Oral History Program Clair Knight Interviewed by Kathryn Burnside 11 March 2003 i Oral History Program Weber State University Stewart Library Ogden, Utah Clair Knight Interviewed by Kathryn Burnside 11 March 2003 Copyright © 2014 by Weber State University, Stewart Library ii Mission Statement The Oral History Program of the Stewart Library was created to preserve the institutional history of Weber State University and the Davis, Ogden and Weber County communities. By conducting carefully researched, recorded, and transcribed interviews, the Oral History Program creates archival oral histories intended for the widest possible use. Interviews are conducted with the goal of eliciting from each participant a full and accurate account of events. The interviews are transcribed, edited for accuracy and clarity, and reviewed by the interviewees (as available), who are encouraged to augment or correct their spoken words. 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It is recommended that this oral history be cited as follows: Knight, Clair, an oral history by Kathryn Burnside, 11 March 2003, WSU Stewart Library Oral History Program, University Archives, Stewart Library, Weber State University, Ogden, UT. iii Abstract: The following is an oral history interview with Clair Knight. The interview was conducted on March 11, 2003, by Kathryn Burnside, in the Ogden City Train Station. Mr. Knight discusses his personal history and experiences involved with Weber County and 25th Street in Ogden, Utah. Also present at the interview is David Bingham. KB: My name is Kathryn Burnside. I'm a history student at Weber State University, and we are here interviewing Mr. Clair Knight for the Ogden 25th Street Oral History Project. Today's date is March 11, 2003, and we're conducting this interview at the Ogden City Train Station, where Mr. Knight is a docent. Also present in the room is Mr. David Bingham, who is another history student. Mr. Knight, thank you for allowing us to talk with about your recollections of the Ogden area, especially 25th Street. We'd like to begin by asking some basic biographical information about you. Can you tell us your full name and when and where you were born and then perhaps a little bit about your parents? CK: Yes, I'm Clair Knight. I've lived here all my life, I was born in a house on 18th Street and Grant. KB: When were you born? CK: I was born January 27, 1926 and the doctor had me as Clair Knight, and then about two weeks later they give me a middle name of Hugh, but they didn't have that on my birth certificate so I'm known as Clair Knight, instead of Clair H. Knight. The military wouldn't accept it 'cause it wasn't on my birth certificate so I dropped the Hugh. I grew up on 18th 1 and Grant. I played in the river a lot, nearly drowned there when I was about three years old. KB: Would that be the Weber River or the Ogden River? CK: Ogden River. I started selling papers in Ogden, we bought them for two cents and sold them for a nickel and didn't dare buy a lot of papers 'cause you had to buy them and keep them or else sell them. I walked up and down the streets hollering Standard Examiner. Later on we couldn't get on the corner, being so young. KB: How old were you then? CK: Twelve years old, about eleven or twelve years old. KB: And was this to help with your family? CK: Oh yeah, this was to help the family. My dad died when I was thirteen; he drank his money along with his friends, the family didn't get anything, we lost our home because of that. He didn't pay his taxes. Us kids sold fruit, mostly sold papers, 'cause it was so cheap and we could make pretty good money at that time. It was good money; five cents, you'd get three cents from each paper. My dad was a contractor; he moved houses but he'd hardly ever come home at night, he was with friends. But when I was selling papers on the street, I didn't have a bike at the time so we walked the town from 18th to 24th. Corners were taken by older kids, they wouldn't let you sell on the corners. There were some fights over that, but about two years later I had a chance to get a paper route. It was from Seventh Street north to First Street to up the bottom of the hill. I had to get a bike; my brother loaned me some money so I could get a bike and some paper bags. We had to go down to the bottom of the Standard Examiner and fold our 2 papers, take ‘em and ride our bike clear out to Seventh Street. At fourteen bucks a week, so that was a little better, but I sold paper afterward anyway on the way back. Coming down 25th Street when us kids were walkin’ the street, we always tried to go into the hotels and Union Station, tried to get people to buy