| Summary: | Oral History Interview with Glen Smith, 2002 Glen Smith, 1907-2004 Oral history interview with Glen Smith, 2002 1 digital audio file, 44:54 Collection number: Institute digital audio collection, Glen_Smith_2-07-02 Abstract Biography Transcript OVERVIEW Access: The collection is open under the rules and regulations of the Institute. Provenance: Original tapes loaned by City of Fargo. Digitized by NDSU Archives, 2016. Property rights: The NDSU Archives does not own the property rights to this recording. But permission granted to mount on Digital Horizons by City of Fargo and State Historical Society of North Dakota. Copyrights: The NDSU Archives does not hold the copyright. Citation: Glen Smith, A collection of oral histories: downtown Fargo from 1900-1950, NDSU Archives, Fargo. ABSTRACT Downtown Fargo has experienced countless changes in the twentieth century and the community is interested in learning about those experiences. This project attempts to document a more thorough understanding of downtown Fargo and its historic architecture by tying the buildings to events that affected people’s lives. Glen Smith Oral History Interview, 2002 Page 2 of 12 This project includes sixteen oral histories on historic downtown Fargo conducted between January and May 2002. The interviewees range in age from 60 to 90 years. In addition, an annotated subject list is included to make the information in the oral histories as accessible to the public as possible. BIOGRAPHY Glen Smith was born on December 21, 1907 in a sod house near Antler, ND. He attended college at North Dakota Agricultural College and graduated in 1929. While at NDAC, he met his wife, Doris Abel, and they married in 1930. . He received his M.S. at Kansas State in Manhattan, KS, in 1931, and a Ph. D. in Plant Genetics at the University of Minnesota in 1947. Glen and Doris lived in Langdon, ND, for the first few year of their marriage and moved to Fargo in 1934, where they spent the rest of their lives and raised three children. Glen worked as a plant scientist for the USDA, as a professor at NDSU, and later as the Dean of the Graduate School for NDSU. After his retirement, he remained in Fargo until his death on November 10, 2004, which was just fifteen days after his wife Doris’s death. TRANSCRIPT Date: February 7, 2002 Interviewee: Glen Smith Interviewer: Jen Grosz Location: 3140 10th Street North, Fargo Transcribed by: Jen Grosz Interviewer: Can you tell me about Downtown Fargo when you were growing up? Mr. Smith: I knew about downtown and I got downtown occasionally, but it isn’t like you were employed down there. Interviewer: Yeah. Did you visit or go to movies? Mr. Smith: Well, when we were in Fargo, my wife and I graduated in 1929 from NDAC, and then I got a job, well, I was going to say that when we were in school we would go to movies. Interviewer: Where did you go to movies? Mr. Smith: Well, we were in school when the Fargo Theater was built, so we went to that, but that was kind of the upper crust. It was a pretty fancy place to go and we didn’t go that often. But we’d go to the Isis and there was a theater for live plays, a live theater place, I believe it was called Orpheum. It was on either 1st Avenue [North] or NP Avenue, west of Broadway. It burned down, but there were some good plays there. There was a company that came, I guess, several years, and there was a good actress there. Her name was Eloda [Sitzer Beach]. In between acts they would sell candy, you know, the Eloda Bar, I can remember that. So that’s one thing I remember about downtown. Glen Smith Oral History Interview, 2002 Page 3 of 12 Interviewer: Did you ever go dancing anywhere downtown? Mr. Smith: Most of our dances were on campus. The old armory was called Festival Hall. It’s where the [Memorial] Union at NDSU is, on that avenue. Let’s see, downtown. I can remember when there were streetcars. Interviewer: Did you ever get to ride on them? Mr. Smith: Oh yeah. It was a regular thing when we went downtown. We’d take a streetcar or a taxi, of course. But the streetcars came right out to campus, to 15th Avenue. On the corner of 13th Street, which is now University Drive, and 12th Avenue was the college YMCA. That was kind of my fraternity. You could play basketball on the second floor, and the streetcar came right to that corner. I guess it came from both directions, and you could catch a ride. Interviewer: And you said they had taxis downtown? Mr. Smith: Oh yeah. Yellow cabs. Interviewer: And that was pretty common for people to take them around? Mr. Smith: Yeah. Interviewer: Did you ever go shopping anyplace downtown? Mr. Smith: Yes, I