Title | Perry, Bruce OH12_049 |
Creator | Weber State University, Stewart Library: Oral History Program. |
Contributors | Perry, Bruce, Interviewee; Trentleman, Charlie, Interviewer |
Collection Name | Business at the Crossroads-Ogden City Oral Histories |
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-wast and north-south rail lines, business and commercial houses flourished as Ogden became a shipping and commerce hub. |
Abstract | The following is an oral history interview with Bruce Perry, conducted circa 2013 by Charlie Trentleman. In this interview, Bruce discusses his father's floral shop and other memories involving the city of Ogden, Utah. |
Image Captions | Bruce Perry Circa 2013; Bruce Perry Circa 2013 |
Subject | Central business districts--Utah--Ogden; Twenty-fifth Street (Ogden, Utah); Photography |
Digital Publisher | Special Collections & University Archives, Stewart Library, Weber State University. |
Date | 2013 |
Temporal Coverage | 1915; 1916; 1917; 1918; 1919; 1920; 1921; 1922; 1923; 1924; 1925; 1926; 1927; 1928; 1929; 1930; 1931; 1932; 1933; 1934; 1935; 1936; 1937; 1938; 1939; 1940; 1941; 1942; 1943; 1944; 1945; 1946; 1947; 1948; 1949; 1950; 1951; 1952; 1953; 1954; 1955; 1956; 1957; 1958; 1959; 1960; 1961; 1962; 1963; 1964; 1965; 1966; 1967; 1968; 1969; 1970; 1971; 1972; 1973; 1974; 1975; 1976; 1977; 1978; 1979; 1980; 1981; 1982; 1983; 1984; 1985; 1986; 1987; 1988; 1989; 1990; 1991; 1992; 1993; 1994; 1995; 1996; 1997; 1998; 1999; 2000; 2001; 2002; 2003; 2004; 2005; 2006; 2007; 2008; 2009; 2010; 2011; 2012; 2013 |
Medium | oral histories (literary genre) |
Spatial Coverage | Ogden, Weber County, Utah, United States; Pleasant View, Weber County, Utah, United States |
Type | Text; Sound |
Access Extent | PDF is 27 pages; Audio clip is an WAV 00:01:41 duration, 18.5 MB |
Conversion Specifications | Filmed using a Sony HDR-CX430V digital video camera. Sound was recorded with a Sony ECM-AW3(T) Bluetooth microphone. Transcribed using Express Scribe Transcription Software Pro 6.10 Copyright NCH Software. Audio Clip was created using Adobe Premiere Pro; Exported as custom Waveform audio |
Language | eng |
Rights | Materials may be used for non-profit and educational purposes; please credit Special Collections & University Archives, Stewart Library, Weber State University. For further information: |
Source | Perry_Bruce_OH12_049 Oral Histories; Special Collections & University Archives, Stewart Library, Weber State University. |
OCR Text | Show Oral History Program Bruce Perry Interviewed by Charlie Trentleman Circa 2013 Oral History Program Weber State University Stewart Library Ogden, Utah Bruce Perry Interviewed by Charlie Trentleman Circa 2013 Copyright © 2023 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, MortonThiokol, 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: Perry, Bruce an oral history by Charlie Trentelman, circa 2013, WSU Stewart Library Oral History Program, University Archives, Stewart Library, Weber State University, Ogden, UT. iii Bruce Perry circa 2013 Bruce Perry circa 2013 Abstract: The following is an oral history interview with Bruce Perry, conducted circa 2013 by Charlie Trentleman. In this interview, Bruce discusses his father’s floral shop and other memories involving the city of Ogden, Utah. CT: This is Charlie Trentleman I’m interviewing Bruce Perry and we’re talking about his father, Lester Perry and tell me a little bit about your dad. BP: Well my dad was born in 1889 so that puts me going back a long ways as far as some stories. Unfortunately, I don’t know all the stories that I’d like to know. My dad, I’m his second family, his first wife died. My half siblings from his first marriage are now dead. My sister just retired from her job at McKay-Dee and so a lot of this is things that I’ve heard or things that I can remember people talking about. CT: I’m going to come over here so I can see you. BP: The photography thing is what’s fascinating too. To see photos that span a long period of time because he bought the camera in 1950 and I think it says so in his diary. He used that camera because there’s pictures of me and my sister when we’re ten, twelve years old, so it was around a long time taking a lot of different photographs of different things. It’s still not a complete photographic history of things I’ve heard about, but it’s really neat to look back at that and how great the photographic technology was then. I know there’s a comment and it may be in the diary or someplace else I’ve read, where he hid something about when he was taking a picture and piled it up and said, “Some photographer huh?” So he had things like that but he was an artist. He operated Harrisville Brickyard for a long period of time before 1915, I don’t know when he started there. But 1929 1 when the depression hit, that pretty much ended that because he had to lay off all the workers and there was no money. The banks closed down and then he couldn’t pay anybody anything. So it was over. CT: You were telling me that he bartered bricks for