Oral History Program Rena Prevedel Interviewed by Lorrie Rands and Brian Whitney 14 October 2014 Oral History Program Weber State University Stewart Library Ogden, Utah Rena Prevedel Interviewed by Lorrie Rands and Brian Whitney 14 October 2014 Copyright © 2014 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 Immigrants at the Crossroads - Ogden City is a project to collect oral histories, photographs and artifacts related to the immigrant populations that helped shape the cultural and economic climate of Ogden. This project will expand the contributions made by Ogden’s immigrant populations: the Dutch, Italian and Greek immigrants who came to work on the railroad and the Japanese who arrived after World War II from the West Coast and from internment camps. ____________________________________ 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: Prevedel, Rena, an oral history by Lorrie Rands and Brian Whitney, 14 October 2014, WSU Stewart Library Oral History Program, University Archives, Stewart Library, Weber State University, Ogden, UT. Dave & Rena Prevedel, 2014 Rena & Dave Prevedel, 2016 1 Abstract: This is an oral history interview with Rena Prevedel, conducted by Lorrie Rands and Brian Whitney on October 14, 2014. Rena Prevedel was born in Wyoming and later settled with her parents in Ogden. She discusses the Tyrolean community that thrived in Ogden, and how the immigrants from the northern part of Italy worked to keep their heritage and culture alive. David Prevedel is also present. BW: This is Brian Whitney. We are with David and Rena Prevedel at Rena Prevedel’s home in West Haven, and we are going to be discussing their history. I am joined by Lorrie Rands as well. Today is October 14th, 2014; the time is just a little after 10am. Thanks for agreeing to interview with us, and it’s been a real pleasure speaking with you for the first few minutes while we were setting up. So, why don’t we just start with some real basics: if you could give me your full name— including your maiden name as well—and when you were born, and when you came to the United States. RP: My name is Rena Rauzi Prevedel. I was born September 16, 1922. I was born in Superior, Wyoming. My father and his brother had purchased a farm in West Warren, and one would work in the coal mines all winter and one brother would stay on the farm to take care of—probably milk cows. Then the following year, they would rotate; the other brother would work in the coal mines and the other one would stay with the farm. It was very secluded from most of the rest of the town. DP: When did you come down here from Superior? 2 RP: The brothers would take turns in the winter, and I came down from Superior in December 1922, and I was maybe two or three months old. I don’t know. At the time, there was what they called the Section House. It was the Rees Section House, and the trains would stop there if they would flag a train down with flags, and they would stop. And there was a section house where the foremen lived, and then bunkhouses where the workers lived. And I just imagine my uncle Mike and his wife and family left ahead, and my parents came to the farm when it was dark and cold. I remember the coldness—the window was broken out and it was just freezing. So then they took over the farm for the remainder of the year, I guess. My mother never did speak English; she understood very few words. My father could—of course, he spoke broken English—but he could speak better. I didn’t have any playmates, we were kind of out alone and the LDS people were just wonderful, just wonderful to us and, in return, my father was nice to them too. When it came time to go to first grade, my parents decided I was too little and thin and I couldn’t speak a word of English, so I didn’t go to school until I was seven. I went to West Weber School in West Weber, and I couldn’t speak a word of English, I just sat through everything. I don’t know how far it was—at least three months along the school year—I looked up at the blackboard and there was this sentence that said, “The sun is shining,” and I hadn’t realized I could read prior to that. The LDS people were really nice to us, they really were. Although we were Catholic, I did go to primary occasionally and made a few friends. But my parents 3 were over-protective because I was an only child and they were very strict—a lot I couldn’t do. BW: Can you give me a little background on your parents? RP: Yes. My parents were from Brez, Arto-Trento, Italy. They were Tyrolean. They spoke a language that—the Italian language is a smooth, smooth road; the dialect they spoke was like a bumpy, bumpy, bumpy road. At the station house where the trains stopped, there was an Italian family that spoke the real Italian, and I would play with their children occasionally, so I picked up speaking the real Italian also. When I started in first grade, I was seven years old, and it was almost comical: my father smoked a pipe, and it was in his mouth from daylight to dark. He bought tobacco in a little bucket that was maybe ten inches tall and round, and it was Miners and Puddlers tobacco. My parents packed my school lunch in a Miners and Puddlers tobacco bucket to take to school. We made friends, and I had one special friend, Iris Snyde, she was really nice. Occasionally, maybe on Sundays, a special treat, we would go to West Weber to visit other Tyroleans. But going back a little, when I was a baby, I guess, my father still had a horse and buggy and they would travel to Ogden, which is twelve miles, and pick up staples like flour and sugar and groceries. I recall he had a high-spirited pony that would pull the buggy, and he would hang onto the buggy—or hang onto the horse’s bridle—while my mother and I got in the buggy, and then he’d have to catch the buggy on the run because the minute he let go of him, he was gone. 4 When we were downtown they had the livery stable, which would feed and water your horse while you shopped, and it was twelve miles one way and I imagine they came home later in the day; I don’t know what time they would arrive home. My father had, I can’t say how many cows at the beginning, but he did build up a surge of about twelve cows. In the meantime, I think it was 1928, my father’s youngest sister came from Brez, and she married Bert Knowley. My father was wanting them to buy a farm—be his neighbor—and they weren’t interested in farming at all, but as a result my dad bought sixty acres just out off of the lane we lived on. It was known as the Rackham Place at the time. They weren’t interested in farming, so he did have the two farms of sixty acres each. I recall my mother saying when they topped beets in the fall—this is when they had the round washtubs—she would put me in the washtub, and I could play, and she’d pull me along as she topped beets. BW: A lot of Tyroleans came to Wyoming hired by the coal mines and the Union Pacific Railroad. Can you tell me more about that? RP: My father, I guess where they were, it was beautiful country and everything, but they were extremely poor—there were no jobs. The only jobs the young men could find was going to Germany, but they were raised up right at the foot of the Alps, and they would go to Germany for the summer. And I imagine they had pastures; they would tend cattle in these pastures. And then they had payment at the end of whenever they stayed, they were given a pair of brand new shoes, and that was their payment. 