used to go to (Eddy [Ed Stern] wasn’t there then, I don’t think they’re related) Stern’s. Stern’s was a men’s clothing store. At a store called Richman’s we got our suits for $22.50. That was a men’s clothing store. Interviewer: Was there a de Lendrecie’s or a Penney’s downtown? Mr. Smith: I think they had a Penney’s at that time, and a De Lendrecie’s, of course. Interviewer: Did you ever take dates anywhere downtown? Mr. Smith: Oh yeah, my wife and I dated in college from the time we were sophomores. Interviewer: Where did you guys go? What was a good date? Mr. Smith: There was a chocolate shop, and that was at about 2nd or 3rd Avenue on the west side of Broadway and that was…Abinao was the name of it. I’m forgetting so many things. There was another place that was quite fancy to eat. We didn’t go there often, but I think it’s where the Donaldson Hotel is, and it was the best place to eat. But the chocolate shop would be the regular place to go after a show. Interviewer: Do you remember any [Ku Klux] Klan activity when you were going to college? Glen Smith Oral History Interview, 2002 Page 4 of 12 Mr. Smith: No, I don’t remember anything like that. I can remember one kind of interesting thing. One time when we were all pepped up for a football game. We had one guy that was a leader. He was really a good leader. It was before an important game, I don’t remember if it was the University [of North Dakota] game or what it was, but anyway, we all went downtown and I don’t know how many of us went, 75 or 100 people, a big gang. We really got into this gang spirit, you could feel it. We got down to the Fargo Theater and we rushed into the Fargo Theater shouting and hollering and celebrating for NDSU. It was really a feeling of a gang. You don’t feel that very often, you kind of get swept along in the spirit of the moment. Interviewer: That sounds fun. Mr. Smith: It was. I don’t know what the patrons thought of us as we came hollering through. We didn’t stay long. We didn’t do any damage, I don’t think. Interviewer: Were you involved in any clubs or community activities when you lived in Fargo? Mr. Smith: Mostly campus stuff. I was on a debate team. We had an interesting trip to Winnipeg once. Is that interesting to you? Interviewer: It is interesting to me. Mr. Smith: We went up there, Harold Fog and I, the two of us were scheduled to go up there. Harold was in Mr. Arvold’s Ibsen plays [Henrik Ibsen was a nineteenth-century Norwegian playwright]. What’s the name of the big one you hear about yet? Anyway, Harold was the leading character. But I had nothing to do particularly with plays, but I was kind of flattered to go along with Harold because he was a really good actor. We were scheduled to go up to Winnipeg, and Mr. Arvold had us over to his house. He was a very unusual character. Nobody knows about him anymore, but he was nice to us. He invited us over. We were going by train, and we went out to this little town east of Moorhead and took a train north that went to Winnipeg. This was in the evening; it was a night train. He had us over there for chocolate or something. We got on the train and we got there early in the morning, and the debaters met us up there. We had sort of a breakfast on the train, but they took us out to breakfast. The courtesy they showed to us was really nice, it was really unusual. During the day before the debate we went all around Winnipeg in a car, and they showed us the grain exchange. We went into a radio station and we got to talk on the radio to our friends back home. That night, at the debate, they had to move the debate ahead an hour or so, because of a hockey game; they are really crazy about hockey up there. We were debating the McNary-Haugen Bill, which was a popular subject of those days. This was about 1928 or ‘29. We had one side of the debate, and the University of Manitoba had the other. We had the side which was for government support of the farmer. We took the position that they should build a rail line to Churchill, giving them a connection to Hudson Bay. This would be useful to the farmer to get better transportation for his grain. But, their rebuttal was all based on the McNary-Haugen Bill, which was another solution entirely for aiding the farmer. They won the debate. We had judges, and there was a decision, but we thought it wasn’t a very good decision. We thought it was local folks that decided, but anyway we had a great time. We went to the hockey game, and everybody ate peanuts. I don’t know if they still do that or not. Another Glen Smith Oral History Interview, 2002 Page 5 of 12 highlight of that trip was that they took us to the