Oral History Program Ruben Mora, Albert Mora & Eddie Mora Interviewed by Charlie Trentleman Circa 2013 Oral History Program Weber State University Stewart Library Ogden, Utah Ruben Mora, Albert Mora & Eddie Mora Interviewed by Charlie Trentleman Circa 2013 Copyright © 2023 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. From the 1870s to World War II, Ogden was a major railroad town with terminals from nine rail systems. Business and commercial houses flourished as Ogden, with both east-west and north-south rail lines, became a shipping and commerce hub. After World War II, the railroad business declined. Some government agencies and defense industry businesses 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 to appeal to the 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: Mora, Ruben; Mora, Albert; & Mora, Eddie, an oral history by Charlie Trentleman, Circa 2013, WSU Stewart Library Oral History Program, Special Collections and University Archives, Stewart Library, Weber State University, Ogden, UT. iii Abstract: The following is an oral history interview with Ruben Mora, Albert Mora and Eddie Mora, conducted circa 2013 by Charlie Trentleman. In this interview the Mora brothers talk about their memories of 25th Street in Ogden, Utah CT: Okay, before we start out if everybody would say their name so we can hear what your voices sound like. RM: Ruben Mora. AM: I'm Albert Mora. EM: I'm Eddie Mora. CT: Okay, what are we talking about? AM: Well, I found this. I guess my brother Luke had made this when he was going to Weber, and I found that there was two of them. Here is his final cut. He interviewed my Dad. That's the rough draft, and here's the final one. RM: That's the one Luke wrote about Dad? AM: There was also a recording but after he passed away we didn't find the cassette. CT: Dig around man, that cassette’s gotta be somewhere. AM: It's already been six years since he passed, seven years. CT: What a shame, and he worked for the railroad? AM: He did. Actually, the railroad brought him here from Mexico. CT: Yeah, I wondered what your family was doing here. This is wonderful. Now do you guys have copies of these, or should I make copies of these? AM: That's it. CT: That's it, huh? I may just photograph these so that I don't have to take them away. I'm always nervous when I borrow somebody's original documents 1 because I tend to be really sloppy about giving things back. Get a safe deposit box, serious, houses burn down, stuff gets thrown away. AM: That's true, you never know what's going to happen. CT: Mention it in your will, I'm serious about that, and type it up. What I'll do is, I'll also give this to Weber State and they'll have it in their archive up there, with your family’s name on it. AM: You know what, there's some items in there I'm not really sure about. CT: He was twenty-four when he came to the U.S.? EM: Yeah, I guess. I thought he was 26, but I guess he was 24. Mom and Dad came from Mexico when he was 24? AM: Yeah, cause David found in the census, in 1924, they lived on C Avenue. I think in 1926, they moved to B avenue. They were on the census in 1924 I believe. I wish my brother David could have been here, because he did a lot of research on that. Like I was saying, there's a picture of the whole family while we were all alive. And if you notice, down towards the peak, that was the original picture with our real mom. She passed away, my Dad remarried, and that's the lady who’s in the picture now. Her name was Ida, and that's all of us. CT: Okay, and what year would that photo have been taken? AM: Well the original picture was taken before my sister Yolanda was born and she was one year younger than me. The original had to have been taken in the early 1950s. The second was taken in the mid-1970s. CT: Okay. So picture within the picture, early 1950s. 2 AM: Cause in that picture I look probably maybe three or four years old, and I was born in 1948. CT: So you're just a year older than me, then. You’re just a young guy. What year were you born, Eddie? EM: I was born in 1946. CT: Okay, and Ruben, what year were you born? RM: 1931. CT: Well, this is really neat. Well, somebody tell me about your dad. AM: Well, in 1919 he came to the States. The railroad brought him here. They shipped him to Elko, that's where they were working on a gang, and that's where he met my mother. My mother's father, Grandpa, they brought him over on the railroad too, and they was on the railroad camp where my Dad met my Grandpa and then met my Mom. Then in 1924 they moved here. CT: To Ogden? AM: Well actually they went to Clearfield first, right? When Mom and Dad moved out here? RM: No, before we went to Clearfield, we used to live right there on 26th and Grant. Before we used to live over there at 26th and Wall. That's as far back as I can remember. From there we went to Clearfield. AM: So Ruby, how old were you when you guys lived on 26th? RM: I was born then. AM: So that was the early 1930s. RM: Early 1930s, yeah. 3 AM: Okay, then the Depression hit, my dad had to move to the farm. They were sharecroppers. CT: