Oral History Program Dan E. Layton Interviewed by Lorrie Rands 20 September 2013 Oral History Program Weber State University Stewart Library Ogden, Utah Dan E. Layton Interviewed by Lorrie Rands 20 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: Layton, Dan E., an oral history by Lorrie Rands, 20 September 2013, WSU Stewart Library Oral History Program, University Archives, Stewart Library, Weber State University, Ogden, UT. Dan E. Layton September 20, 2013 1 Abstract: The following is an oral history interview with Dan Layton, conducted in his home by Lorrie Rands on September 20, 2013. Dan discusses his ancestors’ settlement in Layton, Utah, his memories of Ogden and 25th Street, and his knowledge of prohibition and polygamy in the area. Also present is Dan’s wife, and Elliot McNally, the videographer. LR: Thank you for letting us come in your home and interview you about this. Let’s start with the basics, when and where were you born? DL: Right here in this house on January 3, 1928 in our bedroom. Of course, it’s been revamped since. LR: This was originally your— DL: Father and mother’s home, built in 1923 in West Layton. LR: So you’re part of the original Layton family. DL: Yes, our ancestors came in here, the early Mormons, in I think 1852, I should say, is when they arrived here. LR: What were some of your earliest memories of 25th Street? DL: The earliest memories is when we’d go over to—well, my mother would put potatoes in the old Whippet car and fill it up about eight sacks and my brother and I would ride on top of the potatoes, and then we’d go down in the back alley behind the Senate Café and she’d go to this Chinaman. He would come out and he’d look at the potatoes, and my memories are that my mother was bickering with him on the prices. This is the depression in about 1935 or 1934. He’d always get them and say, “Too widdle, too widdle,” like, “They’re too little,” you know. But 2 anyway, she’d make the deal and then we’d go in and we’d always get a meal. The first time I remember anything about eating out and we’d have, from what I remember, it’s similar to Weinerschnitzel and pork Weinerschnitzel like what they have in Germany. It’s pork—sliced pork, dressing, and potatoes and gravy and probably vegetable soup with the oyster crackers. I still like them, by the way. I think I told you about walking up there and we’d catch the Bamberger track and we’d go up and walk up and get off at 25th there. The Bamberger station used to be over on 24th by the old federal building that’s still there. We’d get off 25th and walk up to 25th Street and go up to Washington right on the Walgreens corner and just about one or two buildings north of it was a little pool hall downstairs, and we’d go down and play pool. We’d sluff school, by the way. They had a lady, I’ve got to watch my language, but we had an old lady there, well she was a truant officer from Ogden High and she’d come down, getting everybody that she could find that were sluffing, so we’d usually get alerted and we’d go out the back door and that would be behind there from Kiesel to Washington on 25th, it would be behind the buildings on 25th running west. Anyway, I can remember that part and then, and at the same time, we had a lot of trains coming. I can’t tell you, over one hundred passengers a day as I remember or have been told. At that time I wasn’t interested in the railroad, I didn’t hardly even know it existed, just trains running on the tracks. The soldiers and sailors and marines were all getting off and running up 25th to buy whiskey or bootlegging—well they had whiskey for sale, prohibition was over in 1934. But they were all tanking up to get back on the trains and go and they were going 3 east and west, north and south, all directions. This was during the war years, that would be, from what I can remember more 1943 which was the height of the war. LR: You talked about Ross and Jacks. DL: Oh, Ross and Jacks and National Tavern and all of that. This was the food of course, Ross and Jacks, they had a buffet and you’d get a big hamburger and potatoes and gravy for about 15 to 25 cents for one scoopful or two. I don’t remember exactly. It was very cheap and later on, when we were in college, we’d go down and get a meal there. They split up sometime in the late 1940s or 1950s it seems like, and they partitioned Ross and Jack’s off so one brother had one side and one brother had the other side. Anyway, we were going to college at that time, this would be fall of 1948 and most of us just got back from the service and we were beginning college on 25th Street, and we’d go down and get the cheapest meal we could because we didn’t have a lot of money. That’s about all I can say about Ross and Jacks. Then the bars, I knew people that used to go to the National Tavern and the, I think it was the American Tavern, and then they had The Club. One of the Greek boys, I think it was Pappas’, and this was later on in 1953 or 1954 and 1955 and on up. I worked on the railroad and we’d cash our checks at The Club. We’d get our railroad checks at the freight office down on Wall, just north of the U.P. Depot, and we’d go up and cash our checks. Some of the fellows, whatever crew we were on, train crew—we used to have