5 DP: Did they ever say how they found out about Superior and Rock Springs, to come here? RP: Prior to their coming, a lot of them were coming to Superior and Rock Springs to work in the coal mines. I have my dad’s ship manifest. I have it here. DP: It was from the Ellis Island arrival. RP: I have it here, and I always thought he was maybe sixteen when he came, but my granddaughter looked at it and she said he was eighteen, so I don’t know. Coming across the United States, they had to have at least $25 in their pocket after they left Ellis Island. I recall him saying on the train, they’d hold their hand out, the conductor would take whatever change it took to get food—I imagine a hamburger or whatever—and they were fed. Then they came to Rock Springs, and in Rock Springs, there was a lady who lived near the train station, and she would take all of the immigrants for one night or two nights until they got their bearings and found out where they were to go. My parents were in Superior, Wyoming, which is a little coal mining town. I think they were working for $1 a day. I think the miners went on strike, and my dad went back to Brez to see his family, and I’m sure the mines were on strike. They had what they called in the mining town boarding houses. Some of them belonged to miners. They had bed and food, and they were paid maybe $10 a month, I think. My mother’s sister had two boys, and they said in Superior they had ordered skates. They could lay near the railroad track and put their ear to the railroad track, and they could hear when the train was coming from miles away. It 6 kind of shimmied or whatever it did. And they had ordered roller skates, and they knew their roller skates were on the way. DP: Your mother came later. How did Grandpa send for her? RP: What year did my mother come to the miner’s town? DP: Well, it was after World War I; 1922-23. RP: She was thirty-three. My dad was thirty-four when they were married. And, of course, she couldn’t speak a word of English. My dad spoke broken English. She worked right alongside my dad piling hay and lowering hay. It wasn’t bales at that time, it was just piles. We had friends we visited. Oh, I just thought a lawn was being in heaven. If I could have a lawn, I thought I’d be in heaven. And I begged my dad to plant me a lawn each year, and of course he didn’t have time. And then when they’d haul the sugar beets to the dump, I imagine they shook the beets somehow, and they’d bring their soil home—a pile of it home—in the wagon. So, one year, he decided to bring some soil and I have a small front lawn in front of the house. BW: What do you think it was like for them coming from the Alps to the High Desert? RP: Well, they knew that to survive this is what they had to do. I think it was harder for my mother, probably, because she was home more or less. My father would see other farmers; she would be home more. She was a great cook and everything was immaculate. Of course, she had to wash clothes on the washboard. They did get a Model T, finally. I think I was in second grade or so. They got a Model T—so that made life a little easier. They didn’t complain that it was ever hard, just a lot of hard work. They had teams of horses that would do 7 everything. I recall my father, I guess maybe they were hauling hay, and at noon, he’d leave the harness on the horses, but he’d bring them over to the water trough and make sure they got a drink. BW: A lot of work. You’d mentioned something in your book, David, and maybe you can elaborate on this: skimming grease off water. DP: Okay, this pertains to Superior—it’s a high desert community, they did not have drinking water. But when they pushed the coal mines back into the coal seams, they did hit water, and it flowed down through the tracks and out of the mines as a lot of coal mines do today. Of course, there’s a lot of equipment back there, so by the time it got out of the mine, it was all contaminated with oil and grease. But that’s all they had for drinking water, so they’d run it from the mines out to barrels, and they let it sit in the barrels for the oil and the grease to come to the surface—then they’d have to skim that off to have water to wash with. I don’t think they drank it, because most of the Tyrolean children grew up drinking coffee because that’s how they purified the water was to boil it. So they didn’t drink it, but for general washing or general utilities of water, they’d have to skim the grease off the water coming out of the mines. BW: World War I seemed to have a big impact on the Tyrolean community. Did you hear anything from your father about that? RP: I don’t recall. DP: We had a lot of relatives that were in Tyrolia at the time of the war, and they had to go fight the Russians. Remember the Bertagnollis and Genettis they went to war; the Austrians were fighting the Russians, and several of the Tyroleans went 8 to Russia to fight. Fortunately, both of my grandfathers left before the war started and avoided that forced conscription that they had at the time, but we do have some relatives that were in the war with the Russians. RP: I recall my mother-in-law had a brother who was also a coal miner, that somehow they left Russia and had to walk back to somewhere, and they would hide all day. When the farmers fed their pigs in the evening, they would go eat pig food, whatever that was, and then walk at night, always walk at night, and then in the daytime—hide. DP: She’s thinking of the Tyrolean soldier. Because when the war finally ended, we know that the Czar had been overthrown and the communists took over, and so the foreign troops are just left to get home on their own. So, they had to just steal and walk their way back home. I was reading the other day; we hear a lot of the Ukraine, that’s where they were doing a lot of the fighting. Apparently, there was a big cemetery in the Ukraine where a lot of the Tyrolean soldiers were buried who were killed during World War I. My grandmothers, your mother and Noni Prevedel, they