Oral History Program Delores Tippetts Interviewed by Wess Marriott Circa 2019 Oral History Program Weber State University Stewart Library Ogden, Utah Delores Tippetts Interviewed by Wess Marriott Circa 2019 Copyright © 2018 by Weber State University, Stewart Library iii 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 The Marriott-Slaterville City Oral History Collection was created by the residents of the town to document their history. Each participant was provided with a list of questions asking for; stories about their childhood, schools they attended, stories about their parents and grand-parents, activities they enjoyed, fashions they remember, difficulties or traumas they may have dealt with, and memories of community and church leaders. This endeavor has left behind rich histories, stories and important information regarding the history of the Marriott-Slaterville area. ____________________________________ 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: Tippetts, Delores, an oral history by Wess Marriott, Circa 2019, WSU Stewart Library Oral History Program, University Archives, Stewart Library, Weber State University, Ogden, UT. Delores Tippetts Circa 2019 1 Abstract: The following is an oral history interview with Delores Tippetts, conducted in 2019, by Wess Marriott. Delores discusses her life and her memories of Marriott-Slaterville, Utah. There are two unknown females that are also present during this interview. WM: Delores, it’s good to meet with you. We always start out by just asking your age. DT: I’ll be 90 in July. WM: 90 in July. Okay. Alright, so where did you start out? Did you start out living in this area or somewhere else? DT: Nope, I’m a transplant. WM: From where? DT: From Riverdale and Roy. WM: Oh okay. DT: Yeah. WM: Alright. DT: I grew up in Riverdale. WM: So when did you come here to Marriott-Slaterville? DT: We moved here on the first of October of 1960. WM: Oh okay. Alright, so what is there about the difference between Roy and this area? 2 DT: It’s quite a bit of difference, especially in that altitude. You know? And the ground and the farm land is sandy soil up there. Down here, it’s very clay type. WM: Okay. DT: And very different. But it’s rich soil down here, I like it. It’s good stuff. WM: What do you think is the difference in the climate here? In terms of just the weather? DT: Well I think it’s more moist for one thing. More moist. I don’t know why but I think it’s more moist and damp and cold down here than it is up in Roy. WM: What about the community? Do you find a difference in the community? DT: In the people? Or the…. WM: The in community people and just the economic area? DT: Not really. There’s not really much difference really. It’s country still. WM: Yeah. DT: It’s country. WM: What is there about this community that you like? DT: The people for one thing. The people. If hadn’t been for Jack Lucas I’d probably wouldn’t even be here. WM: Really? Well… DT: Down here. 3 WM: Tell me about Jack Lucas. DT: He—when we was—my husband and I lived up in the Beavercreek Timber Company, hauling lumber and Jack Lucas was one of the customers that our boss up there at Beavercreek had. My husband would bring lumber to Jack Lucas once in a while down at his lumber mill. WM: Uh huh. DT: And that’s how we first got acquainted with Jack Lucas. Gosh, he was a nice guy. He’s the one that got us started here in Slaterville. WM: Really? DT: He showed us a few different places and finally the place that we did move to was on 250 N. and we bought the land from Norman Thompson, was his name. He lived down in West Warren somewhere. We only paid $1,000 for that—over an acre lot down here. WM: Wow. DT: And we bought an old home over on 30th and Wall and had it moved out on our lot. WM: Really? You had it moved. DT: Yes, had it moved. WM: Oh my gosh. DT: In those days, they used to move houses all over the place. 