What did he do for the railroad first, working on the gangs, laying tracks, or hammering spikes? AM: Well this article tells you a little bit about it, and it tells you what lines he was in. He worked on different lines, I believe. EM: Probably laying tracks, being a gang worker. AM: Must have been, because he was pretty young and strong then. CT: Basically, a gandy-dancer, that’s what they called them. Men who built America. AM: Building America, yeah! CT: So did he still have family in Mexico when he came here? AM: Yes. He had three brothers that were still there. Then my mother, she brought her dad, Jose, Mom’s brother. They lived with us. RM: Uncle Joe? Carlotta’s brother? AM: No, Mom’s brother, and Uncle Ross. RM: And Aunt Lupe. There was four of them altogether, my mom, my aunt, and my two uncles. CT: All living in the same house, living together? AM: The only one who lived with us was Grandpa. RM: He died while I was still overseas, he died in 1952. AM: Yeah, then I was four years old, then. I remember them carrying him out. RM: Last time I seen him was in 1951, something like that. But I never did see him no more. 4 CT: Now this was your grandfather you say? He was your mother’s father? RM: Yeah. CT: Okay. Now what was your mother doing? She was in Elko too, what was she doing? AM: She was mostly a mom. I remember she worked when she moved here to Ogden. She worked at the turkey plant, and I know she worked for St. Mary’s, she was a housekeeper. RM: I can’t remember what year it was, but she worked at the old Dee Hospital. CT: The old Dee Hospital, over on Harrison Boulevard? RM: Yes. That was quite a few years ago. I think it was 1950, 1951, something like that. Way back then. EM: Didn’t she also work for St. Benedict’s hospital? RM: No, not St. Benedict’s. Angie, my wife, worked at St. Benedict’s. Mom didn’t. Mom worked at McKay Dee years and years ago, and Dad worked at a steam coal company. He would deliver coal. AM: He worked for UR and D Railroad. Yeah, he was on an extra gang that started to work on a section where he met my mother. This was in Tacoma, Nevada. CT: Yeah, it says they came to Ogden to get married. What was the attraction of coming to Ogden? Just cause it was a big city? AM: I think it was more prosperity. There was more jobs and everything. My Dad, he did work for many years at the byproduct company in West Ogden. It's no longer there. CT: The byproduct company? 5 AM: You know where Swift’s used to be, the canning company? Right behind there was a byproduct, where they’d process dead animals, and they’d make fertilizer out of it and stuff. It had a smell to it. Somewhat like the dog factory. CT: Only probably worse. EM: It was in West Ogden, see, and it kind of gave West Ogden a… RM: Where the dump was there, the byproduct going up, it was quite a smell. AM: Also, Del Monte, they had a vacuum company down there, and come tomato time, it smelled just like ketchup. It smelled like tomatoes in West Ogden. CT: I was about to say, it probably did, between the packing and the slaughter houses over there. I heard they had a slaughter house over there too, didn’t they? EM: That was Utah Byproducts, and it was a slaughtering house. AM: Well, the slaughtering house was Swfit’s, and it was in front. They slaughtered cows in the morning and pigs in the afternoon. My dad told me, in the 1930s, he was even bootlegging on 25th street. My mom made him a tall coat with extra pockets on the inside of it, and he would go down 25th street. He was telling me, at that time, he was also selling marijuana. Marijuana came in a little matchbox. Remember those little matchboxes? They’d fill it up, and he had one steady customer. His name was Eddie Plano, he lived in 25th street. He died there, also, but he was the town drunk. CT: Did your dad ever get in trouble for that? EM: That was the days of the Depression, it was hard for people to survive back in that day. Jobs were very hard to come by and therefore they had to do what they 6 could to support the family. It was a little rough back there in the 1940s and 1950s. RM: 25th was notorious, let me tell you. Decent folks didn’t go down. CT: Yeah, I was just going to say, Mayor Harmon Perry protected that kind of thing on 25th street. He actually allowed it, supported it. AM: Well yeah, it’s a money maker. I remember, we were just ten, eleven, and twelve, we were selling newspapers on 25th street, me and my brothers. We would go down there, for a quarter we could get five papers, sell them for a dime, make 50 cents. CT: So you had them for a nickel a piece, sold them for a dime a piece. Now, what was that like selling newspapers on the street? AM: Well, Eddie’s the one who taught me how, because he had already been out for a couple of years. First thing he told me, don’t go on Washington Boulevard. That’s somebody else’s territory. CT: I think I met some of the other guys how would beat you up. Ernie Diamond used to sell papers down there. Of course, I think he was before your time. What was the secret to selling papers? EM: You had to go out there and yell, "Get your Standard-Examiner." Our brother would say you had certain areas where you could sell, because back then, there was a lot of prejudice. You couldn't go into certain places because there was a lot of prejudice here when we were kids. AM: Yeah, I remember, on the windows at the bars, it says no blacks or Mexicans allowed. 