Crewport Farm Labor Camp Manager
Highlights Of An Interview with his Son and Daughters
Interviewed December 28, 2000
Crewport History Project
Guy Peterson, Sr. was a staff member of the Crewport Farm Labor Camp Administration from 1941 to1963. He started as a clerk but was then promoted to Camp Manager, a position that he held for approximately sixteen years. His children, Marsha, Maxine, and Guy, Jr. remember him as a loving, caring father who was deeply committed to serving the migrant families who resided at the Camp. They also remember him as a man of high integrity and honesty. Other narrators interviewed for Crewport History Project generally speak of Guy Peterson, Sr, in positive terms, commenting that “he was a good man.” Marsha, Maxine, and Guy, were all born while Guy, Sr. and his wife, Ormi, lived at Crewport, and spent a good part of their early lives at the Camp. In the narration that follows this introductory summary of interview highlights the Peterson siblings offer some insights into Guy Peterson’s daily routine as Camp manager, and life among the migrant families who lived at the Camp while they lived there. Some of their insights are drawn from the journal [in Maxine Peterson’s possession] that Guy Peterson, Sr. kept, and offer a valuable “insider’s” perspective of Camp life and of the families who lived there during Peterson’s tenure as Camp Manager.
Born in Monroe, Utah Guy Peterson Sr. was orphaned at birth and was raised by foster parents. He attended public school in Monroe and graduated valedictorian and salutatorian of his high school class. He had aspired to enroll at Stanford University, but his education goals became a casualty of the Depression. His daughter Maxine described her father's unfortunate circumstances, "Our father was extremely high I.Q. His mother died giving birth to him. He was the thirteenth child. He was literally orphaned and raised by a loving family who saw a need to raise a boy. He graduated valedictorian and salutatorian of his class. He graduated in three years instead of four in high school, had full ride scholarships to every major college and university in the state of Utah, but he was too big for his britches, and he wanted to go to Stanford or Valparaiso. So consequently, with Depression, no family support, etc., he rode the rails during the Depression. That’s when he ended up in Utah..." Peterson became a staff member with the Civilian Conservation Corp (CCC) and then with the Works Progress Administration (WPA) in Idaho, where he met his wife Ormi. They were married in 1940. He was subsequently transferred to join the staff of the Crewport Farm Labor Camp in Washington State in the winter of 1941. Guy, Jr. and Maxine Peterson shared this part of their father's early career. Guy Jr., stated " …what’s called CCC [Civilian Conservation Corps], starting in Idaho, and then he got transferred up there [to Crewport] …" Maxine added that, " He started in Shelly, Idaho, and he worked in the migrant farm labor camp in Victor. He worked for the WPA..."
Peterson first joined the Crewport Camp staff as a clerk in late 1941, and was subsequently promoted to Camp Manager. The precise date when Guy Peterson, Sr. became Camp Manager is not clear from his children's narrative. However in an article published in the Yakima Morning Herald of July 22, 1956 Peterson indicated he became Camp Manager in 1947. The Peterson siblings’ comments indicate Guy Sr. was released as Camp Manager in 1963. Together these comments place his tenure in that position at approximately sixteen years. What is clear from the Peterson siblings’ narrative is that his tenure as Camp Manager ended in 1963, when Peterson was released as Crewport Camp Manager apparently over a controversy with his superiors involving religious services at the Camp. Maxine recalls the incident, "I was a junior in high school when it happened; Marsha was away at Ricks & BYU [college]. I remember Claude Shambly was the Olympia boss, and George Phipps was the Yakima County boss. George Phipps had authorized the Catholic Church to build a small church there for the residents of camp. I remember my father made a decision to allow the Mormon missionaries to go tracting [sic] down through camp, since religion had more or less been opened up to the Camp. He allowed the Jehovah Witnesses to go down into Camp – I remember them being there – and he allowed the Mormon missionaries to tract. I don’t believe my father was given much more than two-week
notice, but he was fired. "Maxine further remembers that her father's firing was quite a financial blow to the Petersons, "... It was devastating because my father had known nothing else. He was in his early fifties. He had known nothing else. He was employed by the Camp and the Employment Security Department job was a separate job, a separate employment. He had been employed by them for thirty years, writing the orders the farmers would call in. He would place the workers in jobs. But these were two separate jobs he had. … Claude Shambly, I believe, was the Employment Security Department boss over in Olympia, and George Phipps was the camp boss supervisor. It was the camp that fired him, so there went our residence. We rented our home; we rented our beds; we rented our kitchen table; we rented our refrigerator, everything from the camp. So there we were; we had no place, no job other than if my dad would take up temporary work, seasonal work with the Employment Security Department. He continued on selling World Book Encyclopedias on the side."