4 WM: Oh my gosh, I didn’t know that. DT: But we lived there and moved it up on 250 north and after a few years of living there, we remodeled. Tore the old windows out and remodeled the whole house. I drew the plans up for the new part and it was a nice home. A nice home. WM: Really? DT: Yeah. WM: Tell me about the home. How many bedrooms and so forth? DT: Well it was a split level and it had three bedrooms upstairs. Later on, we added one downstairs. But yeah, the old home was different though. Before we remodeled it was an old old home. It had an old front porch on it which we— when we got it on Wall Avenue, the porch was facing Wall Avenue. But when we moved it out, we put it long ways. WM: Oh really? DT: Then added on the porch. We tore the old front porch off and added the split-level onto that. WM: I’ll be darned. DT: So it was a nice home, wasn’t it kids? WM: It sounds like you are good at construction. DT: Well my husband was good at it. WM: He was good at it. 5 DT: He remodeled that home and then when we moved down to the farmhouse—do you want me to keep going? WM: Yeah, absolutely. DT: After we lived… WM: I want you to keep going no matter what. You just keep talking, okay? Make it simple. DT: Okay. When… we lived there on 250 north for, oh gosh, I can’t remember how long. From 1960-1977. We bought a piece of land down Pioneer Road from Elmer Spencer and Beulah Spencer. There was 60 acres we bought down there off of Pioneer Road. WM: That cost more than $1,000. DT: Yeah. Well we got it paid for. But what we did, we moved in an old farm house. It used to belong to Chadwicks. WM: Okay. DT: Do you remember the old Chadwick name? I don’t know whether you do or not but there is a lot of history about the Chadwick family too. I could tell you, but I won’t go into that. WM: Okay. DT: Anyway, we bought the old farm home from Elmer and Beulah Spencer and we remodeled that too. We took out two or three big petitions in the front. You go in 6 the front room and then it had the real steep stairway. Those old big homes had big steep steep stairways. WM: Right. DT: We remodeled that and my poor husband—I think that’s where we started getting weakness. He got Parkinson’s later on. Anyway… WM: Oh boy. DT: I won’t go into that. But anyway, we remodeled that old farm house. We had John Dickimore come and give us some advice on it, whether we wanted to bulldoze the old farm house down and built a new home on that same spot. But we brought John Dickimore over and asked his advice on it. He said, “You guys would be crazy to tear this old home. It’s built like a fortress.” It was, it was. Anyway, we remodeled it and made one big 30 ft. long living room out of the three little rooms that was there. That’s when my husband tore down those big petitions. They weren’t petitions like you see now. It was all brick petitions. He tore down three brick petitions to make one big long living room. Then we remodeled the stairs and instead of going straight up, we went up to a landing and then up and it made it not so steep. WM: Yes, right. DT: We remodeled and made a nice bedroom out of the attic—the old attic upstairs. We put a complete new roof on the house and built a new beautiful fireplace in the south end of the living room. We remodeled the kitchen and put nice cupboards up and we put cement floors down. The old wood floors were kind of 7 rickety so we tore the old wood floors up and poured cement floors. Then covered it with carpet. In those days, they used to have that kitchen carpeting; you know where you had the kitchen carpeting in the kitchen. Then in the front room, we had nice beautiful green carpeting in the front room and up the stairway. WM: What did you do with your 60 acres? DT: Well, we sold part of it to a doctor—Dr. Crawthland—6 acres to him. Then we farmed the rest. It was alfalfa mainly. WM: Alfalfa. Did you like farming? Is that really your way of… DT: Oh I loved farming. I love farming. I was raised on ranch, on a farm up in Roy. WM: Right. DT: My dad was a truck farmer and he did a lot of hard work in that farm. That’s how we grew up, working on the farm. WM: Right. DT: You know, we had an old horse drawn cultivators that we cultivated the rows with. Do you want me to go into this? WM: I do. DT: Okay. Us kids would have to take turns, you know? On the horse, the old hand cultivator that my dad or my brother would hold onto, it would be on the horse. We’d have to sit on the horse with the harnesses on. We didn’t have slacks on then. In those days, we didn’t know what Levis and slacks were. So we had little 8 homemade dresses all of the time that my mother made for us. We wore them on top of the horse…. WM: Horses. DT: While we were riding that horse. Every once in a while, those darn old harnesses would pinch our bare legs. WM: That’s funny. DT: The old sweaty horses too didn’t help anything either. Do you kind of have a drink? WM: Sure, go for it. Take your time and I’ll just ask you a couple more things about… what I’m interested in knowing is what that 60 acres did for you—55 acres