Kenneth Chapman Taylor

Since the last publication of the Taylor Family History, much time has passed and we have all become older and perhaps wiser. Our children have all grown up and left the nest.

Sharon and her husband, CJ, live in West Jordan, Utah. Their children are grown.

Michael and his wife, Connie live in the Salt Lake area. They are busy furthering their educations and doing all the things necessary to become established as a family. Their daughter, Michelle and her husband, Michael Orozco, and family are living in Monrovia, California. They have given us three great grandchildren to date. Mikenzie, Jacob Thomas and Abigaile are all most wonderful and precious. Our only regret is that they live just far enough away that we do not get to see them as much as we would like.

Robert and his wife, Lorraine together with their son, Jared and daughter, Amy, live in Walnut Creek, California. Robert has opened his own accounting firm, RK Taylor and Associates and is doing what he loves. Jared and Amy are attending school.

Roger and his wife, Pat live in West Jordan, Utah. Roger is working for Auto Zone and Pat is working for the school district. We were blessed to have Pat bring two sons to our family. They two are all grown and on their own.

Pete and his wife, Lisa have two little ones, Peter Joseph and Laura Rose Nielson.

Sam has two daughters and they two live in the Salt Lake area.

In nineteen eighty-five Ken and I joined that strange, exotic, species known as “snowbirds” We started by spending the winters in our Airstream travel trailer in the Mesa, Arizona area. We bought our first travel trailer in nineteen sixty-two and owned an RV continuously until nineteen ninety-four. In the early seventies we joined the Wally Byam travel trailer club, better known as the Airstream Travel Trailer Club. We traveled many happy miles over the years. We did not go further east than Nauvoo, Illinois, but we traveled the western United States from Canada to Mexico, some parts many times. In nineteen ninety-four as we became older and health concerns began to surface, we bought a lot in an RV park in Saint George, Utah. We intended to park our Airstream here and spend the winters. Two years later we made the decision to sell our beloved home away from home and traded it for a park model trailer, which we put on the lot in Saint George. This was the year the tore up all the freeways in the Salt Lake area, which influenced out decision greatly. We decided we had better quit while we were ahead.

Now we spend our time in Saint George in the winter and Murray in the summer. We feel very blessed in our family and the blessing we have of belonging to the extended “Taylor” family.

I REMEMBER; When we lived within sight of the Manti Temple, Father rented a farm west of Manti in the year of nineteen twenty-four. It was called “Foxes farm” Father would take us out to the farm and tell us to pick some alfalfa from around the fences to take home to feed to the pigs. One afternoon I decided I wanted to go visit the Temple so I proceeded to take out hiking up the road. I had gone perhaps a half mile when I saw someone coming up the road on a horse, when he caught up to me I saw it was Father on his white riding horse “flip”. I asked him where he was going and he said he had come after me and he proceeded to lift me up on the horse with him. He said “ when I get you home I’m going to give you a good thumping”, I got to thinking about it and decided Mama would be gentler so I asked him “can we wait and let Mama do it?” Needless to say I did not get the promised “thumping”

I also remember the time Momma and Papa had gone to town and left Ray and Lillie to watch out for us. Papa had pointed out a pulley on the ridge of the barn roof that had been used to take hay off the wagon and pull the hay into the barn. Everything was now gone but the pulley and Papa made the remark that he would sure like to get that pulley down. I decided I would retrieve it for him. Of course the ridge of the barn was about thirty feet off the ground. While I was on my way to get it, Momma and Papa returned home, seeing me in danger, Papa yelled at me to get down, but I was determined to get it for him., Papa finally convinced me to get down and the last I knew anything about it the pulley was still there. This happened when I was six or seven years old.

When I was three years old my uncle James Chapman came to Clarion and spent the night with us. The next morning when I went into the kitchen there he was dismantling the kitchen stove. When I asked him what he was doing he said “hasn’t anyone told you, you are moving back to Manti?’ Which they hadn’t, this was the first I knew we were moving. We spent Christmas in Manti.

The time I went with Papa up the north fork of twelve-mile canyon to get dry poles for kindling. We proceeded to load the truck and when Papa pulled the truck out onto a steep grade and went to shift into a lower gear to slow the truck down, he could not make the truck shift. He yelled at me to jump out because he could not shift and was going to crash. Just as I opened the door to jump he was able to jam it into gear and we were on our way home, but after that Papa had me drive because I knew how to double clutch, Ray had taught me how.