Oral History Program Willis Hipwell Interviewed by Mack S. Taft circa 1960s Oral History Program Weber State University Stewart Library Ogden, Utah Willis Hipwell Interviewed by Mack S. Taft circa 1960s Copyright © 2016 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 The Great Depression in Weber County, Utah, is an Oral History Project by Mack S. Taft for completion of his Master’s Thesis at Utah State University during the summer of 1969. The forty-five interviews address the Great Depression through the eyes of individuals in several different occupations including: Bankers, Laborers, Railroad Workers, Attorneys, Farmers, Educators, Businessmen, Community and Church Leaders, Housewives, Children and Physicians. All of these individuals lived in Weber County from 1929 to 1941. The interviews were based on what they remembered about the depression, how they felt about those events and how it affected their life then and now. ____________________________________ 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: Hipwell, Willis, an oral history by Mack S. Taft, circa 1960s, WSU Stewart Library Oral History Program, University Archives, Stewart Library, Weber State University, Ogden, UT. 1 Abstract: This is an oral history interview with Willis Hipwell. Mr. and Mrs. Hipwell describe life during the Depression, discussing the CCC, farming potatoes and sugar beets, entertainment, and cost of living. Flood control around Willard, the North Ogden Canyon road, and the bird refuge in Farmington are among the CCC projects described. The interviewer is Mack Taft. MT: Where did you live during the years 1929-39? WH: West Weber. MT: One of the things I wanted to talk to you about was the CCC program during that time. I understand that you were with the CCC program...? WH: Yes, we were at Willard, South Willard now, just south of town. MT: What type of project were you on there? WH: Flood control. MT: What particularly did you do there? WH: We built that slush reservoir up there at Willard. We put up a cement wall, rock and cement. To keep the water from running down into Willard City the way it did a few years before, and flooded the city, we built that there. It’s against the road there yet. Whether it’s used or not, I don’t know, but that’s what we did. MT: What do you remember most about the CC Camp? WH: It was just... I went in in the fall because there was nothing else to do, and we needed the money. We had a family. And the wife, she moved to town, to Ogden. I went to the camp and stayed there, and I’d come in on weekends. But there was, it was a married man’s camp is what it was. There were a few singles, but mostly married. Of course we took first aid and forestry. We had a little 2 schooling. We got $10 a month and our board and clothes; that was pretty good. Of course we, well, we did, and we got a little help besides that through the welfare – well, it wouldn’t be the welfare, WPA probably. I don’t know whether that was on at that time, but we got a little help besides my $10 a month. See, that was brought to the wife in town. MT: What were you doing prior to going in to the CC Camp? WH: I was farming, and there was nothing to do in the fall. So I went in October and came out in the spring when we started farming again. But it was what I said, a married man’s camp. It was a real good place to take up slack for the men without trying to make a little money, you know, to get by. But it was all right. I didn’t mind it too much. MT: Looking back at the programs that were set up by the New Deal, how would you compare the CC Camp to some of the others that they were offering at that time? WH: Well, that’s the only one that they were offering, was the CCC. See, that was all. That was nationwide because they were all over Utah here. .. Where they took the bird refuge camp, at Brigham City, they put that dike in there for the bird refuge. See, that was put in at that time. I had a chance to go in there, at that time, with the forestry. That’s what I ought to have done. He wanted me to go up there and work for him, you see, at that time. MT: What other projects were you in at that time that were done by someone other than the CC Camps? WH: Well, there weren’t any, only the WPA. Of course I went and got a contract with 3 the government up there in Brigham City the following summer, and I bid to keep them in spuds for, I forget how long. I made a little money extra off of them that way. Of course I knew the officers and the lieutenants, and they gave me a pull, and I got the contract to keep them in potatoes. And a little on the side besides that they gave me. It was tough pickings. I’d do anything. I went and picked turkeys for Christmas one year, trapped muskrats in the winter. When they talk of Depression, they don’t know what Depression is now. And if there ever was one, I don’t know what would happen to these young guys. MT: How would you contrast a young man today with one back then? WH: Why he would go crazy. He would divorce, he’d roam, couldn’t get money, probably steal like they’re doing. We never used to have that. We never used to have that stuff like they do now. If we