i Oral History Program Ruth and Eugene Bailey Interviewed by Christine Jouffray 6 March 2015 ii Oral History Program Weber State University Stewart Library Ogden, Utah Ruth and Eugene Bailey Interviewed by Christine Jouffray 6 March 2015 Copyright © 2015 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 Ogden Union Stockyard was a key fixture in the largest livestock market west of Denver during its heyday from 1916 to 1971. The activities at the yard brought Ogden national attention as a livestock center; the rise of the livestock shows, auctions, etc. at the site spurred the local and regional livestock industry, physically shaping the development of the agricultural landscape both near and far. This project documents some of the stories of the stockyard workers and visitors. ____________________________________ 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: Bailey, Ruth and Eugene, an oral history by Christine Jouffray, 6 March 2015, WSU Stewart Library Oral History Program, University Archives, Stewart Library, Weber State University, Ogden, UT. 1 Abstract: The following is an oral history interview with Ruth and Eugene Bailey, conducted by Christine Jouffray on March 6, 2015 in Liberty, Utah. The Baileys discuss their memories and experiences with the historic Ogden Union Stockyards. Also present is Cameron Jones, the videographer. CJ: First, I wanted to start by thanking you both very much for your willingness to do this interview. Eugene, you had mentioned a story about your father giving you a calf; could you tell us about that please? EB: Yes, probably when I was about eight or nine, I had this calf that was my favorite calf. As it grew up I claimed it as my calf and I had it tamed down to where I could lead it around. And it got sort of big, like probably eight hundred pounds. We never cut its horns off, so they were about six, eight inches long. It was tame. One day my dad came and said, “You have to sell that calf.” I was upset because that was my calf and I didn't want to sell it. In those days, I didn't know anything about the finances, and even though it was my calf, it had to be sold. So, we took it down to the Stockyards and I was about in tears. My dad said, “Well, we'll go see if we can find it. You can see it one last time,” and we did. There's a catwalk that goes across the top of the yards outside; we walked up there and looked until there it was, down in one of those little pens all by itself. We went down and went in the pen. Unbeknownst to me, my dad brought the camera. One of those old box Kodak cameras, and got a picture of me standing by my calf. I certainly wish I could find that picture, but I can't. It was a real sad time for me in that era. That made an impression and I have never forgotten it. 2 The calf was taller than me by that time; I came to its shoulders. It was about my height. It was so tame, it would put its head down, I could put my arms around it. CJ: So not a lot of happy memories for that one then! EB: No, but later on I understood why it had to be sold. I guess I thought it was going to be my pet forever. CJ: An eight hundred pound pet! EB: Yeah. CJ: Is that your earliest memory of the Stockyards? EB: Well, around there I remember going up on that catwalk. It was fun looking down at all—talk about noise—all of the cows were mooing and wanting to find their companions. It was noisy there. On the north side were the loading ramps for the railroad cars. I remember seeing them when I was eight or nine, the last few years that they even used them. But I remember seeing them load cattle on the railroad cars, to take them to wherever. I bet there were eight or ten ramps where the trains pulled up alongside and you would see the cows go up in the cars. CJ: What year do you think that was? EB: That would have been in the early fifties, around 1953 to 1955. CJ: That's the peak of the stockyard at that time. EB: And then my memories of the Exchange building; it was quite an impressive building. You went in and it had really high, high ceilings. It kind of echoed in there, with all the people talking. I could just see it now. It was very alive with people doing their business. CJ: What was the business that was going on in the Exchange building? 