Oral History Program Dale Pendlelton Interviewed by Woodrow Johnson 5 June 2014 Oral History Program Weber State University Stewart Library Ogden, Utah Dale Pendleton Interviewed by Woodrow Johnson 5 June 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 The Utah Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum honors men and women whose lives exemplify the independence and resilience of the people who settled Utah, and includes artists, champions, entertainers, musicians, ranchers, writers, and those persons, past and present, who have promoted the Western way of life. Each year, the inductees are interviewed about their lives and experiences living the Western way of life. ____________________________________ 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: Pendleton, Dale, an oral history by Woodrow Johnson, 5 June 2014, WSU Stewart Library Oral History Program, University Archives, Stewart Library, Weber State University, Ogden, UT. Dale Pendleton June 5, 2014 1 Abstract: The following is an oral history interview with Dale Pendleton. The interview was conducted on June 5, 2014, by Woodrow Johnson, at the Utah Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum. Pendleton discusses some memories and experiences during the war. He also talks about his love for music and his musical career. Lorrie Rands is on camera. WJ: So to start out, I would just like to ask you where and when you were born. DP: I was born in Rigby, Idaho, April 14, 1921, in a little farming house. My parents had subleased a farm that had kind of deteriorated in that area. So actually it was a cousin, my mother’s from the Lee family, L double E. This was Warren Lee that owned the property in Idaho, asked my dad to come up and recoup the old farm which he did with the promise that my dad could buy the farm once it got established. It didn’t work out and he sold the farm after dad got it working, but I was born in ’21, 1921. WJ: So did you grow up farming in Rigby then for the first little bit of your life? DP: I knew nothing about Rigby. WJ: Okay. DP: Eleven months old, we came back to Wanship, Utah, Summit County. That’s the Pendleton home, the old Pendleton home is still there. The old rock home. WJ: So what brought your family back to, sorry did you say it was… DP: Wanship. It’s an Indian name. I wrote an article on him just briefly. A trapper, he came down through Idaho and he came into the Salt Lake area and he met Chief Wanship, his name was Want A Sheep and our pioneers converted it to 2 Wanship. Wanship, but yes my dad was a blacksmith, so that’s why he came back. He had a blacksmith shop at Wanship. WJ: So with your dad blacksmithing in Wanship, what did you do growing up there? DP: I was raised, and we came back to the Lee home and Grandma Lee had just passed away just awhile before I was born. My grandparents had the old rock home there right by the railroad track. The old branch railroad track came from Echo up to Park City and the Lee home was right next to the track. So I was a momma’s boy and I was never allowed to go onto that railroad track after I got big enough to walk. Later on we moved down to the Pendleton home when it was vacant. So I was raised there, went to elementary school at Wanship for six years. Two classrooms, three grades first and then three more in the bigger room as we called it. Then I went to Coalville, Utah, to North Summit High School. Briefly, I was just honored by North Summit High School on my birthday April 14, 2014, and they called me about two weeks before and said, “North Summit is a 100 years old since it was established and we’d like you as a graduate of North Summit to come and sing two numbers.” I said, “It’s my birthday.” They said, “That’s alright come on anyway.” So I had two celebrations and some of my family went up. It was quite an occasion, it’s in the paper. Yes I was raised, we weren’t farmers. We were blacksmiths, and dad did all of the blacksmithing work there for the county and had a pretty nice business going. Shoeing horses and everything and we all assisted and helped. I was the youngest of the family, I had five brothers and two sisters. One little sister died when she was 11 months old. In that old Pendleton home the grandparents had 3 13 children. It’s a three room, old rock home. Two of them died young, so 11 lived to maturity and married and they’re scattered from Idaho to Utah to California to Wyoming to wherever. The Pendleton’s came with Brigham Young the second year. WJ: So how’d you learn music in Wanship? DP: Well Santy Clause brought me my first harmonica. I guess I was probably only about two. You have your stocking, you know, and there was this little German harmonica. So like a kid who is real little go around the house and blowing and blowing and blowing. Before the end of the day my mother said, “Dale, you’re actually playing a tune on that thing.” I guess it was Jingle Bells or something, I don’t know. My dad was a musician, a very talented musician. He had played with a bugle and drum core out of Salt Lake and Wanship. They’d celebrate on holidays, 24th and march up and down the street. So he played a bugle as they called it, or a trumpet. I asked him years later, I said, “Dad did you ever learn to read music?” He said, “Yeah, I did when I was a boy.” He said, “I don’t read music, I make music.” So he could play all of the string instruments. We had guitars, we had fiddles, we had banjoes, and we had mandolins. So all of us were taught by my dad and his name was William Joshua Pendleton. His father before him was Joshua and he was the one that was born on the plains in Iowa when the Mormons came forward. They kept the Pendleton’s there because of their blacksmith trade at Winter Quarters. So they didn’t come to Salt Lake until the second year, 1848. So dad, when I was five, and I remember that easy, he had a little Spanish guitar, like a three quarter size 4 Spanish guitar. So he handed it to me and he said, “I’d like to teach you guitar.” He said, “Someday you can play in my band,” cause he had an orchestra there in the town. In those days, for the dances they just had a guitar and a fiddle and a piano, and that was your dance group. So those people were with him and of course he played with his father, Joshua, years before that. So dad could play and very good, he was very good on any instrument, especially the fiddle. I still have Joshua, my grandfather’s fiddle, in my home. WJ: Wow. DP: He was also a blacksmith, Joshua was. They had no modern equipment in the homes or in the blacksmith shop, it was all done by hand. We didn’t even have electricity in the home for oh I don’t know how old I was, but probably eight or nine. Just had oil lamps, and there wasn’t many homes in Wanship that had electricity. The hotel did, there’s a hotel there, or was, and a telephone. So everybody used the telephone at the hotel whenever you had to call somebody. We were on a three party exchange they called it. Yeah, the music just came natural with all of us. We keep excellent rhythm and tempo and the fiddlers, they admire the way I can back up fiddlers and not even know the tune. My daddy taught me to, “Listen Dale, listen to the lead player.” So I can do that. I played at Weiser, Idaho, in the big championship up there. I back up these young kids, I teach them basic guitar chords and so up the line. I