Oral History Program Joan Thomas Sprague Interviewed by Andrew Porter 22 May 1997 i Oral History Program Weber State University Stewart Library Ogden, Utah Joan Thomas Sprague Interviewed by Andrew Porter 22 May 1997 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: Sprague, Joan Thomas, an oral history by Andrew Porter, 22 May 1997, WSU Stewart Library Oral History Program, University Archives, Stewart Library, Weber State University, Ogden, UT. iii Abstract: Interview of Joan Thomas Sprague conducted by Andrew N. Porter in the home of Mrs. Sprague at 486 E. 200 S. Kaysville, Utah, on May 22, 1997. AP: When and where were you born? JS: I was born May 30, 1926 in Salt Lake City, Utah. AP: Did Grandma Thomas ever have a job? JS: She did when I was a teenager during the war. She worked at the small arms plant that they had in Salt Lake City. They made ammunition and stuff during the war. She worked in there. AP: Didn’t you have a job during the war, too? JS: I did. It was pretty well almost over when I was out of school. AP: Was Grandma Thomas during World War I or II? JS: World War II. And I worked at Tooele Ordinance during the war. When did the war end? In 1946 and I graduated in 1944. So mother worked night shift and I tended kids for this family that the mother worked at the small arms too. But I, Mcquivies was their names, I tended the kids during the day. Grandma Thomas worked on the ration board during the war. She did that mostly at home more or less right there in town. We had those ration stamps and you had a book of stamps you could get so much sugar and so much flour and gasoline and you had to use these stamps. If you didn’t have the stamps left you couldn’t buy anything. She was always the registration for voting after the war. 1 AP: Mom said she remembers grandma was always active in things like that, political things, she believed in that. JS: The small arms plant was mostly what she did. Andy— was it mostly women, yeah because most of the men were gone, so, I don’t know. You see Rosie the Riveter and like that. There was a lot of women working on planes and stuff like that. AP: So did Grandma ever talk about the 19th Amendment giving women the right to vote? Utah pretty much allowed that anyway before that time. JS: This is what gets me, people think, all over, that the Mormon women are oppressed and yet they were the first to get equal rights and stuff like that they were the first of all the states. For things like that so they make me perturbed at them. They say a lot because women aren't bishops and things like that. And who wants to be? AP: When Grandpa Sprague was in the Navy before you got married, what did you do then? JS: I was working at Tooele Ordinance. AP: Then didn't you go to BYU for a while? JS: Just one year just before the end of the war. AP: Was it hard for women to get jobs when the men came back or were they treated equal like they are now? Did women… JS: Everybody was working during the war that's when everyone prospered and everything there were more jobs available. I don't know because after the war then I got married. After the war and your dad was going to school. I did the ironing for this gal and she wrote your dad’s themes. She had several little kids and she had stacks of ironing. She 2 washed them, I did the ironing, and she wrote grandpa's themes because neither one of us was very brainy when it came to writing themes. AP: Did you work in High school? JS: Nope. AP: Did any of the girls work when you were in high school? JS: Nope. We tended kids and like that none of my friends ever had a job. AP: Did any of the boys work? JS: My brothers didn't. Ted used to set pins at the bowling alley after school at the Copper Club. There at Arthur down by the Mills and everything, they had a great big… they called it the Copper Club because Utah Copper Company that owned it. AP: Mom said Garfield, where you lived, was owned by the Kennecott Copper. JS: It used to be Utah Copper and then they changed it to Kennecott. So, they had this great big clubhouse and a bowling alley and they used to have big Christmas Programs and wedding receptions and stuff like that. But except for paper routes stuff like that I don't remember the boys working. Most of the boys my age joined the service before graduation. See, the war started in 1941 with Pearl Harbor and that and a lot of… AP: What year of school were you in then? JS: I was a sophomore. I don't think they took the kids that early but in like ‘42 they did. There were several of them that were killed the first part of the war. AP: Did you work anywhere other than at the floral? Mom said she remembered you sorting cherries. You would give her something to do. Her and her friends would play paper 3 dolls until an hour before you were supposed to be home and they would gather them up and work like crazy to get her work done. JS: You know sorting cherries was just up in Fruit Heights at the Rock