3 EB: Well, all I knew was that was where we had to go to get our pay for what we sold, or pay for what we bought. They had a runner from the auction ring over to the Exchange building. The secretary in the auction house would take down the number that was pasted on the calf or the cow. Then when it was sold, she would take the bill of sale and she would put it in a little box and then pull a handle and it would zip outside. Probably after they had collected a few, a runner would run them over to the Exchange building. It was probably fifty or sixty yards from the auction ring to over where the Exchange building was. The bill of sale would go over there to be processed. The auction ring was fun. There were no chairs. It was quite a steep grade with wide benches so that you could sit on them, and people could walk in front of you. It went kind of around. It held, I bet a hundred to a couple hundred people. And there were entrances going up both sides. It's the auctioneer’s cadence that I liked to listen to, and try to figure out what price they’re saying. Of course I had to ask my dad a lot. I have sat there all day; it's just so much fun to see the cows come in the auction ring. There were two guys in the ring. One would open the gate, and they had little sticks to prod the cows over to the other side. There was a barrier of big iron pipes, so that if they had a mean cow in there, the guy could hide behind the pipes. CJ: Oh, really? EB: The guys wouldn't get smashed. And I've seen them take that refuge several times. You get kind of a mean cow or something in there, wants her calf and they'd let her out the other side. Nowadays they have the auction ring on a scale. 4 They bring the cow in, and immediately or in a few seconds they'll have the weight up on the board. But back then you just had to guess its weight. After the cow was sold they would take it out and they would weigh it on the outside. You never knew what they weighed until you went and got your check or paid for them. CJ: Did you get pretty good at estimating? EB: I didn't but I'm sure the older ones did. That's kind of crucial, because you try to know how much they weigh so you can calculate how much this one is going to cost you. And if you guess eight hundred pound say, and it’s eighty cents a pound, you quickly do the math and you know how much you're paying. Most of the buyers would sit right around the bottom, and the buyers for the big outfits. RB: Meat processors? EB: I'm sure they were a lot better at guessing their weight than most people. RB: Well didn't the auctioneers sometimes guess their weight? EB: No, no, I don't think the auctioneer ever mentioned what the weight was. But it's really nice now days that you can see the weight immediately. You know how much they weigh and how much they are going to cost. CJ: Now you were just dealing with the cattle aspect of the stockyard? There were also sheep and pigs. Did you have any interaction with that aspect of it? EB: Well, didn't we buy a pig or two? RB: Yeah, we bought some piglets down there. EB: We did buy some Weiner pigs that we brought home and raised for our own meat, a couple of times. 5 RB: A lot of people sold chickens down there. Just cull chickens, not layers. They would take down there a batch of them. They come through almost every week, a few chickens in cages. EB: Sheep, I saw them go through, but we never had anything to do with sheep then. Horses would be sold and a lot of times the horses, probably most of the time, the horses went for horsemeat, which has been outlawed for quite a while now. CJ: Did you ever eat there in the restaurant in the Exchange building? EB: Now the restaurant was downstairs in the basement in the Exchange building, and when you first stepped in the door you smelled those hamburgers. I'm pretty sure they were greasy, but it sure was tempting. I went down there with my dad, but I don't remember eating there. He was pretty conservative and he didn't think we ought to spend money eating at the restaurant. It was always crowded and noisy and a lot of smoke rings. All those smells mixed in together; it left an impression on me. CJ: I know that you were a dairy farmer, but what brought your dad to the Stockyards? EB: He mostly was beef cattle. I mean, we had a few milk cows; five or so was all in my day, in my younger days. So he was buying and selling beef cow and calves. That was his main farming income, was the cattle, well he had grain. He would sell grain, by the bag and not bulk; but mostly it was beef. That is why we grew hay to feed to the cows in the winter and to the calves in the spring, and sell the calves in the fall; and then start over. 6 CJ: The eternal cycle. What years are we talking about, that this beef production was going on? EB: Well, my older brother when he got about twenty years old, he wanted to take over the farm. He wanted to milk cows, so that would have been probably in the fifties, so we gradually got out of beef production and into milk production. That was a more sure income. You had a paycheck coming every month with the sale of milk. We would occasionally take cull milk cows to sell down there. We got out of the beef in about 1958 or 1960. CJ: And it was about nine