The Peterson siblings remember Guy Peterson, Sr. as a loving father and a compassionate man who cared deeply about the migrant families who resided at Crewport. Maxine has very fond memories of her father; " I know one of my favorite memories I alluded to earlier was that cherry orchard. That was my world. I could climb those cherry trees; and each one was a different world to me, a different setting …” Maxine also remembers that her father would let his children play in his office, “…that office that they mentioned, to the left, I remember dad set me up in there … I played secretary, and he would make those little scrap tablets of paper for me and I would make notes, like these that he’s written everything on [refers to Peterson's journal]. I would sit in there and I would pretend. We didn’t have a swing set or anything else. It was either climb the trees or play in the office with dad. So I would spend quite a bit of time over there playing office with dad ..." The Peterson siblings also cited examples indicating that Guy Peterson had a “soft spot” for the families who resided at Crewport. Guy, Jr. remembers that his father made sure that the children had a nice Christmas, "... every year dad would put together at Christmas time … Christmas bags for the kids down in Camp. They always had an orange and a little chocolate..."
The composite picture of Guy Peterson, Sr. that emerges from his children's memories of him is that of a man whose compassion did not discriminate one "lowly" person or family from another. Again Maxine shed light on her father's character and values, "Old John Riley was just kind of a hermit. He really didn’t go out and work very often. He’d just make enough to… I don’t know, if the rent was just fifty cents a month or something … I just remember walking down with dad to check on old John Riley ‘cause dad wouldn’t see him for a day or so … and opening up that grain bin door, and there was the filth … there was straw on the floor there was a wood burning stove in there that just vented outside. I was never allowed to go inside, but Dad would go in and check on Uncle John Riley. That’s what we knew about him." Yet, the Peterson narrative suggests that Guy Peterson, Sr. did establish social boundaries when it came to his children's playmates at the Camp. Maxine's comments suggest this, "... Annadelia Ballí, her parents were migrant workers. They were originally from a family, a very elitist family in Spain. Her parents did not speak English. Annadelia was my age, beautiful, and one of the very few children that my parents allowed me to play with. They were migratory. They would come up in the summer; but they would only go to Texas for a few weeks. But they would always come back up and live year ‘round then at the Camp. Her father, you could see she was a girl of class and distinction, would not allow her to go out and work in the fields. She would stay home. They lived down there in the shelters just about right across from the old post office. I remember I was given permission to walk across the street from the post office to go and visit with Ana Delia and ask her if she could come up and play. And she could after she cleaned the house and washed the dishes and everything." Still, regardless of Guy Peterson's feelings and attitudes toward the Crewport migrant children, that is, being selective of those he thought worthy of being his own children's playmates, other narrators who have shared their stories with the Crewport History Project generally confirm that 'he was a good man' whom they respected.
Guy Peterson Jr., Maxine Peterson Kerttula, Marsha Peterson Clark, Narrators
START OF INTERVIEW:
Dan: Guy Peterson, Sr. started there as a clerk and later was named camp manager. Our purpose here today is to gain some insights into what life was like in Crewport. …Our purpose is to talk about your experiences there. Of course, Guy, you were real small…
Guy: I was very young. I was born there, but we left in ‘63, so I would have been about 9 or 10.
Dan: Maxine, when did you move to Crewport?
Maxine: My parents lived there when I was born. I was born in 1945, up in Yakima. They [parents] lived in house number 6. Then they moved up to the manager’s house when my dad was promoted to manager, and that was my childhood. We left camp when I was 16. That’s where I learned to drive, that’s where I played, and that cherry orchard was my world. That’s where I learned to climb trees, that’s where I would follow Carroll High around as he mowed the lawns. I sat there and watched my dad build that little brick mason wall, I don’t know if it’s still there, that separates the back yard of the manager’s house just before the water tower. My dad built that; he wanted to learn how to lay brick and so he practiced and he built that. I’d sit and watch him. My goal was to jump over it without tripping, as I’d run down to the store. We always bought our groceries down at the store during the week; you know, a loaf of bread or a quart of ice cream.
Dan: Where was the store? Which store did you go to?
Maxine: It was run by St. Mary’s. It was down there in the community center, on the back part… I’d have to go down past the workshop, down the hill, the sidewalk there; I’d ride my bike down the hill or walk. It was to the right, around the back, and St. Mary’s had an apartment there, but they had a grocery store. We would go down there, and that’s where we would go during the week to do our little grocery shopping, and get a fudgecicle or something during the day. That was my childhood – that was my childhood.
Guy: I’m curious – the one thing I remember -- is the barbeque still there?
Maxine: The fireplace. . .
Guy: My dad built that.
Maxine: Yeah, he built that. He built a brick wall then he built the barbeque. Ruben Colexto built the fireplace and I think Dad helped him with it, but Ruben Colexto did it, but Dad did that little brick wall that stood about three feet high.
Guy: I remember the fireplace.
Maxine: I have an aerial picture of all that [narrator had photos]. That’s the door to the store.
Dan: Do you recognize the woman? [In the picture].
Maxine: That is Annadelia Ballí.
Guy: She used to baby sit us.
