Oral History Program Olive W. Burt Interviewed by Pam Wilson 01 December 1972 i Oral History Program Weber State University Stewart Library Ogden, Utah Olive W. Burt Interviewed by Pam Wilson 01 December 1972 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: Burt, Olive, an oral history by Pam Wilson, 01 December 1972, 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 Olive W. Burt. The interview was conducted on December 1, 1972, by Pam Wilson, in Burt’s home. Burt discusses her life and growing up as an aspiring writer. PW: This is an interview of Olive W. Burt by Pan Wilson, on December 1, 1972 for the Weber State College Orel History program. This interview is being conducted at Mrs., Burt's home at 777 E. South Temple, Apartment 12D, at 2:30 in the afternoon. Mrs. Burt, tell me a little bit about yourself, your childhood, your parents. OB: Well, I am the daughter of Jedd Wolley, who was a teacher. He taught and was superintendent of the Cane County Schools and like that. Then he went to Ranauborne and took my mother and three brothers and I was born back there. He went back there and graduated from the University of Michigan. He went with three children and came back with five. Then I have lived in Salt Lake all my life. Traveled a lot. I've been away when I traveled, but this has been my home. In 1922 I was married to Clinton R. Burt, a school teacher. I had been teaching school then. We had two children, two girls and a boy. The older girl is Mrs. Winton R. Boyd; she lives in Long Beach, California. Her husband is a doctor. They have no children. My second girl is Beverly Ann and she married Bert Nochols, a communication engineer. He works on satalit.es, communication satellites in Lexington, Massachusetts. And the boy, Robin, is librarian at the University of California at Bakersfield. He married Nancy Bee raft, a Utah girl. They have two children, and Beverly has two children. So that is the story of my life. PW: What about, in mentioning your childhood specifically, what sort of things did your mother read to you? 1 OB: Well, mother did not have too much time to read to me. My mother had many children; she used to sing to us a lot. If she heard a song anyplace, she could remember it and she would sin it, she didn't have a trained voice, but she had a sweet voice. She sang to us a lot and taught us a lot of verses. We learned to recite poetry. But as for reading, we read to ourselves, and we all read. My second brother, Cloy, read the Bible when he was five. We all read all the time. Played word games, we had a big dictionary, we would play games, we had books, all sorts of books. Of course, my father was a teacher and mother had been a teacher. But I can't remember her reading to us. She didn't have time. She always had something that she had to take care of. PW: What did you read on your own as a child? OB: Well, I read everything. My father didn't believe in overseeing children’s reading, he let us read anything in the library. I remember once, I took the Dickens, Fall of the Roman Empire, I was in about the fourth grade to school to read at recess and like that and my teacher got all cross at me and she said that I couldn't read it and couldn't understand it if I did read it. But we read everything. We had a big medical book. My brother next to me, sixteen months younger and I were kind of in the middle of the family and we would pal. I was the only girl, I had eight brothers, But Lawrence and I kind of palled and I can remember lying on the floor and reading this big medical book. We didn't know what we read, but we looked at all the pictures. We read everything. Everything that we had. There weren't comic books then, we didn't have comic books, but we read the comic papers when they started. I think that was about 1900 when the comic section started in the newspapers. Foxey Grandpa and Buster Brown and those. But any book we wanted to read, if we found it we read it. I had a library card. We lived on Seventh South and State and the library then was in the City, County building, just two blocks north of us. Every day or two after school Lawrence and I would go up to the library and fret books, and take them 2 back the next day or two. I think that we were only allowed two books at that time. It was dark in the library. It was just a little place. The schools didn't have any library books then like they have now. My goodness in all the schools we didn't have anything. In fact, they kind of frowned at our reading anything outside of our text books. PW: Why was that? OB: They thought that we should spend all of our time studying these stupid text books. It was altogether different. Every child in the class had the same book and not a lot of variety like they do now. We were supposed to read every word in each book and that was all you had to do. Remember it if you could. PW: Now, specifically, can you remember any of the books that you did read when you were a child? OB: Oh yes, now let's see, aside from Dickens, I remember that, and oh, I don't know. The bible, I read the bible through when I was eight, a regular adult bible. I was kept out of school that year because my eyes were bad and then I would sit and read that fine print of the bible every day. Oh there were fairy books, fairy tales. I believe, I can't remember if I read the Lang’s Yellow Book, and Red Book and Blue Book then or later, but T read it when I was a youngster. I read them. I don't know, a little later I was reading Richard Harding Davis and you know that Jude the Obscure. PW: Thomas Hardy. OB: Thomas Hardy, yes, but that was when I was older then, in high school. But as a little girl, I can't remember the names of the little books. PW: How did you react to Jude the Obscure? 3 OB: I loved it. I thought the TV show was horrible, but I loved the book when I read it. I cried. I am a great crier. I remember one time in high school, my students asked me, when I was teaching high school if I cried at movies and I said do you laugh, and they said sure we do, so I said that I have as much right to cry as you do to laugh, I sit and read and thoroughly enjoyed them. PW: Was Thomas Hardy one of your favorite writers? OB: Yes, for a long time. I read everything. Jude the Obscure, a Tess of the D’Urbervilles. When I read Tess now, I have to laugh at it. I mean I got on a kick at reading all the books that I was crazy about when I was young. Dickens I read when I was a little kid. I remember now that I read everything that was Dickens. That was Ione before I was in high school. I read Jude, not Jude but Tess and just had to laugh at it. It is so silly and also the Woodlanders and that poem that I used to recite so much of something grace, it's in the Woodlanders, I have forgot it now. I used to say it a lots. It is so silly. Oliver Wendell Holmes, Elsie Venner, I believed every word of it when I read it. Now I think that Oliver Wendell Holmes was just kidding the public. He was a doctor and I don't think that he believed what he wrote. Just kidding. But it was fun to read them all over again and see how I feel now about them and how I felt then. I used to believe everything that I read. My father spent a lot of time with my daughters, trying to convince them not to believe what they read, they were just words on paper, anyone can put any words down, don't believe it. Don't believe what you read. But when I was a little girl he didn't tell me that and I used to believe everything. If it was printed, I thought it was true. PW: Did that ever cause you to do anything exciting? OB: No, no, I never did anything exciting. I was a very good little girl, very quiet. My brothers were quite, the older boys were quite obstreperous in school, they were always being expelled, dad and mother would have to go over and get them reinstated and I went through school very quiet 4 and subdued because I did not want anyone to know that I was related to those older boys. One time in high school, I didn't have my Latin lesson and finally that reached my teacher and so she said did you study last night and I said ah-ah, and she said, oh she was angry and she said ahah, were you brought up on a street corner and don't you know how to speak to someone. So I said. She said did you study last light and I said yes, then I thought that wasn't very polite so I added ma’am and it came kind of smart alec-y but I didn't mean it that way. So she told me to come in after school and so I went in and so she said, did you study last night and I said I tried to but Jim was making so much noise that I couldn't think and she said is Jim one of your brothers. I said yes and she said, you poor little chickadee, you don't need to get your Latin if you have to study in a room with him. After that she gave me good marks whether I had my lessons or not. She felt sorry for me. PW: Well, what was your first writing effort? OB: Well, I started to write and sell when I was eight years old. The San Francisco Examiner used to have a poetry corner and they would pay $2.00 for poems, and I sold them some, one or two then I would watch in the papers for any contest and then I would write. My brothers could carry paper routes, they could pick up junk around the street and sell it and they could work in stores, errand boys and they could do lots of things to make money. But there was no way 1 could make any money except to write. So I turned to that and I hs.ve sold something every year since I was eight excepting the year I was ten. I don't know what I did that year. I wrote plays and put them on in Primary and I belonged at that time to the LDS church. I went to Primary and Sunday school. I put on the first play I wrote. I guess I was 12, up in the sixteenth ward. We moved up there for a while. We lived in the third ward for years. We moved back in the 5 third ward after the sixteenth, we lived up northwest for two years. I wrote the play and put it on for the Primary. PW: Tell us about the play. OB: Well, it was in verse, I used to write in verse all the time. It was called, I don't know The American Girl's Wedding, or something like that, and there was this American girl and she was very wealthy and all the crowned heads of Europe wanted their sons to marry her. So they came out, she would set there and they would come out and sing and there was a Greek and a Italian, and a German and they all sang their songs to her but she decided to marry an American boy, that sang a song to her. A very original plot. Putting it on was a big thing. We had a Primary teacher, Mrs. Wagner who had no children, and for the Greek boy to sing and talk in Greek. I had them in their long johns and I made short skirts to go over to make them look like Greek as near as I could. I didn't have any money to spend. So the boys to get ready, they had to take off all of their ordinary clothes, you know, and put these long johns on and then this skirt over it and they were cold, it was in November sometime and they were in this little room there and got undressed and Mrs. Wagner went to see what was happening and she fainted in the doorway. I guess she had never seen anyone undress before, though she was married. So I couldn't drag her up and I wasn't in the play, just managing it and I had to go out in the audience and get my mother and she came and got Mrs. Wagner up and go the little boys dressed. All that time one little girl was singing the same song over and over so when mother pot back out she told my oldest brother was there and my cousin and they giggled through all the rest of the play. We finished it. I always had trouble, I put on a play a couple of years later in the Third Ward and in rehearsal I got mad at the little boys, I had about ten little boys to sing and I slapped one of them so they all walked out, and so I had to get little girls to take those parts and we had to borrow overalls from the boys and 6 the night of the play when the girls came out dressed as little boys, they boys were saying, yah, yah, she has got on my pants, and disrupted the whole play. But that was what I wanted to do when I was younger was to write plays and I sold a number when I got into college, but from, there is no money in it unless you can get on Broadway, you know. You spend more than you make and I had to earn money with my writing. I had no money, so that was too extravagant an activity for me. Now when I see these people working and working on plays, I wonder what the value of it is. They write. There is places now that they can produce them around here but they are so chancy to make anything out of play writing. That is what I planned to be was a play write. I had quite a few plays published. The Family of America published one, and Bakers published two, Willis Bugby published some. As I say when I got on the newspaper and had the children it was play writing is too concentrating. I couldn't do it and work all day and go home and write plays at night; that is just too much. I could write prose or verse, but you can't get any money writing verse. I spent a year and a half on a poem once and got a national prize of $10.00 and at the same time I wrote a confession story that took me an hour and a half and I sold it for $500.00 so. PW: Oh, that is terrible. When you first started to write, was there anyone that encouraged you. OB: Mother, Mother would have liked to be a writer. Mother wrote verse but she didn't, she graduated from Brigham Young University so she was educated, but she didn't have time, that is all, so she wrote verse. She would keep the clippings, I have the clippings of the published pieces and mother kept them for me, every time I sold anything or I had anything published even free. She clipped them and kept them for me. She would like to have been a writer, but she was an old woman, she was passed 85 and I was writing 7 confessions then, all the time working on the newspaper. Mother thought that if I could write confessions, she could. Then without telling me anything about it, she took a course, a correspondence