years later that you went into dairy farming? EB: Yeah, 1969. I was in it with my dad and then we bought this place. We went from thirty-five cows to over a hundred cows overnight. That's a big change. CJ: Yes, that is. What is the span of your family’s interaction with the Stockyards? EB: Dad would be in the thirties. So the thirties to the sixties, a thirty-year period, it was mostly all beef for sale down there. Occasionally there was horse. In fact, I remember he bought a draft horse, a very big draft horse and brought it home. It was kind of wild; I was too young to know much about breaking horses. I remember we hooked him up, and down through the field we went, on the run. He turned out to be a good horse, but there were horses sold. See, back then, we still had horses for farming and so forth. There were a few of them going through, not just saddle horses. CJ: How were you getting your cattle to the Stockyards from up here in the Ogden Valley? 7 EB: Well they used to drive them down the canyon. But that was before my time. There was a man that lived over the road a ways named Harold Chadwick. He had a big cattle truck. He'd probably haul everything down that anybody wanted to send. We'd have to take them to his place where he had a chute to get them into the truck, because it was a high truck. It wasn't like the trailers we have now that you can back up to almost any gate and just walk them in. The trucks were quite high, so we'd have a chute. We would drive them a couple miles over to where Harold's place was and he'd take them in his big cow truck. Trailers didn't come in to much use until, when did we get our trailer? Well, probably seventies. RB: Well, probably earlier than that, sixties. EB: They had a lot of unloading ramps in the Stockyards for trucks, and there was one place for trailers. There were mostly trucks and that is what created the backup that Ruth's going to tell you about. There were so many trailers and only one place to unload them. CJ: You are from Ogden Valley and your family has been up here, how many years? EB: Since the 1880s. CJ: Ruth, you were from down in Ogden? You lived on the street corner that was just near Weber State University? RB: Yes. CJ: So you're the city girl, and you had a different experience at the Stockyards. What happened? RB: Well it was after we married, it would have been in the eighties. He was driving a truck and a trailer, and I was driving a truck and a trailer. We had a lot of cull milk 8 cows that we were taking down that day and some calves and different things. So, we had two big trailers. I got down to the stop sign at the bottom of the hill facing north, just facing the Stockyards. Traffic was backed up, he was in front of me, he'd made the corner and I was just stopped at the stop sign waiting for the trailers in front of me to unload. There must have been fifteen or twenty trailers lined up, trying to get in, trying to back in to the one stall that they can unload in. EB: But they were lined clear up the hill to 24th street. RB: Yeah, they were also lined up, clear up the hill behind me, and there wasn't any place for me to go. I just had to stay at the stop sign. A police officer came, he had his car down there, kind of in the middle of the road, right straight, in the middle of the intersection. He came up to me and he got real mad at me. And he started cussing and swearing at me and said, “You have to get out of here.” I said, “There's no place for me to go.” And he said, "I don't care where you go, you just get out of here. You're going to cause an accident up on the road.” I'm thinking to myself, “Well, there is no place to go.” And I don't think that that was unusual. It's just that we hit the Stockyards at a bad time. He was not nice, he just kept going on and on about me having to get out of there and I was just in line. I said, “Where is it you want me to go?” He just kept saying, “Anywhere you want, anywhere you want.” And I thought, “You want me to take out your car on the way out because I don't have any room to move anywhere? There's no place for me to go. Your car's in the middle of the road. I'm at the stop sign waiting to get around the corner.” So I got out of the truck and went and talked to Eugene and [the officer] was mad about that and said, “Get back in your truck.” This went 9 on for about fifteen minutes, but I finally got room to move. I wasn't the only one that he was yelling at. He had been yelling at the people all the way up the front all morning trying to get everybody to move. Everyone just has to take a turn and unload their cattle. EB: I think the problem with that was the backup, up the hill, and traffic coming west to east off the viaduct. You know, it was causing a traffic