remember the soldiers coming through the town during the war. I remember my grandmother saying they had to flee to the mountains. And the Italians, the Tyroleans being Austrian, were fighting the Russians and the Italians. Towards the end of the war, the soldiers came into the town and they had to head for the mountains. RP: Austrians didn’t really like the Italians at all. 9 DP: Fortunately, Brez was off of the main route into Germany and Austria—through the Brenner Pass—so it was off the road a ways where it missed a lot of the major conflicts like that. RP: My mother was thirty-three years old when she was married, of course, but prior to that she worked for royalty in her hometown. She said all the silverware and all the dishes, everything, had to be just immaculately put away, and she would work until midnight every night putting everything just perfect. But I imagine it was just in the summer. I don’t know that they were there for their summer. DP: She worked in the Casa Caraza? RP: My mother was born in a castle, but it’s a castle—I have pictures of it and everything—but nobility didn’t own it. Her great-grandfather purchased it. A lot of families lived together, all relatives, and she said they had the largest dance hall through the middle of it, and the art hanging in it was just out of this world beautiful. There are a lot of castles in that area, I think. When you get on the computer, they are just endless. I have pictures of it today. I think today, the same castle still stands, and it’s like— DP: Like a hotel. You can rent rooms and stuff. RP: You can rent rooms. Erda Strauss’s daughter went over, and she said, “I slept in the castle, and I thought, ‘If only these walls could talk.’” BW: Let’s talk about the Great Depression and the effect that it had in Wyoming. Do you remember that? 10 RP: The Great Depression: we were on the farm, and I recall—this wasn’t summer, it was winter—we were Catholic and I knew nothing about religion, I didn’t know it existed, and they decided to board me with a family in Ogden, to send me to St. Joseph’s Elementary School. I recall my dad’s income for the month was $40. He milked cows and sold milk, and he paid $5 per month to have me stay with this family. I was thinking, “My goodness.” BW: That was a big portion of his income. DP: Tell them where you lived in Ogden and what was in the house. RP: I lived on Doxey Street. It was just off of Wall, and St. Joseph’s Elementary was just east of it. We could walk to the school without crossing streets or anything. DP: Who was the family you lived with? RP: It was the Boggio family. Also, this doesn’t pertain to me in any way, but 25th Street—some of the Italian women or the Tyrolean women had hotels and they rented rooms to, I don’t know who. On 25th Street, there was also a store, and it was John V. Bernetti and workers on the railroads would come in from the trains and buy overalls and whatever else they needed along the clothing line. He sold cheese and things that way too, not groceries. A lot them depended on that. We would go there often and buy cheese or whatever. I was on the south side of 25th Street. DP: Were the Italians in different areas in downtown Ogden from the Chinese? RP: I think so. Some were plumbers. Mr. Boggio, who I lived with, was a plumber. I’m amazed at how the women in those hotels—it was an area of prostitution, too. I recall we went to see this particular family with the Boggio family. They had the 11 most beautiful girls living with them, and I could not believe what such a beautiful girl was doing living here. I won’t say what it was, but later I kind of thought— well, I don’t know. LR: Was the Boggio family—were they Tyrolean or Italian? RP: They were Tyrolean, but there were different little towns, and they all spoke a different language. It was all a different dialect. My parents spoke Nones. What were some of the other dialects? I can’t think. LR: Was it weird living with the Boggio family and them speaking a different dialect? RP: Well, it was understandable. Like the Pardini family that lived on the section house: they spoke real Italian, and you compare—it flows just beautiful, almost musical. And the Nones that my folks talked was like this [makes bouncing gesture with finger]. If I can compare: the real Italian to say “a good day,” the Italians would say “buongiorno,” the dialect would say “buondi.” See, it’s almost another language. BW: Let’s talk about bootlegging. RP: Well, yes. I remember…do you recall on 24th street, the Mountview Auto Core? It was like a hotel. Well, it’s like a motel, I guess. They had all their cabins, or all their places to stay with room to drive your car, and then they had a big home right in the middle of it—a huge two-story home, the Bertagnollis. Little did I know what bootlegging was, I knew nothing of that, but I recall one time, maybe I was five years old, they brought this Model T out to my dad’s house and hid it in the barn. I remember they were all throwing hay on it to hide it and I thought, “What are they doing?” It took me years to figure out, it was probably what they 12 delivered whiskey in, and it was well-known, so they were trying to hide it. The Bertagnollis family had cars for bootlegging. I didn’t have dolls, I didn’t have any toys, I didn’t know they existed, really; they would bring me their daughter’s dolls when she grew out of them, and the doll’s buggies. I recall I had a cousin, his name was John Rauzi, and he was Peter Rauzi’s brother, but he was a bachelor, never married, he came and brought me a tricycle once. I didn’t know what it was, didn’t know what I was supposed to do with it. BW: [to Dave] This is a historical question from your book. Can you tell me a little more about the Chinese massacre of 1885? DP: All I know is what I read about it. It was probably similar to the situation that occurred here in Corinne: just anti-Semitism, you know, with Chinese workers and miners. It was just another massacre like what occurred here in the 1880s. The Chinese were highly persecuted. I think it just follows along the same thing. Following the Chinese massacre, I think the unions start coming in the mines, and that’s when they started importing what they thought was ignorant Europeans to replace the strikers—use the Europeans as strike-breakers. As I mention in the book, little did they know that when they got people from Austria and Tyrolia, they had mandatory education through the ninth grade, so they all came here knowing how to read and write. They didn’t quite get the ignorant sector that they’d hoped they would get to break the strike. So, they soon joined the unions too. 13 BW: Leading from that question: how much contact did your family here in Ogden have with