Oral History Program Althea Roberts Interviewed by Jordan Chavez and Elliot McNally 8 August 2013 21 August 2013 Oral History Program Weber State University Stewart Library Ogden, Utah Althea Roberts Interviewed by Jordan Chavez & Elliot McNally 8 August 2013 21 August 2013 Copyright © 2013 by Weber State University, Stewart Library iii 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: Roberts, Althea, an oral history by Jordan Chavez & Elliot McNally, 8 August & 21 August 2013, WSU Stewart Library Oral History Program, University Archives, Stewart Library, Weber State University, Ogden, UT. Althea Roberts August 8, 2013 1 Abstract: The following is an oral history interview with Althea Roberts. The first portion of this interview was conducted by Jordan Chavez on August 8, 2013. The second part of the interview was conducted on August 21, 2013 by Elliot McNally. In both interviews, Althea discusses her life in Ogden and 25th Street. AR: Now we didn’t take any pictures because we didn’t have any cameras in the war time and you didn’t have any film. The service men would sneak you a film sometimes and I don’t know if they’d get it at the PX or where they’d get it, but they’d bring you film. Film only costs 25 cents for a film, but you didn’t have 25 cents, the bus only costs 5 cents to ride and you didn’t have 5 cents. Nobody had any money. Period. It was just nobody had any money, you just walked everywhere. I had a lot of these pictures out. My brother who was in the war, they all were at war, everybody was at war. Everybody. Oh now this is an interesting picture. This is a picture of the railroad when it was at the—the railroad started at the mouth of Ogden Canyon, I mean Weber Canyon, and that’s where the center was before Brigham Young gave them the proper data to start putting the railroad down here. So, my dad was commissioned to paint and here’s the picture that he painted. The big collection that the college has of the early days of the railroad and the college has this, all these paintings they commissioned and had them hanging in the library for years. That’s the one my dad did, he did a lot of it, he did. JC: They’re very good. He’s very talented. 2 AR: And they were big, bigger than the ocean, they were, most of them were as big as that picture and that picture put together. JC: Oh yeah. AR: And a little bit deeper. One of the very earliest memories, the good early memories, was about a little man who was a china-man. He has his garden about where 12th Street goes down to the river. There was no highway that went out that way, you know. My brother showed me where his farm was but he had a great big hand cart and he would come into town, in the morning, pushing this big hand cart. He would get up really early, and had vegetables in his hand cart. He had Okra, and it was on a bed of—there wasn’t such a thing as ice cubes or anything, he had gunny sacks over the top of it and as soon as we’d see him coming, we’d go running. We’d holler “The Chinaman’s here, the Chinaman’s here!” And the ladies would come out and they would buy things. They always bought fresh vegetables from him. I remember mother buying Okra. I hated her to buy the Okra, I didn’t like it. But, then he couldn’t speak English, but he’d keep his money in his hair. I haven’t thought about this in a long time. He’d get the money out and give it to the people and get them change and give it to the people. And whenever you’d put money in your mouth, mother would say: “Don’t put that money in your mouth, you remember it’s been in the Chinaman’s hair.” Anyways, that was one of the very early memories was the Chinaman. When I was at my brother’s farm, he said look. I was looking from the east, I was looking down, he said: “You see down by the river, those are the gypsies.” I didn’t even have a clue we had gypsies, but we did and they lived down there, by the 3 river. They undoubtedly were among the people wandering around and they probably just infiltrated in the community because I don’t think there are any gypsies around here now. But that’s where they lived and because my brother was older, he and my other brother would go down and see when the tramps would come in on the trains and they would talk to him. Now, you wouldn’t dare do that but I even had an episode. Down in Dutchhallow, it’s where the Bamberger tracks went down. They went across Wall Avenue and where 30th Street goes into Nyes Corner. Nyes Corner is 1900 and where the junction goes off into Ogden. My family owned that whole territory. There was nothing but the dump yards on that side and the sand hills on this side. Before they came out into Roy, I had never even been to Roy, it was just a little tiny polka dot. That area, Dutchhallow was where the Dutch people lived, down by the river and all through there. Very respectable people lived there. So, when the railroad came through the tramps would be on the railroad. So this was at the end of The Depression sort of, and I was about 10 when the service men finally petitioned and got there bonus they were promised from World War I. My brothers would go down to the river and catch little frogs and get cotton buds to blow, you know, at other kids. Everybody had a little grey pipe. Now the pipe came in a plumbing kit, they were about this long and nobody seemed to use them in the plumbing kit, and so every plumbing kit had one. And they would blow the cotton buds through these little pipes. So the boys would go down and get the cotton buds off the trees. Well, the tramps would be coming in 4 and they would come across these tracks and get off the train and go down by the river because the dump yards were right there; they would go and salvage in the dump yards. They would make stews and things down there. Now this particular incident, I was probably eight, maybe nine, we were told to never go down there, we were just kids, you know. We would go down on Easter sometimes, across the Bamberger tracks on Wall, where the sand hill started, to eat if we wanted. And the rest of that was sand hills but if you got up into the sand hills you’d get lost. So, a bunch of the kids on the block decided we would go down to get some cotton buds. Now remember that girls did not ever wear pants in those days, they wore dresses. The boys were going to climb up the trees and I was supposed to get the cotton buds when they cut them off and dropped the branches. Anyway, all of a sudden over the hill, coming from this way were three tramps. They came across and sat on the bridge and the river was here, we were down in the hollows here. We were aware of them, they just sat there and watched what we were doing, you know, and pretty soon it changed and I was aware that it changed. I don’t remember what they were calling down, but they were calling something that made me alarmed. Now at that age, I was not familiar with what men would do, I was just a little kid, but I was aware that it wasn’t right. And the boys were up the trees, and so, I was down in there by myself and one of them started to walk down by the river. Here’s the river and here we were. He started to walk down this way and another one started to walk along the tracks this way. If I had run this way, I’d gone right into the hollows, where there was no escape. I couldn’t run this way, 5 there was the river. I really, really do feel that the lord prompted me on what to do because the minute he started down this thing, I knew I had to get outta there and I ran this way up this hill and there was already a tramp coming this way down the track and I ran this way, climbed through a barbed wire fence, tore the whole back of my dress out, and ran the tracks and I beat him. He ran after me and I beat him. I was just little and I think now of it and I get chills because I know what they would’ve done. I never did tell my mother. The boys, they didn’t hurt the boys. When the boys came back, I remember one of them said: “Yay Althea!” That was all that was ever said, we never even discussed it. Why, I don’t think they ever told their mothers because we knew we weren’t supposed to be there in the first place. So the tramps were big, they’d come to your houses. I mean, there would be like 10 a day. We lived half a block below Grant and they would walk and go to your backdoor and just knock and mother would get so annoyed because it wasn’t just once, they would come all day long. One of them would come begging for food and she’d usually give them a piece of bread and a cup of coffee. This one day, one of them came to the back door, and I can remember mother going: “UGH.” And just took him out a cup of coffee, no bread. And so, he drank the coffee and came around the house, to the shady side of the house, our house faced east, and he came around to the front lawn and laid down on the grass. What he did was collapsed. But we didn’t know, we just thought he was laying there, you know, and all the kids were playing in front and my mother sighed and said: “Why didn’t you tell me he was out here.” We didn’t care but 6 anyway the police came and got him. I wrote a poem about that. I didn’t write it about the episode so much as I wrote it about the tramps. It won national prizes and is in the Library of Congress. JC: Wow, that’s really cool. AR: So the time, the Depression time, was vivid. Out on Washington Boulevard between about 30th, maybe it was 32nd, there was a big ballroom called Brown’s Palace and they had the Marathon Dancers. They had canned music of some kind, it was just blaring loud and they had bleachers and you could go in and watch the Marathon Dancers. Once in a while we would go over there and watch them but I didn’t like it because they were so exhausted and tired and hanging on each other, barely moving. You could hear this can music going on and that went on for a long time before the end of the war and that ended and nobody ever got any money from it. The one who stayed on their feet the longest would get $100. Never did, it just