fanciest place in Winnipeg to eat, I can’t remember the name. It was a place that you see on those TV programs. It was a club, one of the major buildings in downtown Winnipeg, a place where the rich guys went when they wanted to get away from their wives. A club of that sort. We had raw oysters on the half shell. Probably the only time I ever had them. They were all right. We had a very nice trip up there. It was a memorable occasion. We stayed over another day just to see Winnipeg. We went around on our own and had a good time. Downtown Fargo, I don’t know what I can say about that. Interviewer: What made you decide to go to NDAC [NDSU] for college? Mr. Smith: Well I was interested in wheat breeding, so I took agriculture. My father was employed at the NDAC experiment station in Dickinson, ND (where I grew up). As a high school kid, I always had a job at the station pulling weeds and taking up in the crop work, the agricultural research work, done there. I kind of got into it there, and then I came down here and took agronomy and agriculture. When I graduated, the state was just at the point of having a new durum wheat breeder. The USDA supported this. The job opened up on July 1, 1929, a month after I graduated. So I got a job and had this job all through the depression, fortunately. In 1934 I was transferred down here [to Fargo]. When the wheat breeder, Dr. L.R. Waldron, died, I became his successor. First I was a durum wheat breeder, and then I became a bread wheat breeder. That’s how I came back to Fargo. Interviewer: Do you remember the Black Building being constructed in 1929? Mr. Smith: Yeah, I don’t remember the construction particularly, but it was a fancy new building. Interviewer: Do you remember what people said about it? Did it create quite a bit of talk? Mr. Smith: I wasn’t in on that sort of thing. I was just a freshman out at the college. Interviewer: Just a freshman. [Laughter] Do you remember any tornadoes or storms or blizzards or floods or that kind of natural disaster? Mr. Smith: We were here in 1957 during the big tornado. I don’t remember anything in the early days like that. My dad went to college here too after I was born. He started in 1910, so I can remember from about 1910 on. I vaguely remember, everything was horses. Horses pulled the milk wagons. When they would deliver the milk, they would stop and put out this weight, which was attached to the horse’s bridle. It kind of impeded it from running off. It was just a piece of iron about this big, you’d just drop it down on the pavement. The pavement on Broadway was bricks in those days, big bricks. I guess they made them locally. They were really heavy. They took them up eventually of course. There were some wooden bricks too, I’m not sure about that. Interviewer: Did that ever get messy when it rained? Did they slide around? Mr. Smith: The bricks didn’t. They weren’t as smooth as pavement, of course, but it was a good street. It just wasn’t as smooth as concrete. Glen Smith Oral History Interview, 2002 Page 6 of 12 Interviewer: Do you remember anything about prohibition in Fargo? Mr. Smith: Not particularly. Everything was dry during the dates when I was in college. Interviewer: Did you hear about any bootlegging or anybody going to get their stash of moonshine? Mr. Smith: It was common knowledge that that was what was going on, but I was raised very conservatively and I didn’t have any personal experiences along those lines. Interviewer: Do you remember anything about the people when you went downtown? Were they friendly? Mr. Smith: I don’t remember any particular feeling about it. During the thirties of course was the depression, but I had a job you see, so I wasn’t in any particular pain. We were married in 1930 the year after we graduated. My wife taught home economics at Neche [, North Dakota] for a year before we were married. I went down to Manhattan, Kansas and got my master’s degree. I had started this job in Langdon, [North Dakota] and I interrupted it long enough to get my master’s. Of downtown, I have vague recollections but nothing specific. Interviewer: Do you remember any hobos or any hobo villages under the bridge? Mr. Smith: No, I wasn’t aware of that. Interviewer: Did you ever get to see Peggy Lee or Duke Ellington or anybody when they came to perform? Mr. Smith: I heard Peggy Lee perform once in the Powers Hotel. There was a little coffee shop in the front. Lloyd Collins, I think, was playing that time. Did you hear about Lloyd Collins? He was in the paper when she died the other day, and he was on the TV. He played for her. They were quite close and kept in touch all her life. He’s