Grandmother to Keith M. Chandler
Partial Life History in Her Own Words
My parents, William Bailey Taylor and Nora Matilda Allred were married (a civil marriage) in Arizona on February 20, 1917. On June 27, 1917 their marriage was solemnized in the Logan Temple. The following February 19, 1918 my brother, Howard, was born. The following year on May 16, 1919 I was born in York, Arizona. Of course, I don’t remember, but Dad told us when we were about two and three we were playing over in the school grounds swinging with children older than we were, when one of the older boys pushed Howard from the top of a slide. He hit on his head. I came leading him home. His face and head looked like it was beaten to a pulp! They rushed him to the nearest town to the doctor there.
Another story Dad told me was he had just bought me some new black shoes. He put them on me and I went out to play with the other kids. I came home without them—bare-footed. When they asked me where my shoes were I couldn’t tell them. After looking all over with no results, they bought me some more shoes. The following year someone found them neatly wrapped up in newspaper in an outside toilet. By that time I had outgrown them.
We both had Whooping Cough, turning black from coughing and choking.
When I was two, the influenza and pneumonia epidemic hit the country. My Dad came home with it and had to go to bed. Then us kids came down with it and when Mom got it, Dad had to get out of bed, half sick, and take over. He said Mom died of influenza, pneumonia – and meningitis in March 1922. I about died too.
I never did know my mother. Howard was four and he could remember her well.
We left Arizona soon after that. I don’t remember getting on the train in Arizona but remember getting off it in Colorado. Dad’s oldest sister, Nancy White, lived there (Sanford Colorado), San Louis Valley. We lived there until the following March. All their children were grown except two, Dola and Almie. They were in the elementary school—don’t remember what grades they were in. While there I remember my cousin Ella was so good to us. When she made cookies, she would gather us around her, give each some dough to play with. Then as the pans of cookies came out of the oven, she’d put us out a glass of milk and let us eat all we could. Then she’d proceed to fill the cookie jars. They were really good to us!
I remember once when we were playing in the yard next to us, no one lived there but there were large white boxes. I was curious and thought they were bird boxes. The kids didn’t tell me any different, but I soon found out! The bees came out and being the youngest, I was too slow getting away and I got stung all over, even in my mouth. They said I looked like a bulldog! They owned a ranch with chickens, turkeys, cows, dogs, cats, etc.
We left Colorado in the early spring and came to Logan, Utah to Grandma Taylor’s. It was on the island, on Crocket Avenue on the east side of the street. This was the Eighth Ward, I believe. We were there two months or more, then we moved up to Lewiston where Aunt Dean and Aunt Cora lived. We lived in a little white house close to the chapel.
After a short time we moved back to Logan on the same avenue only across the street from where we had been. There were fruit trees around a little white house sitting back off the street. The house is still there (1977) the sheds are still there too. The bishop was across the street and his name was Bishop Peterson.
My best girlfriend was Leora Naylor. She lived next door.
Grandma used to send us up the trail to the college (Utah State University was a college then) with a little tin bucket after buttermilk. They had just a small college in those days—just a building or two and the barns where the cows were—there was also a small museum which was a delightful place to visit.
The Church we went to is [now] a wedding chapel (Colonial Mansion) remodeled with the most beautiful natural landscaping—river running through the grounds. I don’t believe I have ever seen any place more beautiful! (1977)
At this time Dad was working in the mines in Park City.
My grandmother was an angel. I’ll never be the grandmother to my grandchildren that she was to me! So loving and kind and patient! We three would go to Salt Lake, then when we got home, she always had a glass of orange punch and a dish of custard.
I remember when my Dad had his teeth pulled. He had teeth that stuck out so far he couldn’t get his mouth shut. Anyhow, I looked at him and said, “You don’t even look like my Daddy.” He and Uncle Rone (his brother) were sitting out under the trees—whittling on sticks, making whistles for us.
One day when Aunt Dora was there with her three youngest kids my cousin Don was sitting on the cellar door (underground cellar). Don was a year younger than me. I was 5 by then. He was singing to the top of his voice—all cuss words.