other ethnic groups? There were still Chinese here, there were still Japanese here. Do you remember any of that? RP: I don’t recall anything. Well, no. At the time, there probably weren’t very many Chinese or Japanese. I know this is not—when I was about, I’d imagine four years old, I had never seen a little colored girl, and we were walking downtown Ogden somewhere and, of course I could always speak the dialect, and I said to my mother, “Look, Momma, look at this little black girl. Look at this little black girl.” I just couldn’t believe. BW: There’s a song on page 51. Could you open that? I want to know if either of you know the tune to that song. I’m curious. DP: On page 51? Are you thinking of the song they sung in the mines? RP: Oh! DP: Remember that song? I think maybe Mary Ravarino told me about the song that the miners would sing in their dialects so the foreman couldn’t understand them. I don’t know what the tune was. RP: I never heard that before. BW: Well, tell me a little more about the story then of how they would use the song in their dialect. It’s an interesting story. Did they do this while they were working? DP: Well, I think that if you’ve ever done a lot of manual labor that is very repetitious that has a rhythm to it much like an army march song, it helps the work go by if you sing a cadence while you’re shoveling coal. I think that’s where it came from—they’d just sing these little songs they’d made up to keep their cadence 14 going while they were shoveling coal. I don’t think the songs were done in disrespect; they were more just entertainment or a cadence thing while they worked. But some families, I understand, were highly into songs and music and stuff like that. Apparently, my family was not. We never grew up with this, so it just depends on what family—even though they came from the same area— some families brought much more music and song with them than others. BW: Your family was too busy working. DP: I guess. Like me, I still just don’t sing. LR: One thing I noticed as I read the book was how important food was. Something that was brought from the old country was food. How important was that for your family? RP: You know, I got this out of the computer, and it says polenta was the main staple. And you think corn. And that, the book, says a lot of people got scurvy. Was it scurvy? Because polenta had no food value. I was surprised to read that about polenta. DP: What are some of the other foods that are a family tradition that came from the old country? Ravioli, right? RP: Well, ravioli and spaghetti. But that was more Italian. They never had that much at their house, I don’t think, just polenta. DP: We lived on polenta? RP: And this says how polenta was not—what does it say, David? DP: It was just a vitamin deficiency, but apparently corn was one of the cheaper products you could buy for food. 15 RP: When my father came, I guess there was a strike and he went back to visit, and he and his father were rabbit hunting, I guess, and they shot a little rabbit, and my grandfather says, “Oh, I’m going to bring this right down to the priest.” And my dad said, “No, you’re not.” LR: So, what is polenta made out of? RP: Cornmeal. DP: It’s cornmeal. We still carry it as a family tradition today. RP: You boil water, add salt, and add cornmeal and stir it. Now we’re baking it in the oven on 200 degrees after it boils. DP: It makes a thick, thick mush, but we still use it as a family tradition today. RP: Have you ever had tamale pie? LR: No. RP: Anyway, tamale pie is a layer of polenta, a layer of hamburger, and a layer of polenta. And it’s in one of my cookbooks, that’s why I thought maybe you’d heard of it. When the caregivers came, she was Hispanic or whatever she was, I thought, “Oh, I’ll make this.” Told her I was going to make tamale pie, and I don’t recall if she didn’t eat hamburger or if there was something about it, but she didn’t taste it. DP: Yearly, we still fix ravioli. RP: Yes, ravioli. But I don’t think that was from part of our country that was really a delicacy. My in-laws knew a fellow that had like six or seven oil wells just out of Rock Springs, Wyoming, somewhere. And it was his wife that gave my mother- 16 in-law the ravioli recipe. It’s really a tradition; sometimes the whole family participates and we make—one time we made 900 raviolis. LR: Oh, wow. RP: We don’t go that far any longer, but at just a nice get-together we sit around a table and one grinds the meat, and one rolls the dough. BW: What are tongue sandwiches? DP: That comes from the wedding of my grandparents Prevedel about 1921-22, when they were married. Well, it had been before that, about 1920, I guess. Tongue sandwiches are cattle tongues, which apparently at the turn of the century were a real delicacy. And for their wedding reception, they imported cattle tongues from Denver for the wedding in Rock Springs. Throughout the western United States, they were a real delicacy. I can remember when they tore the old Broom Hotel down between 25th and Washington. Stuck in the wall was a menu and the Standard-Examiner ran an article on there because they had tongue sandwiches on the menu for the Broom Hotel. BW: One recurring theme that I hear—read in the book and hear when you’re speaking is self-reliance. These were tough economic times to live through. So, whether it was raising livestock for meat, or farming, or dairying, or harvesting fruit for winemaking, these were all—making your own clothes—it seems like they had to be a pretty industrious and resourceful people. How do you think that affects you and your identity growing up in that kind of environment? RP: Because I was an only child, I was more spoiled than that. And living in West Weber, I recall there was Cella Wright, she had at least six children and then her 17 sister had never married, and she was quite heavy, and they asked my dad if they could haul beets for him. They left their family’s home, of course, and they would haul and then sit down, and then haul the next row, and then sit down. And my mother always fixed a big dinner when we had hired help. I don’t recall—she probably had mashed potatoes and gravy and meat of some kind that I don’t recall—and I remember her name was Cella Wright, and she says, “Oh, I haven’t tasted meat for months and months and months.” She said, “This is so good.” And she had a large family—can you imagine having like eight children and going out and hauling beets? DP: But you raised almost everything you needed. Other than trips to Ogden once in a while for sugar and flour, you raised everything else, and you had the root cellar where you’d keep the— RP: We canned peaches, of course, and made jellies. DP: And you had the livestock and you grew potatoes. Almost all the things you ate you grew yourself. RP: Because in our family there was just three of us: my mother, dad, and I. We didn’t have the large family to feed that most of them did. I recall when I started school, there was a little store, maybe quarter of a mile up the street, and a real elderly lady ran it. I recall she had a wood-burning stove, and she would get her fire going, put the coal in, and then sell us candy with black hands. My dad would give me one penny every day, and I was the only one in my class that had this. I didn’t flaunt it or anything, but you could get maybe three or four pieces of candy for a penny, so I always had candy to share. 