Abstract: This is an oral history of Keith Hodson Butler. It was conducted March 1, 2007 and concerns his recollections of the history of the Marriott-Slaterville area. KB: I’m Keith Hodson Butler. I go by the middle initial of “H.” Both are prominent names within in the Marriott-Slaterville area, the Hodson’s and the Butler’s. My father was Carl L. Butler who was born and raised where Defense Depot Ogden (DDO) presently is. The 12th street entrance to DDO is where the family grew up. My grandmother on his side, my dad’s side, was a Hadley. Of course, my dad was a Butler. It really spreads out from there. My mother was Bernice Hodson and she grew up where the present Internal Revenue Service (IRS) building is, on the south side of 12th street. She was a Stanger. Her grandmother was a Stanger which the Stangers are very prevalent around this country too. We lived in my grandmother’s house who was Jane Sharp Stanger. We lived at the house that is still standing across from Pilot Oil, the white house that is still there on 12th street. That is where I was born and raised. Right in that vicinity there were three houses that we rented off and on. My grandmother Stanger who was my idol, she was a tough rascal. She was one of those pioneers that came across as a pioneer. She had diabetes in her later years and was eighty-four years old when she died. She was tougher than you could ever ask for. She owned the house, and back in those days it was the depression when I was born, and we lived with her, my dad, my mother, and I. In the next three or four years we had two more children, my brother Jay and my sister Carlene. Like I said, we lived there and there were three houses across the street where, and Pilot Oil is presently, there was a house there. Bill Hipple owned that house. It was a little two room house and we rented there, and right up the street where the present freeway goes through there was another house owned by the Halverson’s. We lived there until 1945 and I was fifteen at that time. That is when we moved over into Slaterville on 1200 West and that is where the rest of my family was raised. In fact, when my folks died, my sister bought the house and she still lives in that house. As far as going back to my younger days, I remember, like I said, the depression—it was tough times. My dad was working for what was then the Works Projects Administration (WPA). He was making I think forty-eight dollars a month. The WPA was a public works association, one that I think President Roosevelt set up to help these people because there were just no jobs available at that time. That is where they set up projects, put in outdoor—you might call them restrooms—but they were outdoor toilets. They built the cement platform and built the outdoor toilets. They were even doing some work with the Forest Service. They would go up and work in the mountains making rock fireplaces. Some of those are still there. As a little kid, I went with my dad a number of times during the day while they were building those outdoor fireplaces. That kind of faded out and it even got worse. My dad would go haul hay, throw hay on wagons all day long from daylight till dark for Clifford Blair. Where we are presently in our City Hall, he ended up owning this property here and handed it down through his children and they donated it to our city. Dad would go out and work all day hauling hay. We didn’t have a car back in those days. He had a bicycle with a basket on the front. We had to go up to 12th and Washington. He would ride the bike up to 12th and Washington to what they called Floyd Barnett’s little grocery store. He would get what he could with what little money we had and he would bring it back. We were so tickled the time when he would come back—by then I had a brother and a sister—and he would come back and might have two or three small candy bars or nickel candy bars or a pack of gum that was good. We were tickled to death to get a candy bar or a stick of gum because we didn’t know any better. That was all we knew of at that time. It was pretty rough slaying back in those days. In fact, I remember going out with my dad. The railroad tracks ran down parallel with 12th street to the west into San Francisco out of Ogden and back in those days the old steam engines would go through there and they would load the coal on the train. Of course, they would sway back and forth and a lot of time lumps of coal would fall off from the railcars and my dad and I—I would go with him—I couldn’t help him much because I was real little—but we would take a gunnysack and go along and pick up this coal. This was what we used in our old coal stoves to heat our water and do our cooking. We didn’t have much ground so we would raise a few cows and we had our own pig and cow and chickens. It was pretty tough going in those days. We would herd the cattle. I remember on the right-of-way on the railroad track, we would let our cattle go out there to feed on the grass that was between the rails themselves and the fence to try and make a go of it. I was a very little kid at that time and my dad was sitting on the rails just talking and I will