Of Wounded Dogs and International Disasters

So Jo is sleeping again.  

This is a good thing — she spent much of yesterday sitting because lying down hurt, and had to be coaxed to lie down because sitting and almost-sleeping sitting up just wasn’t working, but she finally did get down and went to sleep.

And at night.

And today.

These are trying times.  As I write this Jo is healing from a severe dog bite and surgery and if that weren't bad enough,  the world seems to be going to hell.  

More than a few of those plague/disease/disaster movies seem to be coming true and, as one friend said, our alleged leaders all seem to sound like the mayor in the movie “Jaws,” always trying to tell folks that no, don’t worry, no problem, go back swimming, a few folks always disappear around here, it’s no big deal.

I sit here at home and read too much news about that crap and feel my gut tighten up, my head buzz, my eyesight go tunnel.  I worry if I’ll ever be able to buy bread flour again, or is this it?  This one bag I have hidden away is it, and then we all starve?

Which is silly.  Not gonna starve.  

I did this to myself. I mean-I’ve been on this planet for 71 years now and never once, not one day, missed a meal for lack of opportunity.  This simply is not a nation where one cannot get food somewhere if one has any means at all (which is why it is so tragic that so many do not.) 

Such a change. 

A month ago I was lazing around the house thinking, several times, that wow, this is pretty good.  The world is humming along, everyone at least in the immediate family is healthy, I had absolutely no deadlines or even horrible stresses. I was the ultimate retired guy.

That was pretty selfish thinking, now that I ponder it.  

We have two family/friends battling cancer, and one of them is pretty close to losing the fight. Climate change is making the world go weird, politics has gone insane, who am I to sit and be smugly content?

This strikes me now, even as I write it, as something out of a Greek tragedy, the unseen foreboding, the signals not paid attention to. The dumb contentedness and then — BOOM.

I was not totally at sea.  There were the tiny little voices saying “Watch out!” that are oh so easy to ignore. 

But what was I going to do … tell our broker to get all the stocks in cash at once? Buy gold? 

Panic is never wise.

Order that month supply of MREs? Tempting but then you have to eat them. Ever eat an MRE?  It helps to be really hungry.

The larder here at home is already full of staples.  Stupid to jam more in. Even if you do, as the saying goes, if everything falls apart that won’t matter and if it doesn’t fall apart, well, we’ll muddle through somehow.

It started falling apart quite suddenly, actually. Through February the stock market was on its usual helium high, stores were full. I went to SLC on March 9, a Monday— to pay my taxes.  While there I stopped off at Trader Joe’s and admired all the well-stocked shelves. Bought some stuff. Eggs. Chocolate. Coffee.

Stopped at Smiths and admired the mostly stocked shelves there. Bought some stuff. 

Tuesday I was at the eye surgery doctor’s place all morning getting my eyes examined.  With them dilated, I didn’t go anywhere else that day.

Was hearing rumbles Tuesday night. Went back to Smith’s Wednesday morning, bought more stuff — some soup, canned chili.  We didn’t need any, I bought more anyway.  We now have lots of canned chili. 

Don’t ask me why.  It’s not as if we eat that much canned chili. It’s more that I have always had this urge to be well-prepped although, get real, I’d starve in a month on my prepping skills. Or get royally sick of canned chili.

But the place was normal.  Moms with kids were pondering lunch meats and frozen foods. Nobody was sweeping stuff off shelves. I could buy all the tuna and chunky soup I wanted. I went home, ate lunch, took a nap.

That same afternoon I saw folks putting up posts on Facebook of the “Have people gone nuts?” variety. These posts were describing long lines in grocery stores and people sweeping whole displays of Hostess cupcakes into their baskets. 

I didn’t go look, but poo-pooed them.  Really? 

Actually, yeah — go figure.  And that’s the way it’s been ever since—people going mad over stuff they have never bought in bulk before.  Vicarious desperation made me feel a small twinge of victory when I found a three-pack of pocket tissues the other day — 10 tissues each! — at the local dollar store. Buying something at another market just so I can say I did — a small jar of peanut butter, some packs of bread yeast.

I don’t understand it, honestly, except from a psychological standpoint, why folks are acting nuts. I know when that happens I, too, am strongly tempted to act nuts and grab stuff I don’t really need — like 3-packs of pocket tissues. The British, I hear, are panic buying tea.  