course in writing from someone in the east. After she died, I found this. She had worked and worked, He was a very honest ancient man and critic and some will praise your work but he told mother she had marvelous material but she didn't know how to use it. But mother thought that when you wrote a confession you told the truth and I have got this materiel on the families in southern Utah. It is tremendous. Can't use it. It would be no value not to use the right names as my mother did. Though I do use it sometimes in my article on lye making in southern Utah. I used a lot of mother's material, but I didn't use the family names as she always did. She thought you always told the truth told their names. PW: I don't know. I am not sure what you are talking about, the families in southern Utah. OB: Well, mother was born in Orderville, back in southern Utah and she had a tremendous memory and a good sense of storytelling and she had stories about any families down there. I could name families there were the Pillsbury’s, and the Foresight’s and the Wolley's and the MacArthur’s and all these people who lived down there in St. George and Orderville and Cedar City and mother wrote true stories of what happened. There was a lot's of things that happened. It was very funny material too. She had a good sense of humor. PW: What kind of things happened; could you relate any at all? OB: Well, some of the harmless things I could tell you. She tells about, now this I don't know if this was in any of her confessions, a confession for most people, things of today wouldn't be frowned at so much, if you looked at them as babies wouldn't be frowned at 8 so much but they were terrible at the time. But among the stories, just to give you an idea, she told about Mrs. Bean, who named her children names like General George Washington and that, Martha Deloffiate and Queen Victoria Rehina and so on and so forth. And then at night she would go up out in the yard and call them in for dinner yelling, General George Washington, and then she would tell about Mrs. Benny in Rockville that had a baby during the big flood of the Virgin River. She had her baby in the wagon box and the men had the wagon box up high out of the flood for mending while she had her baby. She named the baby, Marvelous Flood Penny. She wrote a poem about it saying, "Marvelous Flood came down from God, a Marvelous Flood from God, and down it came a Marvelous Flood, my Marvelous Flood from God." Mother could remember all those things, you know, I mean those things are just old any posts, but she had a lot of stories about the different, families and the courting and any murders, and there was a murder in Kanab in about 1898, I think it was, about 24 July. George, I forget his last name, killed Segmiller, Dan Segmiller, because he thought Dan had stolen his water, his turn of irrigating, you know about irrigating. They would take turns to have the water turned down in their ditches to water their crops. This, I know his name so well, but his name has slipped my mind, anyway he thought that Dan Segmiller had stolen his turn of the water so he went up to Dan's house and called him to the door and Dan came out holding his baby and this fellow shot him and killed him there. In my mother’s scrap book there was a poem about it, I don't know if mother wrote it or not but I imagine she did and told the whole story. I have a book, The American Murder Bell, and I used that in the book. I said I don't know who wrote it, but I think mother did. She knew about all the things that happened. There was another murder in Orderville and 9 she had a poem in her scrap book. A girl, Stevens, Mary Stevens, murdered by a young man. Nobody, they couldn't find out who murdered her, they found her buried up in the canyon, just in a shallow grave and they found two rows of steps going up there and only one person’s coming back. So they got the shoes of every man in Orderville and tried to fit the tracks there. This one man's fit the tracks but they wouldn't believe that he was guilty but finally he confessed and then they sent him to prison up here in Salt Lake. He is in prison for about five or six years. When he got out, he was going home, and they had automobiles by the time he got out. They were driving along and the automobile wrecked and this young man was killed. And in this poem it says that he was killed right at the spot, where he killed Mary Stevens. I drove down there and he was miles and miles from the spot where he had killed Mary Stevens. Poetic license. I think mother wr6te that but I don't know. She liked to write poetry, she called it poetry, mostly Verse. PW: What was Orderville like in those days? OB: Well mother taught school there when it was the United Order. She went there, she had nice clothes and things and she had been teaching before. She had taught up in Richfield. She had a sewing machine and she didn't want to turn it all in to the United Order. In fact, she didn't turn it all in to the United Order. But she taught school there and my father taught school there and fun all evening. Years ago Robert Frost was talking at the AC as it was then, now the USU and they had a program and they had different people read their poetry and I read up there, so then Mr. Frost came down to Salt Lake to talk at the university, so I invited him to dinner and I invited Wallace Stagner and Bruce Trusgesland Brewster Gieslan? and a lot of people that I thought 10 were the tops in Salt Lake writing circle, Frost said, my mother was living with me, she was old. Frost sat on the floor by her feet and listened to the stories of Orderville, and never talked to these other people at all hardly. They were pretty nasty about it. They thought that I should put mother to bed, but Frost could talk to professors any day of the week and he couldn't talk to mother and he was enjoying it. He just did something then to choose who he wanted to talk to. But mother could tell stories very well. She had a knack. I wonder if she always told the truth. Some people think that she exaggerated and maybe she did. Put she made a good story. PW: Do you remember we were talking about what you could remember in Orderville? OB: I never lived there. PW: Can you remember what your mother said about it? OB: Oh yes, I can remember lots of stories. We told about the time we were cooking dinner and, you know, and had a great big pot of gravy and the old woman was stirring the gravy and fell in the kettle and they took her out, scooped the gravy right up then and put it back in the pot and scooped the gravy off that women and put it back in the pot. They took off her clothes and they served that gravy to the people. That is the kind of stories that were told, I don't know if they really happened or not. That is the kind she told. She told about the boys, one is this story about the boys in their pants and didn't want to wear homemade pants, see they made all their clothes and the poor young men when they went down to St. George or anywhere courting the girls, they didn't want to go out in these homemade pants, they wanted bought pants. I can't remember what they did about that. They did something. Things like that, stories like that. 11 PW: Do you remember her talking about the way people felt about the United Order? OB: Well, they thought it was OK. They thought that it was designed by God. That is why they were living it. Charlie Terrell, who I have a big article on the United Order, Charlie Terrell, we called him Uncle Charlie, he took care of the books there. He used to after we moved up to Salt Lake, well see when dad went East then we came back to Salt Lake we never went down there, only to visit there. He they all thought it was perfectly the right way to live. Of course, they all lived in polygamy and my family didn't. But I think that I have more polygamist cousins today than anyone else in Utah. All the Wolleys still believe in polygamy, most of them. They think that that is the word of God. In 1947 when they had the big order reunion here let's see, they came in 1847, yes, 1947 J. Ruben Clark stood up and his mother was a Wolley and he had tears running down his face, they wouldn't at least believe the authorities here in Salt Lake. I looked around and I just had to laugh, there were chins all sticking out, all stubborn. Even J. Rubin, he was a dean of the family and the highest in the LDS church, highest position and he could tell them what to do but they still knew what God wanted and they still marry in polygamy. Young cousins and their cousins, children and grandchildren, marrying in polygamy today. PW: Still, still they are marrying in… OB: Oh yah, ah-ah. One of my cousins has a boy he graduated from the D of U a few years ago with a doctorate, a pretty smart boy; he has married in polygamy and has two wives at least and maybe more. I don't know how they can reconcile it but it doesn't used to bother me but doesn't any more. I got to a place that if own ups want to live with two or three women, that is their problem, not mine. I don't, the only thing that I think is bad about it is the children. When we were living down on Second South there were polygamists living around us and the children always had, well the PTA. always took care of their eyes, their classes, their teeth, and their medical help 12 as they had no money. I was working all the time and I had to pay for my own kids glasses, and teeth, fend doctor bills, and I used to get pretty offended because there were so many of those polygamist children pitting help. It doesn't bother me now because I don't have any of my children. They take care of their own children; I don't have to worry about it. But I do think that in that way it is bad. I think it is strange that so many people don't think that there is any polygamy here, PW: I've never heard of any. OB: You haven't. Well, there was an article in the Ladies Home Journal, this man said two or three years ago, this man said he had been in Salt Lake and couldn't find anyone that could tell him anything about polygamy, He certainly didn't come to me. One of my cousins, and he was younger than I am, and he got married in polygamy. Just maybe four years aero, maybe five years ago, she had never been married. A very smart woman. Her sister didn't know her married name; she didn't know what name she had married in polygamy. Her sister wouldn't tell her. But I know. I know in a roundabout way. One of my nephews found a cancelled check that had my cousin’s name on and the man’s name and they had a joint account at the bank. But there is lots of it. However, I could tell you, but I am not going to on tape, but there is a lot of funny stories about polygamy, right today, right today. PW: Well, we can close up the tape for many years and write it down then. Can you think of anything that you can tell me? OB: I can tell what would be interesting what I could tell on tape. There are just lots of them, that's all. My husband 5nd I went down, one of my cousins was married to a wealthy man in California and he died and she had all this money so she went down to what 13 they call Colorado City. It was Short Creek in the earlier days, and they would tell stories about it. It is built on two sides of a creek, one side in Utah and one side in Arizona. But they tell the story that when the Utah sheriffs used to come to arrest polygamists they would run over to the other side of their house and be in Arizona. Then when the Arizona sheriff would come they would go to the other side of the house and be in Utah. I don't think that any of the houses are built across the line. I think the creek is the line. But anyway we went down there, my husband and I a few years ago and he wanted to, he came out, my husband came out her to teach Navajo Indians, came out in Indian service. He boarded with one named Mrs. Black and he heard she was dying and he wanted to see her so we drove down there. She was living in Colorado City then. She wasn't when he boarded with them. So went there and we were driving along and we would see children ask them where Mrs. Black lived, asked them their names, and nobody would answer us, they wouldn't answer us at all. We didn't know where she lived. We, my cousin had built a beautiful house down there, oh it is tremendous, landscaped and gardens and everything and we drove up there but they were having church there. It was Sunday and they were having services there and I didn't want to go in, so we drove on down the road and hunting Mrs. Black’s home and finally we saw a young man and his wife and he was carrying a baby so I was smart and I said that I am sister Burt and my husband has come to visit Mrs. Black with whom he used to board and we don't know which house he lives in, so he told us right away. Every time I would ask someone no one would tell me. They wouldn't, the children won't answer to other names or anything. PW: Why? 14 OB: They are afraid. There have been a lot of arrested people. They have tried to stop it by arrests, but you can't stop polygamy by arresting people. Arizona took the children away from the polygamist families and the mothers and put them into institutions and oh it raised a big rough, they didn't think that it was right. Here in Utah they tried to do it with one woman, but there was such a hub-bub raised about that taking the children away from the mother, I don't think that is the answer either, I don't think that there is any answer. The harm was done when Joseph Smith said that God wanted than to do it and the people that believed that are going to continue. They don't think that the laws of the state compare to the laws of God. I don't know. PW: So you just got the name of Mrs. Black, where she lived? OB: Yeah, and we went there and saw her. Awful poor, poor. Most of the people down there are terribly poor. You would be amazed. Little houses, There is no pavements, no sidewalks or anything there are just wandering roads, mud roads, and the houses scattered around. Hither and yon. It's awful, horrible