Union Station's 90th coming down the track

I really love this picture. It's so festive.

So fun. And so real.

No kidding, it really happened. The image may be a bit romanticized, but not much. Real pictures of the event are similar.

Ogden's Union Station burned down in February of 1923. After some initial reluctance, the railroads that used the station agreed to build new and set to it.

A little more than a year later, in November of 1924, they were done. Anyone else think that feat could not be duplicated today for any amount of money?

Me neither.

There was a huge hoo-ha for the dedication, of course. Speeches were made, music was played, everyone partied and, at some point, a steam engine attempting to get to the festivities allegedly got into trouble and needed help.

So some women of the city attached ribbons to the engine and pulled it in.

A photograph was taken, of course. Probably many. One of them was seen by the artist for La Domenica del Corriere, a Milanese newspaper that was famous, until it died in 1989, for its vividly colored front page illustrations of news events.

It ran the picture on Jan. 25, 1925, and its publication in Italy is an indication of just what a big deal the new train station in Ogden, Utah, was back then. Ogden was a major rail hub, nationally famous and important.

And it's also a darn fun picture.

The image is one we're having made into posters for sale at Union Station as part of our 90th anniversary celebration this year. You can already buy it on a tea towel in the station souvenir shop.

We're celebrating the birthday on May 10 so folks don't freeze in a November blizzard, but feel free to come down any time.

If you take this picture and go around back, looking north on the rear platform, you can stand just about the same place where this picture was taken.

We're happy to provide the station.

Ribbons and pretty girls are your job.

The year that started with me being cut open

A year ago today, March 7, 2013, around 1 p.m.,  I underwent what is listed here on the surgical order as a "L Diagnostic VATS Open Thoracotomy Decortication."

In English, that means a guy I'd never met until two days before cut me open, spread my ribs apart and then spent four hours scraping a load of gunk off my left lung.

While he did so another total stranger, an anesthesiologist, carefully monitored a tube he had shoved down my throat which closed off my left lung, leaving my hopefully-happy right lung to keep me alive.

So, essentially, I was laying there like something in a butcher shop, sliced open, a couple of guys keeping me alive and, I sincerely hoped, making it possible for me to live longer and happier.

That's mind blowing when you think about it.

Who are those guys? Why do I trust them? Why are they doing this for me? If the fact that they are standing there working pretty darn hard to make my future life better doesn't strike you as miraculous, or at least darn amazing, then you really do need to get out more.

There's a lot of debate about medical care these days. I have to admit I'm astonishingly fortunate. Utah has some of the best in the nation. I'm also fortunate that my lovely wife has a job with an entity that provides darn good coverage for health care. She works for the state of Utah, and the Public Employees Health Plan (PEHP) does a darn good job.

It's state supported and funded. Your tax dollars at work! So thank you, all of you. We should broaden PEHP so everyone in Utah is on it.

I was undergoing all this because, if the doctors and anesthesiologists and nurses and whoever else didn't do these things I might not die right away, but life was on course to be incredibly uncomfortable.

More so than it had been the previous three months, and those three months had really sucked. I look back on them and shudder, not only for me but for my loving wife, who had to suffer through it all as well.

I'd had a wet cough for a couple of weeks before Christmas. Had to wear a surgical mask to visit my new grandson, Oliver. Christmas day I started coughing on the way home from a family dinner, started having trouble breathing and ended up in the emergency room with more than 130 other folks. After a fun 8 hours they said I had pneumonia, loaded me up with antibiotics and said I'd be OK in 10 days or so.

Only I wasn't. The damn cough never went away and after a third course of antibiotics things were getting worse yet again, I went to the doctor on March 4 where they tested and measured and guessed and prodded and finally did a second CT scan and said I had empyema.

"Sounds like something you get with rice and beans and Javier's," I said.

No, he said, it's a ball of infection on the outside of my lung. The infection from my pneumonia inside my lung had somehow leaked outside it, my body had sensed the infection, encapsulated it, and there it sat, getting bigger, pushing my lung out of shape so the pneumonia was never going to go away.

"We'll send you to the emergency room, they can drain it and you'll be fine," the doctor said, but the ER said "no, send him to a surgeon," so they did. I visited with him the next morning and he explained how my body, to protect itself, had not only encapsulated the infection, but probably coated my lung. Unfortunately the body isn't real smart about these things, and the infection was still growing inside that ball.