a while is that right? BP: He lucked out having the kilns full, ready to fire, and when the depression hit apparently it must have been instantaneous. I mean all of a sudden it was just over. So there was no warning particularly, and having those kilns full he and one other person managed to fire either all or most of the kilns at least that were full of brick. So he used brick to barter for things that he needed during the depression. He was from Slaterville and that’s where the family was from. So he had a lot of relationships everywhere. He lived in Ogden at that time and he was a really neat guy. I mean just the little snipits that I read in the diary he’s taking art classes, he’s going to the movies. He mentions what the name of the movie is and it’s neat to see that. CT: What year does this start? BP: 1915, it goes for a few pages and he’s talking a lot about what’s going to happen with the situation overseas and the possibility of war. One of the notable things in there that I chuckled at was he didn’t know whether it was better to let Germany win or England to win. He wasn’t sure of either one of them. But he talks a lot about the Kaiser and what’s going on over there. CT: When I was looking for this wreck, the newspaper is full of war news, in fact this was not on page one in the newspaper, page one was full of war news. Germany was doing this and Poland was doing that and the Russians were doing this and 2 France and England were doing this because the war was getting cranked up. Back then it was not a given that we were going to join on England’s side because there were cities in this country where German was the first language, England was the second. Milwaukee had newspapers in German, it was not a given, not at all. BP: So to see him talk about those things, and unfortunately as I was growing up those stories didn’t get passed on to me. There wasn’t a lot of communication from the first family to me and my sister. So I feel like I’ve got some holes there that probably will never get filled but there’s enough. When the brickyard was finally not a possibility during the 1900’s he moved to Pleasant View and bought a 15-acre farm. His passion was not to be a business man, I think in his heart he wanted to be an artist. He wanted to grow things and that’s what he started. He had the farm and he started to plant flowers and ended up operating a flower shop in Ogden, but he had already established essentially a nursery operation on that farm. All kinds of flowers that was his passion. He went to florist school in Denver, I remember him telling me that. He was a painter in his late years, taking classes from B.Y.U. and up at Weber State. Business wasn’t his forte because he was in a sense too generous. I think he gave away more flowers than he ever sold, I’m not sure. CT: In the flower business that’s a tough way to make a living. BP: Yes, but when I was growing up I made a lot of trips with him to Salt Lake, to the wholesale florist to bring flowers back. He started out on Washington at the old checkerboard market, just north right across the street from where that Mormon 3 Temple is. Then he moved over on to Grant Avenue by Tom Poorman’s and J.B. Marsh’s and Carpenter Paper, they were all down there. CT: Now that would’ve been on Grant between 24th and 25th? BP: Yes. CT: Okay, what year would that have been? BP: It was in the 1950’s, I was a bit of a help so I’m sure I was ten or twelve so that would’ve been around 1951, 1953. CT: So he was in his older years then because you said he was born in what year? BP: In 1889. CT: Wow. So he was in his 60s when he did that. Okay I was under the impression that he had his shop downtown when he took the pictures in the streetcar, but no because he was just a young guy when he took pictures of the streetcar. BP: Yes, it was his second life in a way. I never knew when I was growing up who the Shaw’s were. He’d always talk about my uncle Austin Shaw and I never knew who the Shaw’s were. Well finally it came to light that his first wife was Pearl Shaw, but he never talked about it to me. In those generations I guess you didn’t talk about some of those things. CT: Some people did and some people didn’t in that generation. I had the same problem in my family. My parents had this whole life before I was born that I never knew much about. They were these closed mouth Germans, these northern Germans and they just never told us. That’s why I made it a policy to write up some of the family history every year for my kids at Christmas and that way something gets passed down. I write it up and illustrate it with pictures in the 4 family album and everything and its great fun too and a cheaper Christmas present. BP: Good idea. CT: Oh absolutely, it’s the one they wait for the most. BP: That’s part of the reason why this photograph and the other stuff that we find, I want it to be available for my kids, I want it to be available for them and taken care of. They can find it and hear about where it’s at and hear what stories we’ve got and read