone of the area was called a say-so and cost ten cents. This was more than most children could afford very often having only 25 cents for the whole day's outing. The first merry-go-round at Lagoon was pulled by horsepower— the four footed variety. The popular bands of the era were a main part of entertainment at Lagoon and other resorts. One of the most enlightening discoveries for me was the information about the early phases of Lagoon and its predecessor, Lake Park, and how many buildings of the earlier park were moved up to Farmington to establish the present resort. Mrs. Hess had many interesting facts about early Lagoon as they actually lived for many years right next to the midway. She told of some of the early fires as well as the floods. Also her reminiscences of Adelia Rogers were amusing. As the interviews progressed with the people in the East Layton area, a pattern began to emerge—that of attendance at the Dawson Hollow School. Several had attended the school as youth and Mrs. Knowlton had been one of the last teachers there. This school had been built upon the property of my husband's great grandfather and the foundations are still visible today. This created a very deep interest in the history of this school and is a project which I wish to pursue in depth in the future. In fact it would be a worthwhile project to compile the history of all the early schools of Layton. Although material might be somewhat limited, a short history of the flood era would be a noteworthy addition to county history. Most of the available material at the present time consists of government documents which are sometimes very uninteresting and of course are more concerned with facts than experiences. Such a 17 more personal approach would have to be made within the next few years while there are still people around who lived through the experience. I feel very strongly that a comprehensive history of Lagoon and some of the earlier resorts would be of interest to many Utahns. A project such as this could easily expand to include Saltair, Liberty Park and other resorts in the area. I am not really aware of what has been done on this subject, but a consolidation of the material plus new additions and personal remembrances would make a fascinating addition to Utah history. As one will soon learn upon attempting an oral history project, there are many problems connected with it which must be overcome. One of the first hurdles is not in getting people to talk to you, but in convincing them to talk in the presence of a tape recorder. Reactions here will be from hesitant cooperation to outright refusal to even discuss the project. Sometimes a pleasant discussion talking about old times in a relaxing atmosphere can convince people that the proposal is worthwhile. It is well to point out that the interviews will be entirely informal and that they will merely be asked to reply to simple questions in their own words about the selected subject. It is well to discuss with them what questions will be asked so that they may consider them in the interim. Most people are usually cooperative at this point; however, if they are still extremely reluctant, it is best not to go ahead with the interview. One woman I interviewed was hesitant through the whole process and when the interview was completed and transcribed she wanted to dispose of everything and forget it. This can be a very difficult experience for both parties. It is much better if each participant has a positive feeling toward the project. This attitude also makes for a better end product. 18 As was mentioned earlier, some interviews were in progress before it was learned that the person had not actually witnessed the event. This problem could be avoided with a more thorough questioning during the pre-interview period to try and discover their actual depth of knowledge of the subject. This is also why it is well to have several additional subjects to fall back upon so the interview won’t be a complete waste of time. Another problem was encountered when the person being interviewed would ask you to turn off the tape recorder and would then proceed to tell you about a particular incident and ask if that was what you wanted. When they told the story the second time around it had lost its spontaneity and became a more mechanical action, ^his was disappointing several times and I did not know how to handle the situation. Perhaps mentioning this before the interview might help. One suggestion which I very strongly recommend is that the interviewer stops and transcribes the first tape or two before proceeding with the remainder of the interviews. Hearing your own voice and the speech problems you might have certainly gives you more empathy with those being interviewed and also gives you a chance to correct your own mistakes. I discovered this fact a little late and felt that my technique was certainly not very scholarly. I didn't realize how much talking I was doing myself with many unnecessary comments. I took my own advice to relax and enjoy the conversation, whereas I should have let the interviewee feel this way and I should have been a little more reserved. However, I would like to point out that this relaxed attitude certainly helped to bring out some beautiful comments, particularly with Mrs. Hess whom I did not know personally. This would not have happened in a more formal interview. Perhaps sometimes the information 19 revealed and feelings evoked are just as important as a scholarly presentation. Even though this problem was stressed in the class periods before the interviews began, I think that each person has to experience it for himself to discover his own weaknesses. This is why you should at least listen to the tapes before further interviews. There were several aspects of this project which were difficult for me to accomplish. One was setting up an interview with those people who were strangers to me. However, once the initial contact was made it became much easier as most people who accepted the project were very friendly. Setting a definite time schedule also proved to be somewhat of a problem and if this was adhered to closely the project would certainly be completed more quickly and smoothly. However, the greatest obstacle was the transcribing of the tapes. The time required for this portion of the project was overwhelming. There is no solution to this except to hire the work done. So it is a choice of spending either the time or money in order to accomplish this most distasteful job. If there was one idea that struck me more than any other during these interviews it was the fact that there are so many older people who have wonderful stories to tell. They are eager to share their experiences with others. It is a shame that more of this cannot be accomplished. Of course it is a greatly time-consuming task to both gather and listen to oral history, but in my opinion it is one that is very worthwhile. It captures an essence that is completely missed in other forms of history. It is something beyond what the printed page can offer. Although oral history can never replace that which is written, it certainly deserves a place in our records of the past. 20 READING LIST FOR ORAL HISTORY WORKSHOP Pages History of Farmington, Utah to I89O Glen Milton Leonard 146 The Wall Around Farmington John W. Steed 2 Cloudburst Floods in Utah 1850-1938 Ralf R. V/oolley 80 Floods and Accelerated Erosion in Norther Utah Reed Bailey 21 Torrential Floods - Northern Utah 1930 Special Flood Commission 51 Janice Dawson The Floods of 1923 in Northern Utah J. H. Paul and F. S. 3aker 20 Beet Sugar in the West Leonard J. Arrington 175 East of Antelope Island Daughters of Utah Pioneers 200 Utah - A Guide to the State Writers Program WPA 116 The Great Salt Lake Dale L. Morgan 370 Flood Plain Information - Farmington Bay Tributaries 21 35 Army Corps of Engineers Flood Plain Information - Barton, Mill and Stone Creeks 26 Army Corps of Engineers 22