18 DP: You went to the West Weber School when it was brand new, one year old? RP: One year old. Now they’re rebuilding it. DP: Now they’re tearing it down this year. RP: It’s all built, see it David? DP: They’ve rebuilt, but the old school is still there. RP: Oh, no. Isn’t that torn down? DP: Not yet, they’re in the process. RP: Oh, okay. We rode by it the other day but I didn’t see. DP: So, we’ve come full cycle on that West Weber School. LR: Being self-reliant: growing everything you needed and growing up. How did that affect your own family as you had your own family and were raising your own kids? RP: Here? Everything was fine. This is the greatest town. I sent my kids to primary, and think David was the one—my daughter Diane followed him—they went to primary and brought home a sheet that had genealogy—put your grandmother’s name, your mother’s name—that was just fantastic. That’s how I got into this. They would go to primary. DP: But you always had a big garden here. RP: Yes, I always had a big garden. You know how bad I wanted a lawn when I was growing up; we finally got it, but now I have too much lawn. LR: Seeing that growing up, did you notice any of that? Did you always have your own things growing up? 19 RP: Yes, we always had big gardens and Mom always, always cooked. Cooking was a big tradition. We always had well-balanced meals. DP: Right. I was born in 1945, and I can remember probably in the ‘50s, and we still had the little country stores. I can still tell you where they are today: over here was Sorenson’s and ProFaizer’s; just families running a little store out of their house, even in the 1950s. That’s where we did our grocery shopping. And then like you say, I remember when the first Safeway came up here to Roy. That was the start of the supermarket. We’ve been through all the chains. RP: My husband, when we were first married, he said, “We’re only going to have one name on this check.” I said, “Okay, that’s fine.” And he would give me grocery money. He gave me actual money. He was Scotch—he would give me $40: two $20s every two weeks. I learned to add all my groceries mentally, so I wouldn’t have to put something back. DP: You might tell them how much it cost for me to be born. Remember when you were in the hospital? RP: Oh, yes. David was my first-born. He was born on our first wedding anniversary. And, of course, you know your first baby—I think I was in labor ten hours, and then I was in the hospital seven days. What was that hospital? DP: St. Benedicts, right? Or was I born in the Dee Hospital? RP: The Old Dee Hospital? LR: Were you born in 1945? DP: 1945. I must have been born in the Dee Hospital. 20 RP: It was the Dee Hospital. It was 24th Street and Harrison, on the southeast corner of the street. DP: What was the bill after seven days? Do you remember the bill? RP: I dare say, it was something like $45. I know it was $45, I believe. DP: Who was the doctor that delivered me? RP: Dr. Moesinger. I recall when Wayne Prevedel was born, my brother-in-law and sister-in-law’s last baby, Dennie and Gerrie Prevedel, I went over and I decided to scrub Gerrie’s floor before she got home from the hospital. They had linoleum in those days. I stood up, just walking out, and they just drove up and Gerrie got out of the car, she says, “Dennie’s all upset, it cost $35 to have this baby!” Oh, my goodness. How old is Wayne now, David? DP: He’s fifty-something. So times change very fast here in Ogden. You know, when you ask what did I experience, I experienced change very fast having lived it. BW: I have a few more questions. We talked about the early settlements here in Wyoming for coal mining and railroad. We moved from that to the Great Depression; talked about the Depression-era a little bit. Before that we talked about World War I a little bit. Let’s move forward to World War II. Tell me what kind of an impact in the Tyrolean community and in your family World War II had. RP: We were all basically farmers. And like DeGiorgios, you know. We were real friendly with the DeGiorgio family and they had two sons, Mario and Dave, and they would defer one of the sons to stay and farm, but the other would have to be drafted. And it was quite a decision to decide which could go and which could stay at the time. Dave went and Mont [Mario] stayed and farmed. 21 DP: And then Dad went in the Army. Tell them about the farm when he wasn’t here with David. RP: Yes, they had the farm, and Dennie, who’s my husband’s younger brother, was I’d say, eleven years old? DP: Yes. RP: He was eleven years old, and they had sugar beets, and that’s when you topped them and hauled them. They had a truck, just an old truck—wasn’t even a dump truck—neither my father-in-law nor his brother knew how to drive. Dennie was, I think, eleven years old. The uncle would sit by him in the truck, and Dennie would stand up and drive the beet truck to the sugar factory. DP: They were left a little short-handed. Finally my father, after eighteen months, got an agricultural deferment and was discharged from the Army. He came back home and helped, but it was quite an impact when the men left, because they were still using horse teams to farm with. It’s quite an impact. You might tell them, where did you work during the war? RP: Well, my parents would not let me go to work. Oh, that was the last thought. But we had a neighbor that worked at North Ogden Canning and she picked up a couple other neighbor ladies and asked me if I would go and I did. Oh, it was just heaven to get away from home and earn a little money of my own. And then one time, and I was unaware of this, when they bring and they harvest peas, they have to be—what did they do with them at the factory? Anyway, whatever they did, they have to be finished the day they are cut. They can’t hold them until the next day. And we didn’t get home until 1:30 at night, with no phone my parents 22 didn’t know where I was. I recall as you come down the road West Warren, there’s this road that went south, and the lady that lived there, we dropped her off and