Dad took Dean and Don, Howard and I to the circus—where the Central Park is now--that’s where the tents were all set up. They used to have a big parade down Main Street. Elephants, would lead. They were huge—Jumbo was the name of the largest—then would come the cages with tigers, lions, etc., little horses too. Man that would eat fire… one that would eat glass too. Midgets and the tallest man in the world (so they advertised). Oh what a thrill!
My Grandmother passed away February 6, 1926.
From there I went to Salt Lake to live with Aunt Louise and Uncle Steve. She was a Temple worker. So when she’d go to the temple, I would go with her and stay in the nursery and help with the babies and little ones—until they had to get ready to go be sealed to their parents. I would help get them ready.
Uncle Steve was a night watchman for the street cars (at the Barn). Aunt Louise would sometimes take me on the street cars clear to the end of the line and we would wait for Uncle Steve to get off work. Then go home with him. That’s where “Trolley Square” is now.
I remember we used to walk under the Eagle Gate to get to town and back.
[On] April 1 Aunt Louise made me a small “apple pie” and it wasn’t apple. It had cotton in it. Howard was with Aunt Dora then. When spring came he came to live with us. I had my 7th birthday there. Then we all moved up to Park Valley for three months. I really enjoyed it up there. I remember Aunt Louise fixing a lunch for Uncle Steve and getting the buggy ready, we’d go there. Uncle was working. He farmed and ran a cattle ranch. He was always fixing fences and we had a dog that would bring the cows home. I still have fond memories while there.
In the fall Dad came to get us. We rode the train back to Mapleton to Aunt Maud’s for school. Howard was in the 3rd grade by then and I was in the 2nd.
Sometime between Thanksgiving and Christmas we both got the measles.
Howard never did go back to school. Dad took him home to Park City. There he couldn’t seen to get well enough to go back to school.
The next summer Dad and Uncle Rone got us and we moved back to Logan. We lived on 4th North, between 2nd and 3rd East.
I was baptized in the Logan Temple.
I remember one of the neighbors had raspberries that had to be picked, so he hired several older kids to pick and I went along with them. I ate more than I could pick, so after the first day they fired me and also two of the other kids that were my age.
I just loved to go to Sunday School and Primary every place I lived, so I had a good bringing up.
That fall I went to live with Dad’s Aunt Dean Ross. She was raising her granddaughter, Zelma Ross—She had been a twin, and her twin and mother had died at her birth.
We had such good times together. I was a year older than her. She was in the 2nd grade and I was in the 3rd. (Dad had Howard with him in Park City.)
I remember seeing my Dad walking down the street. He was so handsome and he walked so straight, broad shoulders—looked like a military man. After he had his teeth out, so he could shut his moth, he was the “man of my dreams!”
My Uncle George Ross had a big apple orchard in North Logan. When it came time to pick the apples, he and his son, Marcel, would hitch the horses to a wagon early in the morning. Aunt Dean would fry chicken, etc. and we’d have a picnic while we played and ate apples, [while] the rest picked. I don’t remember how many bushel apples they picked, but it must have been a huge amount.
We would play house—always sewing for tiny celluloid dolls, piecing on apples and tomatoes or green peas, carrots and turnips, etc. That’s where I got sickened on green peas. They must have been too old, and I ate too many.
We used to be on our bellies across the bridge on the ditch across the road and watch the water skeeters swim around on the water.
I remember there were neighbor kids we played with sometimes. This time we were playing Hide and Seek. As I ran around the house, I grabbed a weed that had a bee on it and I got stung! Aunt Dean got some mud from the ditch bank and made a p____ out of it—my hand healed right up.
I know it was while I lived there, we took Easter eggs up to the University and rolled them down the hill.
That fall around Thanksgiving the schools all closed down – Smallpox epidemic hit. We all had to go to town for inoculation shots. I had been exposed in school so the shot didn’t do me a bit of good. I came down with them – but wasn’t sick at all. When I would itch, Zelma would play on the mouth organ to keep me from scratching. I’d dance around.
Zelma didn’t come down with them until I was nearly over them. Then she took sick and nearly died before she broke out.
