Oral History Program Louise Butters Waldron Interviewed by Jeanine Carter 08 July 1976 i Oral History Program Weber State University Stewart Library Ogden, Utah Louise Butters Waldron Interviewed by Jeanine Carter 08 July 1976 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. The reviewed and corrected transcripts are indexed, printed, and bound with photographs and illustrative materials as available. Archival copies are placed in University Archives. The Stewart Library also houses the original recording so researchers can gain a sense of the interviewee's voice and intonations. Project Description The Weber State College/University Student Projects have been created by students working with several different professors on the Weber State campus. The topics are varied and based on the student's interest or task for a specific assignment. These oral history assignments were created to help Weber State students learn the value and importance of recording public history and to benefit the expansion of the Weber State oral history collections. ____________________________________ Oral history is a method of collecting historical information through recorded interviews between a narrator with firsthand knowledge of historically significant events and a well-informed interviewer, with the goal of preserving substantive additions to the historical record. Because it is primary material, oral history is not intended to present the final, verified, or complete narrative of events. It is a spoken account. It reflects personal opinion offered by the interviewee in response to questioning, and as such it is partisan, deeply involved, and irreplaceable. ____________________________________ Rights Management All literary rights in the manuscript, including the right to publish, are reserved to the Stewart Library of Weber State University. No part of the manuscript may be published without the written permission of the University Librarian. Requests for permission to publish should be addressed to the Administration Office, Stewart Library, Weber State University, Ogden, Utah, 84408. The request should include identification of the specific item and identification of the user. It is recommended that this oral history be cited as follows: Waldron, Louise Butters, an oral history by Jeanine Carter, 08 July 1976, 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 Louise Butters Waldron. The interview was conducted on July 8, 1976, by Jeanine Carter, in the home of the interviewee in Richville, Utah. Mrs. Waldron discusses her personal history as well as her recollections of historical times during her life in Morgan County, Utah. JC: This is an interview by Jeanine Carter with Louise Butters Waldron in her home in Morgan County, Utah, and she lives in Richville. Today is July 8, 1976, and it is about 6:30 in the evening. Mrs. Waldron, would you tell me about yourself, who your parents were, and about your early life here in Morgan? LW: I was born in South Morgan, Morgan, Utah, on August 23, 1916. My parents are Henry James Butters and Arta Robison. My mother was busy getting ready for the thresher dinner, and she has related the story to me many times1. She wasn't feeling very well, and she stepped outside for some fresh air. A neighbor came by, and he could see that she didn't look well, and he said, "Arta, don't you feel very well?" She replied that she didn't. Mr. Turner said, "Don't you worry about the thresher dinner. My wife will get it." I was born shortly after. I had a sister and a brother, Louis and Dean. We lived in the home which was my great-grandfather’s— T.R.G. Welch’s home. It is formally occupied by his grandson Albert Welch. It was a small frame home with a small running ditch in front of the home. My father was trying to make his living in the first part of their married life as a farmer. My father owned a team of horses and they were gray in color. We children would like to meet father as he came into the yard, or if he had to run short errands with the wagon and go with him. I remember one time, we were all trying to crowd into the wagon when my sister Flora fell off, and it was lucky that my father was 1 able to get the team of horses stopped before they ran over her. Also I can remember an experience when I was a young girl. Mother had cooked some crab apples to bottle, and she set them outside on the porch and told us children to stay away from them because they were hot. We let Mother go back in the home and through our curiosity, my sister took the lid off. The three of us were looking down into the hot bubbling apples, and Lois took one of the apples by the stem and held it over Flora's head. It fell off and frightened her, and she went forward into the hot syrup of apples. I have always been grateful to this day that she was never scarred by the burns on her face. Lois and I were so frightened that we hurried and hid under the bed. JC: Would you tell some of your experiences when you were going to school? What did the schoolhouse look like? LW: My first school was in South Morgan, and we walked to school. We lived about two blocks away. To me, it was a big, large bare schoolhouse. We didn't have carpet like we do now, and you could hear footsteps going up the wooden stairs to the second floor. I can remember my first grade teacher was Miss Simpson. The building was heated by an old coal furnace in the basement. The children used to like to go down there and peek into the furnace because all of our homes were not heated this way, and there was a central heating system in this school. When it came recess time, we were allowed to go out into the yard and play. When we first started school, there was a large bell on the top of the building. We used to fight to take turns ringing the bell to bring the students back in from recess, to start school, or to let school out. But they had to arrange it so each one of us had our turn to ring that bell. Then they graduated from that to ringing a hand bell for the same purpose. The large South Morgan city canal ran in front of the 2 schoolhouse, and there was a wooden bridge that we had to cross over. In my fourth grade, I was living in North Morgan, and I would ride a school bus to school. I can remember the day that the Voss girl was killed by the school bus2. We didn't have any order in leaving the school house. The teachers would just send us on our way, and we would all go outside. When we saw the school bus approaching, we would all run over the bridge to see who could get the first seat in the bus. That day one of the boys held onto the bus handle, running along with the school bus as it was coming to a stop. The bus driver automatically opened the door, and it swung him around, and in doing so, a young girl was put under the back two dual wheels and was run over. It was a frightening experience. They took her up to the South Side Store, but she had died before they arrived to get help from the doctor. JC: You mentioned the school bell. Where is the bell today? LW: The American Legion received the bell when the schoolhouse was torn down. They used it sometimes during the 4th of July. They would put it in a truck and would go around the county ringing it to awaken the people