love to work with the little kids, and I play for free for everybody. I don’t charge for lessons or anything. So I have them in my home now, come over and we have good sessions. I played the mandolin a little and the fiddle a little, 5 harmonica a lot. We had a harmonica, electric band for a few years with German friends of mine. So yeah, music just came natural especially when I got into high school. In those days, of course we didn’t have microphones for the place, stage in the high school. My voice was the type of voice, it’s not really so loud, but it will carry and the speech teacher and the music teacher liked my voice. We had some good teachers at North Summit. A lot of them came out of Ogden and they were excellent teachers. So I got the lead in just about everything, operas. One was a Spanish opera, and I got to play my guitar. I was in the Glee club and the quartets and soloist, it never bothered me. I could do it, and it just came natural. I can memorize, I probably know a couple of hundred songs right now. Singing and playing with the fiddlers, I never look at a piece of paper. I just tell the audience, “I know two songs, number one and number two. Which one do you want?” So it’s music. I’m the only one in the family that really stuck with it in life. My sister, Thelma, she played First Violin at North Summit, she could not fiddle. She could play semi-classical as they play in high schools and very good, she was very good at it. Dad tried to teach her the technique of fiddling, the bowing. The bowing is mainly your technique. Your short bow or you notice classical or tabernacle choir, whoever, they use a long bow. That’s the way they teach and it’s all exact music. You tell them to play Home on the Range and they say, “Where’s the music?” They can’t play by ear. 6 WJ: So when you first started did your father teach you to read music or was it just to… DP: No. WJ: To listen and play. DP: Yeah, he taught me, in each key you go through the alphabet, A, B, C on up. Each key that you’re playing you have three basic chords, that’s not what they’re called but yeah three positions to play. You can play any song in the world with three and any key. You don’t need the music, it’s in your head. So dad would teach me, he would teach me, and he would play a tune and he would teach me the three chords that went with that tune. There’s more in progressive playing, you run what we call around the clock and you’ll have eight positions. They used to say, “Well how can you play a six string guitar with only five fingers?” My guitar came out of Spain, it was Spanish. So it’s easy now a days, they do what they call a bar chord. I used the open chord, what they call it, open chord. You press in your fingers on each string that you want a sound, some you don’t press. So the three chords, so dad would do that and then when he would play, he would play the tune and he would just call off, “One, two, and three.” Or it might go from one to three, might go from three to two in the course of the tune. So that’s the way he taught me and that’s the way I teach nowadays, same as the way my dad taught me. WJ: At what age was it that he first gave you the guitar? DP: Five. WJ: And when do you feel like you were comfortable to just play songs? 7 DP: Oh I think by eight he showed me, he said, “Someday you can play in my orchestra.” Which I did and all of the family of course played. I have a picture of it here if you want to see it. We played the variety of instruments that we had in the home and dance music and church programs or whatever. I’d say about eight I got pretty comfortable by playing. So I played all through school system till I graduated. Dated the pretty girls and I always had a guitar with me. I’d sing them love songs and they knew they could be safe around me because I thought more of the guitar than I did the girls. I played on that little Spanish guitar for a number of years and I’d look in the Sears and Roebuck catalog and there’d be these beautiful guitars for 100 dollars or less. Well you made a dollar a day and I’m still that way. If I was going to buy something in the store and it’s over a dollar I have to think on it. Wait, you only made a dollar, a dollar a day, 30 dollars a month if you had a job that way. Dad was working at the blacksmith shop for 20 cents, all day long, 20 cents. Maybe never get paid for it. So we were poor, we were very poor. Most of the families were. The depression really hit Summit County when the mine closed at Park City. That really put us at the bottom of the heap for schools and everything. We couldn’t have yearbooks, we couldn’t have school rings, and we couldn’t have anything special. We kept music, we kept music going all the time in high school. So I played right up till I got in the army. My brother and I, after I got out of high school in 1940, and my older brother, Marquis (Mark), he was six years older than me couldn’t get a job in Summit County. So he says, “Let’s join the Marines.” So we went to Salt Lake, took the exam, the full exam, but we all had bad eyesight, near sighted. So they 8 said, “No, you can’t be in the Marines. Go across the hall to the Navy, maybe they’ll take you.” So we went across to the Navy, they gave us the full exam again, they said, “We didn’t pass the eyesight.” So they said, “No, wait for the army.” My brother, they found out had a heart murmur, so he didn’t get in the service, I got in. Went to Camp Roberts Infantry, I went to Fort Douglas first. I had my guitar with me, oh by the way I bought a guitar from Glenn Brothers in Salt Lake when I was about 16 for 80 dollars. I had a paper route, so I’d save five dollars or ten dollars and paid Glenn Brothers Music in Salt Lake for my beautiful guitar. We still have it, my son has it. They say it’s worth 1700 dollars right now. When I got in the service, I’d never been in the military, never been around military, we didn’t have that in high school in those days. ROTC or anything. So anyway I ended up in eight weeks of basic training at Camp Roberts, California Infantry, and that was tough. That was tough training and I had my guitar with me so sometimes on a Sunday afternoon we’d go over to the orderly room, they had a little hillbilly band there. They were from North Carolina, Kentucky, Florida, and Virginia, and so I fit right into the program. With my guitar I just played backup and sang. They taught me songs that I’d never heard before on the radio or whatever. They thought I was a real hillbilly hick and where’s Utah? They said, “Where’s Utah?” So we played for eight weeks off and on when we had a few minutes. When I got out in the line to leave the infantry they said, “One barracks bag is all you can have, one barracks bag.” So I got in the line and the sergeant come by and he says, “Soldier, I told you one barracks bag.” I said, “This is all I have, one barracks bag.” He said, “What’s that?” “My guitar.” He 9 says, “Where you’re going, you won’t need a guitar.” So they made me go to the orderly room and I sent it home to Ogden to my brother, Marquis. It’s one I still have, it’s a Gibson guitar. So for three years I never played it. When we got in England though we sang a lot and the English and the Scottish and the Irish. Eleven months training in England. We were the biggest supply company for soldiers, everything that the soldiers used or wore. We