INTERVIEWEE: Marie Ogden

Sevier County Oral History Project

INTERVIEWEE: Marie Ogden
INTERVIEWER: Elizabeth Lyman
DATE: December 5, 1997
PLACE: Richfield, Utah
SUBJECT: The Great Depression

Elizabeth Lyman: This is Elizabeth Lyman I am interviewing Marie Ogden on her memories of the Great Depression. The date is December 5, 1997; the place is her home in Richfield, Utah.

Where were you born?

Marie Ogden: Nephi, Utah.

Elizabeth Lyman: Can you tell me a little bit about your family and your circumstances?

Marie Ogden: Well, there was my mom and dad and there was thirteen of us kids. Well, at that time there would have only have been maybe eight kids. At the time of the Depression.

Elizabeth Lyman: What kind of house did you guys live in?

Marie Ogden: It was a log house and then it was stuccoed on the outside.

Elizabeth Lyman: How big was it?

Marie Ogden: Well, there was living room, kitchen, and two bedrooms.

Elizabeth Lyman: One for girls and boys? Or one for the parents and one for the kids?

Marie Ogden: Well the boys slept out in the sheep wagon. There was two little boys and they slept in the sheep wagon and we girls all slept in the—there was ten girls—we slept in the one room, bedroom.

Elizabeth Lyman: How did you help out with your family? Like what were your chores and stuff?

Marie Ogden: Well we didn't really live on a farm but we had cows and chickens and pigs and things like that. I helped with the garden, helped bottle fruit, helped tend the little kids. I was the second girl, so I was one of the older ones so I helped with the babies, and washed the diapers, and brought the water in. We didn't have plumbing in the house. So we had to go to the ditch and collect the water and let it sit in the bucket until any dirt in it had settled to the bottom and poured it [the water] off carefully and that's what we would drink and wash with.

Elizabeth Lyman: You were eight years old during the depression; did it really hit you hard at first?

Marie Ogden: I don't remember that it did.

Elizabeth Lyman: Was it just something you just heard about?

Marie Ogden: Well, most of it I just heard about, but I know Dad had a hard time getting work; never any money.

Elizabeth Lyman: So what was his job before?

Marie Ogden: Well, he was county road supervisor and that kinda, well, it just didn't keep him busy. They just didn't have the money there in Juab County, to keep him busy. So he did other things; he, well, I remember one summer when he and my two brothers dug cess pools. And rocked 'em out; you don't even know what a cess pool is probably.

Elizabeth Lyman: No

Marie Ogden: It's kind of for the sewer.

Elizabeth Lyman: That's what I thought.

Marie Ogden: But anyway they would do that and this one summer I remember they did it for a service station, a home, and a coffee shop for one man. They worked all summer and then, that fall he took out bankruptcy. (Teary eyed.) That took care of that. So they didn't get one penny for their summer of work. And everybody that helped there with them, they didn't get paid either because he [the man they worked for] took out that bankruptcy.

Elizabeth Lyman: Was it really hard?

Marie Ogden: It was, it was hard but we had our pigs and chickens and cows, like I say, and horses. And so we never went hungry or anything like that. We didn't have everything we wanted to wear or everything we wanted to eat either, but we got along.

Elizabeth Lyman: Did your family have a particularly hard time with the depression in general?

Marie Ogden: Well, my dad didn't really have any money in the bank that he lost. But he was working everyday that he could and getting nothing more than what he could, but you couldn't get jobs; nobody would pay. They didn't have any money.

Elizabeth Lyman: Were there other families that were having a struggle like yours?

Marie Ogden: Oh, everybody was, everybody. And then in about 1932, this was in 1929, in '32 I believe is about when Roosevelt came and was made president and he started the W.P.A., the N.Y.A., the E.R.A., and the C.C.C. and that gave a lot of people work.

Elizabeth Lyman: Did your dad work for one of those?

Marie Ogden: He worked for the W.P.A. He was the boss and my mom was book keeper.

Elizabeth Lyman: What type of activities did you do for fun?

Marie Ogden: Well, we had to make our own fun. Everybody in our end of the town would get out and play during the summer, night games like they do now. Kick the Can and Run Sheepy Run and Hide and Seek, and in the winter we would play checkers. We didn't have electric lights so we would have one lamp that we'd move from one room to another; we'd put a little oil in our lamp and we would read or something like that. But when it got night and dark, we went to bed.

Elizabeth Lyman: Where did you get your clothes from?

Marie Ogden: My mom did all the sewing, and a lot of it; well I had two aunts that were school teachers, an uncle that was a school teacher, and he had two daughters that were school teachers. So they gave us their old clothes and Mom made them over. I very seldom, well, I remember when I got my first boughten dress, I was about twelve and I'd gone to pick beans. We had to pick the beans and put them in gunny sacks we'd drag it up the road to the bag drop hole and a man would come and pick them up and load them. We made twenty-five cents a day.

