Oral History Program Zada Haws Interviewed by Kathryn Burnside 23 April 2003 i Oral History Program Weber State University Stewart Library Ogden, Utah Zada Haws Interviewed by Kathryn Burnside 23 April 2003 Copyright © 2012 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: Haws, Zada, an oral history by Kathryn Burnside, 23 April 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 Zada Haws. The interview was conducted on April 23, 2003, by Kathryn Burnside, in the Office of Human Service on 26th Street in Ogden, Utah. Haws discusses her personal knowledge of the history of 25th street in Ogden, Utah. Present during the interview is Ivan Peterson. KB: My name is Kathryn Burnside; I'm a history student from Weber State University, and we are interviewing Mrs. Zada Haws for the Ogden 25th Street Oral History Project. Today's date is April 23, 2003, and we're conducting this interview at the Office of Human Services on 26th Street. Also present in the room is Ivan Peterson; he's an associate of Mrs. Haws. Thank you, Mrs. Haws for allowing us to talk with you about your recollections of 25th Street. We'd like to begin by asking some basic biographical information about you. Can you tell us your full name and your birth date and then perhaps where you grew up and a little bit about your parents? ZH: Zada McGill Haws. I grew up in Ogden, I was born in Colorado but my father was on the railroad and so they transferred them to Ogden. My birth date is July 2, 1922, which makes me eighty years old. What else did you need here? KB: Great, tell us about your parents. Where were they from? ZH: My father was a railroader; my mother and he were married in Colorado. My mother is originally from Iowa, but Colorado was where they met; she was a schoolteacher, but women didn't teach school when they were married so that was out and they transferred here. 1 KB: Okay, so when you lived here your mom stayed at home. Was your dad gone a lot working? ZH: Yeah, on the railroads in May they were on the road a lot of time. KB: So then you grew up on 33rd Street and Wall - tell us your earliest recollections of 25th Street. ZH: They had streetcars that went down Wall Avenue; I believe they went up 25th Street. We could go all over town on a streetcar. We could also put pins on the tracks and make designs. I took newspapers, was the only girl newspaper person in Ogden, so we took the Denver Post and the Los Angeles Examiner and I had a bicycle so I could ride all over town. I knew where the prostitutes houses were so that I couldn't go there, but my brother did and they told him to come back when he was older. 25th Street, as I remember it, was a real bustling place; ‘course I think I remember it mostly during the War when all of the troop trains were coming through and I worked at the Commissary down at the Depot. The Commissary was a laundry, in case you didn't know; we would get off work, and I went to Weber College. You couldn't walk on the south side of the street; you could only walk on the north side, because that was the white side. KB: Is that right? ZH: That was in 1930; I had a friend who played on the basketball team and he was black, so whenever he walked up with me then I could walk on the south side. There were signs in the window of Caine’s Pharmacy that said, "No Blacks Allowed." That's hard to believe, but it was true. The Porters and Waiters was on the south side. The Lyceum Theatre was on the south side, the - I think it was the Royal Hotel - was right on the 2 corner across from the Depot. Now if I'm making these things up, you'll have to forgive me. KB: You're fine. ZH: On the other side, on the north side of the street, there was the most beautiful hotel and it had pink marble in the lobby, it was gorgeous, huge pillars - and I can't remember the name. KB: Was it the Healy? Does that sound right? ZH: Yes, the Healy. That's the one that was right on the corner. The Marion Hotel was there; the Marion Hotel had a bit of a reputation for having things going on underneath, but I don't know what they were, because I didn't go down there. The Club was supposedly a prostitute house with rooms upstairs. There were pawnshops I think, and lots of bars, many bars. We use to go down in the cars and just sit in our cars and watch the people go by, it was so much fun. KB: Who did you sell your papers to? ZH: I sold them everywhere, individual homes mostly. KB: So were people living, would this be around 25th Street, were they living up and down? ZH: Ah, anywhere in Ogden, so there wasn't any places along 25th Street that actually took the paper, but I would ride down there on my bicycle. The Lyceum Theatre was one of the places we went as kids and it would only cost a nickel, I think, to go into the Theatre. The Paramount Theatre was just off 25th Street. The only entertainment you had in those days was theatres, so you went to the Lyceum or you went to the Paramount, they had kid shows. There was the Egyptian, and then the Ogden Theatre was up 3 above Washington, and it was a smaller theatre, and then the Orpheum, so you had lots of theaters right around there. A lot of restaurants; you had Ross and Jacks, where everybody went to eat. KB: Did you eat there too? ZH: Oh, you bet. Yeah, we