about them. It’s kind of great fun to say, “Boy you know he led a hell of a life.” I mean it was really something. CT: Now Mrs. Shaw was his first wife. Now didn’t you say she died? BP: Yes, she apparently had a really bad heart and I had two older half-brothers and two half-sisters and a half-sister was the youngest. She was 16 when her mother died, I think 16, I could be wrong. She just died here a few months ago finally. So all that family now is gone. The Shaw’s, Austin Shaw had something to do with, maybe quite a bit to do with Ogden Blueprint. I think he may have, but I don’t know if he owned it, I don’t know what the relationship was there, but I know he was involved with it because that’s where we would see Uncle Austin every now and then. So the Shaw’s, that group of Shaw’s was his first wife’s family. There’s a lot of family photos that you’ll see in the Salt Lake bunch I haven’t brought up yet. Some of them are pretty interesting old shots. CT: Oh they’re gorgeous, we were just looking at the ones you gave us already. We were looking at those and just the pictures of the kids in the fields and the buildings and the equipment it’s all just gorgeous to look at. 5 BP: It’s neat. CT: It’s just so fascinating to look back and see the fashions and to see the normal life that they led. That’s the thing that gets lost to history is the normal life. If you go to a museum and you see a suit of armor it’s always really fancy, that’s the show stuff, that’s the stuff that got saved. Normal stuff, worn out and thrown away and melted down, that’s what gets lost. That’s why I love this. All those guys standing around and you look at it and they’re all very well dressed. BP: Oh yes, I mean my dad had a hat on all the time. I mean that’s just what you did, you dressed up. CT: Yeah everybody here is wearing a suit coat and good pants and good shoes and you notice they’ve all got white collars. They all have collars and that’s just normal, everyday how people dressed. Not like now, t-shirts and jeans. So it’s a whole window, it’s a time machines. BP: The steam engine they just brought in here, I can’t remember what number the steam engine is. CT: I think it was the 844. BP: Yes, and people crowded around to see that, but they didn’t understand what was there before, how massive the railroad operation was in Ogden City. I mean it was just huge. People as well as equipment, a round house and all the repair facilities. It was a big deal and they don’t remember that of course, but some do. CT: Some do, like that older gentleman that came in on Tuesday in the afternoon, __ Knopper, I think you met him briefly. Didn’t you? Oh maybe you had left before he got here. He’s the guy that scanned all your pictures. Neat guy, I interviewed 6 him for one of these and back in the 1950’s he worked in the commissary and laundry building here. BP: That’s this building right here. CT: The old laundry building over there, did the laundry for the entire Union Pacific Railroad. I mean they brought everything here, linens, bedding everything came. The commissary building that’s not here anymore, that’s where all the food for all the cars came from and just the amount of laundry. Car loads of this stuff, we’re talking train car loads of laundry everyday coming in here and going out again. It was huge. BP: Yes, it was big. Ogden was fairly prosperous as a town because of it. So it was well done. CT: Do you have any idea what your dad would’ve been doing downtown the day this happened or did he have business downtown? 1915 that’s when he was working in the brickyard wasn’t it? BP: Yes, he was doing brick business. In addition to operating the brick yard he also had to go out and sell brick or attempt to sell brick to contractors so it could’ve been something like that. He even took trips in to Idaho to sell brick. He took the train up so he was doing that sort of thing. I know he made trips to Salt Lake and Provo to their facilities, their brick operations. CT: Just happened to be downtown when the streetcar come loose, wow. BP: There’s a part of that story that’s really neat and that’s why the guy’s got off that car in the first place because the sander wasn’t working on the other streetcar because of slick leaves. 7 CT: Is that what it was? Leaves on the track? BP: Leaves on the track they get wet, yes, it’s like grease. The Bamberger used to run up through Pleasant View and there’s some hills and I remember my oldest cousins, telling about going up and greasing the Bamberger rails so the train couldn’t get up the damn track. So when I read that about the slick leaves it just brought that back and I can remember them telling that story. I can’t remember who exactly was doing that, but somebody raising hell by greasing the rails. You hear funny things that jolt a memory from somewhere. My dad was also very, very involved in boy scouts and 4-H club, big time. He was on the counsel and of course because he was involved, I was involved. Well you just were a scout in those days, but his 4-H work was really pretty