Oral History Program Dean Perkins Interviewed by Colby Wayment 3 March 2009 i Oral History Program Weber State University Stewart Library Ogden, Utah Dean Perkins Interviewed by Colby Wayment 3 March 2009 Copyright © 2014 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: Perkins, Dean, an oral history by Colby Wayment, 3 March 2009, 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 Dean Perkins. The interview was conducted on March 3, 2009, by Colby Wayment, in Dean Perkins’ house. The interview concerns the Steinfel Climbing Club and Perkins Ltd. CW: Did you get into climbing from skiing? DP: No. I knew Ralph Lowe from skiing. We skied together. I just knew the Lowe group. Ralph took me once and I got hooked with the sons and Ralph. It was a natural thing. I was just trying to sell anything I could sell. At that time I was just selling mainly ski wear and I hadn't gone into tennis yet and I hadn't gone into men's and women's clothing yet. I started out just as a ski shop. Then I started with men's and women's, what they call natural shoulder clothing. It was a certain kind of design - no padding in the shoulders and just a three-button coat, Gant shirts, which was a button-down grey shirt that nobody else in town had. So, I started that way and due to the climbing, I thought, what the hell, I might as well put in a climbing store. I started buying three price ranges in boots. I started buying shorts cord-knickers and pitons, crampons, ice axes just for looks because there was no ice climbing, but I carried all the gear. So, I really got into it heavy. Because I was a tennis player, I put in a little tennis shop in too. But where I rotated and got the ski stuff out in the winter, I had a whole room full of nothing but climbing gear and I had all the ropes - three different kinds of ropes. Then it was natural, I got all the shit and a lot of people were interested, and Chimney because I was the first one to climb it and climb that chimney, which is a narrow. You know what a chimney is? You have to push on your legs and push on your back. I climbed this chimney and as you went up it, it went out towards the river. So the higher you got, the fuck you had nothing. There was nothing down there but the 1 river almost. It was just a straight shot. You weren't going to hit cliffs or rocks or anything. You were just going to go to the bottom. It was pretty shaky. We climbed the flatirons over there; we used to call them. We climbed there to get up to it. You climbed to the top of those and go a left a little bit to this chimney that takes clear to the top. We used to have a lot of fun. We used to climb all over that place and I used to watch them after I quit. And the Lowe guys, Jeff started climbing that waterfall in the winter. I think that's where he started on his ice climbing. Then slowly I saw the police started getting everybody out of there because cars were stopping in the summer. They wouldn't let them stop and gawk because they were holding up traffic. So they probably kicked everybody off and said, "You can't climb here." And they went to the other side of the road. It was fun. The school was fun. But, I've been in that kind of stuff all my life. I started the Ogden Standard Examiner ski school. CW: Which school? DP: The Ogden Standard Examiner ski school was the Perkins Ltd. ski school. That was the name of my store. I was selling stuff and I got a bunch of guys to be instructors and worked with Earl Miller and his instructors. What I did is I hired a bus. I charged these kids something like 100 dollars a year and got them ski lift tickets. They would meet at the store every Saturday. Once a week, on Saturday, they would meet down at the store on Kiesel and 24th Street. We started out with a bus. We rented a bus and had a busload of kids. They would bus them up to Snowbasin and bus them back. Their parents drop them off at the store and pick them up at the store. That was good for me. Again, it got too much to handle, so I turned it over to the paper. The paper turned it over and they called it the Standard Examiner Ski School and it still goes today. We used to teach skiing out of 2 there. We used to teach tennis. We used to teach mountain climbing. We did all that fun stuff. CW: A lot of these people you were teaching, how do you think they got into it? Were they just inquisitive people who came into your store? DP: No. Mostly friends that told other friends that knew what we were doing and it just networked down the line until more and more people got into it. And the climbing industry itself started getting big and soon there was a climbing shop in Salt Lake. There was a rock up there on the hill. They used to go train on that rock and practice. Then it got to be so it was a pretty big deal. CW: Would a lot of people loiter around your store? DP: Oh yeah. A lot of people, it didn't matter what you did whether you were a tennis player, a skier, a mountain climber, or anything you did. We were in the thick of all of it. CW: What compelled you to start all these things, the store in general, the outdoor clothing? Was there anybody else you were reading about at this time or was it your own motivation? DP: Well, the way I started the store was I left Ogden, Utah, when I was seventeen or eighteen years old. I started ski racing and I got on the Snowbasin race team. They sent us around to these little races in the Intermountain like Jackson, Brighton, Alta, and places around Idaho Falls. I got to be a fairly good skier. I was young. Back then you had your classes, 1-2-3-4, and I was like a class C racer. Instead of 1-2-3-4 they would go A-B-C-D. Before I went to high school, in junior high school and into high school, I started ski racing. Well, story goes, we got to Jackson, Wyoming, for an Intermountain Ski Association championship and the lift broke down. That was when I was about a junior. It was the last 3 year I had to race before I turned 18 and I was out of the junior class. We got up to Jackson and the lift was broken. It was on Christmas vacation. We were