7 EM: Or Orientals. None of us were allowed in there, only white people. AM: From Lincoln to Wall, it was a minority state, and from Lincoln to Washington, white people could go into the bars. CT: This was in the 1950s? AM: Yeah. CT: Well, what about the blacks just being on the south side of the street? AM: Yeah, porters and waiters. That’s where the black section usually hung out. CT: Well, where the Hispanic bars then? The Mexican bars? AM: Across the street. CT: Oh, on the North side? RM: Yeah, colored people wasn’t allowed on the North Side. And the Mexicans and the Orientals and that weren’t allowed on the South Side. They were separated. CT: So did that make it hard to sell newspapers, you could only stay on the one side of the street? AM: No, not really. Sometimes just walking up and down the street yelling, Standard!” Sometimes I would stick my head into a bar and yell, “Standard!” Somebody way in the back, “I’ll take one!” Bartender says, “Get in and get out.” CT: Really. AM: I’d run over there, "Here you go, here you go." He gives me a dollar, I say, "I don't have change." He says, "keep it." Oooo! From there, I would have to go find these guys, tell them look what this cat gave me! I threw the rest my papers and go home. 8 CT: Why sell them man, when you got a 90-cent tip, my God! AM: Right there, where the Borracho used to be, I was standing right there, and that was probably my first week of selling papers. I was getting tired, and standing right on the back door of the Borracho. There was two doors, one going into the Borracho, and one going upstairs. CT: So the one on Grant goes right upstairs? AM: Right. So I was standing there, and pretty soon I seen this black lady come out. Wow, she was all fancy. She had a hat and gloves and high heels. Wow, that's a pretty black lady, never seen one. Pretty soon, here comes another one. I thought, "Wow, two pretty black ladies all dressed up!" Come to find out, they were prostitutes. CT: Yeah, those were the Rose Rooms up there. AM: They just started in on each other. "You black bitch, you took my," what she call it? RM: My candy man or something? EM: My trick or something. AM: They started fighting right there. I was shocked, I ran inside, and John was running the Borracho then. I told him, “Hey, John, there’s two ladies out here fighting.” He says, “Get the hell out of here, close the door.” He didn’t care. People driving by, nobody stopped. They just let them go at it. I thought, "Oh my God," that's the first time I ever saw chichi and it was black. I got a little scared, and took off around the comer. 9 CT: Chichi? AM: Tits. CT: So they were going at it pretty good, my goodness. Did you know any more about what was going on at the El Borracho then? EM: Well, we were little, and we weren’t driving down there. It was kind of rough, and people went there to get juiced up, and whatever happens in a bar happens. Fights develop, or whatever, but we didn’t really get down there ‘til the war started and just after that they had the problem there with Korea. By then we were teenagers and started learning everything that was going around about us in the world. It was wild. From everyone that I’ve known it was a wild place down there. CT: Yeah, I talked to police who said they were afraid to go into the El Borracho. They said, "We got guns and we're afraid to go in there," and I said, "You should be." AM: They took their guns, took their badges, I remember that. RM: Who were some of the gals there? Jenny, in that picture, her sister, I think it was, got shot in the El Borracho. EM: Well my sister used to work at Ponchos, and there was either a stabbing or a shooting, either at Ponchos or the Borracho. RM: Or both of them. CT: They were tough bars. I didn’t go into those places. I came to Ogden in 1978 and I didn’t go in those places. AM: 1978, they were still rough, not nearly as cleaned up as it is now. 10 RM: 25th street was very well known all over. When I was overseas, there was one of the new crewmen, I don't know where he was from, he said, "Did you ever go down to 25th street?" I said, "No, I never." He was from down South somewhere, but he knew about 25th street. AM: My padrino, my godfather, he lived on 25th street above Ponchos. I remember going into some of those hotels up there and stuff. Wasn't much to them, but man, it was an experience. CT: Why so? AM: Well, cause everything looked so old, so poor. I was used to a house, and when I went up there they just had a bedroom and everyone shared the same shower and bath. CT: Just those old single room hotels. Well, kind of like how the Marion is now. AM: Well, not that clean, and it had a smell to it that was unique. CT: I was in that other one that is closed now. It’s down the street from the Marion, and