Oral History Program Cliff Johnson Interviewed by Lorrie Rands 19 September 2013 Oral History Program Weber State University Stewart Library Ogden, Utah Cliff Johnson Interviewed by Lorrie Rands 19 September 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 houses flourished as Ogden became a shipping and commerce hub. After World War II, the railroad business declined. Some government agencies and businesses 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 smaller 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: Johnson, Cliff, an oral history by Lorrie Rands, 19 September 2013, WSU Stewart Library Oral History Program, University Archives, Stewart Library, Weber State University, Ogden, UT. Cliff Johnson September 19, 2013 1 Abstract: The following is an oral history interview with Cliff Johnson, conducted in his home by Lorrie Rands on September 19, 2013. Cliff discusses his memories of 25th Street, including his paper routes, the Bamberger street car, and multiple robberies. He also discusses the growth of Ogden and his service in the Navy. Also present is Rebekah Whitesides, the videographer. LR: Let’s start with the basics, Cliff. When and where were you born? CJ: I was born at the Dee Hospital on 24th and Harrison in Ogden in 1924. LR: Where did you grow up in Ogden? CJ: I lived at 574 23rd street. 23rd and Jefferson. LR: So as you were growing up you had a paper route. Would that take you to 25th Street? CJ: Yes, I had half of Ogden. I had everything from 25th Street north between the southern limits and the western limits. The western limits was Del Monte Canning Company which is way out over the hill. The eastern limits was the water storage facility just off of 23rd street. LR: What are some of your memories of doing that paper route? CJ: Well there were two routes. The first route I had was strictly the Salt Lake Tribune and I delivered half of Ogden, and the most papers I ever had on it was 105 papers that I delivered. That includes everything from 25th Street on north. The fellow that had the other route, him and I were very close friends. As a result, if one us had problems we would always help each other out. His name was Bud Robins. 2 LR: Which part of the route was the morning route? CJ: Salt Lake Tribune was always morning. Ogden Standard was only morning on Sundays. The rest of it was in the afternoon. LR: What are some of your memories of that? CJ: Well it always hits me that the biggest memories came from the days it was coldest when you just had a bicycle and you had to cover that much of Ogden. It was an effort. Usually we’d get there to pick up the papers about 5 in the morning plus or minus a half hour. But when it got real, real cold like that, sometimes we’d have to start out maybe an hour earlier in order to make sure that you get to school on time. It was always interesting because there were certain parts of the route that you just sit there and have to park your bike in some spot and go around and hand carry as much as you could. Another thing that I’m not very proud of now, but I always insisted my younger brother, when we had bad days like that, he always come help me. I don’t think he’s forgiven me yet. He’s passed away now so maybe he has, but he hadn’t before he passed away. That was a bone of contention with him. LR: So as you would deliver on 25th Street what was the odd thing about delivering those papers in the morning? CJ: Well 25th Street never shut down. Now you have to understand I’m talking now before 1943, because when the war started, it was a whole different deal after that. It never shut down, mainly because the railroad was there. Then as the war came on the railroad became extremely active. My father-in-law was a passenger and freight agent for the SP railroad at that time. We had 80-100 trains a day 3 come in and out of Ogden, especially once we got wrapped up with England and looked like we were going to go war. From then on it was we just lived war because we were feeding everything to England we possibly could to keep them out of problems. That certainly made it to where 25th Street became quite a hot spot in Ogden. When you bring a hundred trains, even if you just bring them in and park them for an hour or so. How far can people get? A couple blocks up 25th Street and back down. Anything that went on went on in that lower part of 25th Street at that particular time. There were, needless to say, lots of bars, there were lots of restaurants, there were lots of cat houses, there were a lot of gambling places at that particular time. Pool was probably the biggest game around, at least in Ogden. Practically everyone played pool, and if you did play pool you played between 25th Street and up to 25th and Washington and then north on Washington over to 23rd. Those two streets were the main pool hall. I don’t know why the other streets didn’t get involved. LR: You mentioned last time that when you would deliver papers in the morning the doors were open. CJ: Yeah, in the summers, because you know no air conditioning and we were delivering in the second stories usually. You didn’t just put them down on the first floor, it wouldn’t last long enough for them to be there. You would take them up, if the door was closed you would tuck it under the door and that if it was open you’d just pitch it in some place, or lots of times I would crack the door and just throw them in. 4 LR: Was that strange going through the hotels with the doors open? CJ: No, it wasn’t strange because it was the norm at that particular time. The fellow I inherited the route from, he accepted it and I accepted it. There were certain things—you certainly didn’t want to disturb anybody because you would get your butt kicked and that. So you tried to be as quiet and non-intrusive as you possibly could be. LR: So did you ever feel unsafe going up and down delivering papers on 25th? CJ: No. LR: Why was that do you think? CJ: Harman Peery. Harman Peery absolutely