Elizabeth Lyman: Did you ever think anything was missing from your life?

Marie Ogden: No, not really.

Elizabeth Lyman: Were you just used to it?

Marie Ogden: Well, that's how I grew up. We were happy, the kids, we all got along well together, and Mom and Dad loved us and played with us and taught us. So we didn't, well, everybody was in the same boat. So they didn't have anything, we didn't have anything, so we didn't miss it.

Elizabeth Lyman: Did your family have to move a lot or did you mainly stay in Nephi?

Marie Ogden: We always stayed in Nephi. I lived in the same house; no, I was born in another house, but right after when I was just a baby, I don't remember how old, of course, but we moved to the house that we lived in. The year I graduated, in 1939, we moved to our new house we just built. And I helped build that; my dad did most of it, but it was sturdy; and then we had to drive nails in the adobe around and then he plastered it.

Elizabeth Lyman: Did you really enjoy having the new house?

Marie Ogden: Yes, because there was plenty more room.

Elizabeth Lyman: Did you have to share a room in the new house, too?

Marie Ogden: Two of us in a room.

Elizabeth Lyman: What did you do on birthdays and Christmas?

Marie Ogden: Well, on birthdays mom would make us a birthday cake. I don't remember if we got much birthday presents or anything like that. But she'd make Floating Island Pudding and that's like a lemon merange pudding; she would put the egg whites, drop it on and then put it in the oven around the meringue. We called that Floating Island Pudding and that was a birthday thing that she did.

Elizabeth Lyman: So you didn't get many presents then?

Marie Ogden: Nope.

Elizabeth Lyman: What about Christmas?

Marie Ogden: Well, we all got a doll.

Elizabeth Lyman: Every Christmas?

Marie Ogden: As I remember the year the Dione quintuplets were born they bought a set of those and each one of us got a doll. It was about six inches tall; we didn't get big dolls, we didn't. And then mom made us rag dolls sometimes for the babies.

Elizabeth Lyman: Who were the Dione quintuplets. Were they a set of four?

Marie Ogden: No, there was five of them and they were in Canada. And it was something; there'd never been a multiple birth like that before and the government kind of took over and raised them. It's going to be kind of like these seven that were just born. But they were just famous at the time; everything was Dione quintuplets, and there was one named Marie.

Elizabeth Lyman: Is that the doll you got, the Marie doll.

Marie Ogden: (Nods head.)

Elizabeth Lyman: Did you watch any movies?

Marie Ogden: Not 'til I got older and was able to go, and we watched Tarzan and the Apes. I didn't like it because my eyes were funny and my brothers and sisters just liked to sit right at the front. And it just seemed like they was coming right over me, and I didn't like it, so I would stay home. Dad would give me the money and then I would put that in—my dad was a smoker; he smoked Prince Albert. And I would put that money in a Prince Albert can and save it, about the end of the month he'd run out of money, and so he'd borrow my money back. But I didn't like movies.

Elizabeth Lyman: What type of songs did you guys sing?

Marie Ogden: Well, my brother played the guitar, so we'd sing just cowboy tunes, westerns, "Springtime in the Rockies," and stuff like that.

Elizabeth Lyman: Do you think the depression was a good thing or a bad thing?

Marie Ogden: A lot of it was bad for the people that had money in the bank, that lost it. But as far as we were concerned, I guess it was hard; we needed the government programs to kind of get people back on their feet so they could make a little money and eat. There was just no jobs; there just wasn't money. But those of us that had our cows and pigs, stuff like that,, we had a garden so we didn't go hungry; we got along. And I think it made your family closer to have less. Maybe I'm wrong, I don't know.

Elizabeth Lyman: Did you stay active in the church the whole time of the depression?

Marie Ogden: I wasn't active at all in the church. My mom and dad weren't active. It wasn't 'til I was old enough to go to primary that I used to go with my girlfriends and started to get active.

Elizabeth Lyman: What type of impact has the depression had on you?

Marie Ogden: I think it taught me to be more frugal and to appreciate what I had. I first worked for the N.Y.A., the National Youth Administration, and I learned to knit and crochet; we had stockings and shawls and sweaters, stuff like that, so I did learn to knit and crochet.

Elizabeth Lyman: What advice would you give young people if they were to face a depression?

Marie Ogden: Oh gee, I don't know. Just make the best of it. Just watch, you can't have everything you've had. I was young enough that I didn't realize that I was missing anything. It'd be hard for kids, now because they've got the lights, they've got the indoor plumbing, they don't have to worry about any of that. They didn't have to go out and chop wood, take care of the cows and chickens and pigs. So I would say learn how to take care of a garden, learn how to take care of what you've got, and not expect new all the time.

. Elizabeth Lyman: Are there any other experiences you'd like to talk about?

Marie Ogden: Not that I know of.

Elizabeth Lyman: Well then, I think that's all.

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