Maxine: Annadelia Ballí, her parents were migrant workers. They were originally from a family, a very elitist family in Spain. Her parents did not speak English. Annadelia was my age, beautiful, and one of the very few children that my parents allowed me to play with. They were migratory. They would come up in the summer, but they would only go to Texas for a few weeks. But they would always come back up and live year ‘round then at the camp. Her father, you could see she was a girl of class and distinction, would not allow her to go out and work in the fields. She would stay home. They lived down there in the shelters just about right across from the old post office. I remember I was given permission to walk across the street from the post office to go and visit with Annndelia and ask her if she could come up and play. And she could after she cleaned the house and washed the dishes and everything. I believe she …in high school I know she dated one of the Hernandez boys who lived across the road from camp. And I don’t remember the name of that road – Beam Road. But she was a beautiful, beautiful, beautiful, woman ...
Guy: Us younger children, when she was older, she became our babysitter when mom or dad would be gone.
Dan: Marsha, you were already part of the family when Guy Peterson moved to Crewport…
Marsha: No, actually not. I was born in Toppenish. Mom and Dad moved there from Southern Idaho in ’40 or ’41. They were married in ’40, so they moved there in the winter of ’41 and I was born in August of ’42. I think they weren’t even in house number 6 when I was born, but I’m not sure of that because they lived, I think, in one of the shelters before they got in. I could be wrong on that.
Dan: What was your mom’s name?
Marsha: Ormi.
Dan: Where were they from?
Maxine: Mother was from Rigby, Idaho and dad was born here in Southern Utah, in Monroe, Utah, outside of Richfield.They met in Pocatello, Idaho.
Dan: What brought them out to Washington?
Guy, Marsha, Maxine: A job.
Guy: …what’s called CCC [Civilian Conservation Corps], starting in Idaho, and then he got transferred up there [to Crewport]…
Maxine: He started in Shelly, Idaho and he worked in the migrant farm labor camp in Victor. He worked for the WPA, and [reading from his memoirs], “suffice it to say I was completely and totally unaware of the of the social and economic concepts surrounding this. To me, the social program of Roosevelt Administration, which
was reportedly the brainchild of Mrs. Eleanor Roosevelt, in effect, to alleviate the economic and social distress of the 2 to 3 million migratory agricultural workers who because of loss of farm and jobs, particularly in the Midwest and South, had found themselves at the bottom of the economic ladder and the job market and had taken to the road in pursuance of any work available. The migratory labor camp program was conceived in an effort to alleviate the almost indescribable distress so often a part and substance of the migratory labor movement.”
And then he goes on to say, this is part of that history I was telling you that was so hard to decipher, ... he talks about how it had started with Eleanor Roosevelt, then it goes on [about] the unit in Victor, Idaho, how he was then set up to be the time keeper, how much he got paid a day, and then it goes on to talk about Crewport.
Dan: So a lot of Guy’s memories are captured in some of his notes…?
Maxine: Oh, absolutely. He said, “it was a corporate organization, it was completed along lines formulated by the American Confederation Association. This organization consisted of a president, secretary, treasurer, a board of directors of 7 members, elected for a membership of 50 members who were residents of the camp”.
Then it goes on to say that they had purchased 70 head of dairy [cattle] and a tractor and tools for tilling, and they had … a real community. And you understand that that area down there, that community. They had sewing machines; they had a home economic [s] teacher. They taught the woman how to cook; it was a real community that they had.
Marsha: County extension people would come…
Maxine: Exactly. They had nurses, and doctors and then the apartment on the other side – what was that originally used for, before the Tracy’s moved in to the apartment?
Marsha: That was the clinic.
Maxine: That’s where they had the doctors and the nurses. And that row of Mulberry trees that was along there going down past, across the road from the office down the steps, the apartment to the left, that was where the Clinic was and on the right that’s where the home economics department was.
And I know, it was the community of women, whether they were white or Mexican, that really bonded together, and the camp was the cohesiveness that pulled them together. Because, if you’d go in to town in Granger, or Sunnyside, they were treated differently.
Dan: What was different?
Maxine: There was the bigotry.
Guy: If you were from Crewport you were less, less then what the rest of the community was. Even as a first and second grader I felt that.
Maxine: We all had to go to Liberty school until fifth grade – through the fourth grade. The school bus would pull up right in front of our garage doors. Right there at the office garage doors and we’d get on … I
remember one time I was saving a place, I was in third grade, and I remember I was saving a place for Annadelia to sit next to me, so I put my arm up on the back of the next seat to save a place and the bus driver, looking in the mirror, said, “Peterson, you’re no better than the rest; sit with whoever wants to sit with you.” I go, “OK…” But I remember that, “Peterson, you’re no better than the rest.” And we never felt that we were better than the rest, because we were a community. Although we …as children, we were not allowed to go down and play with the children down in camp. Our parents chose who could come up, across that brick wall, and play with us in our yard... Annadelia Balli was the only one I remember, ever, that I was allowed to play with.
Marsha: Patsy Cochran. Her mom’s name was Helen, and her dad’s name was Willie.
Guy: … and Jimmy St. Mary.
