Oral History Program Ron Ross Interviewed by Charles Trentelman 26 September 2013 Oral History Program Weber State University Stewart Library Ogden, Utah Ron Ross Interviewed by Charles Trentelman 26 September 2013 Copyright © 2013 by Weber State University, Stewart Library 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. The working files, original recording, and archival copies are housed in the University Archives. Project Description Business at the Crossroads - Ogden City is a project to collect oral histories related to changes in the Ogden business district since World War II. From the 1870s to World War II, Ogden was a major railroad town, with nine rail systems. With both east-west and north-south rail lines, business and commercial house flourished as Ogden became a shipping and commerce hub. After World War II, the railroad business declined. Some government agencies and business related to the defense industry continued to gravitate to Ogden after the war—including the Internal Revenue Regional Center, the Marquardt Corporation, Boeing Corporation, Volvo-White Truck Corporation, Morton-Thiokol, and several other small operations. However, the economy became more service oriented, with small businesses developing that appealed to changing demographics, including the growing Hispanic population. ____________________________________ 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 This work is the property of the Weber State University, Stewart Library Oral History Program. It may be used freely by individuals for research, teaching and personal use as long as this statement of availability is included in the text. It is recommended that this oral history be cited as follows: Ross, Ron, an oral history by Charles Trentelman, 26 September 2013, WSU Stewart Library Oral History Program, University Archives, Stewart Library, Weber State University, Ogden, UT. iii Ron Ross September 26, 2013 Abstract: The following is an oral history interview with Ron Ross, conducted September 26, 2013 by Charles Trentelman. Ross describes his memories of 25th Street in Ogden, Utah. CT: Ok, Let’s start with an introduction, I have started recording but your fine, whatever you’re saying is great. Don’t worry about talking into a microphone, we can just sit here and talk. So we’ll start out, this is Charlie Trentelman, I’m interviewing Ron Ross. Ron is a lifelong resident of Ogden and this is for the 25th Street Weber State University project and we are just going to talk about life in Ogden. RR: By the way, I was born in my grandmother’s house in the front bedroom at 744 Ogden Ave. CT: When were you born Ron? RR: In 1928. CT: What was your birthday? RR: January 6th. CT: Oh, ok, we’ll talk about that. Let’s talk about your early life here. You went to school where? RR: Grade school? Madison, The old Madison, not the new James D. Madison. I lived right behind it on 24th Street in a little house that’s no longer there, but it was the third house below, or west of Monroe. The Glassmen’s were right on the big house, and the little house we lived in was just enough room. Well actually my 1 sister and I had the middle room, she had one side and I had the other. It cost 15 dollars a month rent for the house. CT: That’s amazing. RR: Oh it was fantastic. CT: Of course that was back when fifteen dollars was real money. RR: My folks lived on Washington Blvd., just south of seventh, and one Sunday morning there was a loud explosion, a couple of them I guess. I wanted to go next store but my dad wouldn’t let me because a man had shot his wife and himself. CT: Wow, about when was that? RR: That would have been back in the early 30’s because that’s when they still had street cars along Washington Avenue, which was not Washington Blvd. back then. My grandfather ran the street cars along there and up to the hermitage up the canyon. CT: I did not know that. RR: That was a long time ago. On the north side of the canyon road you can see a level place that goes all the way up and that’s where the street car ran, up to the hermitage. It was a very important place. Then the trolleys, or the Bamberger’s as they were called, went from Ogden down to lagoon and on to Salt Lake City. CT: Wow, and that was in the thirties, when all that stuff was still running. So you were a kid in Ogden when this town was just rip roaring fun? RR: Well… CT: Fun, I use that term loosely. 2 RR: Well it was fun. When I went to Madison that was kind of fun. We lived on Jefferson at the time and I went into the house crying to my mother because I wanted to go to school. All my friends were going to school, but my birthday wasn’t until January and they wouldn’t let me in. But at that time, my mother, who was working in the house, cleaned up, changed her dress, and took me to school just so I could find out that I couldn’t go to school even though I was crying and wanted to go. She took me into the first grade. The name of the teacher was Bluetrue, Miss Bluetrue, and she said, “Leave him here.” I stayed. When my mother came to get me after school she said, “Thank you for letting him stay, I will keep him home tomorrow.” But Miss Bluetrue said, “Let him come back, he knows how to read now and he’ll have no problems.” That’s how I got into school, and the interesting thing is my mother never graduated from high school. She decided to get married and I was