jam up there. As well as where she was stopped at, the stop sign the road went over towards the Smith & Edwards building, which was the Swift Meat plant then in those days. CJ: Right. EB: So there was traffic coming and going there and they had to stop behind it. RB: It was just a big traffic jam that he wasn't being nice about. CJ: No one could really do anything about it. You were saying this was in the eighties? RB: Late eighties. He didn't have any patience with unloading things. He didn't have any idea of what was going on. RB: We got through it and everything was good. Nobody got in an accident. CJ: You were hauling cattle back and forth to the Stockyards; did you see many women in the Stockyards doing things? RB: The secretaries were all women doing money transactions in the Exchange building. We used to take the kids down there when they were out of school or pre-school and take them down and sit. They liked to go and watch the animals go through. That was a good experience for them. We'd go down, or if we had something to do or take down we'd sit there for an hour, an hour and a half and 10 watch the animals and try and get an idea of what prices where. That's where you get a good idea of where the prices are. As they go up and down, we watch; well last week the prices were up we'll take something this week, this week the prices might be down. EB: I have something there. As we unload the animals, they are taken to a little pen. Immediately after you unload them they have to go to a pen. Then they have to push them through a chute, where they are stopped and the people put the stickers on them, their number on them. Then they let them out and there are people on horseback driving them down the alley, the main alley to go to wherever. There were not a lot, but a few women riding horses. RB: Handling the stock. EB: One of them was the Webb girl. Oh, I can't remember her name now, but I knew her. Another thing that I was kind of interested in is most of these guys had stock dogs to help them drive the cattle down. We had dogs all the time, but nothing that was trained real well. They'd say “git that” and the dogs would go bite the cows’ heels and get them moving. They were good dogs to help them; I liked that. Now we have our own stock dog. CJ: There were women then that were on horseback? RB: A few. CJ: A few and was that surprising or no, just sort a part of the terrain? RB: I don't think that it was surprising because I was kind of Western too. Not growing up too much because I was in the city. 11 EB: It was a little surprising to me. I thought that women belonged in the house. I've changed my mind. Back in those days, in my younger days I was surprised. CJ: But as a little boy, seeing a woman on a horse, herding the cattle down…? EB: They can do that? CJ: That's interesting. Ruth, you had told us some experiences you had as a mother with the children's rodeos that were held at the Coliseum? RB: They call them the Little Buckaroo Rodeos. They rode sheep and they'd do a little bit of barrel stuff. It's like what the 4-H do now. This was a little bit more for the younger kids, from the kindergarten to sixth grade. The school would give that in spring, it was always in April. Our kids would participate; our two girls were in the queen contest, which was held over at the park to start with. They'd choose the queen and then they'd get to go to the Little Buckaroo Rodeo and do their little entrance things and wear their little crown and their hat. EB: They had their little pony too. RB: And their pony, which we had, which sometimes didn't work out real well. CJ: Can you tell us about that time? RB: Well, we had our oldest daughter Shannon. EB: She was only first grade. RB: She was first grade, and she had a stubborn little pony. Ponies are really stubborn, but we took her through the whole process, with the hat and the fancy shirt and the talking to the big queens. They were all excited because all of her friends were doing it too, so it was a community thing. She got down there and went with her pony to the gate, to go into the arena, and the pony wouldn't go in. 12 So, one of her friends had a dad or someone she knew, who took her horse in and let the pony follow. As long as the pony was following, it was okay. Then we got in and it ran back out and she fell off. EB: Well no. RB: Ran around a corner. EB: No, it ran in, as I remember it. She finally got it to follow the horse. It ran in about halfway, all of sudden it just stopped and she went right over the head. RB: She just fell off. EB: Right over the head. RB: She was so embarrassed. She came out crying. It was the first time she had ridden in public and it hurt her feelings so bad. She did it again though. And then