dissolved. So that was a big area that is gone and there were big homes along there. One belonged to the Farr’s and one belonged to the Kingi’s, one belonged to the, I forgot the name right now. They were big, they were mansions. It was the saddest thing in the world when they tore those down. The Bertha Eccles’ Hall is one of the few remaining homes that were like it. They were just mansions, big sandstone mansions. They tore them down. When we would have dances at the school we would, everybody danced, all the time. The reason I know I am in the wrong book is because I didn’t run across the pictures of the White City. The White City was owned by Harm Perry, 7 and everybody, everybody danced. And I’ve got pictures of that dancing and of the fall, and so when you had a dance, you went to dance. And you went to White City. Well, the White City was a dance hall and the Berthana was down 24th Street about across from the Episcopal Church there on that side, and it’s still there. But when the war came, they made that into a skating rink. So that people who didn’t dance went to the skating rink. And they would skate on that lovely, wonderful Berthana floor. Well anyone who danced went up to the White City to, to dance and I do have those pictures that I can show you of that. That’s where I met my husband. He had been in the Navy and came home right after the war and he was a musician. He lived in Star Valley but his folks have come down because Hill Field came in. When Hill Field started, I got a job out there. It was right after high school and you carpooled because there wasn’t any bus or anything that went out. So cars would go out and just park out in the fields. Then you had to walk about four blocks to get into the field, and then they had a big gate where they’d check you in. They had built one hangar at the time, just one hangar. And I worked close to that hangar. Well, everybody had moved down because the government gave Utah all these bases and they did that because everybody was a democrat, everybody. And the democrat party was under President Roosevelt and Utah was a minor little podunk place that was barely getting by by the skin of its teeth with agriculture. So out they came and found where Hill was an ideal place for an airbase, so they started with Hill, started with the arsenal purchase to make bullets; that was the first building. And then Hill came right next to it and 2nd 8 Street, which was a storage place, and then the Navy base, which is Freeport now, then Kearns, then Wendover. The government gave them all these bases because it was a crossroads. So my husband’s folks moved down into the area then to get work and everybody could get a job because it was war. Neil was gone with the Navy so his folks moved down here and so when he came home, he settled in. They lived in Washington Terrace and he started to go to school on the G.I. bill, by then I had met him. I had finished college already. I finished going to Weber and I had gone up to Utah State and I got a lot of that in. So, Grant Avenue was not even a paved highway, it was just a road and they had an oil truck that would come by and oil the road and they paved that with cement when I was in elementary school. So that would’ve been in about ’30-1932, or around then. And they took a section of the road at a time and they would have two big cement things that were turning and they built the forms and poured the cement and straightened it out. We were told in school: “Don’t you go near that cement. Don’t you put your initials in that cement. They’ll end up cartin’ you right off to jail.” And so we didn’t. But they built Grant Avenue all the way down and cemented it up to where it meets Riverdale. That’s the first and after it started to set up a little, they covered it with straw. It was kind of an orangey colored straw. And you couldn’t step on it. Boy if you stepped on it, it was just really an affair. Finally, after so long it was set up, then they says: “Okay, now you can walk across it.” The straw was already still on it and everybody played in the straw and on 30th Street. There were a couple of kids playing football out there and one of them fell off the side of it and broke his leg and, you know, it 9 was a big deal. That was when Grant Avenue became a thorough street. We had to cross it because we had to walk to Washington School. Washington School, then the Brown Palace was right next to it and all these big homes next to it. Also, there was a kid there whose folks owned the Noodle Parlor, which was by the Orpheum Theater. At the Boy’s Day Parade—everybody would be in town for this parade— students would march by schools. The drum chorus would have green ribbons down their pant legs and all the elementary schools had a drum chorus. And by the time they were in junior high, they had a band. And so, there would be thousands of kids, and everybody had a date. I had my first date when I was in third grade and it was from the Boy’s Day Parade. We went to a movie and after we left the movie, we walked home. Now mind you, you could go to the movie for a dime and you could buy three bars for a dime, and then we had a nickel left over to buy a hotdog on the way home. So we would walk down to Kramer’s to get a hotdog and then we would eat the candy bars and then my date and I went by the library and got pictures over there in the library and we busily picked every tulip on the library property and took them to our house. Third grade, so that would make us nine, maybe, nine. So anyways, that was the Boy’s Day Parade and they had that parade for years. That was long before Ogden High School was even thought of, because I remember the parade where they had a big bass drum and they beat the drum as they were going down and they would chant: “Boom, boom, boom, we need more room!” And that was before Ogden High School was started. They had a 10 picture in the paper of this girl showing the picture of Ogden High School. That was not the early days. The early days were long before then, where the Chinaman would come around, that was the early days. Now, they used to block off 32nd Street for sleigh riding and the kids would all go to 32nd Street and down that steep hill. There was enough snow that it was covered and you don’t see that kind of snow now. They would clean off the streets and when they would clean them they would have snow on each side of the street all the way to town. It was a lot of snow and everyone would sleigh ride in the streets and catch onto cars, which my brothers did all the time and my mother nearly died, but they did that all the time. And there was no Snow Basin. Snow Basin didn’t begin until; I got a picture of my brother and I when we first started to ski, and Snow Basin had just started and they used to just walk up Ogden Canyon. They would walk up, maybe they’d catch a ride. Then they’d walk up Wheeler’s Canyon, which is where the dam is, and there is a road that goes off this way, it goes over to Snow Basin. They would go through there and walk all the way over there to where Snow Basin is, and ski down the whole thing, clear down to the Ogden River. Now that was before I was in high school. The dam wasn’t built, remember the dam being built. When I was dating, that’s where everybody went was up the canyon to below the dam where everybody would have bonfires and roast weenies. That was before they built the power plant or anything. Used to have to cross the dam and go through a cave, a big cave, and the road wove around to Huntsville, but then they had to cover up the cave because they made the dam higher. The dam, I remember the dam 11 being built because we would go up and see the artesian wells. My mom and dad took us up, and here were these wells just coming out of the ground, and we would go over and get a cup of water and see the wells. Which are now capped and underneath the dam. Now I don’t know whether that water is being used but all through Weber Canyon, Ogden Canyon, it has to be the Ogden Canyon, are on a water system, which they’re changing now. The big, big pipe was monstrous, as big as this room probably, and it came all down the mountain because the railroad came down through there and we used to walk on that pipe, clear down to Getty. The dam was very instrumental because it gave everybody irrigation water and so I remember them building it, trying to get to the bedrock and trying to find where they could finally get it settled down. I don’t believe it was until close to the war time. Because when the war started I wasn’t even through high school. I can remember when our west coast was attacked. Nobody know even knows it was attacked but I heard it on the radio. Where the Japanese had sent submarines over and had shelled our coast. Now they talk about how atrocious it was to move the Japanese people from that coast inland but I was really glad they did. Now by this time I was old, I was in high school and you didn’t have news every five minutes on the radio and there was a television, but you had news occasionally, and I heard it and you never heard it again. But the government rounded up all the Japanese people on the coast and shipped them away, and boy, I clapped my hands, which wasn’t a good thing, but it was war time and we were fighting the Japanese and we had a whole coastline of 12 Japanese people. The war started so poorly, we lost everything. We didn’t have a practiced army or anything and they took the guys away after high school, every single boy, everyone. When I went to Weber State, I think there were nine, maybe seven, boys that had heart problems, and so when I went up there, there were no boys, until the Naval Cadets came. Then they brought in, on the north end of the old campus, just after Washington Boulevard, it was on 24th Street. So it had to be past where the USO was, there was one of these big beautiful homes, it was old and it was empty. So they made that into a dorm. And they brought in 90 Naval Cadets, who were flyers, to get their training at Hill Field. 