Fun.

It was on the 5th I saw the surgeon, Dr. Rafe Connor, whose skill I still very much appreciate because two days later I was on the table and he was slicing in to me.

Having surgery is like being dead. You're out, no memory, no dreams, no nothing. The medications induce amnesia, so I don't even remember going unconscious, that whole "count backwards" bit that movies love. I also don't remember them installing the catheter, so that's a plus.

They wheeled me into the room, scooted me onto a table and the next thing I knew  the world was full of nurses and tubes and hands and voices asking me where it hurt.

I was told later there was a 4 1/2 hour gap there. My wife said the surgeon, when he came to talk to her, looked dog-tired. He didn't tell my wife, but told me much later that "when we got in there it looked like a bomb went off," and said a student who had been observing the surgery still stopped him in the halls weeks later to remark on what a mess that had been.

Actually, he told me, he'd found two empyema when he opened me up. One was on its way to attaching itself to my chest wall, where it would have worked its way out, and isn't that a lovely image?

So much for x-rays and CT scans. Nothing like taking a look for real.

Cleaning out the infection, clearing off the gunk and coating, re-enflating my lung, was what had taken so long. He'd had to shave off a section of rib so it wouldn't break when he bent it back but still I can't imagine the work that took in close quarters inside a living human body.

They had me on antibiotics for a month. They had three drains in my chest. The scars from the holes they left -- each about an inch wide -- look like bullet holes.

I spent five days in the hospital and, again, there I was surrounded by folks I'd never met, all doing their best so far as I could tell, to take care of me and make sure I didn't die.

Yeah, they got paid well for it (or at least the hospital charged me well. I sure hope the nurses and doctors got a good chunk of that) but all this still allowed me the luxury of not having to spend any time worrying about myself.

I've done this both times I had surgery. Ed Abby said, "when the situation is hopeless, you have nothing to worry about," and while my situation wasn't hopeless, I sure as heck had no control over it. Either the medical care worked or it didn't. I was extremely fortunate that the surgeon had said "it's all fixable," and I held onto those words daily.

It's interesting that all this took place three weeks before I was scheduled to retire. It was life reminding me that everything can change overnight, so don't dawdle, I am convinced.

I'm just taking a peek at some of the posts on Facebook that my wife put up back then. The relief in her writing is palpable.

I remember the only time I really broke down out of fear was driving home from registering for the surgery on the 6th. It had, very suddenly, gotten very real. But it was very real for three months for that lovely lady -- three months of listening to me cough and cough, so much so I slept on the sofa much of the time just so she could sleep, and I was more comfortable there anyway, able to get up or read or fidget or whatever, knowing at least she could sleep so one of us, at least, could get her job done.

And I didn't care about work anyway. I was close to retirement, I had oodles of sick time saved up. I was told betting was strong I'd just stay home and run out the clock...I didn't, but with all the sick time I put in I might as well have. I didn't miss any columns though. Not only am I good at BS, but I had a nice stock of "evergreen" columns to run through.

A word about my amazing wife.

I've often said that it is the caregivers who have it hard, not the sick. The sick know their lot, after all, while caregivers have to watch, powerless, and just care.

I didn't know why I was so sick for so long -- I went home from the doctor's office on the 4th of March happy, overjoyed, that finally we know what was wrong. But my wife had had three months of watching me shrivel (I lost 15 pounds) and hack and cough and wander around, and had no idea if I'd ever get better or if the surgery would really fix it.

I at least had the hope of a fix. She had to watch and worry. Which job is harder?

Anyway, I went home on the 12, retired on the 30th or thereabouts (I forget) and that was that.

People ask me how retirement is. Pretty nice, I say.

I think, often, that having all that medical stuff happen so close to retirement might have been a message to live a new life, or a different life. Some might say it was a message to go hike the Amazon or something.

But the life I had wasn't so bad before, except that then it was at a newspaper. I was burned out on newspapers, but newspapers are changing so much that I suspect the feeling was mutual.

I have a lot more fun these days working at Union Station. A lot of the work -- digging through old history stuff -- is not much different from what I did at the newspaper. Mostly, now, I don't have to go to fires or wrecks, or deal with politicians.