out of school so we had like four or five days. We had a carload of four of us in an old Ford. We decided to hell with this, the lift’s broke down, let's go to Sun Valley. Sun Valley is not very far away. We drove over to Sun Valley. Sun Valley started in 1936 or 38. This was in the mid-40s. It was just a little village of nothing. But man, it was like I died and went to heaven. It was so good skiing. Everybody knew everybody and ate three meals together if you worked up there. I busted my butt to get a job. To make a long story short, I got on the race team out there. Then I tried out for the World Cup team. I got on the World Cup team and went to Europe. After I got on the World Cup team, they usually classify skiers in lumps of five instead of 1-2-3, and I was in the first five. That was the first year I had been in the international circuit. So, I was pretty sure of making the next Olympic team if I hadn't got hurt. I started thinking I'll lay out a school and train. That was the biggest mistake of my life. I laid out a school and got drafted in the Korean War and I couldn't get out of the service to even try out for the Olympics. But lucky enough, I got sent to Europe and I skied with the Olympic team all that winter and skied for the Army in the Army, Navy, Marine Corps championships of Europe. That's how I got into all of it. Then I came back and I went to work for Buhler Bingham's. That was a men and women's clothing store and they wanted to start a ski shop. They hired me to run it. By then I had quit racing. I worked for them for two years and that's where I got my experience as far as selling and buying. I worked there for two years. I started my ski shop on Riverdale Road where the saw shop is out there. I started out there and I had to close in the winter because I didn't have anything to sell but ski stuff. The second year I was there, I figured that isn't going to work 4 and went out and got a job on the road as a salesman. I had a buddy in Provo that got me started in the clothing business. After two years down there, I moved downtown. That's when I moved to 24th and Kiesel. That's when I went into the climbing. I've always been wanting to do what's fun to do. CW: Selling the ski clothes didn't get you through the winter? DP: Ski clothes were Raffi and Demitri, which was a pant and parka line. We had the second stretch pant that was ever sold in the United States. First stretch pant that was ever sold was Boldinger, out of Germany. We had the second and the only American-made stretch pant. I had nine states, which was a lot of territory and I started out... in nine states, I bet I didn't have 30 accounts, maybe, and I had to travel nine states to get to them. So, as things progress, the line got better, then I think I ended up with 150 or 200 accounts when I stopped. Then I had Texas, Arizona, Oklahoma, Kansas, New Mexico, Utah, Colorado, and Idaho. I missed one. I did that for 38 years with the same company. But after the first 20 years, I dumped the store and stayed on the road. CW: What dates did you start and end the store? DP: I opened the store about '52 or '54 and sold about '70 something. I kept the climbing. As long as the store was going, I was into climbing. As soon as I closed the store, I had to close the climbing too. I closed the store so I could devote more time to the road, then road started getting busier. If you go back, I got into the ski business when it was at its infancy. We had a rope tow on Becker Hill at Snowbasin. That's all, one rope tow. Then after a few years they got another rope tow where they call City Hill. In 1947, that's the first time they had the Wildcat lift with the big wide wood chairs, wood towers. I go clear back to then; skiing was nothing. But I got it in its glory days. I got into it when it was getting 5 better, and better, and better. So pretty soon - I told you about the finances - well, everything turned around. It used to be that I was eight months in the store and four months on the road. Then it got to be where I was four or five months in the store and seven or eight months on the road. But I was making all the money on the road and had all the rest of the time off. But then you had to get ready for next year’s line. Well that kept growing, and growing, and growing until pretty soon I couldn't even cover the nine states, in a car, because it used to take me 30 days to drive Texas. So I bought an airplane and learned how to fly. I had a secretary and three guys working for me before it was over. CW: Getting back to the climbing, where did you order that stuff? DP: I ordered a lot of that stuff from Europe because I was looking into climbing when I was over in Europe skiing. I had the names and numbers. Plus I was importing... back in those days, as far as the ski industry went, you're looking at like, 70 or 80 percent of everything came out of Europe. Japan wasn't even making stuff yet. There were a few companies in the United States, but it was all coming out of Europe. A lot of the climbing stores over there are also in the ski business. So, that's where I got my boot lines, my rope lines, and my hardware. Then slowly but surely, they got a couple companies over here. Gerry Mountain Sports and Recreation Coop REI in Seattle. Gerry Mountain Sports was in Boulder and they were stocking stuff. Boulder started being a big climbing place because they have those Flatirons. CW: Did you have any relationship with REI? DP: Yeah, I bought most of my stuff from Gerry, but then I got really pretty heavy into REI because the same guys in REI were selling ski stuff - the Whittaker brothers. I knew Lou and his brother. Jim Whittaker was the first American to climb Everest. He was out of 6 Seattle. Lou and his brother were both selling ski stuff. They were on the road. When I would go to road shows... we go to these big shows. Back then we had about four a year. We were a week in Seattle, a week in LA, a week in San Francisco, and a week in Denver. And all these guys that climb were also in the ski business. Everybody