Tempe Historical Museum Oral Histories

Kenneth S. Clark was born in Abilene, Kansas in 1907 and was brought to Tempe as an infant. He graduated from Arizona State Teachers College in 1928. He has been a real estate and insurance agent in downtown Tempe for more than 60 years, and was still operating the Kenneth Clark Insurance Agency in 1999. He served one term as a Tempe City Councilman, 1934-1936.

In this interview he talks about the commercial history of downtown Tempe, including specific businesses and proprietors, as well as changes in general business practices over the years in retail stores and banking.

JANNSON: . . . June 17 today. My name is Kyle Jannson. I'm talking with Ken Clark, who grew up in Tempe and spent most of his business career in Tempe. What is your first memory of a business in Tempe?

CLARK: Well, one of the things that's very different is that if you wanted meat, you went to a meat market. You wanted bread, your bakery goods, you went to a bakery. The idea of a combined supermarket had never come into Tempe -- in fact, maybe never anywhere in America at that time. However, there was an enterprising man by the name of Matley [Benvenuto Matley]. Matley had the store, it would be about the junction of Van Ness and University, on the north side of University where the high-rise dormitories are. He had a small grocery store, and he put in a meat market, and then he put in a clothing store, and then he put in different kinds of hardware. The store ran through from University to Dewey -- that was a short block. In fact, he's the only one in Tempe in the 1900 to. . . . Well, about 1912, his store was flourishing. He serviced a lot of the cattle people who would come down and do all their shopping in one place -- from Globe and Young and points further away where they didn't have anything. But a fellow by the name of Teeter, he had a meat market. He first had the meat market on the west side of Mill in the 400 block.

JANNSON: About where your office is now?

CLARK: Well, that'd be a block-and-a-half north of where I am. Then he built his own building in back of where the bank is on the northwest corner of Mill and 6th. He built a meat market on the alley in back of that building, the bank building. There would be like two meat markets, three or four grocery stores, two bakeries. One bakery was in the 400 block of Mill. That was the Vienna Bakery. And one was near Matley's on University, about a little west of McAllister, the junction between. And it was run by a little old Dutchman about four foot two, and a very interesting character, very popular with children because he was always giving them a cookie or something when they came in. But the stores often had a case where you'd bring your purchase. The front of it would be all blown glass displays, and he'd have all different kinds of cookies displayed in this glass front. That was rather common in many stores.

JANNSON: One of the things I've read and heard is that the stores -- especially in the grocery stores -- items were kept up on the walls, and then you told the clerk what you wanted, and the clerk got down how much you wanted of a particular item. Is that the way you remember it?

CLARK: It wasn't anything you could walk around in like a supermarket. You had to tell 'em what you wanted, like you say. If you bought anything, they wrapped it up in paper. They had a roll of paper on the end of the counter, and a big bundle of string that fed out of the middle of it. And they would wrap this all up, and whether it was the meat market, or whether it was the grocery store. They didn't do so much bagging -- practically no bagging. Practically everything was wrapped up. Actually, most of the groceries were sold by a messenger who came to your door and took an order. And the messenger told the housewife what there was in the store in the way of vegetables and that sort of thing. Then he went back to the store and he put this order up. And he would take it back and deliver it. Very few people paid money -- they charged everything. The druggist -- they charged everything. They had a ledger a foot thick. And then once a month you'd go in and settle up your bill. Maybe if it was Laird and Dines, they'd give you a bag of candy or something. Not everybody did that, but that's kind of one thing they did. They never sued anybody. I don't think they ever forced a collection of ANY account. If the person didn't pay, eventually it just got too old and they tossed it out. Dr. Moeur was the principal doctor, and he did very much the same. If you couldn't pay, he'd write it off. In fact, I don't know whether there's any truth to this story or not, but like the hardware store [Tempe Hardware Company], they'd say if some item didn't get put down as to who bought it, they'd put it on two or three people's bill, and then whoever owed it would pay, and the rest of us would complain and he'd take it off. (laughter)

JANNSON: How long did this practice go on of just paying the bill once a month? Did it end with the Depression?

CLARK: No. It was still going on in the '30s -- it was still going on. We only lived a block from the store. We lived at 7th and Mill, right where now the alley goes through there. We were only a block from them, but it didn't matter, the man came from the store, over to the house, and took the order. He came every day, Monday through Friday. I don't know whether he came on Saturday -- maybe he came on Saturday, too, I don't know. Stores stayed on open on Saturday usually 'til nine o'clock. Otherwise, stores closed at six o'clock.

JANNSON: Was Saturday the big shopping day?