Funny part: I'm the young turk pushing the internet and web to that place. "Let's shoot video of stuff," I've even found myself saying. "Is everyone here on Facebook?" I actually told the board of directors last month. (No, they're not.)

Those are the same things that so changed my job at the paper that I didn't recognize it any more. Those are why newspapers are hiring folks who do them a heck of a lot better than I do.

But at Union Station I'm the guy who's bringing it on.

That's what we call irony, but life's full of that.

Hostler's Annual Show A Model of Success

Loved the annual Hostler's show at Union Station so much I had to go twice.

Story Trentelman

Of course, on Saturday I was shepherding grandchildren around. When you are busy watching grandkids you don't see much of the show. I had to help carry, feed and help get them to the train ride out front. Model Trains? They're in there somewhere.

So Sunday was mine. I wandered, I looked and wished. I bought a pocket watch.

And, wow, great show. Huge thanks to the Hostlers. This was their 25th year at Union Station and attendance on Friday and Saturday was just a 100 or so below last year, which set a record. More than 8,000 saw the amazing displays in our amazing Union Station.
But, hey, I'm not prejudiced.

I have several favorite displays. The Hostler's massive setup in the grand lobby is a must-see, of course.  There's tables full of train cars, engines and other gear I just love to wander by. Every time I see the Lionel stuff and wish mom hadn't sold mine at that yard sale.

Max and Alice 2nd car back

Steve Moore

But not all displays are showy. In the grand lobby I met Steve Moore from West Jordan, sitting by himself at a table with a bunch of clear yellow sheets of plastic with holes cut in them.

I don't do model train layouts myself, but anyone who does needs to know how to plan their system so trains can make the curves without running off the edge of the table. Those plastic circles are a system of templates that Steve designed. They work sort of like those protractors you used to have in grade school to draw curvy lines, allowing you to set precise curves on HO, N and O model railroad scales. You can do easements, tangent alignments and much else that Steve confused me with, but I'm stupid.

If you missed him at the show, his web site is here (click!)

This is Coldwater Gulch's 14th year at the show, and theirs is always a huge winner in my book.

Ron Wilson at Coldwater Gulch

 As Ron Wilson explained, Coldwater Gulch was the dream child of the late Dick Watson. The idea was to have not just a model railroad, but a whole community, complete with history and institutions.

The members of the group went one further. Most model railroad groups let members build module segments of the display as they want, the only rule being that rail connections and electronics had to link up.

Coldwater Gulch went one step more, requiring the whole display to have the same scenic theme, a mountain and cliff look not unlike the rocky mining districts of Utah and Colorado. This meant, said Ron, that module builders had incentive to finish their module first, since that meant the guy next to him was stuck matching his cliff, or river, or whatever.

Dr. Bill Hughes waiting for
a freight to go by

They're always happy to teach. How do you make those tiny shingles on those tiny buildings? Ron said Dick Watson would collect business cards from folks, cut strips off the cards and then little cross-slits every 8th of an inch or so and voila! Instant strips of shingles, any color you want to make them.

It was more work, but makes for a really great display overall. Theme is the important part of any story, and the Coldwater Gulch story is told very well by these guys.

Street Car Wreck! A Camera Bought 99 Years Ago Is Today's Time Machine

Bruce Perry examines his dad's camera

Cameras are time machines, especially the camera bought 99 years ago by Bruce Perry's dad.

Talk about a window to the past. And, miracle of miracles, we have the actual negatives that camera produced.

Wow.

Bruce Perry, Roy, grabbed me at the recent opening of the Black and White show at the Eccles Community Art Center and said he had a pile of negatives taken by his dad he was unsure what to do with.  Could I advise him?

Happy to, I said. Bring them down.

He did, repeatedly saying "I don't know if these are any good."

Are they any good? Bruce Perry is my new best friend forever. That's how good they are.

His dad, Lester Perry, ran the Harrisville brickyard in 1915. Yes, the same one that finally closed last year. Business must have been good in 1915, because Lester felt flush enough to buy himself a Folding Pocket 3A Kodak Autographic, a camera that only fits in your pocket if you are a kangaroo. It uses film about 4 inches wide and produces post card-size negatives and prints.