place but I have lots of relatives living there. I didn't see any of them. Mrs. Black, we went to see her, but we didn't try to see anyone else. PW: She was living in polygamy then? OB: Well, she was an old, old woman, and I can't remember if she had been a polygamist or not, but her daughter was and she was with her daughter. I don't know if she was ever a polygamist, she wasn't when my husband boarded with her but of course, that was back in 1911. I don't know. I don't know what she did. And they thought it was right and some of them and of course so many of the first wives didn't like it. In fact I can't imagine that any of them did like it. Some of them claim to. There is this Sam Taylor, he has written some, what did he call his book, the Family Kingdom, 15 he is, his mother was my father's cousin. Sam Taylor, he is a good writer, he is tremendous. Done little diddies and things like that. PW: Well, you mentioned just a minute ago that when that fellow came back looking for someone that could talk about polygamy that he didn't come to you. If he had come to you, what would you have told him about? OB: Oh, I don't know, probably a lot of stories. I have never; I have written about polygamy, yes, I have written a couple of confessions on polygamy. Years ago when they rounded up the polygamists in 19^ I was at the tribune and they rounded up a lot of polygamists and had them in jail and everything. One of my cousins, which was in polygamy, came to borrow some money from me. And I said “why are you in this mess?” and she told me what she believed, and all the national magazines were land blasting the polygamists, so I wrote this article, why I am a polygamist wife. I sold it to Mary Rollins at Modern Romances. They published lots, a number of my confessions and never put a name on it. They never put a name. Do you know confession magazines, the post man left one the other day Modern Romances, and he said that I am the only one here that gets a romance. Ain't I awful? Anyway he may never put a name on a confession so she published this article "Why I am a Polygamist's Wife" is revealed to Olive W. Burt. If she has said told to Olive W. Burt, it would have been ok, but all the polygamists thought that God had spoken to me and it was revealed to me. They came, "are you living in plural marriage, why don't you ever come to church, we never see you at church." I had a hard time living that down. I think it is a boring subject now. I am bored with it and I wouldn't bother to write about it. People write about it and they don't know anything about it and if they know too much like Sam Taylor, they glamorize it. His mother was 16 the sixth wife of John E. Taylor, son of the third president of the LBS church. John Taylor was the third president, and he married several women, among them was one of dad's cousins. The way Sam sums it up, his mother was the favorite wife. They had their wives; the children of the other wives are very uptight about that, they all think that their mother was the favorite wife. They all know that down deep in their hearts that none of them probably were. There would be one probably, but it wasn't Jeanette Wolley. Anyway my father would pet very upset because the Wolley women aren't very big and they worked hard for their family. But at that time this wife of John Taylor's was taking in washing, and boarders and working like a daemon. My father didn't like it, to think of it. When Tine and Taylor was there visiting us he said Jedd, you will be so sorry in the next world when my wives and I are on the top row of the ladder and you and Agie are down at the bottom and he says ha-ha. Maybe we will be at the top and you will be down *t the bottom with all those women. He got mad. There they glamorize it, Kimball Young, one of Brigham grandson's I guess he was, wrote "Isn't One Wife Enough" and he glamorized polygamy. See they aren't in it so they glamorize it. And if they investigated they tell the awful stories, there is both, some bad stories, some good. I can't see any good stories, but there must be somewhere. My mother used to say that you can't cut an onion so thin that there isn't two sides to it, and I guess that is true. Everything has two sides. I don't know. PW: Well, getting back to this dinner you had for Robert Frost, did you meet him personally? OB: Oh yes, he was there at my house. PW: What was your first impression of him? 17 OW: I thought he was darling. Witty, full of pep and life, very lively man. Our league of Utah Writers, of course, that wasn't the league, I did that personally, and I didn't have many league members there. As I say, I invited what I thought were the top people professors and like that to meet him. In the League o-f Utah Writers we have had some fine people come here. Theodor Dryser, we entertained him one afternoon and Wilder Ant and Earl Stanley Gardiner came many times. We used to have, well, I was on the newspaper and so were other members of the league and we would watch when any famous person came we would have a luncheon and we would have a telephone committee that would call the people up and we would rush to our luncheon for them. They were always very generous. Nobody does that any more. This Mae Angelue was here the other day talking for the BYU, nobody did a thing. I would love to meet her. If I had had any authority which I don't have any more I would have tried to arrange a luncheon for her but the League of Utah Writers, the president should have done that. They would say that they are the president of Utah Writers and then the author is glad to meet with us. If I just say I am Olive Burt they don't know me and they don't want to bother. You can't blame them. People come, writers come all the time and nobody ever entertains them or does anything for them. We used to. We used to always. We would make a point to entertain the writers when they came; authors, famous authors, and they were always so pleasant. PW: What can you remember about Frost, what he said, can you remember anything? OB: No nothing, too much. He would listen more to mother than he would talk. He talked some but I can't remember any definite statement. PW: How about Wallace Stagner? 18 OB: What about him? He didn't like me. I think that it was Wallace Stagner, I am not right sure, I think it was Wallace that, it was one of the two that used to say as they left, it was quite a disappointing evening. PW: Why? OB: Cause Frost didn't talk to them. They sat around and frowned and grumped. He-'talked to mother. I was embarrassed. I didn't know whether to grab mother from under Frost's nose and say o-o up to bed you old woman, but he was having a food time. She was telling him things that these people couldn't have told him. If they had been smart they would have listened to them because they were firsthand accounts of Orderville. That is mainly what she was telling him was first hand stories and things that happened in Orderville. And as I say, I don't know if they ever happened. But they were stories. I think mother didn't advocate as much as I used to think so because a story about the Bean family, I thought was a made up story. One of my friends daughter-in-law is a Bean and she told the Bean family history, you know genealogy, and so my friend sent me a copy and names in there are all in there. Maybe mother heard Mrs. Bean ell the kids once but anyway the way she made it, it more. Maybe she did, I don't know. I have never faulted mother for any of the stories she told because they always were amusing and people liked to hear them and why not. I mean I am not a stickler for sticking to the exact truth in a story. Now my son’s two children, the boy David, is a very matter of fact. Everything has to be absolutely true. And the little girl, Patty, she can make up stories. She is writing books all the time, she is 12 years old and I don't know how many books she has written, but David will say that didn't happen. I said to him once, he was about seven or eight, I said to him, you are spoiling life for Patty and yourself. All you do is sit 19 and check on what she says, you ought to listen to what she says and enjoy it. He can't. He don’t like anything to not be matter of fact. Patty, she does the best things. When she was about four she said, when she was up here, "I just love to live in a hotel" and David said you have never lived in a hotel and I said what difference does that make. He said that she doesn't know if she likes to or not and I said she does in her mind. I said how do you know that she doesn't know? That matter of fact all the time, I can't stand it. PW: Well, just going on, when you just started to write, was there a particular writer that you admired? OB: No, I don't think so. I can't remember any. I just wrote, I wrote mostly verses, you know, I guess they never rhymed, they were not poetry, of course, I was just a kid. I do think that I have written some poetry that is really good, though nobody else thinks so. When I was in college I signed with B. Rolin Lewis for a poetry class and he was starting this one act play class. He told me that I couldn't write poetry and I could write plays. So he told me to drop the poetry class and take the play writing. I didn't want, to but I figured if I stayed in his poetry class, he would have to fail me to prove he was right and if I went into his play writing class he would have to give me a good mark to prove he was right, so I went in the play writing class and I won the Maude Adams prize for a one act play and he gave me an A. Bartus Fisher was in that class. He entered the contest but he didn't win anything. I knew Bartus for a long time and I knew he was sick and dying. He came over to my house in August of 1967 and when he told me good-bye, he kissed me good-bye and said I will never see you again, and I said oh you are just talking. He died the next May, I think it was. I was in Europe and his last book on mining the gold rush 20 towns, he told me he would send me a copy of it and he told me he wanted it reviewed and he wanted me to review it and so he was going to send it to Helsinki and when I got to Helsinki it wasn't there, but when I got home, I found that he had died. Then Texton sent me the book and I reviewed it then. He was in my classes there. So was Verna Devoto was in the, when he was a freshman at the U and of course, they kicked him out. They kicked him out because he said that he was a radical. One time Mable Silvane who used to be the editor of Woman’s Day magazine when they published fiction, and she was here one day when we were having lunch and so Devoto then was doing a page every month for Family Circle, or Woman’s Day and so she asked me if I knew him and I said yes. So I mentioned that they kicked him out in 1915, in the spring of 1915 because he was a radical. She said a radical. Verna Devoto was the most conservative man in America. I said well, and she said of course, if you are not a radical when you are in college you are dead by the time when you are forty. That is what they considered Devoto. PW: Did you know Devoto? OB: Oh yes. He lent me books. He had marvelous books, rare books. Some cost a lot of money, at least to me in college it seemed like a lot of money, some were $125.00 to $200.00 a volume he paid for them. This one of $125.00 he lent me and. I took it home and read it and I went to see a play with my brother, an Irish play, Mother McCrey, I think it was and the leading lady was ill and her stand in had her hair cut Dutch, what we used to call Dutch brown hair and when we went home my brother said that I would look good with my hair cut that way so he cut my hair that night. He played barber. The next, day or Monday or maybe two or three days later, I went and took the book back to Devoto. He said you tell your sister she shouldn't have let you have this 21 book, it is a very rare book and I paid $125.00 for it. That is why I remember the price and I said my sister. He said yes, you tell Olive that, and I said I'm Olive. He didn't recognize me with my hair cut. I never corresponded with him after he left Utah, my brother Cloy wrote to him a number of times. He met him down at our house and thought that he was so smart. I didn't admire Devoto at the time, I admired his books, but he was a very homely young man and he used to put barcarole up his nose and it would drip down on his lip. PW: What is that? OB: It is a brown liquid that they used to use against colds. You people… When I was a little girl, there was a custom for many people; my family didn't do it, but many people, they would get acidfidity. Do you know what acidfidity is? No, of course not, but it used to come in lumps. I don't know what it is, I think it is a salve from a tree that hardens, anyway they used to sell it in lumps like that and it smelled worse than rotten eggs. They would put it in a little sack and tie it around the kids face to keep the germs away. Someone said that it kept people with bad colds away because nobody could get by anyone with those sacks on. Well, a few years ago, I was living up here on Haxton Place and the neighbor had a lot of rabbits and he had them penned close to my house. I thought it was illegal and I called the animal control and they said they controlled dogs and cats but rot rabbits. I said that I am not going to have this here and I will call the health department. I did and they said that if it is really obnoxious, we will come up and see. So I thought I'll get some acidfidity. The rabbits smelled bad and if I put this acidfidity around it would smell so awful bad. So I went down town, all the drug stores, and no one had any acidfidity. Finally the prescription druggist said I can order some for you, so I'll get you some. A few days later he called me and said that your acidfidity has 22 come and I went down and it was in a bottle. It was a liquid. It cost me eighty six cents. I went up home opened the bottle and it had no odor. They had liquefied it and deodorized it. I had wasted eighty