That’s how we finished the week and weekend. Watched news stories of the virus spreading, the markets crashing.

I took Jo for a walk Tuesday.  Nice sunny day. We went through the cemetery, did the full two mile walk.  Saw some lady with two dogs, including a puppy that was all over on its leash, didn’t pay them any mind.

Then from across the field there saw the larger dog, a pit, take off and wondered why the owner was letting it run loose, but I guess it had broken loose. I saw it curve around and come at us and instead of stopping and sniffing like most dogs do it snarled/grabbed at Jo — loud yipping, I waded in and kicked it hard in the chest, then yelled at it as it backed off.

Kept walking, checked Jo, saw nothing, kept walking, lady came walking towards her dog apologize/waving and I kept going, thinking that was the end of it. 

But later Jo was limping and I found blood. Vet found a slash and bruising. Surgery.  Home with a collar.

Rough rest of the day — she had those post-operative stares where all you can do is sit and look and hope to die quietly while your body figures out what just happened.  That night I did get her to lay down in her bed in the bedroom, but at 4 a.m. she was up and I needed to take her out. Carla needed to sleep so I just took Jo’s bed out to the living room, put on clothes and went out with her.

Which was where we were at 7:09 when the earthquake hit. Good noise and rocking and rumbling, but nothing crashed down. It was a 5.7 near Magna.. Caught Ben taking a shower.  Scared the bejesus out of everyone, and like we needed a new source of stress?

Many jokes of locusts being next.

Jo had a quiet painful day yesterday.  She would move when urged, or led with a treat, and it was afternoon before I got her to lay down and sleep for a while.

  

Tending to her has been a good distraction for me — a dose of reality amid all the chaos and doom and gloom and fear.  I can stare at the news all day and all night, but there’s not a damn thing I can do about it. The world is a giant ocean and I am just a minnow — I will go where the ocean goes, powerless to do more than wave my little fins. I can think I'm making a difference, but if the ocean swell takes me 100 miles one way, my paddling only gets me back a couple feet.

But a hurting dog is real, something I can deal with, a ground point. It is someone who needs me to be there, to act, to do.  She is a family member in need.

And today — March 19, my 71st birthday — she’s a lot brighter, pretty close to normal in outlook.  Still favoring that right front leg, which also got a nasty bruise, but she is being Jo again.  This all made me realize how much I’ve grown to depend on her and how little I think of that.  

So here we are.  The world is going to hell, idiots are panic buying toilet paper, but I made it to 71 in pretty good stead.

And my dog is doing ok. She's watching for the mailman again. 

Life’s no longer that care-free fantasy I enjoyed in that bygone era of last month, but I still have very little to complain about.

Signet 35 a significant performer

The Signet 35 family -- Civilian, Army, Air Force.

Got lucky shopping at the local thrift store: Scored a really sweet Air Force version of the Signet 35 at a price that could not be avoided, and it got me thinking that maybe I should actually run some film through one of these wee beasties.

The Signet 35 is an odd duck. It replaced the Kodak 35. Sold beginning in the early 1950s, it featured a nice design and built-in rangefinder.  The Kodak 35 it replaced was a Frankenstein, with the rangefinder a clumsy add-on.

Unlike the other Signet cameras, and the Kodak 35s, it is made of cast aluminum and all-metal construction.  The others are bakelite with metal parts screwed on. It is clear this was made to be a serious camera, able to take some knocks.

U.S. Air Force version

Word on the street is that it was meant originally for the military. It was to be a simple but sturdy camera for use on the platoon level to document combat stuff that didn't need a professional. In that vein, it's small, simple, sturdy, just the thing to hand to a guy carrying a rifle and tell him to "take some snaps." Half an hour with the instruction manual and you're there.

It has a simple 4-speed-plus-B 25-300 shutter and a self-explanatory exposure calculator on the back. There are two hyper-focal marks on the focus scale. It is all designed to make picture taking as fool-proof as a higher-level camera in 1953 can make it.

As mentioned above, it came in military versions: Black anodized aluminum and leather for the Air Force, green leather/black anodized aluminum for the U.S. Army Signal Corps. The civilian model, in gray leather and polished aluminum, is exactly the same camera. Production went on for a decade, so there's lots of the civilian ones around.