To keep me from missing too much school, Aunt Dean fumigated all my clothes and scrubbed me with a disinfectant soap. She sent me to live with her son, Rulon Rose’s wife’s mother, Mrs. Green in the 11th Ward. She was a widow with five children, Chloe who was married to Rulon, Nathan, Rulon Green, Lula and Zenda. Zenda was the youngest and she was in junior high. Mrs. Green took in little ones in the daytime, ran a nursery with about four or five.
I remember tending Chloe’s children one night. She had gone over to her mother’s (right next door). I didn’t know what was the matter. She was crying. Rulon was out to teacher’s institute. The next morning I went back over to Greens. There was a funny smell in the house and the Doctor had brought Chloe a new baby in his little black bag. I was nine then!
Rulon was one of the lucky ones. He had a new ’28 Ford. When we’d go fishing, I knew it was because they needed someone to keep the children out of the river [why they took me with them]. We always went up Logan Canyon clear to the top somewhere.
I remember the third grade at the Woodruff School. That year there was lots of sickness, when the teacher tried to put on “Old Mother Goose” the cast that was picked – one by one—had to drop out. I was “Mary, Mary Quite Contrary.” I had quite a part to learn. I didn’t get sick. We had the cutest costumes. [We} had a lot of fun that year.
In the fourth grade my best friend was Ethel Hodges. She was a grade ahead of me. They were well-to-do—her parents had a beautiful brick home—they had a car. They even had a radio! I loved to go over to her place and play! Her big sister’s name was Fannie Kay. She also had a brother, Dale Mayne.
That year I took piano lessons from Lucy Shaw. That’s how my Dad met my step-mother, Martha Lily Shaw—Lucy’s sister. Dad was 39 or 40 and she was 34 and never been married before. They were married in the Logan Temple in April, 1929.
That year the 4th grade got to visit the fire department. They let us slide down the pole, the one the firemen slid down when there was a fire. The firemen slept upstairs, when the alarm went off, announcing the fire, the men would jump into their clothes and slide down the pole. The fire house was on Logan Main Street until 1973 and then there was one built on 2nd North (between Main Street and 1st East).
We also got to visit the flour mill, which is still there.
In the 11th Ward [we] went to our meetings in the bottom part of the Tabernacle.
We also learned to dance the “Minuet” a dance that the society danced back in Washington’s days. We had beautiful costumes and the boys had powdered wigs.
That spring we had the braiding of the Maypole and had the most beautiful paper dresses. Part of us looked like daffodils and part like tulips. I was a tulip.
I came home from school one day. No one was home. There sat a dish with beautiful red berries in it. I took a big mouthful and thought I was poisoned. It was cranberries with no sugar on them!
Mrs. Green made the best ice cream I have ever tasted! She had a cow and used real cream. Every Sunday after going to Sunday School she would have it all fixed so we could each take a turn at freezing it—hand turned—with ice and salt packed in real tight. Boy, it was well worth the work of turning the freezer!
After school was out we moved into Mom’s Sister, Mary’s house in the 7th Ward. I had a darling little cat and for three months had lots of fun keeping contact with my friends I had gone to school with. Dad did Temple work all this time.
When fall came, we moved to park City. There being a few days late in getting into school, I started the 5th grade at the Washington School. There were too many students for me to go to the Jefferson, which was just two blocks away. The Washington was 7 short blocks away.
Nothing special happened for the next 2 years that was worth remembering. I guess.
When I was in the 7th grade, one of my best friends was Dora Fraughton. She had broken appendix later on and died. We girls who had been her friends were pallbearers. I really did miss her, she had had about the same kind of life I had. Mother had died when she was a baby. She had three older brothers and her Dad and Uncle all lived together. She was a year older than me. She played the steel guitar and sang, [she] composed some songs too.
My Uncle, Dad, and Mom, Howard and I all lived together. Mom and I got along fine, but she and Howard had personality conflicts. Dad worked as long as he could crawl up the steps (they both were miners). Dad got arthritis and was in the chair for years and years. Twenty years before he died on September 14, 1950.
