Oral History Program Joseph Anderson Interviewed by Ben Reeves 17 August 1971 i Oral History Program Weber State University Stewart Library Ogden, Utah Joseph Anderson Interviewed by Ben Reeves 17 August 1971 Copyright © 2012 by Weber State University, Stewart Library ii 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. Archival copies are placed in University Archives. The Stewart Library also houses the original recording so researchers can gain a sense of the interviewee's voice and intonations. Project Description The Weber State College/University Student Projects have been created by students working with several different professors on the Weber State campus. The topics are varied and based on the student's interest or task for a specific assignment. These oral history assignments were created to help Weber State students learn the value and importance of recording public history and to benefit the expansion of the Weber State oral history collections. ____________________________________ 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 All literary rights in the manuscript, including the right to publish, are reserved to the Stewart Library of Weber State University. No part of the manuscript may be published without the written permission of the University Librarian. Requests for permission to publish should be addressed to the Administration Office, Stewart Library, Weber State University, Ogden, Utah, 84408. The request should include identification of the specific item and identification of the user. It is recommended that this oral history be cited as follows: Anderson, Joseph, an oral history by Ben Reeves, 17 August 1971, WSU Stewart Library Oral History Program, University Archives, Stewart Library, Weber State University, Ogden, UT. iii Abstract: The following is an oral history interview with Joseph Anderson. The interview was conducted on August 17, 1971, by Ben Reeves, in Salt Lake City, Utah. Anderson discusses growing up on a farm in Roy and attending public school there and then Weber Academy. He also discusses medical care, politics, the canning industry, recreation, and the Spanish-American and First World Wars. BR: Mr. Anderson, can you tell me a little bit about yourself, a little background, such as when you were born, who your parents were, and such and so? JA: I was born in Salt Lake City November 20th, 1889. We moved from S. L. C. when I was just a child, must have been about three or four years old, and we moved to Kaysville. We weren't in Kaysville very long when we moved to Roy. Father, George Anderson, was a railroad man, and he was a section foreman on the Oregon Short-Line Railroad. In Roy we lived in the old section house, which was right at the side of the railroad. As a boy, I had fun jumping on and off trains they were switching around there, and I suppose, frightening my mother very much, not purposely, but unintentionally. Roy was a very small town then and it wasn't really known as Roy. It was known as Hooper. My sister, Clara, who was just a young girl, but rather aggressive, determined to write to Washington to see if we couldn't get the name of the station changed to Roy. And that was done. In those very early days, a man would ride up from Hooper to the station on the railroad and get the mail each day. Hooper was really three or four miles west of Roy. My boyhood days were spent in Roy, and we hadn't been there very many years, only a few years really, when Father retired from the railroad and bought a farm 1 in Roy. This farm was west of the Rio Grande tracks, and we went into farming. But we weren't really good farmers, father wasn't a farmer, and we had a hard struggle on the farm. We used to take our produce over to Ogden, by wagon or buggy. There were no automobiles in Roy at the time, and we tried to sell the produce to the markets and stores and sometimes to people at their homes but had very little success. Eggs brought very little, and melons, watermelons particularly, we could sell them for five and ten cents each--that's about all we could get for them, so it was a rather hard life. Father became postmaster of Roy. That helped somewhat. I went to the elementary school in Roy. There was a little school- house of one room. All eight grades were taught in that one room by the same teacher. And sometimes we were a little rough on the teacher, I suppose, the boys especially. In those days many people were not inclined to go even to high school or to college. The year I graduated from the elementary school, there was only one other graduate and he was my brother who was two and one half years older. The teacher wanted two graduates instead of one and I was in the seventh grade, but I graduated with him. We had to go over to Ogden to take the examination. In Ogden---all graduates in Weber County had to take the test, and in some way I passed. Later, I went to Weber academy, where David O. McKay was the principal. I took a commercial course. I graduated in that course, English, shorthand, typewriting, bookkeeping, and so forth, in two years. But each year I went to Ogden, back and forth each day on horseback until the severe winter snow. When it got too cold I rented a room in Ogden and stayed with other boys who