the conductor in the back and three brakemen and a fireman and an engineer at that time and we’d go in and maybe imbibe a little. A lot of times we’d end up at the bar, LeRoy’s, it’s on 28th 4 Street and we’d go up there and spend a little time and whatever. That’s what I can remember of that part of 25th. LR: Well, you mentioned last time that you really didn’t understand how famous 25th Street was until you were in the service. Why is that? DL: Well, yes. When I was in the service I was aboard the ship USS Roosevelt. I’d mention I was from Utah and a lot of the—they’d mention getting off at 25th Street to go on transits. It was a famous street, I mean, it was really quite famous. I’d tell them, “Yeah, I’ve been there.” Well, I didn’t spend a lot of time on 25th Street, but like I told you, we used to people watch. We’d come down from college and we’d have a couple hour break between classes, and we’d park down on 25th or on Washington Boulevard and it was always, well it was quite interesting to see the people walk by. We’d see the short, tall, and all, you know, fat, thin, whatever. It’s still interesting. When I take my wife to Wal-Mart or up at the mall and that, I wait for her, she can’t drive anymore because she had a stroke that ruined her peripheral vision. I married a younger lady to drive me around, but she can’t drive, so I’m still doing it. Anyway, that’s a lot to remember. Then, we’d go to the Star Noodle, I believe it was, and we would get noodles and they had some of the best noodles. They out beat Utah Noodles, which used to be over on Kiesel by the Paramount Theater and then they moved down over on the corner on Grant. They had the best noodles, Spanish noodles, and the only place you could find them was Utah Noodle, but I believe I read that they’re closed or closing. Then, they used to have two little theaters on the south side of the street on 25th, just down from where the bus depot is now, I think it’s 5 still there. I can’t remember their names, but they had little theaters there. Then I told you last time, they had a little hamburger stand there and our parents would let the children off. There were three, my brother—no, it would be my two sisters, my brother wasn’t old enough, and they’d let us go to the Popeye Club. It was at Paramount Theater up on Kiesel Avenue. We all belonged to the Popeye Club and then they’d give us—money was pretty tight, but I think they’d give us two bits among the three of us and we’d go down and get a hamburger and a drink or an ice cream or something for a nickel—a nickel a hamburger, a nickel a hot dog, or whatever we had. Then we’d wait across the street at the park, it’s still there, and we’d wait for our parents to come and pick us up. Okay, those are fond memories as a child and 25th Street. LR: When you were on board ship and you’d mention you were from Utah, how many sailors do you think would say, “Yeah, I know that street, it’s amazing.” DL: If we’re in somewhere in the city or aboard ship—well, just people you’d be talking to, different men either in your division or in the mess hall or somewhere on the ship, they’d ask you the common thing, “Where are you from?” You’d tell them Utah and they’d say, “Oh yeah, 25th Street.” The most famous street in the nation and almost in the world at that time. And then sometimes you’d be down to, like if it was in San Diego or San Francisco or Seattle or somewhere, Shanghai, and you traveled and you get together with a group of men and, of course, you’d say, “What state are you from?” Which is common among all of us here and they’d always mention 25th Street because their knowledge of 25th 6 Street was the hub because of the railroad where they’d get off. I can’t tell you how many, but every conversation, you’d run into somebody that had been there. LR: You mentioned last time in the late thirties, early forties when they started the 24th of July parade, Harman Peery… DL: Oh, the parade started back in the thirties. Harman Peery and he was the mayor when he started that and they had a 24th of July parade every year and they still have it and, but they don’t have it on down the street anymore, I think they have it at the fairgrounds there. And they had a wonderful parade. It came from the south, so it would probably start down around 36th Street and go all the way up to, well I imagine they’d cut it off somewhere up around 21st or so. LR: So that went down Washington? DL: Yeah, right down Washington and it was a big parade, they had a lot of the movie stars in there, the ones that would come in, and, a cowboy area, and a lot of horses. Now you don’t have as many horses in any of the parades, but that was all horses then, especially in the thirties. We didn’t have a lot of automobiles and trucks, in fact, her uncle, he got one of the first trucks down here in West Layton about 1932 and her dad, I think, got one about 1936. I think it was a 1934 Chevy ton and a half. We didn’t have many trucks in Layton when my dad was farming and all of the people here, they had wagons. A lot of them were steel ram wagons. We’ve still got some up by the old barn up by my cousin’s. But some of them had the rubber tired wagons. Anyway, about the street, they had the floats and they had the—we