TRANSCRIPT OF
TWO INTERVIEWS WITH
JOY McARTHUR BELNAP
Interview Dates: Sunday, 26 March 1978, and Sunday, 2 November 1980
Interviewer: Brent J. Belnap
Location: Ogden, Weber, Utah
Both interviews were conducted by Joy’s son, Brent, on Sunday evenings while sitting in the living room of Joy’s home at 1592 Oakcrest Drive in Ogden. The interviews were originally recorded on [2] analog cassette tapes of [120] minutes each. Initial transcriptions of the cassette tapes were made by Joy M. Belnap approximately 10 years later. The cassette tape recordings were subsequently digitized and transferred onto 4 CD-ROMs in [2000] by Troy Sales with Information Technology Services at BYU. The CD recordings were randomly broken into separate tracks. Breaks in the original cassette tape recordings and tracks on the CD-ROMs are noted within the transcript in square brackets. Lengthy passages have been divided into paragraphs.
Sunday, 26 March 1978
[CD 1; Track 1] [Tape 1; Side 1]
BRENT: All right, Mom, where were you born?
JOY: In the Dee Hospital in Ogden, Utah.
BRENT: What day?
JOY: November 11, 1932.
BRENT: Were you named after any particular person in your family?
JOY: I've never really been definitely told, but I've always suspected I was named after my mother's older sister Gladys. My name is Gladys Joy and I always felt that I was named after her even though I never went by the name of Gladys, always by Joy.
BRENT: Why don't you use the name Gladys?
JOY: I don't know. I've just always been Joy. As I got older I thought perhaps my name could be changed to Gladys, but it just didn't seem to be me. I've just always been Joy.
BRENT: I guess your parents called you Joy all the time?
JOY: Yes, as long as I can remember.
BRENT: Now, you have a sister. What is her name?
JOY: Marion.
BRENT: Who was she named after? Anybody particular?
JOY: This is another supposition on my part. I don't really know for sure, but I think Marion was named after my mother's mother, Marion Pearl Allen. I don't know where the Louise came from. Marion's name is Marion Louise. Mother had a dear friend named Louise, and in looking back I think perhaps mother just kind of put the two names together. Marion never went by anything but Marion.
BRENT: Can you tell me more about Grandma's friend Louise?
JOY: No. I don't know very much about her. I remember as a little girl sometimes mother doing things with Louise, but I don't really remember too much about her.
BRENT: What homes did you live in, in your early childhood?
JOY: I'm not too sure on some of them. I think when I was born we lived on the corner of 26th and Quincy in Grandma McArthur's--my Grandma McArthur's--house. At one time the family lived in the Huish Apartments, but I don't know if that was before I was born. I remember of Marion as a little toddler mother mentioning the Huish Apartments, but I don't know if I ever lived there. My first recollection would be 26th and Quincy. I think the address was 2685 [2586], right on the corner. It's changed quite a bit from what it was then. They've painted it and remodeled it somewhat. It doesn't look the same. But I remember the house very well. It had a little foyer-type thing and Grandma's bedroom was off to the left. She had a special pantry and she had a--in the early, early days--she had one of the old-fashioned toilets where you pulled the chain to make it flush. And I remember that when I was little, but I don't know when the period changed. But as I was older the chain was not there anymore. It was a regular modern flush-type toilet. When I was little I remember having to reach up on my tippy, tippy toes to pull that chain at Grandma's house. And she had a cellar. You couldn't enter it from the inside of the house. You had to go around the back and open a big door and go down the stairs and it was so scary. I remember we went down there, Marion and I, once and it was just a dirt cellar with the wooden steps and we went down there. Grandma kept lots of old, old things, but I never spent much time down there because it was, like I said, scary and dark. You know how you can imagine all kinds of spiders and things.
BRENT: What other houses did you live in?