I guess. In terms of income from the alfalfa, right? So was that your form of living? DT: Well my husband really didn’t do much farming himself. He farmed it out. WM: Oh okay. DT: He worked at IML and Barton Truck Line. He was a truck driver. WM: Oh okay. DT: So that’s what was his income. WM: Okay. What about the family. How many kids, do you have any kids? DT: We’ve got seven children. Six girls and one boy. One innocent little boy in between the six kids. 9 WM: In between? DT: Six girls. WM: Oh my heavens. DT: Three girls and then my boy… WM: I’ll bet you got stories about that. DT: Yeah. WM: What was it like for him to grow up with…? DT: Oh hey loved it. WM: Did he? DT: They teased him and they dressed him up like a little girl but he took it. WM: That’s terrific. DT: But we all loved Slaterville. We all love Slaterville. We only paid $1,000 for that one acre—a little over an acre we had on 250 north. We had a nice garden and irrigation and then when we bout Elmer and Beaulah Spencer’s land, we moved on down. Like I said, we remodeled that old Chadwick home. That old two-story— it was that sandstone brick. You know? Just like Richard Slater’s home. We did it. My poor husband he worked his head off on remodeling that home. But it was sure beautiful when we got it finished. A nice long 30-foot front room and built a new porch on the front and then on the back we had a carport that we… 10 WM: Who were the people in the neighborhood or in the community that you really enjoyed? DT: Well there is good ole Merlin Buck. He was a good neighbor. He was a good farmer, he always loved horses. He had a good team of horses. My daughter Claudia used to watch… she lives right next to me now, but she remembers Merlin Buck and the beautiful horses he used to work in his… Unknown Woman 1: Belgium DT: Two beautiful Belgium horses. Unknown Woman: He had them pull the hay wagon and grandkids would throw off the hay. It was like I was transferred back in time. WM: Oh really? DT: Yeah, but we didn’t have any horses on our land at all. Unknown Woman: On 250 north you didn’t, but on Pioneer Road. After I got married and left, then you got horses. Unknown Woman 2: Now, just wait a minute. I remember getting kicked in the head on the house on the dead end because Jack was going to feed the horses. Unknown Woman 1: Dad always had somebody else’s horses that that house. Unknown Woman 2: Oh okay, he had somebody else’s horses, okay. Unknown Woman 1: He always had somebody’s horses to ride. 11 DT: We had two horses to ride. We got it when we left the home on 250 north. We made a deal with the Jones guy. He bought our home on 250 north when we moved down to Pioneer Road. He—yeah, he traded part of the payment for the home with two horses. WM: Oh really? DT: Two beautiful horses—Little Rock and Trickle Rock. Unknown Woman 1: They were both pregnant. DT: They both had… WM: Both had colts. DT: Colts the next spring and so the kids got a taste of riding horses with the saddle on, not a harness, a saddle. They had a lot of fun down there on the farm. But Beulah and Elmer Spencer were sure good people. Good ole Elmer Spencer. I’ve still got a receipt that I saved that he said, “$50 down on 60 acres of land from Jack S. Tippetts.” WM: Really? DT: As a down payment, to earn his money for buying the land. But we’ve enjoyed that land down there ever since, haven’t we kids? It’s very special and we decided that we’ve had so many chances to sell that land. Unknown Woman 1: We had another one last night that just called. DT: Another one last night. But I said, “God didn’t make any more land and we are keeping this right now. It’s ours and we are keeping it.” We are right in the 12 middle of a new trust so the kids will be in charge of the land after I leave. They’ve got lots of plans, haven’t you kids? A lot of plans. But right now, our new neighbor—Jones, Troy Jones and his step father, Ken Prochinski, good men. Good men, good neighbors, they’d do anything for you. But they are taking over on the Alfalfa now. WM: Are they? DT: Yep, and they are sure good guys. He comes and plows the road out without even asking. Unknown Woman 1: When it snows. DT: My history in Slaterville has been neat. Good people—Orville Holly is one of my best friends. I went to college with Orville. His wife was a sweetheart too. Unknown Woman 1: Tell them the story—was Uncle Mill the one that told you when you and daddy moved out here, “Now be sure that you don’t talk about anybody.” DT: Oh yeah. When we moved here, you had to be very careful of who you talked about in Slaterville because they were all related. You didn’t want to say any bad things that would cause feelings. So we learned not to talk about our neighbor because we knew they was related somehow. The Slaters and the Allreds and a lot of others. So we’ve learned since then, but we’ve always had good neighbors. Unknown Woman 1: You’re oldest daughter, married local. 