The military models are scarce collectibles, selling in the $600-plus range; the civilian models are less than $75 in good working order. On-line resources show how to clean the usually-hazy viewfinder and revive an aged balky shutter.

U.S. Army Signal Corps version

They're pretty cameras.  The 1950s design is subdued and clean, with big knobs to wind the film and fire the shutter. The controls are all easy to use even with gloves. It fits in the hand comfortably, with a nice rounded form and good heft to help hold it steady. At the same time, it is compact, solid, easy to carry in a pocket or bag.

Is it any good?  That all depends on the lens.

The old Kodak 35s -- both with and without rangefinder -- had a Kodak "anastigmat" lens, which is a simple lens that does OK, I guess. You get pictures. They're nothing to write home to mother about as far as definition, sharpness go. For snaps to put in the album, they're fine.

Kodak 35 RF

The Signet 35 has a 44mm Ektar. Very cool.

Ektar lenses were Kodak's premium optics, the top of the line, pro grade, carefully made and installed.  They are similar to the Zeiss Tessar, which may or may not mean anything to you. All you need to know is that Leitz, Zeiss and, yes, Kodak, all used the Tessar formula to make really wonderful optics. Many still do. I have seen this particular Ektar compared to the legendary Leitz Elmar.

So I loaded a roll of Kodak Plus-X (which is now discontinued but was being sold when these cameras were) into my civilian model. I grabbed a light meter and set out.

I wandered down some new-to-me streets here in Ogden -- Lincoln over near 28th Street, then over around by the LDS temple down on 22nd Street. The dog and I just rambled, snapping this and that. We finished on Two-Bit street taking random street scenes just to burn the rest of the roll.

Gotta tell ya: Very impressed.

The first print I made was of this 1970s Chevy (Impala?)  that the owner said he's owned for more than 40 years.  It's more-or-less restored, he's very proud of it, and it looked real nice.  I promised not to put it on eBay as I took a shot.

I got very excited as this print came up in the developer and I took it out of the fix -- I'd focused on the back bumper and it's really clear and sharp. Tonal rendition is as much the film as the lens, but the image is crystal clear and, as I said, very sharp.  The negative would go larger than 8 by 10 inches easily. I would rate this image beside one shot with one of my Leicas.

Same with the other prints, which I scanned for this blog: The negatives were a bit dense, which tells me the shutter speeds on my example are probably running a bit slow after 65 years, but making prints was no problem and they were all very good. The focus is very accurate, the images are very sharp.

I really don't like the kind of viewfinders these and many others of that era have, including the screw-mount Leicas.  They're a simple look-through optic with a very tiny eyepiece that you have to shove your eyeball up against.  Glasses wearers find these difficult.

There's also no bright-line or sharply defined edge inside the viewfinder, so you have use a bit of zen to tell where the edge of the frame is. I suspect the viewfinder sees a bit less than the lens does to allow for parallax error when you focus close.

That said, the triangular rangefinder spot is big and easy to see.  The final prints look to take in about what I wanted as far as what I remember seeing through the viewfinder. Once you remember to manually cock the shutter after advancing the film, shooting it is uncomplicated.

All-in-all it's a sweet little camera. It's not the camera I'd take on vacation -- I really prefer wider-angle lenses and interchangeable lenses -- but if I were forced to it would certainly do good job.

If you see one at an antique shop or flea market, give it a look, and if you find a black or green one jump on it.

Focus was accurate.

Mailboxes make interesting still-life displays

Horses on Two-Bit Street

A guy on Lincoln Ave. built this little memorial to Ogden's founding

Farr's Ice Cream is an Ogden institution

Sadie's coffee shop is also an Ogden institution

Moon Glow is dimming to nothing

Moon Glow in 2018

One of my self-appointed jobs at Union Station has been to occasionally document the state of the museum's and city's rail cars stored at Ogden Business Depot.

There's some real history out there which, sadly, is being horribly neglected.

There is a couple of wood Saltaire excursion cars slowly moldering away to kindling. The shell of a Bamberger inter-urban rail car that once ran from Ogden to Salt Lake City is rusting away.

Saltaire Excursion Car

But most sad of all, Moon Glow is pretty much done for.