early in the morning. The bell has been preserved by the American Legion. We just dedicated our Bicentennial City Park Theater in the Morgan City Park. The bell was donated to this park. They put the bell on a nice metal tower that goes into the air with a rope on it. We had a delightful day on the 5th of July ringing the bell. It brought back old memories of our school days. JC: I thought it made the day a success to hear the old bell. Will you tell about what you did around the home to help your mother? LW: We were kept busy. Mother never allowed us children to sleep in the morning. We were up bright and early every morning. She always had something for us to do like getting 3 breakfast. We had a black coal stove that had a two-door warming closet at the top. We could put food in there to keep it warm if we were crowded on the stove with our cooking. We always had ham and eggs. We had a cow, so we had plenty of milk. We had a water reservoir on the side that kept the water hot so we could do our dishes. We didn't have any hot water in the home; we just had the cold running water. As soon as we got through eating, Mother never allowed us to sit at the table and talk. It was get right up and see that our dishes were washed and put away. We didn't have any cabinets when I was young. We had a pantry, and the shelves were in the pantry. I can remember sometimes in the winter we would have to pry the dishes off the wall because they were frozen to it. Mother could also keep things cold there in the summertime, like pans of milk. It was our responsibility to skim the cream off and see that the butter was made. Then our other responsibility was to clean house. Every Saturday we had to sweep the floor with a straw broom. We did have a rag carpet, which Mother sewed on the treadle machine. My sister and I would have to rip cloth, old dress material or shirt material, in strips about 3 ½ to 4 inches wide. Then Mother would sew the strips together, and we would have to roll them up in balls. I can remember she had a gunnysack full of balls and took them to Mrs. Mortenson in Porterville, and she made a 9 by 12 foot rug, our first rug on the floor. We never would dust until we got through sweeping and the dust would settle, then we would dust the furniture. In our front room was a potbelly stove, as we called them. It was round and flat on the top. It had beautiful chrome trim on the bottom just above the legs and across the top. You could feed the stove from the top lid or open a door in the center. We burned mostly wood through the day, and we banked the stove with coal during the night so we could get a fire going 4 quickly in the morning. As for washing, it was my responsibility to see that some of the clothes were soaked and ready for washing. We had a wooden washer that had a wooden dolly inside, and we would crank it by hand. We would keep water in it during the week so it wouldn't dry up and leak. Mother heated the water on the stove in a copper boiler, and when it reached the point of almost boiling, she would put a teaspoon of lye in it and cut up homemade soap and put in it. She would stir it to dissolve the homemade soap, and this is what we used when we washed. Later Father put a motor on the washer. We were sure glad that we didn't have to stand there and turn the handle back and forth. A few years later, the new washers came out, and Mother took in some boarders to feed. They had their breakfast and dinner in our home, and she saved the money from these boarders that were building a home and bought her first Maytag electric washer. It was aluminum, square tub, and my mother still has it to this day. We also had the responsibility of irrigating. We had a beautiful lawn. Mother had flowers, shrubs, and a large garden that we would plant every year. Once a week we would have to hike up the hill at the back of the house and bring the water down in a ditch into our yard and irrigate.3 It was fun to go out into the garden and pull fresh carrots, wipe the dirt off with our hands - sometimes we would do it with our dress - and chew away on the carrot, or we would peel a turnip and eat it. Another responsibility we had was gathering eggs for breakfast. Father always had a cow that would provide us with milk and a pig that he would cure for our bacon and ham. He would do this in a salt brine in a wooden slat barrel. I would have to go up, some of the time, and gather the eggs in the chicken coop. We had rattlesnakes, so many of them in the North Morgan hills, that we were taught never to walk without watching in front of us because you never knew when 5 there would be a rattlesnake. Many times we would go out on the front porch, and there would be one curled up back of the rocker. We might find a rattlesnake at the watering trough, going up to bring the irrigating water or gathering eggs. I always took a stick with me, and poked into the egg nest before I would dare put my hand in. I was afraid there might be a rattlesnake curled up in it. I always enjoyed gathering eggs under a warm hen. I knew she wouldn't be sitting on a rattlesnake, and it was fun to sneak the eggs from underneath the hen. JC: You mentioned your garden. How did you preserve this food? LW: We did it mostly by drying. Mother bottled fruit, and she did some vegetables by cooking them a long length of time. To dry, we would cut the corn off the cob, and we dried apples and apricots. Father made something similar to a screen door, and we would scatter the fruits or vegetables on the new wire, then he would lay another one on top. No matter how careful we were in trying to seal it off, we always had to watch for flies so they wouldn't ruin the fruits or vegetables as they were drying. We also salted beans in two five gallon crocks. JC: You mentioned your stove in the front room. Did you have heat in the other rooms? LW: No, we just had the one front room that had heat. Our bedrooms were cold, and in order to sleep warm in the winter, we had double cotton blankets made. We would take rocks and some clean bricks and put them in the oven of the coal stove and heat them. Before it was time to go to bed, we would put them in the bed, but we wrapped them in old blankets or sheets so it wouldn't scorch the bedding. By the time we were ready for bed, our beds would be warm. 6 JC: You mentioned that you had cold water. Was this all the plumbing you had in your home? LW: This was all the plumbing at the beginning of my early life. We just had cold running water. JC: Where would you bathe? LW: We would heat the water in the copper boiler, as I have mentioned. We had a large, round tub that we used when we had clothes to scrub on a scrubbing board. Some of the clothes were so soiled that the washer wouldn't get it out, so we had to scrub the clothes on a board and then wash them in the washer. We would use the same tub to bathe in. We would put it in the middle of the kitchen floor, put in cold and hot water until it was a temperature that wouldn't burn us. We would put chairs around it and put blankets around the backs of the chairs so we could have a little privacy, and we would take turns bathing. JC: You mentioned homemade soap. Can you tell me how the soap was made? LW: It was