five cents and two trips down town. Anyway I called the health department and they made them move the rabbits, they smelled badly enough, I was wanting to have them really stink. You don't know those, you young people. Everything is deodorized now everything is made easy to use and like that. Then, of course, you don't have the illness in the schools that we used to have. And the quarantine. They used to put yellow flags up and quarantine you. PW: Now getting back to Devoto, you were saying that he was really homely. OB: He was. Dark, Spanish looking. His father was Spanish and his mother was an LDS woman. He was homely; I don't think that any 0 f the girls wanted to go to the dances or anything with him. Then there was Bartus Fisher, they thought Bartus was horrible. PW: Why? OB: Well he was homely, he was shy and he walked with his Head down like this. There were other boys that never turned out nearly so famous, but they were better looking. PW: Why would they call Devoto a radical? I am not familiar with his past background. OB: Well they, he was just, he wasn't really radical, the University of Utah was just terrible back in 1914 and 1915, along there. The spring of 1915, the summer of 1915 was a most active; well the whole year of 1915 was the most active dramatic year in Salt Lake history, in Utah history really. That is the year when Joe Hill was murdered or when he murdered someone and was executed. The big trouble at the University of Utah, it all started, when they were having a meeting and someone said to one of the, regents s*id to one of the professors, what department are you in 23 and the professor said physics and he said so you are a doctor? So the University Chronicle published this story and they said that is the kind of regents we have up here. So they started a rough. We had all sorts of roughs. They fired four professors and ten others quite. Then they expelled a number of the students, and Devoto was one of them. They were just people who liked to talk a lot and discuss things. One of the professors will Wilber Snow, he used to have poems in the Esquire after he left here and other eastern magazines. He wore a big red bow tie, a Winsor tie and long hair. I took a class from him. I got no credit for it. We would sit there until six or seven o'clock at night listening to him read poetry that was all. Some of them got credit, but I had all the credit they would let me take. Just to sit there and listen to him, we just thought that he was tremendous, you know. He was pretty good. I mean that his poetry was published in eastern magazines all the time. Then there was Phil Bing who wrote a book on teaching college, he was one that was expelled. They wouldn't give the reason. They asked and asked for a reason but the regents wouldn't say. The gossip on the campus was that someone went into Snows room and found the cleaning woman in bed with him. They wouldn't say that, that is just what was said around the campus. Whatever was the reason, they expelled Snow and Bing and my father’s cousin Peterson, who taught psychology because he would teach, I can't think of words, evolution and so they fired him. I forget who the ether one was. There were four processors fired. Then as I said, ten others quite. PW: Because the others had been fired. OB: Yes, out of sympathy. But it didn't faze the university regents because they hired some other people. Some of them were as goofy as could be. I don't know what the professors are like right now up there. I went up a few years, when I retired; I thought that I would get my doctorate. I went up to the English department and I had graduated 24 from the university and had my decree and had taken post graduate work at Columbia and Chicago and Mr. Deesman said well, you would have to take twenty-two hours of undergraduate work before you could go into a graduate school. I said why, and he said that you don't have Shakespeare and I said that I have taught Shakespeare for years in high school and I said, wouldn't my writing for all these years count a bit and he said maybe we could eliminate the composition. I walked out. I don't know what they might have put there now, maybe they are as goofy as they used to be. I don't know. We had some, my daughter was telling when she had this professor and, of course, you couldn't smoke on the campus then and she was so scared of him. One day she saw him out behind the bush smoking and then she wasn't afraid of him anymore. Then he would go behind the bushes to smoke. PW: Can you remember anything else about your relationship with Devoto? OB: No. He sat next to me in English because his name started with a D and mine was a W, so he sat right beside me all year. They took a group out of all the English classes and one or two students and put them in a separate class. Bartus Fisher was a year behind me, so he wasn't in this. But Devoto was and I was in the effective class. Phil Bing caught it. He sure was. He would pull the punches. I remember that one time I wrote a theme on, we had to write a theme on; we had to write a theme every day, every day of the year. So this was on trees and I started out and when he got up he would say that I am going to read something that you never imagined, this is news, this is exciting, this is the most exciting thing that I ever read. He would go on and on and on and all of us got up and he said that this is written by Miss Wolley. I want you to remember it. Then he 25 found out that there are many kinds of trees. I never made that mistake again. I was a freshman. Too bad. PW: How did Devoto do in that class? OB: Oh, he was good. He was very good. His writing was very far ahead. There are a lot of good writers, there is one that is named Abbleb Onion, I saw his work later in magazines and what was that other, English, something English. I used to see his work. Carl L. Borrows, he was the drama editor of the New York Times for years after he graduated from college. One time when I was in New York I was going down the street and he called Olive Wolley. That was Carl Borrows and we met there after years. But 'men in that class did very well. Bing was a good teacher, and so was Snow. I mean all you have to do is expose kids and point out their errors. Devoto wrote very understanding stuff, I mean he was looking deep into things. I can't remember any of the articles particularly but. I know we all thought he was tremendous and very rude. I knew he was a good writer then but I didn't care much for his personality. He didn't for mine either, I guess. It was very funny though, when I think back and Carl Borrows wrote a story and didn't end it. He wanted it published in the Pen and Clara Boyer was the editor of the Pen and she said how did you end it and he said just like the lady out at the counter, the reader, finish it the way he wants to. Of course no one would publish it and Clara was pretty good about that and some were following that story. You know the Lady and the Tiger, anyway we had to read it and he thought he would do the same thing. After it was done once there was no sense in doing it again. It was fun. PW: Did you read each other things in class? 26 OB: Ah-ah. And we had things published in the Pen. I had poems published and articles published in the Pen. Ruth Harwood, I don't know if you ever heard about her, but she used to be a real considered great of the poet in Utah. She went to California. Her father was an artist, Harwood, and she was in that class. They had no rooms for us to meet, to sit and talk or anything like that, you know. We would set on the lawn in good weather and when it was bad Ruth Harwood and I found an attic in the old building, the one that is next to Kingsbury Hall now. We taught language in there. We had to go through the German room and up a ladder into this attic and it was full of open statues and everything. We asked Professor Kerr who had the room if he cared if we fixed it up and he said no but we would have to ask Dean VanCop, the dean of women. We thought that was easy, she wasn't in her office so we went home and we got on old clothes and we were two days up there, fixing it up putting some chairs, some old broken chairs and things around so we would have a place where we could meet and talk. Lucy VanCop had a fit; she wouldn't let us do it. Years later when Robin graduated at the U they was up there. They had the song fest in the spring and the Sigma Chi's were singing a song about Lady of Pinkham. Do you know who the lady of Pinkham was? She used to sell a patented medicine and (guaranteed a baby on the eighth bottle. If the women would take that, I guess it made them frisky, and all of them, you know, took that and maybe by the eighth bottle they were so drunk that they could relax enough to get pregnant, I don't know. The advertisement, a baby in the eighth bottle, so they were singing about lady of Pinkham. The girl behind me said, who was Lady of Pinkham, and the girl with her said that she used to be the Dean of women up here. She lived in Massachusetts, but that was Lucy VanCop that was the dean of women for years and years. Bartus Fisher wrote one about her in one of his early books, about her watching a rooster chase a hen and it was terrible 27 because Mrs. VanCop was all right I think. I thought it was too much to write. It was a horrible picture. PW: OK, well, what do you think the greatest quality a writer can have? OB: I don't know. Sympathy, I guess. PW: What was that? OB: Sympathy, understanding. An ability to understand someone else and someone else’s point of view. Then if you can get into their feelings. I think it is something that all writers don't have. You read so much stuff where they don't care how the person feels. They write about, I am having quite a bit, I think about that now I am ha vine- a little bit of trouble. I wrote a book "Negros in the Early West" and the blacks liked it so well and it has gone well in the schools, so they asked me to do another Negro book. I have done another one, "The Biography of Mary Cloud McCune" and that was alright, nobody objected. Now they want one on black women. They said we hate to ask a white woman to write about blacks but this book has done so well that we are asking you to do it so I thought about it and I decided to. Some black women who had made a success between the civil war, and the current awareness. I selected, the first one was before the civil war and the rest were after. I wrote about these women. The publisher submitted the manuscript to black librarians. They didn't like it they said. They said that I had written white and not understood the black woman. I can see their point of view. I, the first woman, before the civil war was taken as a baby by a Quaker woman and because the child had a marvelous voice, they gave her piano lessons, music lessons and she became internationally famous. I chose her because she was the first American black to become internationally famous. She went to Europe and sang, her portrait was 28 painted and hung in the move and everything. In all I thought it was for a woman, you know at that time. They said, "The Great White Mother Helping the Black Chickeninee". They didn't like that. When I mentioned her picture being painted, oh I bet they had fun, the librarian or whoever it was. Boy, I bet they had fun laughing at that, black women among all those pictures of Rubins with all their big fat women and here is a long skinny one. And they didn't, if you were writing about a white woman who had her picture painted and hung in Paris, they would have thought that it was OK. The white people wouldn't have objects. I can see, I am leaving it out, and I am trying to rewrite it, but there is no way to rewrite it without outside help, because she could not before the civil war ret anywhere Without white help. I am eliminating her, though I liked to write it. I think she ought to be known. So then I have to, in writing this, I have done the second woman, and I told how she got help to go to college and she became an internationally famous doctor. I have never even heard of her. I mean you don't know these people, they don't exist. There were other blacks, other women at the time, so no I am eliminating all mention of the whites. She would have associated with the blacks. I happened to have written about one of the black women who was there at the time and became a teacher, so I know that she would have been there and she would know about it and I could put the two together and, in keeping, I am eliminating everything I can about whites; rewriting it from as near a black point of view as I can. It is a bit difficult for me, as I have had very little experience with blacks. I as a little girl, my mother had a store, down on Seventh South and State Street and we had many black customers. One of them had a little girl named Lois, a baby girl, black and they dressed her beautifully. My brother Park was a blond as an angel and this Lois's mother used to 29 always say, don't they look alike; they are both so fair. I don't know whether I can make it or not. I am going to try. I think I can. I had the same kind of experience when I wrote the biography of Prince Henry, the navigator. The publisher, they nearly always asked me to submit this to an expert, and I wanted them to because I want the books to be accurate. So he submitted it to an expert on Portuguese History and he said it sounded like a woman farmer writing about a Catholic Priest. The publisher said this is publishable as it is. You don't need to change it. It is a perfectly good biography if you wanted to leave it this way. I said I do, I had spent a year, I had been in Portugal and I had done some research in Spain and North Africa and I wanted to leave it that way. Then I thought, well if it sounds that stupid to fix, but there will be other people that will think the same. I called Mr. Walsh and told him to send the manuscript back, then I went down to the Cathedral and I know Monk Senior McDougal, he was on the