13 DT: Yeah. My oldest daughter Vickie married James Smout from the Smout family. WM: Okay. Unknown Woman 1: Cliff and DT: Cliff and Marzilla Smout. So they were good people too. They were farmers. Unknown Woman 1: And their ancestors were actually the first ones to put a cabin out here. DT: Yeah, that old cabin that’s up here—well it’s out here now I think. Unknown Woman 1: It’s be Venture, you know Venture Academy. DT: Is it by Venture? The old Smout Cabin. I can’t remember the first name? Unknown Woman 1: Evelyn? It had to be Edwin’s father. DT: Yeah, but a lot of good history out here. WM: So that was one of the original cabins? DT: Yeah, the original cabin was right there and they just moved it behind the offices here. Unknown Woman 1: The story goes that Beth Smout’s cabin was the first one here, not Richard Slater. WM: Oh okay. So now we’ve got a new type of problem. Who is right? Unknown Woman 1: So the story goes and it depends on who tells the story is… 14 DT: What was that Smout name, I used to know the name of the Smout’s that owned that cabin. Unknown Woman 1: Cliff’s dad was Edmund. He’s the one that built that old farmhouse there by the highway with the big huge white barn. DT: Speaking of barns, the barn that Smout built was a huge big beautiful barn and my daughter wanted—[To Unknown Woman 1] What was it that you wanted to start up a new? Unknown Woman 1: Trader Joes in the bottom. But it didn’t work out. DT: Good ole barns in Slaterville are slowing going gone. Unknown Woman 1: But Marriott-Slaterville, I think we have about 12 barns, if I’m right. DT: She said she wanted to start up a new group called S.O.B.—Save Our Barns. Unknown Woman 1: S.O.B. Society. WM: That’s a great one. DT: Save our… Unknown Woman 1: Save Our Barns. WM: I love that. DT: Save Old Barns. There’s a few little old barns left that are getting rickety. The old hay barns down south of the Allred Family. Unknown Woman 1: Regina Smout Carver. 15 DT: Oh yeah, Regina Smout. Yeah she owns the green barn reception center right over here on 2250 west. WM: So what is there about the barns that’s kind of fun? What do you like about the barns? DT: I love old barns, it reminded me of my childhood. Unknown Woman 1: History. DT: History. History in old barns. There’s a lot of history in barns. WM: Talk about the barn, what is there about it? The inside—what’s inside of a barn that’s fun? DT: Well us kids—just ask kids that used to love to jump on the hay in the barn. WM: Alright. DT: When we was kids up in Roy, we had an old hay barn that we would… In those days, you didn’t know hay bales were. It was all loose hay. WM: Oh really? DT: Yeah. We used to throw the hay on the wagon—loosely. My brothers did and they’d bring them to the hay barn. We had a horse pull a cable with the old Jackson fork. My brother would get up on the hay load—the loose hay—and push that old Jackson fork down in and get it loaded. Then the horse would pull the cable… Bring the Jackson Fork across the rail in big hay barn and it’d click and come down on the hay and my brother’s would clip the hay onto the Jackson fork. Do you know what a Jackson for is? 16 WM: No, I don’t but I can understand it, the concept. DT: It’s a big old thing that—well it’s about five… WM: It’s just like a big fork? DT: Yeah, it’s a huge fork that you have to push down in on that loose hay and click into place and then we would have a cable come down and hook onto the Jackson fork and lift it up and it would click and then go on the rail back into the back of the hay barn and then drop the first load. WM: Oh really? DT: They used to drop lots of loads of hay to fill up the hay in the hay barn. WM: So that’s the way they did it before you had to do bales? DT: Yeah, before they had the bales. WM: Before they started baling. Wow, that’s terrific. DT: Yep. We used to have horses. Don’t know what we would do if without our horses. Nig and Bali was their names. I even remember their names. Unknown Woman 1: Tell about your runaway experience. DT: One