as we were coming home there was a flat tire and so I got home at 1:30 in the morning and they didn’t know where I was or where I could have been. DP: Then later you worked at 2nd Street. RP: I worked on 2nd Street. My parents would not let me go to work, and I just begged and begged. My husband-to-be was in the Service, and my friend—she lives in Salt Lake now—worked up at 2nd Street, and I was hired as a file clerk. I worked ten months and then my husband didn’t want me to work after we were married, so that’s all I ever worked outside of the home. DP: You tell them what they thought of the Japanese people? RP: Oh, yes. It was sad. When I worked at the canning factory, there was kind of a big oval table, and the Japanese, they were on the inside of the table and we were on the outside of the table. I think we were doing tomatoes or somewhat, and I tried to talk to them but they probably weren’t allowed to either, I didn’t talk to them, but some of the ladies quit. They said, “My brother’s over in Japan now, I’m not going to work by those slant-eyes.” It was sad. BW: You mentioned an agricultural deferment. Can you tell me what that is? DP: I can only assume it was a military-type deferment. The farmers had to keep producing food for the troops, so they let certain farmers receive a military deferment. RP: It took about a year to get it. My father just insisted my husband had to come home, they were just having such a hard time, and it did happen. 23 BW: And you said your husband-to-be was out in the war? RP: Well, no. He was just in the United States. He had never been deployed to anything. DP: But several of the Tyrolean sons did see combat in World War II. And ironically some of them went clear back to Italy as U.S. soldiers. RP: Oh, and then after Italy became on our side, and there were Italian prisoners of war off of 2nd Street, and when we were no longer at war with Italy, I guess, they were free to come visit people in this area. I recall the Tyroleans always had Canyon Days, where we went to the Canyons; all the Tyroleans came and made polenta and visit, and we had big tables and we’d reserve—where was it in the Canyon that we would go, David? I don’t know. Anyway, remember all of those tables? One time there was, say, seven or eight prisoners of war—Italian prisoners of war—who were able to come. Some were doctors and whatever, and they had invited them up because they were Italian. My husband left me up there and he came home. He said, “Why should they be up here when our boys are out there at war?” Oh, my goodness. I was in shock. Then later the German prisoners had some freedom, they were able to help farmers tend beets and do whatever, and they’d have the security guards in the fields. DP: I thought that this was during the war, that just because there was a labor shortage that they used German prisoners of war to do the farm work under a guard. RP: That’s a nice way to put it, David. 24 DP: So, it was quite a diverse community here in Ogden during the war. I remember growing up, you know the DDO out here? I can remember the barbed-wire fences around it still when I was growing up from when it was a prisoner of war camp out here at DDO. RP: They were on the north side. The DDO. BW: Some of those POWs stayed and married local girls. DP: We don’t know any who married Tyrolean girls, but several of them married local girls? BW: Italian girls, probably. DP: Well, I don’t know. Not necessarily. Do you remember any of the Italians? Who were some of the Italian names that were the prisoners of war? RP: Oh, gee, a Ropelato girl married a prisoner of war, what was his name? And there was a lady who lives in Warren now; I think her husband passed away. They had a large family, and he was a prisoner of war. He was German or something, wasn’t he? They would do things together like go fishing. DP: So the war added more diversity to Ogden. RP: When the Germans were prisoners they’d have the guards go out with them and they’d put them to work on farms and that, too. BW: What was The Friendly Club? RP: Let’s see. The Tyroleans bought an old tomato factory, and it’s still sitting there, and they bought this old tomato factory and turned it into a dance hall on the bottom, and then had kind of a kitchen on the east side. A lot of the Tyroleans had weddings and wedding dances there. In fact, my wedding dance was there. 25 Every two weeks, they had a dance with the orchestra and anyone could come, it wasn’t just Tyroleans. There were LDS people who would come if they dated a Tyrolean girl, or whatever. I don’t recall, but I’m sure it was non-alcoholic. I seem to think they served beer, but I’m not sure. DP: They were Tyrolean; they drank. That building still stands today. It’s a private residence on 12th Street. RP: Is it a private residence? Because I think a lady from Warren bought it, do you remember, David? DP: Yes. It’s about 4200 West on 12th Street. I don’t know the address exactly, but it still stands today. I can remember as a little teeny kid, going to those dances. I didn’t want to dance because I was a little kid. RP: You know, the first time I brought you, you were just three months old. I guess all that noise and the band playing, you cried and cried, and your dad wouldn’t come near you, I had to hold you all night. He says, “What’s the matter with that kid?!” I said, “Well...” DP: I didn’t like to dance. But it was all part of holding the ethnic community, the Tyrolean community together. The Friendly Club was a big tradition and Canyon Days, where they all met up Ogden Canyon at Meadows Campground, it was a big event. That event is still held today for what is the fourth or fifth generation. RP: What’s that thing that they have where they serve polenta in the spring? DP: Oh, they still have dinners and stuff like that in the spring. It’s kind of a fundraising type thing. RP: That’s a tradition. 