Telegram when I was on the Tribune and I pot instruction and took criticism and what investments mean, what incents mean, what the objects on the altar signify, you know. Then I rewrote it and I think it is a best book and it was a lot of work. But to get the captain point of view I hope that I can pet the black, but I don't know. It takes, I have a friend here whose neither Mormon nor Negro and she wrote a novel about the Mormons treatment of the Negro. It hasn't sold. Of course, it won’t, she probably doesn't know what either one thinks, and never taken the effort to find out. She just imagines she knows and she knows everything and so she just wrote it. You can't write that and get anything worthwhile unless you can get into the person's minds, and know how they felt. It was a hard job with Prince Henry because I am not one that believes in killing people if they don't believe the way you do. He did believe that, he firmly believed it and 30 thought it was alright to kill Mohamad, in fact it was more than alright, it was noble. But he did a lot of marvelous thirds. I like to write about people that haven't been written about much. At the time I wrote that, Prince Henry, there was not a book for the readers on Prince Henry, in America. It was published in England too, and sold much better in England than it did here. It never sold well here. PW: That was a novel type then? OB: Yes, a historical novel, a biography. But then, of course, you have to invent conversations and things like that. It wasn't documented. I just had gallies on Dr. Easter Paul Lovejoy. Nobody knows who she is when I mention her name. She is most wonderful woman who ever lived in modern times. She has saved more lives than any other single person. She administered all the relief in France, all the medical relief during World War I, then after the war was over in Serbia and Greece and Turkey and in Asia and then went over to Japan, South America. All over the world, she has established hospitals. But aside from that she was humorous, and witty, and she lived until she was passed 97. Ninety-seven in November of 1966, In March of 1967 she retired from her office and died in August. She shouldn't have retired. Ninety-seven, nearly ninety-eight years old, and working every day. °he did a lot and I like to write about people that have. It takes a lot of research. I do more research on a thirteen thousand word book than most people do on an adult sixty thousand or a hundred thousand word book. I go to the place, go to the area, spend a lot of time and money doing and getting....I learned that way back when I did Luther Burbank. That was one of the early books. I have been asked to do it a lot since I have written for the Tribune. When a story goes to press and the editor binds it over. That was just the beginning. I 31 mean I have been writing for years, but just getting into the book field, so I did Luther Burbank. I kept sending the manuscript back and she would send it back and say it's dead. There is no life to it. Finally I decided that I would have to go over to Mass and it was back during the depression, I had a family, I had a salary, if I went it cost me money and time. But I went back. Went back where Burbank lived. I met people, one man that was 95 that had been in school with Burbank. Then I went to California to Sonoma and met Mrs. Burbank. Spent all that time and money, well the book still sells. I make about, as much every year now as I did the first year, as it goes on in time, and it has been translated into seven different languages. So I found then that it pays to go, because Mrs. York had sent it back and sent it back and said it was so dead nobody would read it. When I pot back there I could see where he lived and what he did and talked to people, you know. Yes it has been translated into such romantic languages as Maroti, and Burmese, Pi, Korean. Those people like to read about somebody, I don't know if you know Luther Burbank. Do you? He was a plant wizard; a colored boy wizard. He, as a little boy, began to experiment with raising better plants. He is the one that experimented, that we have to thank for our big daisies that we have; for our big potatoes, there was only little potatoes about that big when he was a child, and he developed the potatoes and these exotic, what is that fruit that part peach and part plumb, nectarine. All those things he developed, and oh many, many more. He really, and then they brought him up on the carpet in San Francisco, he had moved from Massachusetts to San Francisco or to Sonoma and they had him up there. He had to defend himself against a charge of atheism because they said that if God had wanted the plants to be like this, they would have, he would have made them like this, and 32 Burbank had no right to interfere. They called him an atheist. I think he was. But he defended himself. He had been baptized as a Baptist and he had his record of baptism. But if I had been Burbank, I would have said, you go to Hell, it's none of your business. But, of course, back, T suppose this was in about 1900, you couldn't say that. He was a tremendous fellow. He knew Edison, Henry Ford, and all those people. In fact Henry Ford bought the "L" or part of his house where Luther was born and moved it to his village at Greenfield. I don't know anyone that spends that much money on a small juvenile book, of course, it pays. They sell on and on and on. I don't make much money or hardly any from foreign rights, they rather pay me at first a nominal sum and I get no royalties. Germany pays royalties, and Japan pays royalties, but the other countries don't, India doesn't. But you have fun. I was in Thailand and in Bancroft and I have a copy of Burbank in Pi, and so I was trying to find a school where they were using the book. I found one. I asked the teacher to bring the children out and I would get a picture of the school. It was up on stilts. She stood them up here and I took a picture. The little boy over here was holding my book and he didn't have on one stitch of clothing; absolutely naked. I asked the teacher if he came to school like that all the time and she said no. She said that they have one pair of pants in the family and his brother is weariness them today. When I was in New Deli, I met the president of the Children's Book Trust. He was a coy old man and liked to tell me about what he was doing and he didn't listen to anything. I wanted to tell what I did too. He didn't listen and didn't care. So he took me through the children's library and when we came to Tarvinvex, I said Mr. Schreincart, can I stop here a minute. He said certainly, and I looked and there was Olive Burt and I asked the librarian to bring this book and T could show him my book in 33 Morothy. Things like that are stupid but they are a little fun, you know. But anyway, he is a marvelous man. He is doing, he publishes a book every year with top art and poetry and prose from children all over the world. There wasn't anything -from the United States in that issue. This was '69 and there wasn't anything in it. But he sells that book. He, of course, India subsidiaries it. He couldn't do it otherwise. PW: What help have you received in the way of criticism or cutting? OB: Well, eve y publisher, every editor, works on the manuscript. I think that Mr. Watts of the John Bates Co. has been the most helpful because he is the one that submits everything to some export and it kind of guides me. Sane of them don't do much, and they have an editorial assistant that goes over them, manuscript and marks it some. The John Bates people, years ago, in about '39 when the whole idea was one world, you’re too young to know that too, but anyway I was going around into all the schools for the Tribune and I went to one school and the principal had on her best semi-circle of flags, The U.S. flag was at the bottom and the Japanese flag was at the top. I said is that the way that you display the United States flag, I always learned that in America that the United States flag was on top of any other flag. She said oh, we don't tell the children that, we don't tell them that the United States is better than any other country. They can put up the flags up, whatever country they want to put at the top they can put at the top. It annoyed me. So I came home and I wrote a book on the American. I sent it off and I sent it out and every publisher said the same thing. The schools aren't teaching Americanism, they don't want to stress the values of America, nothing. So I filed it away. Every year Mr., Watts asks me what I want to do every year and I send him some new ideas and then an old one if I have got a lot of books in there that I have written and that 34 nobody will buy. So I put in I am an American and he wrote back and said, that is what we need, today. He said that our boys over in Korea didn't know how to answer the Communists propaganda, and we need that. So they published it. I had to bring it up to date, but it didn't take too much rewriting. That book in six years has come up so it is third in volume of all of my books and some have been selling for years. PW: Oh, my word. OB: So it is something that they needed. But you have to get the right time. It is a....Mr. Watts...what I was going to say is he said, can I submit this manuscript to an export, your story and I think it was Arthur Surelessinger. I, if ever I need him I will ask him. But anyway he was nasty. Oh, whoever it was nasty with margins along and all. He says, I said in the 1920's we began to have electrical appliances, refrigerators, and vacuums and things like that. He wrote that there were no electrical refrigerators in the '20's and when they came out they weren't called electrical refrigerators, they were called Frigidaire. My oldest brother keeps a record of everything and he had the first electric refrigerators that I ever saw so I called him and said when did you buy your electric refrigerator? Then he went to his files and came back and said that I bought it in 1922 and I paid $14.00 a month for it and it was a. General Electric. So I wrote on the other margin, I wrote that we did in Salt Lake have electric refrigerators in 1922. They were called General Electric refrigerators, and they cost so much. But I said that we were much more sophisticated here in the electrical way in the west than you people in New York. He made off a comment, I had mentioned each president. When I mentioned Franklin Roosevelt along with the four freedoms and different things, along with that. So one chapter I had a paragraph about every president and he wrote, My God, four 35 sentences about Franklin D. Roosevelt and a whole paragraph about that fool Eisenhower. Mr. Watts wrote and said check what he has done and what he has marked and if you find that you are wrong change it and if you find that you are right, don't change it, I know that you ought to check to be sure that it doesn't come out you are a good Republican as clearly as he is a good Democrat. And that was a good criticism, because I had snuck in some things. I thought here is a chance and I will say something smart About the Democrats and something good about the Republicans. So I eliminated all that. I came out very unpartism, though I would have liked to have left in some of those things. I didn't dare. So anyway, that kind of help is a help, and I am grateful for it. One of my editors said once, you are surprising, you never grumble when you have to rewrite. I don't. I like to rewrite because I can improve. No matter how often you rewrite it, you can improve it. That is why I don't mind. PW: What years of your education were most helpful to you in your development as a writer? OB: Well, not the grade schools, they never did anything. In high school I was quite encouraged to write by stuff was published in the red and black. I wrote a German play and they put that on, in school and everybody thought that it was tremendous. All written in German and I guess all of the U too, the U They published in the Pen and I did a lot of work on the year book, even before I went up there. My oldest brother was business manager and I forget who was editor, I believe Dottie Habner, an way whoever it was got me to help with things, verses and things like that and with Cloy as business manager, his people would tell him what they wanted and he would come home aid get me to write them. Verses about the different football players and things like that. While I was on the Tribune, this artist came in, he said, you know we could publish together and 36 I said when. He then told me that he did art work for some of the verses that I had written. So up there I had lots of encouragement. So I don't know. Actually though, I think a person gets more good out of just writing and sending it out for publishing. Of course, it, I don't know, I don't know whether that is right or not. Now when in 1920 I went to New York and I went out on the big ships. I can’t remember it was one of them anyway and I wrote a letter. I swiped some note paper from a desk there. You know, a desk and I sat down and wrote a letter and when I come home my mother said, that darn fool has gone to Europe. If I had gone then, then I would have known John Scott Fitzgerald and Gertrude Stein and all those people. Because even then I was writing and I tried to write. I had finished college and I had enough money to go. I didn't go, I came home. I went to Columbia for a year but then I came home. Now if I had enough guts to go and get out and go to Europe, I might have done far better, you see. I don't think that there is a great stimulation in Utah for writers. I didn't know anyone that was writing, or trying to write except for the students I met in the English classes of the U. I belonged to the literary society. Well a few years ago, about five years ago the university was making a survey of all the women in that group and what had happened to them. They hadn't done anything. PW: Is that right? OB: I was so amazed; one of