knew everybody anyway. So, I used to see those guys all the time. Plus Raffi and Dimetri were from Seattle and I had to go to Seattle three or four times a year design meetings and different meetings and those guys lived up there. When I went up there, we would get together for ski shows and talk about climbs. CW: Were you involved in getting Royal Robbins and Yvon Chouinard over? DP: No. But I knew those guys very well. I bought a lot of stuff from Chouinard and Royal Robbins. It was mostly clothing from Robbins, but Chouinard was all the pitons and the hammers, carabiners, and all that stuff. He was hardware. He started with the carabiner. CW: So that was Kent calling them up? DP: Yeah. But I knew those guys as business. I never climbed with Royal or Yvon, but that's where I bought my stuff. They knew the store. CW: Were you involved in the carousing with the climbers around here? DP: I was at the Hermitage all the time: with Hack, John, the Lowes, and everybody around here. See, after a time, I had quit selling mountain climbing stuff because I was out of the store. Then Mike and Jeff went to Colorado. Well, Denver was my territory. So, I would always stop in and see Mike, Jeff, and Greg if they were in town whenever I went to Denver on the road. I went to Denver like four times a year. CW: Did the Steinfel kids come over to your house and party? 7 DP: I climbed with them as long as I was climbing, but it was most of the older guys like John Narcisean, Lynne Barnett, Hack, and a lot of people that maybe knew Hack. They're the ones that started with me. And they're the ones that helped. Hack was a great guy, one of my best friends. He was a great worker, very innovative, always on time, great skier, fun to ski with, and fun to climb with. He put everything he had into whatever he enjoyed. He put his whole life into those things. He wasn't lucky enough like I was to be the industry. He had to work another job a lot of times. But I can tell you that with every hour he had off, he was either climbing skiing. CW: There was no active promotion? DP: No. If they did any of that, it was after I quit. CW: It kind of seems like there's a correlation that the club disbanded when you gave up your store. DP: Well, it wasn't a very good club. I can only remember five or so names. I bet there weren't any more than ten or fifteen in it. It was a very small group in Ogden that even climbed. Most people didn't understand what the hell you were doing. "What are you, crazy?" CW: Salt Lake's is a different story. People relocate to Salt Lake just for the climbing. DP: It was always a big struggle between who's the best: Ogden people or Salt Lake people. But Salt Lake always comes out ahead because they have a bigger population. When it gets to individuals, then we compete. But when it gets to an industry, well how the hell can you compete with Salt Lake in a mountain climbing club because the goddamn near a million people down there and we've got 80 thousand or so. So, who's going to have the most climbers? 8 CW: Was there a lot of friendly competition between Salt Lake people and Ogden people in climbing and skiing? Did you know many people from Salt Lake? Needle each other? DP: Sure. Climbing to me, I never got to the point where climbing was competitive. Me against anybody else because you've got to have someone you can trust climbing with you. I was always a competitor at individual sports, because I was small. I never could get on a basketball team or never play football. So I got into individual sports, which was good, because everybody, when they got out of college, wanted me to teach them to ski, teach them to climb, teach them to play tennis. They all wanted to do that but nobody knew how. Well I was doing that since I was twelve. I was good. But in mountain climbing, you better have at least one good buddy - two or three are better. There wasn't a lot of climbing alone in those days because it was a relatively new sport. CW: What state were you from? You said you moved here to Utah? DP: I was born in Montpellier, Idaho, by Bear Lake. I moved here when I was 5 and I've spent most of my life here from the time I was 5 until I was 17 or 18. Then along came college, Sun Valley, and the Army. There was probably ten years I wasn't here. I came back here after I decided, "Well, I've already made a World Cup team, skied in the Olympics, and skied all over Europe and you've been laying out of school all this time, so what are you going to do Dean? You're about 22 or 24 and you want to try and make another team? You've already been there and you didn't make any..." Back in those days, we were called ski bums. You didn't make any money. So, I'm trying to look at my future and, "Well let's see, what could you do that you've really been doing? You could be a ski instructor in Sun Valley? No. I'm not going to be a ski instructor the rest of my life. But I wouldn't mind getting into the sporting goods business. Well, you're not going to do that in Sun Valley. 9 The only thing you're going to do in Sun Valley is become a ski instructor or ski patrolman and that don't pay shit." I came back and worked down here on the railroad for a while, worked for the American Can Company stacking cans. Finally, I got a chance to work for Buehler Bingham and run their ski shop. They were opening a sporting goods department. They didn't have just ski. They had ski, tennis, golf, and guns. They had a regular small sporting goods store and I was their manager. I was the one that was trimming the windows. I was the one that was buying the gear and running the whole show and hiring the guys. I had all these friends out there plus I had all these sources in Europe that I could buy stuff from as long as I could pay for it. I started my ski business with 800 dollars and about 5,000 dollars worth of credit. In other words, I could go out and buy about 4 or 5,000 dollars worth of inventory and I had 800 dollars to build the shop, to build the office. It would be pretty tough to do that now. You couldn't get to first base. 10