always remember this, he was sitting on the rails watching the cows waiting for the train. When a train came we had to herd them back into our property so they didn’t get scared and run or anything. Lightning hit somewhere down the track quite a ways away and it really tickled our butts really good. We decided that wasn’t a good idea if it was cloudy or if it looked stormy in any way we didn’t sit on any more rails after that. Anyway, a little later—of course, my grandmother was getting older—this was my great-grandmother Stanger that I am talking about that owned that property. One of the things that I will remember too as a kid—back in those days, whenever you had the measles or chicken pox the health department would come around with a sign and tack it up on your pillar or the front of your house and if you had the measles it would be a red sign and it said “measles.” Everybody was supposed to stay away from them. In those days the only thing we had to do was visit neighbors. That was really our entertainment, to go to our neighbors as families and talk and run around with the neighbor kids and that. A lot of times it seemed like there was always a sign of some sort—chicken pox, mumps, measles, or something hanging on somebody’s door so we had to be careful. One other thing, when I was small and living in that house. I couldn’t have been very old; we had a pretty good earthquake. I think it was 1936. That was the only time I can remember an earthquake—well, a couple since then but that was a pretty good-sized earthquake. It shook so much it shook a lot of the dishes off the old cabinets we had. It is a lot different than it is nowadays with the locks and whatever. I remember that as a youth. Dad would milk the cows and we would listen to the radio and I remember the old fights. Max Schmeling and those guys fights and we would listen to the fights while we were milking cows and out in the barn. Quite a unique thing is the neighbor to our west was Bill James. He had a daughter that was deaf. She tended us as little kids. She would come over and listen to the radio by putting her hand on the radio. It was so unique I remember that as plain as day. While she was tending us we would listen to the radio, Jack Armstrong’s—of course, nobody today knows what we are talking about—Red Rider and Hop Along Cassidy and all those that were on in those days, Fibber McGee and Molly and Jack Benny, all those were on. That is the entertainment we had but I remember sitting there next to the radio with her hand on the radio. What she heard in that I don’t remember, but she would do that. I go back a little bit more to when I was talking about the place that we lived at Bill Hipple’s house. It was across the street and was just a real small house. It was old and linoleum floors and I remember so vividly that this home had two real small bedrooms, a living room, and a pantry. Of course, everything was outside, the water, the toilets and everything was outside. They didn’t have anything inside the house. The things that I remember are the windows back in those days when we would get these east winds that come down 12th street in the winter time with the snow. The snow was sometimes blowing or just the wind the curtains would stand almost straight out because there would be so much cold coming in through those windows. I remember my dad would try to bank the old coal stove, we had to have the kindling which was when you would cut up the wood into small pieces so when you put the paper it would start to burn and then you would put the coal in and get the fire going and the heater or the kitchen stove where we did our cooking and what hot water we had. Anyway, he would get up in the morning and bank the fire as best he could to keep it as warm as you could during the night but by morning it would almost be out. I would hear him get up and shake the grate to try and get the coal embers to burst into flame and try to warm it up again. Those cold floors were pretty tough. The blankets—mom would have these quilts that she would make. They were so heavy. Once you got in bed you couldn’t roll over because of the weight of them. They would just mash you down. My brother and I slept together at that time and we were both very small. That was quite an experience there. Like I said, all the plumbing was outside, there was no plumbing inside. Of course we had our cow and chicken and that. This is a little personal thing. My mother always claimed that I hate wind, especially east winds, violent winds. Apparently, I just barely remember, I was looking out the back window when we were having one of these awful wind storms and my dad was out in the barn and it was all old and rickety and gunnysacks hanging on doors about ready to fall down anyway. They did fall down. With the east wind the barn blew down. I was scared my dad was in there but thank goodness he wasn’t. It killed our pig. That left an impression on me that ever since that—I don’t know if that is really the truth or not, but I don’t like winds, high winds. From there we moved up the street a ways on 12th street there. It was just a little narrow street. There