CLARK: When all the farmers came in, and a lot of people -- everybody's off work that day, so they could get in. There was very little advertising -- nothing like specials. Very limited amount of fruit and vegetables. They weren't long on fruits and vegetables. And they didn't have proper counters to display their vegetables, to keep things cool or keep things fresh -- difficult for them to do that. So usually vegetables were brought by peddlers that would bring things around. They'd go around to everybody's door and peddle it. They had to get rid of it in a day or two, especially in warm weather. Ice. Ice was delivered to you. Everybody had an ice box. Most people had ice boxes that would hold 50 pounds, and they would bring these blocks of ice, 300-pound blocks of ice around, and cut 'em up as they made a delivery. If you wanted ice, there was a card, you put it in the window. If they saw the card in the window, they'd come in and deliver the ice. People weren't home, didn't matter, nobody locked their doors anyway. And so they would just come in and deliver the ice. Of course the ice had to melt and did melt, and you had a pan under the refrigerator. And then when it got full, if you didn't remember it, why, it'd remind you. (laughter) If you lived in a house that was built up off the ground -- and of course many houses were built up off the ground in those days -- you just bored a hole in the floor and put a funnel under it, and then you never had to empty the ice water anymore. (laughs) Little things like that are different. Of course they had . . . everybody had quite a few salespersons. There was no "help yourself," so you had to have somebody -- especially if it was dry goods or something like that. Of course they sold lots of yard goods, which, of course, they do today. And. . . . So they had people to do that, too. So when you went into a store, you were usually met by a salesperson right away. It isn't like roaming around and trying to find one now. Most of the clothes were purchased out of town, in Phoenix. Clothing stores primarily carried Levis, work shirts, that sort of thing. There was maybe one store, Bucher's -- later became Getz -- they had SOME clothing for men -- not much clothing for women. And there was a tailor in Casa Loma Hotel for many years -- about five foot five, little bitty guy, very popular. He made a suit for you from scratch. That was rather common then. You could go to a tailor, he'd make you a suit.

JANNSON: Did people order clothes from, like, Sears catalog?

CLARK: Oh, yeah, Monkey Wards -- Montgomery Wards, Sears Roebuck -- they did a big business. Every year you got a catalog from them, a catalog as big as the Tempe phone book, or -- Phoenix phone book, now -- huge catalog, 1,000 pages, everything under the sun. You could buy groceries from 'em, you could buy hardware. You couldn't buy an automobile. The stores went along, didn't change much, year after year after year. They were pretty much stereotyped, pretty much like they'd always been.

JANNSON: So they didn't really compete with one another, like some stores do now? _________.

CLARK: They didn't have any way, really, to reach the public. See, most people didn't even take the newspaper. Tempe Daily News was not a newspaper -- it was merely a legal sheet. It had. . . . It might have had two or three ads in it -- practically no ads, because nobody looked at the Tempe Daily News unless they wanted to see if their legal notice was in there. It primarily was used by lawyers. It was a daily paper, and because it was a daily paper, they could put their ad [legal notice] in there and get it printed so many times. And that's all the law required, if it was in a newspaper in the county, and was published so many times, it qualified under the law for having been given legal notice. The rates were very cheap. It printed more legal business than anything in the valley. That's all it did. And it wasn't until, oh, in the '40s that the owner [Curt Miller] passed away and his children didn't want to run the paper -- his grandson -- so he sold it and it became Tempe Daily News, which is now the Tribune. And then it changed to more like -- it later became a real newspaper. Of course when the Cox Publications bought it [1986], why then they made a real newspaper out of it. Even until then, it was pretty second-rate. But now it's just as good as -- for local news, probably better than the Republic or Gazette.

JANNSON: Now, when you were young -- or younger than you are today -- were there certain stores that were more popular, where people met?

CLARK: Well, like I said, most of the people didn't even go to the stores, because the salesmen came around and took their order. Laird and Dines was a popular store, drugstore, and people did go there, 'cause it had a soda fountain. And so downtown people would go in there. Most people, they'd call up if they had a prescription or something like that -- they'd call it in, and then somebody would go by and pick it up, and they wouldn't actually. . . . There wasn't a lot of congregating in stores. Of course the stores were very small. They were only. . . . A big store was 50 foot wide and about 100 foot deep. That's about as big as they were. They might have Baber Mercantile. A fellow by the name of Joe Birchert started it, and he started it around 1900, somewhere in there. He owned the building on the northeast corner of 6th and Mill where the Savings and Loan was. I guess now it's some other -- United Bank or something, I don't know. HE had a market, and Lukens had a market about at the intersection of University and Van Ness. And then Matleys [Benvenuto and Welcome Matley] had a store. See, there were only three grocery stores to speak of. Well, they really didn't think about competing against each other. They had certain people who went to certain stores. They didn't shop around, looking for specials and all that stuff -- there was nothing like that, no specials. That's a 20th century invention. Nobody threw out anything -- handbills or anything like that. Most of the grocery business was done in those three places. See, all of the telephone numbers you could put ______ one piece of cardboard. That's what the telephone directory was -- they didn't give you a directory. They'd just give you one sheet, and it had all the numbers. I remember our number was 12 or 14 or something. I can remember two numbers people had. The mortuary [Carr's Mortuary], they had number 8, the City had number 1 or 2 or something like that. It wasn't until the '40s that they had three numbers.