still around; he still plays the organ. He played for us in a group that was called the Antheum. The Antheum Chorus was a group of Fargo men that sang for quite a number of years. They went to Europe one time and Lloyd Collins played for us. Interviewer: Did you like Peggy Lee’s music? Mr. Smith: Oh yeah, it was all right. We didn’t know how famous she was going to be, of course, but it was interesting. Interviewer: Were there any factories downtown or was it mainly just business? Mr. Smith: We thought of it more as a business place. If you went shopping you went downtown, of course. That was the place to go and there were all the services you wanted on Broadway or just off Broadway. Restaurants, a Chinese restaurant, there were a couple Chinese restaurants we used to go to. Glen Smith Oral History Interview, 2002 Page 7 of 12 Fargo Café was one; you could get a meal for thirty-five cents. We used to do that regularly. I’m trying to think of that other restaurant. We’d go down on weekends, go to a show. Interviewer: Did you ever go see a movie at the Roxy or the Princess? Mr. Smith: Yes, the Isis, the Roxy, and the Princess. They were all cheaper theatres. Interviewer: Which was the nicest theater? The Fargo Theater? Mr. Smith: The Fargo Theater, it was quite a contrast to the others. Interviewer: How much more expensive was it than the others? Mr. Smith: I don’t remember exactly. It was enough difference. I think that we got into the others for a quarter and maybe the Fargo was thirty-five or fifty cents, which was enough to make you think about it. Interviewer: Do you remember any fires downtown? Mr. Smith: No, I don’t particularly. Interviewer: Do you remember any big crimes or anything like that committed downtown? Mr. Smith: No, I don’t remember any things like that. Eddy [Ed Stern] would know because his father was a very important person in the clothing business, he started their store and it’s in the third generation now. I think he came from Jamestown. Or somewhere else. I remember a bit later, this was in the forties, one of the floods, I guess. The Red Owl was a store down on Broadway, south of what is now Main Avenue. Main Avenue used to be called Front Street. On Broadway and on the east side of Main Avenue, it’s still lower down there, where the bank has a parking lot now, that is where the Red Owl Theater was and it was flooded because it didn’t have protection from the river, and the river backed up in that whole area there. Interviewer: Do you remember when Island Park was constructed? Mr. Smith: Yes. We used to go boating there. You may have read about this in the paper, but the river came over farther west than it does now, and I think the boating place was on the other side of the river [Dommer’s Boat House]. You crossed a little bridge to get a boat. We would rent a boat and go up the river, go south, we’d rent a canoe. There were canoes. This is what my wife and I used to do, romantic boating. Interviewer: Did you take a picnic with you? Mr. Smith: No, this would be evening trips after school or on weekends. There would be quite a few canoes on the river. They had quite a few boats to rent. Glen Smith Oral History Interview, 2002 Page 8 of 12 Interviewer: Do you remember the big skiing hill in the winter? Mr. Smith: I don’t remember that particularly, no. I think that was farther south. I think I do remember it being there, but I never used it. I think that came down onto the river. It was a structure built on the west side of the river, probably around 13th Avenue South. Interviewer: I think that would have been really fun to go down that. It looked really tall in the picture I saw. Does anything stick out most in your memory about Downtown Fargo? Mr. Smith: Well, we didn’t have a lot of money to spend, so you got some clothes, or went to a restaurant, or went to the theater, and that was about it. Interviewer: Was it really busy downtown? Mr. Smith: Oh yeah, it was a busy place. Of course that was in the days when Fargo was 25,000 people. It would have different potential now. Interviewer: Did lots of families come in from the surrounding areas on the weekends and stuff? Mr. Smith: Not so much, not like they do now to West Acres. In those days, I remember particularly when we were up in Langdon in the 1930s; we were in Langdon from 1929 to 1934 in the worst of the depression. You never saw a farmer in the restaurant. They just didn’t have the money to do anything. Interviewer: Were there lots of bread lines in Fargo during the depression? Mr. Smith: No, I don’t think so. I suppose there were, but I wasn’t aware of them. I’m sure they had relief