didn’t have a lot of kids marching bands or anything because Ogden High and Weber High were the only two schools in Ogden. I 7 don’t ever remember any of the county schools like Davis High—it was the only high school from North Salt Lake to Sunset. It was the only high school in the whole county. It’s hard to believe, but it’s true. LR: It is. DL: And we went on the eighth-four, we’d go to eight grades in grade school and then four in the high school. By the time I got—they built North Davis Junior High in Clearfield. About 1939 or 1940, I wasn’t the first class there, I think I started either 1940 or 1941. That was the first junior high, and this didn’t count, but they did have a South Davis Junior high in Bountiful. Anyway, that’s part of the school deal and we’re talking about parades and people marching, they’d only have, and maybe they had Weber High or Ogden High. In the parades now, they have them from all over. LR: Do you remember watching the parade? DL: Oh, all the time. That was a big deal. That was the deal, 4th of July sometimes, we’d go over, but the 24th is the big deal, it was the Mormon parade in 1847 and that was the deal. That was our summer outing. We didn’t get very far in those days. In fact, after school was out, we would pretty well run bare footed without shirts all summer and then the folks would take us over and outfit us for school clothes and when we put shoes on, we felt like we were walking on stilts. LR: Last time we talked about when you were in Weber College, you and a buddy had a bachelor party? You took him to the Rose Rooms. DL: That’s not embarrassing to me because I didn’t ever go in the Rose Rooms, but I went up the stairs. Our friend got married, and in the old days, well, they would 8 take him, pair up and—a bit of a sideline in a minute if you want to listen. But we got this kid and this one friend, he got the handcuffs from one of the deputies out in Farmington, which was a friend of his and we handcuffed the groom to his arm, and it’s too long of a story to tell, but we all went up—there was about eight of us all together, two cars, and we brought him up to the Rose Rooms. I got as far as the stairs, but Rose, I don’t know whether it was Rose or one of the girls, I don’t know, we had a lot of fun with him. It’s just playing around, kid’s stuff, college stuff and so that was one of the things. My brother, Jerry, had a friend and his mother was a prostitute that worked down on the Rose Rooms, and so my brother, Jerry, and his friend, I’m not going to mention his name, well, I won’t mention his last name, Dean, they’d go down and knock on the door and get his mother to give them money then go up to a movie. Now, this is what my brother told you and he’d have some stories, but he didn’t feel well, you now. And so, that’s 25th Street. I’ve covered a lot on 25th and we covered about the antiques and then Ann talked about later and then they had the pawn shops and what else did we cover? LR: You had a little side story you wanted to share. DL: When Ann and I got married, oh it was rotten. They took me for a ride and then took her for a ride, they was even going to take her Evanston, Wyoming, but then they took— AL: All of his friend’s wives. DL: Yeah. And Ann didn’t know them like I did, I mean she was younger than me— she’s about nine years younger than I am and, they took us to the Canton Café. 9 Canton, down on Washington, and I had to pay for all of them and we were short of money, I was short of money on the honeymoon and, oh well, we got through with it, but we didn’t get back together until what time to get my car? They hid the car. LR: That’s cruel. DL: I don’t know, it was cruel, but we ended up in Logan our first night, then we went up to Yellowstone and Jackson, but that’s a little sideline. But then, it was just something that happened. LR: You guys were mean to bachelors and doing the bachelor parties back then. DL: Well, but, they were after me more than anyone because I was— AL: He was getting his just dues. DL: Yeah. I had it coming. AL: But I didn’t. DL: But she didn’t. But it’s something that’s part of your life story, you know. LR: That is so great. You talked about some of the raids on the slots. DL: Oh, up at the Old Mill, is that it? Harm Peery was the mayor then, but he had what they called the Old Mill up there by the water well on the Ogden River there above Charles Street, somewhere up in that area above the old Lorin Farr Park. And we were in high school then and the war years were still going and we were going to get drafted, we knew that, but we’d go up there and old Harm would let us in as long as we paid the 50 cents, the fee to get in and we’d go in and drink these little glasses of beer. We’d have a few beers and then if he knew there was going to be a raid, he wouldn’t let us in. But there’s a hole by the water well over 10 by the river, you know, they had a water well and there was a place you could crawl through. A lot of times, the raids would come in, so if we were in there, we’d hurry up and go out the back and we’d sit in the car and watch them dragging people out. We were wise enough that we knew where the hole was. But, like I said, he had friends at city hall and if he knew about it, then