30 would come in a month and 30 would come out a month, and they stayed three months. So that was the sum total of the men at Weber State College. They had their classes on the half hour, we had ours on the hour. But, guess what happened, every time you had any activity, the Naval Cadets were in invited and it was great because you always had a date and they lined you up by size, they took your name over and signed you up with a guy and then you had this dance. They call out his name and he’d come out, they’d call out your name and you’d come out. And then you’d get together and you always had a date and you always had guys at the activities and there weren’t any strings attached. It was great fun. So when I was going up to Weber State that was marvelous because they had a big obstacle course in-between where the gym and the institute and the educational building was. In the middle there was a big quad where, and they had this big obstacle course there and the guys were out there doing their 13 obstacle thing and guess where all the girls were, they were all flirting with the guys. You got so you missed classes to see these guys out there. And they were wonderful. They were smart, and they were really brilliant guys that were flyers. Sometimes you would walk into a building, the Moench Building, and they’d all be asleep on the floor because they were up really early, going to class and the gymnasium, where the swimming pool was. They’d swim also, they’d have classes in swimming. So we went in there one day, we had swimming class, we were all standing up on the diving board, of course were all girls, the bottom floor was for the men. But we were all standing on the diving board and somehow the timing got screwed up. Either we were late getting out of there or they were early and they bust in, the Cadets burst into the swimming pool and they were all stark naked. Some of them ran and jumped into the pool before they realized here we were, all these girls up on the diving board, and we were all just: “UGH,” you know. Well then they tried to get back out, through that door back into the locker room, well of course they were all pushing to get back in there. That’s a picture I’ll never forget, never forget. This big, blonde guy named Cordova, was right at the very back of the end and just pushing to get in and I could see his bare behind and he kept looking over the back of this shoulder, trying to get through that door. JC: You have some fun stories. AR: What a fun time it was in college because everyone always had a date, it was just a fun time. They made all these activities and they all centered around the 14 Naval Cadets. Big sleigh running parties and everybody would be there and food would be out and I had a wonderful time. JC: Sounds like fun. AR: Wonderful time. One of the girls, two of the girls, married Naval Cadets. One’s name was Ogla Hone and the others name was Bobby Dicker. Bobby Dicker still lives around here and her husband’s name was Eldritch and he was a Naval Cadet. I think he was from around here. So that’s a period of time that Weber State was very different. No boys, they had dances just after I graduated from Weber, they had a big dance where girls could ask a guy and he had to accept every girl. He had to take every one of those girls to the dance and dance in turn with each one of these girls. That was just before I went up to Utah state and Hill Field was going strong and I got a job at Hill Field, in order to get some money because that was just after the depression and nobody had money. In fact, the depression was a whole episode in itself, because of the tramps and because of the economy and because of 25th Street. Now there was a man named Kent Bramwell, and he ran for mayor with a guy named Welch and we had to write a paper on what we would do to clean up 25th, because 25th Street, I really do think the mafia was well into 25th Street. My mother would caution us to stay away from the building right before you get to the viaduct, on the east north corner right before you go into the viaduct, there is a big red building there. It was always empty, it had nothing in it, nothing. And my mother would say: “Stay away from that building. That building belongs to the 15 mafia,” which was teensters at the time and they had a big strike, a railroad strike about that time. We didn’t go down 25th Street, not because of the prostitutes, it was because of the gambling and the opium dens and there were opium dens. There we two Chinese laundries that Don tells us about, and when they finally made the move, the opium dens were below the Chinese places. They had clocks in each one where people could come up from the railroad because they were trying to use workers and they would come up and go down into the opium dens to be able to smoke their opium. So as children, we recognized that street as dangerous, not like it is now. I mean 25th Street now has got stores and they did build the bus terminal on the corner of Grant and there was a theater between there and the park and you didn’t even go to that theater, it was a no-no place. We just had to stay away from there. And it wasn’t until the war when you’d even walk down there. So 25th Street really was a bad street. So we had to write this paper on what would you do to clean up 25th Street. Because not only was 25th bad, but it effected the whole town because the railroad came in had to go up 25th Street to get where the commercial area was and, of course, you probably know that whole story of it becoming, Ogden was a melting town of the higher class and the lower class and still is. So, we had to write this paper: “What would you do to clean up 25th Street?” Kent Bramwell ran on that ticket that he was going to clean up 25th Street and get rid of the gambling, gangs and everything and he won, became the Mayor and Welsh, but he ran with him and everybody was so happy to see this young guy get in there. I 16 knew him really well, because he ran around with my brother-in-law Perry Levitt and he was not my brother-in-law then, he was my sister’s boyfriend and they were going to Weber, I guess they’d been to Weber State, because I was up there. So I knew Kent Bramwell and he tried very hard to get underneath, find, the police were involved and I really think the police were in on it. I think it was a corrupt thing. The city seemed to be involved in everything and they caught Kent Bramwell in a bribe. Now the bribe, they had him in a room, and I don’t know the whole story, even Perry did not know the whole story, but they had him in a room and I have a guess, now this is just my opinion and Perry’s opinion, that his life and his family’s life was threatened because the next morning he left town and joined the Navy and was gone. And that was really an episode. So when I had wrote this paper, I wrote: “They ought to take 25th Street and make it into a playground and make it into a place where everybody could go and have a date and it would be clean and they could have restaurants and places where people could go to movies and make it into a big atmosphere that cleaned up the mess that’s down there.” And that’s of course exactly what they’re doing. JC: Yeah, it is. AR: They began to change it when they built the Hilton hotel and built a couple of nice restaurants and that began to make the changes on 25th Street. Although I’m sure there are still corrupt places. On the south side of the street the blacks had dances and you could hear them dancing and just having fun and Mel, since Mel 17 was a musician and played with the dance bands, he didn’t ever play there because he was gone to war, but I have a brother-in-law who played drums and he played on the black side a lot. And so, they had big things going and the waiters had big thing like the waiters club over there where all the guys of the railroad, and they had a big laundry and the candy making factory and everything down there. How long have I been talking? JC: About an hour and 15. AR: Wow. JC: Are you exhausted? You had a lot of good stories. AR: Oh, and I do have a lot of good pictures I could show you or tell you about the stock yards and the building of the floats, I’ve got the pictures of some of the floats, my dad at one time built, he would try to get a float for the parade, the 24th parade and we built the floats down in the stock yards and he got maybe 15 dollars for building those floats. He would supply all the things and we tufted the tissue paper, we tufted to make letters, we put them on and we built the floats and this one year, Harm Peery had him build eight floats and he talks about this. He says that he built three so he must be right but I remember it to be more than that, they were the founding people that came into the United States. The Spanish element, Magellan and Cortez. He would build a float for each one of those. He painted all over those and they were the whole float. Also, my dad did the Fall Faces West, which was a community concert they’d have every year and they hired Igor Gorin to come in and sing the lead of Brigham Young and they had this big thing out in the stadium, and it was free. 18 The whole community could go to it and they had choirs and horses and everything, and my dad worked for that and he did that 7-8 weeks to build the flats to put on this big stage and he did it free. He didn’t get paid a penny to do that. It was community service that was done and those floats he used to do the floats for 10-15 dollars, and I used to help him down at the stockyards. JC: You had a lot of good stories. AR: So he was the art teacher and he also painted cars after school, he had a place, it’s where El Matador’s is now, they were barns and buildings there and across the street was Weber Central Dairy. Over on the side corner of Weber Central Dairy there was like a hose place and anybody, anytime, could go and turn on that spout and get a bottle full of buttermilk free, just turn it on and