insisted, he was the mayor at that time, he absolutely insisted you could sit in the middle of 25th Street with 1,000 bill sitting by your side and be eating breakfast and go to sleep, when you woke up that 1,000 dollar bill would still be there. That was his attitude and him and my father were good, good friends. Well there was four of them really. My dad and Harman Perry along with a fellow that ran a big turkey farm out where the Ogden Airport is now. His name was Matthews and his brother, Art Matthews, was the depot master. They were all good friends because they were all wrapped up in horse racing. Horse racing and I’ll grab this photo album here. They pulled what they called sulkies with them, they didn’t ride them. This gives you a, that’s me believe it or not. My dad was well enough fixed that we spent two years just doing nothing but racing horses all over the country. Art Matthews and Harm Peery they were both horse lovers as well. Dad—they end up jointly owning a lot of horses. That’s a picture of Art Matthews. He was the depot master, he’s quite 5 well known on 25th Street. I don’t think there’s anything else in there. I think they’ve taken everything else out. You can see everything involved with horses back in those days. That’s where they were raised in. These are all ranchers that were sat. The horses, they didn’t let the horses trot. They had them pace and when they paced the two legs on one side would go forward together. Dad had five ranches and he raised a lot of these horses that they used to race. He kept them there whenever they weren’t racing. He made enough money racing, he was able to live a pretty darn good life. That’s a picture of dad, but anyway that’s just a little background on his association with the people from 25th Street. If you need copies of pictures or anything out of here I’ve got a whole bucket full. LR: We would love to have a copy. CJ: What I’ll do is, I’ve got—my daughter-in-law has got a 140 page history of my dad that she’s writing. She’s still working on it now, but anyway, there might be something in there. LR: So you believe Harman Peery was one of the reasons you were safe on 25th Street delivering your paper routes. You also talked about why Ogden was so small for so long the last time we were together. Could you talk about that a little bit? CJ: Well, up until the war started, like I say, 20th street was the north edge of Ogden. 28th street was the south edge. Harrison Boulevard was the east edge. There were only about four houses above Harrison Boulevard, but it went all the way out to Del Monte Canning Company which is where the big water tower is now. What was out there mainly on the other side of the river was all there because of 6 the stockyards. The motels and everything out there were in support of the business that was brought on by the fact that this was a big packing area. The packing plant here shipped beef all over the country and it was such a big factor that they had auctions every day. In fact, my dad being a rancher and a cattleman, I don’t think there was ever an auction that they had that he didn’t go to that he was in town and could go too. Same with Art Matthews. LR: You mentioned the substation as well. CJ: It was on 23rd between Washington and Ogden Avenue on the northwest side of Ogden Avenue. It consisted of three big generators in there and these generators were driven by AC, alternating current, motors and the output of those generators were direct current. The current transformers gave you any voltage you wanted. On DC the only way you could change the voltage was by taking an AC motor driving a generator do a setup for a specific voltage. The ones that they had down there were all set up for 600 volts. Those 600 volts, the only thing that supplied was down 23rd street down to Washington Boulevard to a couple of stores that are still there on the east side. They were hardware stores at that time, they were multiple stories and they still got the names on the side. You can actually see them on the east side, they had elevators in there. On the west side of the street there was a Boyle’s Furniture Company that had an elevator and it was a three story building. Over on 24th and Washington on the northwest corner there was a JC Penny’s store. Then across the street there were a couple of buildings that aren’t there anymore that had elevators on them. Then over on 25th and Washington there was where the Ben Lomond hotel is now, they had 7 an elevator in there, and across the street they had the Broom Hotel and it had elevators in. That power station, all it did was supply power to those elevators. LR: Ogden stayed small because there was no way to power those elevators except for the substation? CJ: Ogden stayed limited to that particular size because what industry was here. The industry at that particular time was all the stockyards and the freight yards. Union Pacific/Southern Pacific/Idaho Central and the railroads all came together there and they swapped cargo there. It was a terminal for all of them. They’re just—I don’t know of any other industry that was of any importance except those. LR: You talked about your dad knowing Seth Thomas and kind of some stories surrounding that. Would you share those? CJ: Yeah, Seth Thomas was also a horseman. He had been married at one time. We never met his first wife, but he, after he separated, he and my music teacher, her name was believe it or not Mrs. Bluecher. In grade school she was our music teacher there and she and Seth were—I don’t know whether they lived together or not, but in that time it was probably as close as they can get to be doing that. In the system that existed at that time. He ran the jewelry store that was underneath the hotel that’s on the northwest corner of 25th and Lincoln. Right down there now it’s either a hair salon or, well, a barber shop. It’s been everything from a hot dog stand on down. Anyway he ran that jewelry store and