born when she was seventeen. She was married when she was sixteen, because kids check up on things like that. My dad would have never been the success he was without the way she backed him. He had a lot of drive but… By the way I died once. They put me on the washing machine as a dead child. CT: You mentioned that. Please tell me again because I don’t remember the details. RR: Apparently my mother, her milk was poison for me. So my dad would walk from 7th to 12th to a farm there and get milk from the same cow every night and bring it back and that’s how I survived. CT: But you said you were put out as dead? 3 RR: Yep, they laid me on the washer as a child and I don’t know any more of the story than that. CT: Obviously you did not die. RR: Obviously. But when I went to Madison school that became fun because I was ahead of myself, and by the time we got into the sixth grade they put a show on and it was seventh grades, and I got in the first show. By that time I had been in the drum core that Ray Mitter was in charge of. I paid twenty five cents a lesson every week, and I marched in the parades, and I was in the drum core, and playing in my dad’s orchestra. Well actually it was a marimba band that he would take me out of school to go preform with a group at another school. The principle would say “Well you can’t take him out of school,” and my dad would say, “How is he doing in his school work?” “Well he’s fine.” Dad said, “Is he missing any days?” and I didn’t miss a day of school until the ninth grade. “Well no,” and dad said, “Then I am taking him out.” So he’d take me out and I’d entertain him with the other people then he’d take me back to school. CT: Now when did your dad form the band, or the orchestra? RR: His own? I don’t know. It was with Charlie Knight, as a whistler. CT: As a whistler? RR: As a whistler. He started out whistling then bought himself a xylophone and taught himself how to play, never really learned how to play music. Everything he did was by ear and by what people liked, and he knew what people liked. As I grew up we had jokes; he called the band I liked “Sauer Kraut Vinegar,” which 4 was Sauter-Kinegan, and I called his “Guylem Bagel,” which was Guylem Vargo. But it was a pleasant kind, there was no upset. But in Madison I was a good student, and I would go to school. I’d climb the fence, which you weren’t supposed to do, the big fence in the back yard. I’d climb over to get into the school yard rather than walk all the way around, which is only what a kid would do anyway, and I’d get into trouble all the time. But if I was sick I would go to school and they’d have to send me home, I made no bones about it, I wanted to be there. I liked school. We did a show, I don’t remember the name of it, but I was one of the little clowns. We sang a song about “Won’t you be my Pushkin, my merry little Pushkin,” or something like that. The next year, in seventh grade, we did Tom Sawyer, and I was singing around Ogden as a boy vocalist all the time. I got Tom Sawyer with somebody else, they double cast. He was supposed to preform one night, and I was supposed to perform the other night, which was fine. Except his voice started changing while we were doing the show so I would sing for him off stage, and he would play onstage. Ct: So you had to work every night? RR: Yeah, it was fun, just had a good time. When my mother would take me down to pick up my dad, when we finally got a car, we’d go down to the Berthana and pick him up. The place where they played was on the other side of the hall. My mother never let me walk her around; I had to dance her around. So I took up dancing at a very early age. CT: Well good for her. That was very smart of her. 5 RR: Oh, my mother was tremendous. She said we grew up together. But she was such a sharp lady. I don’t know where she got her ideas but I found out that I wouldn’t eat pancakes, I didn’t like them. She would fry eggplant slices that she had dipped in egg and bread crumbs, fry them, and then let me put jam or jelly or syrup on them and eat them for breakfast. I found those in an airport in Australia. They made them there, and I wondered how my mother had ever heard of that or got that idea. But it was on the menu there. I had some and they were delicious. I still fix them every so often myself. CT: Sounds good, I'm thinking eggplant for dinner tonight, I’ll try that. RR: Ok. Otherwise take your eggplant when you got them and make meat loaf. Hard boil the eggplant and mix it in with whatever you normally do in a meat loaf, bake it, and you’ve got an extra vegetable in there that nobody knows about, and it’s very good. CT: What was mother’s name? RR: Rosa, Rosa Taylor. CT: Was she an Ogden family as well? RR: Oh yeah. My grandpa Taylor and Grandma Taylor were the ones who lived on Ogden Avenue. The Ross’s that my dad came from, lived on Chester, which is about a half a block away and a little farther up the street. CT: So then both your families were here for a very long time before you came along? RR: Yes. When I was a little kid I would go out in the back yard of Grandpa Ross’s, who was planting a garden, which is by the way where I got my love for collies 6 and shepherds. When something would happen, we didn’t take good care of dogs, and something would happen and I got to pick the next one out of the litter, and he said I would always pick the