he wouldn’t let us in, but then if we sneaked in, well, okay, then we had a way out. That was quite the going place up there for years and years. It’s been maybe, I think they tore it down now, I’m not— LR: I think they did. DL: Yeah. But anyway, that’s a little sideline too. LR: That’s a good story though. How long were you at Weber College? DL: Two years. I got an AS and then I went off to Utah State and graduated from Utah State. LR: During those two years at Weber College, how much did 25th Street change? DL: It stayed pretty well the same. Ogden, well everything was pretty well the same. People in Ogden were always walking, busy, on both sides of the street, mostly on the west side of Washington Boulevard and down 25th. And then, in the fifties when I was in college I’d come down, the streets started to thin out. A lot of it was because the railroad started to slow down and, you didn’t have the passenger trains anymore. But then it picked up a little bit in 1950 when the Korean War started and they started to move troops through. By 1953, I worked, I hired out on the railroad and they had a few troop trains coming in. I’d be on 24, 23, or 11 some other troop train. But most of it by that time, they flew people around. It was in the fifties. It’s pretty well petered out. LR: So, as the railroad came to an end, the street kind of just— DL: Yeah it started to, well, fizzled out. Mostly just the passenger trains. See, the passenger trains, I think they quit running those and the Amtrak took over one train in the seventies I think, as I remember, but they kept deleting the trains, the passenger trains. And so that was a lot of the business and then 25th Street started to shut down, there weren’t very many people on 25th. LR: Did you ever have occasion to go up onto 25th during the eighties or nineties? DL: Oh yes. Ann and I would go over and get something to eat sometimes and she’d go to some of the antique places. Even the nineties we’d go down and go down to the depot once in a while. They had the café in there, this might be in the nineties, I remember we’d do that. There were nice restaurants down there and we’d go down to the depot and then they had a little store in front and you could buy railroad paraphernalia, things like that. LR: So, in comparison to when you were at Weber College, to when you were there in the eighties, how different was it? DL: It was almost nothing. It was just like the streets were almost vacant. And then, they started to pick up at the end of the eighties a little and they started putting little stores in and a few things. But as I remember it, if you went down there, the streets were just almost abandoned. LR: Wow. That’s hard for me to imagine. 12 DL: Well, they were. Even on Washington Boulevard. It was just almost like a ghost town there. See all these malls and that out in Riverdale. It’s just like now, Ann and I, we went down south here this summer sometime, we came home from the restaurant over here, my brother has a restaurant, Lucinda’s. We went south out by Pleasant View and went down there, instead of going to Plain City, we turned left and went down through Syracuse and West Point and that, and it’s just like little cities down there. I couldn’t believe it. And you know, I used to drive out to Roy when I was going to college at Weber and when I got out of the service and you had landmarks. On our drive, we didn’t even know where we were. It’s just changed, everything’s changed. When I came home from the service, there was a sign out, the town of Layton was 571 people, and Davis County, I doubt if it had over 15,000 or maybe 20,000 in the whole county. But I remember they had a sign and the reason I remember is I had my picture taken in uniform, I was home on leave. Layton had more people than that because they’d had Verdeland here and that brought in a thousand or two and it had more, Layton did. Then Davis County built up around Layton. Now there’s 70,000 in Layton. Where you live right on Angel, that was all farm land, John Thornley owned that land along there. LR: Wow. I believe you mentioned last time that you’d been on 25th Street recently. DL: It’s been at least six months to a year. LR: So, you’ve seen how it is today. DL: Yeah, there’s life there now. There’s cars there and little restaurants and I think we went to Rooster’s maybe a year ago. Ann, she took one of her grandsons there and walked up, and yes, there’s life there. 13 DL: The only difference is what the life entails. LR: Right. I agree with you. A little bit different clientele. Do you like the different feel that it has today? DL: Well, yes, from my experience. When we were kids and that, we didn’t pay much attention to everything; we were just watching the fights and a few things. We weren’t participants at all, other than we’d go to the restaurants here. But, anyway, we quite enjoyed what was going on through that period of time. We just accepted things. Oh, this little fellow, Jimmy, he’s ex-navy, he’s younger than I am. He’d be about 81. I think he was born the 9th of January, about 1931. My mind tells me that. I don’t know why, but it does. And the kid, he used to shine shoes, his dad had a little cigar store and Jim tells this story. He’s at the airport