Loft. AP: Where is that at? JS: You don't know where the Rock loft is? It is the Great Big Rock building up there. And now they have a bakery, a deli store and a great big… AP: I've never been there. JS: We'll have to go up there. I sorted cherries there. They use to ship cherries all over the country from here. This was a big cherry place. They had great big vats that they did the maraschino cherries in. And they had to bleach them. We didn't do that. They would pick the cherries and put them on the belts and we just picked out the bad ones. There were a whole bunch of us doing that. That was in July and I was grateful to have that job. It was just one month. AP: About what time period was that? JS: That was about the 1960's AP: What did Grandpa Thomas do for a living? JS: He worked for Kennecott Copper Company. Garfield Improvement Company. See Kennecott owned all the homes there and Dad painted and papered the homes. He always wore white paint overalls and a hat. AP: Did they rent their house or did they just let them live there? 4 JS: They rented. Mother and Dad had one of the newest and biggest homes. They paid $21.00 a month rent. I think that was with utilities also. In Garfield we had a great big swimming pool, and a show house. Each family paid $1.00 a month. They had shows on Monday nights and Friday nights. They had two shows a night. The kids would go to the early show and then the parents would go to the late show. Swimming was free. I goofed by not taking advantage in the summer of swimming lessons. I would go to Oakley or Castle Rock and stay with my aunts and uncles. Garfield was surrounded by mountains and it was hot, hot, hot. There were no air conditioners at all. Up at Oakley it was cooler and there were a lot of things to do like riding horses, going and getting the cows. AP: Did you help them herd the cows? JS: Yes. When I was up there my aunt Lois and I would help, otherwise it was just the boys’ job. I also would ride the horse with a rope attached to what they call a derek, which was a big wagon. The rope would pull the hay and then the ones on the derek would yell “STOP!” And I would stop the horse and the hay would drop on to the stack. Grandpa Sprague did this a lot also in Cedar City. AP: What was Garfield like? JS: My hometown was there by the smelter. The smelter smoke would come over the mountains and drop over on Garfield. So there were not many people who had lawns. They had just gravel in their yards. No flowers and dad used to go up to Paradise in Cache County, and go out in the fields of their farm cut out some sod and it was just heavy grass and he would come back and plant it. We eventually had a lawn. Everyone had a picket fence. We would walk along the picket fences. They had pickets on one 5 side and the straight board on the other. Grandpa Thomas would paint and paper the houses or use what they called calcimine. They would put coloring in the calcimine and then take a sponge and dip it in and then dop it on the walls. AP: Kind of like texturing? JS: Yes but it was colored. Grandpa Thomas saved all the old rolls and used them on our first home. The wallpaper was not workable like it is now. When it went on it was there to stay. Garfield is no longer there. Now it is covered with trees and there were not very many trees when we lived there. Our back yards were mostly gravel. We had coal stoves so everyone had a coal shed in their yard. We had a great big double one. After we did not have coal the coal shed became a playhouse. Between our homes there, you know how houses are back to back, we had an alley between ours. There was a row of houses then an alley then a row of houses then a street. We had a peddler named Bill, he was Greek and delivered produce. He would call out "produce." And all the people would come out and buy their produce. So, he was known as Bill the peddler. We had a store in Garfield but we always got fresh produce from Bill. I can remember we had ice boxes and the ice truck would come and we would go out there and us kids would get the shavings when they would bring in the block of ice and eat all the shavings. AP: Did you have a car or did you walk a lot? JS: We walked everywhere. The car never went out of the garage unless Grandpa and Grandma went to the Temple in Salt Lake. Once a month we would go to Salt Lake to do shopping. We walked blocks to school. Came home for lunch and then went back to school and then home again. Our garage was a small one. 6 AP: Did you ever drive? How old were you? JS: I never had a license until I had been married about 4 years. Grandpa Thomas would let me drive a little downtown. We lived in Clinton when I got my driver’s license. AP: What did you do for dates? JS: The only time we ever went anywhere was to the Gold and Greens ball dances at the church. Then we had to show. We didn't bum around in cars like they do now. We could not afford the gas. Until I dated your grandpa, I never