The camera itself is about 10 inches long and two inches thick, but had a good lens and shutter. One unique thing is that "autographic" stuff. The camera let you write through an opening in the back so your notes of what you were taking a picture of showed up right on the negative. This was Kodak's early version of the metadata digital pictures have now, and it means we know precisely what day Lester took some of his shots.

Lester was a good photographer. He paid attention to exposure, focus and composition.This is really good because he carried his camera with him when he went all over Ogden selling bricks.

The wreck of the 25th Street street car. Photo by Lester Perry

So, we know that on the afternoon of Nov. 14, 1918, four days after Armistice Day, Lester was in downtown Ogden, probably hoping to cash in on any post-war optimism by selling bricks, when the street car  crashed into the Broom Hotel.

The street car had been going east, up past Adams Avenue, and stopped when its crew got out to help another street car in front of them. The car's brake let go and back down the hill it went, careening towards the busy intersection of then-Washington Avenue and 25th Street.

It flew through the intersection, jumped the tracks and bashed into a hat shop on the south side ground floor of the Broom Hotel. The newspaper said it was a miracle hundreds were not injured. As a matter of fact nobody was injured, but its more fun to say a miracle occurred.

And there was Lester, off to the side, taking pictures.

I think his are as good as the one the paper ran.

Nov. 15, 1918 Ogden Standard

I love Lester's pictures. Because I have the negatives, I can make good prints, dodging and burning, working the contrast to bring out details.

Why is this important? Almost nobody saved the negatives back then, which means every image we have from years ago is a copy. Copies from prints always lose some of the original data, and copies of copies lose more.

Detail from street car photo

To put it in digital terms, think of saving an image as a jpg, then expanding it, then saving it again, over and over. Every time you save it, you compress it digitally, meaning your computer is taking out pixels. Every time you open it, your computer expands it again, replacing those pixels with what it thinks goes there, but it is just guessing and after a while things degrade.

Same with copies of photographs. Every iteration gets worse.

So when someone has the original negative, that's treasure. The actual light from the actual subject came through a lens and nudged a few silver atoms on the negative.  Ninety nine years later you can still see the mark that light left: The US Liberty Bell, a row of army barracks at Fort Douglas, a street car wreck in Ogden, farms in fields long gone but the mountains behind, still familiar.

Look at the buildings in the street car photos, the store fronts, the details of life.  I love the hats everyone is wearing, and notice all the men have on white collars and are dressed well? Nobody wore jeans and t-shirts back then.

Check out the bicycles. And $3 hats!

Liberty Bell in Ogden. Photo by Lester Perry

In 1915 the Liberty Bell made a national tour on its way to an international exposition in San Francisco. Of course it had to go through Ogden, and talk about excitement. The paper ran dozens of stories, people from all over the state came to see, an estimated 30,000.  This at a time when the population of Ogden was about 30,000.

And there was Lester. He got the bell, the crowd, and an amazing shot of the train leaving Union Station. I love the women wearing their bloomers.

And on and on. He shot the new army camp in Salt Lake City up at Fort Douglas. He took the camera along when he and some other guys went rabbit hunting, killing hundreds of the critters.

Liberty Bell train. Note the
Autographic notes

Yes hundreds. Back then rabbits were a major scourge. Parties would  shoot thousands of them. During The Depression those rabbits fed a lot of Utah's poor.

We're still sorting and scanning negatives. Bruce brought his dad's pocket diary down, so we also have some details of daily life, and I recorded an interview of Bruce talking about his dad's later life. The brick yard had to lay off all its workers when The Depression hit in 1929, and his dad traded bricks for a few years to buy food.

In the 1940s Lester set up a flower shop on Grant Avenue between 24th and 25th Street. Bruce said his dad always wanted to be an artist, and in flowers he found an outlet that paid the rent.

Flowers wilt, but a good photograph lasts forever. When Lester died he left his camera and his negatives. His children, being wise, didn't throw either out, but saved them, a window to his time.

Thanks Lester, for your good work. And thank you, Bruce, for bringing it to us in the Union Station archive so it can be preserved and admired in the future.

Detail, Liberty Bell train leaves Ogden. Note the original station's tower and the ladies' bloomers.