were going to the academy. I was late each year in starting to school 2 because I worked at the Hardy Canning-Factory, about six weeks in the fall to get enough money to pay my tuition, and other expenses of school. My older brother and sister went to Salt Lake and attended the University of Utah, but Father was not able to keep all three of us in school, so I had to make a special effort. Oh, I can tell you this--the people who lived in Roy at that time were very interesting. There were really two streets, the street on the south was sometimes known as "Cousins Street" because most of the people who lived there were early settlers and were related. The people on the north street where we lived were not related. We lived west of the Rio Grande tracks on the street that came past the old poor-farm, and as kids we used to enjoy very much going up to the poorfarm, getting acquainted with the patients there, and some of them seemed a little odd to us as children but we enjoyed playing around there. At that time, a man by the name of Taylor was in charge of the poor-farm. He and his family lived there and they were very fine people. The bishop of the ward at the time we were there was Thomas Holland, and his farm adjoined ours on the east. Later, Mark Brown moved into Roy; he lived on the hill and he became Bishop of the ward. Being the eleventh member of the family and the youngest, and being rather small and young, it fell to my lot to herd the cows. Not only our cows but I gathered the cows of all the neighborhood, and took them up into the hills where they would feed until evening and then I'd drive them home. Just last Saturday and Sunday, I was up visiting the Grand Cooley Stake. The president of that stake is Thurn Baker, T-h-u-r-n. His parents lived in Roy at the time I was there and we had a good time talking about Roy and its people. There was a man by 3 the name of Chauncy Garner, and another by the name of Will Robinson; their wives were President Baker's aunts. Chauncy Garner and Will Robinson were the ones that baptized and confirmed me a member of the Church. Strange to say, I was baptized in the old swimming pool up on the hillside and President Baker told me that that was where he was baptized also, although there are many years difference in our ages. BR: Okay, you mentioned this letter from your sister; do you remember when she wrote that letter? JA: No, I'm not too sure. It must have been about the turn of the century. Maybe a little before, maybe along about '98 I would guess, '97 or '98. BR: When was your father the postmaster, do you remember what date? JA: I don't know the exact year, but he was the postmaster at the time I went to school over in Ogden, which was 1904 and 05. It was a little longer than that. After I graduated from the business college I worked just a few months in Ogden, then I came to Salt Lake City. My parents later moved to Salt Lake. BR: What type of activities did you do around Roy when you were a boy? JA: Well, I worked on the farm, and it was hard work. I used to thin beets and top beets and pull weeds. The irrigation was one of the things that was most difficult. We would get our turn to take the water at different hours of the day, and sometimes our turn came at night, so we had to stay up all night and irrigate. Of course they do a much better job of irrigating now than they used to do. Our land wasn't altogether level and sometimes when we let the water run down the 4 various rows, it'd cut a gully and it wouldn't really reach the roots of the various crops that we were raising. But we did raise tomatoes and we raised beets and we got a real training in farming. It seemed that I never had time nor did our family to go fishing like many people do, we just had to work hard on the farm. I always said I was not going to live on a farm, that I did not like it. I had some very nice boyfriends and girlfriends and we had house parties the same as young people do now when we were youngsters. That is girls and boys together, played games, and had a good time and we played some games that they don't play now very often. We played a game they called Tippy, which was very interesting, and Run, Sheepy, Run, and other nice games of that kind. But we were kept pretty active and didn't have much time to play. We were kept very active on Saturday, and all week, and we were always good church-going people, never missed church in those days, or Sunday school. And there were dances; people came from Hooper and Clinton to dances and the people in Roy would go over to Clinton and Hooper in exchange. There were often fist fights at these dances, I remember as a youngster. Some of the fellows got to drinking a little too much liquor and occasionally a fist fight resulted, but there was never any such thing like we have now about pulling a gun or a knife. BR: The last time we talked you mentioned having a horse named Jimmy. JA: Yes, I did have a horse named Jimmy. I used to herd the cows with Jimmy. I remember my brother and I rode him over to Ogden one day to attend a show and he got lame over by Riverdale and could hardly walk so we had to get off and lead him the rest of the way. But we found that when we came back that his 5 foot was alright. I don't