I really thought at last we were a family—though Mom was real good to me, she really didn’t know how to be a mother. There was never any affection shown between Dad and her. She didn’t actually know how to show love to anyone. Not that I blame her—Dad was the same. We weren’t shown any more love than if we’d just been staying there. No putting their arms around us and letting anyone know we were special. So, I lived with no more security then I’d had living with the other people I’d lived with. How I longed for someone to tell me I was someone special in their lives! I know she thought she was being good to me by letting me run and play when I should have been in helping her—learning how to do things.
The kids in the neighborhood used to play “Kick the Can” and “Pick up Sticks,” etc. All ages played together. We climbed choke cherry trees and ate the choke cherries. The happiest time was when Mom would go with me to pick Columbines, way up high in the late spring. Her birthday was June 20 when they were blossoming the best. When she wasn’t able to go with us anymore, we’d go bring her some. She would be so pleased. I did want so much to please her the first two years. After that when I knew she really needed my love and companionship (by then Dad was in the chair, crippled up with arthritis) From then on, she really didn’t have any close friends. She was always very hard to get acquainted with. Everyone in the neighborhood was so nice but she wouldn’t go to church anymore, not even with me begging her. She felt her place was home with Dad.
When I was in anything, I never was like other kids, proud to perform for my parents. I really missed that until I finally didn’t think too much about it as I got older.
I never had a home where I could bring my friends. I can see now that it was the best my folks could do, but I began to resent it and I no longer cared. I realize now that after she had Darlene (Dolly) and Earl, that she wasn’t any different with them than she’d been with me! She really didn’t know how!
The summer I was 15 I went over to Kamas to Aunt Dora’s for a month. Dolly was born in April that year and instead of staying home and helping, Dad let me go. I never had so much fun in my life! Dean and I went to the dances up at KillCare[?] I got a look at how much I had been cheated out of… Dad sat all day long and could imagine all kinds of things gong on (overly protective – I had to lie to get out). I knew what I was doing and couldn’t see why he didn’t trust me. So, I’d lie and say I was going some place else… then not go there at all. So I really enjoyed it in Kamas. Dean was three years older than me and I know at 15 I was seeing the other side of living too young for my own good, but there was no stopping me after that.
The next summer I was 16 and couldn’t wait ‘til I got over there! I was just out of my sophomore year and had really began to show resentment at home. The only way I ever got out was to lie and this began to get easier all the time. Over at Aunt Dora’s I didn’t have to lie. She trusted me!
The ________ dance I went with Florence Martin – she and I had been friends since the 7th grade. I’d heard a lot about George Ross (even then the name sounded so familiar to me), so when he asked for a dance, I was thrilled to death! I’d been dancing with some of the boys my age…he was three years older than me, so I felt like I’d hit the “jackpot.” My Dad didn’t take to him at all, so I had to lie to go out with him. We had a fight, so when summer came and I went to Kamas. While there, I went out with several boys that I liked but I really fell for Bus Pitt! He wasn’t too good looking and he had a short leg—limped when he walked—but he was a real gentleman and was always so courteous, so respectful, etc. We would go horseback riding, I’d go with him to milk—then go to the show or to the dance, etc.
I loved Aunt Dora’s house. They didn’t have electricity—fuel gas or coal oil lamps, coal cook stove—so old-fashioned and homey. That was during the 30’s (depression). No electricity went that far out of town.
I hated that summer to end.
I started the junior grade that fall and Bus went out to the BYU. I really looked forward to his letters and would answer right back. The letters became fewer and fewer, though I knew he had to get an education to prepare him for some kind of work he could do in the future. He’d had polio, I believe, when he was younger—which left him with a limp.
I was just like the girls today. I thought I new everything—couldn’t be told anything at all. I went to the football games and basketball games and school dances, Church dances, with different boys, then finally I began going with Goerge Ross (when I could get out). My junior prom I went with George. He was so handsome and the girls were all crazy about him. I must have been in “love with love.”
Anyhow, we ran away and got married April 14, 1936, just before my junior year was over. We were married in Heber City, Wasatch County. “Marry in haste and regret in leisure!” The heartache I put my folks through—‘til my dying day I’ll never forget the way my Dad looked!