best one out of there. He was planting potatoes, I was a little kid, I just went out there and said, “Oh potatoes where’s the gravy.” [Laughter] CT: Pass the gravy layin’ right over there. RR: Oh yeah, it was a lot of fun. My Grandma Taylor had raspberry bushes and we would be picking raspberries and she also had chickens. I would go out to help her get the eggs, and reaching under the chicken getting the eggs, chickens don’t like that. They get very upset. She’s the only one that got me to eat eggs. She did that by telling me that the brown eggs tasted better, so she wouldn’t serve me anything except brown eggs. CT: You have very smart ancestors there young man. RR: I know they were good people. When I was growing up, I would ride my bicycle, when we lived up on Monroe, I’d go out to the iron fall pool and swim. It was free in the mornings, and then I’d go on out to my grandparents’ house on 7th Street in Ogden, and my folks might not see me for three or four days. I just stayed there. CT: Just hanging out with the grandparents. RR: Well we got along swell. CT: As a kid could you go anywhere in town you wanted? RR: Anyplace there were no problems. A story of when I was four years old, when we lived on Jefferson just about 24th, and my dad ran the station at the foot of 20th Street and Washington. That’s when they used to close that off so kids could ride 7 sleighs down there, 27th Street hill was another place. But at age four my mother would put hot soup or something on the sleigh and I would walk over, go down the hill, had my dad’s lunch and then I’d play on the hill until it was time to go back, and walk back. Well number one, people would say, “How could you let a four year old do that?” My mother said, “He knows how to handle himself.” We had no problems with people at that time accosting children. In fact, even when we lived on 24th, we had nothing but a skeleton key in the door and people just didn’t lock their doors, they didn’t have to worry. CT: So even in evil Ogden where all that bad stuff went on? RR: The bad stuff went on down on lower 25th Street but out in the environs no problem. CT: Well that’s right next door practically. I mean 24th and Washington is just right up there. It’s not that far away. RR: Oh well we lived up the hills, up on Jefferson, then Monroe, and then my folks moved to 25th and Brinker. CT: Right yeah, so way up the hill. RR: Yes, very much. That’s when the ritzy district, when I was in high school, was Marilyn Drive. CT: Which is still pretty up there. My brother bought a house right around there on Taylor and 27th. You’ve got Marilyn and that whole little time claims there, really nice houses. I’ve often wondered the history of that little section there, because somebody obviously bought a bunch of nice houses, they all have a similar design. 8 RR: If you wanted to find out about that I think that Marilyn Robinson is still alive, in Salt Lake City. She became the head of the Theatre department at the University of Utah, she also was Miss Utah for one year while she was still in high school. CT: Is she who Marilyn Drive was named after? RR: No but she lived on it. I don’t think it was named after her, but she was very, very attractive and very talented. I used her in my dissertation doing a speech from Macbeth. CT: Lady Macbeth’s great soliloquy. RR: She did that, and did it for my dissertation. CT: Oh, ok now when did you finally start to get down to this part of town, I mean as a teenager you must have been rebellious? RR: Well no I didn’t hang out down here until I started playing in dance bands and small trios, because lower 25th Street you stayed away from. That was the time when the stories I heard were that black people, only they didn’t call them blacks then, could only walk on the south side of 25th Street and white on the north side, and if either one went to the other side they’d get beaten up so it was a wild place. But I started coming down on 25th Street when I started playing piano in small trios. I was in high school and the war was on. There weren’t very many musicians around but they wanted entertainment. So I played at the Beehive and I played at the Fort Weighters Club. CT: Now where was the Beehive? 9 RR: Beehive was on the northeast corner of Lincoln and 25th. There’s a little restaurant in there now, but it was a little bar, they sold beer and stuff and had a piano. CT: Oh that’s where ponchos was, now it’s the Lucky Slice Pizza. But it was Poncho’s when I came to town. RR: All right well, it was the Beehive before that. It was fascinating because I’d be playing piano down in this place and the war was on and soldiers would come up from the depot walking up 25th and ladies of the night would be hanging out the window with no clothes on calling to the soldiers down below to come up. The rose rooms were almost directly across the street a little bit east. I never went upstairs to meet the ladies but they would put dresses on and come down in to the beehive, so I knew some of them, and as a kid in high school that was pretty risqué. I was not wanted by the best people in high school for that reason, because I hung out down there. When I played in the Washki Club, which was in the basement of the hotel Ben Lomond, I was so well known by the people there and so trusted I could go out and buy cigarettes for the guys who played in the band and