Evolution of Time

EVOLUTION OF TIME

March 21, 2014

My story has been a classic in my own mind and I’m sure that there’s not many things that I would change if I could. It has been filled with a variety of events all of which have been necessary to produce a quality of life and a retrospect that continues to formulate each day of my life. My earlier years were lived in extreme poverty. Looking back I consider that period of time to be a blessing.

My mother and father were kind and hardworking individuals and at the time I knew nothing of their hardship. My only remembrance was love and stability. I never realized that we were poor people. Their youth and their everyday effort to conquer their problems gave me a feeling of security. It didn’t matter to me that they actually had to walk and carry me upon their shoulders everywhere they went. I really loved the time we spent getting to our destinations. I, being the first born, enjoyed all their attention.

The stories of our virtual existence have been told many times by my parents. The actual pain of their suffrage was absorbed by them alone. I will always appreciate their sacrifice and to grow up as a child protected from the world and encouraged with lofty goals.

Since my parents lived in a rural area and away from industry, the only source of their income came from small opportunities of helping farmers with their daily chores. They became a part time fill in resource for all the farmers in the area. If someone needed to leave or go on vacation, my parents would take care of their chores until they returned. Their pay included all the milk, eggs, and vegetables they needed plus ten cents per cow that needed to be milked. Most farmers milked 8-10 cows twice a day which gave them from $1.60 to $2.00 each day. We were happy as they as they carried me on their shoulders to the next engagement.

Over the years Mom and Dad have related their stories. They were happy stories…stories of love of two people starting out in life together, doing whatever they had to do to make ends meet. I will forever be grateful for their attitude and their ability to never give up. Those two strong individuals gave me a firm foundation, the value of which cannot be estimated. I was by their sides every day. I learned how to work with them and at a very early age, I learned how to take care of our own chores as we became farmers ourselves.

At the age of 8, my parents left me and my aunt, Colleen, to milk our cows and to take care of the daily chores while they traveled to Provo Utah to pick fruit for a week. After just 4 days, my aunt became ill and had to return to her home, and I was left to do the chores by myself. Each morning I got up early and milked the cows and fed the pigs and chickens and gathered the eggs. Lucky for me, my dad had purchased electric milkers, and so the cow milking was not so labor intensive. I remember on Friday, as I was running the half mile to the bus stop, I realized I had forgotten to pick a vegetable for our school’s Autumn fair. My uncle lived on the way so I stopped in and asked Aunt Noreen if I could get a vegetable from her garden. She quickly picked me a squash and I ran on to catch the bus.

On Saturday, I got out of bed early, milked the cows, fed the pigs and chickens, fried myself 4 or 5 eggs, and then caught my horse from the pasture, and  rode five miles to my  grandparents house. I spent the day helping them  harvest their garden and waiting for Mom and Dad to return from Provo. I remember they returned home late in the afternoon with a truck load of fruit. Our joyous reunion was short lived as I was told that my father had to return to Provo that evening. He had found a full time job at the Geneva Steel mill. Since we only had one old truck, my mother and I took my father to Duchesne to catch the bus. When we arrived in Duchesne, we found that we had missed the bus. I will always remember the sadness I felt as my mother and I drove away leaving my father standing with his suitcase in the dark beside the highway. He was determined to get to his new job, hoping to catch a ride with a traveler who may be going his way. He had to hitchhike 120 miles that night.

You can see my parents faced a lot of hard times. No sacrifice was too great. They did whatever was necessary. I’m so proud of them. I couldn’t ask for any better examples to be my mentors. They never faltered and they never gave up.

Because of their hardships, they were very conservative. Their dreams were very small. They were wise at the time to hold on to every opportunity that came their way. Their lives had been filled with shortages and meager existence.

You can just imagine how my parents felt when I became old enough that I had dreams of my own. I was adventurous and at the age of nine, I was riding my horse to several sheep herds, helping the sheep herder work his sheep. In return, they saved their bum lambs for me to pick up and feed on a bottle. Bum lambs were baby lambs who were left behind by their mother. Each week I would ride the range and gather the orphan lambs that the sheep herder had saved for me. By the end of lambing season, I had gathered 32 lambs and had nurtured them on a bottle with cow’s milk.

That Fall we moved to a larger farm in Talmage where the area was more primitive. There was no electricity available and the distance to the school bus stop had increased from one half mile to two and a half miles. To catch the school bus, we had to navigate long muddy roads in extreme weather conditions. My parents accepted their hardships as just another day and kept moving on. I don’t remember any complaining. I can now see the goal and responsibility that my parents had for their children. They understood the need for us to get a good education and they battled the elements every day to make sure we had that chance.

My blessing and sense of responsibility came from standing by their sides and trying to lighten their load. It’s just assuring to know that some of our happiest days came from their struggles. In fact our ability to feel real joy comes from the firsthand experience of living through those struggles. I have no regrets.  

At this point in time, I stand at my pinnacle of life looking back at those people and applauding those early pioneers, still marveling at their strength and fortitude. We were not alone. Every family in our community lived through those trying times and became the salt of the earth. Many of them have gone now and I stand with the elders of our time hoping for the youth…hoping that their trails will be steep enough to provide a strong enough backbone to get through their tests. I hope we haven’t made it too easy. Easy spawns lazy and lazy leads to irresponsibility and decline. Eventually the foundation gives way to decay and rubble. You can see where I’m going with this. We must not let this happen.

 Thank God for hard times.

Love ya,Taylor