it’s right above the Historic Place Bar. I remember going in there, back before they closed it. It was like you say, very crude, not much to the rooms at all. You had the bathroom down the hall, and there were a bunch of old retired railroaders when I was in there. A lot of them ended up in places like that. AM: Well, the town drunk lived there, and he died there. Aeroplano, they found him in the alley behind 25th street. CT: What was his name? 11 AM: His name was Aeroplano, which means airplane. He was a gay Mexican that was constantly drinking on 25th street. They'd get him for public intox, and he was telling me, he went to court one time and went in front of the judge. "Okay, you're gonna get five days for public intox." Aeroplano said, "Ayyy, five days is nothing. I can do that on my head." Judge said, "Okay, do twenty days!" He was constantly in jail. CT: He was gay and he was Mexican? Now there's a combination. AM: He was one of my dad's better customers for the marijuana. CT: So that would have been in the 1940s and 1950s? AM: No, that would have had to be in the 1930s. CT: I'll have to look him up. That was his name? Aeroplano? AM: Aeroplano? It's just airplane in Mexican English. But I'm not sure what his last name was. I never knew. CT: I'll have to look, see if they mention him in the newspapers. EM: I'm sure he was in the paper! CT: So he would have died back in the 1930s, then? AM: Actually, no, I believe he died in the mid-1960s. They found his body in the back there, behind his motel I think it was. CT: Where would he have lived? You say on 25th street? AM: On 25th street, it was between Lincoln and Wall somewhere. CT: You mentioned being Mexican back when there was a lot of discrimination, and I think there is probably still some. EM: Yes, there is. 12 CT: What was it like between the Mexicans and the blacks back then? EM: We got along fairly good. We wasn't as prejudiced as the whites were. We got along better than we did with the white people, cause the white people here, they were very, very prejudiced. AM: Well, we were pretty fortunate. Because we grew up ... EM: They were some big white people that treated us really good. AM: Most of the black people lived on the upper west side of West Ogden. EM: More further west of West Ogden. AM: And as you get into the avenues, there were whites, Mexicans, Italians ... RM: A mix of them all. AM: We lived next door to some blacks. He was a conductor for the railroad. EM: Union Pacific I think it was. CT: That was when you were over on 26th street? AM: Over on B avenue, and Basil Richards, was his name, and his wife was Vera! They had one daughter. RM: Emily. AM: We called her Peaches. But I was really surprised when I walked into their house. Man I couldn't believe, "These guys are rich, look at this!" They had carpet and everything was clean. I said, "Oh, what's that?" They said, "That's a blender." I said, "Whoa! What's that?" They said, "That's a toaster." I was surprised. They were clean, they had nice stuff, and I think she worked for the hospital too. 13 EM: She did. That and JC Penny’s. AM: That’s right. CT: Why would that surprise you? AM: Well, because, I was so young, I just thought there was only Mexicans. Even when we went to church, I seen a black lady in church, God, I couldn't take my eyes off her. What the heck she doing here, you know? My mom said, "Stop staring." So when we got out of church I asked my mom, "What is that black lady doing in our church?" She said, "Well, hijo there's all kinds of Catholics: Mexicans, whites, blacks." I didn't know that. I just thought Mexicans. Well, I was surprised, because the Richards was rich compared to the black people that lived up on the hill. They were like higher class. EM: I believe they was more educated and had better ideals for living a good life and that. They were quite clean, and educated, and had good jobs. AM: But, we got along real good with the Mormons. At that time there was the 16th Ward LDS Church over there. They had just built it. But we became close friends, even my older brothers, they all had white friends. Over at school and everything. I had white friends. EM: All of us did, there in West Ogden. Everybody got along pretty good in West Ogden. It was like a community of all races, it was like the United Nations there in West Ogden. Everybody got along pretty much. It might have been a few that were prejudiced, but the overall of the people of West Ogden, all helped each 14 other and got along. It was pretty good there. So we grew up in a good way down in West Ogden, thanks to our Mom and Dad. CT: Where did you live in West Ogden? EM: Over on B avenue. AM: First it started on C Avenue. Then from C avenue to B avenue. CT: So what years were you over there? AM: That had to be 1924 to 1926. It was in the census, I was hoping David could have been here because he had all that information. I remember seeing it, Mom and Dad's name, on C avenue, then we had moved to B avenue, so I think that was in 1926. CT: How long did you live there, then? AM: For the rest of our lives, practically. Our mother died there. She had cancer, and she passed away there, and then shortly after, my dad remarried. In 1968, I left, I was the last one to go into the service of the brothers. In 1969, my Dad and our step mom moved out. They moved up to 24th street and F avenue. My sister Sill, kept the house, and us younger ones lived there. It was me, Richard, Eddie, Yolanda, Cathy, and Julia. CT: Really? Lotta kids. RM: There was eleven of us. AM: Actually, it was more than eleven. There was eight boys and six girls. CT: What was the address, do you remember? AM: 2459 B avenue. CT: I’ll have to go take a picture. Is it still there? 