made with rendered lard from the pork and processed in a large black metal kettle. Mother used to put the kettle on a bonfire and would process it by melting the lard, then adding lye, and after you would stir and stir. When it started to thicken, you knew it was time to pour it out into a mold or large pan. Before it became too hard, you would cut squares of soap out of it. JC: How would you preserve meat? LW: Pork, Father always put in a brine, and he had a smokehouse built where he would smoke the bacon and ham. In the summertime, he would wrap it up and store it down 7 deep in the wheat that he had in a granary. We didn't have too many problems in the wintertime because the pantry would stay so cold because it was on the north side of the house. JC: What were some of the ways you would earn money? LW: I was one of the best babysitters I guess they had in North Morgan because I was sure kept busy babysitting. It was long hours, and I didn't get too much money. A dime seemed to be a lot in those days. I would go to some of the homes around 6:00 p.m., and never return home until 2:00 in the morning, and would be paid a dime. There was only one home that ever said, "If you get hungry, cut you a slice of bread and put butter and jam on it." I guess that the rest didn't think anyone got hungry. I can remember one time tending children at a large home in North Morgan. It was a snowy night when I arrived. They had four children. They had one bucket of coal to keep that big home warm. Midnight came, and I had run out of coal. It was getting cold, so I put my coat on and rode the children's tricycle around the table to keep warm. When they arrived home, they just barely made it into the yard, the snow had fallen so deep. So they had me walk home, about 1 ½ blocks, and the snow was above my knees. Uncle Irvin Butters ran the barber shop, and he used to cut our hair. In those days, we had windblown hair that was cut short and turned towards a person's face. I would go down to get a haircut once a month. He had rows of individual chairs, and when I would get there, I would look at comic books and wait my turn. Usually a man or woman would come to me and ask, "Will you hold my turn while I do some shopping?" (The barber was on the main street of town.) I would hold the seat until the person returned, which was about 10 minutes, 8 and they would pay me a dime. Other people would do the same, so I would just sit and hold turns. I would make about 40 cents in an hour. That was better than babysitting. JC: Tell me about the hobos. LW: There were many that came through Morgan County because it was the main road into Ogden or Salt Lake at that time. They were always hungry. They would come to our home for food because they didn't seem to have the money to purchase food. They would knock on the back door, and sometimes Mother would have us girls, or she would, fix a sandwich and a glass of milk, or a piece of cake. They would sit on the porch and eat it and would usually thank Mother graciously. But the biggest percentage of hobos would say, "I would like something to eat, but I would like to earn it. Do you have anything I can do while you are preparing me something to eat?" She would always put them to work chopping wood because we used lots of wood. JC: Where would you purchase your clothes? LW: Mother always went downtown. We had a shopping center just through the subway. In fact, we would go over the double railroad tracks first before the subway was built. She would go to J. Williams and Sons and buy cotton and wool material by the yard. Mother made all of our dresses, petticoats, garter belts, coats, and hats on her treadle machine. Nowadays we have such wonderful material, you just have to wash and drip dry. When I was a young girl, we used to have to gather them off the clothes line, or we would dry inside the home on a wooden rack. We would dampen them down and put them in a dampened sheet and iron them later. We had three or four irons that I would put on the hot stove. I would take the handle and clamp onto the hot iron. To test the iron to see if it was hot enough, I would spit on the bottom of the iron, and if it sizzled, it was hot 9 enough. When the iron wasn't hot enough to iron, I would replace it with another hot iron. I had to keep the iron moving so it wouldn't scorch our clothes. JC: You mentioned going to an elementary school in South Morgan. How many grades did you go there? LW: We went to the fourth grade, then we were transferred to North Morgan School. It was a two-story building, and we went fifth, sixth, and seventh grades there. That was a lot of fun because it was within a half block from where I was living in North Morgan. We had such a good sleigh-riding hill for the wintertime. We all brought our sleighs to school, and we got so darn wet sleigh riding, I don't know how any of us survived. We had longlegged underwear on and long black stockings kept up by garter belts (that went from the shoulder down). Mother would knit our gloves and make stocking caps and warm coats. We didn't have boots because they didn't make them in those days. We wore high-top laced shoes. I can remember that we had a spool contest where you would take a spool and drive four nails in the one end and would braid a rope down through the center of the spool. We would use a bent hook made out of a small nail. I would gather the strings that came into the home. They wrapped packages with strings because they didn't have paper sacks. I won the contest. I had a rope made that you could lean out the second story window in the North Morgan Schoolhouse and it would reach the ground. We had a good play area. We had teeter-totters and swings. Sometimes we wouldn't get along. Someone would get hurt being pushed out of the swing, or someone would jump off the teeter-totter and let the other person come down to the ground hard. I can remember we had one teacher that kept us in recess to find out who had broken something in the classroom. I was so scared of that teacher, I hid 10 underneath the desk. Our parents got after the teachers because the stairs outside were made out of cement, and every chance we got we would slide down these cement railings, and we would wear out our underpants too fast. As far as recreation, oh, we did have fun in North Morgan. We would play baseball, run sheepy run, kick the can, jump the rope, Annie I over, and roller skate. We used to make cans to walk on. We would take rags or strings, tie through holes that were near the top of the can. Standing on the cans and holding the strings we were able to walk. Sometimes we would make stilts made out of 2 x 4's to walk on. We would join in the marble games with the boys and sometimes we would even beat. I would go home with a sack of marbles. After we got our work done, we would take a blanket out on the lawn and lie and watch the beautiful clouds in the sky and see how many birds we could count that flew by. We combed each other's hair. We would spend hours on odd pieces of material, sewing little skirts, bonnets, and blouses. We would take long clothes pins and make dolls, or we would gather hollyhock flowers and make dolls. Each Saturday we would hurry and get our work done because we