weren’t ten cars a day that came down 12th street there. It was where presently the freeway intersects over 12th street, and there was a house that we rented there. It was a bigger house. It was really something in those days. There were high ceilings, twelve foot ceilings. I think they were twelve. It would have one cord hanging down from the ceiling which was your light. There was no power or wall plugs or anything like that. We had a cooking stove where my mother would do the cooking. There was a reservoir on the end of these cooking stoves with water. The heat from the stove would heat the water. The thing that I remember about that was that it was so cold in there we would have our Saturday night bath in a number two which is just a washtub type thing. That is where the three of us—by then my little sister was born or was along with us—the three of us would take a bath in this tub. With the shortage of water, we had to pack the water from across the street so we didn’t waste any water. We would have this number two bathtub, just a galvanized tub and on Saturday night, mom would get an extra boiler or something to put on the stove and try to get enough water. Because my sister was little, and she was a girl, she got to get in the tub first. Then my brother was younger than me so he got in second. Of course we all used the same water. I was third and we just kept adding a little water to it. We’d all get out and about half froze because of the high ceilings and that in the winter time. I would get the one with the old hard water, and there would be a scum on that tub pretty thick. One thing I remember as a kid, we had our chores to do. We had to get the coal and the kindling every night. If you didn’t get it in, when dad would come in to put the stove away for the night, if you didn’t have it, it wasn’t, “Well, we’ll go out and do it tomorrow,” we’d go out and do it then. A lot of times it was pretty darn cold. We had to get the water. We all had our chores. At that time my dad was just beginning to build Hill Air Force Base. He was working the swing shifts so I had to milk the cow. It was across the street from the house that we lived in. We lived on the north side of 12th street presently where the freeway is but the barn was on the other side, the south side of the road. That is where the well was. We had to pack the water across the street. I had to do that because my little brother and sister were too small and I was much bigger and I was the oldest so I had to do it. That was my job every night, to milk the cow and take care of it, feed it, get the water, the kindling and the coal in every night. You weren’t watching TV or anything. There wasn’t anything else to do. This house we are talking about now, it was called the Halverson house. I remember vividly the morning of the 7th of December at the beginning of the war. We were all standing in our front room, standing around the old stove of course, it was the 7th of December, it was pretty cold. The news came over the radio and I remember we all stood around, my uncle and aunt had come over, and as I remember a couple of my aunts and uncles had come by and we all listened to Pearl Harbor being bombed and President Roosevelt talking. I was eleven years old and I remember that vividly, that day, the 7th of December 1941. At about this point of time, like I said, my dad was working at Hill Air Force Base in the evening. They were building the hangers and so forth out there. About that point in time—well let us see, I am getting ahead of myself—we were there a little bit longer than that, and I remember one thing—where the Marriott farm was. Before we moved over to Slaterville, during the war they had the prison camps over here on DDO, the Italians and the Germans prison camp was over there. They needed almost all our guys to fight the war, so the prisoners would go out and work in the beet fields—I remember it specifically over on the south side of the tracks toward the river there. The Marriott’s had a farm there that was being rented by the Hipple’s at that time. Every morning they would bring these prisoners over from the prison camp. Those guys—they didn’t want to go to war. They were happy to be here. They would all be in a state body truck, and there would be one guard with them. I always laugh about the fact that whenever they would pull up in the beet field, and these guys would go to get out, the guard would always go down first, so he would hand the gun to one of the prisoners while he got down off the truck and then the prisoner would hand him the gun and then they would go to work. I always remember that as a kid too. I thought that was quite funny, the fact that they would do that. I would like to give a scenario that I’d give to my grandkids and great-grandkids as they come along. Things are different now than they were when I grew up. I am very conservative. I didn’t have anything as I have stated before. We were so appreciative of a nickel candy bar and if you got a nickel back in those days you were happy. Now you give a kid a ten dollar bill and he looks at you like, “Hey, what am I going to do with this. This