15 AM: Yes, it is. It was a two story with a partial basement, they converted it into two apartments now. But, we had an upstairs and downstairs. It was pretty great. CT: That sounds like a lot of people to have in one house, because they're not big houses over there. AM: Not really. But this one got to be good size. I remember the Bluemills lived across, on 24th and B avenue, and they had a three-story house. That one was pretty big. CT: Yeah, I know West Ogden was kind of its own little enclave over there. It was cut off from the city by the railroad. It was on the wrong side of the tracks. All the bankers and stuff were on this side of town. AM: I didn't realize that until I got into junior high school, and was talking to the kids that lived over at Mound Fort that was over on 12th street. They were afraid of West Ogden. I said, "Afraid of West Ogden?" They said, "Yeah, there's a lot of bad people over there." I thought what the heck are they talking about? I think they were talking about the blacks, 'cause there were black people over there. CT: Well, they might have been talking about you too. You're always afraid of what you don't understand. So you guys went to Hawkins school for grade school over there? Then you went to Mound Fort Middle School? AM: We went to Mountview first, then we transferred to Mound Fort, then on to Ben Lomond. RM: When we moved from Clearfield to Ogden, I went to Hawkins to 6th Grade, then from Hawkins to Madison, then from Madison I went to Central, which used to be 16 on 25th. Then from there I went to Ogden High School. That’s where I graduated from High School. AM: Growing up, since I was the younger one, I'd go to one class and teachers say, "You're a Mora," 'cause he already had my brothers and sisters there. So I got that a lot. CT: I bet you did. AM: I remember me, Ed, and Lou, it was Lupe first, Coach Hislop from Ben Lomond. He taught Lupiel how to wrestle, then here comes Eddy. He taught Eddy how to wrestle. So when I got there, he taught me how to wrestle. He remembered all of us. It was pretty neat. CT: Now, when you guys were here as kids, did you ever get down to Union Station? EM: Yeah, that's where we sold our papers. Remember, Uncle Joe or Uncle Ross, some of the Uncles, they were in Nevada and that. They used to come in by the railroad into town to come visit. I was amazed how big and busy it was back then when we were kids. Busy, lots of people in and out of the Union Station. It was one of the main ways of transportation, coming in and out of the city. Utah, coming in through Ogden, coming to Salt Lake, and vice versa. It was big though. AM: Yeah, I remember when we would sell newspapers and I would go in there. They had all the benches, where all the benches were sitting in there. I'd go out through the back, see the different tracks, and it was bustling, people running back and forth, and in and out. It reminded me of the train station in New York? It was that big to me, because I thought, wow. CT: Did your dad still work for the railroad then? 17 AM: No, by that time he was working for Utah Byproducts. But I did have my brother Renny, he worked for the railroad. EM: Yeah. He worked for Uncle Ross, Uncle Ross was a foreman for the Saline Section, just the other side of Brigham City, down by the lake. AM: Well, I was probably ten or twelve years old, my mother had gotten cancer and they had a compadres and comadres that lived in Nevada. They worked on the railroad, and when my Mom got sick, they sent us little guys out there to stay with Joe and Rosie. I remember when we got there, there was only two houses out there right next to the railroad track. On the other side of the track was the ice house, where they kept all the food and stuff. I remember going out there, I remember smelling that creel all the time, but there was nothing out there. Sometimes the train would stop and sometimes it didn't. But it was pretty neat. CT: Where in Nevada was that? EM: Carlin. AM: Yeah, I believe it was Carlin, Nevada. It was a little dinky town. CT: So just in the middle of Nevada? Well, there’s nothing in Nevada anyway. RM: It's no-man's-land. AM: I remember one tree, we had dug a big hole out there. But they had the ice house, and that's how they'd keep their food cold. CT: Was the ice house for the railroads? AM: Yeah, because they had big blocks of ice. CT: Yeah, 'cause I know they had big ice houses in Ogden too, on the West side of the yards. 