JOY: Well, my next recollection—oh no, no, before that even, we lived on 20th Street. When I started school we lived in the 200 block on 20th Street right across the street from the American Can Company. It was a duplex, a big grey stone building, and we shared the hall and the basement with the next door neighbors. We were real close friends with these next door neighbors. Their name was Marshall. They had a couple of little girls about the same age as Marion and myself and they had another little one after that. But I started school when we lived there. Went to the old Dee School up on 20th Street which is now Lil' Audrey's Health Spa. And, of course, we had to cross Washington and that's a big, busy street for two little girls to cross everyday to go to school. And in those days they didn't have traffic guards, policemen, on the corner for the school children like they do now. It was just up to our knowledge or common sense or whatever to make sure that the light was the right color when we were to cross the street. And we had an old maid principal, Miss Light. [This name is wrong. The principal at Dee School was Miss Fitzgerald. Miss Light was principal of Lorin Farr School later.] She was tall. She just was a big, big lady--really tall and she wore her hair in a tight bob. She was very masculine and very firm. I remember one morning getting called out of class, sent to the principal's office, and I didn't know what on earth for. I went in there and there was Marion and she was crying. And Miss Fitzgerald had spanked Marion with a ruler. She asked me all kinds of dumb questions about did I know how to cross the street, etc. I couldn't have been more than kindergarten or first grade. Of course, Marion being two years older than me, she was probably seven or eight and I was probably five or six or so. Anyway, she was very stern and she said she had just happened to look out her office window and had looked down on the corner of Washington. Of course, the school's not very far up the street, and she said she had seen Marion and myself running directly through traffic against the light and it's a wonder we were not killed. She was very unhappy with us and she had called Marion in the office and had spanked her hands with a ruler. And she had forgiven me because I was the younger and I, of course, was just following my sister. I didn't know any better and my sister had led the way and I had followed her, and so my sister had been punished because she did wrong.
Oh, and that was my first experience of school. Well, I shouldn't say my first because I went to visit a program before I started kindergarten. I went with mother to a school program that Marion was in and the kindergarten teacher, maybe she was first grade, no, kindergarten teacher. Her name was Miss Bugbee. A very dear, sweet lady, as I remember, with dark hair. And she made such a fuss over me. She just thought Marion had the sweetest, dearest, cutest little sister she could hardly wait for me to start school. Noticing my extreme intelligence she talked my mother into enrolling me in kindergarten when I was five. I was a November baby and so I was supposed to wait until the following year to start school, but I started the early year at five and enrolled in Miss Bugbee's class. I remember how thrilled she was and how special she treated me. I don't know what the deal was, but I was just very special in her eyes and got lots of privileges as I remember. And I remember being in a program. The first thing I ever remember memorizing in my whole life, and it will stick with me till the day I die, was a little poem:
"I put my foot upon the stage,
My heart went pitty pat,
For fear some other folks would say,
'Whose little dunce is that?'"
And as I remember at that time at the Dee School Marion was taking harmonica lessons and in this same particular program I remember Marion playing a piece on the harmonica--did very well--but it didn't amount to very much. It lasted a couple of years. Marion later took vocal training, singing, and I never took anything. But anyway, that's my recollection of the Dee School on 20th Street.
[CD 1; Track 2]
Then in the middle of the second grade--oh, well, I should mention in the second grade, too, I had a few boys who used to chase me home from school trying to kiss me. There was one who lived just up the street with red hair. His name was Bob Sewell and, oh, he used to just wait behind trees and everything else to jump out to try to kiss me. Then there was another favorite who would stick my hair in the ink well. I had long ringlets down to my waist about this time. Mother was always so particular about Marion's and my hair. She would comb in beautiful ringlets every day. He sat behind me and he would invariably stick my ringlets in the ink well. And, of course, the ink would get on my clothes. His name was Ronald Wright, who has since done very well for himself. Anyway, about this time we moved. We moved up to 2263 Jackson, just almost to the corner of 23rd and Jackson on the west side of the street. We were right across the street from the 13th Ward, and here I spent most of my teen years, I guess. I went to Primary and started mutual there and went to my first mutual camp when we lived up there. We had a field right next door where there's a medical center there now. We used to imagine all sorts of wonderful, exciting things to play. There was a canal that went through and we used to always play Tarzan. We had a rope that we'd swing across the water on to the other side. Oh, we let our imagination run wild. We dug a fort in the ground and we had--one time we even imagined we were on the Hawaiian Islands and we played like we were Hawaiians and it was just great fun. It was just the ideal place. The whole neighborhood played there because it was just fun. It was only just a lot, like one house big, but boy, to us it was the whole world and we sure had a lot of fun. The skeeters used to go along on the canal and we'd wade in there a lot. I remember one time, though, it was dry. It was an irrigation canal and I don't know if it was turned off or if it was dried up that particular year, or what. I remember, though, there wasn't any water in it. And we were swinging across on this rope. By the way, we were sluffing school that afternoon. The rope broke and I fell flat on my back right in the middle of this canal. Luckily there was no water in it, but it was dry, and it knocked the wind out of me. It's the first time I'd ever had the wind knocked out of me and I thought sure I was dying. I couldn't get air. I couldn't breathe. I was struggling and kicking and I just had all the wind knocked right out of me. Oh, it was a terrible panicky moment until I finally regained. And as I went home crying and glad to be alive, I thought to myself, “This is the payment I get for sluffing school. I'm never going to sluff school anymore.” Course, time would tell.