Marsha: It was Jerry St. Mary that I played with. They’re the ones who ran the store – their folks owned the store…
We went up to a high school reunion this year and was hoping Pat would be there, and
she wasn’t.
Dan: We’ll let Guy Peterson Sr. speak for himself, then, through his own memoirs, and let’s focus on your memories. What was one of your early memories, either of the lay out of the camp or an incident that happened, or one of the things that sticks out, one of the landmarks that sticks out for you. You’ve mentioned the brick wall as one of the landmarks that has meaning for you. I can’t wait to go back and see if it’s still there.
Marsha: The Smoke Tree at the end of the garage.
Guy: It’s beautiful. Was it fall or spring? You would never find it any place else; it’s bright, bright red, the seeds and that type of stuff to it.
Maxine: I have a picture of it.
Marsha: It was just like smoke. I remember more pink – pinky [color].
Maxine: It was there at the entrance, not our driveway, the family home; but it was the office community camp past the office. It was there on the corner as you came in, as you’re coming in on the right hand side.
Guy: Do you remember the water tower? In the summer laying in the grass watching the clouds go over, past the water tower. You’d think the water tower was ready to fall over.
Maxine: Yeah! It would move!
Marsha: I remember riding my bike on the sidewalk down by the community hall, and even earlier then that, riding behind Jerry on his trike, up and down that sidewalk…
Maxine: …you see, that was a good hill for a bike going down there.
Guy: I remember going into the office; there were concrete floors, and there was some sort of reception area and a little office over here [gestures]; and they had the swinging hinges and a half door and an empty cubical over here.
Marsha: I never remember seeing those other offices in use.
Guy: …his office [Guy Peterson, Sr.] was over here. It was a big room; it was bigger than this room.
Marsha: …maybe not, but in our memories it was big.
Maxine: And off of that was the bathroom and back room…
Guy: …and a storage room in the back….
Maxine: …where we kept the freezer.
Guy: And Dad…every year Dad would put together at Christmas time …Christmas bags for the kids down in camp. They always had an orange and a little chocolate. What did they call them?
Marsha: An old fashioned chocolate. The kind that are kind of triangular… And I remember it because they had them every year.
Guy: … was just like a pyramid chocolate, and they always had four or five of those in it… and that’s what Dad … he says, “the kids in camp need to know what Christmas is. They need to have some sweets for Christmas.”
Maxine: And peanuts, whole peanuts in the shells.
Marsha: What I remember about that was one year, I think I was sixteen, and they let me drive the pick up to make deliveries of those. I don’t know why, maybe somebody else wasn’t available.
Guy: I remember being tied to the clothes line.
Maxine: Well, you’d always take off.
Guy: As a kid I would take off and go down and play; and Mom wanted to know where I was at … she wasn’t mean or nasty about it, she’d just tie a rope to the back of my belt loop …I had plenty of room to play in the yard; I just couldn’t leave the yard! Those are my first memories.
Marsha: Another thing I remember was one night there was a fire in one of the grain bins, during the night, and the panic Dad had! There’s nothing to those buildings, and they had kerosene…
Maxine: …they even had hay & straw on the floor of some of the grain bins.
Guy: People lived there…?
Marsha: Uh huh -- they were the big tall… the shelters were the one story… and I never understood the purpose of the grain bins. Why they just didn’t have all shelters. But the grain bins were the taller… but they were open. As I remember it was just a taller building. I don’t know that they were two levels, but they were just tall.
Maxine: That’s where Old John Riley lived, down by the grain bins.
Dan: What about John Riley…?
Maxine: Old John Riley was just kind of a hermit. He really didn’t go out and work very often. He’d just make enough to… I don’t know, if the rent was just fifty cents a month or something…but, I just remember walking down with dad to check on old John Riley ‘cause dad wouldn’t see him for a day or so, and opening up that grain bin door, and there was the filth…there was straw on the floor there was a wood burning stove in there that just vented outside. I was never allowed to go inside, but dad would go in and check on Uncle John Riley. That’s what we knew about him.
Guy: I wasn’t very old; couldn’t have been more then four, five or six, but I had the same thing – I was never allowed to go in. Seem to think he was an alcoholic or something. Spent most of his time drinking.
Maxine: But dad took care of him.
Guy: Checked on him.
Marsha: Dad had a real special, soft spot in his heart for everybody that lived there.
Maxine: He often said, you never have to get involved in a domestic dispute. Sometimes the Mexican families, five, six families would live in that one room. He said, I never had to call the police on a domestic dispute. He really admired [Camp residents] … he did have a real fondness [for them].