know whether he was playing a trick on us or not. On one occasion we, as youngsters and we were very young at that time, went to Ogden to see Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show. We were thrilled with what we saw. These cowboys, riding their horses and doing the rodeo-stunts, et cetera. The cowboys would stand on the backs of their horses while they were riding, jump off and on them and do all kinds of rifle shooting. Buffalo Bill was there himself, William F. Cody. So when I went home I thought I could do what the circus men did, and I learned to jump off and on my horse while he was running. I would put my hands in his mane and throw my feet on to the ground and up I would swing back onto the horse again. And there were the big horses, the work horses, I used to stand up on their backs, they were heavier, holding onto the reins; I would make them run too. I got so that I could do the same thing that the cowboys in the circus did. But I haven't ridden a horse, I don't think since I left Roy, so I doubt I could ride one now if I had to. But Jimmy was a great old horse. He had been a cowpuncher's horse; I was the cowpuncher at this particular time, so we worked very well together. There wasn't a gate on the farm that he couldn't open. Sometimes when I was herding the cows, the cows would get into the fields of green lucerne and get bloated. That used to worry me. We had to put a gag in their mouths, to get them to get rid of the gas. If it got too bad one had to stick the cow in the side with a knife, but we never had to do that. BR: What type of activities did they have of a cultural nature, like music and maybe drama or something along this line? Did they have much? 6 JA: I don't remember any cultural activities of that kind. There were those who I suppose were learning to play the piano. I remember, in the very early days when we were there, and that was the very early days, a man by the name of Harry White used to come to church and lead the music and he had an accordion that he played as accompaniment. We never had any piano. As far as culture is concerned, I don't think we had too much of it in those days, that is in the way of music or dramas. Maybe I was too young to recognize it at the time or remember it now. BR: What types of things did you study when you were in school? JA: You mean in grade school there? BR: Yes. JA: Well, it was really reading, writing, and arithmetic, and we sometimes had spelling bees in school and we got to be good spellers, much better than they do these days. And normally they learned to write better than they do now. They didn't have typewriters; at least we didn't have any there. I guess they did in Ogden. We didn't have any doctors in Roy at that time, so when we had an illness we had to send to Ogden to get a doctor. We didn't have much in the way of telephones either; I don't recall if we had a telephone at that time. We just had to send someone to Ogden to get a doctor. He'd have to make the trip by horse and buggy. We used to enjoy very much in the wintertime jumping on and off the sleighs, bobsleds particularly. It was all horse and buggy and wagon in those days. We didn't have the automobiles. I remember one of the very first automobiles that came to Ogden. On one occasion, my brother and I went to 7 Lester Park, and they had one of those one seated horseless carriages. For a nickel they would give you a ride around the park. Later when we drove to Ogden with horse and buggy the horse would get terribly frightened of those horseless carriages. On one occasion he nearly turned the buggy over trying to get away from the machine. That's early history. Roy was a small town then, very small. It has become quite a place now. We used to like to go up on the old hill and go swimming in the swimming pool. That's where I first learned to swim. The boys threw me into the pool thinking I'd sink or swim and of course I did sink, and they had to jump in and pull me out. That was at a time when there was no water coming down from the hill. Later I spent many hours swimming there. All of us did. Saturdays we'd go swimming. We'd get a bath that way. BR: You mentioned earlier about your father being section foreman for the railroad. Do you remember any experiences on the railroad? JA: Oh, yes. He'd been a section foreman for a long time. He had served in Springville, in Kaysville, was in Roy. Later he went to the Point of the Mountain south of Salt Lake City, not as a section foreman, but to work on a gravel train. Father was an immigrant. He'd been a coal-miner in Scotland, and when he first came here he went into the coal-mines at Coalville, and then started working on the railroad. Father had no scholastic training to speak of, but he was the most broadminded man that I've ever known and very sensible. BR: I don't know, maybe you were too young to remember too much, but do you remember any of the type of political problems that they had back around the turn of the century? 