get buttermilk. Now how come people didn’t go and take gallon jugs, I don’t know but they didn’t. Maybe I was just too little to see or know but I remember that spout plain as day. You could get free buttermilk, and my dad painted cars right there. He sanded them by hand, we helped him, sand with water and sand paper. They’d sand the whole car, then he would spray it with the paint and then when it dried, he would hand stripe it with a little paint brush around the whole car and he got 10 dollars a car, it took him three or four days. There was no money, nobody had any money. You could buy a pair of shoes in Penny’s and they almost got them like they are now, they were a cad like, they had a strap and across the toe in canvas and you could buy them for 25 cents a pair. So, there just wasn’t any money, and if you went to a dance at school, it cost you a quarter to get into the dance and after the dance we would 19 go to Kay’s Noodle Parlor, cause you could get noodles for 15 cents a bowl. The school did the decorating, my dad did the decorating, of the halls of the gymnasium for the dances. So if you had 50 cents, you could take a date to the dance and go up and get a bowl of noodles. And to get 50 cents was not easy. JC: Yeah. AR: And we would go search in the empty gutters for beer bottles because you could go down to Nick’s Grocery Store and trade them in for three cents a bottle. And if you could find three, you could get to the movie. The depression time was, nobody had any money. They’d barter things people would grow in their garden. The church had a big garden up by the church house and I don’t know whether they used the city water or whether they used the Bishop’s water or what but everybody went up there and raked and had places and they raised squashes and carrots and tomatoes, and you could go over to that garden, work, and take home some groceries, because people didn’t have any money. My dad worked for a hundred dollars a month and he taught school and when they bought their house, they had a few closing costs or things in it, they had 99 cents down on their house. And they lived right next door to where Mr. Junk lived, who was one of the superintendents of the schools. And that is one of the reasons they bought the house because they knew that it was, you know, so you can’t understand what the depression was like. I do not remember ever having a dress that wasn’t a hand-me-down dress, ever. When I was going to school, mother would take the whole bunch of us up and we would get shoes, they were a good solid oxford. That was the only 20 kind we could have. And then by the time it got by the middle of the year, they were worn out. And so you would go to the dime store and buy a pair of 15 cent soles and my dad would take those and sand the bottom of our shoes, you know, sand them, and sand them, and then put this glue on, then put the sole on there and then he would hammer it down so that it would stay on and hundreds of kids were always walking to school with loose soles, they’d be flipping around their feet. People did not have money and you didn’t, couldn’t buy shoes. I bought shoes from Bueller, I worked for Dr. Swanson, who was a chiropodist, now this was when I was in college and he bought shoes that were the high brand Florsheim Dun and Bradstreet, Dun’s, I forgot the name now, he could buy the best shoes in town for $8. I remember buying a pair of Betty Doll patent leather shoes at Samuel’s, which was the most exquisite store in town, and I looked at those shoes for weeks before I dare buy them, and they were $12 and that was really something for me to buy a pair of $12. You could buy a pair of shoes for three dollars. Times were just really different. You worked for nothing, I worked for nine cents an hour. So it was just a little different. Well, I think I’ve held you for quite a while, shall I get those other pictures? 21 EM: This is Elliot McNally and we are here with Althea Roberts in her home on August 21st, this Wednesday, 2013. AR: This is the 21st?! EM: Yeah. AR: That’s my 63rd wedding anniversary. My husband brought me a couple of strawberries, I guess that’s why. I didn’t even realize it was my anniversary, which goes to show you, after that long of time you kind of forget. AR: Oh I thought I put a clip on it, I probably did. Here are all these service men that, look at all this section I got on the war. EM: Oh, wow. AR: That’s President Roosevelt and Churchill, and I’ve written about it. Those are the airplanes that flew into Hill. AR: There’s the hotel, Ben Lomond, where I met Van Johnson. This is the Orpheum theater right there. Look that’s President Bush and President Kennedy and President what his name. EM: Clinton. AR: That was me when I was your age. EM: Oh, wow, so beautiful. AR: Those were the Jews. Nobody can tell me there weren’t any Jews. And that’s the hotel Ben Lomond. And I’ll have to read to you from that, and that’s my poem about, all this is about war. EM: Is that the one that’s in Library of Congress? 22 AR: This has been published, it’s not a very good poem. The reason why I know is because I was taking a poetry class up at Utah State and the professor was very good and he liked my poetry, but I went to school when the guys got back from war. So the class was full and they really didn’t like the poem. So I have to explain a little about the war. Everything was just funny. It was always a, like a wisecrack, everybody had to be on top of it, you had to be tough. Like for instance, I tried to remember the conversation I had with Van Johnson and the only time we ever even brought it up was when we met and he, and I said: “Hi, my name is Althea Angland.” He said: “Wow, how did you ever get a name like that?” I said: “And you have to Al-thea-tomorrow and that’s the way you’ll remember my name.” And that was the way you talked. It was very surface talk. Now what do they call you? Now he knew that I knew who he was. I mean everybody knew who he was. He said: “They call me Johnson.” See and that’s the only time. There we are. Okay and that’s who Van Johnson is and there he is with Claudette Colbert and this was when he died and he was 92 when he died. And he played in several of Lana Turner’s movies, I mean he was a big star and if I’d been smart enough, I’d have asked him a bit about it, but you didn’t talk that way. We talked about the mountains. I asked: “Do you like our mountains?” Because he was a flyer. “Oh yeah, I like them,” he says. There was some singing, we sang: “I would climb the highest mountain, if I had you by my side.” I said, “Oh yeah, I’d 23 be climbing on the mountain and you’d be pulling me on a rope.” He says, “Well, half the time I’d be on the rope and you’d be pulling me.” I mean, that’s the way you talked. You didn’t dwell on the war. Part of it was because when we first started to go to the USO, they trained us a little, and they said: “You keep the conversation light, because there aren’t any strings attached. They’re leaving to go to war and they’re on their way, because they’d go from here to Ogden to San Francisco to leave. Or, they were stationed at Hill or up at the college to learn how to fly and they were all going to war. Then there was Bushnell, which was treacherous because they had all been wounded, well, you don’t want to dwell on all of those things, dwell on what you’re going to eat. Let’s go home and fix a steak or let’s go whatever. We played the Ouija board, although, it never worked. We did however raise someone with our fingers. EM: Oh yeah, light as a feather, stiff as a board. AR: Yeah, not a very smart thing to do anyway. So the conversation was light and how it happened was my girlfriend sold tickets to the movie theater. The guy came and said: “If I buy a couple of tickets, can you...” now I didn’t even remember this and my boss said: “I don’t believe that’s a true story. I don’t believe you went with him. How did that ever get orchestrated?” And I thought well, it didn’t. I’ve been trying to put pieces together what happened. This soldier and Van Johnson were at the hotel and why weren’t they at Hill? Now in the hotel was a lobby. I was to meet my girlfriend after she got off work in the lobby and I don’t know what I was going to do. Well I went down in the lobby there and I was 24 sitting on the benches and they came in. I don’t know what had happened. He had this guy with him, and so I got up and we went next door and we went and walked home. And to walk home was about 11 blocks and that was quite a while. When we got close to home, the other guy took her home, we split, and they’re about a block and a half apart and he took me home. We sat out on the porch and it was a very big moonlight night, and my house had, kind of two abutments where the porch was, and we sat down on one of those, and we talked about genealogy. I told him I was a Dane and a little bit of why I didn’t know any of the Danish language and didn’t know how to speak it but my grandmother did and why they didn’t learn it and why they didn’t teach us the whole thing and I says: “What nationality are you?” And he was very guarded and he didn’t say very much, I don’t know. Either he really didn’t know or he was cautious. He probably thought I would tell everybody and he wasn’t supposed to be out picking up a girl and bringing her home. Basically what happened was he asked her what time she get off work and she says: “Soon as the movie starts, I close the front window.” He says: “Well, I’ll buy the tickets to go into the movie.” She says well: “I’ve got a friend I was going to meet over in the lobby hotel.” He says: “Okay, well I’ll get the buddy.” He went and got the buddy and the buddy was Van Johnson. So that’s how that all started. Now what did you say you wanted me to talk about first? EM: Would you like to talk about what it was like on 25th Street and downtown or do you want to talk about the… AR: No, because I’ve talked about as much as I knew. The downtown? 