I know one of my favorite memories I alluded to earlier was that cherry orchard. That was my world. I could climb those cherry trees, and each one was a different world to me, a different setting, but that office that they mentioned, to the left, I remember Dad set me up in there… I played secretary, and he would make those little scrap tablets of paper for me and I would make notes, like these that he’s written everything on [refers to Peterson's journal]. I would sit in there and I would pretend. We didn’t have a swing set or anything else. It was either climb the trees or play in the office with dad. So I would spend quite a bit of time over there playing office with dad. I remember one project…how do you keep a very active five-year-old busy … and so he would pick some of the blossoms off the smoke tree, they had seeds in the puffiness of it. He would have me rub them together in my hands and collect the seeds for him. I said, “Well, what are you going to do with these seeds?” and he said, “Well, I’ll tell you some time.” Well, what he was doing was trying to figure out what he was going to do with those seeds, but I would be kept busy for afternoons on end, collecting the seeds out of the puffs of those. And another project he had me do was… he gave me blunt pocket knife and he had me scraping these… this wood. And I said, what are you going to do with this wood. And he said, well, I’ll tell you later. And I think they used it for a fence, but it was something just to keep me busy. People would walk in and out and always talk to me.
Marsha: We did have a swing. A tire swing, a pipe between two Poplar trees…
Maxine: …a sprinkler pipe with rope…
Guy: …just west of the house. Dad put a sprinkler pipe in…
Maxine: …and the tree grew around…
Guy: The trees grew up around it. And he’d take an old tire and cut it, and turn it inside out and make an actual seat swing… We had that two or three years on that and he’d come up with a new one.
Marsha: We had a sand box on the north side of the tree.
Maxine: But those Mulberry trees, going down the steps to the community center…those Mulberry trees during the summer time they’d be so full and they’d touch the ground, and you could go in there and nobody could see you. I hid many a time there.
Guy: When they’d mow the lawn, down there by the water tower, they had a sweeper, a hand sweeper come back and sweep it. And then these girls would take and make houses. They’d take the grass clippings and make…
Marsha, Guy: …outlines for houses!
Guy: I ended up being babied more than once in those houses. You come into this bedroom, and just … by laying the grass clippings out and making and outline of house.
Maxine: And they had the camp pick up, I remember Carroll High would… remember that trailer? It was probably about four feet wide and maybe about eight feet long, Carroll High would hook that up to the pick up and Carroll would go around and collect the garbage in the camp. Where the garbage went I don’t know. But I remember one time dad came over to the house and he said, Maxine have you ever seen a mouse? And I said, yes. And he said, have you ever seen a rat? I said no, I’ve never seen a rat. So he took me down, and it was the shop… you’ve got the water tower, then the shop, and the trailer was always parked there. And he said, OK, stand up on the tongue of this pick up and look at a rat. I was nauseated to the point of throwing up. They had caught this rat down at the sewage disposal plant, there at camp and Carroll High had hit it over the head with a baseball bat to kill it. The rat was probably three feet long, and the tail… I mean… this much of it was tail! …and the teeth were probably… I remember it looked like beaver’s teeth coming out of it. Dad showed me that and said, “That is why you never take off and go down in camp, especially down the road to the sewage disposal plant, because this is what’s down there!” And I thought, “I’ll never go, Daddy, I‘ll never go!” I have never forgotten the look at that rat.
Guy: I remember, I never saw the rat, but I remember seeing the tail up over that trailer and hanging down…
Maxine: …it could eat a child! I have never seen anything, but that’s what was down at the sewage disposal plant, feeding down there.
Dan: Tell me about the sewage disposal plant.
Guy: We never got to go!
Marsha: We knew what direction it was!
Maxine: Down in camp you’d go down past the shower room, there’s the main road going down the center of camp…that’s were the showers were and the laundry was, and you’d go on down past the grain bins and it was just an unfinished road, it was just two tracks… that’s where my Dad took me to learn to drive when I was sixteen. And you’d go way down there to the end of the field, and it was just a shack down there, and they called that the sewage disposal plant. That’s probably where they processed the sewage…you know, that was the sewage field…
Dan: I’m sure they did have a leach field there and they did have collectors that collected them from homes and from the shower facilities, and the community center. Then they had a drain field…
Marsha: I don’t know that I ever was down there…
Maxine: I learned to drive on that road. I would go down, turn around, then drive back.
Guy: I remember walking over to the Bosters, the dairy farm just to the west. We bought milk over there…we walked over there to get milk…
Marsha: By that time I don’t know how long…wasn’t that the one that was originally part of the camp? The Stewarts, then Smiths were there before Bosters. I don’t know if it was still part of the Camp at that point…?
Maxine: I don’t know that it was familiar enough to us. Was it because it was part of camp when we were growing up, or was it because we paid and bought a gallon or two gallons of milk every day over there.
Marsha: The Stewart’s had kids that we’d play with.
Guy: Every night you’d walk over and get a gallon or two gallons of milk…cream that thick on top of the gallon.
Marsha: Mom would make butter!
Maxine: And I had the old churn that made the butter to make the cookies.
Marsha: There was another family that lived down… that we used to buy milk from, but I don’t know if it was before… They lived in the house next to home number six…the Quesenberry’s… because I remember you [Maxine] and I went down to get the milk, you were carrying it, and you were going to walk with your eyes closed, and you said, “Tell me when we get to the steps.” And I thought you were peeking, so I didn’t tell you!
Maxine: I still have the scar from my lip being cut open.
Marsha: She stumbled and dropped the gallon of milk, and broke it, and I ran home!