papers, anything to sell a paper. They would run us out of the Union Station and the hotels had their own papers too. We could get in and they didn't watch us too much in the Union Station because it was so busy, so many people in there that you had to holler to let people know you were selling papers and then they could tell we were in there. But most of the time I sold from 24th up to Washington along the 25th just walkin’ along the street. Couldn't stop on the corners, that's where the bigger guys were at. Come down 25th and try to go into the bars...lots of bars. Some of the bartenders would chase you out and others were so busy they wouldn't say anything - we sold some papers in the bars, but we couldn't stay there, in and out. KB: Can you tell us what you remember about the Healy Hotel? CK: Healy Hotel was gorgeous inside. Marble columns, and the stairway looked like oak and cherry wood in the inside. There were a lot of looked-like important people sitting around in chairs in the main lobby...never did get up the steps cause they wouldn't let us kids go out of the big hall. I don't know why they didn't keep it; probably the historical society wasn't around then or we'd still have it, it was such a beautiful building. It got run down and they just tore it down. The Broom Hotel - I didn't go upstairs to see the rooms up there, but it was a beautiful old building; they should have kept it. A lot of people think they should 'cause it was such a gorgeous building. 3 KB: You had mentioned in an earlier conversation that you had ridden the troop trains when you were in World War II. CK: Yes, I enlisted in the Navy in 1943. I was seventeen years old, and they sent us to Salt Lake for physicals. Me and my buddy was goin’ to join up together, but he went into the Navy and I went in the Seabees; I was colorblind, so they wouldn't take me in the Navy. When I was ready to go back to Virginia for boot camp they sent me on the Bamberger down to Salt Lake City where some other Seabees were getting ready from Idaho and Wyoming. We all met down there and come back up to Ogden to change engines and we had a delay here about 23-25 minutes and we went up Weber Canyon towards Chicago. We had a Pullman, which was real nice; I learned a lot, seventeen years old. KB: What was the Pullman like? CK: A Pullman was two chairs, cushioned chairs which made into a bed and then up above there was a rounded part that dropped down to make a bed. The steward pulled it down and made the bed up and we were supposed to have a ladder so we could get up there, but they told us to just jump up there, step on the bed below and climb in. It took about two days to get to Chicago. We lost the Pullman because we had to change trains to go on down to Virginia. So we were in a coach probably about 65 foot long, something like that. There were so many troops on there, guys going in the service; you had to take turns sittin’ down because the aisles were full of guys standing up. You'd sit for about an hour and then stand; there was a lot of troops and here we were, just young kids going to boot camp. It was quite an experience. I never been away from home before, but I didn't get homesick; maybe it was ‘cause I'd worked most all my life, on my own more or less. We got to Williamsburg, Virginia. There was one other guy that I remember from 4 Idaho and we went through boot camp and advanced training, we got discharged together three years later. KB: Do you remember the trolleys or any other transportation here on 25th Street? CK: I barely remember the trolleys - it was going along Washington, but I don't remember it comin’ down 25th and they did go up Ogden Canyon but I never did rode it up there. DB: 25th Street had a lot of prostitutes and bars and stuff? CK: Yes. DB: The prostitutes were called Victory Girls. Have you heard of that? CK: No, I never heard of that. DB: Did a lot of the troops, since they came through Ogden, go out and go down 25th Street? CK: Oh yeah, some troop trains, they wouldn't let them off the train because a lot of the military went up 25th Street and never got back to their trains. So they had SPs and MPs patrollin’ and even outside the Union Station they had the Military Police watching for anybody running across the street. The trains were usually here for only a half-hour at the most. During WWII there were supposed to have been about 110 passing trains through here, and that was busy, but it reminds me of the airport - everybody is rushing here and there and waitin’ - all those benches down there just full of people. Some of them sleepin’. I knew of only a couple of prostitution houses up the street - Rosie's and The Golden over on 24th