nobody thought a word a thing of them. I’d buy the cigarettes and take them in, I never used them, it wasn’t my way of behaving. So that was kind of interesting that that would happen. Across the street, and I don’t remember whether its east or west of the beehive, was another place I played. I always said that it was down underneath the sidewalk I’m not sure, maybe it was just the basement of the Porter and Waiters club. 10 CT: Ok, well that was at 127, 25th Street so it would have been across the street and west of where you were in the Beehive. There’s a maternity shop there now, they sell maternity dresses but that buildings has been torn down and something else is there now. But that now was on the black side of the street, did you have any trouble at all? RR: No, the Porter’s and Waiters Club I played in was on the South Side. CT: Yeah on the South Side of the Street. RR: South side of the street, but as a musician I could go anyplace. CT: Yeah, that was my question. You’re a white guy, you’re going into the Porters and Waiters club, which was on the south side of the street, which is the black side of the street, you didn’t get into trouble? RR: Never, never had any trouble at all because I was a musician. But I played in places that we used to say we’d have to cut the smoke out and move it to breathe, because there were no windows and no air conditioning. But we got along great. I was playing one night, and they were putting on a fashion show, and the other guys in the band, saxophone players, bass, drums ect., all of a sudden they started dropping out playing. Well I was in the corner and I stood up and looked over the edge of the piano, playing the piano still, and here were these beautiful young ladies modeling underclothes, bras, and panties only. So the guys in the band quit playing, oh I had to keep the music going because the music had to go for the ladies that were doing the modeling. I knew Joe McQueen played later on at the rainbow gardens, jam sessions on Sunday afternoon. He and his pianist who lived, at least the pianist 11 did, in a place on the south side of 25th Street. I went with him once to his apartment. Well, it was a long dark hall and I mean long. There was a restroom at the end of that hall, and he’d open the door to his apartment, it was one little room for a bedroom, no cooking facilities or anything like that. I was just amazed that that’s how anybody lived because I coming as a white person, going into that, that was a whole new world. CT: Yeah this was on the south side of the street. RR: Yes, and I got along swell, there were no problems. CT: Well you know what you’re describing, if you’ve ever been in the Windsor Hotel over there, which is on the north side of the street but actually the rooms are pretty much the same. RR: I did. CT: Little tiny rooms, with a facility way at the end of the hall. RR: It was Fascinating. CT: So when you played in the Porters and Waiters was it all on the one level, or did you go down in the basement? RR: Down in the basement. No I think it was under the sidewalk, that’s how I always described it. I’ll give you a story, my dad played down there too. Now my dad played pipes and this is a negative story, and somebody else when I told them, they squashed it. But he was playing down there and playing pipes, and someone came over and said “Play such and such,” and my dad said, “I’m sorry, I don’t know it,” and the guy whipped out a razor and said, “Play it,” and my dad whipped out a pistol and said, “No!” That was the end of that, no more problems. 12 Back in Washington D.C. when I was in the army, I was stationed at the barracks at silver springs and I was the piano player in the band there, and everybody there except members of the band were black people who took care of Walter Reed hospital. Well of course we became very good friends, in fact I played on an all-black basketball team, except for the Jewish center, who was tall, and me. We played and went around to the different places and it was a pretty good team. But I would go with the black people down into the Howard Theater, in the black session of Washington, which was pretty wild. I had no problems because they knew I was a piano player and I’d go to these dance halls where they were doing jitterbug, but I mean wild jitterbug. Of course I was a jitterbug at that time too, so I had a marvelous time. But I would go to the Howard Theater which was an all-black Theater, that’s where I saw Duke Ellington and his band and it was just fantastic. But the same problem existed in Washington as existed here between the races. In fact I know white people in Ogden who would not shake hands with a black person unless they put a glove on. Then they would shake hands. CT: Wow and that was when in the 1940’s? RR: It was, yes. CT: 1940s and 1950s, wow. You know you tell people that and they have a hard time believing it. RR: Well it was true. CT: I know it was true. 13 RR: I got a liberal education because I went into debate, and in debate we started getting exposed to a whole lot of different cultures than the average high school student was exposed to. CT: Well it sounds like being a musician was a ticket to everywhere in this town. RR: Oh yes, I knew Mayor Perry very well because I used to go to his canyon club or whatever it was up on 12th Street and down in the canyon area, which didn’t