Oral History Program Judy Glommen Interviewed by Cynthia Ann Balzomo 18 April 2008 i Oral History Program Weber State University Stewart Library Ogden, Utah Judy Glommen Interviewed by Cynthia Ann Balzomo 18 April 2008 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 University Archives. The Stewart Library also houses the original recording so researchers can gain a sense of the interviewee's voice and intonations. Project Description The Weber State College/University Student Projects have been created by students working with several different professors on the Weber State campus. The topics are varied and based on the student's interest or task for a specific assignment. These oral history assignments were created to help Weber State students learn the value and importance of recording public history and to benefit the expansion of the Weber State oral history collections. ____________________________________ Oral history is a method of collecting historical information through recorded interviews between a narrator with firsthand knowledge of historically significant events and a well-informed interviewer, with the goal of preserving substantive additions to the historical record. Because it is primary material, oral history is not intended to present the final, verified, or complete narrative of events. It is a spoken account. 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: Glommen, Judy, an oral history by Cynthia Ann Balzomo, 18 April 2008, 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 Judy Glommen. The interview was conducted on April 18, 2008, by Cynthia Ann Balzomo, at Weber State University. Glommen discusses growing up in Ogden, Utah during the 1950’s and 60’s and how the atmosphere of Ogden has changed since the city has grown. CB: If you can just state your name and spell your last name. JG: Judy Glommen G-L-O-M-M-E-N. CB: Where were you born? JG: I was born here in Ogden Utah, at the old MacKay-Dee hospital on Harrison Boulevard. I lived here in Ogden until I was about 3. Then we moved to Gillette, Wyoming and lived there until I was about 4 1/2 then we moved back to Ogden. Then I lived in Ogden until I got married and moved to Michigan. CB: Now you don't have to give away your age, but approximately what time period is this. JG: I was born in 1950. So I'm 58. CB: Are you the oldest? JG: No, I have two older brothers, and then myself, and then I have a younger sister who is ten years younger than I am. CB: So what do you remember of Ogden when you were younger?' JG: Ah, we lived on 25th street, just across the street from the park and right down from what use to be Central Jr. High. And their play field was right in our backyard. And at that time, it was all dirt, and as kids, that was our playground, we use to climb the fence, that 1 was our backyard. For us, now if you go down 25th street where we lived, it's close to—I would say pretty impoverished in that area and when we lived there, we knew we were poor but we didn't know we were that poor. It was kind of a weird situation for me, because we lived in the basement apartment. We use to walk, my brothers and I, because my mother was working and my father was always working, one of the things we use to do, was go down in the summer and go down to the court house. They would let us go in and sit in the back of traffic court and watch court hearings. I always thought I wanted to be a lawyer until I realized that you had to do so much research and I didn't want to do that. CB: How old were you when they would let you into court? JG: We were probably 10, 11. We would just sit in the back of the court and if you were quiet and didn't say anything, you were fine. We use to do that, my brothers and I would walk down there and that was our entertainment. We would go to the Egyptian theater on Saturday mornings and get into the movies for 10 cents. It was a different kind of a life then. We never thought about not playing outside in the neighborhood. That was something we just did, we didn't have to worry much. CB: What was 25th street or the shopping district like back then? JG: I don't remember —if you went down there used to be a bowling alley called White Lanes Bowling Alley. Right now, it's where—I think it is a bank there now on 25th street if you go down the hill, I'm not sure. There was a bowling alley there. We use to go down there as kids. The actual shopping district didn't start until you got up to Washington Boulevard and most of them were little stores where you went from store to store to store. Old Ogden is like Logan's main street now. Logan still has that same atmosphere 2 going from store to store to store. JC Penny’s, JC Penny’s was a big one; it was at the corner of 24th and Washington. That was a big Penny’s store right there. We use to go in there and where they sold the candy, was right across from the elevators. And the elevators had a lady that would stand in the elevator and push the screen over and that was pretty cool. And Grants, Grants was across the street on the eastside. Now Grants was kind of a neat store because they had soda fountains and the waitress would—you could sit on the stool and the waitress would take your order and then the food would come