didn’t have ammunition, we didn’t have food, but we had all the clothing and bedding and tents. You name it, we could set up a whole camp. We were 186 members strong, and we were the biggest in the ETO as they called it, European Theater of Operation. We trained in England, I trained with an English supply company for three weeks. I was a staff sergeant in England. The British, if you’re a noncom you’re almost like an officer. You get special privileges over there. I bunked with four other big, husky Irishmen with stripes, big stripes they had on them. I had a little one you know, like the U.S. has. So I got along fine with them, we had a lot of fun. They taught me a lot about English and the food we didn’t like. They sent troops to our company so they had an exchange program for three weeks I think it was. So I learned quite a bit because we supplied all of the ally troops, didn’t matter who you were, from Canada, from Australia through England, the French, anybody that needed supplies we supplied them with American produce. So we were handling millions, millions of dollars. I was in charge of the stock records. I thought, “Well why do we have to keep track of all this stuff?” In the invasion a big storm hit just after we got inland and dumped our ships, tanks, everything 10 right to the bottom of the channel. So how many million dollars did we lose? There was no record of it, but we survived and we outlasted the Germans. The hedge rows were the worst thing for our troops to get through. The Germans would be situated behind those hedge rows and their talking hedge rows, we’re talking great, big, and wide and high and vines that had grown all those many years. They had openings for their farms you know and here’d be a gateway they could go through. They’d set up machine guns, the Germans would pick our troops off. We learned how to cope with it and our troops, the 29th Infantry was one I have memorabilia from all the way. I’ve gone to the schools around here, I’ll ask the kids, “What’s a foxhole?” They said, “I guess where foxes live.” I said, “No, that’s where soldiers lived in war.” The time we hit the beach was June the 12th. We went, we lived in foxholes till October. We counted up how many months, June to October we lived in foxholes. Rained every day, cool, and we ate K rations most of the time. A little box, I don’t know if they’ve ever seen army K rations. Had a little can of spam and crackers, little white crackers. Charm candy, hard candy that you sucked on. A chocolate bar maybe and a drink, usually like a lemonade. You just put in water and the powder lemonade. Then we converted, we did have a cook. We had a cook tent and we had C rations which was hot, hot cereal. We called it mush in my days and mom would say, “Get out of bed, the mush is ready you know.” It was germade, mush cereal. It was similar to that in the army. We had, I guess some people called it gruel, I don’t know. Anyway, we had that sometimes, a hot meal. We had scrambled eggs, but they were dehydrated eggs. Milk, I’ve 11 always loved milk and we didn’t have any milk to put on anything. We survived it, I’m not a big eater. I’ve never been very big or heavy. WJ: So while you’re out there and you’re living in foxholes, was music a part of your life during the war? DP: No, didn’t think about music at all. In fact, even though we had weapons we had rifles. In the army a rifle is called a piece, it’s not called a rifle. So we had a piece, we had these little caliber, I called it a BB gun. We trained with the 30-06 caliber, the old Springfield 30-06. We trained with those, and I was familiar with them because all of our family deer hunted. I shot guns when I was this big. We had a 4-10 shot gun, we had 22’s and we had 30-40 Craig’s, we had 06’s in the family. So, our company was not allowed to fire a shot unless a German was right onto you because every fifth shell is a tracer. When it’s fired in the air, especially at night you can see your position is down here and you’re firing. They can tell where that came from. The Germans came over mainly at night and we called them Midnight Charlies. M-E 109 and 110’s were fire planes and they had bombs on them too. So they would come at nighttime and, of course, because we were a big supply company we had all of the bad guy protection around us. So we had plenty of our own military trained. We were taught—your automobiles, you’re running on the battery that’s DC right. That’s called direct current, so when you’re coming on a plane, German planes are AC, alternating current. So here you’re coming, so at nighttime we knew when a German plane was coming, we didn’t have to see it. We knew that those were the two planes and they would bomb us. 12 We covered our supplies with big tarps, heavy tarps. In the morning they would just be covered with shrapnel. We’d pull the tarps off of our supplies and part of what was from our own guns, the shrapnel. Anything that goes up comes down, but luckily we only had one guy get hit in the forehead with a piece of shrapnel. He got a purple heart, but one guy died in the foxhole of a heart attack. Other than that we didn’t lose anybody. Our main scare was the German B-1 bombs, unmanned radio controlled. If you want to see a sight in your life be in a position to have those come over you. I got knocked down by one and made me dizzy for a few weeks, but it didn’t hurt. Read Stephen Ambrose’s books and found out about B-1 bombs. At one time 100 surrounded our rail depot, we were at Herbesthal, Belgium, after we got across France. We went to Belgium and was a railroad depot like this or depot as they call it. It was up on a hill, up on a knowl. Aachen, Germany, was just down the hill so we had a scenic view of Aachen. We saw it get destroyed like a movie film. A thousand planes a day bombed that city. They gave them a warning first, put your white flags out, because the troops, German troops were encased in there. They had everything and so our troops warned them to surrender. Well they didn’t, the German troops moved out as soon as the bombing started, but we literally flattened that city, and Aachen is a big city. Well it’s bigger than Salt Lake, but anyway these B-1 bombs would come over night and day and they was headed for Holland. They would come and they wasn’t too much higher than this building. They were on kerosene I think with radio controls. They come over the top of our building, we were in the bombed out depot. Our P 38’s with the twin 13 tails, fighter plane U.S. they’d knock them out of the sky. They’d come and get them as they come over an open field and they’d just pick them off like flies. We’d watch from the windows and that’s when I got knocked down. One came down and they were loaded with dynamite in the nose and when the nose hit the ground, boom, it would really blow things apart. We lost one gas supply, we didn’t have gas but one of our gas supply companies got bombed with one of those and blew it all apart. Anyway they would come over you headed for Holland, but then when the radio control would conk out they would fall to the Earth and blow things up. Then they developed the V-2, which was out of the stratosphere, you couldn’t know they was mainly to England. That’s what blew England apart, a lot of those. Yeah, war is hell. I pray for those that are over there now, they don’t even know who the