have a very healthy reputation. CT: No, no it didn’t. He got arrested a few times for things. One of my most cherished possessions is his booking card at the weber county jail. RR: Oh, really? CT: Yeah, when they were tearing it apart, up at the top of the City County Building, one of our reporters went up there and there were all these old booking cards scattered on the floor and she picked one up, it was Art Perry’s. She gave that to me, and I’ve got that along with a picture of him standing in front of the entire police department grinning like an idiot. RR: He was a very, very interesting guy. I modeled a character I played once, in bell book and candle, I played the drunk lead using him as the model. When the time came for me to shake hands in there I shook hands like Mayor Perry shook hands with everybody. Just put your hand out and shake hands with me and that was it. It was just a limp hand and you did the shaking, but we got along great, no problem. CT: How often did you meet him? 14 RR: Not often, because he wasn’t down at the club all the time but I’d meet him once in a while, but well enough to know him and we got acquainted. I told you a story once about him running a meeting for land lords that I had to go to because of an economics class when I was in college CT: Well tell it again because I don’t have that one recorded. RR: Well I was in a class of economics and we had to go to this meeting because the government had put a ceiling on all rentals and wouldn’t let people go above it. The land lords were very unhappy about it, so Mayor Perry had a meeting up at Weber College and we were required, as students, to be there from this class. I listened and listened and listened and heard all these people really very upset because of the ceiling. Mayor Perry was conducting it and I got upset and angry because debate training had taught me to look at both sides, we had to debate the positive and the negative. Well I went backstage and I called the mayor over, he knew me well enough to come over, and I said, “May I speak?” Well it was a closed meeting and I shouldn’t have been allowed to speak but he allowed me to go out and speak. I took the points and things they had said and in true debate fashion turned them around and used it against what they were saying. I turned the audience into a screaming, raging mass of people, jumping up and down and hollering and Perry just laughed his full head off and dismissed the meeting. I went out and a little Scotsman came up to me, madder than hell, and he shook his fist under my face, under my nose, and backed my up against a wall. He was very, very threatening and my economics teacher came over, just laughing like 15 Perry, and pushed the man aside took me down the stairs and said, “You don’t need to come back to class, you’ve earned you’re A”. CT: That’s beautiful. RR: So it was quite a lot of fun. CT: Yeah, you mentioned when you were playing over by the Beehive the ladies from upstairs would put on clothes and come downstairs. What were they like? Did you get to talk to any of them? RR: Not very much because I was very busy. They would say hello or come over and smoke a cigarette, and the smoke from a cigarette always goes straight to the piano player. They are all standing there and it’s horrible, but they were nice ladies. There was no problem they were personable. CT: Now did they having someone running the house or just working independent? RR: I don’t know I never got that close. CT: Because I know Rose Davy was across the street, I remember her pet Ocelot or something she had over there. RR: That I did not really know about. Where ever I was I played, that was it I didn’t stay around socially, I simply left. Another fun story, I worked for continental bakery, Wonder Bread, and I worked in the shipping department getting the boxes ready for them to put the bread in. Well on Saturdays I would go out with the delivery man and deliver bread and we delivered it on lower 25th Street as well as other places. I went into this one beer hall once, taking in the bread, and there was my priesthood teacher, sitting at the bar drinking a cup of coffee. Now that’s no great crime, but to a kid being taught by that teacher that you should not 16 drink coffee, and it was later on that I really learned about the Mormon word of wisdom. He not only drank coffee, but he was very, very fat, so he didn’t keep his weight under control. But that was quite a shock. CT: Are you sure it was coffee in that cup? RR: Ah, no. I didn’t check. CT: When you say lower 25th Street, where are you referring too? From Lincoln on down or Washington? RR: Well it started at Washington but really from Grant on down. From Washington down to Grant, that’s were Ross & Jacks was and that was acceptable right there, but then lower on beyond Grant you had troubles. The favorite restaurant for my folks to take me when I was a kid was the Bamboo on Grant, over near 24th Street. There is a Thai restaurant or something there now. It was the Bamboo, and when I was a little kid my mother and dad would put me in a buggy and wheel me from 7th Street up there and go in and have a bowl of noodles which cost twenty five cents each. They put me up on the table in a basket because I was that little, so I started going out to different restaurants when I was very young. I used to go when I was older, watch them