25 EM: The downtown or the USO would be fine. AR: Okay, now you had to walk up 25th Street to Washington, over to 24th and then up to where, now, in your scenario you don’t see it as I see it because there was a corner store that was Grants, maybe it wasn’t even grant then, it was a beauty parlor, and it was a beauty school, where you got permanents for a dollar and they were these kind where they fit the hot things in your hair. I remember walking up the street, up that hill, and right after you got past the beauty parlor, where probably the drive-in, where ZCMI is, there was a big old beautiful building, and it was beautiful, old fashioned, and it was empty. But they had still kept it up and that was where they had housed the Naval Cadets, they made those into their rooms and then it had a, it was built level but of course there was a hill. So we would get on the railing that was between the building and the sidewalk because the building was going down and the sidewalk was going straight and we would walk that, like it was a ledge, oh it was like this big, it was kind of a brick, rock, ledge, and we would down as far as we dare go and jump off at the end before it got too steep, because the Naval Cadets were in there. We, of course, waved to them, talked to them, and sometimes we’d take their check down to Penny’s and cash it for them because they got quarantined because they had, I forgot what it was, measles or something. So they were quarantined, and just hanging in there because they had their classes on the half hour, we had ours on the hour. So they were over in the school most of the time. They had a big obstacle course, it was right in the middle where the Weber gym 26 is, and I nearly flunked Botany because of it. One time I was late for school and I got off the bus and came up 24th Street and cut across, so I was going to go from the pod right into the gymnasium and they were drilling out on the pod. A whole bunch of them doing marching and they were coming toward me and I was walking alone the sidewalk and they split up and both of them had two areas. One area on this side of me and one area on this side of me and I could just see Betty Grable in this and she would’ve burst into song, I was so embarrassed. They walked all the way across that pod in their marching, you know, and their guns and everything and then they did a couple of maneuvers and went around me, so embarrassing, but I loved every minute of it. But it was, if I had a friend around to grab on to you know, but it was just embarrassing. Realizing that those boys were only 19. I had a granddaughter get married just last week was 19. That is so young. Even the officers were really, really young. They had out to 2nd Street, prisoners, and they would bring them into town. In fact, they even got so they would bring them to the USO and as soon as they did that, you wouldn’t ever see a soldier in there again. They moved the USO down to a different place. AR: But they, of course, didn’t speak any English and I got on the bus one time, and I worked out of 2nd Street, and I got on the bus to come home and the bus was full. It had all these prisoners on there and they had a sergeant or somebody with them and one man was dressed in bright red and zipolite was gold and I could tell he was really somebody in the, probably Italian or, I don’t know. When I stepped on the bus he immediately stood up and motioned that I could have his 27 seat and he smiled at me and every tooth in his mouth was solid gold. So that was a very interesting thing. Back to the history, when we first started to go to the USO, they started to go around to the churches and asked for volunteers to help serve them doughnuts and coffee on Sunday morning. Now, the canteen down at the railroad couldn’t have done the job because if everybody in town would have made cookies every day, all day long, you wouldn’t have had enough because there were thousands of boys, just thousands. And they came in and would get off the trains and stand in line at the telephones and they sat around in circles and pitched pennies. I don’t know why I was down there so often, but I was there a lot. 25th Street really started to change I think was when the service men started trenching up to Washington Boulevard. It wasn’t quite such a dark street. When 25th Street began to change, that’s when I used to become aware of what was on 25th Street, the bars and the, all it was is bars. Restaurants and on the south side of the street was all prostitution. But along Washington was marvelous. It was Doctor Louis who told about the fashion shows, they had every year a spring festival sort of things and a fall festival sort of thing where they would have a contest and each store would decorate their windows for the contest. There were beautiful windows, there really were fashionable stores. Les Samuels was from Ogden, and so he had the Samuels store and it was just a long store with long windows and they had silver boxes that they put things in. And they had 28 little match things that were silver and they had a shoe on them. That was just after the Depression. Now I was pretty little because I got ahold of one of those match things and I went down on my street, where there were a couple of foundations that have never been finished. We always played on them, ran around them, had mulligan stews down there. I climbed up in the tree and I started to strike those matches. I don’t know, there was just something about being glamorous, and I was sitting in the tree and naturally I caught my dress on fire. And I don’t know how I got it out, because blowing it doesn’t make it go out. I don’t know, maybe I had an angel help me, very likely I did. Anyway, I finally got it out and my dress was burned. Then I didn’t dare tell my mother. So, I must’ve known it was wrong. I went down the corner to a girl’s house and her father was a firemen and I loved to go down there because we’d play dress up lady. I was pretty little, and she had all these high heels and everything because she has all these older sisters. They would sit at the piano and play chopsticks at the piano and I loved to go down there. So I went down there because I wanted to play dress up ladies so that I could get her dress. So we played all day and when I left, I kept the dress on. Evidentially, I must have told her. Anyway, then, just to show you how bright kids are, I put my dress in the dirty clothes. My mother finally knew about it, but I didn’t tell her the truth. She says: “How did this get burnt? “Well we were making a mulligan stew,” this really did happen, but it just didn’t happen at the same time I burnt my dress, “And we were just horsing around and one of the boy’s hair caught on fire.” I remember it, he singed his eyebrows and his hair and 29 everything. I don’t remember how we put it out. If we had some water, I don’t know. And I don’t know how I got my dress okay. The store was so beautiful, unless Samuels had his people come from New York to dress his windows for the contests. They were better than Nordstrom’s windows. They were beautiful. Finally by the time the war was over. The Auer Bach store in Salt Lake was also from New York and Mr. Auer Bach died and so Les Samuels married the Auer Bach girl. So they changed Samuels to Auer Bach’s. So, Auer Bach’s was expanded and they made it big and across the street Fred M. Neye’s, big beautiful store. I’ve got some clowns in here that they had in their windows. When they finally sold their store out when the mall came, I went in to see if I could buy them and us because I like clowns a whole lot. “Well, there’s a list that want to buy them but we haven’t got anything packed so if you want to put your name on the list.” I said: “Yes.” One day I got a call and they said: “If you want to have them you can have them. It will cost you $50, but one of them’s broken. Broken in half.” I said: “That’s all right, I’ll glue it back together.” And I bought them. I love them and every once in a while I’ll put them out on the coffee table here and maybe I’ll change it. It’s getting close to fall now. Anyways, that kind of an interesting story from Neyes. And they had Castleton’s, Bueller Bighams, the shoe stores, and they were all so beautiful. They had always the 24th of July Parade and that 24th of July really was something because they didn’t even have a parade in Salt Lake. Ogden started the parade, it didn’t amount to anything but we had very influential people in Ogden. Like the Kiesel’s, the Neye’s, Peery’s 30 and the Biglow’s and the Farr’s, and they had big beautiful homes. They were red sandstone, two or three of them on Washington Boulevard and they were mansions. You know what the Bertha Eccles home is like, well that was one of the little ones. They were big and I remember when they tore them down. Why they ever allowed that but businesses started to move in and just a lot, I wasn’t old enough to be concerned about what the city was doing. But, those homes were beautiful and 24th July parade was really beautiful. I have here my father’s journal. This tells about it. He worked for J.C. Penny’s and the Chevrolet place. He would go in after school, because he taught school, in art, and he would go in and paint their signs to put up in their windows and he even painted cars, did I tell you about that? EM: Yeah, you did. AR: Okay, so he, what he did was floats, for the parade and he always had a float or two to build. “I was paid for some of these. Especially from Penny’s or Utah Power and Light, or Anderson Lumber, or Sperry Mills. I donated the Ogden City school floats. And the First Ward floats.” And he says another thing, he talks about working for JC Penny: “Another side job I enjoyed was to do the sets and staging for All Facings West, which is a church sponsored pageant. Which told the story of the pioneer trek to the Salt Lake valley. This took about two or three weeks to prepare because I had to build the sets and built the pieces for the various scenes. It was held out on the field house out at the stadium on 14th by Lawrence Art Park. He had to build them. Build the flats, build the…everything. 