the women that my brother thought was so smart, he even Erskin, John Erskin, of Columbia said that she was one of the smartest women that ever went to Columbia. What did she do and I said nothing. I don't think that is really smart. If you have talent and you never use it I think it is stupid, I don't think it is smart. But she never did. I was quite envious of her because my brother Cloy thought that she was so 37 great, terribly great. At one time he read a story to me and he said what would the Post pay for that? I said that they were paying $500.00 for the first story you write. He just tore it up and said that 1 make more money advertising, and that's what he did. He was the manager of an advertising agency and said I wouldn't waste my time writing fiction. He is a real good writer. He did make money writing ads. They were original and renovated ads. I don't know where you get the old. I kind of feel sorry now that I didn't have enough gumption to go to Europe. PW: What prevented you? OB: Oh, my family was here and everything and I guess they would of, mother would have thought that it was OK, mother would have clapped her hands in glee if I had gone. But my dad, and I don't know, everybody and my friends would have thought that I was crazy, Whit Burnett went. I don't think that he was the genius that he thought he was. I knew him. He was on the Telegram when I was on the Tribune, and he went to Europe and edited Yankee Doodle, what causeth a Yank maketh thee, whatever, stars and stripes or something. And his sister, she had one story published in the Brian and they thought that she was getting a check but never rot anything else published. So I don't know, maybe I wouldn't have written anything if I had gone over there, maybe I would have fallen through the bottom of the boat you never can tell. But it would have been fun. I have been able to do that I would like to do, but I didn't do it. PW: Do you feel that writing can be done when raising a family? OB: Sure, I did it. I wrote all the time, and I had a full time job. All the time, I taught school for the first ten years, then T went to the Tribune and I was there eighteen years, then I went over to the news and I was over there ten years on the staff and seven more years 38 I wrote a column for them, a regular column. So that was 35 years on the newspaper. And raised a family, three children, had my mother living with me the last 15 years of her life. T always had time to write. But I wrote at night and I still can do better at night. After dinner, I can go in and write until about two or three o'clock in the morning. I have told the people around here that I write from 10 to 4 because I do write from 10 to 4 or read and I don't want to get into any of their bridge clubs or anything like that. I don't play bridge. I used to when I was teaching school, play a lot of cards; we didn't play bridge then but 500 and Uke and all of those. This game of Uke, What good does it do to take time to stack a lot of cards down on the table. My older daughter is a tournament bridge player and she thinks that it is the greatest, mental exercise that there is. Maybe so, but there is nothing lasting. After the game is over, what have you got? I guess that I have chum the work ground into me, to the very marrow of my bones, but I feel bad if I am just wasting time. I don't want to waste time. And as a result, I produce almost more than anyone that I know. I have got about 48 books published and I have got about 20 more in there that nobody wants. PW: That is a lot. OB: Then worked down at the newspaper, wow, what a lot of writing. When you get around there, I will show you what I have got. I have got all my published book work in one book case. All of it. Everything that I have had published from a little girl on. When you think of the number of words that I have written I ought to be wealthy. But there is another thing, so many people think that they make so much money out of a book and you don't make money out of a book, you might if it is a best seller, one book. Most people like Hemingway didn't die wealthy, he was poor at death when he died and so 39 many writers are because if they do research, well Irvine Stone said when he was here, that he sells thousands and thousands of books but he uses all that money to do research for the next book. He lives in Italy or where ever he is working and Germany or where ever he is writing about and it takes all the money that he has made on one book. Not all I am sure, but a good part or the money so that he doesn't pile up a lot. Like when I was in Russia I said to the guide, do any of your writers here make any money? Oh yes, she said, we have many writers that make millions and millions of dollars but they give it all back to the states because who needs a million dollars. So they give all theirs back, they don't get it, that's all. They give it to the state. It is pretty grim there in Russia. Do you get any money, can you save any money, do have a bank account, and she said yes, I can have a bank account. She said that when I want to buy a refrigerator or something like that I find out just what it costs and I go and get it approved. Then I can put money in the bank until T pet enough to pay ^or that refrigerator. Then I take it out and pay for the refrigerator. I said, you have nothing le-ft. "he said who needs anything more than that, I have got what I wanted. They don't have any private bank accounts excepting for some approved ones for some certain purpose. Their writers make a million but they don't have it because they don't need it. Nobody needs a million dollars. PW: In Russia ah. OB: Anywhere, you don't need a million dollars here. It would be good to have, but nobody needs it. You have that, you need there. But people ask me, well one woman wrote a book, it was published by a big dollar, it was a good book, it got a prize in California, for the best written by a Californian, she was living there when she wrote it though she was 40 a Salt Lake woman, or Provo, she was born in Provo. She said well, I trot $500.00 advance and I have earned that much now and it will be clear pro-fit. It was the end of the first year. And of course, she said that every year she made more. Well that isn't so. Very few books sell every year on and on and on. And her book, I doubt that it is even selling now, I don't see it on any list, or anything. There are other things. Now much of my work is being put in colleges of different sorts and in school books, readers, excerpts. They used to pay only $5.00. Now they pay up to five hundred thousand dollars to use an excerpt from a book. I mean that the price has gone up since and that is an income that comes, forever, I suppose. As long as people want to use your stuff. Since I have written about people that other people haven't written about, yon see, it is stuff that is used a lot. PW: How do you feel about contemporary literature? OB: Well, some of it I like very much, and some I don't care so much for. I like those that explore today’s trends and the different memories that we have now. Young people particularly and why they have them. I think they are all to the good. I don't see much sense in using some of the words and phrases that they used but in describing some of the things that they describe. I think that there should be a little...well, I generally write biographies. I had an article in the Writer last February, I mention this, it is a good thing to write biographies so that you don't have to go this modem trend. But there is an excellent article in the Saturday review. The last, a couple of weeks ago, on the reading habits, of what is being read by children and adults today and the books that they describe for children I wouldn't write. I don't, it may be alright, murder, and mayhem and abortions and burglars and all those things in the children’s books. Now I don't know. It 41 might be alright for children to read those things. I wouldn't like my children to read them. I never did restrict them from reading anything but Forsyth. I didn't want them to read Gods Little Acre. I told her she couldn't read it but she went up to the library and they wouldn't give it to her so she wrote a note and took it in and said my uncle asked me to come and pet this book for him and she pot it and read it so it didn't do any good to forbid her to read it. She reads anything anyway and always has. I just think that those things are, I think you have to have a little romance in the world and if they read all of those awfully realistic things that they, I don't see how they pet it. It would be like Pam Welsh back in Massachusetts, my granddaughter’s cat was having kittens so Burt and Beverly think kids ought to know a few things so they invite all the neighbors in to see their cats have kittens. Little Pam Welsh was five years old and she was watching them and she said I will never have a baby. Burt says why not, and she said I not even going to get married. Burt said that you don't need to get married to have children and Pam said that there is a lot more chance of it. Five years old. They know so much more now. I don't know these things get around. I know when I was thinking back when I was a little girl, I don't think I would have liked to read those things. Maybe I would. You know, maybe children today do. I know Katty came home terribly upset when she was 10. Her teacher was reading the Lottery to them. Do you know that story? Katty was terribly upset about it. Well, my grandson was here the other day and he said well, I read that a couple of years ago. He is 14 now and he said it didn't bother me any. Veil, I don't know, but some children it does bother. Maybe they get callus. I don't like to think of them being callus. I hate to think that all their sentiments have rot a furry growth over them so that they can't feel or think. Writing biography's you don't get into that because 42 you don't have to go into the modern trends and the emotional problems of the children today. Since I am not around them, I have four grandchildren but I am not around them all the time. I don't know what they are going through really. So I don't know, I don't know. But for adults, I think that adults ought to be able to read anything that they want to and if they get a chance to get a kick out of novel, let them read it. I do think that children should be protected. I do think just as we protect them physically, I think we ought to kind of protect them until they pet a little older. I wouldn't want to write it. Maybe I couldn't. You write confessions. Years ago I hadn't seen a confession magazine or even read one; I didn't even know that they existed. Then as I was saying to my brother Jim, I said, I was visiting him in California and I said anybody can sell to any magazine if they just study it. Really study it. He said oh that is silly to say anything like that. You couldn't write a confession. You don't know enough. So I bought a stack of confessions to read on the plane coming back, Confession Magazines, that was in September and I sent one in in October and it came back, then I sent one in November and it came back then I sent one in December and got $500.00 for it. I was on my way. I think you can. I have tried my best to sell to the Saturday Evening Post for years, I never made them. I never made that market, but I sold to other national magazines. Not that are obsolete. I wouldn't want to write…Oh I read all the best sellers. My daughter first started to originate a little club among her friends and there is ten of them. They would all buy the 10 best sellers and read them and send them around. When T was down there last Christmas, one of the women hadn't moved. All of the books had stopped at her place. She had seven of the ten. She brought them over to Forsyth’s and I read them all while I was there. Some of them I liked. I liked the other. I didn't like the Exorcist, I thought that 43 was horrible. Have you read that? I think it is horrible but one of my friends read it and thought that it was just wonderful. I don't know, but I didn't like it. They both are about spirits inhabiting children’s bodies. Well both of them were bad spirits, Exorcist was the Devil himself, and the other was a brother who had died. PW: I saw the movie of that. OB: Oh, I didn't see it. I liked that story. The Female Unic that seems silly to me. A lot of those books written by women just to be writing something. PW: What is the greatest difficulty for you in writing? OB: I guess finding something for the publishers that they will read. Finding something they want that I am interested in too. I don't, I have written as I say, I have a let of books in there just because I was stirred up about something and wanted to write them. That is considered the best kind of writing. But what good does it do. It just sits in a filing cabinet; nobody gives a darn about it. So I stopped, I don't write until I have a contract and an advance payment because I don't have to anymore and if nobody wants to publish it, there is no sense in my writing it. If I leave a bunch of manuscripts at a University they will just smelter up there and nobody will see them. I would rather have the book out. I gave the Fine Arts Department 387 fine books by Utah authors when I moved into the apartment. I had a big library down at my house. I had big house. Getting rid of books was terrible. So I gave all those written by Utah authors excepting the very best ones which I still have. The majority were no good especially. So I gave them to the Fine Arts, so they, that was in April of 1970. And just about a month ago they got a book case built. I am sorry that I pave them to them. I wish that I had given them to Evert Cooley of the University. I don't know why I gave, I told Wilber Westley he 44 could have them and then he insisted on having them. I got very upset because they never made book cases for them and they were in boxes there. They just as well been in boxes in storage or any