Maxine: …and I’m … right there on those steps. I also remember we were sitting at the table eating dinner one night and Dad said, “You know Maxine, I want some ice cream for desert. And he gave me a quarter to go down to St. Mary’s store to buy a little brick of Carnation ice cream. It was summer time and the cross-ventilation from doors slammed the back screen door slammed on me. I just grabbed my hand, and I ran and I jumped over that brick fence and I was down almost to the store, and I looked down and blood was dripping
down and my finger just flopped – this middle finger… and I went back, and I was in shock so I wasn’t crying yet. I remember being put into the car Dad took me into town, and Doctor Heisie was the doctor there. And I remember Dad saying, “Doctor, you’ve got to sew her finger back on.” And the Doctor Heisie said, “Mr. Peterson, how much money do you have on you?” My dad says, “I got about fifty cents.” And he says, “That’s one stitch.” So he put the stitch right here…you can see where it’s at… one stitch … to hold my finger together, and that’s… what I have! He did a good job! Anyway that was Dr. Heisie…
Marsha: You’re talking about a brick wall…
Maxine: …it was only about maybe two or three feet.
Marsha: The way our yard came, it kind of slanted down and then there was a drop off and this was just more of a retaining wall – is that what your memory is?
Maxine: Yeah, just a little brick wall.
Guy: I have a memory of mom and dad keeping me busy by phoning back and forth between the office and home. They had some sort of an agreement between them that mom would call over to the office, and tell dad that she needed me. I would go over to the house. Of course, it’s probably only thirty yards from the house to there, but it seemed like I had to walk forever, then the minute I’d get home Mom would say, “Well, no.” Then dad would call, and I’d be sent right back.
I was actually raised with the name of Bud. My real name is Guy, named after my father, but everybody calls me …
Maxine: Bud.
Guy: My sisters call me Bud, up there they called me Bud.
Marsha: …but in Sunnyside, he’s known as Bud.
Guy: I’m kinda like Pavlov’s dogs – if they call me Guy, I don’t react to them. If my wife calls me Bud, I don’t react to her.
Maxine: But you know that phone system, I remember them installing that phone in the house; it was on the dining room wall. Our first phone over there… and it was an extension to the office. When the phone would ring, we never answered it at home; Dad would answer it, and if it was for the house, he would ring the fire bell.
Marsha: He had like a horn kind of thing…
Maxine: …we knew we were to answer the phone, that it was for someone at the house, but we could never use it to call out, because it was the office phone. It had to be available for the office.
Marsha: …during the day, but at night, I remember we used it.
Guy: And the first six numbers I ever learned was that phone number: U-L-4-2-6-4-5.
Maxine: That’s right --Ulrich 42645, and we were box number 7, Crewport, Washington.
Guy: The box was just about my eye level.
Maxine: And I remember Mother becoming the assistant postmistress to help out Maude Ortery. I remember Mother liked it because she could look out the window to see when we would come home from school, and she would call out to us to come down to see her. But I remember one day she was coming home ringing her hands and crying, because in balancing her books she was a nickel off. She was just crying because she just didn’t know how she was going to balance that; she was a nickel off. Bless their hearts…
Guy: I remember Shadow was the dog across the road.
Maxine, Guy: Saint Bernard!
Guy: …Saint Bernard dog that would come down; and I can’t remember the names of the people across the road.
Marsha: Actually, it wasn’t directly across; it was down Fordyce R.d.
Guy: Our great aunt and uncle eventually bought the property directly north of us…
Marsha: …that had belonged to Fallers…
Guy: It was right next to them. They had a Saint Bernard dog that would come down, and of course I wasn’t very big – just looked right in his teeth. One of my first memories is that dog sitting on me, trying to lick my face. I thought he was trying to eat me; and dad sitting back and laughing his head off, ‘cause he knew—he saw what was going on, and this dog was just trying to lick my face, and I thought he was trying to kill me!
Maxine: Another memory I have is Dad’s involvement with that Liberty School. Alice Beutel was the principal and fourth grade teacher. I called her an old maid, she was probably in her late thirties, but she looked like an old lady. She lived with her two brothers. They had a farm out there in Liberty somewhere, around the school someplace. She was the principal; and she and my dad had a real love of those people. And I remember several times she would come to the house at night, when it was dark, and knock on our door. And Dad would go to the door, invite her in. And she would have arms full of winter coats or something that she wanted Dad to take down to the children. I remember one time there was butter, real live butter purchased at a store, something we had never seen before. She had heard that it was a lack of butter that caused sty in children’s eyes… And so this butter, she wanted Mr. Peterson to take to them. He and Alice Beutel had a real common bond with the love of those people going to Liberty school. Dad was eventually elected president of the PTA at Granger. I remember going up to Grange meetings at the Lincoln Grange for PTA meetings, and they’d have their meetings up there. I don’t know if it was concerning Liberty school or Granger school.
Guy: Roosevelt...
Marsha: Roosevelt was the elementary.