31 This was a part of the annual 24th of July celebration, it was held at the Ogden stadium. The stage was a raised platform about 40 times 20 feet and about six feet high. “The only thing I got for this was the satisfaction of doing something for the church and the city.” The star who portrayed Brigham Young was nationally known baritone, Igor Gorin. He and the orchestra and the writers, Mr. and Ms. Rollin Perry were paid. When he found after that all these years that I had never been paid, Mr. Peery, who was the Mayor, was amazed that I donate all of my time and talent for that effort and he didn’t get paid a dime for doing it. He tells about making the floats and so I think that is very interesting, because this is his journal. Now the window that they had were right about the time they had the Boy’s Day Parade, where all the kids walked in the parade, and I don’t know when they did away with that, I don’t know how old. I do know that when they built the Ogden High School, where my father was a teacher, he taught Arts, they were considering building this building so that’s about the last parade I remember. I got a thing here that probably will be of interest to you. Here’s the piece. There’s my Dad, here is his painting of them building the Ogden High School. Here is a picture of the picture and this is the collect that the college has. All of the early days of Utah. EM: Yeah, this is incredible. AR: So this is in their permanent collection and it’s been exhibited many times but it surely is a master piece, partially because of the car that’s in the picture. EM: The one right here, this car? 32 AR: Yeah, now you see. You can tell what has about, that was before 1930, I don’t know when they built it but here’s the explanation of it right here and that might be of interest to you. EM: Yeah, definitely. It’s the most beautiful high school I’ve ever seen. AR: It is, it really is. It’s absolutely beautiful. And here’s another picture that’s interesting. Right here, because you can see the streetcar and this building isn’t even in my recollection, so it must have been done very early and that was taken from a post card. Let’s see, right here you will see the Orpheum theater, that’s where we went to the movie and right there was Doc’s Candy and the hotel was busy, I mean it was always busy, and there are lots of ghosts up at the hotel and lots of stories about ghosts. I did meet—across the street was the park and then across this street was Walgreen Drug, big drug store—I was in there one time and I was looking at some lipstick and this guy came up to me and started talking to me and it was Robert Montgomery. Now I don’t know if you know who Robert Montgomery is but he was a movie star. He played in a lot of movies of the Navy and a very good movie star. He was a very good movie star, and we had a good talk. He had asked me if I had known anybody in the service and he was over at the hotel too and he had gone to the drug store to buy something and I had told him yes, that I had a brother who was serving the Pacific and I had a boyfriend that was serving, you know, he was in the CB’s and so we talked about the CB’s and he was in the Navy. Robert Montgomery was in the Navy, and they all had their uniforms on. 33 Nobody ever went without their uniforms on. They could not, even weren’t supposed to take their uniform off when they came home from furlough. When guys would come home on furlough, you were with a soldier, and if they did take them off, they were pretty careful where they were going and if they were going to be seen. So that was a very interesting time, and I got a whole lot of his journal about the USO in the Times. Here is something else you might be interested in. This is Washington School and I do have more pictures of Washington School, which they tore down, and this was the first ward. The first ward in Ogden and that was on Goddard and Grant, which was about 33rd. When you approached the building, I lived here and you went in that door and this was the recreation hall, that little room up there, they showed moving pictures. You could go to them for a nickel, which nobody ever had a nickel so you just sort of went to them for free. They never asked for you for your money, then they’d put out the chair, then they’d show the movie. I don’t remember how often they had them, but it was maybe once a month or something. Here’s the side, which is this part and out here they had a garden. And I don’t know whether they watered it by the water from the church or the bishop’s home was right next to it, it was right before we got Pineview Dam. I don’t know what the people did to water their lawns, I guess they used city water. He maybe irrigated it with his out, but I really think they used water from the church. Anybody in the ward could go and plant something if they wanted and they could 34 pick some produce and you know that Depression was an interesting time and really did not end until the war. It was hard times and people improvised with everything. My dad built his home on Pingree, between 30th and 32nd near Harrison. No homes up there at all. And he saved every nail that he ever put in there that he bent, he straightened out. Nails, for a dime you could get a sack of nails. You didn’t have a dime, so he straightened out every nail in the house. I remember making a pair of shoes. Here’s a picture of the White City though. The White City was owned by Harm Peery and it was every night, it was a dance hall all the time. And every one who went on a date went to the White City or to the Berthana. The Berthana was a roller rink by then. AR: It began with a ballroom and it had a wonderful floor but when by the service men got here, they really needed a roller rink, well nowadays they build a roller rink but they don’t do it, they just took that building and made it into a roller rink. This was the White City and the ones that danced did not roller skate, if you roller skated you didn’t dance, you were just sort of that way. I described the dancers in the book here, the sailors were the Jitterbuggers. Anyone in the Navy was “swing you out, swing me in.” I was a real Jitterbug, you know. The air men, which we had more than anybody, they danced smooth, close, gliding, you got so that you could just follow anybody. The Army men would step into the dance. They would step, step, step their dance. You could just tell anytime, I could probably tell you what branch of the service they 35 were in by how they danced. But that was a fun time. I have a record that I made but I don’t quite know where it is, and after you’ve got this old, you got everything everywhere, but it was one of the first records they ever knew how to make. The boy I was going with at the time was a good dancer and we’d go up there and dance. When we found out we could get a record made, he made a record of singing I’ll Be Home for Christmas, and I said a few things but I didn’t sing. It’s just the funniest thing because it was squeaky and really funny but I saved it because it was such a relic. Anyway, as you came into the USO there was a desk and there was somebody at the desk and there was a stairway that led up this way to the dance hall, and there was a kitchen behind the dance hall back down underneath the dance hall, which was on the main floor. There was a piano and couches and stuff, you know, card tables and things where people could do a lot of things. When you came into the door, you would sign up if there were any people who wanted to go on any of their field trips or whatever, they were like a field trip. And everybody did because nobody had cars or gas because they were either supplied by the USO fund or somebody volunteered. A lot of the times they would take us up to the patio, and I’ve got a picture of us up at the patio, but I think gave it to the girl that was in the picture with me. We were with a couple of men, soldiers, don’t have a clue who they were, and the thing is you don’t have a clue if they did, because many of them probably did. There was one scenario and I haven’t even written about it. My friend came, got off the bus at 25th and Washington, I was in college at the time. There 36 were a bunch of service men there one of them started to talk to her and he says: “Will you write me a letter?” and she says: “Sure.” So he gave her his address and in the meantime Shirley got married. She married a guy that was a flyer and so she didn’t want to write to him. So she said: “Althea, write to this guy.” So I said: “Okay.” So I did. I’ll show you one of his letters that I got sent to me. Anyway, we wrote for a long time and I really liked him, I never saw him. I wrote this letter to him and it came back and said: “Address unknown” and that usually means they have been killed. Now I got a letter from him just before that that was all cut up and censored and his plane had crashed into the ocean and he had told me about it but it was all cut up so I couldn’t really tell what had happened. But anyway, I thought, he had just died from that. I sent him a four-leaf clover that I had put in—there was no such thing as plastic—in a celluloid thing and Scotch taped around the sides and he used to carry that with him all the time. Anyway, we’d written for a long time, I had saved his letters for a long time. Heck, I probably still got some, and here I’ve been married 63 years. EM: That’s a long time. AR: Anyway, after I was married and I didn’t get married until I was 25, which is the very best age to get married, I had a lot of boyfriends, a lot of roses, a lot candy. I’ve been on a lot of dates, I saw Flynn Miller, I saw, I danced, and then I got married. If you get married before then, you give up all those fun years. And then you start to work because when you get married it’s work, and I really mean it’s work. There I was. EM: Oh, so beautiful. 