knew that if our work was done by noon, Mother would let us go with the rest of the children in the neighborhood. We would fix a lunch and hike up to the top of the North Morgan Hills. That was one of the biggest thrills. Many times we would lose our hard-boiled eggs because the hills would be steep, and it would fall out of the cloth sack and roll right to the bottom. We would walk along the top of the ridge and come out by William's Point by Como Springs, and then would walk back home. We had a spring in the hills, called the North Morgan Spring. It had several little islands there, and we girls would spend hours playing house and jumping over the water from one island to the other. Also there was a round water cement tank that was discarded. It 11 is still over in North Morgan to this day. It had an opening in the bottom, and we would have to crawl on our hands and knees to get inside. We would have more fun there. We would build a fire in the center. There were boys and girls, and we would roast potatoes and wieners. I can remember my mother thought we spent too much time there. She was kind of curious to see what was going on, so she walked over one night and looked down on us. She saw that we were having such a good time that she never worried about us again. JC: You spoke of combing long hair. Was that the hairstyle? LW: We started to let our hair grow because we found out that if you would dampen our hair, roll it up in rags and tie it, that when it was dry, it was curly. When it got to a length it was too much to roll up on rags, the electric curling iron and Marcel iron was invented. The curling iron had one rod, and you could curl your hair up and make it curly, or the Marcel had two rods. You would put the Marcel iron into your hair, and you would have two bumps instead of one. When you combed your hair, it made more of a wave. JC: Now from hairstyles, what was your dress style? LW: It was more or less straight from the shoulders with lots of lace trim. I can remember Lois and I were asked to sing in Sunday school Mother's Day program. Mother made two of the most beautiful yellow taffeta dresses for us and trimmed them with blue lace. Oh, I thought it was the prettiest dress that I had ever had in my life. I was so tickled over it. I was a great person to wear rings. I was in style with today's style. I would have two or three rings on each hand. JC: Where was your father working when you lived in North Morgan? 12 LW: Father was working for the Anderson Pea Factory4. He used to have to keep the boilers fed with coal so as to keep the steam up to process the canning and preparation of the peas. Mother used to send me down through the summer months when the peas were on, to take Father a lunch5. It was quicker to go through the fields than it was to go down the sidewalk and over the train track. I would take the hot lunch and go through the Robison field and over the railroad track, and the factory was on the other side. I can remember in July, when the peas were being harvested, walking into see my father. He had blue overalls on, bib overalls. He always wore a second pair of pants underneath his overalls, and he never did button the sides up, and he was dirty from shoveling coal. He would open those big old furnaces and it was so hot that I would have to stand back. I don't know how Father ever stood it. He would put about five or six big shovels-full of coal in the furnace and shut the door, and then he would look up at the gauges. It would show how much steam. He couldn't go above or go below a certain number, so he had to govern just how many shovels of coal went in each time. He had that down to almost perfection. They would blow a whistle when it was noontime. Then Father would sit down to eat. While he was waiting for the whistle to blow, I would usually leave and go watch the process of canning peas. The farmers would bring the peas in on their wagons drawn by a team of horses. They would take them to the thresher area at the back of the pea factory. The way the farmers would load the peas on their wagons in their fields was to pitch all those heavy vines and peas on with a pitchfork. When they arrived there, they would have to pitch them all off into the thresher area that would take the peas from the pods and the vines. The vines would go out on a conveyor belt. It was way up in the air. They would hire older boys in high school to 13 stack the vines. They received a pretty good wage for doing this, and they had to see that the stack was perfect so it wouldn't tip over. This is where they left it to ferment for animals to eat. After the peas were threshed, they would go on another conveyor belt to be washed and sent up to the second floor. I always liked to hurry and get up to the second floor and watch the women. They employed a large group of women to stand by the conveyor belt as it brought the peas along, and they were to pick out the cracked peas and what trash didn't wash off the peas so there wouldn't be any in the cans6. This conveyor belt would move the full length of the large building, then it would go into the canning center where they were put into cans and went through a steam bath. Salt was added and the lids, then they processed them and cooked them. There were two buildings in this area plus the one my father worked in. In between the two buildings was a cement ditch of cold water. After the peas were cooked, they came along on a belt affair in the air. They were lowered into this water to cool. As it slowly went through this cement water ditch, the peas were cooled, and when they got to the other building they were brought up out of the water and shook firmly. By the time they got into the building to be packed and stored, they were dried7. By the time I would watch this process, Father would be through eating. I would go and talk to him for a few minutes and go home through the fields again. JC: Did each little community have their own cemetery? LW: Oh yes. We called ours the North Morgan Cemetery. There was also a South Morgan. Each community, Portersville, Milton, Enterprise, and Peterson had one. We children would go with Mother to the cemetery. Her parents and grandparents were buried in the North Morgan Cemetery. It wasn't only on decorate day, but many times she would take 14 flowers over and she also planted shrubs. Many times the graves would sink because they didn't have cement vaults in those days. They were buried in wooden boxes and the wooden boxes would decay, and the graves would settle. Mother worked many days on building up the graves, taking the lawn out and putting more dirt in, then putting the lawn back on the top so her mother's and dad's graves would be level. While she was doing this, we girls would go down to the lower part of the North Morgan Cemetery. We felt sorry for the people that no one ever thought to bring flowers to or clean their graves off. We would take our hoe and rake with us, and we would work several hours to see that those graves were kept just as nice. They didn't have lawn on the graves, and we were careful not to let any weeds grow. We would pick sunflowers or flags - they call them iris now. These were purple flags, and we would pick bouquets and