all ate there. KB: Really good food? ZH: Good wholesome food, you know. KB: For a good price? ZH: And cheap. KB: Yeah, that's what I heard. KB: Do you remember what you ate there? ZH: I think bacon and eggs mostly, and potatoes, you know - real basic food. Maybe a hamburger, I don't remember hamburgers, we went down on Washington for hamburgers and hot dogs. Ross and Jacks was the place where you went for dinner. It was cheap there. The Depot had a restaurant in it too. KB: Did it? ZH: Yes, a big restaurant. I worked there for about two days, got fired because I was too slow - you had to cut your own bread and I'd never cut my own bread so it took a whole loaf of bread for me to make a single sandwich, so they fired me. Let's see, is there anything special that you want to know? KB: Tell me about your job at the Commissary. Do you remember your schedule? 4 ZH: Oh, you bet I remember that. KB: What kind of hours and what kind of work was it? ZH: I worked mostly the afternoon shift, we had round the clock shifts. KB: I was going to say was it 24 hours to keep those...? ZH: Yes, and you got twenty-seven and 3 to 4 cents an hour, I think it was. We shook out dish cloths and they were full of maggots; it was awful, we'd get maggots in our hair. If you got really good, you got to fold sheets as they came off the mangle, but you had to be fast to do that. You know when you folded the dish clothes, actually, you had to shake out the dish clothes and then feed them. Feeders were the most important - you know, I don't know if they were or not, but I think they were. It was an interesting job, but I have never had another job where everybody was so bonded because everybody was working in a really bad place and they all knew it; but we got the best money in town. KB: Did you? ZH: Yes. KB: Those were good wages? ZH: Oh, very good. KB: Now these were linens that stocked the trains, is that right? ZH: Yes, that's all they were. KB: Twenty-four hours a day your laundry was open. ZH: We worked eight hours a day, six days a week, and it was fun because we'd go in at midnight and do the night shift or we'd go in at four o'clock and do the afternoon shift. 5 You had to have seniority to get on the daytime shift and the ones who had been there for thirty years worked daytime so there was very little chance of getting the daytime. KB: So you were teenage girls, it sounds like, on swing and graveyards. ZH: Yes, it was the first job I'd had out of high school. KB: During the war? ZH: It was in 1940, before the war, and then we worked during the summers. Most of us were just summertime help and then we went to school in the winter or the rest of the year. KB: So what do you remember about the train station? ZH: Oh, it was the most hustling, bustling place in the world. It had benches, wooden benches that completely filled up the Depot and they were always full. People were coming and going all the time. Ogden was the center of commerce, it was where all the cattlemen came; every train stopped here. My brother told me they had sixteen tracks I think - that may not have been accurate, but he worked on the railroad too, later. You could get on the railroad if your family was a part of it. They preferred hiring somebody that was already on there, so if you had sons and then they were preferred Dockers. Girls could not work on the railroad at the time. I would have loved to. It was exciting, it was the thing that everyone wanted to do and they were the best-paid people in town. KB: What was it that your dad did, and your brother? ZH: My dad was a conductor and a brakeman; my brother worked as a brakeman and conductor. The ones who made the most money were the engineers. Engineers made more money than anybody, but my dad didn't like that. He wanted to be a conductor and 6 he had to take tests every year to be able to continue working. You had to have your watches set by the jewelers in town so that your watch was always on time. There were a lot of things... they had their own their own language. A deadhead was where you went somewhere and you didn't have to work, you know - the railroad people would be sent to say Wyoming somewhere, Green River mostly, and they didn't have to work on the way up; that was called a deadhead. The gandydancers were the ones that worked on the tracks. Everybody knew what everybody else meant, but it was a different language, it was fun. Then I grew up in a place we called Dutch Hollow so all of the people around me were Dutch immigrants, the cleanest place in all of Ogden. KB: Is that right? ZH: Between 33rd and probably 30th and from Stevens below Wall up to Washington was all Dutch Hollow. KB: And clean because they were clean? ZH: They were all very clean people. They all had a little bit of the Dutch accent, and so they all said "Ya," you know, to everything. KB: Did they leave influences like food or manners or anything like that? Do you remember? ZH: They had the best cookies in the whole wide world. The Dutch cookies were sugar cookies and they used to give them to us at Christmas time, you know, when we would take the papers to them, they'd do things like that. They'd always give a little gift. Neighborhoods were neighborhoods, where everybody was responsible for