agencies, but it wasn’t organized as well, at least when I was in college. Roosevelt made quite a difference in all those things with the WPA, FERA, CCC, all those acronyms. Interviewer: There’s a lot of those. Did Fargo react in any way when Pearl Harbor was bombed on December 7, 1941? Mr. Smith: Well everybody reacted, of course, the same as they did on September 11[, 2001]. It was a very traumatic happening. My family and our three children were guests at the home of Captain Kiker. Kiker was on campus as an ROTC professor, so he was in the military. We were guests at their home and we went to the same church, the Methodist church. They happened to be entertaining us that particular Sunday. We heard this news, as we were at the table. Kiker promptly got into his uniform. He saw service in Europe and in Italy, I believe. He came back and retired in Fargo. Interviewer: Do you remember any parades and celebrations? Mr. Smith: Nothing downtown, except the Homecoming parades that NDAC put on. Glen Smith Oral History Interview, 2002 Page 9 of 12 Interviewer: They went all the way downtown? Mr. Smith: Yes. Interviewer: Did the whole community get into them? Mr. Smith: Yes, they had people watching of course. They went up and down Broadway and back out. Interviewer: Were you ever in one of the parades? Mr. Smith: I think I marched. When I was in college the ROTC had a unit and we marched in the parade. Interviewer: Was that fun? Mr. Smith: Oh, yes. We thought it was important. Interviewer: Did you go to all the football games when you went to NDAC? Mr. Smith: Yes, it was one of your date opportunities. Interviewer: Were there many girls that attended NDAC? Mr. Smith: It wasn’t as high a number as it is now. There were girls. That’s where I found Doris. She was a home economist. But, I’m sure there’s a higher percentage now. Do you know what it is now? Interviewer: I think it’s almost fifty-fifty. Mr. Smith: It was more like 20 or 25[%] then, not more than 1 to 3. Interviewer: Were there any other colleges in town? Mr. Smith: At that time there was Concordia [College] and Moorhead Normal. Moorhead Normal was Moorhead Teachers’ College [now Minnesota State University Moorhead]. I suppose it was four years, but they called it a normal college. Of course originally there was another Fargo college. Probably the first college in town was Fargo College, and this was the building down on 5th Street that goes past the skating rink and Island Park. Is that 5th Street? It’s down there where you turn around the south end of Island Park. It’s up on a hill there, to the south. Those buildings then were converted to an insurance company. But the buildings, if you pay attention to them, you’ll recognize that they were not built for insurance, they were built for a college. Interviewer: Did they ever have a basketball team that NDAC played? Mr. Smith: It didn’t last very long. I think that it’s part of the early history of Fargo. I guess it was probably a church college. Glen Smith Oral History Interview, 2002 Page 10 of 12 Interviewer: Do you remember Dakota Business College? Mr. Smith: There were two, Dakota and Interstate. Interviewer: Did members of all the colleges get together at all? Mr. Smith: Not particularly. I don’t recall there was any particular event. The tri-college wasn’t organized at that time, so you didn’t have that opportunity. Interviewer: Did you ever go to any fairs at the fairgrounds? Mr. Smith: Yes, the fairgrounds were where Fargo North High is now. East of 10th Street and west of Broadway, north of 15th Avenue and south of 19th Avenue. That whole lot was the fairgrounds. The thing that I remember was when my dad was in college he would take us out to the fair, and I can remember seeing the fireworks at the fair. This would be way back in 1912. Interviewer: Did you ever see any of the circuses that came to town? Mr. Smith: I guess I’m not sure where I saw the circus. My dad took me to a circus somewhere, I’m not sure if it was at the fairgrounds. There was a racetrack and space where you could set up a circus. It probably was at the fairgrounds. I don’t have very vivid recollection. Interviewer: Was Moorhead as booming of a town as Fargo? Mr. Smith: I think Moorhead has come along quite a ways since, compared to how it was in those days. It was always a booming town, in the early days when Fargo was dry, of course, but I don’t think there was the population. The ratio is probably higher now than it was then. Interviewer: Did you ever go over there when you were a student or did you stick to Fargo? Mr. Smith: I don’t remember any occasion of going over there particularly. Interviewer: