"My Life in [1950's] Carbon County [Utah]:" A Conversation With Dr. Ronald G. Watt (Season 2, Ep. 15)

**Brad Westwood** (0:10)
Welcome. This is Brad Westwood, and you're listening to the podcast Speak Your Piece. From our first podcast with Will Bagley on the musings and the value of history, to this episode, which is Episode 15 of Season 2, there is much for you to listen to, and I hope that you might consider. This is a podcast about Utah's history, produced by the Utah Department of Heritage and Arts. My job as Senior Public Historian is to make the very best, the most interesting, the most accurate history of Utah, accessible to the widest audience. If there's one place, one podcast to get your Utah history fix, I hope this is the place. My guest today is Dr. Ronald G. Watt. Hello, Ron.
Dr. Ron Watt received his PhD from the University of Minnesota and is a historian, an archivist, and an author. He is the author of at least three books that I know about. One about the very first Watt to arrive in Utah entitled, The Mormon Passage of George D. Watt, First British Convert Scribe for Zion. He also authored A History of Carbon County, which was part of the Utah State Historical Society's Centennial County History Series, and he's written A History of Price called City of Diversity, A History of Price, Utah. Ron spent much of his professional life working for the LDS Church History Department in Salt Lake City as a long-time director of the archives and as a research and reference archivist and historian.
Today we'll be speaking about his most recent publication entitled, My Life in Carbon County in the 1950s, published in 2019 Millions of Utahns, tourists as well, go through Carbon County to get to Moab, Gobbum Valley, Lake Powell and many to see Nine Mile Canyon, which is often described as the world's largest ancient art gallery, which I believe needs to be placed on the UNESCO World Heritage Sites.
This is a county rich in geology, culture, magnificent landscapes and more. Again, today we are going to focus on Carbon County circa 1950
Now if you want to know how to purchase a copy of the book we will be talking about, please go to our notes online. You will see under Brad Westwood in Speak Your Piece. You will be able to see how you can purchase a copy. This whole episode is about 1950s Carbon County. Now this county is framed by Dushane County to the north, Uinta County to the east, and San Pete County and Emory County to the west and south.
Here we are talking with Ron Watt. Hello Ron. Hi Ron. Ron, will you tell us about the dedication of this book? You mentioned four women, Mabel, Norma, LaRue and Barbara. Who are these people and why this dedication?

**Ronald G. Watt** (3:23)
Mabel Livingston is my grandmother on my maternal side. Norma is her daughter and my mother. And LaRue is my sister. And then of course Barbara is my wife.
I dedicated this book to those four because they are the four people who have influenced me the most in my life.

**Brad Westwood** (3:50)
Well, you write about them too. There are some really great stories about these four women.

**Ronald G. Watt** (3:56)
Yes, I do write about them including how I met my wife Barbara.
She was living in Emory County at the time. So I write about her. I write about my grandmother because I used to talk to her quite a little bit, especially when I was helping Hay out on the old grandpa's farm. Grandpa and Uncle Oz would go sleep. A 13-year-old boy can't go to sleep during the noon time.
So she talked to me. That was fun. Of course, my mother was there all the time for me.

**Brad Westwood** (4:44)
Well, I thought it was interesting. Wonderful, rich, descriptive detail you described. We're going to talk about this, going out and gathering the hay from early in the morning until noon time and then going in and eating all the beef and potatoes you can get into you and then nap and then get up and do it till sundown.
We'll talk about that a little later. You started out this project as a personal history, but what I saw as I read your book, Ron, is your training as a historian pushed you to do much more contextualizing, much more description and analysis. It has elements as a personal history, but then it renders such detail. It was almost as if you took your readers from a highway to the dirt roads, from field to field, from street to street in your mind, using your craft as a historian.
Tell us about this start of this project.