and he’d sell his cigars for about a cent apiece and this was back in the depression. When he was shining the shoes, that would be more like 1943 or 1944 in that time. He’d probably be in the seventh grade when I was a senior in high school. But, I don’t know where he grew up, but he’s with his dad and I think his uncle ran the cigar store. But, but he’s full of stories, he’s witty. LR: I know you say you’ve talked about everything you can remember, but is there any other story that is just coming to mind that you’d like to share? DL: On 25th? LR: On 25th, or surrounding areas of Ogden. It’s doesn’t have to— EM: Well, what about Layton? Well, in Layton, growing up, they had the old grandstand up south of the elementary school and— 14 LR: The one here on Gentile? DL: Yeah. They tore the old one down and they built a new one, but that one never had a grandstand. A regular grandstand, with a roof over it and everything. They’d have ball games all the time, in fact, a lot of times, the local farmers and that participated in the ball games and they’d play different teams in the county, Kaysville, Clearfield, West Point. They all would have teams and sometimes they’d have a lot of fights there. Then, in one year, 1934, I believe, they didn’t have any water. They just couldn’t farm hardly, and so most of them, they spent a lot of time playing ball that summer. I could give you a little fun thing. They still had the ballpark in Layton in front of the old grandstand and, in fact, when we were kids, Ann’s younger, but she played down at the grandstand. They had the seats and you’d run around and play and do what kids do, Run Sheep Run, and all whatever they used to do. When I got home from the service, we had a couple of our friends, they were younger, and they were still in high school a couple of them, and they were playing ball there. They had some local teams so this friend of mine, he got a Jeep from Tooele Surplus Jeep and so we went up Farmington Canyon and got up to where the towers are now, they weren’t there then, and we filled the Jeep up with snow and put a six pack of beer in the snow and we came down and we’d been imbibe a few, there was about four of us in the Jeep and full of snow and beer and we got throwing snowballs to ball players down at Layton down at the Grandstand. LR: You went all the way up to Francis Peak? 15 DL: Well, yes. There was the old road up Farmington Canyon and then you go along, almost over to South Weber on that road, but then it cut off over above Clearfield somewhere. You couldn’t go much more than that. And, at that time, this was July 4th, we’d had the Riada Days and they used to have them in the park, the one by the Layton grade school. That’s where they had their parades and that and you’d go down there from Layton on Main Street. Then we’d go down to the park and they played ball and they had hot dog, a little hot dog stand and that like they do in the Layton Commons Park now. We’d be down there and then they’d have the fireworks at night. But anyway, that was just some of the memories. LR: So, the year of 1934, when there was no water— DL: Yeah. My sister and I, we used to—there was nobody to take you anywhere then, you walked. You shanked ponies here (pointing to his legs), you walked everywhere you went. And we’d go up and watch some of the games. That was a big deal in those days. LR: I’m trying to understand, so we’re in the heart of the depression, there’s no way to farm, how did you survive? DL: A lot of people didn’t survive, but I lived on a farm, and I did tell you, and I like potatoes today, but I ate a lot of potatoes and onions and most of us did. We weren’t ever in bread lines and my dad would never go on WPA or PWA, public works and that. But we survived. I had a neighbor next door, in fact, a relative, Davis County had a truck come around about every week or two weeks or something and drop food off to them, but we got by. We stored potatoes, like I said, in the basement and onions and food and then we had a pit, you know, the 16 pits, they store food in dirt? We all had the gardens and we had a big garden like I have today, I’m still farming. I’ve got potatoes, onions, well my nephew does. Mine is mostly hay and wheat now. But what I’m saying is, we don’t store like we used to anymore. We have potatoes, onions out here and we put up peaches yesterday and we’re going to put some up today I think. But if anything happened—we followed the church and put a lot of storage away and we had a part in our basement, our storeroom that was full of stuff. It didn’t stay long, we hauled it away to the junk though, and I think we could get by if we had to, in my opinion, for a short time. But we would be all in the same fix if some disaster happened. So, this is a little bit of west Layton, but we were all in the same boat. We had our knees patched and I used to have to get dad’s old felt hat and he’d cut it and put it in the bottom of our shoes. I tell you, the holes would wear them out. You’ve heard the stories, I’m sure you have, if you haven’t, that’s what we did. We all got by and we were pretty well all, well, during the depression it was pretty bad. We, like I say, we didn’t have like in the big cities, the bread lines and