all the time he had a jewelry store there, he was the major jeweler in the Ogden area. One thing that made him so important was that all the railroad had to have their watches and that checked for 8 accuracy in five different positions. They would set them this way and they had to be accurate, tip them over on the side, five different positions, and they had to do this every three or four months depending on whether you’re an engineer or fireman or brakeman or whoever you were. Anyway that was his big job, mainly, was supporting the railroad. Course he sold jewelry to other people and that. LR: So you mentioned that he was robbed. CJ: Three different times people decided to rob him. The first time, the guy was still in the store and looking over the counter. Each place where you could sit down Seth had a kind of a deal he would pull out and it had a piece of cloth in there so that if he was working on a watch and a part dropped it wouldn’t bounce off on the floor. They had a separate name for it, but I can’t remember. He had three of them in the store. The first shooting I can remember, the guy walked in and he handed over a bunch of stuff to him and somebody walked up to the door just about the time and he looked away for a second. Seth grabbed that gun and shot up through the counter and shot and killed him. Then the second one he—the guy actually got out. The door opened onto Lincoln Avenue, he got out and started around the corner and was going down to 25th Street. Seth shot through the window and killed him. The third guy, I don’t remember the details that great, but he was about halfway in between the two of them. Seth had a bunch of cards printed up on his counter there and he says, “You want to find out how close you are to God? Try robbing me.” Oh yeah, this Mrs. Bluecher she had a diamond ring, the biggest 9 thing that I ever laid eyes on. My wife had a good size diamond and it was nothing like that one she had. Evidently he had given that to her as a promise ring or something. LR: You mentioned that building where Seth had his loan shop or jewelry store at one point was a hot dog place. CJ: Yeah, it was quite a few years after that. I think that happened after the war ended, shortly after the war ended, maybe within a year or so. So 1946 to 1948, somewhere around there. LR: What do you remember about those hot dogs? CJ: They were good. If you wanted a hot dog anyplace in Ogden everybody went there. LR: You mentioned the last time that Ogden didn’t really change much until after the war and then it just started to expand and change. CJ: Hill Field. The thing right there where Seth Thomas had his jewelry store. Right on that same corner, only a block up on Lincoln Avenue, on Grant Avenue and 25th Street, on the southwest side, part of that building there was a train station. LR: Right, the Bamberger. CJ: Far before that was the Bamberger Station across the street on the west side of the street was where the Bamberger Station was. Anybody that worked at Hill Field—you caught, you didn’t drive out there. This is back in 1941—I worked out at Hill Field part of that time. You went down there and got on a train and the train took you out to Bamberger took you out and took you up through the east area and they had Hill Field. Then the donkey trains, little pull by tow motors that 10 just had cars that you sit on either side of and they’d deliver you to wherever your work station was. That’s the way you got out there. When Hill Field suddenly became the main employer and that’s when in fact if you look at Hill right now, they got some 30,000 people that are not working out there, but they’re dependent on out there. That’s just slowly built up over that period of time. That’s when Ogden started to build up. LR: So as you look back at the way it was and the way it is now, do you think Ogden has changed for the better? CJ: Well, I think that mainly just because the education system and everything and what Weber State has done for Ogden it’s definitely better. LR: So as you look at 25th Street, do you think that they’ve changed that for the better or do you think it was better before? CJ: Well, certainly it was better in the old days as far as the money earning. As far as moral and that’s concerned, I don’t think that people had low morals at that particular time. I think they were just like any other time at that particular time. I think that after Harman Peery got out as mayor it certainly changed it as far as what was tolerated and how they tolerated. Harman Peery says, “You don’t cause any problems with me I won’t cause any trouble to you.” After that they sit there and said there’s a brothel or a gambling institute and that. I was trying to think if there’s an organization that developed out of that that’s still around now. I’ll probably think of it after, but anyway it was started by a group of women that thought there was a lot of dirty books and that spread around. What did they call 11 it? It still exists, but anyway they’ve been trying to really clean up. There are still some spots that sell adult rated books and that around that they’re still after. LR: So after you got back from the war and got married you settled here? CJ: Well, I settled back down on 23rd and Jefferson, our old home there. We lived there with the idea we bought some property out in Riverdale and we were going to build this home out there. We built a little, partial house that we were going to live in until we got this built and we lived there for a couple years and in the meantime we found out we were never going to be able to get natural gas there where we were at. We did get city water, but sewer and all those other things we couldn’t get. So when this lot became available up here, I decided well this is where we were going to end up building. It was kind of funny the way it came about. Myself and a couple of the guys who were good friends of a fellow named Dean Morn who was a contractor in Ogden at