enemy is. Little kids will blow you up you know in a baby buggy or something, more troops coming home with legs and arms off. It’s rough out there regardless of where you’re at. We was very fortunate the lord blessed us for sure. It’s a lot of troops lost, 50% or more of the personnel. Oh if I had been in the infantry I wouldn’t be here talking to you. No. When we got in England we did a little singing. I was a staff sergeant, I had a class A pass. I could leave camp anytime I wasn’t working. I could go anywhere all over Liverpool. There was all blackout, everything was black. Little lights here and there, we had jeeps and weapon carriers that we moved around in. Any business we had, my officer in charge sent me in town we’d go at nighttime, we knew the lights were the different places. They sent me in daytime 14 to do something, get some supplies or something and I couldn’t find it in the daytime. I’d been to that place a lot of times and I couldn’t find it. I had to finally ask an Englishman where it was. I walked by it about five times, but the blackout conditions they helped, they were for real. So we had quite an experience. We moved from Liverpool to Bristol and finished our training. Then when we got the information, (course as individuals we didn’t but our company commander got the information) that we would be in the invasion. So then we went down to one of the southern ports, in South Hampton, and that was all hush hush. In the army you used a buddy system, we didn’t have any women. French had women right with them, but two men in a foxhole. You took care of each other, you watched over each other. If one had some problem you helped him out or they’d help you out. So you used a buddy system in the army and that’s the way you survived. Anyway when we got into that final stage they converted all of our money into invasion money. Have you ever heard of invasion money? It wasn’t French money, it was printed by America, approved by the French. They were little, about this big, two and half, three inches square and they were green. If you got lost from your troops the French would acknowledge those. You could buy food or whatever you needed. With invasion money, I still have some of it, I have memorabilia half the size of this room here. They said, “Is that all you done is collect memorabilia?” I said, “No.” We went across Germany and that was quite a thrill to go across the Rhine River on a pontoon boat. You could move tanks across it, just like them big rubber boats you know or you’ve seen them. They made a highway out of them 15 and your trucks move, go over the pontoons. When we got over there they gave us the assignment to liberate a bunch of Russian Jews that the Germans had used as slave labor. It was about maybe 50 or more I guess of them. They were in terrible shape, not like some of the other terrible camps that they were burning. They just work them to death and beat them with whips. So they thought they was in heaven when we moved in and gave them food and clothing and freedom. We had one Jewish boy in our company and so he could speak to them. He’d go over and talk to them. They would dance, you’ve seen the Russians and how they dance. So we got to see all of that and so we took over a German supply depot and it was full of German equipment. So they just said, “We’re going to throw this out in the street and burn it. Take anything you want.” So I did, I was a collector. I opened—it was a book at one of the places they was going to just burn it out in the street and I picked up this book. I love books and I think it said 1,001 of the most interesting places in the world and I take the book like that and opened it and there was our L.D.S. Tabernacle. So I tore it out and took it, still have it. It was being built at that time it was only partially built. I recognized it, it’s funny how you just open it and there it was. They kidded me about being a Mormon when we went in the invasion, one of the beaches is Utah, Utah Beach. They said, they called me Sergeant Penny. They said, “Sergeant Penny, you’re in the wrong beach. You’re in Omaha and Utah’s over here. Better get over there before you go off.” So we had to joke, we had to laugh in order to survive. This one kid, Irishman from New York, he was a character. Harry, he was all Irish, he’d put on a German cap and he would march 16 like the Germans count. You know (something in German) he’d march us when we was goofing off around the area. We had some fun, and on the battle field there wasn’t too much fun. I was in charge of quarters, CQ as they called it. That night I had a little camp cot site at the telephone and the company was down in another part of town. There was about three of us maybe in this warehouse and I was dozing off a little. I’m sure and all of a sudden I opened my eyes, it was just as bright as day is right now. In the middle of the night and I thought, “What’s going on?” So I went to the window and looked, there was flairs hanging in the sky, German flares. We was right on the northwest corner of the Battle of the Bulge. About then the phone rang and I answered it. It’s all by code: Hot Glue, Charlie, whatever the code name is. You’re not allowed to answer or talk in plain stuff and so they gave me the code word and I gave them mine. They said, “We’ve been invaded by the Germans and get your troops.” No they said, “Where’s your troops?” I said, “Downtown.” They said, “Get them up here immediately.” So we hit the foxholes then again. We just had machine guns and little light stuff, but our commanding officer brought the troops up. We surrounded our area and then immediately we had a lot of U.S. military around us, guards. Six paratroopers, German paratroopers dropped right in our company, but they were just young kids. A lot of Polish, they didn’t want to fight. They just threw down their guns and surrendered as soon as they hit the ground. So there was no shooting. They just surrendered, about six of them I think it was. I have a little book, a record of all this, we weren’t allowed to write anything. Our CO said, “We could write home 17 letters.” They were censored, my mother wrote back to me one time and says, “Dale, I couldn’t understand what you wrote in this letter. It was all cut apart.” It was censored because you couldn’t write anything military. Anyway, we survived our company we got all of our supplies out back to Gembloux and in a couple other towns. That was the first time we ever went backwards. The Germans were pretty strong, they were really in force. They had our equipment, they had our tanks, and they had all of our markings, our stars. They had our uniforms, they had our guns. They came into the Ardennes Forest and we just had this lightweight troops there position. They all spoke English and they’d been trained and then as soon as they got into our troops they just murdered them right there. Then the main force came through with tanks and everything little thing. Well if you’ve read the battle of the bulge that’s a story in itself. So we moved back, we was trapped in there, but the Germans had the road blocked. So we got all of troops out by rail and by truck and burned just a handful of the odds n’ ends stuff we burned. I think it was like two weeks maybe, I’d have to check this out, before our troops opened up that roadblock. It was the Canadians and the British