Ogden's Past Still Lives At the Two-Bit Cafe

I just put up some Facebook pics/ads from the Bon Ton Cafe on 25th St in Ogden back in 1927, and was reminded that darn few restaurants ever come close, these days, to the dining experience our grandfathers took for granted --- good food, friendly proprietors who were right there waiting on you in a restaurant with vintage atmosphere, with real tables, real linen, real silverware.

Who does that any more? Lamb's in Salt Lake, Idle Isle in Brigham, the Bluebird in Logan, come closest.

One in Ogden offers a similar experience, and the guys who ran the Bon Ton would recognize it, because Two Bit Street Cafe, at 126 25th, is a block down from the Bon Ton and its interior has changed but little.

They serve anyone!

When I came to town in 1978 it was "The Club," a beer bar where railroaders cashed their checks, prostitutes plied their wares and drunks did what drunks do. The bar closed, but the back bar that was there in the 50s and before is still there, the wood work and fixtures are still there. The clock with the bullet hole is still there.

James Dayley snaps a pic for customers

Co-owners Penny Allred and James Dayley have been operating the place for 10 years now. Penny is an amazing cook, James is an amazing magician, and 10 years is a lot of amazing food and bent spoons.

A good meal there costs a bit more than 35 cents, but the food is excellent, prepared for you while you wait, not nuked. It is the only restaurant in town where vegetarian and vegan are happily prepared, but carnivores eat well there too.

More important, their restaurant is locally owned, operated, and part of what makes my town unique. James and Penny live, work and shop here, just like owners of old. Can McDonalds say that? Nope.

You can sit in a booth and, very easily, imagine yourself back in time as the owners bustle, friends drop by the chat while you eat, and the past oozes out of the woodwork.

Man if only those walls could talk.

Happy 10th, guys. And thanks.

HURRY! Darnel Haney in Statewide Art Exhibit

Darnel Haney's work

I was wandering in Salt Lake City today and ran into an old and dear friend, Darnel Haney.

Not in person. I ran into his art, which is cooler, in a way. Darnel puts his soul into his art, so I ran into much more than his body, I ran into his beliefs and feelings.

Darnel's amazing art work is on display -- gad, only another two days? Sadly, yes -- at the Rio Grande Railroad Station in Salt Lake City, now home of the Utah Historical Society and various arts groups. The display is of art that has "a dialogue with historical and contemporary civil and human rights issue," because those were the centerpiece of Dr. Martin Luther King's work.

Darnel, who is black, has a long life history of fighting racial prejudice, not the least of which when he fell in love with, and married, a white woman in Logan, Utah, back in the 60s. They had to go to movie dates separately, couldn't even sit next to each other, if you can imagine, and she was shunned.

They're still married, of course.

Darnel's long career led him to Washington Terrace where he and Marie moved in and watched the neighbors take one look and move out. That's OK, a finer class of folks moved in again.

Darnel took up painting, with African and slave themes, which obviously fits in with this show. There are seven pieces by him showing.

A DREAM kid

There is other works from others who have struggled -- Hispanics and other immigrant populations.

I found most touching the one about DREAM kids, the children of undocumented immigrants who were brought to the US by their parents, built lives and then faced deportation. Recent changes have allowed those kids to get legal residency, which is letting them lead normal lives, more or less.

Three years ago pictures of the kids were taken, not showing their faces clearly so they wouldn't get into trouble. This year new pictures were taken, showing them now bright and smiling, the typical American kids that they are, ready to build themselves new futures.

That's nice. Darnel looks at the past, the pictures of the kids look at the future.

The show is in the main lobby through the 14th. I'd have written about it sooner if I'd known about it sooner, but I miss a lot. Get down and see it if you can, the Rio Grand Station is an easy one block walk east of the FrontRunner Salt Lake Central stop.

Dear Utah Lawmaker: Listen to me too, ok?

My wife got a constituent survey in the mail from our local representative, Dixon Pitcher.  She filled it out, but I wanted to play too so I sent him an email with my answers to his questions.

They're good questions and I have to go on the assumption he's honestly wants my answers. 

Lawmakers have tough jobs, and so I tried to make my answers clear. The screamers in Eagle Forum and others are making a lot of racket down there, it is up to us to give lawmakers the ammunition to answer their screams, or at least the comfort that intelligent people have different answers than Gayle Ruzika.

So, find your lawmaker's email address if he/she hasn't sent you a survey yet. You can find them all at 

http://www.le.utah.gov/house2/representatives.jsp.