everything that happened in that neighborhood. Now on 25th Street, they had a Japanese community and the Japanese community stayed pretty much to themselves. You know, 7 they didn't interact - a friend of mine owned, well, her father and mother owned a store on 25th Street. KB: Would that be Mrs. Oda? ZH: Yes, Mrs. Oda. KB: Linda Oda, who was at Weber State? ZH: Yes, and her father was killed. KB: Do you remember anything about that? Were you aware of that as a teen? ZH: I didn't know Linda at the time, she was just going to college after me so I didn't know Linda, but we're best friends now. She's told me a lot about their community and how they stuck together; they didn't really have a lot to do with anybody else on the street. They were very isolated. KB: Do you think that it was racism a little bit too? There were other people not of their nationality that would be pushing them out a little bit. ZH: It might have been either way, you know; they didn't want to be involved, and the people were probably reluctant to involve them, so I'm not sure that it was either fault. KB: Do you remember, I hear stories about other nationalities groups there, Greeks and so on. ZH: Well, the Greeks owned all the restaurants. KB: Is that right? ZH: Yes - they had good food, they hired Greek people, but they hired others too, and whenever a new Greek person would come into a community, everybody would go in 8 and buy, say, a Coke or something like that and leave five dollars, ten dollars or something for the Coke. That was to help whoever it was start the restaurant, or whatever it was. KB: Oh, that's neat! ZH: It was, and my mother-in-law worked for the Greeks. Actually, my husband had an aunt who married a Greek and they all owned restaurants and they all helped each other in making their restaurants. Course, I don't think they had a Greek Church here, I think that was in Salt Lake, but I'm not sure of that, they may have had a Greek Community Church. KB: Do you remember there was a candy store? Was there a candy store? ZH: You bet! Dokos'. KB: Did you ever go there? ZH: Well there's two Dokos' was just off of 25th Street, we all went there. KB: Did you? ZH: Yeah, and there was another one down on Grant that was a candy store...you bet, we all went to the candy stores. KB: Do you remember what you'd pick up at Dokos' on 25th Street? ZH: Well, Dokos' was more expensive, but there was a Greek down on Wall and 33rd that owned the store and we had penny candy...but we'd get ten pieces of candy for a penny, so if you went in there you could spend the whole day choosing candy for a nickel. 9 KB: Yes. ZH: So money, it went a lot further KB: It went a little further in those days, yeah. Do you remember what the Depression era was like on 25th Street? It was rough I know. ZH: Before, see, I would have been younger, then... I don't know really what went on and that but the railroaders were probably their main source of income and the people that came in on the trains would go up 25th Street to get to anyplace in Ogden, it was the thoroughfare. KB: The way to go if you wanted to get through the rest of the town. Then you probably remember war era with the soldiers? ZH: Oh yeah, that's the one I remember the best. KB: So what do you remember the best? Lots of guys coming in uniforms? ZH: Oh yeah, USO meeting the trains and giving them coffee and donuts and them all waving out the windows. Being there at the Commissary, we would see them all, you know. Actually, the Hill Air Force Base, they came in on Saturday nights; they weren't supposed to; 25th Street was off limits. KB: Supposed to be off limits, yeah. ZH: Yes, but they did anyway, and they would meet us down at the train station and stuff like that. Girls from Ogden would go out to Hill and dance with the men. KB: Like a USO party? ZH: Yes. 10 KB: Were you ever bothered by the men? ZH: No; my daughters were later, in the Vietnam era, but I wasn't. KB: Let me ask you as well; I understand that famous people would come on the trains. ZH: Oh, yes. KB: Do you remember who? ZH: I believe I saw Marlene Dietrich, but I'm not sure of that, but her hair was blonde and very scraggly, I thought. John Wayne, people like that, would just walk down the street. It was; you know, you didn't even pay attention to them because it was so common. And the rodeo was very important to us. KB: Was it? Right over there by the viaduct and back that way? ZH: No, no. Down at Lorin Farr. KB: Oh, okay. ZH: But the people who came to the rodeo to ride and stuff like that were in their cowboy hats and they stood out a lot, you know. Mayor Perry was very important in the social life. I'll tell you somebody you ought to talk to is Ralph King, have you already got him yet? KB: Actually, we haven't yet... I used to work at Rainbow Gardens. ZH: Oh did you? Well, Ralph King would be the best source you could possibly have. He has spent a lot of research on it too. We all thought that Mayor Perry let things go on when he probably shouldn't have, you know, he kind of turned away and let the fun things happen. Whether or not he did, I don't know. 11 KB: Was that probably the general perception? ZH: That's what we all thought, but then the police kinda did too. KB: I was going to ask you