that opened up, or the French, excuse me. Canadians and the French opened up that roadblock with their tanks so then we got out. We got out by truck and moved back to Gembloux and a couple of other towns. We stayed there and recouped our supplies, and of course it was bitter cold, it was winter. Our troops were really suffering, we had everybody supplied up to that point, but of course when you think of an infantry man, all he’s got is clothing that’s on and a blanket, ammo and C rations, K rations whatever and that’s it. As 18 soon as he’s out of ammo, then man he’s in bad shape. So we have to resupply all of the front line troops and it took a while. We had that special winterized clothing, the shoe packs, all of the special heavy wool. Equipment for those that were skiing. We had the white uniforms and whatever so we eventually got them all, but we lost thousands in that battle. They called Patton up, the third army, and he woke them up. He took all of our supply for the first army. His tanks were all out of gas and they were in a field. We heard the story later that her come ol’ General Patton he says, “Who belongs to all these gas tanks?” They says, “First army.” He said, “Form right over here in this field, gas us up. We’re third army and we need it.” So they took all that particular one supply and gassed his so he could move forward. We survived that invasion and went on forward, but we saw the German prisoners of war by the thousands. They’d throw down their weapons and come, at any one time they said there was 5,000 in one deal. That’d be like a whole division, a whole division and they were pretty ragged looking. They weren’t all this fancy German stuff like Hitler wanted you know. They were pretty sad as they was living in the mud too. Once we crossed that Rhine, well it was duck soup from then on. We just knocked them off like flies and took over. We moved three or four times. We thought we would be going the other way to the Pacific, but then they dropped the bomb in Japan and that changed things. We were allowed, they had a point system. I think I had 85 points, I was in five battle zones, so we got a bronze star for everyone and if you had five then you got a silver. So I got that and we had 19 the Meritorious Service Unit Plaque award for our supply. So we had a few awards. We came home on the Queen Elizabeth ship. We went over on the Accuitania and that was terrible, that was an English ship. They had boarded over the port holes, welded them over to put more troops on. We was sleeping in water under our feet. I thought, “Oh it stinks.” Oh that was a stinky ship. Took us seven days, we came home in three with the Queen Elizabeth to New York. I got my milk, the girls were there. The Red Cross and some of the others so we had a drink of milk, of good milk. I went into the New York camps and then came across country by the Challenger train. We came right into Ogden here with the Challenger. Then came through Fort Douglas and got discharged. We didn’t have any celebrations or nothing, we just got discharged and went home to mom and dad. That was quite a homecoming, but we corresponded letters back and forth. I had a girlfriend I thought was going to be my wife and that didn’t work out. She was too demanding when I got home. I couldn’t even please her by my guitar. I got my guitar back. WJ: That was a sweet reunion, wasn’t it? DP: Yeah, so I got me another pretty girl, Margene Hortila. She passed away five years ago. She was a farm girl from up at Oakley. Oakley, Utah, not Oakley, Idaho. She was a very intelligent and lovely lady. We have four children, got two girls and two boys and they’re all grown. Married and moved here and there and around, but they’re all pretty close by now. One’s in Layton, all the rest Plain City and Ogden and a lot of them going to Weber College. They got degrees, I never 20 even went to college. I taught generals and colonels out at the depot and college graduates from back east. They said, “How can you do this? You only got a high school education?” I said, “Well it was a good one.” I went to Utah State in the summer time, seminars. I went to Weber, Dr. Butterfield, he was out of New York. We had some good times, some good training. Had 38 years in government service, but all the time I was playing music. I’ve been in country bands, western pioneer, western Yomen, the rangers, had my own band. Pendleton Roundup, you go up to Oregon to the rodeo, Pendleton Roundup, I stole their name. So I’ve been in music and my wife loved it. She didn’t play an instrument, but she supported me and my children. Some of them played guitars and drums, violins in school, but then they just quit. I stuck with it, I’m one of the original members of the Utah Old Time Fiddlers, 1975, Jim Shupe organized it from North Ogden. He asked me to be backup guitar player. Jim played with the Utah symphony so he was a violinist, but his grandfather was a fiddler and his mother was a pusher. Grandma Shupe, she told him what to do. A music teacher, she gave Jim music lessons when he was young and the music teacher come to Mrs. Shupe and said, “It’s just a waste of your money and time. That boy will never learn music.” She said that’s all it took. Somebody to tell me he had no talent so she trained him herself. She played the piano and the organ in church. She knew music. Every once in a while she’d tell us, she’d say, “Dale, that’s an E. That’s an E chord that you got to hit there.” Jim say, “Mom, that’s, you don’t put an E there.” “You do, listen to it.” She’d say. She’d play it on the piano and it sounded real pretty. So we put an E in, but she was a good trainer. 21 All those Shupe kids, they are talented. Oh wow! They teach music, they’ve been to Nashville, they’ve been to Europe. That’s what happened when I went to North Summit 100 years celebration. There was all the young boys that I used to train. The one boy said, “Dale, I was six years old when he backed me up and now he’s one of the top fiddlers in the United States.” He made a tape with Mike Iverson. You ever heard of Mike Iverson? Blue Sage? They’re one of the top players around here. I also got to see the Shupe boys and the Bates boys from Wanship. They’ve got a band up there and playing all around now. Some of them have been to Europe, some of them have been to Nashville. They’re good players. My fiddle player Becky Wright, she’s the one that nominated me for this position. She’s a journalist at the Standard and she’s a good fiddler and a very wonderful person. I’ve been to their place many, many times and my wife loved her too. She is just always so patient. I’d just call her and say I needed a fiddler and she’d just come. Anyway, so Becky has played with us a lot of years, ever since she was a little girl. We went to Bryce Canyon, the fiddlers did. After we got organized in here, Jim asked me to be the chairman of our area, the Ogden area. I was chairman three or four different times. We changed three or four years, then we’d have a new chairman or a woman chairperson. We went to Bryce Canyon over 20 years. The wife and I went 13 years to Bryce. We played at the lodge and that was out at the campgrounds. People from all over the world come and, “Where are you folks from?” “Oh right here in Utah.” “You’re from Utah and you come down here to play?” “Yeah.” Then we had some of the Dutch oven