everything. I could tell you a lot of stories of what’s gone on like trying to get to Antelope Island by walking across the lake. The lake was low and we’d get out so far in the lake, it was shallow, I don’t know how shallow, maybe like similar to today. But we could see the capitol building in Salt Lake from the lake. We could have, if any storm came out, we could have drowned, I guess. I’ve been on the 17 railroad, we went across the Great Salt Lake for 34 years, on the trestle and then the field. It’s pretty hairy out there. LR: Speaking of the lake, during the floods of 1983, did those floods affect you here? DL: No, it didn’t come up to here, oh no. It just came up, it probably came up to the Stansbury level. There are what they call the Bonneville level, the Provo level and the Stansbury is below that. Down here it got to about the Stansbury level here, that’s up on the bottom part of the mountain. Over there, by Stansbury and Grantsville, it came up to that level and then Farmington, Centerville, it came across the highway and went up into those houses that are there now, which were not there then. My mother lived there and they had to abandon their house for a while. LR: The reason I ask is there’s the bird refuge that’s just down the street now. DL: Oh yeah. LR: There’s a mark where it came up past it. DL: It came up pretty close right down here—either Angel Street or down by Call Street. That’s when the lake was so high and we had a freeze and the lake water, of course, lake water doesn’t freeze, the fresh water on the fringes does. It came over and knocked all of those big power lines down and we were out of power for about three days. Then, the ice, it came off in big jams and it looked like icebergs down there. You could go down here at the bottom of the road right down here and follow it down 2200, around Call Street—well you’re familiar—and you could see ice jams right up there where those towers are, you can see the towers, so it came past the towers and they looked like icebergs, I’m serious. 18 LR: I believe you. DL: Yeah, just the wind blew them in and the fresh water, you know, on the fringe there. Oh yeah, I’ve been down on the lake—we used to go duck hunting and be sitting down there all the time. I have geese come in my field right behind where you are, across the trail, I own that land. I told you about it. They’re not in there now, they would be, but we’ve had so much water and rain that the volunteer wheat and the scrub oak, you could go by and you can see the scrub oak from my field. It’s green. It’s regrowth coming. We got to just get it pretty for next year, but the geese would still be in there. We’d get thousands in there. Last summer, last fall, we had thousands that would come and land right there. LR: And you’d go out and hunt in those fields? DL: Yeah, right up in my field there. You’d see them down below her mother’s house, right there, this fall when they got to chop the corn up, it was full of geese every morning. I had quite a few, maybe a few hundred in my field before the rains germinated the wheat seeds. So it’s been quite a unique area here where we live, and of course, this is my home. I’ve got the barn here that my dad built in 1925 and I’ve maintained it. LR: I love that barn. It has both your names on it. DL: Yeah, well, I maintain the barn and paint it and keep it together. My cousin’s barn, the green one up here, that’s where my grandmother and grandfather Layton lived, and that was built in 1900. They built that home in 1880 and he never married my grandmother until, I think it was 1883 and then they raised a family. My father, they raised him and he was born in Kaysville in that home. It 19 used to be Kaysville, all this area was Kaysville, clear out to the sand wrenches. They had trouble with Kaysville, the town of Kaysville, because that was the local seat at the time. It was something over his dog tags. It was still open country and only 31 families in the whole area. I have a book here somewhere I could show it to you and they broke away from what they called, “Kaysville,” but it was still Kaysville, but they started to call it Layton after my relative, Christopher Layton. The reason was they put the D&RG Railroad through here, they’d go by he was a polygamist and he had some wives that lived on Angel, just below you, where Randy Weaver lives, if you know it. That home was one of his polygamy homes. Christopher married Ann’s great aunt, Mary Jane Roberts. She was a Roberts and lived, that’s her home up on the parkway. All that land in there and that was one of his polygamy homes. Her name was, Florence, the daughter of Mary Jane and Christopher is, Florence— AL: Lived in what house? DL: Where Randy Weaver lives. DL: You know what I’m talking about. AL: Okay. DL: Anyway, I’ve got a story about it, but he was a polygamist and he had ten wives, but he claimed nine wives. A lot of people are related because of Christopher, but actually he had ten and I’ve got the Christopher Layton book, so I’m not talking out of turn there. They have one paragraph, and he’d come up from California at the end of the Mormon Battalion, he was in the Mormon Battalion and—her great grandfather, Levi Roberts was. He broke his leg or something. I 20 