BRENT: Where else did you move afterwards?
JOY: From there, about the sixth grade I guess it was, we moved over to 19th just below Brinker. It was 1123-19th Street, a little white frame house. Mother hated it. All the time we were there they were out house hunting--all the time--she hated it. But the house on Jackson, we were renting it, and they put it up for sale and they really didn't give us first option on buying it or whatever. They just said it's up for sale and we have a buyer and you've got to move out. So we had to really just find almost anything to move into. And this was a new housing development by the mouth of the canyon and it was the old circus grounds. Mother said she could remember the elephants and everything else up there, you know. It was just an old rocky area and they had made a subdivision out of it, and this is where we moved. At the time I was still going to Lorin Farr School. I remember being in an operetta. It seemed like I was always participating in things, but I don't really remember too much otherwise about school. I had to wear a costume or something to school this particular day. I was so shy and backward and felt so silly and dumb to walk from 19th to 22nd, the great long distance, with all eyes in every house staring at me as I walked by, and so my mother, dear sweet mother, had to go to school with me so that I wouldn't feel silly to go alone. And as I remember, mother made my first formal dress there. The seventh grade had a dance, but, of course, it wasn't a date-type dance, but it was to teach the boys and girls of seventh grade age how to dance and it was to be very special. Mother at that time made most of Marion's and my clothing. Another time we were to walk over. Of course, it was early, early afternoon this dance was, and dad, of course, had the only car we owned at work, and there was no other way to get there but to walk. I felt silly to walk and so mother had to escort me to school again because I felt so silly and thought everybody in everybody's houses was watching me.
BRENT: What about the weather there? Wouldn't the wind blow out of the canyon?
JOY: Yes, the wind was terrible. That was the worst place to live. We lived there from, oh, it must have been about 1944-45, somewhere along there, until 1952. It was a long time, a lot longer than mother and daddy had ever planned on living there, and the wind was terrible. In the summer, though, it was quite nice because you could open the east windows and you had a lovely breeze to sleep with. But in the wintertime the wind was so bad the snow would drift. We lived on the south side of the street with a north front which was absolutely the worst arrangement there could be. Poor dad, the winter of 1948, I guess it was, when the snow was so deep and heavy, he'd get out every morning and he'd shovel until he was just completely exhausted to get the car out of the driveway to go to work. And he'd also shovel a little path from the front door out to the sidewalk. Well, from the time he went to work until the time about three in the afternoon when the mailman would come to deliver the mail, the snow would have drifted over and it looked like no one had shoveled for a month. And the mailman one day very irately said, "If you don't get your father to shovel this walk, I will refuse to deliver mail anymore." He did not believe my story that my dad shoveled out every morning to even get the car out. And that was another reason they hated it so badly over there. Daddy and mother just could not wait to get out. They finally succeeded, but by that time I had gone all through junior high and all through high school, graduated from high school and had one year at Weber College before we ever moved up to 2640 Tyler--just a block or two from high school and I was all through high school by then.
[CD 1; Track 3]
BRENT: What about some of your friends? Can you remember any certain influential friends that really stick in your mind? Some of the things you did?
JOY: Well, I had a lot of friends. We always--a big group, boys and girls, no real dating off with one particular one. We would do everything together. We'd walk everybody home from mutual, stand on the street corner and freeze to death with our bare legs. In those days it was just unheard of to wear anything on your legs, you know, like slacks or long stockings or leggings or anything. And we'd stand on the street corner under the arclight on mutual night and just gab, gab, gab. I couldn't possibly remember what it was about, but everybody had so much to talk about. And then, I'd come home from mutual, say like 11:00, and my father would be so angry and he'd ground me for a couple of weeks or a month or so, and I had to come directly home from mutual. One time it was so late that I couldn't even go to mutual, that's how bad it was. And yet, it was so innocent--just so dumb, you know, just dumb. I don't know--we had a good group.