see that they went to every one of the graves that no one visited. JC: When you were younger, did you ever see a picture show? LW: Oh yes, we had silent movie picture shows. It was downtown. The tracks were on one side and the stores on the other side of the road. There was a Clawson Hotel, and they had silent movies there. Father would see that we could go to the movies every Friday night. He would give us each our dime. It would cost a dime to get in. It was a narrow room, but long. We just had the regular hard chairs like we had at home in the kitchen. The pictures would come onto the screen, but we couldn't read the words underneath, so Mrs. Clawson would sit on the front row and she would read out loud what the words were so we could connect the words with the pictures. We could see their mouths moving, but we couldn't hear anything. Going back to when we would arrive, it all depended on if Mr. Clawson was busy selling tickets. But if it slowed up, when we 15 young girls arrived, if he could put his arm around us and give us a good squeeze, he would say, "You don't have to pay this time." We thought that was quite a trick. I can remember saving our money from babysitting. We could hardly wait until we had been to Sunday school and our meetings. There were about six or eight girls that would always walk down to the drugstore. It was owned by Frank Ulrich. He had the prettiest round iron tables and four little iron chairs. He had several of them. We would sit there and order our ice cream sundaes. It cost us 20 cents to have the largest dish of ice cream, and I always had cherry topping on mine. We would do this every Sunday for many months. JC: That sounds fun! Did you ever go on a sleigh ride? LW: When we would get our work done, or after, that was the highlight especially on a Saturday, was going sleigh riding. We called it the North Morgan Hill. They changed the railroad tracks and made a subway underneath, which made it a little more convenient because the cars were starting to come into Morgan County. But before that, it was just the railroad track. We would go to the top of the North Morgan Hill. We would have to have someone stand down at the crossroads. There were two roads, and we didn't want anyone to get hit. Boy, we would just come flying down there. If a car was coming up the North Morgan Hill, or going west, east, or north, there was four ways of traffic. A flagman would flag us, and we would have to hurry and turn our sleighs out so we wouldn't be in the line of traffic. It was a lot easier when there were just bobsleds because we could get clear to the bottom before they arrived. We would just fly down, but we always had to turn out for the railroad track. We would make sure we didn't go over them. Then the cars came, and it got too dangerous. So we had to stop and not 16 enter into the line of traffic. Sometimes on a Saturday morning or a day that we didn't have to go to school, we would go for a bobsled ride. The farmers would get their team of horses on their bobsleds. They had runners instead of tires that would just run along on the snow. They didn't scrape the snow off the roads like they do now. It was just packed roads of snow, and the only way of traveling was bobsled. On a Saturday morning we would, if Mother would let us, bundle up warm. We knew that Jim Palmer would be coming by with his bobsled to go down and get some silage to take home and feed his cows. He knew we would probably be out there waiting, and he would let us ride the runners. We would go up to the North Morgan Hill and down over the railroad tracks, over to the pea factory. We would wait while he would shovel the load of silage into his bobsled. Then we would ride the runners home. Speaking of bobsleds, we had a Santa Claus in Morgan. Every Christmas morning when we were children, we would look forward to this Santa Claus as much as we did having one in the home. Mr. James Anderson owned the pea factory in Morgan. He would put on his Santa Claus outfit and load his bobsled. He had the most beautiful team of horses. He would go around the whole county, ringing bells to let us know he was coming. His horses had beautiful bells ringing, and he had one in his hand. We would all run out, and he gave every one of us a box of stick candy. That was just the most wonderful thing. He did this many years until Mr. Anderson moved out of Morgan. JC: In your childhood, did you ever hear of polygamy? LW: Yes. There was a fellow that lived in Morgan. His name was Charley Clark. Even though polygamy was ruled out, we knew he still had two wives, one in Morgan and one in Ogden. We children used to get quite a bang out of watching Charley trying to thumb a 17 ride to Ogden. There were cars then. He would get his thumb up there. He was an old gentleman then, and we would say, "There goes Charley down to see his other wife." And in about four days, "Here comes Charley back to see his other wife." JC: What did you use to do for transportation? LW: In my days, it was just the sleigh, and then my grandfather bought a Model T Ford. We used to use that a lot. Then my father bought a Model A Ford. This is how we traveled. The Model A Ford that Father owned had isinglass curtains for the winter, and in summer you would take them off. It was real nice to ride in. It wasn't as comfortable as the cars are now because the roads were dirt, and rocky, muddy when it rained. It felt like you were on steel wheels. There wasn't much air in the tires. They were mostly hard rubber. We would, in the wintertime, hook the isinglass on to the car. They pushed on with snaps. No heater - there was an exhaust heater that went through the car, but it was below zero weather. You couldn't feel any heat come from them. So we would prepare ourselves with blankets and hot rocks. JC: Would you tell me how you spent some of your holidays? LW: I can remember after Father purchased the car, we had the means of traveling a little better than horse and buggy or sleighs. We would take turns with a couple of Mother's sisters and their family in Ogden, and they would return and visit us during a holiday. We looked forward to going at Christmas down Weber Canyon. Father would gas up the Model A and put the isinglass windows on so we would keep warm. We would heat the rocks up, bundle up in our coats, and get the wool blankets, and then head to Ogden with our Christmas gifts. We would stay over until Christmas day. Going down the canyon, the road was on one side of the canyon only. It was very narrow, and in some 18 places you would have to stop the car to let another one pass because there were some areas that you couldn't pass another vehicle. I can remember going down the canyon. I was so scared of the side where the river was. I was afraid that Dad would dump us in the river. We would kind of have a little quarrel to see who was going to sit on the river side, and the same coming back. We always had so much fun in Ogden because we had other cousins to play with. They just couldn't get us calmed down for Santa Claus to come. They would try everything. We were all excited. I would say there were about 10 of us children waiting for Santa Claus, and they had quite a problem with that many. We would come