JANNSON: What about stores like, say, Tempe Hardware, that people didn't go into on a regular basis, and probably the stores didn't have regular delivery people? How did they do business?

CLARK: Well, Tempe Hardware was kind of unique. They had a very large stock. They'd buy stores that went out of business, and things like that, and they kept the stock. They did plumbing, they had a plumbing shop in the rear of the hardware store. Quite a few people went in and visited with the Tempe Hardware, because Curry -- M. E. Curry, Sr., who started the store, was a very popular old man. Everybody liked him. And then the red-headed twins [John and Ed] came along and took over from him, and they were very popular. They usually were on the school board or on some City Council or something. And so they were pretty much a part of mingling with the people. The biggest business, the flour mill, never really became involved as far as the public was concerned, because they didn't have any grain to deliver to 'em, they didn't buy and sell the products that they had. Those were all the farmers from out south. They would bring their grain in. I've seen wagons of grain, standing, waiting to be delivered, for two blocks long. They did BIG business, but all with the farmers. And they'd loan the farmers money until their crop came in, and then they'd get the crop. They'd have the farmers tied to 'em because they owed 'em the money. Of course in the early times, especially, credit was a very important factor. Most people didn't make much money: $75-$100 a month was good wages. So they didn't have a lot of money. Most people had nothing above their job, kept comin' in. And of course the farmers, they didn't have anything, because they had to raise these crops and take care of themselves for a long period of time, until the crop was harvested. And at the time it was harvested, they would have to bring in machinery for that purpose. They didn't keep tractors and farm machinery for that purpose. They'd have people that traveled around from farm to farm and cut the grain and threshed the grain, and the farmer would haul it in. Of course in those days, they'd have an engine -- steam engine type, and then they'd have a long belt. The belt would be 30 feet long, over to the thresher. They separate 'em, 'cause they'd get on fire now and then. This belt would turn the machinery, but most of 'em couldn't afford to have machinery and just have it sittin' around to use it one week a year, so they'd hire that. Well, that became a part of raisin' that crop, and they wouldn't have the money, so of course the mill would have to advance 'em money for it.

JANNSON: It sounds like between the mill advancing money and then people buying on credit, essentially, at the stores, that when people needed money, they went to their store to get some sort of assistance -- they didn't go to the banks?

CLARK: Not much.

JANNSON: People didn't go to banks very much?

CLARK: The cattle people, they went to the bank. It was difficult to get money on a crop. See, you could get money on real estate, 'cause it's not gonna run away. You could cut the grain and sell it and the banker doesn't know anything about it. Of course the next year you had a little trouble. But the press, they were worried about that problem next, but the first problem (chuckles), they'll avoid. But I suppose there are some that could borrow money from banks. But, of course, nothing like the government sponsored loans that you have today -- all kinds of 'em: farm banks, farm loans, what not. And of course one reason they came along was because of this very problem: the farmer didn't want to be tied to one particular miller, because he wanted to be able to sell his grain at the highest price. So if he could cut that link between him and the miller, why then he was free to bargain. That's kind of the way it went.

JANNSON: Now, when someone was starting a business up. . . .

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CLARK: Oh, to start up a business? Well, I never had any experience about how they did that. Lots of people borrowed money from individuals, somebody backed you. Banks were very conservative, they didn't throw money around like they do now. Most of the people that went into business, they had saved the money to begin with, or they got somebody in the family, or somebody in the area, that would back 'em -- pretty much on just a note. They couldn't very well mortgage their stock, because they're sellin' stock. Pretty much. . . . In those days, if you told somebody somethin', you were expected to go on through with it, you were expected to complete it. Those stores that were in Tempe, they stayed for a LONG time. I have an idea that a grocery store, it's possible that the wholesaler may have been willing to put the stock in, on the basis that if you paid so much. A harness maker, he wouldn't have enough leather to buy any amount ________ you know. Probably the average store -- see, we think in terms of these supermarkets, but the average store probably didn't have over $3,000-$4,000. Multiply that by 10 to 15, because that's what a dollar would buy in those days compared to today -- that's $30,000-$40,000 worth of merchandise. So like I say, an average ASU [then known as Tempe Normal School] teacher only made $100 a month. Now they make $5,000-$6,000. But they made $1,200 a year. My father taught three years at $1,200 a year -- glad to get it.

JANNSON: Now, did your father help you, give you some money to help you start up your business?