and Grant. They'd sometimes bring their bikes out by the Golden Hotel there; you'd hear the women through the windows upstairs it was 5 summertime and they had their windows open and you could hear them talking, shouting, and cussing, but this Rosie's - I just heard of it, I know where it was. DB: What was your impression of the troops before you joined, when they were coming through? CK: Well, I thought they was quite the thing to be. I was in the 10th grade went to, supposed to go to the 11th grade up to Ogden High but my buddy was the same age as I, and we decided to go into the service and we was pretty hyped about fightin' the war but I didn't see any action so I was real lucky. KB: Did you know about other ethnic groups that were here on 25th Street? CK: Not really - those Chinese and Japanese, but there weren't too many Negroes around. As a kid you don't pay any attention to those ethnic groups. I think that older people know more about it, but as a kid you just took it for granted that they were a person but never thought about Japanese and Chinese. KB: How did Ogden, and especially around 25th Street, how do you think it changed with the war, with World War II? CK: Well, for all the servicemen that came and women that came in here, 25th Street got real busy. Ross and Jack's, a restaurant up the street, it had great food and they were really busy all of the time; even after the war they stayed in business. They sold a lot of burger spuds, they called it, and for twenty-five cents and everybody was in there eating. The two owners split up later on and put a partition down the center of the restaurant and they finally went out of business later on. 6 KB: Is that right? And what was the name of that restaurant? CK: Ross and Jack's. It was at the side of the Broom Hotel. KB: Do you know, was crime a problem by that period? CK: Well, there probably was a lot of crime, but as a kid I never paid that much attention to it. I never got in trouble. I broke a few arc lights and got caught, and that was the last time I threw rocks at arc lights. It's scary. But we had to pay fifteen dollars for that service call, so I paid the fifteen dollars. I got in trouble, my dad really whipped me. KB: That was a lot of money back then, too. CK: Yeah, that was a lot of money - when you broke the light bulb there was kind of a lens on it too and a guy had to come out and put it up. Utah Power and Light. KB: Was that near your home? CK: Yeah, on the corner. Naturally, us kids didn't think about that - we did from then on. KB: Where did your mom shop for groceries? CK: There was a Safeway up on about 19th Street and Washington Boulevard, and there was also a little grocery store on 17th and Child's, about a block and a half away from us. She done most of the walking, shopping I guess - we'd take the wagon up and come back with the groceries. KB: Did you have like a Victory Garden or anything like that? 7 CK: Oh yeah, we had plenty. We had this root cellar outside that had a slatted door that locked, and we had our apples and all the carrots and celery and stuff like that down there - it kept pretty good. KB: So that was how you were able to sell some of that fruit? CK: Yes; we had grapes, apples, pears and apricots and all kinds of vegetables. KB: Do you remember anything about the rationing that was going on during WWII? CK: No, I was in the service mostly when that was going on, so I wouldn't know much about that. KB: Where did they end up putting you? Where did you end up being stationed? CK: I went from Virginia to Rhode Island, down through the Panama Canal over to Hawaii, and then on over to the Philippines - Samara Island. That's where we was waitin’ when the war was ending - we was getting ready to go Japan and train 'em to go up and down these cargo nets with full packs, and it delayed us for about two weeks sayin’ that there was somethin’ coming up - we'd take a couple weeks off. So we did nothing but just stayed in camp, then found out they'd dropped the bomb, and they dropped another one later on, so we didn't have to go to Japan. There's seven battalions - that's about seven thousand men, getting ready to go to Japan; Seabees, so I was sure thankful they dropped that bomb, ‘cause there would have been a lot of dead people. But then after they dropped the bomb, about a month later we headed back to home - landed in San Francisco and later discharged at Fort Waneime down by, north of San Francisco - got discharged there. 