37 AR: I was 18 when that was taken, not the same girl. EM: Oh, sure you are. AR: Boy, I’ll say not. 88 and I’m sick as a dog. And here I am at Snow Basin, and I’m sure you have talked to Floyd Fletcher, but anyways they’ve had this picture in the paper several times and they don’t know who it is, and it’s me. And I know it’s me because I can tell from my outfit and this was going up decker hill because it was free, you just go up the toll road and then you could come down. If you went up the wildcat, you had to pay a quarter, and who had a quarter. EM: I know, free is better. AR: By then, it was bitter. Hang on because I’m going to show you that letter. The telephone company, I was there when they had their strike. Also, there was a big railroad strike that I remember and I was working at Samuels, for Doctor Swanson and right next to Samuels was the Commercial Security Bank, with two big pillars out there. And I think every guy that worked for the railroad was in that bank that morning, and I don’t know if they were there to get their money out or what they were doing, but everyone was in that bank when President Roosevelt said you are back to work or you no longer have a job, and that was it. And he wrote over the teacher union: “You cannot do this, we are a nation that is trying to recover from war and you can’t do it.” There’s a movie star I went with. EM: Who’s that? AR: His name is Marc Gombert but his movie name was...and I went with him...and boy, did I get treated like a million dollars. He didn’t even take my coat, they took it and turned it inside out and kind of draped it over their arm. He really was a 38 gentleman. And he never came to my house, he looked like he just stepped out of Esquire, just marvelous. And he was a writer for MGM, and I went to California one time and I was in the Whip Club at Weber and they changed their uniforms. We had a white sand brown and then it was a two-piece, you know, but they were old, and so they changed their uniforms. So they gave us a big piece of material and said: “This is what we want you to make.” Well I never did get it made, most the girls didn’t get it made. And there wasn’t a picture taken, there wasn’t films and camera. I decided one day that I was going to make a dress and I made a dress that had a peplum and it was really pretty. It was bright purple and I painted on it, all along the peplum, I painted chartreuse flowers. I mean nobody else in the world had a dress like that, because I did it. I wore that when I was going with him. So once I went to California and I was over on the UCLA campus, and I was walking around and I saw Ginger Rogers doing something, because there’s stores you know, on that alumni campus and I went out onto the sidewalk and a car came by and slammed on its breaks and sat there for a minute or two, and I had that dress on and it sat there and finally drove away. And I just know without any shadow of doubt that’s who it was and I just thought: “No, it couldn’t be.” EM: Yeah. AR: It was Marc and he wrote the most wonderful letters. There’s the letter, the reason I want you to see the letter is because what I had drawn on the bottom of it and you’ll think that it’s kind of funny. 39 EM: Aw, it’s you writing a letter and giving it to the mailman and him running away with it. AR: Now, turn it over. EM: Oh… AR: Then he gets the letter. EM: “Runs to the point of exhaustion.” Is that across the sea? Finally get to read. AR: That’s the letter, yeah. I’m glad I saved it. I didn’t save the letter but I’m glad I saved the envelope. See it says return to sender. Anyway, the story didn’t end with me not hearing from him. Long after I was married and had my first baby, I got a letter from him. It went to my mother’s house, and he said: “I was wondering if you would send me some addresses of radio stations?” He loved the radio. And I thought: “You jerk.” So I bumped him back a letter and did I ever tell him off. I said what the clun you writing me back. All these years made me wonder what ever happened to you. EM: Yeah, thinking he was dead. AR: So, naturally, I didn’t get anything back from him. Well one day, I was living in this house, maybe it was when I got this letter, I hadn’t decided I was going to save that, I thought: “I could find anybody in the United States, I’m going to see if I can find him.” So I did. I found him, and I connected on the telephone, and I said I’m trying to find a man who would be about 70 years old, who fought in the pacific, who loved radio and his name was Keffler. And she said: “Well you got the right place.” So I talked to her awhile and then I talked to him awhile. And he said: “Althea, I tried to meet you. I drove all the way to Utah to meet you, but by 40 the time I got there I was so sick, I even went a hospital and finally I just had to come home, I couldn’t find you.” Well, he said, it wasn’t when he went into the ocean, it was, they were building a base and were strayed by the Japanese and he was shot right across his stomach. So they sent him to a hospital and then they sent him home. Now, whether he was better when they sent him home or whether they sent him home to die or whatever they did. He said: “I was in the hospital a long time, and I always had stomach problems since then. But I did get better and I did try to get out there to meet you.” Never did meet him. And he owned this radio station and he was married, had been married several times. He said a son that was not his son, but his wife’s son who was living in Alaska and took dogs sledding and things. It was very interesting, and the next morning he called me from his radio station and I think we talked about an hour and he says: “I’ll get back with you, I still want to meet you.” And I never did get anything after that. And I thought, I was afraid if his wife wondered if I wanted an affair, and so I send a Christmas card to him and his wife. She was very pleasant too, and nice, you know, and I got a letter back and his obituary was in it. So that was a service man that I never did meet, but I met him and fell in love with him from letters, and then he died. Never did meet him, but I’ll show you a picture of him. I’ll read the poem and then find the picture. “The USSO soldier. The USSO soldier he is rightfully called, a wired up story completely installed, with lines and bills and smooth looking eyes that laugh while they feed you their butterfly lies. Just home from the Artic, Europe and Asia, they’d tell you some things that would simply amaze ya. There stories are 41 sad, gruesome, happy and gay, while most are dolled up with gigantic array. Take Harry the sailor, bell-bottom trouser, singer and dancer, drinker and krouser, could always be found asleep on the sofa, simply consider a USSO loafer. He loved all the girls, many loved Harry too, until one fine morning when one and his wife blew, then Harry went wistfully out of the door, the sofas now empty, end of Harry’s detour. Alfredo was skinny I’m sure, Italiano would constantly sit and plunk the piano. Always composing but never attune, drove us all crazy, wished he’d finish up soon. Hank wanted to take every girl for a walk, then he’d try to kiss her halfway around the block. Against all the rules, but he thought out the door, none of the rules applied anymore. Sailors were Jitterbuggers and swing, bent at their knees, twirl you and whirl you and back and release. Air men danced smoothly, glided on floor, held you tight, cheek to cheek, lots of amour. Most Army guys stepped, stepped, stepped into dance, instead of a two-step, they stepped with a prance. Each foot, side to side, holding arms way out straight, keeping time way up and down, bounce and exaggerate. There were some guys who just wanted to drink and take you to heaven, what else do you think, and wanted to tell you of conquests they made, always a hero, making the great. Smith, dark hair and thinker, alone most of the while, quiet and thoughtful and seldom a smile. Barricaded himself upstairs in a nook, lost in good music and escaped in a book. I could tell you more, a hundred I guess, who came in and signed as a USSO guest. The swimmers, the bowlers, the dancer, the most just trying to find entertainment off most. They came in for coffee and doughnuts for free, they talked for an hour and left almost three. They wanted a 42 time to forget and relax, and have companionship without income tax. Missing their girls and their mother, character sure but mouth just like your brother. They paraded, sang songs and out the door howling, drinking Coke and never ever scowling. They did ever scowl. Out to the late bus, to take them to Hill, a new girl tomorrow to swing and to thrill, maybe a friend to write a nice letter, or maybe tomorrow he’d find something better. 10:30 sharp, they all left out the door, yodeling cowboys, heard of them no more. Where they go? I hope they made it home and are there now free, happy, as I am writing this poem. The USSO soldier he is rightfully called, a wired up story completely installed. With lines and bills and smooth looking eyes, that laugh while they feed you their butterfly lies.” EM: That was awesome, that was excellent. AR: It’s been some time since it’s been published. Anyway, I’ll see if I can find you the picture of West. There we are. Look what a kid he is! There were the guys that were sailing our country. Glen, Blair, Wes. EM: Yeah, he looks like he could be 16. AR: They’re just kids. Airman, soldier, soldier, there we are together. Airman, there was one I really wanted to get married to, I really liked him. He sent me a grass skirt from the islands. There I am with my sister. That was Elaine, the one that got the tickets, she sure wanted to go with him! She didn’t want to be with the other guy but she already made the date with the other guy. A sailor, sailor, he really tried to get me to marry him. I didn’t want to marry him, I was young. I wasn’t ready to get married. And this was the telephone company, they had their big strike. 