time we was out in the field, we had just been plowing—digging potatoes. My dad, after we had got through digging the potatoes, my dad said, “Would you please take the horse back to the barn and I’ll be right there to get the harness off?” So I took off and went to the hay barn—or to the regular horse barn. He stopped and he looked around and there was another horse already out in the 17 field still and he didn’t want to be put away so he took off running. He still had the harness on him and I started screaming and yelling. My legs—I remember hanging on to the reins of the harness. WM: Of the harness. DT: My feet was kicking against the horses legs while he was running all of the time. WM: Oh no. DT: I was screaming and my dad came running and saved me. WM: Oh my gosh. DT: So I made sure that that didn’t happen again. But it was scary. But that’s the way we used to haul hay and put hay in the barn. Those old hay barns—that’s why I love these old hay barns. I still see them once in a while. It takes me back to my childhood. WM: Sure. DT: Yeah. WM: Well what else is there about this community that you like? DT: Well let me think, it’s the people and all of the history of Slaterville, too. It’s a lot of good history here. What do we like? What do you kids like about this area? Unknown Woman 1: The open fields and the ditches. DT: Yeah, the open fields. 18 Unknown Woman 1: The roads we used to ride horses all over the place, dirt roads and barns. DT: Irrigation ditches. People still irrigate out here. Unknown Woman 2: Agriculture, open space… Unknown Woman 1: We still have open ditches. Unknown Woman 2: Yeah. DT: Open ditches. Yeah, but I just love the community. It’s a good feeling out here. It always has been to me. WM: Are churches pretty strong here in this area? DT: Yes, it is. WM: Tell us about the churches. DT: Well there’s just the LDS church over here on 250 north. It’s just a little ways away from where I moved the house—where we had the house moved on to 250 north. 1660 west 250 north was my old address. But the old—I remember when they were building the old church. Well…. Unknown Woman 1: The new church… DT: The new church, yeah. Unknown Woman 1: In the late 60’s. DT: Yeah, way back in the late 60’s it was. It’s right up here on 250 north. 19 Unknown Woman 1: Tell him some memories about the old church house. DT: Oh my heavens that old church. That’s where the bowery is now in Slaterville. It was the old church; it had a big bunch of steps up. My daughter knows about those steps. She remembers riding a horse up those stairs. WM: Really? DT: It was okay getting up but she had to turn around and come down, that was the scary part. Unknown Woman 1: There were a group of us dare devils. Unknown Woman 2: She’s busting… DT: The neighborhood bums, huh? Unknown Woman 1: He was a good ole horse, Old Smokey. The we went down there to the church, “Do you think Old Smokey will go up those steps?” And there were at least 20. WM: Oh really? Unknown Woman 1: I mean it was a lot of steps. He got up to the top and we thought we were pretty cool. We didn’t ride him, we just lead him. When we got up there and then we looked down and said, “Holy crap. We have to go down now.” He made it and we all survived. DT: I remember some of the meetings in that old chapel. When the wind would blow, the windows—I guess it was supposed to be… 20 Unknown Woman 1: Shutters? DT: It was weather stripping. It was metal of some kind and when the wind would blow that metal would rattle and flap and… Unknown Woman 1: Vibrate. DT: It would vibrate the whole dang windows. The people in the meetings at the same time would just kind of, “Okay, there it goes. There’s the wind blowing.” Unknown Woman 1: Parents would tell their kids not to laugh. DT: Suffer through it. Unknown Woman 1: We were trying to be reverent, it was really hard sometimes. DT: I remember the good ole ward reunions there at the old chapel. WM: Tell us about those. DT: Oh my heavens, you had to go down the stairs and into the back. The front of this room—that’s where the kitchen was. They had one stove, one cook stove and they had to cook all of the meals of the ward reunions on that one cook stove. My word. [Video stops] [Video continues] WM: We are going to continue Delores and talk about the horse races on the freeway. DT: Oh my goodness, when I heard about that, I about died. 21 WM: Tell me about it, what was the issue? DT: Well she just loved horses. She wanted to ride a horse and