8 KB: Did you ride the train back home? CK: Yes, I was even on the thirty day leave, they gave us a thirty-day leave before I got discharged so I came home on the train. I enjoyed it. It was quite a deal. KB: And were there lots of happy people here? CK: Oh yeah, yeah, there was a lot of troops comin’ home waiting for. DB: Did they all come through the Union Station? CK: Most of them - there were a few that came by bus, Greyhound Bus and Trail way Bus, but most of them came by train. I think it was better travelin’. I got a pretty good deal; my brothers who lived in California paid my way to come home, so I got home on the train. I never did go by bus. DB: What did people do when you came home to Ogden? CK: Well, I went up to school, Ogden High to see my girlfriend, a gal I'd been writin’ to, Barbara Collins; we finally got married, but went up there wearing my uniform and showing off. My little ribbons on my chest; but I was home for thirty days and then went back to California to wait discharge. KB: Is that right, you had to come home and then go back to get discharged? CK: Yeah, they wouldn't discharge you. You got a thirty day leave and then you had to go back and wait discharge, which took about three weeks. I don't know why. KB: That's a long time. CK: It is, yeah. You know the government, they're real slow about domestics. 9 MM: (Showing a book to Mr. Knight) there’s a lot of the Broom Hotel CK: Yeah, there's a lot of the old Broom Hotel. KB: Mr. Knight is looking at a book that has old post cards and photographs of 25th Street looking at some of the buildings. CK: The Forest Service Building was over here on 24th and Lincoln. It says, "Used for local draft board during WWII and torn down in 1980" but before I went in the service, we went over there and got commodities. KB: Oh, is that right? CK: That meant that we were on welfare after my dad died. KB: And that was in the Federal Building, where the forestry was? CK: Yeah, we had to get commodities over there. KB: So did they just have them all stored there? CK: Yeah, it had the side entrance on the east side, and you went in and down to the basement to get flour and dried milk. KB: Is that right? CK: Oh yeah, canned stuff - there was a lot of people on welfare. Mother had to go to work. She worked at Larkin’s, I believe, to pay for Dad's funeral. KB: Is that right? 10 CK: Yeah, we didn't have any money. My uncle took us kids - there was five of us - he took us over to the Desert Industries to get clothes for the funeral. There wasn't a lot of money in our family at that time. KB: Well, not going around by leaps and bounds I think with anyone, anyway. What do you remember about your mom - did she work most of the time? CK: No, she stayed home - there were five of us at home. KB: So you could all pitch in and help. CK: Yes, we all tried to help her out. When her sister got married; she was seventeen when she got married and left. KB: Can I ask, where did you go to sign up then to join the military? CK: I went to the Forest Service and then they sent us to Salt Lake. Had to go down there for physicals in Salt Lake. KB: I see, so did you take the train down or... CK: Went down on the Bamberger. KB: The Bamberger? Tell us what a Bamberger is. CK: Bamberger is an electric - kind of like a street car only a little longer - made for traveling long distance. It kind of wobbled back and forth, it wasn't too bad. It'd hold a lot of freight on the same route too, sometimes they'd hook freight cars behind it or pulled it. KB: And did it run on a separate rail system? 11 CK: It was separate from the railroad. Yeah, it was a street car that had an electric connector above the line, above the railroad tracks, formed to run the train. KB: So would the station be built around here as well? CK: It was over here on Lincoln. About where the ballpark is now, Lindquist Park. Some of the buildings on Grant are still there. KB: Did it run all the way to Salt Lake? CK: Oh yeah, it went to Salt Lake and Provo, went up north, let’s see, I think it went into Brigham City . KB: Do you remember what it cost? CK: No, I don't remember what it cost. KB: Do you remember what it cost your brothers to pay for your train ride back home, you know, after the war? CK: No, I don't know. I remember they said they'd buy me a ticket. They lived in Vallejo and worked at Mare Island Navy Base, so they was older than me - they were my halfbrothers actually. There were three of them down there, so they bought my ticket home and back. KB: I remember reading that the different military installations here, like the Defense Depot and the Arsenal, brought quite a few people into the community. CK: Oh yes. KB: Is that right? Civilian workers? 