neat. My mom too was involved in that and he had a 4-H Club and gardening was a big project. I raised sugar beets for crops as a project, but he was involved in that before I was born because my half sister and brother were all involved in 4-H. There’s a lot of photographs or some photographs that the extension service has of my sister doing 4-H work. He had a 4-H Club besides me and my sister, but another group of kids and two of the kids in his 4-H Club were black kids. Their last name was Williams and they lived in Harrisville I think. This was probably the first black kids in 4-H and he got into a little bit of a tussle over that. Some other parents didn’t want that to happen. CT: Didn’t want the kids in 4-H? 8 BP: Didn’t want the kids in 4-H because they were black. I can just remember he said, “They can go to hell. You know these kids are in my 4-H Club. They can just go to hell.” CT: The parents can go to hell. BP: Yes the parents can just go to hell. I mean these kids are just like any other kids. He was one of the most tolerant, forgiving guys. He just was, that’s why he didn’t make any money. He just was not well off in that sense. CT: Yeah you were telling me about the coat. BP: Oh the coat story, I sat and watched that and I thought that was interesting. CT: Now that was at the flower shop? BP: Yes, the flower shop right on Grant and because you’re by 25th street you got all the train guys and people that come in on bus lines, Greyhound and Trailways. So you had a lot of people that were kind of on the down or hobos riding the rails. They came around a lot, it was amazing, but one day one of these guys came in and he needed money. He says, “I’ll sell you my coat if you’ll give me some money.” I don’t know, like three dollars or something I can’t remember how much it was. Its winter time and I thought this wasn’t much of a coat but it looks like all he’s got. So my dad told him he would buy the coat. He took the coat and gave him the money and the guy laughed and headed down toward Railways, right toward the corner of the bus station and my dad kind of looked out the window of the store and then headed out down the street, carrying the coat. He came back without it and I just remember him saying, “The damn fool can’t be without a coat,” so he give the guy back his coat and I’m sure he didn’t get the money 9 back. In fact, I know there’s no doubt he just gave him his coat. When the dump was, it’s probably over by King Fisher Trail maybe now or… CT: Yeah that’s where the landfill was. BP: The landfill, yes. CT: In West Ogden. BP: My dad would take me there and he’d scrounge for anything. At that time he could go to the dump, he’d come back with more shit than he took. CT: Sounds like me. BP: There was a hobo village there and I mean it was a big area. CT: Down there by Fort Buenaventura. BP: Ye and it was all built out of cardboard boxes. We went down there to that and this is where all the hobos live and there was a bunch of people down in there. It was pretty amazing, it was neat but kind of scary for me. CT: There still are occasionally hobo villages. That was one of the weirder stories I did. I went over there and did a story and made sure to take a photographer with me and I made sure he had a big tripod over his shoulder. Not that he needed a tripod but it looked imposing. I remember standing there listening to all these drunks telling stories and there wasn’t any problem if you couldn’t take notes fast enough because they just told the same story over and over again. If you didn’t get it the first time you’d get it the next time, but that was fun. I was told by other reporters, “Don’t ever go alone, you take a photographer with you and make sure he’s a big guy.” BP: Yes there’s camps in there. 10 CT: Those guys will act friendly until they’re not. BP: Maybe if there’s a gun range they’ll leave, I don’t know. CT: So your dad had his shop over on Grant in the 1950’s? BP: Across the street was Bamboo Noodle, Utah Noodle. CT: It’s under new ownership now by the way if you haven’t been in lately. BP: Oh really? CT: Yeah. BP: They opened it up? CT: It’s, oh its been open right along but… BP: Utah or Bamboo? Utah Noodle? CT: Bamboo Noodle on Grant between 24th and 25th. Yeah it was kind of a rundown place for a long time and it’s under new ownership now. They completely cleaned it up and redecorated and everything. My friend Larry Carr, he highly recommended it for Thai food because Larry’s a connoisseur of Thai food. We went there and they’re open in fact and it was excellent. I strongly recommend it. BP: Good because I love Thai food. CT: In fact, if you want to we can go up there for lunch. You know it was excellent food. They’re very nice people. They said Larry’s in there about once a week. BP: A new home. Speaking of that I’m going to recommend a place. CT: Okay. BP: Up 26th street two doors above Harrison there’s a little coffee shop. CT: Yeah, Caffe Mercantile. BP: Love it, just went there the first time the other day, I love it. It’s a great place. 