went on a date. AP: Did you have a football and basketball team in high school? JS: Yes. The football field was cow pasture. They would mow it down during football season. We always had good basketball team. My dad use to take me and my girlfriends to the games like in Toole and like that. When I was in high school it was the war so we couldn't do anything. We couldn't get gas for cars and a lot of the guys were gone. Now days the kids would be bored to death. AP: Which was Grandpa Thomas in? JS: He was in World War I. I have his little uniform. AP: Did Grandpa Thomas know Grandma Thomas before the war? JS: No. They didn't meet until after the war when they were on the missions. See Grandma Thomas went on her mission when she was 18 years old. Her mother died giving birth to Grandma's youngest brother Brinton. Grandma had 5 brothers and sisters that she helped raise. AP: Did Grandpa Thomas ever talk much about the war? 7 JS: He didn't talk much about it. He just said war was Hell. He served in France. I have a couple of the bulletins. There is a history of the war. He was in something Lorraine in the Black Forest. Grandpa Thomas was 5 feet 4 inches tall. Grandma was 5 foot 1 inch tall. So when I was in fourth grade I was taller than my mother. In 8th grade I was taller than my dad. The war was close to being over when Grandpa got to France. AP: Was he drafted? JS: I don't know. One thing about Grandpa Thomas was that when he was in school they didn't have many books so they had to memorize everything. They used slates. So he always could quote poems and songs. He only went to the 6th or 8th grade. AP: Was he the youngest in his family? JS: No there were two children and he was in the middle. When Grandpa Thomas and Grandma Thomas were first married they lived in Magna. The smelter was probably about 10 miles from our house. He walked that every day. AP: What exactly did you do at the Tooele Depot? JS: During the war at Kearns they had a prisoner of war camp. At Tooele they had prisoners also. When I was working at Tooele, when I think of it now is scares me to death. This friend of mine, she worked in another building from me would sometimes drive us to work, usually we would ride the bus, because we would have to work overtime, I would be in my office all by myself and there were Italian prisoners that did the janitorial work in the nighttime. They had a guard to watch over then. The guard carried a gun, rifle. And in Garfield they had a camp of colored soldiers. They lived up there at the club they called it. On Sunday they had church meetings and I was the chorister. They would hold 8 their meetings in our church. I worked in the Post Engineering. I was a clerk typist. The Post Engineers kept track of all the materials that came in. We had files and files of all the equipment and coal that came into the depot. AP: Did your friend do the same thing? JS: She was a clerk typist in the travel. She kept track of the automotive equipment and the repairs. AP: Was that a big producer of war time equipment? JS: It was an army depot. But were just an intermediate and transfer depot. AP: Did they make bullets and ammunition there? JS: They did not make them. They were shipped into and held at our depot until transfer to where needed. AP: Mom said when she was 16 years old she was a car hop at a fast food place and before that she mowed lawns from the time she was 10 years old. JS: It was different when I was that age. You just didn't have everything. There was a lot of supplies. Everything was rationed. When I got married and your mom was born I couldn't get flannel for diapers. So all my aunts in Oakley would buy there share and give it to me to make diapers. I was the oldest grandchild and I was the first one married. AP: You said Grandma Thomas did the rationing stamps. Did you get paid in rationed stamps or money? Or did you pay for the stamps? 9 JS: Children were given so many and parents were given so many. Then you had to pay for, with the ration stamps to receive your products. The stamps were issued. AP: Kind of like food stamps? JS: No you had to use money with the stamps. The stamps alone gave you nothing. If you wanted to have a cake. Everyone would have to put there stamps in for sugar. The stamps were like A’s, B's, C's. Each for certain items. AP: Did they just limit gas and sugar or on everything? JS: There were just a lot of things that were not available to buy like flannel. AP: Could you get nylons? JS: I never knew anything about nylons until I went to Norfolk, Virginia to see your Grandpa Sprague during the war. I learned then of silk stockings, not nylons. I also heard about plastic bottles. AP: Baby Bottles? JS: Any kind of bottle. I remember after that reading about it in what they called the Dope sheets— the newsletter that we got to tell us about the war. AP: Did you have any other jobs in your lifetime? JS: Yes I worked at the Flint floral disbudding plants. 10