get out. WM: That had to do with the freeway. DT: Well it was before the freeway—it was the first part of the freeway. It was still dirt. WM: Dirt, okay. DT: So a dirt top and it was nice and smooth and level and so she got on the horse. Unknown Woman 2: She wanted to be a horse actually. DT: She pretended she was a horse more than once. She’d get a stick between her legs, you know, and whoop the horse… WM: Gotcha. DT: And take off and this was a real horse. She got on and went onto the freeway but they was building the freeway and took off bareback on that horse. She was in her glory I’m sure. When I heard about it I said, “My gosh, honey, you shouldn’t do that. That’s so dangerous.” She said, “Mom, I loved it.” And the horse loved it too, I’m sure. WM: So what were the races like? DT: Well it wasn’t a race, it was just… WM: Just her? DT: Just her. 22 Unknown Woman 1: Just a bunch of kids. Whoever wanted to challenge whoever else. WM: Gotcha. Unknown Woman 1: Just like a neighborhood thing. DT: If she got caught, she might be reprimanded but she was reprimanded by me. Unknown Woman 1: We never did get caught. WM: Orville was the one that had the horses? He raced horses? DT: Orville Lash was his name. WM: Lash. DT: The neighbor, Orville Lash. WM: What kind of horses did he raise. Unknown Woman 1: Appaloosas DT: Appaloosas mainly. WM: Why were you involved with them? Because they were neighbors? DT: They were just close neighbors. WM: What was the deal that your husband made with them? DT: Well he made the deal… Unknown Woman 1: That was a different guy when they sold the home. WM: Oh okay. 23 Unknown Woman 1: Was the man who purchased the home. DT: He sold our home and he made a deal with… Unknown Woman 2: Jones? Unknown Woman 1: Jones DT: Jones WM: Jones. DT: Ned Jones who bought our home on 250 north. WM: Okay. DT: To sell the two—to give us the two horses as part of the money. WM: Part of the payment. DT: Part payment for buying our home. That’s where we got our two beautiful registered horses. WM: Okay, let’s talk about family and Star Valley just for a moment because you only had 89 cousins? DT: Only 89 cousins. Unknown Woman 1: Both sides, the Beavers side and Tippetts side. DT: They’d go riding up the canyon, up Dry Creek Canyon on the horses that the cousins dad owned. They just had fun on the horses. Even if it was out in the barnyard they would ride around the yard in the barnyard. Just to be on a horse. 24 WM: We talked a little bit about the barns. Tell us about the way that you took care of the hay before they were baled. What was the process? DT: Well my brother would go out in the field and pulled a wagon—a team of horses would pull a big hay wagon, go out and throw the loose hay on the hay wagon and try to get it level and even as possible because my dad was so particular. He had to have the hay straight, not lop-sided. It had to be up straight so it wouldn’t fall off the hay wagon. Then we would haul it to the hay barn and the horse would pull a cable and on that cable was the old Jackson fork that went up into the hay barn and on a rail and it would come down and click and come down onto the hay. On the stack of hay, on the trailer. My brothers would click that big ole Jackson Fork down on the hay and it would click some way so that it wouldn’t fall off. Then the horse would pull the cable and it would pull that Jackson Fork up and then it would click on the rail and click and go way back into the hay barn. He would pull the cable to click the hay off of Jackson Fork onto the pile of hay where they were stacking in the hay barn. WM: So that’s the way they did it before it was baled. DT: Yeah, before hay bales. Yep. WM: Terrific. DT: I remember the hay rakes too. It was pulled by a horse, one—maybe you’ve seen the old hay rakes in somebodies back yard back in Slaterville. We’ve got a couple of them in our backyard ourselves, an old hay rake. The guy—my brothers would have to sit on old metal seat and the horse would pull it around 25 the hay field and pick up hay and he’d have to push a lever and that would dump the hay so it would get in rows. So when we was hauling the hay, it wouldn’t just be all around. It would be in a row so when we hauled the hay it would be easier to pick-up. WM: Right. DT: And put on the hay trailer. WM: Well you all had a lot of fun with family stuff but you also did lots of parades and activities and ward auctions. DT: Yes. WM: Tell us about the ward auctions. DT: Oh, we