I told my kids that if I ever caught any of them lying to me, that would be the end of my trust in them. If I hadn’t more or less been forced to lie in order to get out, I hurt so many people by lying. I can look back and shudder when I think how I had to lie instead of trying to talk things over so we’d be able to understand each other!
The only thing I got out of this union was seven wonderful children and 35 years of unhappiness for both George and myself.
Carolyn was born January 26, 1937. Such a darling baby. Neither one of us were old enough to really know the seriousness of having a family! I had been looking for love and security. I never was made to feel like I was special in any way. I don’t believe George knew how to give me what I longed for most!
We were living in Park City when Carolyn was born. We had lived in four different places by that time. Dr. Goodwin was the doctor and Hattie Barns was the woman who took care of me. We were living in an upstairs apartment above them. George had worked as a delivery man. He played once a week at the dances too—both the guitar and trombone.
That spring we moved up on the railroad in Echo Canyon—up to Castle Rock—in the fall we moved back down the canyon to Echo, the homes we lived in were wood floors and rafters for the ceilings. We had to carry water from a nearby pump. We had a little coal stove (our rent was free and our coal was free). George was a section head worker laying ties – 6 days a week – getting a paycheck of $42.50 a month (that was when a dollar was a dollar).
I didn’t know how we ever kept warm or even existed!
Gib was born on July 8, 1938. His doctor was Dr. Oldham. I expected him the last of May, but he didn’t get here until the 8th of July. I had quite a time having him! The doctor said if he hadn’t come when he did, I’d have had to go to Ogden, to the nearest hospital. There wasn’t any closer at that time.
We had our first car while we lived there, ’29 Ford Coupe. George’s mother came and stayed four weeks before Gib was born. I didn’t want her to, we had already hired a woman close by, but Mr. Ross was in Wendover working and Elaine, George’s younger sister, was in American Fork picking fruit so she didn’t want to stay alone, so George brought her home to take care of me. I had been raised to always be respectful to older people—so no matter what she said, I didn’t dare talk back!
There was washing on the board to do nearly every day—bread to mix and bake. I know I was just as relieved as she was when she left. I was told to stay in bed for two weeks, but after a week she was more than ready to leave. We paid her what we would have paid the other lady.
I went to Church with Carolyn and Gib and George would take us and come and get us. I was very surprised with the people—mostly converts.
That fall George got bumped out of his job. We moved back to Park City, up Empire Canyon. We had lived a short time in Castle Rock and Emery, then Echo and Hennifer before moving back to Park City. We lived there a few months, then Mar and George and Keith Kummer decided to go to California and apply for work at Douglas Aircraft… then send for their wives. That was a year before Pearl Harbor—December 7. We had lived in three places, Venice, Playa Del Ray, and _________ .
I wanted so bad to stay in California and buy a home! At that time a new home with three bedrooms upstairs and a finished basement cost $2,500.00, but we were only making less than $25.00 a week and we didn’t dare gamble on a home. After that, the wages went up and up. So did everything else. We had come back to Utah to Hill Field—[George] was one of first 25 hired.
We lived in Layton then, 2 places. Carolyn was 5 by then and Gib was 4. World War II was on and they were drafting the young men all the time that weren’t in defense jobs.
From there we moved to Wanship and George rode back and forth to work.
Lucky was born August 1, 1944, in the Coalville Hospital. I have loved every one of my babies! They have all been real special. As he grew older, he was such a happy go-lucky child. His name, which his Dad insisted on giving him, really fit him!
Carolyn started the 1st Grade in Wanship. Finished the first and second grades there—Gib went to six weeks of kindergarten during the summer months, then finished the first grade.
When Lucky was four months old we moved back to Park City and bought a home on Woodside Avenue. George had quit Hill Field and decided to work in the mines in Park City.
After a few weeks, his stomach got to bothering him, so he quit and went to work on “Snow’s Ranch” at the bottom of town. That’s when he really got to playing dances! They played on the radio too. That’s when he changed his name to “Tex.” Mar was “Slim.” Melvin was “Cy” and Glen Stanley was “Kurly” (George’s brother-in-law.) That is when Archie joined the bunch.