26 BW: So there’s some sense of community? DP: A little bit. I often joke: it held pretty good through my generation, and then we all married blonde Mormon girls, and that’s where it started falling apart. RP: But they have this—what is that, David? Once every—what they had at the convention the other day. What is that? You didn’t go, because you were at the rodeo. DP: Oh, that was the Utah Italians. Every twenty years, Utah hosts the National Italian convention. RP: They host it nationally. DP: I’ve got to tell this story, though; I didn’t go because I was busy with the rodeo. It was held over the 24th. Well, they made arrangements for the visiting Italians to go to the rodeo, and after the rodeo, walking down the street, my daughter heard there were a bunch of Italians in town. There were some tourists walking in front of us, so she says, “Hey, are you guys Italian?” They turned around and said, “Yes,” and I got talking to them and they were Tyrolean. As soon as they started talking I said, “I understand these people.” They were speaking Nones. We got talking, and one of them was my second cousin I didn’t know existed. My mom’s mother’s brother; they didn’t know she even existed. They didn’t know so many of the family was here. He was from Toronto. They had maintained much closer ties to the old country than we have, because they were on the East Coast and hopping back and forth all the time. But it was quite—what a coincidence that you’d find somebody from your grandparent’s hometown walking down the street 27 in Ogden, Utah, you know what I mean? One of the guys ended up being my second cousin. RP: My mother-in-law had a sister and she always brought gold jewelry as gifts when she came over from Italy. BW: What do you think the reason for that was? RP: I guess it’s just a tradition they carried through the years. My mother-in-law’s sister, she passed away now, would send the kids a locket or a bracelet, always pure gold. And as poor as they were, maybe, I don’t know, but my dad always said his dad had money, I guess he just kept it hid, I don’t know. LR: You kept talking about topping a sugar beet? How do you top a sugar beet? RP: Well, there’s a long knife like this with a hook on it. DP: It’s a machete with a hook on the end. RP: You take that hook and pull the beet out of the ground—first they would cultivate it so the ground would be soft around it—and you’d do this way and clamp the beet and then hold it in your hand and then chop the top off. DP: But that wasn’t the hard part. The hard part was taking the beets you just topped which weighed ten, fifteen pounds and throwing it up in the truck, and doing that all day long. A big caution was, “Be careful not to chop off any fingers.” LR: Seeing how the Tyroleans and Italians were not from the same community, were you ever at odds? Was there ever any discrimination between the Tyroleans and the Italians while you were here? RP: No, no, no, no. They just didn’t associate with each other much. 28 DP: When my grandparents grew up, see, Tyrolia belonged to Austria and Italians were south—they were two different countries. RP: Are they today? DP: No, after World War I Tyrolia was ceded to Italy, but when my grandparents grew up, they were two separate countries. I think that adds—plus, they were at war during World War I. But, it was the Tyroleans—the Austrian Tyroleans—were never made to fight the Italians. They were sent north to fight the Russians. The Austrians from up in the north side of the Alps, they all went south to fight the Italians. So they knew not to put two close groups together in battle. LR: That’s interesting. RP: It took me a while to figure out why—they were just from different countries. DP: Well, they’re a different language, people couldn’t understand each other. RP: In fact, the Tyroleans published a book here with where they have all the Italian families, and each one told about—anyway, it was kind of fun. DP: Well, it was Tyroleans. BW: You had mentioned St. Joseph’s a little bit, and the Italian community would have also been present at St. Joseph’s, so there was some— RP: There’s a St. Joseph Church and a St. Joseph School. DP: So the Italians mixed with the Tyroleans at— RP: Yes, definitely. They didn’t really hate each other. No. Trying to think what else…I don’t think it was well known that the Tyroleans had their own dance hall and that. Most people aren’t aware of it. 29 BW: This is more of a, I guess you’d say a self-reflective question. But what would you say the legacy of the Tyroleans is here in Ogden? RP: What the legacy is? I don’t think people even know there’s Tyroleans and Italians. I think the Italians are more predominant, and so maybe it was unknown that the Tyroleans were a separate group, or from a separate country. DP: The legacy has just really been ingrained into the Ogden and Utah areas. If you go back to my siblings and my colleagues, and their children and their grandchildren, they’re just assimilated through the community. You can go back and find chemists and doctors, government workers; just about every sector of the economy now is represented by a bloodline within that thing. It’s really concerning to me that very few of the grandchildren and great-grandchildren even recognize their Tyrolean heritage. RP: That is so true. DP: It’s just being lost and assimilated in the communities and everybody goes their own ways. RP: I have to tell you this. I have a granddaughter. She and her husband live in our basement apartment, who’s almost finished with medical school, and got her master’s degree just last year in public health. What I’m saying is we’re all real proud of what our kids have attained. David’s daughter, Angie, was Miss Rodeo Ogden and Miss Rodeo Utah. LR: Do you wish that there was more of that—that your kids and grandkids would have more of that Tyrolean heritage? That they would maintain that? 30 DP: Maybe they will when they’re older. We seem to grasp our heritage when we get older and while we are young, we got better things to do. That’s one of the reasons I wrote the book: just to document down what I could remember. The big lesson I learned was, as growing up I never—well, my grandparents couldn’t speak English very well, I could understand Nones, but I couldn’t speak it very well, so it was very difficult to ask questions. So all I remember is a few stories and some of it from interviews with my mother and her friends. I had a few paragraphs that somebody wrote down, they’d done some personal interviews, is just how important it is to talk to the old people before it’s too late; because I sure could have asked a lot more questions. But I was young, and I think that’s just how history repeats itself. So much goes on over time, and maybe the interest will be there later, and I guess your program and my book, history is the only way to tie this together for people to ever find out about it in the future. RP: Sometimes we were referred to as WOPs, and it was so insulting. You know what WOP is? Without a Pass. When they got to Ellis Island, I guess if they didn’t have a pass, they were a WOP. And we thought it wasn’t something bad, and it wasn’t. DP: Well, you read the Ellis Island records and communities that—there was so much prejudice against the Italians after World War I that the Klu Klux Klan even was a very strong political organization, and they got involved and wrote laws that prohibited Italians from immigrating to the United States any more after World War I. There were very strict quotas, and I’ve never been able to figure out how my two grandmothers got through. 