cooking when they allowed me too. They sliced hard boiled eggs in a way I had never seen before. There was a wire hanging down with a little piece of wood on the end, and he’d take it and slide the egg down the wire and it would cut it. CT: Interesting. RR: Worked beautifully. CT: That restaurant is still there it just has a different name now? 17 RR: Yes. CT: It’s interesting it’s been there that long. RR: Everything was in bamboo at that time. Great big, wide bamboos painted green. CT: Have you been in it lately, does it look the same? RR: Larry and I went over there one time. It was pretty much the same except the interior decor was different. CT: I’ve looked at a list of businesses on 25th Street that were between wall and Lincoln, and it looks like there was really a lot of them. I counted fifty one businesses in 1925, which isn’t that far away from what you’re talking about. It looks like they had to have been very small. RR: Yes. CT: But I see like a listing for a hotel, and you had the Healy Hotel on the corner which was big. But there were other hotels along the way there, the Dixon Hotel and a few others. At 118 you’ve got this hotel and then at 119 you’ve got a café, so how big were those hotels? RR: They were just like the one on Shore that was on the south side of the street. CT: So you meant they were just really long and narrow? RR: There were stairs up to the second floor or on the main floor and just a row of rooms on the side. But I didn’t go into those very much, because I would go in and play and leave. CT: Well what was it like walking along the street? Were there a lot of people out? Did you see people? 18 RR: I saw people, but we could park very close to where we were going, so it was just a matter of walking into the building basically. Socially, I didn’t do anything down there. I’ve got to tell you a story about a friend of mine, Dawn Solberg, who was well known as an entertainer using records and doing Red Skeleton type of stuff. I forget the name of the band that was so big and had funny music, and he would do gags to that. Well he would put on his ROTC uniform and he and his girlfriend would come down to the Union Station, and go stand by a train, waiting to pull out, and they’d neck having a great time. When the train would pull out they’d go to another place were there would be soldiers and more people waiting to be shipped out and they’d stay there. That was there comfortable spot. They wouldn’t go out in a car, they’d go to the Union Station. CT: Just cause they could neck and no one would pay attention since the place was full of soldiers. Wow, that’s clever. RR: Well dawn was a sharp guy and a good entertainer. CT: Did you come into union station very much? RR: Very seldom. I knew enough about it cause my dad worked for the commissary but when I was twelve I was taken by relatives up to the LeGrand, Oregon, and I rode the train back, my first experience on a train. The first experience I ever had going into a diner and having corn beef with fried potatoes and a poached egg on top. I’d never been around anything like that. CT: So corned beef, with fried potatoes, and a poached egg on top of the corn beef? RR: Well it was corn beef hash with the poached egg on top, absolutely delicious and I was only twelve, but nobody thought anything of it at that time. You could travel 19 with no problems, and coming down to the station was a lot of people, lots of room, and lines of people when it was time to get a ticket and pull out. I knew about the trains because my grandfather was a brake man for the Rye Grand, not the Rio Grand, but the Rye Grand was what they called it. He was a break inspector. CT: The Rye Grand? RR: Yeah, spelt as it is now, but that’s how they pronounced it, the Rye Grand. CT: Ok, but It was the Rio Grand? RR: No, it was the Rio Grand. CT: Oh, I was thinking is there another railroad down here that I didn’t know about. RR: No, no. But he worked for them as a break inspector and so we’d hang out and there was no problems. CT: So you could hang around the station? RR: Well I could but I didn’t because I was young, and once you were older you’d hang around your school, which was Central High, but is now James Madison. That was a three-year school so you didn’t go to Ogden High till you were 11th grade, 11th and 12th. CT: Well when I project myself backwards I think it must have been really cool to come down and see steam engines, but that was normal for you. You weren’t going out of your way to see steam engines because that was normal? RR: No, because you knew that was all that you had. When they got the diesels and the stream line trains that was something unusual. But the other ones, that was just normal, yes. The fact that they had a big Y here and shifted the trains around 20 and sent them up the canyon, or northwest, or down south, that was just part of the life. CT: Exactly and it’s kind of sad people don’t document what’s normal, now a days if those people had documented it, that’s the fun stuff to look at. I tell people just to take pictures of the street a picture of anything and in fifty years the people are going to be fascinated by that. You said your dad worked in the commissary down here? RR: Yes during the war years. I must confess, we had quite a bit of beef when it was rationed, everybody in the commissary did, because there was meat for