Don't copy my answers, write your own.

Be polite, be clear, and be large in number.

Here's mine:

Dear Rep. Pitcher,

My wife got a legislative survey from you in the mail and has filled it out. Since you didn't send me one, here's my answers, and I thank you for your consideration:

1. On the gay marriage amendment -- as I recall, I voted against it in 2004.  I would do so again, if for no other reason than the US Constitution is pretty clear on the issue of equal rights, recent Supreme Court decisions are pretty clear on gay rights being equal, and I don't feel that anyone's constitution gives voters the ability to take away the rights of anyone else, however small their minority.

Considering the history of the minority Mormon Church's rights to religious freedom being ignored by majorities in Illinois and Missouri in recent history, I was astonished the amendment was approved. I feel strongly Utah shouldn't spend a dime defending it.

I'm especially offended that Utah has seen fit to hire outside counsel that has clear conflict of interest with the Sutherland Institute. Utah is not a subsidiary of the Sutherland Institute and anything even hinting at such a linkage should be shunned. 

The Sutherland Institute advocates for the LDS Church, and I hope you are aware that not all of your constituents are members of that church. Our voices count too, you know.

2. No, individual states should not be in the business of defining marriage. Doing so violates the equal rights provisions of the US Constitution (see recent Supreme Court decisions). 

Government is supposed to do what people want, not the other way around, and since a majority of the people cannot get together and deny rights to minorities, this is one area that states don't have power. States issue marriage licenses to help keep the legalities of couples taxes, inheritance, finances and other things straight, but it stops there.

3. Raise tobacco age to 21?  If they're old enough to vote, join the army and fight and die in Afghanistan, they're old enough to buy tobacco. I don't think they should, but that's their decision as adults, not mine.

4. Wood burning stoves?  Not only should they not be used on no-burn days, but I'd like to see much stronger efforts to keep the air clean on what I reluctantly call "burn" or "green" days. Why wait until it's bad to keep it from getting worse? 

But this should not be left only to wood burning stoves. Strict enforcement of cars idling, stronger emphasis on mass transit and stricter regulation on industry are also called for. Our children are paying a horrible price, and pharmaceutical companies are getting rich selling asthma medications to us.

5. The AG should stay elected.

6. The gasoline tax needs to be adjusted for inflation AND to reflect the rising price of gasoline and increased mileage of cars. A car that gets 25 mpg and weighs a ton causes just as much damage to the roads as one that gets 12 mpg. 

7. I support the full Medicaid expansion under the Affordable Care Act. A study of this by the state showed it would actually make Utah money. To refuse the expansion and lose that money, not to mention denying medical care to 110,000 Utahns, simply because Utah's Tea Party and others don't like President Obama, isn't just silly, it's mean.

Utahns are not mean. We take care of people, and expanding Medicaid is a good way to do it.

8. Budget "surplus": Any increase in revenue should go to the areas that have been so brutally cut in recent years: Education and human services.  

Under no circumstances should any taxes be cut. Yes, there are always cries for relief, but a cut of $100 million in tax revenue only gives each Utahn $33.33 -- yes, 33 dollars -- which isn't enough to buy dinner for two, let alone help out anyone's annual budget.

That same $100 million can make a huge difference if it's used to buy school supplies, or boost pay for folks who haven't had a raise in years.

9. Liquor laws -- I'd love to see Utah get out of the liquor business entirely. OK, that's not going to happen, but at least get rid of those silly "Zion Curtains."  Who do you think you're kidding? Certainly not children.

10. Other items:  

-- Approve the non-discrimination in housing ordinance now being proposed. Scare stories from the Eagle Forum are just that: Scare stories, completely untrue. Saying non-discrimination laws against gays mean their religious beliefs are being violated is tantamount to asking for state-supported bigotry. 

Jesus said to treat others the way we want to be treated, and I don't want to be discriminated against because of my sexual orientation. Do you?

-- Much more work on air pollution, especially including more mass transit. It should be clear that more highways don't improve transportation as a whole, they just encourage suburban sprawl and subdivisions that make it worse. The gains in capacity made by all the construction before the Olympic games, for example, were gone before the games were over.

Thanks for your consideration, Rep. Pitcher. Have a good session, and try to stay sane.

Charles Trentelman