CLARK: Indirectly he did, because he left a small estate, and so there was some money in that. But I had taught school five years before I started the business. I saved about $75 a month, and so I had a little money. Of course in the insurance business, you don't need any money -- you have no stock, all you've got is a suit of clothes, an automobile, your clothes that you're gonna work in, go to the office in. In those times, if you wanted an office, the company HAD an office, you could go be in that office. But since I was in the life insurance business, it cost nothing to get in. After, oh, a year or so, a fellow who I knew real well said, "Well, you ought to have an office." He gave me an office for $10 a month. My house rent was $10 a month. Utilities were $2-$3 a month. If you made $100 a month, you could live well. That's the way you started, and you gradually built up. Eventually I went into other forms of insurance: fire and automobile and real estate. My primary advantage in the real estate was, it was practically nobody in the real estate business in Tempe. And the reason for that was either they didn't WANT to sell, or they didn't want to buy. See, there was no trading. The feeling of trading and wanting to exchange was very low-key. For instance, I sold lots where the Sheraton [Mission Palms] Hotel is on Fifth Street. Guess how cheap I sold those lots?

JANNSON: Twenty-five dollars?

CLARK: Twenty-five dollars. And I didn't have a lot of people wanting 'em. I sold lots $25-$50. The 25-foot lot where the Plantation [Coffee Plantation at Centerpoint] is now, I bought for $10. I gave the lady $10 for a quit claim deed, and I paid a couple hundred dollars back taxes on it. Today, you can imagine what it's worth. See, there was no activity. I bought 40 acres for $2,000 in Tempe -- 40 acres, Tempe, $2,000. I sold part of it for $30,000. You see, [it's] very difficult for people to translate [relate] to that, that everything was that cheap, but during the Depression there was no money. People just sat around and played cards and put crossword puzzles together day after day. From 1929 to 1935, there was no activity. People who think in terms of, you know, this is bad times and all that, they have no conception of that. They don't know how bad times can be. Of course, you see there was no unemployment insurance, there was no retirement, there was no Social Security -- none of these things that have been put into place were available then. You were on your own. You either made it on your own or you went to the poor house.

JANNSON: How did the businesses in Tempe survive the Depression?

CLARK: Well, in the first place, most of them, they either owned a building, they didn't have to pay any rent, or if they did, the rent would be probably $100 a month. Rent was nothing. Everybody else was broke, so you were all in it together. You didn't have to give any service, you didn't have to do anything special. People didn't trust other people particularly, because they understood the problem. And of course depressions had come and gone before THAT one, so they knew that eventually it'd disappear. Probably one of the hardest-hit businesses would be the sale of automobiles. You could buy an automobile, you could buy a brand new Ford for $300-$400, right off the showroom.

JANNSON: Was there a Ford dealer in Tempe then?

CLARK: Not at that time. The first Ford dealer was a branch of a Mesa Ford agency, and it was where the Valley Bank is now -- that new building on University and Mill, just 50 feet or so east of Mill. They had a branch of a Mesa agency. Tempe never had a Ford agency until No Bull _____, "That ain't no bull."

JANNSON: Earnhart?

CLARK: Yeah, Earnhart. That's the first official Ford agency. They sold Ford automobiles, what they called a branch of the Mesa agent. In fact, I bought a 1961 Thunderbird. I think that's about when they came out, '61 or '62 or '3, something. I bought it right there in that building where the bank is now. That building, that was there then. But it was not -- they weren't a dealer, they were only a sub-dealer. When the car came in, they raised the price $400, so I never took delivery of the car. "Keep it!" Now it'd be worth $20,000! Ha! The old Tempe was moving at a very slow pace.

JANNSON: Now, when you started up your business back in the '30s, the first year you had it at your house (CLARK: Yeah.) and then you moved to. . . .

CLARK: First couple of years I had it at the house.

JANNSON: Then you moved it to _______.

CLARK: Of course nobody came to the house. My wife, the first thing she did when we were married, is she had $60 or something left, and she said, "I don't want any of my money. I'm going to live on YOUR money." "Okay." So she bought me a desk. In fact, one of my children still uses it. And it was a very pretty mahogany desk. That's the only evidence in the house that I HAD an office. (chuckles) But in the life insurance business you have to go make calls. Nobody's gonna come and ask you for life insurance. That's once in a thousand times. So it didn't matter. But when I got into the general insurance business and the real estate, of course I had to have an office. The first office I had, the City hired a fellow by the name of Gertler -- he was a lawyer in Mesa. And in order for him to qualify as city attorney, he had to have an office. So he had rented this office that I was using down in the 400 block of Mill. So I met him somewhere -- I don't remember exactly how I met him. Well, I guess I met him through the landlord. And the landlord said, "Well, this guy doesn't need the office, he's not using it" -- which he wasn't. He just wanted to qualify. He rented it to qualify. So I sublet it from him, so it only cost me ten bucks a month. So I had an office. Then there was a little building where the Sheraton is, and it had been an insurance office. An old man by the name of R. A. Windes had been there for 15-20 years. He was a retired Baptist minister. He was very well-thought-of. He had a nice little insurance business. So he passed away. His daughter worked with him. She didn't know anything about the business particularly, but he was about 90 years old when he passed away, and he'd still go down there and sit, wanted to be in the office. So she maintained the office and kept it open. As soon as he passed away, she sold the agency to the bank. In those days, banks liked to write insurances and keep in touch with their people and all that. Now they're prohibited from writing it. They're trying to get back into it -- maybe they will. See, they liked it because if somebody wanted to make a loan, they'd insist on insurance. If they were loanin' 'em money to run their business, they'd insist on insurance. That way, they liked it. So they bought his business -- I didn't take his business over. But then the building became vacant. So I took the building for $25 a month or something, and divided the building in two. Well, it already had a partition in it. I only took half the building, and made an apartment out of the other half and rented it for $25, so I didn't have to pay any rent. (laughs) And I was there for three or four years, I guess. And then I got this lot on Mill Avenue that is right where the [Coffee] Plantation is, 606 Mill. And I built a little office in there, about 12 or 14 by 20 feet -- just a little office. Didn't have any bath, didn't have any facilities -- just a room. So I was there for three or four years, I guess -- two or three years, not long. A fellow had to move his place of business. He THOUGHT he had to, or he thought he would. Anyway, he bought the lot. I moved the business down next door to -- you know where Rundell's Market was? (JANNSON: Uh-huh.) Where Chase is now. I moved it down to about 150 feet north of that intersection, right on the sidewalk. ____ go down there _________. City didn't object. In fact, I don't know if we even ASKED the City. In those days, you didn't ask the City.

