The Ogden Christmas Shopping Experience of Yore

When I moved to Ogden in 1978 I caught the tail end of what used to be the typical Ogden downtown Christmas shopping experience.

The day after Thanksgiving the corner of 24th and Washington Boulevard was a total zoo.  A Christmas decoration of some sort was suspended over the middle of the intersection, strung from cables stretched across from ZCMI to the Eccles Building. There were so many cars going every direction at once that a cop had to stand in the middle of the intersection, directing traffic. He looked hot and bothered with it all.

1950 Washington Blvd.

And stores still lined the streets. The Ogden City Mall hadn't take out the entire two-block area from 24th to 22nd Streets yet, ZCMI and Fred M. Nye were still booming, the streets were jammed because there were no shopping malls to siphon buyers away. I had to fight crowds to get into ZCMI, where harried clerks were dealing with mobs of folks.

1978 was the tail-end. The 'vard was already heavily spotted with empty store-fronts. To really see what it was like, I'd need a Wayback machine to 1950.

Looking at the City Directory for 1951 between 23rd Street and 24th Street alone there are dozens of shops and businesses: Madsen Furniture Company, L.C. West and Son Jeweler, Christensen's Shoe Mart, Thom McAn Shoes, Rich's Women's Clothes, J. J. Newberry Department Store, Hartley's Hobbyline, Grayson's Women's Clothing, Boston Shoe Shop, Taylor-Wright Department Store, Tribe's Home Furnishings, Pay Less Drug Store, Woolworth department store, W. T Grant Department Store, the Heap O'Beauty Salon, and J. C. Penney.

That's not all of them and that's just one block.

People always wax nostalgic for the way it used to be, but they were quick to abandon all that for free parking and indoor warmth, which was why Ogden's city parents were looking at, yes, The Mall.

Shopping malls killed downtown, but they were just another spin of the cycle.

I remember, vividly, my first visit to the Cottonwood Mall out in Holladay. It was new and glittering and being the holiday season, the mall was bedecked with Christmas glory, glittering and shiny.

That mall was a magnet, with lovely stores of all levels. I worked for 6 months selling cameras at J.C. Penney, eating lunch at Woolworths, buying books at the little book store. There was even a stamp shop where I bought stamp hinges and 1-penny blacks from England.

That mall is now a giant hole in the ground.

The Ogden City Mall started out the same way -- glittering and huge, an intended shopping magnet for cities in Utah, Idaho and others points around the compass. At Christmas time we jammed into the lobby and listened to the Ogden Symphony Orchestra play, at in the horrendously positioned food court and wished we could afford the stuff in Nordstrom's.

I don't recall anyone being nostalgic for the traffic jams at 24th and Washington. That cop, I'm sure, was glad they were gone.

But a few years later they opened the Newgate Mall. Then the Layton Hills Mall opened -- anyone know how that's doing? I haven't been there in years.

The radio, today, had a show of folks discussing shopping malls and how they seem to be dying. Folks are reminiscing about meeting lovers there, having lovely experiences of wandering and looking and so on.

But those are memories unique to a specific incident. They ignore the daily life experience, which was far less romantic.

Nobody waxes nostalgic about having to wander mall parking lots for hours, or having their car broken into, or getting shoved around inside the mall, or having to wander all over, whining child in tow, looking for a rest room.

Wouldn't it be nice if I could do all this from home?

Actually, yes it is. Which is why I'm writing this on Cyber Monday.

Debbie Wade Pinterest image.

This is the day everyone hits the computer to do their Christmas shopping and business owners all over nation ponder their stores' heating and light bills and say bad words. They have especially choice words for the folks buying stuff on-line today who researched the stuff in their store on Friday.

It's odd, in a way, that we've come full circle.

The first national department store chains -- Woolworth and J. C. Penney, were barely 50 years old in 1950. If you go back 100 years ago there were downtowns and department stores, yes, but most folks lived in rural settings, farms and small towns, and couldn't shop there.

They did their shopping "on-line" through the catalog.

Sears made it possible for folks hours away from town to buy through the mail (its day's on-line experience) and bypass the limited and higher-priced local general store.

And now we're back again.

So I suppose, if you want to strike a blow for nostalgia, and make America great again, or something, you could do no less than hit Amazon and get that chrome plated dingleblat you've always wanted, but it doesn't feel the same, somehow.

Your memorable shopping experience has to be one you make. If you want, in years from now, to wax nostalgic about how fun it was to bump around in crowds, feel the chill and enjoy the warmth and cold of shops, it means you need to get your buns off the chair and out the door.

Shop keepers are waiting, anxious.

And when I did my shopping down on 25th Street some of the stores even had free cookies. All had smiles and greetings from actual human beings.

Let's see Amazon do that.

Ogden loses another legend--Karen Waters RIP

I guess I'm at the age where folks I covered are now dying, but it is never fun to see.

Karen Waters is -- and should remain -- a legend along Ogden's 25th Street. As much as anyone, she played a key role in revitalizing Two-Bit Street.

Her small initial cafe, located under where the City Club is now, was small but comfortable, with great food and a constant crowd. Wednesdays were the hardest to get in because that was when they had meat loaf or pot roast, alternating weeks, and you were wise to call ahead and reserve your portions of those two commodities.

She always celebrated Elvis' Birthday by serving up free fried peanut and banana sandwiches. She had a thing for Elvis that would have made her husband jealous if Elvis weren't allegedly dead. One time I was talking to her about him and she started fanning herself, admitting that she was getting just a titch hot and bothered talking about him.

Karen fought numerous battles with the city in order to stay open. She had to struggle just to keep barrel-half planters in front of her store. It seemed as if zoning and building inspectors just didn't want her to be there some times, but she persisted.

Her cafe was what a cafe ought to be--hot coffee, good food, a steady stream of regulars who'd hang out, kill time and joke with the wait staff. Those included the odd (yes, very odd) journalist, who missed no opportunity to write up the place. Hey, everyone needs a publicity agent and, no, I never took free meals.

Local politicians were also regulars -- I need to dig it out, but I did one column when a local lawmaker died who'd been a friend. She hung his cowboy hat on the wall in his memory, I thought it was nice and wrote about it, and she hung the column next to the hat.

That hat and column followed her down the street to her new, much larger, cafe, and always hung there. I felt honored every visit.

Karen's key role in 25th Street exploded when she opened that new place -- it is now Jesse Jean's Coffee Beans -- in the 100 block. She was right next to a newly opened Ogden Blue in buildings the city had just put up, and she lived in an apartment upstairs.  The place was jammed from the word go and the whole street took off. Meat loaf, pot roast and her famous crummy chicken were always there.

Karen's new cafe was filled with memorabilia of her family -- family pictures were imbedded into the plastic of the counter, and it breaks my heart to think of them all tossed out when the interior was demolished.

But all things come to an end. Karen's health declined, and she just couldn't keep up the business. Restaurants are hard to run, you need to be healthy to fight the battle, and after a while it just didn't work any more.

All things change, but it's sad when they do. I hope Karen's afterlife is filled with fun customers to talk to, lots of that amazing meat loaf (I'm guessing the recipe died with her) and, every now and then, some thoughts about Elvis, just to keep her warm.