43 I guess that about does it, but I haven’t told you a lot about the buildings or the businesses or what went out of business. I remember the Scowcroft building and my mother took me in there to buy me mittens for Christmas, and the reason she was able to do it was we had a neighbor that worked there and picked them out and then he’d buy them, see cause he could do that. So that was a big store, I remember going in it and Brant Scowcroft who was Kissinger’s right-hand man, he’s not a good speaker, he’s not that kind of a guy. I went to high school with him and he’s in the year book and he’s a real national figure, a real national figure. But he’s in the year book and this is about the war. This is a girl that was chosen to be one of the 150 people to represent the United States. And this big youth conference they were holding in the world, was held in Prague and I just finished her book that she wrote. I’m finding Brent Scowcroft’s picture for you, and you know that most of these people are dead. He’s national, and he was my year. Now let’s see, what did we cover, how long did you want it to last? EM: It’s totally up to you, I have all day, so whenever you want to call it quits. Do you want to tell me about the businesses? You told me about USSO. AR: I want to tell you about the White City, because that was a marvelous place to dance. I want you to have the picture, but I couldn’t make you a color copy and my copier can do it but the big picture. I tried to get them to exhibit that and they did once when Nordstrom’s went out. They had a big art exhibit there and now there up at the college and there just stuck away somewhere, all those big paintings and they are marvelous paintings. They were done by all the Utah 44 artists and they are commissioned and RC Willy did it. They commissioned people to write about the historical things. They did Lagoon, the forts, dad did this one and he took a picture and that one they had somebody showing that picture, same picture. Dad took the picture so that he could get the number of windows exact when he was painting it. He did this one, he did the burning on wagons when the locksmith went up and they fought in the mountains when they sent the Army out to exterminate the Utah or the Mormons and that’s the one that they had already shown somebody all the post cards they had saved about Ogden. And I know that you will want to have a pictures of Washington School that’s gone, and this first ward that’s gone. So how are we going to work that? I don’t think I’ve written much about the, oh what was his name, that left to join the Navy, Kent Bramwell. I told you about him. EM: Was he the football star? AR: He was the one who became mayor. He tried to clean up 25th Street and got in way over his head and left to join the Navy and his family was threatened and everything. That was the first I became aware of 25th was really a hub of, it wasn’t just a bunch of drunks. Since then when they built the hotel on the other side and they started to have restaurants along there, which has been maybe 10 years ago or so, is when 25th Street started to become a comparably good street. The bus depot there on the corner by the, what used to be the elks building and that’s torn down to, there is a picture of it in this book. It’s wonderful, 45 it tells us about all these buildings. Look at the church there on, and how it used to be. EM: That’s still standing right? AR: Oh yeah, it’s right across from the post office on Grant and they built all here, so you can’t see any of this anymore. And here, this is where we used to go sleigh riding and over here and that went across Wall Avenue and this is where the tramps chased me and I ran back up there. I looked through here yesterday, this was the guy that was the architect, there’s the building, probably the picture that she had. And this is David O’ McKay in the Moench Building, you know, the college is no longer there. And the nurses, here’s even the prostitutes. And that’s how Hill Field was, it was just a bunch of big fields. And that’s how it was, the service men came in like that and there were just hundreds and I just didn’t really realize we had that many young men in the United States, and it was just all day, every day. And you took things down to them and sometimes people would bake cookies and them down and they would distribute them. It wasn’t really every day, all day. The every-day, all-day was the USO and that’s where they would go and dance and play the ukulele, phonograph and drink coffee, cokes and play cards and listen to music, play the piano and play games and go on trips to Patio and we went lots of places. I remember two trips, one was to Patio and one was to the dam. Cause we would go up there and fool around by the art club because there was this wonderful art club up there by the dam and it was going strong until a man died, and then too risky. There is too much undercurrent in that dam 46 and that’s because of the artisan wells, and of course, the artisan wells I remember, I remember the wells. EM: Yeah, you were telling me about that. AR: Think that same girls in that skiing picture I’m in. I forgot who it is. This is when Christmas Village started. We stayed all night in one of these rooms here, look at their gas masks. This was when the ball players came to that field here, where Marvin’s is now, they had this ball field, and it was wonderful down there. There’s Ogden Canyon, now what am I looking for again? EM: The Artisan wells. AR: Oh yeah, the Artisan wells. See, look at the turbines under than dam. Lorin Farr Park, they had such community things all the time, and I think they’re trying to do that now, get more things going because it binds a community, and it makes a closer knit. Ogden postcards, I thought it was surely there. They used to have Tuberculosis sanitarium, it was up at the mouth of the canyon, up on the hill, it would be about 7th Street and it was a big, big place, lots of people died there. See I passed them and I saw those turbines. They capped them and put them underneath the dam, but still that water still flows, and look they used to have it called Water Canyon. We used to go up to Cold Water Canyon all the time when I was in school and picnic, the school would. They don’t do it now, or if they do you just don’t tell them about it I guess, unless you’re not supposed to visit the water supply. You see, here is where they finally built this thing across the road, but before that, see there wasn’t anything, this is early days of the Canyon. 47 My grandfather helped build the edge of the river, it used to be this high, rock, cement top and it went all along the river. Well, that’s not high enough. Kids climb over it and get down the backside and it’s old because it’s my grandfather who built it and I’m nearly a hundred. So, and you realize this country is, what, three hundred years old. We are just a shot in the dark. This world is a long world, lots of people have come and gone and sad to say were letting it slip right through our fingers. I have one thing here that I wrote about the values of America and I wish I would have written it but I didn’t, I only wrote part of it and it’s called: “The Values of America.” And it’s in my book. It started with the, when Tom Brokaw wrote the book on the best generation, you know, the strongest generation or something, and which was our generation because we pulled out of the depression, we fought the war, we made things work, but we indulged our children and indulging our children we ruined them because we didn’t have to pay that heavy of price that we had all paid, and so, we gave our kids too much so they didn’t have to fight for it. Is that it? EM: American Values? AR: Yeah, the values. It says: “They came up with the great assembly of Wood Stock,” they’re talking about the kids, “what a catastrophe that was, and still is. Their music still muffles the ground and bushes around the area where they took morals and establishments in their own hands. They prostituted the entire value system, brought about their founding fathers and those who have established this greatest country and the helping hand of all nations. Their attitude is this, snuff their nose at authority, Wood Stocks own morals and values, guns and beating 48 their brothers with clubs, indulging everyone, selfish, and have no desires that are lofty, this is the great dense of the average American people.” Now that’s pretty picturesque. Now I didn’t write this and I had wish I had. “This is the great dance of the average American people. Who leaves their kids in order to get more money, in order to indulge them? Indulge them so they can have so much that they don’t know what to spend their money on. Eat hamburgers, taco and nothing else. Drink pop by the gallons and stare at the T.V. There wants are to play golf and win a million. Play basketball and earn a few thousand million. Perhaps we need a new Patrick Henry, who will fire, will talk of liberty or death. Burn the flag, move to Canada to avoid the draft, live on drugs and stash enough ammunition to blow up the country, say, let live. We don’t want the responsibility of seeing our friends die, let the Arabs blow up the Towers and the trains in the embassy, who are we to care? Values and fine arts disappearing, corporation greed, we surely left a fine generation to sense the needs to better mend of man kinds, Aristotle was perhaps was right, the people are too dumb to lead. They are too greedy to lead, they must be led by a superior group. Without the lord and his great plan to help us become better then we are with higher reaching values than what we are really made of. But that seems to take famine or depression or wars to shakes us out of our complexity enough to become a fraction of what we should be. The greatest will leave nothing but a few stories in some book that will never be read, because the vast majority to not bother to read anything, except what’s on TV, and what that says, Heaven help us.”