11 CT: A great little place, its got good light and everything. BP: I like that place. No parking but other than that it works. Yes, so you know my dad was an interesting guy. CT: Well how long did he have a shop downtown here in Ogden? About when to when? BP: He sold it in, it was either 1962 or 1963. CT: He opened it in the 1940’s? BP: It would’ve been the late 1940’s on Washington and then moved over to Grant. I can’t remember when that happened and it was called Sunshine Flowers. He was in competition with Jimmy’s, Ogden City Floral, all those guys. He was a good florist. My mom taught me how to pin boutonnieres on wedding people when I was a little kid. CT: Well, if you’re going to be a good florist first you have to be an artist and you just have to decide to do it with flowers. My son is the floral designer over at Olive and Dahlia if you’ve ever been in there. BP: I haven’t been but Barbara’s has and what’s the gal that women create magazine, she’s here in town? CT: Oh the lady that owns the upstairs at Olive and Dahlia. BP: Yes, anyway between that and all of these new things that’s going, because Barb quilts and so she is into that. CT: Well if she ever goes into Olive and Dahlia and sees this really, tall hairy thing behind the counter that’s Jeremy, that’s my kid. It’s kind of interesting his story, he was the kid who got F’s in school except for art class. He always got an A in 12 art and in fact he’d just skip all the other classes and hang around the art studio all day. He was out of a job and looking for something to do down in Phoenix and he just happened to walk into a flower shop and just wanted a job sweeping up the place. He just needed work and he started talking with the owner and started talking, “I like to do this with art and that with art. I could do this with flowers and that with flowers.” He’d never done flowers before. The next thing you know he’s hired by the place learning the flower business and he just turned out to be a natural. So he pretty much designs art, flowers just happen to be a good medium for him, but he does gorgeous stuff. It’s just amazing. BP: You know I’m fascinated, I love flowers, I love them. I love to grow flowers. It’s in my blood. CT: You should go meet Jeremy and talk flowers with him sometime. BP: Yes I should. CT: I wonder if I can find some of his creations here. BP: They doing weddings and all that sort of stuff? CT: Yeah he does weddings. BP: It’s a great business. CT: It is, it really is and that’s him. He’s got a website that has some of his goals, which is to never do anything that could be confused with the standard floral stuff. So he’ll do roses if you insist, but he’s really into these exotics and botanical stuff or this tropical stuff. BP: See I’m a botanical guy. My degree was in forestry but my love was botany, botanical and all the stuff associated with it. So I loved it. 13 CT: Well that must have been interesting running a flower shop right next to the evil 25th street if you will. Did that ever-hurt business? BP: No, I don’t think so. You know 25th street, I don’t think it was nearly as evil out on the street as everybody thought it was, I went down to Uke’s Café when I’m a kid and my dad was never concerned about me being down there. My mom was concerned because it was an evil place, but not that I would get hurt because well things were different then. Kids were pretty immune and I was a little bit older, and I knew when to come home, when to come back up the street. CT: People didn’t worry about their kids being kidnapped or anything. BP: No, no. CT: Ward Armstrong said the same thing because they had Armstrong’s Sporting Goods right around the corner from your shop. He said, “Yeah my parents never worried about me. There was the time I was walking down the street or my brother was walking down the street and saw a guy come staggering out of the Porter’s and Waiter’s Club with a knife stuck in him and died right there on the curb.” So that made him kind of leery about going down to the express office, but he said, “Nobody ever hurt the kids on 25th street. There were news boys on the street all the time.” They never had a problem, the kids were safe around town. BP: I can’t remember what barber shop I’d go to, but I’d have to do down and get my hair cut. There was a barber shop right there so I’d get my hair cut. It just didn’t seem unsafe. CT: Do you remember Willie Moore’s barber shop on the corner? 