did, we’d get the clay knocked out of us, you might say. No, there’s a lot more of that thievery today than what we ever had. I don’t know what they would do in a case like that now. If it ever came to what it was, like we was, let’s see – we had four children, and we lived on the farm. I don’t know what we would do if we hadn’t had a little to fall back on, a pig and a chicken and milk and stuff like that. For those young guys that had to buy everything for $10, it was tough. We paid $5 a month rent there in Ogden. I don’t know what they’d do. Well, they wouldn’t do, period. They couldn’t do it because there are so many of them that haven’t had the bringing-up like we were brought up. There’s one big difference. We were brought up different. Now, these kids here, they want the silver spoon right in their mouth as soon as they get married. They want what we had to work for, for 40 years or 45 years. I don’t know how it 4 would come out. It would be worse, thievery and everything, it wouldn’t help it. MT: What were some of your major problems? Did you have more problems getting clothing, or food, or shelter? WH: Our main problem was getting money. We’d go to town on many weekends with $2.50 or $3 to get groceries for the entire week. Well, we bought a little home for $400, and it was on her dad’s property, of course, then I put $400 in it. I’d get property from the estate, and of course that was the place to live. That was one thing. Kids, I don’t know, there are a lot of kids living in the same kind of house today because they won’t get any better. They haven’t got the needs for it right now, for all the money they’re making. They just won’t do it. You can look around the country now... There’s one old home out on the property there, where my son built a new home. Why, my granddad was 95 when he died, and that must have been 44 years ago. Some kids are living in it for about $30 or $35 a month now, and you can tell what kind of a home it is. It’s just an old rock foundation and adobe to start with. There’s a lot of kids now that won’t get out and hustle. MH: Getting back to the other, I made the family’s clothing, practically all of it we ever had. I remember about that time, too – we got some money in script. WH: I think that was after – that was WPA. MH: Maybe that was after, but I remember when we needed some money for clothes, we used script. WH: Well, the WPA was under price. I can’t remember whether that was at that time or after... MH: He always worked everywhere and anywhere he could, and run the farm 5 besides. He always did. And as far as I know, my family never went without good food because we always had the milk and eggs and plenty of chickens. WH: Well, you can take now, the way we are. We get by one 1/20th the bottled fruit that we used to get by on. She used to put up 400 or 500 quarts. Why people don’t think of that now. Even the people that’s got money, they won’t do it. We used to haul potatoes to town and maybe put ten hundred pounds down in the basement for the family. You can’t do that anymore. People don’t look out for themselves. All they think of now is going to the store and buying and coming home, opening the can, and eating it. Now see, I owed the hospital for three operations, appendicitis and a pregnant case. I did pay the doctor $50 for delivering our last child. I didn’t have the money, and they took it out. Old Wheeler, the administrator up there, I went to him and told him about it, and told him that I didn’t have the money. I told him I had probably a carload of spuds out there. He asked me how much I wanted for them, and I said, “What will you give me?” They were only 80 cents then. And he said, “I’ll give you $1.80 if you’ll deliver them up here.” And I said, “They’re your potatoes.” And that’s how I paid my bill, a carload of spuds. I brought him about 200 sacks besides, and I paid my bill. When it was all figured up, I’d paid my bill and I had $90 coming. That was my summer work right there, that $90. Oh, it was tough, don’t worry. That’s why I say now, kids would go crazy. They can’t stand it. Now you can take white kids right today, right out around here in the farming district. They won’t go to work for a neighbor. You can’t hire a white kid now. And at that time, we’d never think of getting out, or hiring a guy. 6 We’d always exchange work, see. Our neighbors would come over and help us, we’d go over and help them. If there was any difference in ours, they’d pay us, or else my dad would pay them. You can’t do that anymore. They just won’t get out and work that way anymore, to get out and do that. Threshing time, we’d go out, and you know, we’d get two bits an hour and rations. That was pretty good money. And it was work bucking hundred pound wheat sacks, and dumping it in the bin. Getting out and stacking straw, shoveling it in the threshing machine. That CC stuff was just play after that. MT: Now, did you work on WPA also? WH: You bet. MT: What projects were on, on that, do you remember? WH: Well, we ripped up the Ogden River up there, and we put in the 36th Street sewer from the river up 36th Street on the county side. Of course I imagine