looked forward to them kids? They would sell anything that anybody would have to donate: quilts, blankets, anything, food, anything. Unknown Woman 2: Remember the auctioneers? The auctioneer at the end of the night? Who was the auctioneer? DT: I can’t remember. But it was fun. That’s all I remembered and going to the ward auctions and raising money for the new church house. WM: Right. Unknown Woman 1: Women would do hand work, like make aprons or do crochet or you know. DT: Yeah. 26 WM: Right. DT: Make handiwork. WM: What about the Fourth of July parade? Unknown Woman 2: Oh fun. WM: What was that like? DT: We would just line up on the corner of Strattons Corner. Unknown Woman 1: Stratford DT: [To unknown woman 1] Was it Stratford or Stratton Corner? Unknown Woman 1: Yeah, it was Stratton. DT: It was only about 200-300 feet. But that was our parade. The kids would march into—down to the old bowery and then that would be the end of the parade there. WM: Did you have floats at all? Or did you just have kids walking in? DT: Mostly walking and riding bikes, you know? And they’d decorate their bikes up. WM: Sure. Unknown Woman 1: And kids on horses too. DT: And horses, ride a horse too. WM: Okay. 27 DT: In those days, we didn’t know how to make floats. They didn’t have floats in those days it was just whatever else they could… they decorated their bikes up mainly. Unknown Woman 2: They had balloons and stickers. Unknown Woman 3: Crate paper if you were really cool a card. Unknown Woman 2: Yeah, crate paper. DT: Yeah a lot of crate paper. Unknown Woman 2: A playing card in your spokes. DT: But the parties at the bowery, when we would get there—the parade would end at the bowery and then the food, the good food would start to be… it was good homegrown food. WM: You said that they cooked the food all on one big grill. DT: That was at our ward reunions. WM: At the ward reunions. DT: The ward reunions, yeah. WM: Okay. Now that was different. So what was a ward reunion like? DT: Well everybody would come together and they’d have to set up tables and I think we were served then, too. They served us, so we didn’t have to go around to getting our own food. They would serve us. WM: Okay, did the families bring the food in or did… 28 DT: Mainly they would cook it all in that old kitchen. WM: Right there in the old kitchen, huh? DT: In that old furnace room. WM: Really? DT: In the basement of the old church house. WM: Right? They cooked food for everybody? DT: Yes, they sure did. It was amazing. WM: Sounds like a fun thing. So what about your wood stoves? You didn’t have wood stoves when you were here. DT: No. Unknown Woman 3: We did. You had wood stoves, are you kidding? DT: I’ve still got a wood stove but it’s out in the salvage yard. Unknown Woman 1: Just not a cook stove. Unknown Woman 3: But not a cook stove. Unknown Woman 2: For heating the house, we had woods stoves. WM: Did you? Unknown Woman 3: Yes. WM: Tell us about heating the house of the wood stove. DT: Boy. 29 WM: Did you have to cut your wood and everything? DT: Yes. Yes. WM: Where did you get the wood from? DT: Well my mom when she was—when we lived up in Roy—this is something different than Slaterville but it was when I was growing up too. My mom, I could see her right now walking out into the fields and picking up sticks. Putting them in her arms and bringing them back to the house. WM: Right. DT: And building the home fire with them in the old cook stove. I used to do that at Beaver Creek Timer, too. WM: And you said Christmas Caroling. What is that all about? Did you do Christmas Caroling. DT: Oh yes, remember that? Who was that? Unknown Woman 3: Dueling Carolers… What was their theme song? Unknown Woman 2: Holly. Unknown Woman 3: The Holly. WM: Okay. DT: Haul out the Holly. Unknown Woman 3: That was their intro song and then when we were done laughing we would finish and listen. 30 WM: Okay, what about doughnuts. Who made the doughnuts? DT: Oh Fern Defreese and Fawn Slater made the beautiful luscious doughnuts. WM: For what? For what occasion? DT: For after the Fourth of July get together down at the old bowery. WM: At the bowery. Unknown Woman 3: And sometimes Halloween. WM: Okay. Unknown Woman 3: We were lucky on Halloween night; Fern Defreese would whip up some doughnuts. DT: They were glazed doughnuts, glazed doughnuts. WM: Well it’s been fun having all of you help us. Thanks for the opportunity to meet you and to get you to talk to us. DT: You’re Welcome.