Leo Sanford and Stella Dean Taylor, my paternal grandparents — 1960’s
One of the great blessings that came into my life as a result of our move from Reno to American Fork was the privilege and opportunity of living near my Grandpa and Grandma Taylor. I had developed a love for them as a boy and that love deepened as a teenager. My parents and I would often go over to their home on a Saturday evening, with our visits always following the same pattern — we would first go out and survey Grandpa’s animals and garden, then we would set up the croquet set and play a game of croquet, and finally we would visit on the lawn over a bowl of Grandma’s homemade ice cream. I loved these wonderful evenings and I loved my grandparents very much. They never failed to tell me how proud they were of me, and they always encouraged me to go on a mission and marry in the temple. Grandpa reminded me that every one of his grandsons that had reached the age of 19 had served a mission.
I will never forget a wonderful day that I enjoyed with Grandpa Taylor, my Dad, Uncle Bruce, and Martin, as we helped Grandpa Taylor erect a barn on his Pleasant Grove farm. We built it from the ground up in one day, enjoying humor, laughter, hard work, and brotherly love. This barn became the topic of a paper I wrote for a freshman English class at Brigham Young University, as follows:
In July of 1967, one of my uncles, a cousin, my father and I devoted a considerable amount of time to building a new barn for my grandfather. We did the heavy work of laying the foundation, framing the uprights, securing the gables, nailing on the siding, etc., and left the finishing touches to Grandpa. When I recently spent some time at my Grandpa’s farm, I readily noticed, however, that the barn was no longer the “1967 model” that we had built: Granddad had transformed it (perhaps unconsciously) into a 1915, Redmesa, Colorado barn, into a tangible link with his youth, into a part of his soul.
From a distance, the barn has the appearance of a well-preserved antique. Everything is in its proper place or condition: slightly rusted grain barrels stand symmetrically along the side, the larger tools and equipment are on the west side awaiting use, and the other walls boast a new coat of paint (the dull, rustic, barn-red paint that feels greasy in damp weather). The barn has two prominent appendages: the chicken coop on the southeast corner, and the pigsty on the west, which becomes noticeably apparent on windy days. The well-trodden livestock trails leading to and from the barn enhance its appearance of use and age.
Upon closer examination, it becomes readily apparent that the barn lacks any type of modern convenience or apparatus. The surrounding gates are grandpa’s self-made contrivances which require a near herculean effort to close and fasten; the door latches, too, are unique improvisations made of wood blocks and rope; the corner uprights are stout oak poles. There is no cement or steel anywhere to be found in the structure.
Upon entering the barn, Grandpa’s touch of rusticity is even more noticeable. The floor is made of discarded railroad ties (visible only if you scrape away the layers of manure), the inner walls are lined with tar paper, and the wooden doors swing on leather hinges. The doorways leading from area to area are just wide enough for a thin human to squeeze through, but too narrow to permit the passage of well-fed livestock.
The interior of the barn is divided into three main areas: the horse stables, the cattle and sheep stalls , and the feed room with its accompanying loft. The feed room does not have a door leading to the outside: it can only be reached by threading your way through the stables and stalls and their occupants. The two livestock areas are adjacent to the feed room, and hay can be thrown directly from there into the feeding mangers via opening in the walls. The wood in the stables and mangers appears highly glossed because of the constant gnawing and licking it receives from the animals. Salt licks in old wooden frames sit in the corners attracting flies. In the feed room is an ingenious pulley system composed of ropes, cedar posts, and hooks used by grandpa to hoist bales of hay into the loft. A rickety ladder, which can be raised and lowered by a rope, leads from the ground to the loft. Old grain buckets with makeshift, baling-wire handles hang on nails driven into the walls, and tools which exhibit many years of hard usage are all stored in their appropriate places. Randomly placed throughout the room are shallow tin pans filled with scratch to satisfy the meandering chickens.
The impression this barn has made on my mind is permanent. To walk into this barn is to walk into my grandpa’s memory and to experience part of his life. It seems to me that the barn is a representation of Grandpa’s peaceful protest against modernization, a resort to the days when hard physical labor was the way of life. It is his source of contentment, his means of escape from the here and now. Reciprocally, to the barn Grandpa is its life, its heartbeat, its source of fulfillment. Sitting defiantly in the middle of a field surrounded by modern homes, utility poles, and asphalt streets, the barn seems to be a protestant against today’s automated world, and a reminiscence of the past.”
One of the most frightening moments in my life involved my Grandpa Taylor. In the late 1960’s, my father, Grandpa, and I went on a daylong horse back ride up Alpine Canyon. We enjoyed beautiful scenery and wonderful conversations. We had just eaten our lunch and were heading back down the trail when Grandpa’s horse stumbled, lost its footing, and tumbled down a steep incline, rolling over Grandpa in the process. The saddle horn caught Grandpa squarely in the chest as his horse rolled over him. My blood ran cold when I saw grandpa lying on the ground, ghostly white and gasping for breath. Dad and I administered rudimentary first aid and tried to make him comfortable. Gradually his breathing became less labored and his color returned, but he was in severe pain. It was three tense hours before we could get Grandpa down off the mountain and to a medical facility. Fortunately, he didn’t sustain any serious injuries, but it left Grandpa and us shaken, grateful, and humbled.
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