don’t know the whole story and so I’m not going to fabricate it or anything, but it’s what I’ve heard. So, he married her, actually, shacked up down there with her— until his leg was better and she wouldn’t come with him, so he left her there. I don’t know any more about it, but it’s in the one paragraph. But the other book, I have the Christopher Layton book here and it’s got all the wives and the children and everything and it’s just the whole menagerie of how the people around here were all related. You know Clark? His granddad and grandmother, they are our first cousins because his grandmother, Annie, she was Christopher Layton’s—her grandmother Bone was Christopher Layton’s daughter. Then, my Uncle Tom, Dad’s father, Dad’s brother, Tom, he was born to Charles A. Layton and they are relatives, blood relatives. I think they’re first cousins. You know, I’m just telling you little stories and that’s to clarify what went on. I can tell you this, I guess, her grandmother Olive Corbridge, she was from another—her great, great granddad, had two wives and they lived down here at the bottom, right above Bluff Road, the Corbridges. Anyway, he built a house for one, maybe a half a block away and the other one lived in the old house. It’s torn down now. But the story goes, that the old lady, when he was visiting the one lady, the other lady sat on the chair and just rocked back and forth and watched the house when he was visiting the other lady, his other wife. And my grandmother Layton, I’ll tell you this right from the horse’s mouth, when I got old enough to understand what she was saying before she died, I’d asked her about polygamy. She said, “Dan, I don’t even want to talk about, there’s so much wickedness going on.” That’s the story. 21 LR: That’s all she’d say? DL: That’s all she’d say. But, we were all from polygamy families--her side and my side. My great granddad, Charles Layton had—he claimed two wives, but he had three. I have a history of it and the last wife was more or less to take care of him and for a place to live. I mean, as far as polygamy, most of Utah, by the way, are from polygamy families. I don’t know where you came from, or you, but if you trace your genealogy back, you could be. LR: Both of my parents, I’m sure, have the same history. DL: Well, yeah, polygamy, you know. See, most of my, like my parents, my grandparents paternal side, they’re all from England and down by Hertfordshire or somewhere down there in the midlands. We’ve been to England and traveled. My mother’s side, most of them are from Germany, but down in southern Germany. I tried to find the name Hartzog, it was Hertzog or something that they changed to Hartzog when they came to America, but we were in Germany and I checked with the people and they said most of the people were down by the Bavaria, down in the southern part. LR: Do you have any questions? I love what you’ve said and I just appreciate your time. If they want more stories, I know where you are. DL: I better not mention the last name, but one of the guys back in the depression days when we had prohibition and the old gentleman down at the end of Gentile, down by the lake there—that’ll give people that hear this. He had a still. There were a lot of stills around, I’m going to mention about the stills and the commissioner who lived across the street here in 1950. But, he had a still and so 22 this guy, he lived down there and he had some cows and he was down looking for his cows and he didn’t come home to milk that night. So, they had gone out looking for him down in the field, the pasture, and they heard a weak voice coming from down under the ground there, “Help, help.” He fell in the still and if he’d stayed any longer it would have killed him because of the alcohol and the osmosis into his body, so they got him out. That’s the story on this, and this is down is West Layton. Then we had a commissioner who lived right across the street, by the way, and he was the Davis County Commissioner back in 1950. In fact, he put some of the roads in, the dirt roads and they built the cement roads to go to the sugar factory when they built it in 1950. LR: That’s why it’s called Sugar Street? DL: Well no, the sugar factory, where all the homes are just right off Gentile and Sugar Street, you go up there by all those homes, the industrial park there. Jerry Stevenson bought it. So, I won’t go into all the details, but he said they saved the best whiskey for them. LR: So he would, he had a still in his backyard basically? DL: No, no. When they’d raid the stills—the Davis County Sherriff’s Department— they’d raid the stills all over the county and they kept the best whiskey for themselves. He had to go to, what do they call it—Keeley treatments twice, he was an alcoholic and that was to cure it then. But, there are all kinds of stories like this around West Layton. There were some womanizers down here and, well, just like in any little town, you know. See, I’m old enough to know what’s going on and 23 have lived through a lot of it. This has been a fascinating life, it’s a great life and it’s been a wonderful voyage, to use the naval term, or whatever you want to use, but it’s been fun. LR: Well, it has been fun sitting here listening to you.