Not that that's anyone's fault.  In the world of historic preservation, triage has to take place: You save what you can.  What you can't save, gets lost. Money is always the key, and saving these things takes a lot of it.

In 2012, when I still worked at the Standard-Examiner, I did a story on the status of the one surviving remnant of the Train Of Tomorrow.  You can read it here (click!). The elevator version is that Moon Glow was one of four cars built by the Union Pacific Railroad to show travelers in the US how amazing rail passenger life was going to be after World War II.

Just one problem: Automobiles.

Americans were increasingly buying and driving them, to the detriment of rails everywhere. As early as the 1920s Ogden's trolly car system was facing stiff competition, and losing. Why take a train when you can drive?

Things got worse in the 1950s. President Eisenhower admired Germany's Autobahn highways so much that he felt the US should have the same thing. Interstate highways were for defense, allegedly, and funded that way, but car drivers loved them.

So the Train of Tomorrow toured the nation in1947, amazed everyone, and then went away. GE, which built it, had trouble even selling it to a major railroad.  UP finally bought it, but it never achieved the nation glory it was aimed at.

Most of the Train of Tomorrow cars were eventually scrapped, but Moon Glow was adopted for use as an office by a scrapping yard in Idaho.  That was where some volunteers from Ogden found it.  They pulled together enough funds to bring it to Utah, and started some preservation work, but it all went south from there.

Moon Glow today.

With no long-term funding in place, each step made matters worse.  Accessories in the car were removed, stored, and lost.  Windows were taken out, stored, and lost.  Buildings that parts of the car were stored in got torn down, and the parts were lost. There was no money to preserve them, no permanent staff anywhere to monitor it.

The viewing dome today. I'm unsure if
the sign is someone's sick joke

It ended up at BDO, first stored in a building. When the building was torn down it was moved to a siding and covered in plastic.  The plastic shredded in the weather, now it sits open to vandals and weather.

Moon Glow's dream

Get the theme here?  Every step of the way it just gets worse and worse. Good intentions are one thing, but a full plan to save it, and the funds to do it, never existed.

When I visited it last week I took more pictures.  As you can see, there's not a lot left. There's a metal shell. The concrete floors are still there, but beyond that it is very efficiently gutted.  Last I heard, renovation would cost $3 million, but really, who knows? 

Moon Glow's reality

What will happen? No clue.  For 15 years Union Station and the museums were managedby the Union Station Foundation, which barely had funds to keep the doors open.  Renovation of collection objects was simply impossible.

Ogden took back management of Union Station, and the collections, a year ago. Does it have these funds?  It has more pressing problems, such as removing asbestos from the Laundry Building next to the station, or upgrading the station's 95 year-old plumbing, or renovating the 95-year-old Union Station itself.

Rusted hulks of bygone rail cars are way down on the list.

I'd much rather see the Saltaire cars saved -- it would be a lot cheaper and they have more Utah connections anyway.

Moon Glow is rail history, and maybe there's a rich guy somewhere who can afford to take it on. Absent that, though, it's time to face the inevitable.

In 1872 Women's Lib (sort of) Was the Rule

In 1872, it would appear, women in the LDS Church saw life just a teensy bit differently than the stereotypes of today.

Pro-vote?  Of course.
Equal pay for equal work? Darn right!
Equality under the law in all things?  You better believe it, buster.
Polygamy?  Well, yeah, actually.

OK, so some things are different, but it was 147 years ago and things have changed. Still, it is fascinating to see how they were back then.

I made this little discovery thanks to the efforts of the J. Willard Marriott Library's amazing historical newspapers project, which is working to get every copy of every newspaper eve published in Utah on-line, digitized. If you haven't yet discovered digitalnewspapers.org yet, stop what you are doing and go look at it now.



One of its most recent additions is the complete "Woman's Exponent," which was published from 1872 until 1914. Listed as a "semi-official" publication of the LDS Church, its goal (according to the entry in Wikipedia) to uplift women of the LDS church and to educate women about the women of the LDS Church.

You can read the entire newspaper here:  CLICK LINK.

How closely tied was it to the church?  Its first editor, Louisa Lula Greene, was the grandniece of Church President Brigham Young.

Now, as to the paper's content, as hinted above.