the soldiers going through and we had a lot of soldiers going through here. There’s a fun story that they didn’t have enough food on a train that was stalled in California. What they didn’t realize was that they got stalled in the middle of the avocado plantation or trees, and all they had to do was go out and pick avocados and eat them and they’d have been fine, nobody would have gotten hungry. But the rationing went on during the war, that was quite a deal and the tokens. I remember those little tiny round things, when you had to pay so many tokens for twenty cents, you can spend it. You’ve never heard of tokens? CT: Well I know Utah issued little tiny tax tokens, is that what you mean? RR: Yeah that was one, tax tokens. CT: How did you get those? RR: When you went to the grocery store, they’d give you change. CT: It was part of your change? 21 RR: Yeah, and they’d have bigger ones, I think that were five and they had littler ones about the size of a dime, and they were state tax. CT: Yeah oh ok, that’s what those were during World War II. I’ve got one of those in my coin book that I found when I was in grade school. That’s interesting I never knew how that worked though. Your dad, did he make his living as a musician? RR: Well he started out at Scrab and Johnsons or something as the soda jerk, on 24th and Washington. He did other things before that, he sold newspapers and everything. By the way he wouldn’t let me sell newspapers when I was a kid. I’d say I wanted to get a job selling newspapers and he’d say, “No, I sold enough for both of us, you go in and practice the piano and you hit your books, study.” So he worked there as a soda jerk, than he ran gas station, became a grease man for Ogden Buick sales. He could wear a white jacket to work and come home and it would still be white never had gut grease on it. He was meticulous about what he did and at night while he was working with gas stations he would go to night school and he got a degree in accounting so he would keep his own books, and books for other people. We was a merchandiser he grew sweet peas by his gas station, and then he would pick them and make bunches of them and when men came in on their way home to buy gas, he’d give them a bunch of sweet peas to take to their wives, so he was a merchandiser on the word go. CT: Well now this was during the 1930s, this was during the Depression right? RR: Yes. CT: He needed the money yeah. 22 RR: Yes, and by the way, my dad saved for our first trip we ever went on. We never knew it, but he’d come home to the little old house we lived in, on the door way, we didn’t know he was depositing silver dollars that he’d been given, he’d build them up in tips. Silver dollars, that’s how we went on our first trip, with the first car that’d we ever drove, we owned a little used Chevrolet. CT: So he was basically like I do now, taking his pocket change and hiding it. RR: Yes. CT: That’s a good way to save money. Last time I cashed in, I had a whole bag full of coins, and I cashed it in it was $300.00. RR: Great, great that’s the way you save. CT: Just by throwing pocket money in the bank every night. RR: Yeah, well after he learned that he went to work at Hill Field in accounting and went in to cost accounting. Now they would send him away to schools and he would come back and he told me he was working with people who had their masters degrees in accounting and things like that, and cost accounting is this very technical business apparently. I’d say, “Well how do you get along dad.” He said, “I was always one of the top three at least in class,” I said, “Well how did you learn,” he said, “I memorized the book, it’s easy.” He also took short hand because at one time he thought of becoming a court reporter, so he took short hand so he could make tremendous notes when he took a class. CT: I took great short hand in college too because I wanted to be a newspaper reporter, and just like you got in to ballet because of pretty girls? I was the only guy in the shorthand class. I really was and I’ve never gotten really good at great 23 shorthand but I got good enough that I never ever miss quoted anybody, and I could keep up with people when they talked. RR: You had a lot of ladies that you could choose among. CT: Exactly yeah. It was great fun. RR: When I went into ballet a lady named Barbara Berry came from England and Bill hired her to teach ballet, well he had trained me and I was teaching class as a graduate student. Barbara Berry went in his office one time, and some people won’t appreciate the humor in this I’m sure, but she said, “Bill you’ve got to stop Ron,” “Stop Ron, what’s he doing?” “He’s dating the girls in his class.” Bill said, “Leave him alone thank god he isn’t dating the boys”. CT: Now so when did your dad, he was doing music as well as all this? RR: On the side, that’s how he got his house paid for. Our home was paid for long before it was due because he was not only working a day job, and this is where my mother came in handy, everything revolved around my dad. Getting up in the morning, going to work, coming home having a quick supper, and going out and playing a dance job four or five times a week. So he really kept busy, and when he went to work at hill field by this time he was secretary of the musicians union, and also playing jobs and had his own band. He went into the Berthana for one night, that lasted something like eleven or thirteen years, once a week and people loved his band. CT: Yeah, I‘ve seen pictures of it, it’s a beautiful band. RR: I’d say, “Dad how can you stand that music,” and of course I’d be talking about Gandem Borrow and who’s that guy that had a TV show for years? 