if you have any remembrances of the policemen. ZH: I just remember that we all thought that. KB: They must have been letting some things go as well. ZH: It was a wild street and it was fun and you know, we were all kind of proud of it. The drug store was in the corner and the Broom Hotel was on the corner. The Broom Hotel was really an amazing place; it was as old fashioned as you could be, but we should have saved it. It was right there on the corner of 25th and Washington and it was, I think, one of the most interesting of all the hotels. We had a lot of hotels though. KB: And why was it most interesting to you? ZH: To me, it was like, in the 1800's, it was probably built then, and it just looked that age. KB: An older feeling, like it had probably been there a long time? ZH: I kind of remember windows out or something out on the...so that you could be in the hotel and look out at what was going on but I'm not clear on that, I'm sure they have pictures of it and it was quite a classic. Walgreen's Drug Store, everybody went there to get what they wanted, you know, it was crowded all the time too. And there were, like you said, Keeley's and Dokos' and there was a restaurant on the other side of the street on Washington just off of 25th Street. ‘Course, the fact that the college was right at Adams and 25th Street made that another thoroughfare, you know, that we have to go so there was a lot of things going on, all the time. 12 KB: Close by? ZH: Let’s see, what else? IP: Well, I think you pretty well covered everything that I could remember. KB: Was there ever a question of safety on the street, were you ever worried about your own safety on the street? ZH: I never been worried about a thing on this street. You were told that it was a wild street, you know, but I never saw any bad things - maybe somebody fell down because they had had too much to drink or maybe they were told to get out of the place, you know? KB: Kicked out. ZH: And you knew that's what had happened to them, but I never was afraid down there. I walked up and down there because I went to school but I never was afraid. I knew better than to go on the other side of the street, you know, there were certain rules you followed, so no. KB: How did you find out about that rule? Was it just an older brother or sister? ZH: Well, there were signs in the windows. I think that's mostly how. We always thought there were tunnels under 25th Street and maybe there were; I was never in one. I went down the basement of the Marriott Hotel once with a lady that I thought was a prostitute - as a matter of fact, I knew she was. She was taking care of another prostitute who was down in the basement, she was helping, so that I felt as if they were a group of people who looked after each other. KB: Probably had to. 13 ZH: Yes, I think there was a culture down there that we really didn't relate to, but I was never afraid, because nobody ever bothered me. I know one of the things that I was most impressed with was the tunnel from the Depot that went down under the tracks. KB: Tell us about it. ZH: They had an announcer who told what train was coming in and I remember my aunt going, "Who's talking to us?" Apparently it wasn't something she'd ever heard before. KB: A speaker in the tunnel underneath. ZH: Yes. KB: Do you remember how many - did you keep going and going until the very end? ZH: Till the next track, yes. I'm not sure how many there were; probably, I told you my brother said there were sixteen, but I don't know that for sure. Mr. Peterson remembers eight; he was on the railroad so he knew better than I did. I was always impressed with the underground. I've been in places where they kept those and put malls in them, you know. It's too bad we didn't do that. It would have been interesting and probably a good business idea. KB: For sure. ZH: I went in to the Porters and Waiters one time. KB: Did you? ZH: But I was with a black group, you know, I always thought we were a mixed group of white and black and it was exciting. It was scary, but it was exciting. KB: Did you eat or did you just go in? 14 ZH: We just went in to look around. I knew that we weren't supposed to be there, you know, but we were protected because we had others with us that could be there, but it was an interesting thing. AnnaBelle, who ran that club - KB: Did you know her? ZH: Yeah, oh yeah, I worked in the bank, in the Commercial Security Bank and she would come in, she was in jail about half the time. KB: This is AnnaBelle Weakley, right? Who ran Porters and Waiters? ZH: Yes, and I know her from Salt Lake right now, so maybe you shouldn't say some of the things I'm saying. KB: Okay. ZH: She's very well respected. They'd let her out of jail; she'd come into the bank and deposit and every one of our officers from the bank would go out and greet her. She was gorgeous. She was one of the most beautiful people I've ever seen and carried herself very well, she still does. She's an amazing lady. KB: She's declined to interview. ZH: Yeah, and she would tell you lots that we don't know. You know, she's down in Salt Lake. KB: You remember her coming into the bank, then. Have you heard about any other people who - Mr. King, of course, who was mayor, did he have business