31 RP: What about your grandfathers? DP: Well they came before the World War; that was prior. But the prejudices were so high against the Italians after World War I and the Klu Klux Klan mobbing and stuff that—I’ve never figured out how they got through, then they only allowed a few thousand to come to the United States after that. And it’s maybe because they had tried, and they held passports that were valid before the war started, and then they were shut off. RP: In one of these books, I have my father’s—what is that—from the ship? DP: Well, historic sites like Ellis Island, I was able to get the ship’s record for all four of my grandparents. And they came, and I have the Ellis Island register for all four of my grandparents from when they signed the register. RP: When my dad came, he was sixteen or whatever he was, it was handwritten. I have another one here, and I don’t know whose it is, and it was typed. DP: Very important historical documents. They’d have little details on how much money they had in their pocket, who their sponsor was in the United States, where they were going to live, you know, they’d have to fill out this regular ledger. RP: I think it’s interesting. I would like you to see this passport, what it says. I was really amazed, up in the corner it says “Are you Mormon?” Little tiny letters. Back then, I thought “What?” DP: Is that right? I don’t recall that. RP: Yeah, I did see that. I thought, my goodness, come on. DP: You often wonder, and it’s escaped forever, what my grandmothers thought being sent for—they were basically mail-order brides, their marriages were, well, 32 they weren’t arranged marriages, but their introductions were arranged through letters from friends, and so they were basically mail-order brides. Can you imagine being a young woman getting off at Ellis Island and getting on a train to Rock Springs, Wyoming, and coming across the United States and it gets drier and drier and you’re going up to that high desert? There’s a pretty neat museum, a real little museum in Rock Springs; the Rock Springs Museum and, down in the basement, they have a mannequin. People have donated clothes there their ancestors have worn and one of them has the original tag that they put on their coat so they wouldn’t get lost if they changed railroads as they came across the United States. These women would have tags tied to their coats, it was like a 3x5 card tagged to your coat that told where you were going so the conductor could see if you got on the right train. BW: How much did your father assimilate into American culture? Did he try to get everybody to speak the language in the house? RP: Well, we spoke the dialect. DP: You might tell them you used to do the income tax for your dad. Tell them about that. RP: Yes, I always filled out the income tax returns. DP: He was always so critical. RP: Oh, he was just so frightened that I hadn’t done it right. I said, “Well, my gosh. If we make a mistake they’ll come ask you to correct it or bill you for the remains.” One time, I made one tiny little mistake and we didn’t have any more blanks; and 33 he was going to go twelve miles to Ogden and twelve miles back to get a new form. DP: He just didn’t trust the government. RP: Yes, that is true. When he and my mom became eligible to get Social Security: “Oh, it’s just a trick. Just a trick.” I said, “Daddy, I’ll fill this out and you sign it, we’ll send it in, if it’s just a trick I’ll just keep all the checks you’re going to get.” And then later on, of course my father was real paranoid; he was paranoid about everything. DP: You might tell them how they got their citizenship, though. RP: Oh, yes. Getting their citizenship was really a big step to take. Not that they didn’t want to, it was learning and the fear of the judge asking you questions, and what would he ask, and what if I didn’t understand? But they wanted to be citizens. My dad got his first—I don’t know if I have a copy of their citizenship; I guess I do in one of these books. And my dad was all right, then my mother didn’t speak as much English and—what was it he asked her? DP: How the president could be impeached, or something. RP: Oh, yes. How can the president be impeached? That’s exactly it, David. She had never heard of the term, so they turned her down. Oh, she was just heartbroken and, anyway, what happened? Later they went back. DP: They let her retake the test, right? RP: I don’t know just what happened, but she did get her citizenship. But she was just brokenhearted. I thought that was just kind of a difficult word for them to 34 understand. Impeachment? Whoever did it, didn’t do it intentionally. He didn’t realize that maybe that was something we had studied, or whatever. Anyway, I remember we had a Model T after the buggy. And I was an only child, and here was the main road and we had to drive up here and here, and here’s where I lived. And once a year—my father was a farmer—and the water company had a meeting, and it was the first part of February and he went to the water meeting, and this blizzard came up. We were snowed in for a week; we couldn’t even get out to have milk deliveries taken, and here’s the school bus was here and the school bus driver I guess was worried about me, so he didn’t drive away. He just stayed. And I tried and tried and tried to get home. I was in second grade, I think. Then my mother came to meet me. But I thought it was so thoughtful for the school bus driver to stay parked so she could see the bus. DP: But she had to walk from where she got off the bus—I don’t think it’s quite half a mile, but it was quite a distance—she had to walk down this lane that was snow drifted. RP: And my father was at the water meeting at that time and had the Model T, and he couldn’t even get home. He had to park at the end of the lane. DP: Well, and you froze your hands. RP: Yeah, my fingers peeled. I guess they got cold a little bit, whatever. DP: It’s ironic. These places we’ve been talking about still exist. I can show you them all now in ten, fifteen minutes, when it took all day to get there in the buggy. You can just get in the car and drive there in fifteen minutes today. You talk about social change. 35 RP: Anyway, it was—I’m so proud of our kids today getting their education and doing things. That’s the thing I’m most proud of, really. Of course, in my day, if you were a woman, you didn’t need education, you didn’t need any of this. BW: I think we’ve got some good stuff, and I appreciate it. DP: Thank you for the opportunity. LR: Thank you for your time. We greatly appreciate it. RP: I’m amazed that you’re interested in our beginnings. BW: This is a very important part of our local history here, and we don’t want it to be lost.