JANNSON: You just upped and moved the building?

CLARK: Oh, yeah, picked up the building -- had no plumbing, easy to do -- and moved it down there. Then the war came on, and there was no housing. So Goodyear Rubber Company built trailers -- they called 'em "wingfoots," 'cause that's where the place of business is, Wingfoots, someplace back East. Anyway, they were expandable, so that you could have a double bed in one end of 'em, a little kitchen -- just a trailer. But people could sell 'em, agents could sell 'em. There wasn't a house in Tempe for rent, and you couldn't build anymore -- against the law to build. Couldn't buy the material anyway -- the government had all the material. Of course, Goodyear, with its clout, they could get the material. So I had a subdivision over here on Farmers Avenue, so I put a whole row of those in, and we'd sell 'em, and the banks would loan the money on 'em, practically 100%. Of course the people over there screamed, "These houses are no good, they're small, you're making a trailer park out of it!" And I didn't blame 'em, but you know, almost every one of those, the people later built around on it. They built an addition around 'em. You don't even know they're there. Drive down that street now, they all look different, they all look like permanent houses, which they are, of course. And then I put five of these in back of the office -- five of these little houses in back of the office, made a little court back there. So then I decided I didn't want to do that anymore, so I bought where I am now. I bought that lot, and it had a little old house way on the back of it. And I moved the office again -- moved it up to 611 Mill, right across the street from where it was before! (laughs) There was a concrete slab there, 50 feet square, where there'd BEEN a building. It'd been all removed -- just a slab. So I set it down on that. Then I built a little building on each side of it, another building. I was there until about 20 years ago, I guess -- I built where I am now. Maybe 15 years ago. I guess that would have been about 15 years ago. But in other words, I started making $15-$20 a month, maybe $100, and you just add to it. You just build up. You gradually accumulate. Of course now we own half of a block. But my mother lived right there where Restaurant Mexico is. We had a home there we built in 1917, '18. See, once you acquire anything in the city, if you sell it, you'll never buy it back, because whoever you sell it to, he'll either improve it, or he'll raise the price so much. You remember what you sold it to him for. You'll say, "Oh, to hell with it, I'm not going to give him that profit," see? So if you acquire things in those kind of locations, you have to keep 'em, no matter what their cost at the time -- you have to put up with that, and you have to keep it. Part of the 40 acres that I bought for $2,000 just the front 150 feet of it on Broadway would be worth a million dollars today. But I've never sold it, just kept it 'til now, it's worth a million dollars. I learned all this from an old guy who used to do repairs and stuff for me. He owned several houses. He said, "Go to a community, go to the outskirts of a community and buy property as cheap as you can, and just hold it, and let 'em build TO you." And that's the way it is. When I was going, the city limits were 13th Street. That's the city limits, and there wasn't anything there. That was all unimproved. There was practically nothing from 8th Street on -- a little bit, a FEW houses, not much, practically nothing. The city was just from about 8th to the river. And the most important part of the city was north of University, from the development standpoint. Up north of the University and all the way to the Buttes, that had houses in it in 1890, 1900. But they were all Mexican. And so the University bought every house in there. The University bought every house from University to 13th Street on Normal, on Van Ness, and on McAllister. Then they moved across McAllister, went all the way to Rural. Enormous area.

JANNSON: Now, when you first moved your business onto Mill Avenue, do you remember the names of the businesses that were around you?

CLARK: Well, the bakery was next door.

JANNSON: Vienna Bakery?