Laura, our second daughter, she did it for a few years; she had a lot fun doing that. EB: It fizzled out after. RB: Yeah, four or five years and then it stopped. It was really fun. We'd all get ready and they'd brush their horses and get them all ready and we'd trailer them down. I don't know that we had a trailer. We might have had to borrow a trailer. EB: No, we had one then. RB: Yes, it was a lot of fun. So they had this Little Buckaroo Rodeo and it was all Weber County, so each elementary school had their own night. It may have been a couple of schools. They'd organize them so there weren’t too many kids to run, for an hour or two. 13 RB: On an evening after school, but that was fun. Kids love to go down there because the smell of the Stockyards is really… What is it? EB: Tantalizing. RB: Tantalizing, the smell of the Stockyards. CJ: Why do you say it's tantalizing? RB: There is just a Western smell about it. You got a lot of manure but you've got leather and horses and just a lot of smells that are only at the Stockyards. They are that particular, so that when you smell it, and even now, I walk into the Stockyards and go, “Yeah, it's a comfort smell. It's just a Western smell.” A lot of people say, “Oh yeah, smells like manure,” but for us it's a comfort, it's a memory smell I guess. CJ: It evokes a lot. RB: Yeah, a lot of memories come up. CJ: Nice. You went ice-skating also? RB: I did, when I was younger than ten, in the mid-fifties. My parents would take me down. That was a real treat to go ice-skating down there. We didn't do it often, but it was a real treat to go ice-skating there in the wintertime. EB: I went there too. RB: Just for fun, and they'd rent you your skates. I think it probably cost a dollar fifty or two dollars to go in there to skate. But it was a lot of fun. I always wanted to be a skater, it never turned out. EB: I have to tell you one memory of the skating. I was probably twelve or fourteen. We took a bunch a boys, the scouts or whatever down there, we were standing in 14 a circle. None of us could skate real well, but well enough to go around. We're standing in this circle, and this one kid lost his balance. He started going like this, and he fell and he went like that and he hit this kid and split his skin; just split his skin right up the middle. It wasn't very deep, but it could have been real bad. RB: So it was fun. And the smells are still there, it permeates into the ice ring. Just because it's cold and winter you still have those smells, because it was the Stockyards still. CJ: Did you ever see anything at the Stockyards that really struck you as out of the ordinary, so you have a vivid memory of it? Something in addition that you'd like to share that we haven't covered? EB: I can’t think of anything. RB: I always liked to go there. I still like to go there, to the Stockyards. It's just entertaining. EB: After they closed down the Exchange building for some reason, they brought in a little trailer. RB: A little mobile trailer. EB: Enclosed trailer. Set it right there by the door to the Exchange building. That's where you would go in and pay or get your check. They didn't have of course a cafeteria, but these mobile cafeterias. CJ: Like food trucks? RB: Snack trucks. EB: Would come and set up right there so you could still get your hamburger and that. But it wasn't the same because you're outside and you didn't get that 15 enclosed smell. But hamburgers smell good, even outside. That's what they did after they closed down that building. CJ: Do you remember what year it was when the closed the building down? EB: I don't remember that. You'll have to look that up in the history. RB: Yeah, I was sad when they closed the whole Stockyards. I thought, “Well, what are we going to do? Where are we going to go?” It has all worked out. There has been a lot of change through the years. CJ: The Stockyards officially got started in 1917 and then they were closed in 1971. RB: Oh, the Exchange building closed in 1971. The auction part was still going on. EB: That's when they moved the enclosed trailer over for the business transactions. CJ: Cameron, did you have anything you wanted to ask? CaJ: Several times you discussed the “cole” cows. I was just curious what that meant? EB: Cull. These are cows that are like a spent hen. CaJ: Oh, so cows that you can't get milk from anymore? EB: No longer useful for milk, but they are useful for beef. So that's where you take them. CaJ: I did not know that. CJ: Well, if you don't have anything else, then I think we'll close the interview, but not before I thank you again very, very much. This has been really interesting. EB: It has been interesting for us too. RB: It brings back memories. CJ: Good, I'm glad. Thank you.