cook specialist so they’d 22 give them some of that nice peach cobbler you know. These Germans and Japanese people, Koreans oh they’d just flock around this. So finally Bryce Canyon after 20 something years they said, “You’re using up all of the camp spots. You got to stop coming. You can’t come no more.” They kicked us out. So now they go to Panguitch and the Grand Canyon. We have 800 players across the state of Utah. We’re the pioneer chapter and we cover Davis, Weber, Summit, and Morgan. We have 60 players and they change back and forth. We have a lot of little kids and we teach them Maggie and Golden Slippers and all of these old time dance tunes. Some stay with it, some are very good. Austin Frodshain I don’t know whether you’ve ever heard of Austin or not. They live out at Plain City, Fremont High School. So Austin and his mom came when Penny’s used to have a store there in the mall. This lady came to hear us playing a program, she says, “What’s the name of this group?” I said, “The Utah Old Time Fiddlers.” She said, “My boy is starting to play a little bit of violin, could he join?” “Yeah, how old is he?” “Five, he’s five years old.” We said, “Yeah, let’s just do it. The age we want them.” So Austin developed in Fremont High School as the top violinist. Austin soon became our best fiddle player. He won first place in about every fiddle contest. Back to the celebration at North Summit High School (100 years). They didn’t have a picture of Becky, but they had her name in there. They had a beautiful program, about an hour and a half or so. Because it was my birthday, they honored me and gave me a great big birthday cake and standing ovation. All that kind of stuff. 23 WJ: So when you got out of the military, did you immediately go back to music? DP: Yeah, my wife supported me, like I was saying, and all my music. Yeah, I played in three different country bands. I always wanted to play in bars if you will. Real, old, hard-nosed, not rock music, but old Hank Williams and all of the old timers. I always loved their songs and memorized a lot of them and played them on my guitar. I don’t play lead guitar much, but I can do. Anyway, so how I met Jim Shupe. We’re Mormons, of course, and they have what they call the Golden Green Ball, a dinner and a dance in the wards and the stakes. So you know we was the Ben Lomond Stake at that time in North Ogden, included our area on Collins Boulevard. Then the wife and I went to this Golden Green Ball, well while we were eating in come this man with a fiddle. He had a band around his forehead and a scarf around his middle and he was a gypsy fiddler. So he went from table to table, playing gypsy or fiddling music. So after it was all over they said, “Jim Shupe from North Ogden.” So I introduced myself and I told him “I played guitar a little bit and if he ever needed a guitar player let me know.” I’d help him on programs, and he said, “Oh yeah, we do quite a few church programs in different places.” He says, “I have a brother Ted that plays bass, upright bass.” So that’s how we met and started. While we was doing that along come the Yeoman boys from Arkansas and Harvey Yeoman. Harvey was a gospel singer and toured gospel troopadores all over the south and the east and Canada, quite a singer, beautiful voice. Harvey played mandolin, guitar. He said, “I’m organizing a band, a country western band.” They called me, and Ira was their manager, he didn’t play with us, but 24 Harvey did. He said, “I hear you’re a lead guitar player.” I said, “You hear wrong. I just play backup mostly for players.” He says, “That’s not what I heard. I want to hear you.” So long story, we met out at Clearfield where they lived, they worked at Hill Field. Ira did anyway, Harvey worked I think construction mostly. So we got together with a base player and a drummer and the first thing you know we had the Western Yomen, spelled not like their name, country western Yomen. We got all dolled up in the best fancy suits, we took first place two years in a row and 24th of July Ogden Parade. The Orange Blossom Special was Jim’s special tune and Rag Time Annie. That’s an old southern, rag time tune. We played dances and we played bars. We played wherever they wanted us to play we’d play. So about that time Jim, who was our Western Yomen fiddler, said, “I’m going to organize the Utah Old Time Fiddlers, but I’ve been going to Weiser, Idaho.” This is Jim and he says, “I want Utah to have an organization like that, non-profit organization.” So Ira didn’t want to let Jim out of his site because we were the Yomen fiddler, so this is in the ‘70s, early ‘70s. So Jim organized the Utah Old Time Fiddlers in 1975, and I have the newspaper article that has that. Shows the Shupe family and we played on TV, and we backed up some of the top players, country players that was coming into town here. We learned a Black Mountain Rag show tune, which nobody in this area had ever heard or knew. It’s a special show tune like Orange Blossom. You’re not allowed to play that in fiddle contests. So Jim organized and you can believe he went around the sponsors in ‘75 and he was our chairman or leader. He lived in North Ogden and married and had what seven kids? A whole bunch of them and they’re all talented, all of them. 25 One just passed away, one of the daughters. It ended up that Jim got a divorce eventually and married another lady, but we kept the Yomen together for, oh, what five years I guess. Then Harvey went back to Arkansas so we broke up the Yomen. We had an offer back east to go into Canada full-time and play with the Yomen, but there was no guarantee. We all had work here, Ogden area and Hill Field and Supply Depot and Jack O’Dell, he was our bass player he had a carpet business. So we said, “No, if there’s no guarantee we’re not going. We’re going to stay home.” Yeah, but it’s good we did too. That’s a rough life. We see all these stars and we hear them you know and they make the tapes and records, but learn about their individual life and that’s tough, that’s tough going. They’re playing some places, different city almost every night. A lot of them can take it, but a lot of them get one drugs and ruin their whole life. It’s a rough life, but we were all good, clean living little boys, and the Yomen we didn’t have any trouble, yeah. So I was down in Bryce Canyon one day and we’d play over at the lodge in the evenings. Out on the porch and then in the campground so we had a breakfast in the campground that we fixed ourselves, hotcakes and everything. One day we had a jam session over there and a girl had a beautiful guitar and was playing. I said, “What kind of guitar is this?” She said, “It’s a Taylor guitar.” I said, “Well where’d you get it?” She said, “I got it from the Acoustic Music in Salt Lake.” She was from Provo I think. She says, “Try it out.” So I tried it and I liked it, acoustic. We play acoustic instruments, by the way, with the fiddlers. Nothing electric unless you don’t have an upright bass you play electric bass. So anyway 26 I liked that guitar, I liked the feel of it. So one day I was out to a new store here in Ogden area, in Roy actually. Mike Iverson had a shop out there. I said, “You happen to have a Taylor guitar?” He said, “Yeah, we got one.” I said, “Well I’m looking for a new guitar.” He said,” What price range?” I said, “Oh about 200 dollars maybe. That’d