on that street? ZH: No, King was the son of... 15 KB: Oh, that's right, Mr. Perry, uh huh, his mother was the daughter of Mr. Perry. He knew AnnaBelle, I think there was a meeting of maybe another prostitute that I heard her with. ZH: Well, now, Smoky was the one that I went to the Marion Hotel with. KB: Oh well, down in the basement, huh. How old would she have been when you were there? ZH: You know, time has a way of getting away from you, they all run together after a while I would think that she was 30-35 years old, maybe not, maybe she wasn't that old. KB: And she was called Smoky? ZH: Yes. I don't know what her real name was. KB: There was another woman that I think I remember hearing about from another interview, but I don't remember her name either. I believe they said she had a leopard as a pet and a few things like that (Rose Davies). That doesn't ring any bells, huh? ZH: No. We had a prostitution house down there on Wall and 26th that was a two-story house, and the women would sit out on the balcony and wave at the men as they went by. KB: You remember that? ZH: I remember that-- that I saw. KB: So this prostitute house on 26th Street that you saw, was right by this candy store. ZH: It was across the street from the Shupe Williams. KB: Shupe Williams, okay. 16 ZH: And she was very flamboyant about the whole thing, you know, apparently it was acceptable. I don't know. KB: Well, the troops had to have something to do when they came, I guess, huh? ZH: I'm not sure that it was there when the war was on, it may have been before that. Now, we had a lot of factories around. There were vegetable factories; tomato factories, things like that. Many of the women worked in those during the summer time and that was how they got some money. I don't know that that has anything to do with 25th Street, but there were a lot of them. KB: Well, I think you're right, though, because there were a lot of industries that came in from the depression era and then into the war era. ZH: Yes. All the women worked in the factories, there were no bad feelings about it, it was you went down there and worked ‘cause you needed extra money - it was depression time - men couldn't get work sometimes. I had friends and acquaintances where the man hadn't worked for a long time but the women did, ‘cause they could get the low paying jobs. I don't say I had a lot of friends, but especially down in Dutch Hollow, women and men were very industrious. You know, they wanted to work, they wanted to pay their way but you ran up the grocery store account because you didn't have money and I'm talking about - my family was fairly well off because Dad lost his job one time and went out and shoveled snow - but others were less fortunate. KB: So I remember when we first met, when I first greeted you, you told me you ate casseroles. Do you remember eating casseroles? 17 ZH: Ah, yes. That's the only thing, you'd put a little meat into a bunch of gravy and it went a long ways. We always had people coming in who were relatives or friends who had to eat, you know, so we made enough food so it would go around and you might even have leftovers, but it was all a kind that you'd get out of some big container so that everybody could get some and you didn't have dessert until after you'd eaten your main course because of the starving children in China, you know. IP: I remember that one. ZH: You got that one? KB: Tell me about how many were in your family, how many brothers and sisters. ZH: I had four brothers and I was the only girl, but I had cousins that came and lived with us because they couldn't find work where they were and Dad would come and get them on the railroad or we just fed them. I had one set of cousins that came from Missouri and they had no means of support, so they just came and lived with us for a while. And we had a lot of that, but you also had a lot of hobos, and hobos were down on the railroad. We always said that they marked the houses you know so that they knew which house to go to so they could get food. And they would always come to your house and offer to do work or whatever and then my mother would give them a sandwich or whatever we had in the refrigerator that was left over. Nobody was sent away, but there was a lot of hobos. KB: But it is different; they were looking for work probably. ZH: Probably, or else they were just out for an adventure. KB: Right. 18 ZH: They were usually middle-aged men though, as I remember. You know, they didn't have families with them. They were like the scissors-sharpeners that came around all the time too. And that's how they made their living...you also had people with carts and vegetable, they were usually Italian and that would be on 25th Street, you know and they would - I'm trying to think of other things on the street, maybe people did it because that's all they were able to do. They had a lot of small farms where all the kids went out and worked in the small farms. Coliseum was a very important place, all of the cattlemen went there and I understand they had some gambling going on in the bottom of the Coliseum. KB: Do you remember going to the Coliseum for the activities there? ZH: Only afterwards, I didn't ever go there - they brought in all kinds of