some of the city is hooked into it now, but that was county, you see. It’s on the south side of 36th Street. We worked there, and that’s where we got a little... And North Ogden Canyon. We’re the ones that put in that road over North Ogden Canyon, with a wheelbarrow and shovel and pick. MH: He was lucky, though. He had a team. He generally worked a team. WH: I took a team up there and did a little scraping up there. But that’s how it was done. MT: How did they pay you on your team? WH: I think I got $5 a day. And I had to travel from West Weber up there. It took me a day coming and a day going. Besides, I think I got a week’s work at a time up 7 there. I put many a wheelbarrow full of dirt over that bank with a pitch and shovel. That’s how that was mostly built. MT: What would your farm products have sold for through that period? WH: I got pretty good on early potatoes. In fact... I’d truck them down to Salt Lake to the markets sometimes. And we’d grow them early. I don’t know exactly what the price was. I underbid Pacific Fruit up here in Ogden to get that Brigham City project for the CC Camp. I knew what the bid was, see. One of the officers give me the dope on it, see. I underbid them, and I got it, and they’d slip me a ham in the sack, and so on. Of course, that was crooked, but that was all right. I’d been working for them for six months for $30 a month. Of course there was a lot of guys from Salt Lake and Cache Valley. Some are still up in Cache Valley, old Ken Murdock, the wrestler here in Ogden – he was up there, and him and little Billy were the first ones I’d ever seen do this dirty wrestling. But it wasn’t dirty, it was just put on. That’s when that started. Old Joe Lambert, he was sort of a teacher up there. He was a lot older than me, but it was mostly married men. Brigham City was a little bit different. It was these New Yorkers, and them dummies from back there they sent in. They weren’t too smart, but then you didn’t have to be smart. Your smarts never got you anyplace. I don’t care how smart you were, you weren’t going to get by because there weren’t the things there to get by on. There was no work. Trapped muskrats in the winter, oh many a winter, to make a few dollars. And, like I said, picked turkeys for Christmas, and that was hard, taking every one of those feathers out by hand. Now they get dipped in wax. I don’t know, the world is just changed 8 around. It’s no comparison. MH: People aren’t any happier, though. In fact, although we didn’t have a lot of material things, I think that we were happier in a lot of ways than we are now. WH: We could go at night to each other’s places and have parties. We’d have dances in the ward, and now you can’t get a night like that. There’s no sociability at all. They just don’t congregate for nothing now. I don’t know why, they won’t do it. They even go out to a wedding dance, and there’s no dancing. They sit in the corner and gab. They don’t – young people... MT: What else did you do for entertainment in those years? WH: That was about it – home parties and a few dances in the ward. MH: They’d have their own home theaters in the ward, and have shows and things like that. They’d get a show and exchange it with each little settlement, maybe if we’d seen a show already, we’d take it over to Taylor or Plain City, or somewhere like that. WH: They’d show them around to the different wards, and they’d do the same. It would be about like those road shows they had. I don’t know if they still have those or not. Once in a while, we’d go to town and spend 50 cents. Go to the Berthana to a dance – I forget what the fee was to get in, only about a quarter. White City – you could go up there and dance for 10 cents. MH: Sure, but we never did go. That was before, though. WH: Sure, but things were tough. Things had been tough before that. It wasn’t like it is now. But I would just like to see it come that way for what – about two months – and maybe these kids would wake up. 9 MT: I heard that you were a schoolteacher. When and where did you teach, Mrs. Hipwell? MH: I taught at Taylor, and I taught in 1924 and 1925. I did substitute some during the Depression if they needed a teacher up there. Of course, I had my own family then, but if they needed a teacher, I went up once in a while. WH: That’s another thing. They’d keep these women home where they belong. That would be another change. You never heard of women going off and working when they had a family. That’s one of our big drawbacks right today on the discipline of these kids. They don’t respect old people or nobody, and that’s different from what we used to be. If they’d take all these women who are out here to Hill Field and send them home except just the ones that had to work, widows, or somebody like that, to raise their kids, I agree. But not where there’s two or three working in one family, and the wife off, the kids are running around here. We had some right here. She says, “Go on down and play with so-and-so, I’ve got to get some sleep.” Because she’s working nights. And there you are. MT: Is there anything else now that you think of about the Depression that might be interesting