out of the bedroom about every half hour saying, "When's Santa Claus coming? When's Santa Claus coming?" For Thanksgiving, Aunt Nell and her family and Aunt Faye and her family would come to Morgan. This is what they would like to do, for when they would get to Morgan, they knew they could have a sleigh ride in the bobsleds and a good hill for the children to sleigh ride down. Father would always get his team of horses and hook them up to the bobsled, and we would all get into the sleigh. We would all bundle up with blankets. It was cold, lots of snow in my younger days. We would go clear up to North Round Valley after we had eaten, and come back. That seemed to be such a wonderful time. This is how we spent most of our holidays. Another thing I always respected my parents for, they always included their families. We got along so well with her two sisters and families. Every summer we would take one week and go up East Canyon and camp on the canyon creek. Each one would have a tent. We didn't have any sleeping bags like they do now, so we would take mattresses off the bed for the older people, and us kids would sleep on the ground with blankets and quilts. We would spend one week up there. We would cook over the bonfire. We would go fishing, 19 catch squirrels and lizards. The girls were old enough - there were four of us about the same age - to walk up to the East Canyon Dam, and we had a trail right along the edge of the creek clear to the dam. To this day, my parents never did know this, but one time we were up on the dam, and my sister Lois walked on a little tiny rim of cement. If she had fallen off, we would have never found her. It was such a frightening thing. I knew that if we would have went back and told our parents, they would never have allowed us to walk the creek bank any more. We didn't try that again because we realized it was very dangerous. JC: How did you spend the 4th of July? LW: When I was very young and living in South Morgan, we celebrated the 4th of July at the courthouse square. Back of the courthouse were tall trees, and they would have booths. They had a ball game area. Everyone would bring their own picnic lunch, and we just visited. They had some fireworks, but not like they have now. They weren't as noisy. It was just fun getting together, the women visiting, seeing whose child was growing the best. When we lived in North Morgan, Como Springs had become quite a nice resort. There was a large July 4th celebration up there. We looked forward to that because they had booths, they had the merry-go-round, the fish pond, the swimming pool, the boating pond, and they had a restaurant. A lady by the name of Irene Heiner ran the restaurant and her cooking was just excellent. We could go up there and spend the whole day. The Morgan band would play a concert. The Morgan band has a concert every Sunday for many summers. We sure had a good time. Most of the time we had to walk to get there, but it was fun. They had a bridge built for the cars to go over, and the wagons. Then they had a swinging bridge. It's gone now. This is the way we would go across to the 20 other side of Como because of the river. It was fun. It had a wire put up to the sides so you couldn't fall off. We would get six or seven girls in the middle of it, and then we would jump up and down and let it sway. And then we would go over into the park and spend the day. JC: You mentioned the courthouse. Was this the first courthouse in Morgan? LW: I think it was. It was there as long as I could remember. It's the one they tore down to build our new city and county building. It was a two-story building. It reminded me a lot of our schoolhouse.81 thought there was a barren feeling in there. Across the street from the courthouse was our Morgan LDS stake center. This is where all of the people from Morgan County, the different wards, would come for our stake conference. I can remember we looked forward to it. We were having so many of the Saints come into our home for dinner. The families traveled by horse and buggy to conference, and it was too far for them to return home for dinner and come back to the afternoon meeting. Mother would prepare a nice cooked dinner and invite several families into our home to eat so they wouldn't have to travel home until after conference was over. JC: Can you remember any of the LDS Church presidents visiting Morgan Stake? LW: Yes, I can remember President Heber J. Grant, President Joseph F. Smith. President Joseph F. Smith was one of the grandest and greatest presidents we've had to support the Boy Scout program. He was a great leader in Boy Scouting himself. And then I can remember President David O. McKay. 21 JC: The courthouse is on one side of the street and the stake house across the street. Wasn't there an opera house on the other corner? Will you tell me about that opera house? LW: Yes, the opera house was a two-story, and it was a rock, cement block building9. It was like the rest of them. I'm so used to carpeting in homes and in entrances of a lot of our buildings, that going back and thinking how those entrances were - they were all the same, with big board doors. As you entered the theater or the opera house, there was a big entrance with a board floor, and on both sides of the building were about an eightfoot wide stairway that would lead to the second floor. This is where the dance hall was. There were windows on both sides of the building. It was long, and we used to have a lot of our Mutual activities and stake dances there. Oh, they used to have some good orchestras. I can remember the Milton orchestra playing there several times. Their rhythm was so good. Mother and Father, in fact, most of the people in the county, didn't leave their children home to babysitters. They would bring them to the dances, and we would sit and watch the people dance. If we were old enough, our fathers would come and whirl us around a little bit. In the bottom part was our theater. We had a lot of Mutual shows there. I was in many of them, and I can remember Mother speaking about her being in a lot of road shows, too. The stage had advertisements. The curtains didn't open like they do now in theaters. They rolled down a big canvas, and there were every kind of advertisement of Morgan County and even in from Ogden, implement places, theaters, and stores. The background was just the same. We didn't have very pretty backgrounds. If they ever put on an opera, they would try and cover them up with some kind of a material or canvas. 