place. So they finally got a book case built and they called me up to come down and see it. They had the books in there and the doors locked. I said, what is the value of that? They said that someone might steel it and I told them I would ten times have a book stolen than behind a locked door where nobody sees it, nobody knows what is in that book, what, I cannot see any value in it. The winners of the fine arts contest, they are bound beautifully in blue bindings, and a wide strip of blue paper around, pasted so you can't open the book. I said, what is this? They said that they don't want to look messy. One day the librarian brought a book to me to autograph it was so dirty and worn, shabby and she apologized, I said don't apologize. It was clean. You don't need to apologize. It had been used and that is what a book is for. I think that is so silly. I don't think that you should be punished because I don't have enough years left to write everything that I want to write. I am not going to waste time putting words down on a piece of paper to go into a filing cabinet. I have got good books in there that nobody will buy. One I got out the other day, one that I wrote several years ago, I don't remember why I wrote it now. It. was about some of the experiences that I had as a child with a prairie dog. I thought it was a nice clean copy; I didn't have to retype it or anything so I would just send it out. I picked a publisher in New York and mailed it out. I knew that none of my publishers would want it because I knew what they want. I got the darlingest letter back. He said that in the years of thousands of manuscripts he had read, he had never read one as delightful as this. He fell in love with the little girl; he fell in love with the Prairie dog and everything and on and on and 45 on. Then, But, we don't publish for that young o* group. That company has in past years published two books of mine. They stopped publishing that young, I thought they must, would still be publishing them, I didn't know. I don't use an agent. If I send out a book, I just have to send it out blind. I have an agent; I had August Heninger for a number of years. I got mad at him and quit. We gave prizes in the local Chapter of the League of Utah Writers for the best stories wrote. One time I got a prize for six months work, it was on August Heninger. So I sent him stuff and he sold them. Then he was selling magazine stuff for me and I wrote Jed Smith, I think it was, and he, I can't remember whether he sold that first, anyway he did sell Jed Smith, Your Ray which is the option book on that contract. Then he never sold anything more and I was sending out the books and I said... Bobs Mirror was publishing some and I said pay the royalties through Heninger because he is selling the magazine stuff for me and he is not making much money on me, and I think he should have his commission on his books. Mrs. York said, don't do it. He doesn't deserve it. He never sent your manuscript to us. He wasn't trying to sell your novels. He didn't like to sell novels. He still doesn't. Anyway, I sold six or eight or ten books, I don't know how many, and he was getting the commission on my royalties and wasn't doing a thing. The first time T went back, he took me to lunch himself and he wasn't too sure, of course T was writing True Detective stuff and confessions and like that then and so he took me to a club and treated me like I was really something. Then I went back the next time, he had his secretary, Edith, take me out to lunch. She kept saying I have got to hurry back, I have a client coming, I have got to get back to the office, I have a client coming. I said, go to your office, I am no longer a client. Then I walked out. Then Mr. Heninger wrote and said that. I couldn't cut out of an 46 association like that, and I wrote back and said I could too. I had no contract with him or anything. So he said we would sign the year then. Then I told him I was writing all the publishers to no longer pay my royalties through you. He s5id wait until the end of the year and we will send them a notice too, that everything is on the up and up. So I did. Then the next- year he sold one of my short stories to Kraft Weekly Theater, he made an hour play out of it. He sold everything he had in his files of mine and made me more money the next year than he had made me in three years before. But I am through with him. I see him at the Western Writers of America convention. They think that he is great. I see him there, and he says hello. So I don't use an agent. I have to if I sell, of course, I don't, have to sell anything at all. I don't have to contact a new publisher. I have four publishers that I write for all the time, but sometimes when I have something like this, I think it is a good story and pome kids would like to read it. Especially with the idea of conservation, the prairie dog is almost extinguished. There are a few in some of the national parks, they are protected. Most of them are gone. They are such darling animals. I thought that it ought to be published and this man thought so too. He said when it is published, let him know and he would buy some for his children and his grandchildren. I wrote back to him and said with nearly one hundred years of receiving rejections, I had never received one as nice as that. That is the hardest thing. If I find something they like and I like, it is no trouble. This Doctor Lovjoy book I thought it was terrific. I entered it in the fine arts contest and they gave me an honorable mention of $25.00, and I sold it and had fifteen hundred dollars advance pay on it. PW: Oh, my word. 47 OB: They never gave a first or second prairie in that category. They didn't think this was worth; and the judge’s comment was that they didn't think that teenagers would be interested in it. A doctor’s biography. Nothing about the writing that I thought should be some of the criteria. Actually, kids loved biographies. They just love them. I have written fifteen or sixteen and they sell. They never, hardly ever go out. Prince Henry did because here in the United States they don’t know anything about Prince Henry. But over in England it is still selling. Of course, England and Portugal are close and the English children know about Portugal. What do the American children know about Portugal? Ask them the capital. They don't know anything about it. So they are not interested. They don't want to know something new. I wanted to for years. T wrote a short biography for Victor Carney to go in a volume of the South American Heroes. About Francisca D. Maranda, he was the most tremendous man. He' helped Washington in our revolution, he helped Wellington fight Napoleon. He was a lover of Kathryn the Great. In fact every great woman was at his feet, when he would go to their country. He was hansom and he taught all he knew about, fighting. Then when they rebelled against Spain, Venezuela called Maranda back. He had been in exile in England and they called him back to lead their troops. He was a young man and they took him, they taught him some in England. One then betrayed him, he was jealous and he betrayed him to the Spanish and they took this man to Spain. Then the Pantheon in Corothus, they have all these tombs, you know, marble. One of the saddest things I ever saw was Maranda's tomb there, marble. The angel was holding up the lid waiting for his body to be brought back from Spain. It never will be. It just breaks your heart to see that, you see all these others are closed because ill the other bodies are in there, all 48 their other heroes. And believe how they treat a hero, no hair and all those people down there. But young Maranda isn't, well, I wanted to do a full length biography of him. The publishers would say that the libraries don't know about him, they don't care about him. He was so fascinating. So handsome. When I was in South America to do research on him, I thought that after I did the short biography of him I could sell the biography of him. The museums are closed on Thursday. I got in on Wednesday, in Corockus, So I met a nice taxi driver and he took me to the administrator of education and he gave us permission to go into this museum that is dedicated to Maranda. And oh my, such a handsome man, the paintings of him and all the things. Then I went down to Argentina, and found the president of the LDS mission. I was working for the Deseret News then so I was treated nicely by the LDS people around and the president said, he had been the president, I guess in Venezuela, but he had been in Venezuela anyway and he knew Maranda and he said, why are you writing about that horrible man? And I said “why is he so horrible?” He said “do you know what he did?” I said “what?” And he said, “Why he had the biggest collection of pubic hair of any man and you want to write about him.” I don't care if he did, he was a great man. Mr. Williams thought that was awful for me to write about a man like that. But the women fell for him. They can say anything under the sun, it doesn't matter. But anyway I can say that. I had all this material and these pictures and everything. I have never written a -full length biography but I would like to. So, unless I know that it will sell, I don't write it. I don't believe that the best writing is that that doesn't, sell, People are saying that all the time and I don't believe it. Much good writing doesn't sell, but much rood writing does sell. I don't think that the fact that it doesn't sell means that it is good. One of our writers here sells poetry and she 49 says the best things I have ever written have never sold. Well, I don't believe it. From what I have seen of her work, the things she sold to lady's Home Journal and Good Housekeeping have been good poems, but of course they are not, they are rhymed but that is not considered good any more. I don't know, I don't know. PW: Well, I just have one final question. It is kind of a broad one. What world problems concern you the most? OB: I think these world problems of the children of the world. The many half American children in Asia and Korea and Thailand, and Vietnam and over and even the children here, those that are not only disadvantaged as they say, I don't like that word, but I mean those that the exceptional child whose neglected. Which the exceptional child is neglected in America; I remember that this artist at the Tribune told me that he was a little boy in Denmark and they saw his work and they took him out of the public school and put him into a private school. They paid all his expenses, he had no money. Who do we do that for, little kids? They have talent, so much talent and they are neglected. And yet if they don't, we spend so much money on them. I think that the exceptional child here in America and then all the children in, all those kids that are so hard up and so poor and so hungry. In India the little girls that is the only country that I have been in that the little girls go naked. The boys go naked until about seven or eight because they are proud of them. In India they don't have clothes. Their stomachs stick out, their heads are covered with sores, and some of those children are potential helpers to the world. They could do something big, if they get a chance. I think that the neglected pool of children's talent is one of the biggest neglects we have in the world. I think all children should be saved and fed and clothed because we don't know who is going to turn out 50 marvelous. But I do think that as much should be spent on the exceptional child as on the disadvantaged one. And it isn't. I think that that is the saddest waste in America. There used to be, when I headed the Tribune, what we called the night interviews. We had sixteen thousand children enrolled in that. Then we published a little tablet sized paper, it was in four pairs, it was twelve pages when the war broke out, well before the war broke out. They stopped it before the war broke out. Everything in that paper was contributed by children under high school age. The photography, the art, the cartoon scripts, the serials, the stories, the poems, everything. And out of those people, you would be amazed, I keep a record, I keep a file on them. Recluse of Sinlenno who was high in the state department in Washington, Jack Anderson who writes for the news, I am not so happy about him now, Holstein, the head of the journalism department at the university, and oh many of these radio people, I can't think of any of their names tonight, but many of the radio people and university people were in that bunch. There was a chance that encouraged them, you know, encouraged them to go on. Well you know Nanny Nakashimi, the fashion artist, a little Japanese girl, Benny Gim, a Chinese boy, there is a lawyer in New York that argued an ease before the Supreme Court before he was 40. There are a lot that go through their whole life and never get to the Supreme Court, very brilliant boy, he was in our bunch. His brother Weaver, is one of the top authorities on the Orient. He lives in the Orient. He was in Bangkok when we were there. He has been in Korea and all over. A brilliant fellow, we never hear anything about him, but he is. All through government and the state department and locally, these kids all started out in the Tribune Junior and in the Nightly Review. When you think what a bier percentage from this little tiny bunch of kids have really made good, 51 have contributed, it just seems like such a waste. There is nothing for them now. What can a kid do today in Salt Lake if he is talented, as a musician or anything else? We have had these radio programs, two radio programs a week for the children that could sing and recite and dance. Every summer the Tribune gave a play down at Liberty Park, we had hundreds, any kid that wanted to be in it could be in it. One play I had so many little boys come that I couldn't find a part for all of them so I had them all be frogs. They were frogs and then they went all over the park just