18 AM: When the train would stop, old Joe, he would go out there and load the cars with the ice, I remember that. RM: They used to have, where the bridge is, the train would run down that way and, they'd put ice blocks on it there, then when they'd get down here they'd load it onto refrigerator cars. From there, as soon as they filled it up, because it actually wouldn't last too long because it was pretty hot, they'd take and loaded them up right there. CT: How long were you in Nevada, then? AM: Let's see-from there they took my Mom to Mexico to see if they could find somebody there to help her. We weren't there long. It was during the summer when school was out, so we might have been there a month, maybe two? CT: This would have been in the early, late 1950s then? Because you said you were only ten. AM: Ten or twelve, something like that. CT: Funny, I was alive then too, but I don't remember much about what life was like. When you're a kid life is normal, so you don't take notes. AM: It goes by fast though, I tell you. CT: It goes by fast, yeah. AM: My Dad, he worked at the Utah byproducts, and it was West Ogden and it was fascinating. I mean, we had everything we wanted as kids. We had the hobo jungle on this side and then up by the mail is where the sand pit used to be, nothing but sand. Then on this side, we had stockyards, and at the stockyards they had huge auctions and stuff in there. The railroad would come through there 19 with cows up the yin-yang. The stockyards were full of cows. We could run through the corrals and play. Then we had two rivers, we were always hanging out by the river. We would go down to the stockyards right there ... RM: Ride the sheep! Everybody, would dare you and you'd ride a sheep around. Kids would go down there and jump on the backs of the sheep. EM: Right in the corral! AM: Well, because they had Swift's on this side, and the stockyards is down on this side of the road, they had a bridge that crossed over. They'd close the gates, run the cows, the pigs ... EM: Sheep, goats. They had everything. AM: And they'd slaughter them right there. CT: So that building with Smith and Edwards on the side, that was the Swift’s plant? AM: No, the Swift’s plant was right in front. You know, the bridge, that big building? You can still see the word Swift’s on front. EM: But in front, I think they changed it. Because it was Swift’s, but Smith and Edwards bought it. So I think they put Smith’s and Edwards there. RM: Used to be before Smith's, the American Packing and Provision Company. AM: It was in the same building? RM: The same building. That provision company bought Swift's out, and that's why Swift's moved out. No, just the opposite, Swift's bought American Provision. AM: But they would have auctions all over there. They were selling cows and sheep, I mean it was busy. The building that's down there on Wilson Lane now, that place was fascinating. Walk in, marble everywhere. 20 CT: Yeah, I remember. AM: It was a beautiful building. A cafe down on the bottom. There was a shop over there, a barber shop. And they'd sell whips and saddles and ropes and they had all kinds of cowboy stuff in there. It was pretty neat! And it was busy. CT: I bet. I remember going in there in the early 1980s when it was a county government office. Weber County had taken it over, and it was still plenty nice in there then, but now it’s just a wreck. AM: Yeah they let it go. EM: The cafe down there and everything. RM: All the livestock. AM: Golden Spike was down there too. RM: Coliseum was down there, too. They used to have wrestling. AM: Dances. RM: Auctions, and everything. AM: They put an ice rink in there too, right there at the end. In the winter you could go down there and ice skate. CT: I remember there was roller skating down there and ice skating. That burned in the mid-1980s I think. AM: Broke my heart. CT: When were you in the army? RM: I went in the March of 1951. I got out in 1953, and then in 1954 I joined the National Guard. I retired in 1978. CT: So you were in Korea. Did you go to Korea? 21 RM: I went to Okinawa. CT: Okay. So you didn't have to go to Korea? Good! RM: I thought every minute I would go there, too. AM: Out of eight sons, seven of us went in the service. It started with Ray, and then Ruben, Lupiel, David went ... EM: And me and you. AM: Eddie, Richard, and then me. CT: Wow. AM: And then, that's what I was hoping too, if you could help us. Because my brother Eddie here, he was in Vietnam, 1968 to 1969, and he was on Hamburger Hill. CT: Really? AM: Yeah, When Eddie got out and they gave him his DD-214, he had so many medals they couldn't put all the medals on one space, and I'd sure like to find out how to get a copy of all his medals. The VA was going to help us. I sent a form in and I never heard nothing. CT: Never heard back? I know a couple of guys who would chase that down for you. AM: That would be great. Because as far as we know, Eddie, he got three or seven medals on his DD-214. But they couldn't put all of them on there. It shows he's got two bronze stars and a silver star, but Eddie says that he has two more bronze stars other than that. CT: I can tell you the guy to call. AM: I was doing some research on Hamburger Hill, and I found a picture of Eddie on there. 