CLARK: Vienna Bakery. There was no business in the building on the corner of 4th -- that was a vacant building. The upstairs was the Masonic Hall, the downstairs was vacant. Then the post office moved in there -- that's where the post office was. Casa Loma Hotel was the hotel. And across the street there was a rooming house, and there was a meat market, Pioneer Meat Market. There were two pool halls in the 400 block, and one or two barber shops. When you went down to 5th Street, where the post office is, there was a two-story building. The upstairs had a dance floor in it. The downstairs had a ladies' clothing -- you know, cloth, mostly, dry goods. Dry goods and notions, they called it: buttons, pins, stuff like that. The other half downstairs was Carr's Mortuary. The mortuary was in three little rooms through there. That was Carr's Mortuary. The only other mortician was A. L. Moore and Sons had a fellow by the name of Price Wickliffe, and he was on the east side of the street, and he would make funeral arrangements for you, and then they'd come over from Phoenix and take care of it. Carr was the nephew of Ed Curry, and so he put him in that building, 'cause Currys OWNED the building. I guess he didn't pay any rent. He lived in the back end (chuckles) and had the mortuary in the front. Then the hardware store was in that block. The telephone exchange was next door to the mortuary. It was a house and had a circular corner -- you know how they used to build 'em. The call girls lived in the house and took care of the telephones. Next door to that was Goodwin's. That's Kemper Goodwin's father. He had an Indian store and also had a . . . Wells Fargo? I guess it was Wells Fargo. He had Wells Fargo and the Indian store. And then the far end of the block there was a jewelry store, and I can't think of -- Lamont! Lamont's Jewelry Store, which later became a grocery store. And Tempe National Bank. Tempe National Bank started about 1905 or something, where United Bank is now. First they were Phoenix National, and then they became United, I guess. And the next block was the lumber yard where the [Coffee] Plantation is now.

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CLARK: Fellow in there by the name of Smith, and he had an ice business, delivered ice -- had wood, coal, ice -- that was a popular business in those days. And then just a house at the end of the street. Wasn't any business to speak of in there. There was a dentist on the corner of 7th and Mill, and a two-story rooming house on the northeast corner. Then there was a dwelling, the property that I was in. And then there was another guy in the '20s, he built a drugstore. He had a drugstore in there where the ladies' dry goods store was on 5th and Mill. He had Tempe Drugstore right across from Laird and Dines. There's a lot of rivalry between them. Then he bought where Chief Dodge was. He bought that corner and hired a couple of old guys. They worked all winter making cement bricks. They made six bricks at a time and hauled 'em up, and they built the building that's there now with those bricks. They worked all winter and made enough bricks to build that building. And then he moved in there with a drugstore there for a long time. Finally the drugstore got out of business. They were there for 30-40 years, long time. McNary's -- McNary's Drug. That's pretty much downtown. There were some garages. Spain's Garage, which was in back of -- it faced 6th Street, and is part of the property that the City Hall is built on. And then on the other side, facing north, was a theater and Bloy's Veterans' Hall [VFW Post] in there. They finally moved out in an industrial park on Broadway. But there wasn't much business in town. See, then you jumped up and went up where Matley and Luken and those stores were. In the turn of the century, they had a streetcar. You know about that. (JANNSON: Uh-huh.) And see, it terminated up there where Matley's Store is. That's where the Goodwins lived up there, and they're the ones who put the streetcar in. So it ran down to Main Street. The main depot was at the foot of the Butte, where those city structures are now, by the police station.

JANNSON: The police station.

CLARK: That's where the Santa Fe Railroad's depot was. There wasn't any depot over _________. But in 1905, the bridge went out, and so [inaudible] they stopped their line across the street, _____ across the river. That's about all I know.

JANNSON: In the '30s and the '40s, who were the influential businessmen downtown? Who was respected and listened to? Who were the movers and shakers?

CLARK: Well, a fellow by the name of Peck was head of the bank. [Inaudible]. People paid attention to him. Of course Dr. Moeur, everybody pretty much liked him. There was another doctor, Alexander. They had a couple of scuffles in the drugstore. I don't think any blows were exchanged. This city was kind of divided between whether they used one doctor or the other. That seemed to be important at that time in their minds. You were pretty stupid if you used the wrong doctor. Also, schools were divided. See, the University had an eight-grade school in the University -- training school, they called it -- where the teachers could teach the children and learn how to BE a teacher. Not a bad idea. I don't know why they disbanded it. But if you went to school there, you were being practiced on, and so if you were going to learn anything, you had to go to the other school. That's what the kids said. (chuckles) There were these little divisions in the city. The University people tended to be apart from the rest of the community.

JANNSON: So they didn't actively. . . .