22 JC: We have talked about your childhood days. Shall we go into your teenage years? Will you tell me about going to high school? LW: Yes, we had a lot of fun in high school. Our Morgan High School was recently torn down. We went up two flights of steps in a two-story building. It had a nice auditorium in it. We had 72 in our class. We went from eight grade to graduation of the twelfth grade. Our activities were similar to what they are having now. We had lots of dances, basketball, and baseball. Some classes we would double up in, but most of them had a single teacher. We had a study hall. They've always had a good music department. There was a band, and we always put on operas. We called them operas then, and school plays. I can remember in the eighth grade, we put on a Negro minstrel. I was one of the flapper girls. There were about eight of us dancing, and we were made up like Negroes and did a little step dance. I dated. My folks were strict with our dating until we became older. We could only go out on Mutual nights and Friday nights, and sometimes Saturday. As far as school nights, we would stay home and get our lessons. I can remember Stewart in school. He always wore flashy clothes, and he was quite a stepper. He was one the first one of the boys to have a vehicle to run around in. We didn't have to have a driver’s license then. In the seventh grade, he would drive a little Model A Ford truck. It seemed like every time he would come to school in the truck, the girls would all try and get in the back and go for a ride, even if it was just around the block. Sometimes he would go as far as Como Springs and back. One summer day between my sophomore and junior year, school was out and I was just standing on the lawn. (We had moved from North Morgan to South Morgan.) Stewart drove by several times. The city blocks all had open ditches for irrigation, and I can remember him driving 23 up on the bank of the irrigation ditch in front of the house, then down he would come. He would go up the road and back, and do it again. He was in a Chevy Coupe. My father said, "Who's that crazy person?" I said, "Oh that's that smart aleck Stewart Waldron." Pretty soon he decided to stop and he asked me if I wanted to go for a ride, and boy, I was so thrilled. So I got in with him, and we went to East Canyon Dam. I thought I was really smart riding with someone in a car. Especially Stewart, who had been so popular through school. JC: Who does Stewart finally become? LW: Stewart was the son of Levi and Helene Waldron. He lived in Richville, Morgan County. I had known Stewart through the fifth, sixth, and seventh grade in North Morgan School. They started to bring Richville over to that school10. So I knew quite a bit about who Stewart was. From that date, the Sunday when we went up East Canyon, a week went by and he was back. We had started to date. We started to go steady about our junior and senior year. On graduation night, he gave me my diamond engagement ring. I had a pretty dress. My sister Lois graduated the same year. We were just like twins - we were just a year apart. I can remember it was the largest graduation class of Morgan High, and they put all of the teachers up on the stage and made the class sit down on the iron rows of seats. We graduated May 22, 1934, and Stewart and I set our wedding date for August 23, 1934, which would be my eighteenth birthday. I wouldn't have to have my parents sign the marriage certificate. JC: How did the Depression affect your life? LW: The Depression was during the last two years of high school or even before. We were very poor. We didn't have any money. Mother took all of her dresses and coats and 24 made clothes for us girls to stay in school. We had one pair of shoes, two skirts, two blouses, and a pair of rayon stockings that was required to wear at school. A girl couldn't go to school with bare legs. My sisters were the same. We would wash one outfit out, the skirt and blouse and stockings one night, then the next morning we would get up and iron the set that was drying the day before. We just had two outfits to wear to school, but we always went clean. Mother always said if you keep your clothes clean and your hair curled, you will be just as attractive as if you had a lot of clothes. It was the same with my brothers. They had two pair of Levis and a couple of shirts. Father worked on the WPA, which is a program President Roosevelt set up to help those unemployed11. There were food stamps, and he helped to dig ditches to reimburse for the stamps and the food and the bedding that the government gave out to the people that were unemployed. We were always glad we had a good garden that we preserved for the winter supply. We would put the carrots and cabbages in the root cellar. We had Old Red, our cow that gave us plenty of milk. Mother would make cottage cheese and butter, and we had plenty of milk to drink. And then, as usual. Father saw that there was plenty of pork. I can remember we were getting low on pork, and I had an older brother, Dean. He would get up early to eat with Father because he had to leave home before we went to school. He would always get a piece of ham. When we children got up, we didn't think it was fair that we couldn't have ham like Dean did. We had to have hot cooked cereal. We survived. There's one thing we did - we put up lots of fruit and had plenty to eat. We didn't have any money. I felt sorry for my brother, Dean. He had a girl, and all my father could hand him was 50 cents to go on a date once a week. That didn't go very far. If you went to the show, up to the Opera House, it would take most of the 25 money. We didn't have money for gas to use the car to run around in. So during most of our Depression days, we were home playing cards, popping popcorn, and making candy. Whether it was a failure or not, we would eat it. We had fried potatoes. One of our main meals was fried potatoes. Dad always planted plenty of potatoes and kept them through the winter. JC: What about communication in the early days of Morgan County? Can you remember the first radio and telephone? LW: Yes, we had a crank-type telephone in our home when I was younger. I can remember I didn't even know that my mother was expecting. They wore what they called a Hubbard dress that concealed pregnancy. I was old enough that I should have noticed that she was pregnant. We came down early in the morning in May, and Father was there at the bottom of the steps and guided us around into the kitchen. He said, "You can't go into the bottom bedroom." I couldn't imagine why. All the time, he was needed in the bedroom, but he was trying to keep us from going in there. Then we heard the crying of the baby. It excited Lois and I to think there was a baby in the house. That was when my sister, Donna, was born. We had the crank telephone then, and that's how Father got in touch with Dr. Abbott to come because it was Mother's time to have the baby. He brought a midwife, a lady by the name of Miss Vera Mortenson. I can remember the first radio coming into Morgan County. My sister, Lois, and I went around with Elsie Mae Heiner. Her father, Silvester Heiner, was about the first one to own a radio in our community. He invited us to his home to listen to the first broadcast. It didn't come until way late at night. It was almost midnight. We popped popcorn and made tally candy. I can remember lying on the floor, eating in front of the fireplace, when the broadcast 26 started. It was so exciting to think that music and talking were coming through a boxtype thing which was called a radio. After that, we had a lot of soap operas on radio, and now we have them on TV. JC: Do you know anything about bootleggers? LW: Yes, my grandfather was the Morgan County sheriff for about 12 years, and it was during the bootlegging times. He received word that a black sedan was coming up to our county after dark with a load of bottled whiskey. The