Consider the time: It is 1872 Utah. The state is run by Brigham Young, whose word is law. He sanctions you being made editor of a newspaper aimed at women in Utah. Do you think that you will, for one instant, print something that would not be approved by your grand uncle, let alone the rest of the community?

I bet not. It's rather unlikely.

Which tells me that the women of Utah in 1872 were a lot different in outlook, and expectations, than the women of Utah in the late 20th Century, say, the ones who worked against the Equal Rights Amendment, just to pick one example.

How so?  There's a general tone of "look how amazing women are" in the news coverage, both local and around the world. To wit:

"Springfield, Mass., has elected Miss Sarah J. Williams to be City Physician. Twelve doctors of medicine in pantaloons contended for the honor and emolument of bleeding the Springfield paupers; and wise as they were they were all beaten out of the field by a woman."

Or ponder the ill-suppressed rage in this slap at male dominance: "Society will not tolerate a woman who objects to live with a drunken, brutal husband. She married for better or for worse, and though the man becomes worse, she must pay the penalty. Mrs. Nelson, wife of Joseph Nelson, a blacksmith living near Sedalia, Mo., unable to live with her lawful husband, tried to live away from him. Society said nay. Joseph said no, and made her return. On Sunday the 17th ult. after she had returned home, he killed her. Enlightened society! Exalted husband ... or ought to be!  Happy wife, in a better world!"

But perhaps it is best said in an editorial, unsigned so presumably written by Ms. Greene, that lays out the general principles of the newspaper.



The paper doesn't advocate for women's suffrage, it says, because in Utah they already have it. In a hint that it will not oppose plural marriage, it says the paper has "no particular wrong to contend  against, inflicted up us by our husbands, fathers, brothers, or the male portion of the community; and no special claims to champion, throwing down the gauntlet against all comers...We do not propose to speak for a few of the women of Utah who with disappointed hopes or perverted minds may be disposed to rail in bitterness against the principles, honestly entertained by a whole community."

OK, so "don't rock the boat" as editorial policy.

But, in another editorial on the following page, Ms. Greene takes a more proactive tac for the rights she thinks women should have.

How about access to jobs?  Not all women have husbands to care for them, and yet society prevents them from having good paying jobs, and makes it clear this is why some women are forced into prostitution.

"She  should have the right to live, and live purely, and not be compelled by the force of custom and fortuitous circumstances to seek a living death that the physical body might be sustained. And to secure her this right, she should have access to every avenue of employment for which she has physical and mental capacity."

Equality under the law?

"She should not be held more responsible than man -- if as much -- for sexual crime. As the world goes if she sins and falls the ban of society is placed upon her, she is ostracized and driven deeper into a course of wickedness, while her partner in guilt, her tempter and destroyer, walks erect and unabashed, received, encouraged and it may be petted by those of her own sex who would spurn her as an unclean and loathsome thing. He should be held equally degraded -- more so, as more culpable, and deserving the severe penalty."



The right to vote?  They can in Utah (a right they lost with statehood), but this paper argues strongly for the right for all, a right now denied "simply because nature qualified them to become mothers and not fathers of men.

"They may own property, pay taxes, assist in supporting the government, rend their heart-strings in giving for its aid the children of  their affections, but they are denied all right to say who shall disburse those taxes, how that government shall be conducted, or who shall decide on a question of peace or war which may involve the lives of their sons, brothers, fathers and husbands."

Susan B. Anthony couldn't have said it better, but a Utah Mormon woman said it in 1872.

The Woman's Exponent folded in 1914 due to financial pressures.

Of Course Racism Rode the Rails to Promontory

The Transcontinental Railroad was a massive disruption  to many populations in the American West: self-sufficient communities discovered the wonders and costs of cheap imports, crime soared as rough railroad workers roamed and plundered, and folks who "don't look like us" were suddenly everywhere.

And racism, let's be blunt here, was the norm. Newspaper accounts almost identified race except for northern Europeans. Black, Greeks, Italians and others all got their "race" mentioned. A railroad gang supervisor will describe his workers as "three Greeks, two Italians, and five whites," and not think anything is amiss at all.

Especially the Chinese.

"Celestials," as they were commonly referred to, had three strikes against them right from the get-go: They looked different, they worked harder and better, and they were willing to work cheap.