Guy: Granger was Roosevelt.
Maxine: We went in there for fifth grade. Our father was extremely high I.Q. His mother died giving birth to him. He was the thirteenth child. He was literally orphaned and raised by a loving family who saw a need to raise a boy. He graduated valedictorian and salutatorian of his class. He graduated in three year instead of four in high school, had full ride scholarships to every major college and university in the state of Utah, but he was too big for his britches, and he wanted to go to Stanford or Valparaiso. So consequently, with Depression, no family support, etc., he road the rails during the Depression. That’s when he ended up in Utah and became a part of that. You see with his writing…he first wanted to be a court reporter so he had that machine…. Even at camp, from time to time I would see him practicing with that little machine. He had a set of law books that he would learn the vocabulary to be a court reporter, which he never practiced. He was a man that never ever was able to live his vision of himself. I think he grew where he was planted. He loved those people and an extremely high I.Q, very, very eloquent with words. In fact when he went to start a correspondence course at BYU [Brigham Young University] in the continuing education program, how old was he?
Marsha: He was 70. He started it when he retired and he didn’t retire till he was 70.
Maxine: I read the letter when it came back and the professor said, “Where have you been with that fine mind?”
But he was hurt with what happened with him at camp.
Dan: What were the circumstances? Did he write about it?
Maxine: No. I was a junior in high school when it happened; Marsha was away at Ricks and BYU [college]; I remember Claude Shambly was the Olympia boss, and George Phipps was the Yakima County boss. George Phipps had authorized the Catholic Church to build a small church there for the residents of camp. I remember my father made a decision to allow the Mormon missionaries to go tracting down through camp, since religion had more or less been opened up to the camp. He allowed the Jehovah Witnesses to go down into camp – I remember them being there – and he allowed the Mormon missionaries to tract. I don’t believe my father was given much more than two weeks notice, but he was fired. It was devastating because my father had known nothing else. He was in his early fifties. He had known nothing else. He was employed by the camp, and the Employment Security Department job was a separate job – a separate employment. He had been employed by them for thirty years, writing the orders the farmers would call in. He would place the workers in jobs; but these were two separate jobs he had. I know , Claude Shambly, I believe, was the Employment Security Department boss over in Olympia, and George Phipps was the camp boss supervisor. It was the camp that fired him. So there went our residence.. We rented our home; we rented our beds; we rented our kitchen table; we rented our refrigerator, everything from the camp. So there we were; we had no place, no job other than if my dad would take up temporary work, seasonal work with the Employment Security Department. He continued on selling world book encyclopedias on the side.
Dan: So selling books was new…?
Marsha, Maxine: Yes; he didn’t start that until he lost his job.
Maxine: We moved to Fordyce Road down in Outlook…
Guy: We went to Wellner Road first. We were in the Sunnyside school district at that time but we were a quarter mile out of the Granger school district, so we walked that quarter mile to catch the bus to the Granger District
to go back to Roosevelt school.
Maxine: Or Granger High. I graduated from Granger High, my senior year.
Guy: We did that for half a year, then we ended up going to Outlook school.
Maxine: But that was the reason why, I remember. Claude Shambly, I remember him coming in, a very tall, very hansom, distinguished looking man. I wondered why he always had to change his clothes before he walk down into camp, and then he would change his clothes back. As a child we could never figure it out, “Why’d he have to change his clothes just to walk down into camp?” Now as an adult you understand why, because he was an impeccable dresser and he would get dirty, walking down into camp.
Marsha: Or it could have been that he didn’t want to appear more…
Maxine: …he wanted to fit in… very good point.
Marsha: I remember the name; I remember what he had looked like, but I didn’t know him.
Maxine: Tall, silver gray hair, very hansome.
Dan: What other evidence do you have about the motives for Guy Peterson’s release as manager of the camp?
Maxine: I don’t know what is documented. I just know what happened around the kitchen table. That’s the reason we were given. No other reason whatsoever because he was loved. I never knew my dad to do anything dishonest or wrong. He had ample opportunity, I’m sure, as all of us do. My dad was a man of integrity. I never knew him to do anything that would be destructive to anyone. He loved these people, and he just looked out for their well-being.
Guy: I even remember after we moved into Sunnyside, people from camp that were still living in the area were still referring to him as Mr. Peterson, and demanding their children refer to him that way, showing some respect. He had no association with them at this time … I would ask, “Who is that?” “Well, they are some people who use to live in camp.” Just the inference there, was that there was still some respect there for what ever he had done…
Maxine: I remember him making the comment one time that he never once had anyone cut out on rent, pack up in the middle of the night. Of the people who were the standards, he would look forward to them coming, he would receive a letter in the mail: “Oh, Lupe Gonzalez is coming with his crew,” that kind of thing. The only ones he said that would cut out on him in the middle of the night and not pay the rent were the white folk. The Mexicans, the Filipinos, the Indians, he did not have that experience, but it was the Grapes of Wrath type, that were going season to season, or job to job. He felt highly about the people there--he really did.