to others? MH: Well, we who were in the Depression years, now we probably have a little bit different attitude toward the Depression than Willis’s father and mother, because their family was raised. They didn’t have it too hard until the bank closed. And he had his money in the bank. Well, what money he had, he had in the bank. He didn’t have a lot, but it was enough to tide him over and set him pretty good. WH: It was $800, and after that bank went closed, he just kind of lost interest. I don’t 10 know, he never did do as good from then on until he died. Of course, he was in his seventies. That bank was an awful hardship on a lot of people because they didn’t have things like they do now. They had their money in the bank. He was a guy that, if he wanted anything, he went and bought it. MH: But that bank, when it closed, was awful hard on the older people. To us it didn’t make much difference. We didn’t have too much in the bank, and what we had we... WH: In fact, I owed them $60 and that was hard to pay. So in 1936, when Dad died, I went down to live with Mother and run the farm, and they nailed my beet check, see. We were only getting $60 a ton for sugar beets. And I went in to old Strakie, and I wanted to make a settlement with him, like other guys did that owed him a thousand. Several guys owed them a thousand, and they settled for so much. Sure, another guy came down and would buy the property for them, and turn around and give it right back to them. That’s what old Marriott done – they never lost their place. But the little guy was stuck. I owed them $60, and you know, that cost me a hundred and something before I got out of it. And then, see, they wouldn’t make no settlement at all, and they take my beet check. That’s how you get stuck, but the big guys, somebody would buy their property up there, and turn around and give it right back to them. But when we grew sugar beets for $6 a ton, and thinned them for $6 an acre, and hauled them for $25 and $15, $14, a ton, that makes a lot of difference. And we did all the work ourselves. We couldn’t go out and hire it done like we do now. That kid of mine, when he came back in 1950 and said, “I’ll give 11 you $400 if you’ll groom me those five acres of sugar beets,” and he harvested them, and hired them hauled, and I helped him water them. Then he said he didn’t make no money. Of course he didn’t make no money, because we had to do our own work back in those days. I always made a little money on the farm, but I had to do the work myself. I had to – well, Dad helped me buy one place to start with. I gave $1,800 for 14 ½ acres of ground and a house, and Dad, he gave me $500. He told me and my brother, if you can get a place for $1,800, I’ll give you five to buy that place.” So me and Dad went to Salt Lake to see Arch Mack about it, and we bought the place. I got it. Then, that was in 1929. I kept it for about three years, and I sold it. I sold it for enough profit that I bought 21 acres from my dad, and I got a cow and a calf and a pig on the deal. That was a good deal. So then I gave Dad $800 for 21 acres on the river, and that’s what he lost in the bank. I give my brother $400 for this house, and he was making money on that house. Oh, that 1932 on, in there, that was tough. Of course all we had to give was 75 cents for a pair of overalls, and $1.25 for a pair of Boy Scout shoes like they used to have – these that come up here, and lace in the middle, 75 cents for oxhide overalls, 50 or 49 cents for a shirt. It was tough. Of course I wouldn’t say we were as happy then as we are now, but of course that is in the past, and we can see what it was now. Then, we couldn’t see what we were coming into to make life any different. All you figured on was a tough life. That’s all you had to look forward to. And if you lived one year, look again for the next year. Yeah, that’s right in that time, that’s when I bought this place off my dad 12 down there. I put a pump in the river. I guess I was about the second one to run a pump in the river outside of the big Warren pump and the Plain City pump. They stopped me from pumping it, and I only had a four inch pump. So you can tell things... Now, they wouldn’t even say a word because they’ve got all this excess water. There’s always water. But they did, they stopped me from pumping a little four-inch pump once a week. There were a lot of little deals we had like that, and you couldn’t do anything about it. I paid $800 for that, a brand new cylinder 1934, 1935 Chev, right off the floor at old Frank Browning’s. MT: What do you think of the work done by the CC Camps? WH: There was a lot of it that was no good, but they didn’t pay you for nothing. You went there and worked, and got your check whether you did anything... I used to lay rock, a rock mason like that up there. I could still do it now. But I went in there to wash the pots and pans in the kitchen... It was a good living, good meals, the best you could get. They’d have these baby beef, you know. If we could have eaten like that at home, why I wouldn’t even have had to work. No, it’s the eats in there. We had the best of everything, of course.