Well, I hear you saying, "no wonder they were hated. Better work and cheaper? Can't have any of that!"

Mural showing Chinese workers building Transcontinental Railroad in Ogden's Union Station

And hated they were.

Race was part of it, but so was the economic disruption they caused. Sure, they built the Central Pacific's part of the Transcontinental Railroad, but what -- you can hear the nation asking -- have you done for us lately?

In 1885 a camp of Chinese workers hired by the Union Pacific to mine coal and maintain the rails was attacked by residents of Rock Springs, Wyoming. The resulting riot left 28 Chinese dead, more injured, and the survivors fleeing into the wilderness for their lives.

Folks were asking this in May of 1869, just weeks after the railroad was finished.

On May 26, 1869, the dust had barely settled when the Deseret News ran what looks like an editorial, but that is unsigned, raising the question of what to do with all those folks from China. The arguments, pro and con, sounds surprisingly similar to debates going on in 2019.

"The completion of the great continental highway ... is likely to force the question of Chinese labor upon the attention of the country," it says. California is already dealing with it, where "many see little to hope but much to fear from the influx of the Chinese. If their views be correct, it is a peril which not only menaces California, but the whole country."

Indeed, the road of iron put every part of the nation within days' reach of the peril.

What is the danger? "They have come by thousands to California, and though driven from the mines that Americans and Europeans deem valuable, they contrive to live and save money by working in the streams and placers which the dominant race has deserted."

Unlikely to be satisfied with gold mine leavings, this article says, the Chinese "will set eastward. The force of circumstances will push it in this direction."

Statue honoring Chinese workers, Utah Railroad Museum.

And where the Chinese go, others will suffer. "The European laborer in the East will not work for less than two or three dollars a day; but the Chinaman will work for less than a dollar."

Not only that, but the Chinaman "is frugal and patient, and as industrious as a beaver. He will live where one of the so-called superior race would starve. His food is a little rice, and he eats meat but seldom. He indulges in no dissipation; but is simple, abstinent and very economical."

One would think employers would value such people. The CPRR sure did.

"The San Francisco Times says there are Chinamen who have been on that work who are better at aligning roads than many white men who have been educated in the business, and they will strike a truer line with the unassisted eye than most white men can with the use of instruments."

And so on. In a tunnel-drilling competition between gangs of Chinese and Irishmen "bets were freely made that the white men would come out winners, but at the end of the day, when the work of each party was measured, it was found that the Chinamen had burrowed further into the rock that the others and were, moreover, less fatigued."

The presence of such workers "will inevitably work a great revolution in labor," the article notes."Works will be accomplished which, without their aid, and as labor now costs, would be left unattempted. They are adept for almost any species of labor."

And yet, the article says, politicians and governments everywhere torment and discriminate against them. "Their popularity depends upon refusing them every privilite and right which other races, however profligate and worthless members of them may be, enjoy to the fullest extent."

In California, it says, "they are chased, abused, robbed and abominably maltreated by men and boys, their terror affording only amusement, and even the dogs are set upon and taught to bite them."

The article then takes an interesting turn, also paralleling debate today.

"And yet those who thus torture this race call themselves Christian," it says, "and mock and denounce them as idolators and heathens."

Deed, not example, is the key, it says, to those who wonder why the Chinese resent the way they are treated.

"Men may prate to them about American civilization, free and enlightened institutions, the spirit of progress and advanced Christianity until doomsday, but they will fail to respect or attach any value to these high-sounding phrases and professions while they are treated like wild beasts."

The article urges this course, although it does stop short of calling for actual equality.

"These Asiatics are willing to work, and work cheap at any kind of drudgery," he says. "If the Anglo-Saxon is the superior being which he affects to be, he can with safety assume the direction of this class of laborers. He can employ them to goo advantage and, instead of living a life of drudgery himself, he can cultivate his brain and direct and manage their labor to his own and their advantage."

So it's still racially-charged, but it's being nice, not mean, and that ought to count for something.

"If he treat them kindly, and pay them honestly, he will do more to convert them to his religion and ways than years of preaching with a contrary practice would do, and he need not be afraid that their degradation, vices or barbarism will hurt him."

Folks stayed afraid.  The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 suspended immigration for decades. The Rock Springs massacre was, sadly, typical.

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.