out on a conveyer belt. Then she would pick it up off the conveyer belt. That was kind of fun. It was a little different. Am I telling how old I am? Part of my life was kind of hectic because my dad was an alcoholic. He worked for the railroad and he was a functioning alcoholic, but he would get up and go to work but then he would never come home until real late at night and he would be drunk most of the time. My mom had three jobs just to keep us afloat. Cause he would basically spend all his money so—we knew my dad and if wasn't drinking he was a real nice guy but most of the time if he was, you just kind of stayed out of his way and that was a different kind of life. He had a gas station, but he gave the gas station up. CB: Where was the gas station? JG: The gas station was on 27th and Jefferson. It kind of closed because, well, what happened was his friends, his alcoholic friends, would come in and they would ask him for money and he'd give him money out of the till because he felt sorry for them. And finally, my mom just basically closed it because it was costing us more money to keep it open. CB: Did he build it? 3 JG: No, it was a Phillips 66 gas station. It was just a tiny gas station. It was on the corner of 27th and Jefferson, it kind of sat kiddy corner on the lot. He had that for quite a while and then my mom said she wasn't going to do it anymore. They just closed it. CB: What kind of jobs did your mom have? JG: She worked at I.R.S. most of the time and in the evening; she did books for our gas station and several other gas stations. She did that late at night and she also took care of the apartment building that we lived in so we could get our rent for free. She was always painting and cleaning and that kind of thing. So for us, I guess we were poor, but we didn't know we were poor. CB: So, you always had what you needed? JG: Yea, we didn't have the extras we didn't have all the stuff—if we absolutely had to have it we could get it. We never really went, I would say, hungry because we had cows and chickens. We didn't keep them there, we had them down on Gibby—it's down on 12th and below Wall Ave. where we kept the horses and other animals. CB: They were yours? JG: They were our families. We had horses and cows. That was part of my responsibility in high school in the morning—well we had a choice we could go down in the morning and milk or the afternoon and milk. I chose to go in the morning because I didn't want to go after school because I wanted to be with my friends and it was kina hard for me to say, well I have to go milk our cow. CB: Did you have a lot of friends who had animals? 4 JG: No, and the reason why we probably did was because my Dad grew up on a farm in Wyoming. Most of the problems my family had were because my father was an alcoholic. My grandpa needed help so that is why we went up to Wyoming but because my dad was an alcoholic my grandpa said, no you can't stay anymore. So, that is why we moved back to Ogden. CB: Was there a lot of farm animals in Ogden at that time? JG: Not so much in, but on the outskirts yea. Now it's the inner city but you stop and think about Gibson Ave now, that's where the I.R.S. is and all that kind of stuff. CB: So was it kind of a small town atmosphere back then? JG: Ah, I don't know. You had your own little friends and your own little area but we use to go out at night and we never use to worry about anything. You know what I mean? So we would go over to the park and walk through the park and come back. And we were pretty much on our own, I mean as kids. We never got into any serious trouble because we knew my mom depended on us. You know what I mean? CB: Yeah. JG: We just had more respect. If we did something wrong, we felt like it would hurt her more than it would hurt us. We just never—I mean we did silly little things that kids do, nothing to get us in trouble. CB: It seems like now, that either everyone knows each other in Ogden or is related to each other. JG: You pretty much knew everybody. There used to be—I'll tell you— there used to be a little drug store up the street from us, Chuck's drug store. And it was on the corner of 5 Monroe and 25th street; it was on the northwest coroner. It had a soda bar in there and one of the things I really, really liked was the straw dispenser, you pushed it and the straw came up. And so I stole it and took it home and put it under my bed. Now mind you, my mom never cleaned, it was always our responsibility to clean. One day she was doing wash and she looked under my bed and there was the straw dispenser. Well I can remember her marching me back up to the drug store and I had to tell him I stole it and my mom says, what are you going to make her do to pay for the damage she has done. I had to sweep the drug store out for five days and stock the shelves for taking it. I can still remember that till this day. My mother wasn't there that much, but when she was there, she made us do what we were supposed to do. In Jr. High, the Jr. High wasn't too far from our house so we would just walk. Again, we really didn't know we were poor but as I think back on it now, my mom was always conniving to get something for clothes or something for us. She worked a lot of the