22 CT: Really? AM: Yeah, he was helping another soldier off the hill. I did find a picture of Eddie at Hamburger Hill. Let me bring it up. CT: Now which one was Hamburger Hill? EM: 1968-1969. CT: Why did your whole family join the military? Tell me that? EM: Because we were patriotic. That was the thing to do. We're here in America, we're Americans, stand by your country and do your deed as Americans. We did our share to help our country. AM: Ruben retired from the national guard, thirty years? Lupiel did the same thing. RM: He didn’t retire, did he? AM: He did. He was in the 19th Special Forces. He went as far as he could. So he thought he'd join the Air Force, and he went as far as he could there, then he retired. Richard put in fifteen years in the Reserves. Me and Eddie were in at the same time. I missed Eddie from Basic to AIT by two weeks? EM: When you was getting in, I was going. When you were going to AIT, I was going from there to Fort Benning, Georgia for Jump School. AM: Here it is. I don't know how to make it bigger, but you can see, if I can bring that up bigger, that's Eddie right there, and he recognized this gentleman here too. Martinez. EM: He was from New York. CT: I wonder who took the picture. 23 EM: They had camera people from the military there. That must have been one of the picture there, bringing the wounded from the hill down to where they had choppers, loading up the bodies and the wounded. AM: I was really shocked when I seen that. CT: So that’s you right there in the middle. EM: Yeah. CT: I don’t know much about Hamburger Hill. What was that like for you? What are you doing there? EM: Ugly. You’d have to see the movie, they made a movie of it called Hamburger Hill, and it took place in the last part of 1968 into 1969. Vietnam’s here, and then the Aeshop border, and over here there was a split on the border where this side was Cambodia, and this side was Laos. They used to go over the Aeshop and hide, and come back over into Vietnam in the night time and do their business and all that. North Vietnam was all over, in Cambodia, and Laos. CT: Was that the North Vietnamese or the Vietcong? EM: It was the Vietcong. They were all over Vietnam, Saigon, the mountains on the other side towards where it was separating North and South Vietnam. But the enemy would also go through Laos and Cambodia and come into Vietnam. They had us almost surrounded all through that country. It was hard, and the biggest battle was Hamburger Hill, where I was with this outfit, the 10l5t Airborne Division. I didn't think I would make it off that hill, though. A lot of people got killed on that damn hill. CT: What was that battle like? Were they attacking that hill? 24 EM: Well, they were on top of that hill, they were coming over, and that's their stronghold. That was Nanu-Nanu to go over on that side, because we were going out of Vietnam into two countries, Laos and Cambodia, which was forbidden. They were like a safe haven. I guess President Niam decided because they were dug in over there and bringing all their supplies in to attack us, the government decided to hell with it, let's get them where they're at. So we went across the Aeshop valley, which we weren't supposed to do, but we crossed it to try to take them out. But they were dug in so good. You'd drive these two and a half ton pickups in these caves they had down there. They were huge. But that's the way it was. We had to go over there to hold them back somewhat. After that hill, I only had about six days left in country, and I didn't think I was going to get off that hill. When they finally got me to the separation station in one of the base camps, after that I tried to wipe my mind of it. Never could wipe my mind of it, because I still have nightmares of them times. But I have a bunch of medals there that show that I seen my part of action down over there. CT: So you guys got out of the military and got back to Ogden, and tried to settle in and get to normal lives again? The occasional nightmare, and I don't mean to make a joke. PTSD is a terrible thing, and your life is never the same. EM: The VA has taken care of me, and they've done a great deal helping me get back together. AM: I remember down here at the stockyards one day, they had cows and pigs everything, run by train. There was a guy, Ray, I can't remember his last name, but he had a team of horses in West Ogden, on Wilson Avenue. He took this old 25 buckboard to the sand pit, filled it up with sand, go down West Ogden, straight down Wilson Lane, by the Coliseum, and he'd dump the sand right there. We'd take the sand and throw it in the box cars. There was cow shit and everything else in there. EM: Clean it out first, throw dirt, then they'd load up and ship them off to whatever state. AM: When we did the cows it wasn't too bad, because there was only one level. But when they had the pigs they had like three levels. So we had to get down like