Can you think of any questions I may have left out that you have some stories for? Mr. Smith: You didn’t mention the Fargo Auditorium, which was on the West Side of Broadway and down the hill, south of Main Avenue. There was a ballroom in the basement, the Crystal Ballroom. That was where the famous pianist you mentioned played, Duke Ellington. I don’t know when he was here; it was probably in the forties [November 7, 1940]. I knew the guy [Jack Towers and Richard Burris] that went down and recorded him. I was on campus then, and he was the extension radioman and he had all this equipment. That was kind of a new thing, for an extension to have all this equipment to make tapes and record programs for farmers. He had the equipment. There were two of them that went down and made the recording. Have you ever heard it? Glen Smith Oral History Interview, 2002 Page 11 of 12 Interviewer: No, I haven’t. Mr. Smith: I think I have it, my son was interested in it. It was kind of a famous recording, as far as Fargo people go. [The live recording was re-released in 1978 as Duke Ellington at Fargo, 1940 and won a Grammy Award; the original tapes are housed in the Smithsonian.] Interviewer: A local favorite? Mr. Smith: Yes. We had some interesting convocations on campus in those days. Once a week around 9:30 there would be an extra hour and there would be five classes instead of four. In the middle there would be convocation, and then we would have public programs. We would have speakers, musicians, musical groups. Did you ever hear of Chautauqua? Interviewer: No. Mr. Smith: Chautauqua was a program that started in Chautauqua, NY, and developed into a public entertainment program all around the country. Every summer there would be Chautauquas. We had a Chautauqua in Dickinson even. They’d come and set up a tent and there would be programs in there in the afternoon. There would be programs for the kids in the mornings. There would be afternoon and evening programs; you bought a ticket to Chautauqua for a week. There would be musicians, and there would be speakers, comedians, and trapeze artists, all kinds of entertainment. This was in the days before TV or even radio. Chautauqua was quite a thing. My wife grew up in Hebron, Nebraska and she talks about Chautauqua being down there even. There were things going on in those days too. Downtown Fargo, I should remember more interesting things about it. It was a good town. My wife and I always, when we were dating, thought it would be nice if we could live in Fargo someday. We didn’t know that we ever would, and Langdon is quite different from Fargo. Where’s your home? Interviewer: My home is in Bismarck [North Dakota]. Mr. Smith: I grew up in Dickinson and I played the violin in the high school orchestra. The Rotary Club, the Rotarians, took us to Bismarck once. That was quite a big deal for high school kids, for a high school orchestra. The occasion, I guess, was the Rotary convention for the state. So I got to go to Bismarck. Stayed in the McKenzie Hotel. You know where that is? It’s pretty old now. Interviewer: Yep. I think it’s a pretty building though. Mr. Smith: Yep. And of course the other one is the Lewis & Clark [Hotel, formerly located at 400 W Main St in Bismarck, ND]. Is that still operating? Interviewer: I don’t think so. Mr. Smith: Well, the Mackenzie was probably the more impressive building but the Lewis & Clark (named after the pioneers) was a nice hotel too. Glen Smith Oral History Interview, 2002 Page 12 of 12 Interviewer: The thing I remember about the Mackenzie is they had secret storage places for the whiskey and stuff during Prohibition and somebody found them and it made the headlines in the papers. Mr. Smith: Oh, I suppose. Interviewer: That’s what I know most about that building. I always wanted to see those little passageways and stuff. I think that’d be neat to see. [Laughter] Mr. Smith: I remember the Indians used to come on the platform at the depot there, when the trains went through. I don’t suppose you ever heard about that. Interviewer: No. Mr. Smith: Well, the Indians came down and, I think it was Bismarck not Mandan, but that was one of the highlights of going through on the train. They’d put on a program, a little dance, you know, the Indians. Interviewer: I’ve never heard of that. I think that that’s all the questions I have written down, you answered them all. Mr. Smith: I wish I could think of more to… Interviewer: You answered a lot of them! Mr. Smith: After living in Fargo most of my life I should remember more. Interviewer: I got lots of information.
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