Marsha: I remember the big trucks that they would come in…that they would drive up from Texas, most of them, I think that’s where they were coming [from]. I remember when I heard that in those big trucks there was just a big pot where they went to the bathroom…
Maxine: …with a canvas door that flopped down. They’d come in the middle of the night and Dad would wake
up and he would be at the office by six or seven -- during the season he would be there by five – and they would line up at the door and come in to see about jobs. But waking up … there would be one of those big trucks parked there in front of the office waiting for Mr. Peterson to come. My dad has kind of a hobby -- had collie dogs – back yard breeding, so to speak, and he could tell by the dogs bark at night who was stepping into our yard, if it was an Indian, a Filipino or a Mexican. The dogs could tell and my dad could tell. He said he never felt threatened for danger or anything. But he said I think there were only several fights, maybe one or two, that he would have to break up. Knives were always involved, it was always knives but never guns...
Guy: I remember dad’s dogs, the collies. Like he said, he could tell what type of individual was coming into the yard by the bark. I remember him telling a story about the dogs going down into camp, the last one we had, Tip. And the dog would get jumped; he’d get rocks thrown at it, and other dogs would jump. But the minute he got back into our yard, up past that brick wall, that was his domain. And he made sure everybody knew it.
Dan: Was there any tension between him and the program management before he was released that you were aware of?
Marsha: It was something that I sensed, but Mr. Phipps … it always appeared to be a very formal relationship. It was something that I sensed, but Dad didn’t ever talk about those kinds of …
Guy: …never negative, but there was always, like you say, a very formal [relationship] with Mr. Phipps. “We don’t do that because Mr. Phipps wouldn’t like it.”
Maxine: Mr. Phipps was the … I don’t want to call him the Godfather, but it was … someone that we knew that he was the boss.
Dan: He was the supervisor for probably this camp and several other camps, such as the Ahtanum Camp.
Maxine: Yes, I think so. And when Mr. Phipps would come and visit, we were on our best behavior.
Marsha: Oh, we [were] on our best behavior anyway, all the time, weren’t we?
Maxine: “No swinging in the cherry trees, Maxine, when Mr. Phipps comes!”
Maxine: Another thing I remember, too, was that quanset hut there in the orchard where they kept the gasoline. They would pull the pickup on the other side of that fence to gas up. I remember not fully understanding why we couldn’t gas up the car. Why we had to do to the Teapot, or to Liberty or to Smith’s store, into the Village Market. We would gas up at the Village Market. Or we would go to Pumkin’ Center and gas up. Dad could have gassed up that station wagon and no one would have ever known, really, but he never gassed up that station wagon there. We always drove into town and paid for our gas…
In answer to your question, there was nothing ever verbally said. It wasn’t even negative, other than we knew that Mr. Phipps had ordered… my dad said, “I just assumed since Mr. Phipps allowed the Catholic church to be built up there… and it just wasn’t the Mormons -- he allowed the Jehovah’s Witnesses, anyone who wanted to proselyte, to go down through camp. But as soon as it was the Mormon missionaries, then Dad was gone like in two weeks. We had about two weeks’ notice.
Guy: I remember as a young child they had vacation bible school.
Maxine, Marsha, Guy: We always went!
Guy: I don’t remember what denomination, or if it was non-denominational group or not, but it was held down there in the community hall. We’d go every summer.
Dan: What year was that, when they were talking about building a Catholic church?
Marsha, Maxine: It was prior to that…it was way before that…
Marsha: I was quite young.
Dan: About what year was your father released?
Maxine: ’63. I was a junior in Granger High School.
Dan: So he actually served as the camp manager from…?
Maxine: Over twenty five years.
Guy: ’45-‘64
Marsha: I remember living in home number 6, but just when I was really young.
Maxine: I think Dad was the camp manager for the longest period of time of anyone.
Marsha: You [Maxine] were born in ‘45; did we still live in home number six?
Maxine: I vaguely remember home number 6, because that’s when dad was still smoking, and I hid his cigarettes in the refrigerator … I told him he stunk. And he quit smoking.
Marsha: So he probably didn’t become manager in ’45 …
Maxine: Maybe ’48? I don’t know.
Dan: He was certainly working at the camp…
Maxine: Oh, yes. He was a clerk/timekeeper.
Marsha: In ’41 was when he actually started working in Granger.
Maxine: They arrived at the train station in Granger.
Guy: He was going out there specifically for that job, out in Crewport…
END OF INTERVIEW
Guy Peterson Jr., Maxine Peterson Kerttula, Marsha Peterson Clark, Narrators
Crewport History ProjectYakima Valley Community CollegeYakima, Washington
Credits and Interview Identification Data
Narrator: Guy Peterson Jr., Maxine Peterson Kerttula, Marsha Peterson Clark
Place of Interview: Home of Guy Peterson, Jr., in Taylorsville, Salt Lake City, Utah
Date: 12/28/00
Interviewers: Dan Groves
Transcribed by: Gregg Charcas
Prepared for Publication by: Mario C. Compean and Dan Groves