8 JA: No, I really don't. I don't remember a thing about politics, at that time. I was too small. I do remember that we took quite an interest in the prize fights in those days. I remember the Fitzsimmons and Jeffrey prize fight. I do recall now when I think of it that sometimes they did have political meeting in the church hall, recreation hall, and speakers would come out from Ogden principally, speaking in favor of their particular party, but I was too young to remember much about it. I went at times, I remember that. BR: You mentioned at the first about working for the Hardy Canning Factory. What type of things did you do when you worked for them? JA: This was a tomato canning factory, and the thing I normally did was to put caps on the cans when they were filled. They would be filled with tomatoes, the cans would come along on a belt, and I would have to put caps on them, and then they'd go to the next machine and be soldered. I became very expert and rapid putting caps on the cans. And then after the canning work had been done I would assist them with the labeling of the cans. Put labels on all the cans. Sometimes I would get into the freight cars that were full of cans and get them into the factory. Yes. I remember very well, they had girls who peeled the tomatoes. They used to race to see who could turn out the most buckets of peeled tomatoes. Sometimes they really were very speedy. I think that sometimes things got into the buckets that ought not to have been there. BR: Whereabouts was the Hardy Canning Factory located? 9 JA: Well it was right west of the Oregon Short-Line tracks, across the tracks west of the station. I think they later sold it to Del Monte. And then the Roy Canning Factory, another canning factory, was built near the Rio Grande tracks. BR: What type of problems did they have as a result of World War I? Do you remember that? JA: I wasn't there then, as a matter of fact, I was in Roy at the time of the SpanishAmerican War. I can remember when the men came back from the SpanishAmerican War. I recall their uniforms and their going back to work on the farm. BR: What type of problems? Did World War I cause any problems around, say, Salt Lake, Ogden, and so forth? JA: I remember when the Armistice was signed. I remember that on that occasion my wife and I and our baby were out on the sidewalks. Everybody was very, very happy, because of the close of the war. I didn't get into the First World War, I wasn't too old but I was married and we had a baby. I would have gotten into it if the war had gone another month or so because I had applied for service, in the Intelligence Department. Having been on a mission in Germany, I believed that I could write German in shorthand and that my services would be needed. BR: Your parents were foreign immigrants that came over to America. Did they have any special problems because of the fact that they were from a foreign country? JA: No, I think not. Father was a coal miner, and they seemed to need coal miners at that time. He went to Coalville first. That's the only place he worked in a coal mine over here. Then he went to work for the railroad. He always had work. 10 Father was a hard worker, a very strong man. He wasn't a very tall man but he was well built. I heard men who worked with him say that he could pick up one end of a rail and it would take three or four men to carry the other end. He was a man of great strength. He had very big hands, just about like a ham. If he ever used it on you, you would know that you were being punished. He sometimes did, but not very often. BR: Do you remember any specific experiences that--like for example of the effect the poor-farm had on the community around there? JA: I suppose the only thing I remember about it was the inmates there who used to go to church. I think a good proportion of them were members of the Church. They went to church every Sunday. Several of them bore their testimony every fast day, and they were good people. Some of them had some problems, they were old people of course, but some were crippled, and had one defect or another. I think the Taylors did a very good job in administering the home and farm. BR: Okay, well thank you for your time and all. It must be pretty valuable with all your responsibilities. END OF INTERVIEW 11 FOOTNOTES It must be kept in mind that this is a second interview due to the failure to record the first. The first was much more spontaneous and free in movement than the second; also all footnotes are references where more information can be found or a note of explanation of possibly unfamiliar term usage. Weber Academy was the name given to Weber College when owned and operated by the L. D. S. Church before sold to the State for a state college. David O. McKay was ninth president of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, A ward is an ecclesiastical organization of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints presided over by a bishop. All references to the Church refer to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints unless otherwise stated. The swimming pool was the reservoir built by the county poor farm to have running water. Refer to interview of Lettie H. Stoker by Ben Reeves, as part of the Utah Oral History project. Rosella Hardy and Ida Drayer, Roy, Utah: Our Home Town {Salt Lake City, Utah: Deseret News Press, 1968). Interview of Lettie H. Stoker by Ben Reeves as part of the Utah Oral History project. Hardy, Roy, Utah; Our Home Town. 12