barter system because we really didn't have that much money. So one of the things we kind of begged my mom to do, was, as we got older, was to divorce my Dad. But she never did because I think she really, really loved him and he didn't drink as much when they first got married. I think it was because the family put him down so much, it just stimulated and spiraled and ah, and us kids would beg her to divorce him to get rid of him and she never did. I think she really loved him. We always had a car and it wasn't the best car but my dad always gave us a car. It was broken down rattrap but at least you had a car. You know what I mean? And so us kids, we kind of thought we were privileged because we had a car and other kids didn't have a car. Because he was an auto mechanic by trade and owned a gas station and so, we had a car. 6 CB: Did you each have a car? JG: No, my brothers had a car then they would drive to Ogden high, I went to Ogden high, and then when they graduated, I had a car. It was kind of fun getting a car. When I was about a sr. in high school, maybe a little older than that, my mom was diagnosed with cancer and she had chemotherapy and radiation. We thought she had beaten it. When I got married and moved to Michigan with my husband, it came back and she died when I was 20—something, she died in 76 so I was 26 when my mom died and passed away. My little sister at that time was 16 and my dad was still an alcoholic and at that time, since she was under age she didn't want to stay with my dad. So what my husband and I decided to do was move back to Utah. So we moved back to Utah. I kind of raised her until she was 18. She lived with my dad because—they moved from 25th street and moved up to a place on Quincy. And they lived there, well my dad lived there until he passed away, but that is where my little sister lived. She didn't want to leave her friends in Ogden and my husband got a job in Logan. So, we lived in Logan but she lived in Ogden. If there was anything that needed to be signed, then it was us that signed for her. CB: When do you think Ogden started changing? JG: I think Ogden really started to change in the later 80's. You can see the inner city was starting, the people living in the inner city realized that it was changing that the crime rate was higher in the inner city. So most of those people moved out. Then the people just kind of took over those homes. If you go down 25th street today, where we lived—I wouldn't want to live there. And then it just kind of stayed that way. Lester Park was the park that we went to, it was across the street from us. My goodness I wouldn't walk 7 through there today because of the crime rate. It's kind of like wow. I think about all the things we use to do over there, we use to go over there all the time. I wouldn't go there now but I think they’re starting to realize that the older homes in Ogden are valuable homes and starting to clean them I think. I don't know. CB: Have you been down historic Jefferson? JG: Yea, in fact I had a friend who lived down there in one of those homes. And it was a beautiful home inside and when they sold it because they realized that was what was happening and they sold it and turned it into apartments. And now someone else had bought it back and they started to renovate it and make it back to like it was. And the same thing on Eccles I think it is the Weber Club right on Eccles and 25th street, beautiful, beautiful homes. Those were all owned by Doctors and Lawyers, same thing, they're starting to renovate those. Turn those back like they were before. They're beautiful homes. I don't know how much they sell them for but they were beautiful homes. We use to, one of the things was on Halloween we use to get our bags and use to go forever and ever trickier treating and now you wouldn't do that now. I see the people start to move out and going to the suburbs but I think eventually you'll find the city is going to come back. People are going to start coming back in to the inner city and develop those things. A good example is the building on 24th where the crown hotel is, that use to be all business offices the building was so dilapidated that the business people moved out of it. It sat empty for a long, long time and then the crown—I don't know who their mother company is, but they came in and renovated it and its beautiful inside. I am afraid—my son use to work for Wells Fargo and it used to be First Security Bank on 24th street. The First Security Bank had the big large sign on top of it and 8 everyone knew the bank. It was kind of sad when they decided they were going to build the new building across the street. I don't know. I hope somebody does the same thing with the bank and goes in to renovate it because it's a beautiful building on the outside. And you look at the architecture of the old buildings that were built, there not like anything like the new buildings. I think people back then took a lot of pride in their work. More detail to the brick and the top of the building. Look at them and their just really, really, ornate. And now it's just straight up and glass. I hope someday that it comes back to where people take more pride in their work. I don't know if the will though. 9