jumping around. I never turned a child down. In my school I didn't have the best ones preform. I wrote the plays for them and put parts in 'or those that were so stupid they couldn't really learn, but I had every child appear in the plays. One little girl that stuttered so, and I gave her a part as a pantomimic. I think that the potential of every child ought to be explored and those who have exceptional ability should be helped more than anyone else because they are the ones that are going to be the astronauts, and the researchers and the scientists. You can't always tell. This one little boy that drew for the Tribune Junior, he drew and drew and drew and his stuff was so awful, I couldn't publish it. Soon his mother told him that he couldn't contribute anymore. She called me on the phone and she said you won't give Walter a chance and I won't let him contribute anymore. I said, Mrs. Broman, if he ever does anything that I can use, I will use it. So on Columbus Day he drew a picture of Columbus' ship and it was awful but I used it. Well long after I got a letter from him and he was exhibiting in the Royal Academy in London. PW: Oh my word. OB: He just had the determination and he knew what he wanted to do, but he had no training and he turned out an artist. I think that it is just awful that there is nothing for children today. I have talked 52 at schools and the children would say, where could I show my stuff, I like to write? What can I do with it? Put there is no place. Some of the schools display them but that is all. So that is it. If I had my way I would give every kid a chance to show what he could do, to the point of strangers. They know that their parents or grandmother would admire their work, but show strangers what they can do. PW: I think that is a good idea. OB: I am a great one for communication with others. I don't see the value, there is a value of....Grant L Henderson, when he was a little boy he was in our group and he played on a program. When he walked across the stage, he was ten years old. Light stockings, short. Pants, I said that kid is a genius. You could tell it the way he walked across and sat down to the piano. I was talking to him and I asked what would you like to do and he said practice. I said, do you like to play ball and he said no, I don't want to play with my hands. I agreed with him, I thought he shouldn't be made to play ball. Over at the west side there was a little girl and oh she was brilliant. I know her still and she has had a terrible time because she, anyway, she could write, compose music, and draw. She counted on three lines. The principal said that you should pet her out playing ball; she just likes to sit there at the piano, or at the drawing board or something. Get her out playing ball. I said she shouldn't play ball, that girl. Well, she grew up and went to high school. She won a scholastic prize, the top national prize for her poetry, she used to illustrate for the children’s friend and everything. She married a stump that wouldn't let her do anything. Nothing then. She has burst out, she has had shingles, she has lost all her hair one year, she had boils another year, just frustration. Now she is nursing and her hands hurt and her feet hurt, and she is miserable. She always will be because she never got to develop along the lines she should have done. She could have contributed a lot. They think that everybody should be out playing ball. The sports 53 departments in all the schools, I have bought all my life, and I hate them. It is alright to have sports in schools, but there should be no competitive sports among schools. I have seen more skull dugry done by high school sports departments, than all the other departments put together. In American Fork we put on a play. We took it all over Utah county and made the money in order to buy scenery for the stage and they gook it and gave it to the sports department for uniforms. They steal money from everybody. They are not top in sportsmanship; they are just tough, win regardless. I think it is a bad, bad thing for the schools. They do nothing; they spend no money on the brilliant, creative child. PW: That needs to be changed. OB: No they won’t, they will say look at the space the newspaper is doing to sports. Newspaper is one of the creative arts. They have the Sunday page on Sunday. The book section he clips from other papers. I often thought I would write for the Tribune, I am glad your book editor can use scissors, he certainly can't read. He can't. He has the local books; I have twelve of them in here. I invited three men too. I invited Gordon Allred, but he couldn't make it. But I had...That is all in Utah that has written books for children that have been published outside the state. I had an editor here from Whitman’s and a librarian from the University of Southern Mississippi and they wanted to meet these people. I had them here. Each one of those twelve women had their books published and not one of them had been reviewed in the local papers. Published in the East, not Mormon publication. The Deseret News publishes every week the books that are LDS books, but not the Tribune. Not local writers. I guess that the creative arts what have saved our nation, not sports. Heavens, what good are sports. What do they do to help the country? Have you ever heard of a sportsman becoming a president or 54 anything? A sports figure or an athletic figure? I bet you couldn't find one, I have never seen one. They don't do anything but bat each other around or kick a ball in the mud or something like that. I don't know, but that is no creative work. Well, anyway. I think I have talked long enough, I have nearly run out of two tapes, you will be so bored. PW: I want to thank you for letting me interview you. This has been a great interview. OB: Well, I have enjoyed it, as I say, I like to talk and I am here alone and so unless I have someone to talk to, I haven't got to talking to myself yet, I may anytime. PW: Well, OK, Thank you very much. 55 SUMMARY PAPER ON WESTERN WRITERS The subject which I chose to explore through the Oral History Program was one in which I had considerable personal interest. The idea of interviewing writers came to me almost simultaneously as we discussed possible topics last summer during the workshop. Writing had been my emphasis as an English major, so naturally I had a great love for a study of writing in regard to this program. The project itself had to do with the personalities and attitudes of the writers themselves. Rather than an information-oriented project, mine was a person-oriented project, which nonetheless brought forth considerable information. Each writer was questioned along similar lines about their attitudes, feelings, experiences, and opinions about three areas: (1) their own personal development as a writer, (2) the development of other writers, and (3) the world at large. The questions were designed to be the kind which allows the interviewee to go into as much detail as he desires and the questions I used were formulated and improved as 1 perceived their strengths and weaknesses. In attempting to analyze the project, the greatest benefit I derived from it was an understanding of people, how to talk with them, rather than to them, and how to perceive their feeling and thoughts as they are speaking. Last summer after learning and discussing the techniques of a successful interview, I experimented with friends. Friends, much the same as interviewees, require in conversation someone who can, who wants to, and who does listen. In observing discussions between people at various gatherings, it is surprising how few people listen--most of them are merely planning what they are going to say next. I admit that I have not been strong in this area in the past. Indeed, I have been one of those who drift off away from the words of the 56 speaking person, or who plans hurriedly a quick reply before he ever knows what to reply to. This project has changed that aspect of my personality, giving me a greater awareness of others, their needs and their feelings. Further analysis of the project would include the mention of my conclusion that there is an incredible difference between writers, although in many areas they seem to agree, at the same time. Each of them developed in a different manner; each has his own style and his own philosophy in regard to writing. Yet, they all agree that writing comes through intensive effort and persistence. Also, each one indicated a great need for empathy on the part of the writer, a quality which I think many people would not place such great emphasis on. Finally then, the project was one of enjoyment for me. I was able to learn about people, but also writing, and in addition, obtained a feeling for the task of writers, their frustrations as well as their hopes. A critique of any kind requires an objective analysis. A critique of oneself requires considerable objectivity, and at the same time, honesty in determining the positive and negative results. In critiquing my project I find many weaknesses, but I also find strengths. A look at the positive and negative aspects will reveal these. To begin, I think the most positive thing in the project was the interviewees themselves. All of them were more than willing to talk, to submit to questioning, and to donate their interviews to the college. Having designed the questions as open-ended and rather general, I was overjoyed to observe their uninhibited (or almost uninhibited) responses to them. In addition, those interviewed were all intelligent, enthusiastic people, extremely knowledgeable and competent in their field. From them I was able to 57 obtain quite explicit information, without a great deal of rambling, although once in a while this became a problem temporarily. The best thing about the interviews themselves was the long response of the interviewee to one of my own short, general questions. An examination of the negative aspects reveals a lack of knowledge on my part In regard to those I interviewed. Had I had a better knowledge of them personally, I would have been able to zero in on specific areas or issues immediately, rather than come around to them by accident as the interview progressed. However, in spite of that handicap, the interviewees many times came around to revealing things of importance anyway. Another area I had difficulty with was the effect the tape had on the interviewee in regard to his willingness to divulge personal information of a negative nature. Even though the tape recorder was out of sight, more than once the interviewee remarked that he just couldn't say such things on tape. I assume from this then, that the tapes caused them to consider a bit more carefully what they were saying and how they were saying. This of course, would have an effect on the accuracy and completeness of detail, and even of attitude in the interviews. Whenever this particular problem occurred, after one or two tries to bring them forward and out of their shells, I gave up. Perhaps this was a weakness on ray part, although I still felt that withholding information was their privilege. Therefore, I did not press them, and maybe I should have. Looking at the specific interviews, the worst was surely the first. Hoping for an hour interview, I did not plan for all the conversation and activity that went on prior to the 58 actual taping. Mr. Perrins was very anxious to show me what he had written, and I was anxious to see it, but all the time our time was slipping away, and I ended up rushing him through the interview, making it impossible for him to explore any question or go into any depth concerning it. This could have been one of the best interviews, but my lack of planning lessened its success. The second interview I conducted was one I was very pleased with. Mrs. Larimore was easy to interview, and went into a lot of detail without unnecessary pushing. The unfortunate thing about her interview was that at one point I stopped the tape recorder and thereafter, the sound was very muffled for some reason. In the transcript, the interview halts suddenly, because of the inaudible words. The interview of Dr. Allred was perhaps the best, due for the most part to his own relaxed state and his dynamic personality and ability to express himself. He expanded upon many of the questions in much greater depth than others I interviewed. Mrs. Knowles's interview was very good, but due to the fact that she adheres to an extremely busy and hectic schedule, she rushed the interview slightly, thereby not going into the depth she might have if she had been freer in regard to time. My final interview, that of Olive Burt, was one of ideal circumstances. Seventyeight years old, Mrs. Burt had unlimited time, and with great intelligence and recall, turned out an excellent interview. In this interview I was able to steer the questioning into other areas not related specifically to writing, and she explored them with enthusiasm. Perhaps an additional reason for the success of this interview is that her age and accordingly her experience enabled her to expound on a greater number of subjects and incidences with a more refined perspective. 59 Thus, the interviews were anything but flawless. Many unexpected problems popped up, requiring immediate action, and the action was not always ideal. Still, all in all, the project was, I think, a success. The five interviews do present a well-defined picture of writing as a profession or otherwise. To the listener of the tapes, or the reader of the interviews, the project can and will contribute considerable knowledge and understanding. 60 BIBLIOGRAPHY Brooks, Cleanth and Warren, Robert Penn. Modern Rhetoric. (New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, Inc.), 1961. Brooks, Van Wyck. The Writer in America. (New York: E.P. Button), 1953. Hall, Donald. The Modern Stylists. (New York: The Free Press), 1968. Perrin, Laurence. Story and Structure. (New York: Harcourt, Brace and World Inc.), 1966. 61