cattle, sheep - all kinds of animals and then they sold them from there. So I'm sure that they had really wonderful auctions. My son-in-law's father worked there then, so he was into that kind of business. It's interesting. It was an important part of Ogden at one time. The trains stopped here and did their service for the cattle people. KB: Right, exactly, moved animals for the meat and so forth. ZH: Uh huh, uh huh. Ogden was the center for everything, Salt Lake was the bedroom situation. KB: Is that right? ZH: Yeah, we were the business center, not the other way around. KB: Do you think that is where the name Junction City came from? ZH: Yes, definitely. Everything came here. 19 KB: Then everything switched. Do you think that after the war is when it changed, or when the trains stopped being? ZH: When they stopped having the trains carry the cattle probably. There was planes, I'm sure had a lot to do with it, when you change the mode of transportation. We had a bus station, but it was on 24th Street. I think 24th Street had feed stores, but they weren't on 25th Street, they were off to the sides, you know, the hustle bustle was on 25th Street. There were pawnshops too, so that people could trade in for money. I'm trying to think what else; there weren't a lot of gift stores like we have now, and I think that's a good transition, but maybe we need more bars. KB: Well, possibly it reflects the affluence of this era as opposed to the past. ZH: Maybe, maybe, but we don't really have a place where people can go and congregate...maybe they need that. There are a couple of clubs on 25th Street now, but we don't have that same kind of congregation that we had at one time. Maybe we were a little wilder. The wild McGill brothers had a reputation for being very wild, but I don't know. I thought it was the most exciting place in the world. KB: Did you? ZH: Yeah. Oh, the Star Noodle Parlor was down there, I think. KB: Yes. ZH: And they said there were opium dens down there. KB: Do you remember? ZH: No, no. 20 KB: Or just heard about them? ZH: I heard about them. I think that 25th Street was well lighted and I don't know where the lights came from. I don't know if they came from inside the businesses of if there were lights along the street, but it always seemed like it was well lighted and I'm not sure that we've got that now. KB: But you came down to watch people walk by and you remember it being well lit? ZH: You could see everything that was going on you know, but I'm not sure where the lights came from. Maybe we had some kind of streetlights, but I don't remember and if they were, I'm sure they were period type. Wonderful. I think that's everything I wrote down. KB: OK. ZH: You know, people couldn't get jobs, so you didn't let kids take them. They could work in the Five and Dime Stores or you could work in a restaurant but you couldn't get a real job. KB: So you were eighteen before you could go to work as a kid and then you were working at the Commissary? ZH: Right. KB: So then do you remember where the USO Centers would be for the servicemen? ZH: Right on the train tracks. KB: Were they? 21 ZH: Well, that's where I knew of them from. I'm sure that they had an office probably down in the middle of town somewhere where they recruited and brought people in to do the USO. KB: But you remember being right there at the tracks for the USO. ZH: Yes. ZH: Salvation Army had a lot to do with what went on too. They helped in all of the activities. The Salvation Army was more important than the Red Cross at the time. KB: Is that right? ZH: Yes. KB: You saw them everywhere, then. ZH: Yeah, and I'd forgotten about that but they were a part of the war effort and you'd see them in their little black outfits. They helped with food and everything for the soldiers. KB: Do you remember wartime rationing? ZH: Oh, you bet. You could get gas if you worked for the railroad. KB: Is that right? ZH: You got extra gas rations because you had to get to work. You also got extra gas if you worked on a farm. Ah, you may have received extra gas and rations stamps if you were a doctor or something like that, if it was necessary. When the war started everybody was patriotic, you know, and it was entirely different than it is now. Even though people keep trying to tell you that you ought to be patriotic now. We were all patriotic because we'd been attacked, it was entirely different, and everybody was, it was like there were 22 bands playing all the time, doesn't that sound funny? But it was like that because we were all so involved in it, and a lot of my friends went into the service, you know, men and women. Women weren't supposed to, but they did and it broke that barrier. Women were also allowed to teach in schools if they were married and they hadn't been allowed to do that before. So many of the barriers to women were raised during that time. They went to work for the bases and places like that. KB: They held the men's positions while they were gone. ZH: It was an interesting time to be alive because women had not been allowed to do a lot of the things that they were now allowed to do and I'm glad I was there. KB: Me too! It makes for good questioning now. Thank you for letting me come out and interview you today. 23