be about all I could go, 200 dollars.” He says, “Oh you don’t want a 200 dollar guitar. You want a guitar.” He said, “They’re around 1,000 dollars, but I think I can get you a deal.” He said, “I think I can mark that down with Don Baker. You maybe heard of Don.” They give an award every year for Don Baker. He was a standard journalist. So anyway, he says, “We can trim that to 800.” So I talked to my wife and the kids and they said, “If you want it, get it.” So I got a Taylor and then I got another Taylor. I got seven guitars. I got a Fender Electric Jawuar that we played with the Yomen. It’s a beautiful, electric guitar. I got an Epiphone, I got a Gibson, I got a Sears and Roebuck, I don’t know. Anyway if I see guitars well I’ll just leave and I go get a guitar off the rack. I’m fascinated with them. Now I get the publication every three months from Taylor because I got them registered there, registered. They have a shop in California, now they’re all over the world. They’ve beat out Gibson and then Martin. Everybody wants a Martin guitar, so I got a Martin finally. It’s a nice guitar and they usually start at 1,200, and I got mine, it’s brand new, for 400 and it talks to you. It’s a nice guitar, but I still love the Taylor. The Taylor hardly ever gets out of tune. The guy said, “Don’t you have a tuner?” I said, “Yeah, I got one right here in my head.” Dad taught me how to tune a guitar. He said, “Remember.” Guitars can be playing and fiddles all around me and 27 they’ll hand me a guitar that’s out of tune and they’ll say, “Tune this thing.” I’ll tune it and hand it back to them. “How’d you do that?” “Just know.” So it’s a gift, it’s a gift, but I do have a tuner. I hardly ever use it. WJ: How do you feel that music in your life and the music that you share is protecting and passing on a Utah heritage? DP: You know, we teach these young kids and we hope. We go to all their retirement centers, rest home and one woman out there, Clearfield, the last time we played she said, “Dale, how old are you?” I said, “I’m 93.” She said, “We have a lot of people in this rest home that’s in their 90’s, but they’re not doing what you’re doing.” I said, “No, I’m lucky.” My mom was an excellent singer, they had a Summit County choir come in and sing at the tabernacle. We had a picture of that, at one of the regular conference sessions. Mother had a beautiful soprano voice and she worked hard in the kitchen and all over. Cooked when there wasn’t any food to cook, but anyway she had a beautiful voice. She passed that along to us. Dad, if he sang a song it was kind of a naughty song. He put fancy words to standards and he’d make a joke out of it. He could sing, he could sing a tune, but he didn’t. He would make a joke out of it, but he could play. Man, he could play and he had muscles and I had not muscles. I’m weak. Dad had the shoulders and he was short, about 5’4. Muscles in his arms and he’d pick up that fiddle you’d think he’d crush it. It was just like velvet touching that thing and he could play. He’d play all night long. After he come home from service, the wife and I’d go out. He’d say, “You got your guitar in your trunk?” I’d say, “Yeah.” He said, 28 “Let’s strike up a tune.” Let’s strike up a tune, so we did. We struck up a lot of tunes. I got a picture here included. There’s the whole damn family. WJ: Now which one are you? DP: I’m on the far left. WJ: Far left, with the guitar. DP: The guitar, my dad’s the one with the fiddle. The little old man there. I have a half-brother, Oral. Dad’s first wife died in childbirth and the son lived, he’s the one with the white shirt with the mandolin. Oral lived to be a grown man. When dad’s first wife died, dad hit the road to mining camps, dad did. Traveled all around the west, he was a blacksmith. He learned several instruments. I have one other brother, and I think he was on a LDS mission. Lynn is not here and he took the picture. This is my sister and her son. Yeah, that’s part of the old family. WJ: So it is a family tradition, did you carry it on with your children? DP: A little bit. Kevin, I bought him a guitar and Brent is very talented. He can watch me play, all the steel guitar rag is one of the old guitar tunes. Brent will listen to me and the first thing I know he’s playing it pretty well. I used to love Buck Owen, I used to be able to sing all of Buck Owen’s tunes and play them. Brent caught onto it so he’d go around with me singing church parties and whatever, campground. Brent had a good voice and he’d sing. My girls used to sing with me, I get too emotional when the family’s singing and I start crying. They said, “Dad, how come you can entertain all these people if you never cry? If we sing, you cry.” I said, “Well I don’t know, family I guess.” We’ve got children, grandchildren they’re playing violins. Some of them are playing horns. The old 29 Pendleton tribe across the whole deal I’ve got cousins that are very talented in piano and violin. Not fiddling, but violin. Fiddling has a technique and certain tunes. Of course they all came from Europe, the English, Scotch and the Irish, Germans, the Welch and Holland. The Dutch brought all of their old tunes, their own music and America the south had their own style of music. This is what you hear now a days mostly, the country music is more southern. Southern type of music and at first they called it hillbilly, some called it folk music you know. The real western which you’re displaying here. When I came to Ogden in 1942, my brother got a job at the Depot here, the supply depot. I was working railroad and he says, “Dale I can get you on at the Depot, come on down.” So I come down to Ogden right after my birthday in April, got a job at the Depot. Well when the pioneer celebration 24th came here come Gene Audrey and his beautiful horse. He came right up to the stands and we got to shake hands with him, got to touch his horse. I never saw so much silver display on a horse. I have a picture of it in one of my books. He was popular and then of course he was into Hollywood and he was in the service for a little while. You haven’t asked about money. I made a lot of money in the Army when I was overseas, 130 dollars a month. I got a 10% increase. The first ones that went in the draft in 40-41 they got 29 dollars a day once a month. There was a song about that, 29 dollars a day once a month. Then they increased it to 65 I think it was, 60 something. When I went in, let’s see I got, I think it was 60 something dollars a month. Then when I got to be staff sergeant I got 90 dollars, 30 and when I went overseas I got 130. So I keep 30 and send 100 home to mom to help her. That’s the army for you, you know. Nowadays they make a few thousand, I don’t know what a soldier makes nowadays, but it’s got to be around $30,000, I bet, a year. More than that, you in the service? LR: My husband. DP: Have been? LR: He is still. He’s an E-7 so he does a little better than the E-4’s, but a little more now. DP: Yeah, as soon as the war was over they wanted me to stay in Germany and they said, “We’ll make you master sergeant tomorrow if you’ll just sign this paper.” For the cleanup of Germany and whatever. I said, “No, I’m going home to mom. I’ve had enough of this K-ration and sleeping in foxholes. I’m going home.” We didn’t have much better at Wanship no plumbing, outhouse on the old backyard. The