12 CK: Oh yes, a lot of people came for construction work to help build up these different plants and depots. When I got out of the Navy I went to the Navy Base to work, but after being in the Navy about three years I couldn't take working for the government, but they was going to close up that plant anyway. DB: Can you tell me a little about why the railroad left Ogden, and a little about how it affected Ogden and 25th Street? CK: From what I've heard, which is probably right, Ogden City Council taxed the railroad right out of Ogden. KB: Is that right? CK: Yes. They wanted more taxes out of the railroad and the railroad didn't want to pay it. They went to Salt Lake, and it hurt Ogden a lot. Right now they've put some new track down through the yard out here and they want the railroad to put some switchin’ track in to get more business here in Ogden, but they want taxes. That's what I've heard. I don't know for sure, but that's what they've told me here in the station, some of the guys that work for the railroad have said that Ogden City taxed the railroad right out of Ogden. DB: How did that affect Ogden financially? CK: Well, I think it’s hurt a lot. KB: Do you think it's strictly related to the decline of 25th Street? CK: You bet; you lose the railroad, you lose a lot of employment. The people went to Salt Lake to work. A lot of them commuted back and forth, but a lot of people moved right down there rather than drive. 13 DB: I have to ask about the Ogden tunnels. CK: Tunnels under the street? I don't believe there were any -I know there was tunnels under the sidewalk. They had these elevators that cranked up and the doors opened so they could put freight down in the basement to take into the building, but I was down some of those on 25th and up on Keisel and 24th where the Standard was they even put some of their stuff down through those elevators. They wouldn't take them in the building, they'd put them on the sidewalk and drop it down in these elevators. The doors would shut after it'd go down so people could walk on over them. There's some places that had - looked like glass square blocks - that was for light for underneath the sidewalks. KB: Where they'd take that freight down too so they could see? CK: Yes, but as far as I could I knew there were no tunnels. KB: I think that's the way it was supposed to be. So, I know when you worked for the paper you'd go through the building, but do you remember seeing them on 25th Street too? CK: Yes. KB: Just as a kid walking by? CK: Right. Yeah, when they was opened you'd see a flat platform there but they had a little chain around it so you couldn't step on to it but usually they had a truck backed in there and was unloading merchandise to put down in the basement. That's how they got a lot of their stuff in through the building. KB: Do you remember doing anything for fun? 14 CK: No, I chased pigeons by the old viaduct. It's kind of scary to climb up there trying to get those pigeons, but the area was just lousy with them. They'd fly away before you got up there. Come at night, and then you'd have a flashlight and you'd have to climb with two hands and it just wasn't worth it. But there were a lot of pigeons on that old viaduct they had here. KB: And you'd chase them for fun? CK: Oh yeah, yeah. You'd build a fire and roast them over the fire. KB: Is that what you'd do? CK: Oh yeah, like a hobo. KB: Did you ever meet any hobos coming through the train station? CK: No, there were still some guys that would come in which washed up, but they'd get off outside of the city limits and walk in. So, very seldom you'd ever see any one droppin’ off a train out here. DB: Were there any restaurants or shops on 25th Street that you went to that you really liked, or were the popular place to go to? CK: Well, Ross & Jack's was mostly where we went, ‘cause it was cheap food for what you got - you got a lot of potatoes and a big piece of hamburger for twenty-five cents, plus you got a big piece of pie. It was a good deal. KB: A good buy. CK: There was a Chinese place up here or maybe it was Japanese, I don't know, but it was oriental food. You'd go to the show there at the Lyceum on 25th Street just below Grant. 15 KB: What do you remember seeing there? Do you remember some shows there that you saw there and what it cost? CK: Ten cents. Mostly it was ten cents - mostly cowboy shows. Paramount Theatre was ah, like Popeye theatre - us kids went there a lot. I think it was ten cents, and you got a popcorn with, a candy bar or somethin’ like that. KB: Did you have a favorite show? CK: Oh, Our Gang, I think was my most favorite, then The Lone Ranger or something like that. KB: Then did you go out and pretend that you were the Lone Ranger? CK: Oh yeah, yeah. KB: Clair, thank you for letting me come out and talk to you today about your memories of 25th Street. 16