24 CT: Lawrence Welk. RR: I couldn’t stand Lawrence Welk, now I can. That man was a business man that knew his audience and knew how to get them. I said, “How can you stand that and how can you play that kind of music?” He just looked at me and said, “Its easy son,” and he’d rub his thumb against the tip of his fingers, cause he was making money. In fact before he died he was playing at weddings for the grandchildren of the people he had played for earlier. CT: Well he played music around here for a long time. RR: Oh yah. CT: When did he die? RR: I don’t know the exact year, maybe about 1994 CT: Really, that recently, and he was playing right until the end? RR: Yeah, and it was fun because I studied music I wanted to be a music major, until I found out I didn’t have the proper background. Well I took a class from Linroy Robinson in theory and to me when he said play a 7th chord, that meant major 7th; and when they played what they called a minor 7th, that was a dominant 7th, and a minor 7th chord was a chord with the third in it. It was way over my head I quit, and went over to speech and drama. My dad knew nothing about musical theory and he’d say, “Ron how can I get to one key to another,” and I’d tell him what chord to play to go into another key. CT: Well you’re all about theory, I know you make my head spin every time. RR: Well I have a marvelous time with it. 25 CT: I can tell you do. When you were working down on 25th Street did you ever meet Annabelle Weekly, did you talk with her at all? RR: No. CT: Not at porters and waiters? RR: Not that I know of. She might have been there and I might have met her but at that time I was there to play music and that was basically it, I’d say hello to people and get along with them. CT: Well how did you get a gig like that? RR: It just happened. They needed a piano player, they needed a band, they’d call me. I had trios and quartets. CT: So you were known in town as a piano player just because it’s a small town. Yeah get that Ross guy he plays piano. RR: Well they knew my dad, and then I started playing in bands in junior high and I was a singer. I used to go out doing “God Bless America” to the tabernacle and places like that so I was well known there. I was well known as a debater also. Then I went into radio at KLO and so they got my name that way. That’s all. CT: I got to ask you because everybody asks me. You were down here on lower 25th Street and you lived here during the era, was there a tunnel under 25th Street? RR: Not that I know of, I’ve heard stories about going through the walls and things like that to escape from the bullies. But I don’t know, I never saw any of them, I was never under those circumstances, but I would suspect anything. It was quite a wild place and just the fact that I was down here playing and that I played in dance bands I was not socially acceptable. Besides that I was a debater and I 26 was a year behind them as age goes so I was socially backward and obnoxious, in fact I was argumentative all the time. But that was the training that we had. CT: Yeah you mentioned that being a musician made you socially unacceptable this is to the rest of white society? RR: Yes, but with black people I got along great, just as I did later when I was in the army. Soon as they found out I was a piano player and I played popular music why hey, the door was open and that was great. I got to live in two worlds easily, and no problem at all. CT: That’s fascinating I never thought of music as that kind of a bridge but it makes perfect sense. RR: Yeah easily and then when I went into television that was an interesting experience because I’d never been around music and I didn’t know how to treat them. So I was going to be with live kids, seventy five kids every afternoon five days a week for two and a half hours. How do I treat children? Well I had a couple of good directors that said never stand above them and talk get down on their level. The only thing I got along with besides older people were my dogs, so I treated children like I treat my dogs. They understand my physical language and they understand the tone of my voice, not necessarily the words, and children and I got along great. CT: Now you know in fact all the black people lived on the west side of town, now were there more black people in town then, then there are now? 27 RR: Oh there were a lot of them because of their working through the railroad and we were the railroad center stone, lots of black people. Other people might have had problems with them, I didn’t, I was a musician I had access anyway I wanted. CT: Yeah, that’s just fascinating to me. RR: The other guys in the band they had the same thing. Of course piano players have an inside track because you could be playing the piano and talk to somebody and they liked keyboard players. CT: So you talked with the other guys in the band no problems? RR: Oh yeah, no problems. CT: That is interesting. Well Ron I’m running out of good questions for you and we’ve been doing this for about an hour. RR: Well, it’s been fun. Thank you. 28