CLARK: They did mix some, but generally speaking, they didn't. They kind of tended to. . . . My family was a little different, 'cause for one thing, we lived right downtown, and my father loaned money, he was kind of in business in that respect. So there was a banker by the name of Kingsbury there at the bank [Farmers and Merchants Bank], at the northeast corner of 5th and Mill. That bank was there before First National Bank. The Kingsburys owned about three or four acres at the foot of the Butte where the Tempe police station is, and they had a pretty good-sized house for Tempe. It was an old frame house, but it was pretty substantial and had big porches all the way around it, and had a guest house. They had servants, and they entertained people from Phoenix. Well, they were pretty influential, because they were rolling in money and they owned the bank. I suppose Charlie Woolf, who was a lawyer. He was a director of the bank -- he probably would be one considered. And I guess the president of the University was always considered pretty important, although they didn't mingle with the town much. Once in a while, one of the professors -- maybe Felton or Beckworth or Blackburn -- would become, would get on the City Council, but generally they pretty much let the City run its own. They didn't try to dominate the Council or anything.

JANNSON: Did the Tempe people, especially the business people, feel like the Normal School was their school and wasn't any of the State's school?

CLARK: Well, there was no great enthusiasm to build it. In fact, a fellow gave 'em the land.

JANNSON: I'm thinking more about the '30s and '40s. I know in the early days the Tempe businessmen were real important in getting the first building built, for example. (CLARK: Oh, yeah.) By the '30s and '40s, did they still have that kind of interest in the school, or did they sort of see it more as a State school?

CLARK: I think more of a State school. They didn't figure it was something they were going to be able to expand or build up. When it started, it was only. . . . It was four years of high school, one year of Normal School. You didn't get any college. That went on for a long time. In 1920, they dropped off the freshman year of high school, and '20 and '21, they dropped off the next year. After four years, they dropped all the high school off. I went into high school in 1920, so I went to the other high school. I didn't go to ASU until after I'd graduated from high school. But then, they began adding college years. So in '21 or '22, they had two years of Normal School. When I went there, they had three years. By the time I got through college, I went to college two years, and then I taught school a year. And then I came back and finished up at ASU. In fact, I graduated in my same class 'cause I went to summer school and made up the extra credits. So I got a four-year degree out of it, because they finally added enough years.

JANNSON: Now, after World War II, Tempe's population grew pretty rapidly. What happened to business in the late '40s and the '50s and into the '60s? How did things change?

CLARK: Well, of course the bigger markets started coming in. Safeway was one of the first. Of course the big problem had always been the farmers didn't want to sell the land. And even if they did want to sell the land, you had to buy 150 acres or something, to subdivide. I did a lot of subdividing. I had twelve subdivisions. But, the more I put the pie pan, see, things like that, you didn't want to do that on a whole lot of land. You didn't know how fast it would sell. We tried to cut up about 20 or 25 lots, see if you could get rid of THEM, and then add on. But the City was very accommodating in those times, because they wanted population. They wanted people to move in. So they'd go out sometimes, and just cut a road through the land for you. They wouldn't pave it, but they'd grade a road through, or they'd send out somebody and they'd cut a ditch, say, for two or three blocks, so you could lay the pipe in, and they'd come along and cover it up for you. They were helpful, very helpful. You didn't get any sewer, but everybody had cesspools and septic tanks. Most everybody had septic. And of course they had laws that you had to have 'em. After the '40s, they finally got smart: you had to get the right kind of sewage disposal. So. . . . And then, of course, as the population increased, why, the desire for other stores and different kinds of stores followed. You don't get the stores first -- get stores second -- get the people first. But the expansion was fabulous, and where there'd been one or two people in the real estate business, there were about a dozen, bang! right now. And then they'd all put salesmen on and scramble to get as many sales made as they could. I didn't ever do that. I had one or two salesmen, but I wasn't, I never tried to get big or be big or have a big organization. One reason was because these people, salesmen, that could get a sales license -- you didn't have to know anything, and you didn't have to take any test or anything. Just give 'em ten bucks and be a licensed agent. They didn't know anything. So they'd get you involved in all kinds of problems. You spend half your time running around on those. And I didn't want to be bothered. Actually, people would come to your house and want to buy the property, we had a sign up. They'd run you down. When the first expansion started they were just almost hectic in their buying. Way out on ____ Mesa and Tempe, a couple of miles, two, three miles, they'd still be. . . . If you chopped it up into parcels, they'd be beating a path to your door. I had subdivisions all the way out Power Road and east of Mesa. But then it tapered off. Of course there's only so much frontage. Most everybody wanted to build a motel -- they all wanted to build motels. All these little motels between Tempe and Mesa were built about that time, in the '40s. (Aside about time). Change on downtown in there. I think the big change is this stuff that the Chase Bank people built. I think that's when they gave it the big impact. It stayed pretty much the same -- '40s no change, '50s no change. We're talking about 40 years ago. Things didn't change then. There wasn't any impact. Now, of course, we don't know if the east side of Mill Avenue's gonna develop enough. It APPEARS that it might. The City, see, has this power to take your property away from you. And if they think that there's a possibility that they can do that, and get another big building in like Chase built, well, they probably will. Of course, they have to have the money to buy it, too. When they were buying the properties in there, they were getting 'em for nothin', particularly. Now they're gonna be forced to pay a lot more money, of course. And whether they can get that together or not, I don't know.