that time. Dean had all this property up here, and I got talking to Dean one day and he said, “Boy I got all the property, sure wish I could sell it for people to move up there. Why don’t you come up and take a look at it?” At that particular time there was two houses, his house and one next to mine here. They were just starting to build a couple houses along his drive and he said, “If you had that property over there behind you, what would you do with it?” I looked and there was eight acres there. “Gee,” I said, “Maybe if you build a summer club or something like that up there people would move up here.” He looked at me and he said, “Is your neighbor over here a coach down at Ben Lomond High?” I said, “Yeah.” Then he said, “Get him over 12 here.” So he got a hold of Mont Bailey and I said, “Hey if I gave you five acres there what would you do with it?” We built that club and got two hundred people to—believe it or not we got a concept up. We got 200 hundred people in this living room. There wasn’t a window or anything we just had the roof on and we just laid planks out. We had 200 people sitting in here and we convinced them they should all put in 400 hundred dollars towards building this summer club over here. This is where the kids would have a place to swim and have tennis and all that. So Dean Morn gave us the land. He sold me the property here to build my house on, sold Mont the property to build his house on and then he gave us the other land. So we spend about a year putting that in. So that along with the fact that Hill Field was built, this whole area just multiplied. A lot of these houses—north of here if you see any houses just one story high Dean Morn was probably instrumental in building them. He got his start at Bellevue, Washington up there during the war he built that. LR: Back behind your home there was a swimming pool? CJ: It is still there. It was open until a year and a half ago. All of a sudden there were no kids up here anymore. We are all senior citizens, and so we sold the club out to the doctor. Someday he wants to take the clubhouse and use it like they do Eccles Center. Have it for showing art work and stuff like that. It’s got the parking lot and everything over there. He figures someday that might happen. LR: So from this vantage point up here, were you able to kind of see how Ogden changed over the years? CJ: Oh yeah. 13 LR: Was that interesting? CJ: We thought it was pretty good because our kids, once they put Ben Lomond High down here, we had a whole set up to get kids educated and everything. They got good teachers and everything. It worked out right. LR: I’ve pretty much asked all my questions. Do you have any questions that you’d like to ask? RW: How did you like going to school in Ogden? Were you able to go to the university or did you focus on your career? CJ: I went to Ogden High. I was with the first class that graduated out of Ogden High and when I got out that was in 1943. On my senior year at Ogden High I had enough credits that I went down and complained to the state that I wanted to go to Weber State. I said, “Hey I’ve got all my requirements and that. I’d like you to release me so I can go to Weber State.” They said, “No you’ve got to finish high school.” Well that kind of rubbed me wrong so I got a hold of the head of the state school board and convinced them that they should let me go to Weber because at that particular time I was signed up with the Navy to get in what they call a V-12 program, which was to become a pilot. Everybody wanted to be a pilot and so did stupid me. So I went to Weber, I never finished my high school. Well I graduated, but I didn’t graduate with the class. My wife, she was in the same class I was. She picked up my graduation a year later. In the meantime, I went into the Navy with electronics. I got out of the flying bit and it’s a good thing I did because electronics was where it was. 14 LR: Do you have any other memories you would like to share of early Ogden or 25th Street? CJ: Well one thing, it doesn’t totally involve 25th Street, but it was nice that I lived at 23rd and Jefferson. In the same street car that ran up 25th Street and on out to 28th street, out on 28th and Jefferson was as far as they went south. There was a clay pit out there and there was a brick yard where they made bricks. They ran the streetcar out there so you got those bricks and took them to different places. Being where I lived at 23rd and Jefferson, for a dollar you could get on the streetcar there, go down to 24th and Grant, and get on Utah Idaho Central, it was what you would call the Bamberger part, part of the Bamberger. They were owned by different people, but anyway you could go up Ogden Canyon and up to Huntsville or you could go all the way up to Logan and on down to Wellsville up there. Or you could go clear up to Soda Springs up in Idaho, but not for a dollar. You could go any place in northern Utah for a dollar. You could go from here to Lagoon and this all radiated off of 25th and Grant where the station is now. That’s where you would catch the train to go anywhere. So they had a good transportation system in those days. We used to go from here out to Saltair and out to Black Rock, which was a beach on the other side of Saltair. In the summers and fall you could do that for 75 cents. It was quite interesting. LR: What was your favorite restaurant on 25th Street? CJ: Oh, Ross and Jack’s probably is the most memorable, because one thing I could always take mother and my two brothers, dad wasn’t with us all the time, we could go down there and I could feed the whole family on what I was making 15 delivering papers and stuff like that. You know I could do it on my own, prices were such. For 89 cents you could have the best meal you could possibly think of. LR: Well, I appreciate your time, I appreciate your willingness to sit and talk about your memories of 25th Street and Ogden. Thank you for the opportunity to do this.