this. RM: Every time they were like that, it got so bad inside the car. Every now and again they'd have a dead horse or a dead cow, something like that. That's when I was driving truck for the Byproducts. Go pick them up, and just put a rope around their neck, drag them out the door, that was it. Then in the afternoon, I'd have to go to Salt Lake, I had truck and trailer, and we'd go down there, pick up at those stores and bring them back to Ogden. We'd take care of it here in Ogden. I liked to drive that truck. AM: Well I remember after Ray, I guess he passed away or something, but those horses he had were Clydesdales. Man, it was fantastic, because they'd start early in the morning. It was still dark, and he was out there with his horses. I mean, these horses were so trained, all you need was "whoa" or *clicking sound*. So we'd wait for him. EM: He started about three or four o'clock in the morning. Every morning, he was out there, running up his horses, going to the sandpits, loading his wagon up with 26 dirt, drive it down to the livestock for the animals. We'd have to clean it out, throw the dirt in. RM: The way they used to have to unload that sand. They used to pull that board like that, and then they'd come from the sand pit to the stockyard, couple of kids would follow, get behind him, sneak on their, get in all the sand. AM: We'd go over there, and he'd be passing by the house when we was going to school. We used to catch a bus right there on 24th street. We'd take and jump on the back of his wagon, and he'd be going like this, and we'd go "Whoa!" The horses would stop. We'd go to the sandpit where he'd load them up, and he'd be up there like this, and we'd get up there and go *clicking noise*, and the horses would take off. But I can remember hearing the clamp, clamp of the horses and the wagon. He always left a little trail of sand. CT: Going right by your house over there, huh? AM: That was his path. But they were beautiful horses. Clydesdales. I remember, we used to go down to the hobo jungles, and we had half a dozen of us down there. At that time, the hoboes were rampant. I mean, there were two kind hoboes down there. There was Shorty O 'dell and Sundance. They had their own cabins, and we'd go down there and they knew us and we knew them. We had our swimming holes of course, that was butt naked. One time we was down there at Horseshoe Bend, swimming and we hear some sound. Pretty soon horse heads come up. We seen two horses, and we seen the two riders, Lynn Marchant and Bruce Marriott, and there was two girls on the back of them. We was lickity split through that woods butt naked. These guys coming through there, the jerks, they 27 got our clothes and threw them in the river. So we were jumping in the water trying to get our clothes. But we knew most of them hoboes down there. CT: Where was the jungle? Is it where Fort Buenaventura is now? EM: Right. AM: It was mainly on this side of the river. It’s right where the dump is. RM: Isn’t there a park there now? EM: Yeah. AM: Most of the hoboes lived on this side of the river. The camps were there. They'd get off of the railroad and they'd head straight for the jungle. They knew that they could stay at either Shorty's or Sundance's place. He'd send them out and some of them would go pick through on 25th street. Some of them still, would take everything back to the camp, and they'd all divvy it up. We used to go down there and take food. We would take potatoes, our Mom would make tortillas or something, carrots, or whatever we had. We'd take it down there, and these hoboes would bicker with us for bike parts. We needed a ram or a sprocket or something. They invited us to stay after; they made stew, hobo stew. CT: Was it good? AM: Yeah. We knew a lot of the hoboes down there. There was Yincho, Shorty and Sundance, and all of them were young men. There was a few old ones, but I remember, it really blew my mind when I seen a lady hobo. Oh, what's she doing here, because I thought they were all men. They were, mostly just wasn't till the later years when the women started. CT: Why were they hoboes? Were they vets? 28 AM: Well everybody had a different story. There was one guy there said he was a doctor. He's pretty intelligent. He didn't stay long, but he was down in the jungle for a while. RM: Some of those guys down there come, if they've got that profession, they'd do that just to see what it was like. AM: I remember a lot of stabbings, shootings and stuff down there. They'd get drunk, and they were just out of hand. I remember that my Mom and Dad told me, when they first moved to Ogden, there were only three Mexican families living here. The Hernandez and the Frigaz's, and they had a little Mexican club; well, there were a couple of them, actually. There was the Benito Juarez Club, the Centro Civico Club, and there was one more ... God, what was the name of the other one ... three Mexican clubs. The GI Quorum. CT: Which one? AM: The GI Quorum. CT: I remember that. AM: And my Mom and Dad were, at some time, President and Secretary. They used to have some dances. 29