JANNSON: Back in the '60s, Tempe Hardware, Laird and Dines, even the Vienna Bakery, those stores all closed within a few years downtown. What was happening downtown that was resulting in these stores closing? Or was it that families were. . . .

CLARK: The people died, the owners died. The Laird family had three brothers -- there actually were four, but three of 'em were in the store. When their father died, they never probated the estate. Everybody owned an interest in the building. That was a big sore point, because Laird and Dines never paid the others what they thought they ought to be getting. But of course three or four of them were living out of the business store, and how much money could you expect to get? Then when Hugh Laird died, he was the principal partner, principal brother. Bill and Hugh and Claude. Claude was crippled, he had enlarged gonads -- cancer, I guess. Anyway, they had no issue. Hugh Laird had a daughter, she's still living. Bill had a daughter, she's still living. They weren't interested in running the business. There were no sons. So all they did was rent it for whatever they could rent it for. That killed that business. The Vienna Bakery really was killed in the '20s. In the '20s there was -- they had a depression in '21, all over America. And the Farmers and Merchants Bank on the corner, half a block from the bakery, they went broke, and they burned the ledger. They took a blow torch and they burned all ___________, they burned a hole all the way through the ledger. Well, the guy that did that for 'em [Thornton Jones] went to jail. Also, the president [W. J. Kingsbury] went to jail. The secretary and treasurer was his wife. She didn't have to go to jail. So that put that [inaudible] bakery had $25,000 on deposit at the bank. There was no guarantee in those days of your deposit. They never survived it. That crushed them, the loss of their money, the little old people that owned it, ran it. Bauer. He was about this big, and about this big around. They died. One of the children. . . . Let's see, August, and I can't remember the other one. The other one went to Prescott and started the Ideal Bakery in Prescott. Later that went broke. The people like. . . . I can't name them. They make bread. I think there's a Sunshine and. . . . Anyway, in Phoenix they have these big bakeries that bake thousands of loaves of bread automatically. They just put 'em out of business. At one time, they were furnishing bread to all kinds of stores, and they had four or five delivery trucks, they were doing a lot of business. They were doing a lot of business with grocery stores. They weren't doing any business, people walking in and buying. They were baking lots of bread. Well, these stores with the more -- actually, they had a small building, you couldn't put a lot of machinery in it to produce anything. Maybe if they'd have used it all. Anyway, in their mind, they couldn't transform that business into a type that grocery stores would patronize. These other people were delivering _____ loaves, and they were already sliced, the bread was already sliced, and they didn't do that. Finally they did do that, but that was a long time afterward. See, they weren't quick enough to adapt to that. So they really went out of business -- in the '30s, they were practically out. Then the Laird and Dines -- I mean, the hardware [Tempe Hardware Company], when the old man died, why the redheads took it over and they ran it. But then Johnny got cancer and he died. There wasn't anybody, so they just sold the stock. Just an attrition of time and people. Of course in the meantime, people like Safeway, they moved out to Broadway. [Inaudible].

JANNSON: To where the people were living now?

CLARK: Yes, the business just moved on south. It followed the people. See, when the frontages, like on Broadway and on Southern, and Baseline, when they started, finally when those farmers let you buy that land so you could chop it up, and you had the frontage where you could build the business buildings. That changed the whole picture. See, for a long time, the farmers wouldn't sell, like Ellingson. Mill Avenue runs right through that farm, see, to Baseline. From Southern to Baseline, that was all one farm. Well, finally the old people died. The ones that wanted to farm it, died. The kids didn't want to farm it. That's why the thing evolved and changed. On this side where Smitty's is, the owner of that property was a woman, and she lived in California, and she wanted about $3,000 an acre -- nobody wanted to give it. Well, finally somebody, like Smitty's, was able to cough up enough money to get it. That property on each side there was all one farm. I looked after it for years, rented it for 35 bucks an acre. Other people, Hollinshead, across the street from Smith's, you know, that farm: I had 150 acres I looked after in there, $30-$35 an acre. They didn't give a damn about selling it, they didn't want to sell it. You'd ask 'em, "You want to sell?" "No, don't want to sell." Well, they were smart: the longer they held it, the more it went up. The only thing is, they were getting older all the time, they weren't getting any. . . . It was hard to rent the damned stuff, hard to get machinery in anymore. Gradually farmers didn't want to be bothered with people. Just the press of people moving into the valley was so great, see, that you cut the land up [inaudible], subdivide it. I got tired of subdividing because you had to pave the streets, you had to buy a piece of land, get a surveyor, you had to set it all up, stake it, put it all in, pipe it, put the plumbing in.

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BEGIN SIDE FOUR

JANNSON: Thank you for coming in today and for talking. We appreciate all the information you've shared with us.

CLARK: Great! You're welcome.

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END OF INTERVIEW