guy’s that’s got it now, he’s converted it. He’s a collector, he has a license collecting antiques and he’s got all the farm equipment. You look at that poor Pendleton home nowadays it’s just covered in wagons and plows and old cars and you can’t really see the house anymore. A blacksmith shop that’s just full of old metal. He said, “Oh I got some of your dad’s old blacksmith tools.” I said, “Where’d you get them?” He said, “Right around town. People just walked in and took them.” He said, “I had to pay for them, but I got an anvil, and I got the post drill.” So I went down to look at it and you couldn’t even see it. You couldn’t even hardly open the door, here’s all this scrap metal. He’s a character though, his name is also Dale. 31 Anyhow, we’ve had quite a life. All my aunts and uncles, they all sang, played instruments and all the Pendletons. The Lees didn’t, the Lees didn’t play music, they sang, but I got a Lee cousin, she’s 106. In Salt Lake City and lives alone, 106. My mom was 98 and I used to tell her, “I’m okay mom. I’m going to catch up with you.” My grandson talked to grandma. He called her grandma great instead of great grandma. “Make it to 100 grandma, make it to 100.” My mom was a lovely lady, an angel. She worked in Salt Lake in candy factories, the two big Shupe and one other candy factories in Salt Lake as a young girl before she was married. So she was a candy maker at home, we’ve always had vinegar taffy. She taught us how to make it and she made divinity, fudge and you name it. So I’m the candy maker now, my wife graduated me to a candy maker. I should’ve brought you some today. I’ll get you some, I make caramels. They say, “Oh grandpa, those are the most delicious caramels. Have you got any caramels?” “Yeah, there’s a bucket full there.” I’ll have to bring you some. Taffy, I love to pull taffy. Have you ever pulled taffy? It’s fun. You get your hands all sticky, but there’s a technique to it. My wife could really do it. You want to get air into, you cook it until it’s stretchable, cool until you can handle it with your hands so you don’t burn ya. You put butter on your hands, take it out of the pan, start to stretch it and then you overlap it like this and make a 1/3 and then lap it again. Then pull it and overlap and the more air and the little bubbles you can get in the taffy the best it is. I make molasses, I make cream taffy, I make saltwater taffy and I don’t know, a lot of fun. When I’m not playing the guitar. Yeah, I’ve had a good life. 32 WJ: Lorrie do you have any questions? LR: Every time I wrote a question down he’d answer it so I’m good. DP: People said, “How come you don’t have any wrinkles? You know you don’t have any wrinkles and you’re 90 something years old.” They says, “What’s the secret?” I said, “Well ever since I was a little boy we didn’t have plumbing in our house so I always washed my face in cold water. I done it in the army too, you washed in your helmet. Your helmet was your washbasin and everything else.” So I says, “I don’t know whether that’s the secret or not.” The guy says, “I’ll have to start that.” I said, “Well I think you have to start early.” So I don’t know. I’ve been, I have a checkup with the doctor and I take pills of course. I have a little bit of high blood pressure and this and that and the other. My doctor’s out in North Ogden and one day he was checking me with his stethoscope and he said, “Uh oh.” I said, “What’s the matter doc?” He said, “I don’t like what I’m hearing.” I says, “What are you hearing?” He says, “Your heart is beating like crazy. It’s 90 miles an hour.” He says, “I’m going to get to the hospital immediately.” So it took two days before they had an opening up at the heart specialist and they checked me. They couldn’t find nothing wrong with it. We’ll just let it beat fast, it’s alright and we’ll give you pills. You take pills every morning to slow your heart down. So I don’t slow down. I had a little asthma and if I’m working hard I’ll need to rest or something. I have a hard time breathing, take the garbage can out and the kids say, “We’ll do that.” I said, “Well the garbage can is there. I have to take it when it’s ready you know.” The girls come over and they help clean the house a bit. I love to work and my parents were 33 workers and they taught us all hard work, hard work pays off and it does. You learn technique and how to do things the best way. I appreciate your time and your talent and what you’re doing with your education. I’ve been back to Weber a few times for specialized courses and I should’ve stuck with it to get a degree, but I had two paper routes when I was a boy. The Tribune and the Deseret News, 30 families in Wanship. I walked around, I didn’t have a bike. I had a little red wagon and I sing you a song about that, my little red wagon. When I get all the papers delivered then I’d find me a pretty girl to ride back in the wagon to their home. I was always looking for pretty girls. Anyway it so happens that things fall into place and one day the Tribune man came out and he says, “I understand you also have the Deseret News route here in Wanship.” “Yes.” I says, “I have the Tribune is in the morning.” It was 65 cents a month, yeah 65 cents. The Deseret News was 40 I think. He says, “You can’t have both paper routes.” I said, “Why not? People seem satisfied.” The Deseret News was in the evening after I got off the school bus. He said, “No, you can’t do it. You got to decide which one you want.” I said, “Well, I’ll quit the Tribune because it’s early in the morning.” A lot of the times at the service station it would be 35 degrees below zero. My mom would dress me in whatever warm clothes I had. I’d have a string around the paper. They’d come with a truck from Salt Lake and throw the papers there at the service station. So I’d cut the string and put them in my wagon. Around the block I’d go. Wanship’s a small town, there’s no lights in Wanship. Two stop signs now I think and it used to be no stop signs. You had to take the paper right up to the door and knock on the door and 34 hand them the paper. You didn’t just poof, throw it you know? If they wasn’t home then you put it in the screen door or whatever. You collect the money and you didn’t make very much, but anyway I delivered them all the way right up until my last year in high school I think. I turned it over to another kid in the town that needed a job. That was the only money we had, a lot of times we never had a nickel in the house. Not any money at all in the house. Dad maybe by the end of the month have 30 dollars that they had to pay for your rent, your lights and your food and your clothing. Dad went with the sheep a lot. He’s the cowboy, my dad. He went with the ranchers and the sheep men out on the desert all winter long when I was a little boy. Mom would be there with the kids and dad was a poet and a musician. If you’d like a copy of his poem I’ll give you one. It’s special, tells the life of a sheep herder. They’d have a horse and dog. They all alone out on the prairie all winter long, but I knew some guys that went to college and they went back to herding sheep. They said it was the best life they’d ever had. They loved it and they loved the solitude. Be their own boss. So anything else I can tell you? WJ: No this has been fantastic, thank you so much. DP: Thanks for your time and your talent.