can’t buy anything.” Things have changed so much and personally I don’t think it is going the right way. I think that the children of today—back when I grew up my folks didn’t have anything so they couldn’t give us anything. We appreciated everything. Like I said earlier, at Christmas time if we got one item between two of us we were happy. As time went on—my family, my daughter, and then her daughters and now their granddaughters—to me it looks like we are just trying to give them one step better or two steps better than what they had. I think we are going down the wrong road. People don’t appreciate it. At Christmas time it seems like it isn’t what you give, it is how much you give and then it is never enough at that time. I think today we look at when we were tickled to death when we first got married to use hand me downs. When my wife and I got married, I don’t remember us having one piece of furniture that was new. As time went on we would buy a little bit here and there. We always tried to pay as we go type of thing. Of course, there were no credit cards back in those days. We didn’t believe in that, and we still don’t believe in that to speak of. We were satisfied with a small starter home, just enough to get us by until possibly forever. Mine is forever it seems like but it is small. It seems to me like all of our younger people—they want to start out with something that I have worked fifty years for. They want to have a new car, they want a new truck, they want a great big house with vaulted ceilings and brand new furniture and all electronic stuff. They don’t know how they are going to pay for it. I think most of them are just living from day to day. It has just become a materialistic world that is going to be a disaster for us because if, in my view, if we ever have another depression it will be a disaster because the youth of today—the younger people of today have never seen hard times. They have never had to go out and—we were just happy to have a job. Now, they don’t want to work weekends, a lot of them want to go play on weekends, they don’t want to work, they want the best of everything. There will be so many that are so far in debt that they will never get out of it. If we ever have a depression I think there will be suicides all over the place. People could not handle it. I started to work when I was about ten years old helping June Powell on his farm. They had a tractor and I could hardly push the pedal down on the tractor, but my mom and dad, and him and his wife Venice were very close and so he had me come and I’d be on that tractor after school. I would go down and get on the tractor and work until dark disking or something like that. Then we would pick beans and whole beets and tomatoes and all that type of stuff from the time I was ten years old. I have always had two or three jobs all my life. I am seventy-seven years old and I have still got three jobs. I think, not that I am a good person, but that makes better people to work hard and have your goals set to where you are hoping you are doing something for someone to better not only yourself but other people too. When we were kids we used to haul hay, tramp hay on the old hay rack and stuff. Now it seems like you can’t hardly get a kid—unless he is eighteen you can’t get him to work. It’s not all their fault either. A lot of it is because of these laws they have come up with that you have to be a certain age and have a permit to do this and that. Back in those days, the only permit you had to have was to get your butt out of the house in the morning and go. When you get done and it’s dark you come home. My great grandmother—I have a little story about my great grandmother who owned that home that I was talking about earlier on 12th street and we lived with them when I was born in the depression days. As life went on, I loved that lady. She was just a fighter. She was really a sweetheart. I loved her to death. She had diabetes and would give herself a shot every morning. She would crochet and she was just a beautiful lady. She would come live with us in her later years as we got older. One thing that I remember, that I never will forget—she was late 84 or 85 and she was almost on her death bed—my girlfriend, she is my wife now, but at the time she was my girlfriend, we would go up and see her quite often. I would try to get up and see her at least every other week or so. She was living with her daughter. One day, I don’t know how the subject came up and I never will forget it, she was laying there and had diabetes and pretty sick but she said something about Friday. “I wish it was Friday,” or something. She said, “Listen young man. I want to tell you something. Don’t you ever once forget this.” Like I said, she came across the plains. She was a crusty old gal. She said, “I never want you to forget this. If you are thinking about Friday, always wish it was last Friday, not the coming Friday, because you only have so many Fridays in your life.” I never have forgotten that, and that has been probably sixty years ago that she told me that. I can remember that just as if she was whispering it into my ear right now.