14 BP: Oh absolutely. Maybe that might have been where. I don’t know if I got my hair cut there, I doubt it, but it was some place along there. CT: Well there were several barber shops along the way. BP: What else? Of course, Armstrong’s, oh I did stop and talk to Ward on my way out and we had some connections there because he was so involved with the coaches and the people that were coaching. My cousin, Tom, coached at Bonneville for years and years and of course worked really well, just loved the guy. My daughter had cancer and never made it through, but died and the very same day same hour Tom had a heart attack and died. So I lost a cousin and a daughter all within an hour. CT: That’s a kick in the head. BP: Yes, you get slammed. So he knew Tom and Wade Cottle, a lot of the teachers that were my teachers and people I knew. Of course, he knew Mac Wade really well, but Mac Wade’s deputy for a while was Jay Reese later on. Then Jay became a teacher and then a school administrator. He lives in Pleasant View, a great guy. CT: Now did you say you knew Mac Wade? BP: Oh yes you bet. There’s a photo of some scouts and Mac Wade is in that group, but I can’t tell you who he is, which one. CT: Is he one of the scouts? BP: He’s one of the scouts. CT: Really? 15 BP: The reason is, he was in my dad’s scout group. My mom was also his school teacher when she was very young and Mac was a shithead. I mean not a bad guy but Mac was Mac. I like Mac Wade he was one of the most likable guys and he of course was raised in Pleasant View. CT: So why was he a shithead? BP: Oh well, he was full of life. He wasn’t a bad kid at all, but he always had something to say just like he was when he was older. I like Mac, he was good. Also, Shorty Thompson they were my two favorite guys. CT: I know Shorty Thompson. BP: Shorty was a Pleasant View guy, horse trader, dog catcher and his place was immediately adjacent to my dad’s place in Pleasant View. He was notorious, everybody knew Shorty Thompson and had dealings with Shorty Thompson. Trading horses or bullshitting, it just depended. Shorty was one of the nicest guys and if you ever wanted to know someone full of shit, man he was. I heard the place that he owned adjacent to my dad’s place when I was growing up belonged to Mark Chandler a guy from North Ogden and he rented it out to a family named Walkers. They didn’t have as my dad says, a pot to piss in or a window to throw it out of. They didn’t have any money and it ended up they moved over to North Ogden and left the house empty and all of a sudden Shorty Thompson shows up and he owns the place. I understand it he won it in a poker game from Mark Chandler, that’s the story. I know it was some damn thing like that. He ran the animal control for Weber County for a long time right there at his place. He always had peacocks, animals and rodeo stuff going on so he was 16 a neat guy. He got Alzheimer’s and didn’t want to burden anybody and ended up committing suicide and I happen to be on the phone with a friend of mine who would hear the scanner go. He says, “I just heard the police called to Shorty’s.” Shorty killed himself. They had his funeral out there in North Ogden and I wanted to go at least to the viewing. The wait to get into that viewing was over three hours, I mean there was people lined up for blocks. CT: When would that have been? BP: It would’ve been fifteen years ago. CT: I don’t remember that specifically. BP: That was part of my neighborhood that I grew up with. School was always a bugger because my mother was a teacher. She was a teacher at North Ogden Elementary for a while and that’s where I was going to school. Geez if I made one little move wrong I’d get in trouble. Man, there was no tolerance for anything bad in school. Then she taught at Plain City forever on Wilson Lane. CT: Now what was your mom’s name? BP: Helen Budge, Helen Budge Perry and that’s tied into the Budge’s and the Cragun’s. I think there was some polygamy or something, you can’t figure that stuff out. There was another name that came up, Barb says, “You need to mention Tim Erwin.” I says, “Oh okay.” I know Tim too. CT: Really? BP: Yes, I knew, we got acquainted at the… CT: Now you’re talking about the Tim Erwin that lives on 35th street? BP: No, I’m talking about your son’s… 17 CT: Yeah, the one that lives on 35th street. BP: We got acquainted at the U U Church. CT: Oh okay. I know Tim real well. BP: Oh yes you do. CT: Yeah, he’s a neat guy. BP: Oh yes. CT: I keep telling people this is a small town and everybody knows everybody. BP: Yes, it doesn’t take long to hook. CT: Well that’s interesting. Yeah where’d you meet Tim? Oh at the church. BP: At U.U. I was way too much involved in the U U Church [inaudible] when they got it started. Oh I’ve got another item and I’ve got to dig it out but I know exactly where it’s at. I have a silver dollar that has a bullet indentation in it. CT: Really? BP: It’s wrapped up in a paper with a story that my dad wrote. Out of the clay pits at the brickyard the guys for entertainment would go out and shoot. CT: Really? BP: Dad said they would throw silver dollars up and see if they could hit them in the air. He says every now and then they would hit one, but anyway out in the clay pit he found one of the silver dollars with the indentation in it. He picked it up out of the clay pit, he’s had it forever. He gave it to me, it’s wrapped up in a piece of paper with the story that he wrote about the damn dollar. CT: That’s a treasure. BP: Oh yes it’s so cool. 18 CT: Never mind that it’s a silver dollar, it’s treasure. BP: Oh it’s the story he wrote. 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