sheriff's got his deputies and set up a blockade just out of the Morgan City limits, and they waited. They stopped all the traffic. The black sedan had a lead car in front of it. When the lead car noticed there was a blockade ahead, he used his brake light to signal to the black car with the whiskey in it, and they turned around and went at a high rate of speed out of Morgan City. They were never caught. I can remember another incident that Grandfather related. He knew of a certain family that was making whiskey. He went to their place several times but he was unable to catch them because each time they had moved the still from where he was being tipped the whiskey was being made. So he took his telescope spy glasses one day and set across the valley on a hill and watched through the telescope at the home site most of the day. Towards the evening the boys came out of the home and went to the backyard. He could see that they had the still hidden, so he continued to watch them. As they came out, they brought the grain that had been used for making whiskey and slopped the pigs with it. This gave him a clue that there was whiskey being made there. He went over and made the arrest. When I was in my teens, I can remember my neighbor asking me if I wanted to ride to Ogden with the family. We had a good time in Ogden. On our way home, we came down the Uintah Dugway, and 27 at the bottom he turned and went into Uintah County. It was dark and the children asked their father why he was stopping at this house. His reply was to get a gallon of vinegar. A year later, I found out it was bootleg whiskey that he had picked up at this home instead of vinegar. JC: That is really interesting. Were you concerned about getting married during the Depression years? LW: Oh no. We were anticipating and looking forward to getting married. We started to make blocks to build our first home. Mr. T.R. Bates owned a press for making blocks. You would mix sand and cement together and pour it into these molds. It made a nice block. We would put them in a garage where the building was going to be and dry them. It took so many days for them to dry. We would go through the process again of making more blocks so we would have enough available to build our home. Stewart, at the time, was working over to the gravel pit on Brough's farm. He was running a team of horses with a scrapper, scrapping the gravel into a pit area for them to load. They were doing the road in Porterville. So he was employed at the time. Through the summer, when we had time, we would make blocks and get ready to build the home. T.R. Bates helped us. Stewart got all of the timber out of the sawmill up in Hardscrabble. The sawmill was operated by Joe Carpenter. We started our home, but it wasn't finished when our wedding date came to get married. We went ahead and got married in the Salt Lake Temple. We lived with his folks until the home was completed. JC: Mrs. Waldron, I sure appreciate this interview I have had with you. Thank you. 28 Endnotes 1 It took 13 to 20 men to do the threshing of grain. The main attraction of the job was the three fine meals served by the housewives: breakfast at 5 or 6 a.m., dinner and supper. Women worked most of the night preparing food. See Mountain Conquered, page 32. 2 An accident involving one of the school buses and a student, Berlie Voss, resulted in the death of the student. The board held an investigation. After hearing all the evidence, the board held the driver to be blameless in the accident. This happened in the fall of 1926. See "One Hundred Years of Education in the Morgan County School District," page 87. 3 There are two springs east of North Morgan emerging in the foothills. These were known as the Bennett Spring, was used to irrigate the town lots of one acre each. The turns were limited to eight hours, and it required eight days and fourteen hours to complete the round. See Mountains Conquered, page 45. 4 In 1904, James A. Anderson of Morgan, Utah, organized a canning company in Morgan thereby giving birth to the Morgan Canning Company. See "Those Good Peas," page 169. 5 There were no cafeterias, so everyone carried a lunch or wives or family members of the employees brought the workers a hot meal to the factory. See "Those Good Peas," page 169. 6 At the early plant in Morgan, women earned the tremendous about of 12 cents an hour with floor ladies earning the fabulous wage of 22 cents per hour. Women sometimes worked 19 hours a day. See "Those Good Peas," page 176. 29 7 In 1916 the factory was able to produce 12,000 cases of peas per day. The original factory had been enlarged each year to meet the immediate needs. Those Good Peas had attained a favorable reputation. See Mountains Conquered, page 140. 8 It took nine years to construct the old Morgan County Courthouse. It was completed August 1887. The building was a two-story rock and brick structure consisting of six basement rooms, five rooms for prisoners' cells, and one storage room; five rooms on the first floor; and a large room on the second floor. See Mountains Conquered, page 68. 9 The Opera House Company of Morgan was incorporated March 26, 1906, and built through public donation. The value of the building was $10,000. See Mountains Conquered, pages 58-59. 10 Richville School was consolidated in 1926. See Mountains Conquered, page 31. 11 Under a "make work" program, WPA, carried on by the United States government in 1934 during the Depression, the city and county jail was erected. See Mountains Conquered, page 73. 30 Bibliography Bergman, Thomas W. “Porterville Church in Porterville.” Oral History Interview: Weber State College. Chadwick, Mrs. William (comp.). Pioneering Morgan County. Morgan County, Utah; Mr. and Mrs. Albert W. Epperson, Published, 1947. Chadwick, Mrs. William. "History of the Early Settlement and Later Development of Morgan County, Utah." Compiled by the Daughters of the Utah Pioneers, South Morgan Camp, October, 1930. (Typewritten.) Fine Arts Study Group, The (comp.). Mountain Conquered. Morgan County, Utah: Morgan County News Publishers. 1959. Fry, Richard T. "Two Early Settlements of Morgan County." Oral History Interview: Weber State College. Gregory, Ruth West. Those Good Peas. Vol. 36, No. 2 Smithfield, Utah: Spring 1968. Heiner, Camie. "Mr. and Mrs. Fred Florence Note 68th Wedding Date." Morgan County News, 16 November 1973, p. 1, cols. 5-6. Larson, Raymond P. "Public Schools in Morgan County." Oral History Interview: Weber State College. Stuart, Charles W. "Bailiff Dick Fry, at 83, Decides It's Time to Retire." Morgan County News, September 1971, p. 1, cols. Taggart, George Theron. "Morgan County, Utah." Oral History Interview: Weber State College. 31 Thatcher, Isabelle. "Morgan County, Utah; the Early Years." Oral History Interview: Weber State College. Utah State Association of County Officials. The Counties of Utah, 1963. Kaysville, Utah: Inland Printing Company, 1963. Warrum, Noble. Utah in the World War. Salt Lake City, Utah: Arrow Press, 192z+. Wiscombe, Raymond. "One Hundred Years of Education In the Morgan County School District." Thesis University of Utah. 1966. Wright, Maxine R. Remember Devil's Slide? Salt Lake City, Utah: Clyde N. Hatch Company, 1975. 32