Wednesday, March 26, 2014

Memories in Taylorsville

The home I lived in the most while in my youth was the home in Taylorsville Utah.  Most of my memories come from this home and they are plentiful.  I want to talk a little about some of these memories.

Some of my biggest memories are digging holes and trying to make an underground castle like in Voltron.  Riding our horse and pony, playing with the goats and butting heads with them, collecting eggs from our chickens, and other experiences with our dogs, and cats and other animals.  Pole vaulting, high jumping, running track and jumping hurdles, riding skateboards, sledding down hills, and bouncing on the trampoline.  All of these are cherished memories and things I look back on with happiness and joy.

This post may not get many hits, but I want the record for my family, and for me it is nice to look back and think about this time of my life.

I will expound on a few of these memories in no order, just as they come to my mind.  I remember sledding down a pretty steep hill we used to go to in the winter since we could get some great speed on it.  The down side of this hill was that at the bottom of it was a ditch.  We had to either get enough speed to jump it, or we had to stop before we got to it or we would get soaked by the frozen water.  I remember getting soaked and having to head home freezing, because of this ditch.  The hill was still our favorite place to go sledding.  There was a little home at the top and to the left of the hill where the owners of the property lived.  I tend to remember them not really liking us being on their property to sled.  I think they were afraid we would get hurt.  I can see why they would have felt that way now that I am older.  At the time as a youth it was an annoyance to try to avoid.  It also kind of added a suspense to sledding there.

I remember we used to have our trampoline out in front of our house and we would jump off the roof and onto it and then do flips off of it onto the ground.  (Maybe I should keep these stories hidden from my children until they are older).  We would do all kinds of tricks and I think we got to where we could do doubles and other fun tricks on the trampoline, after jumping off the roof.  Well one time we got very daring and decided we were going to move it out onto the basketball court behind the house and jump off the two story house next to ours to get more height. Our babysitter decided to go first and she jumped off the roof, unfortunately she went through the trampoline and hit the pavement below.  The good news was the trampoline broke her fall before she hit the ground and she wasn't hurt.  The downside we couldn't use the trampoline for quite some time again until we could replace the mat.

Another fond memory is that there was a large field behind our house after going through our corral and jumping a fence there was a much larger field and ditch back there.  This is not the story I was going to tell, but since it is on my mind I am changing directions.  We used to play in the ditch quite often and there were a few water pipes that went underground.  I remember we used to take a big breath and then go through the water pipes until we surfaced at the other end, and could again breath.
As I look back on my childhood I am amazed I am still alive to tell these stories.  I was crazy!!! 

So to the next story, in this large field a person that lived about 8 houses down the bigger street from us was a pretty big time skateboarder (at least I thought so).  He built a half pipe behind his home in this large field and we would watch him do his tricks quite often.  I really wanted to do it and he let us on a few times, but most of the time it wasn't allowed and so we turned to other skateboarding.  We would skate down the pavement of the other side of the hill we would sled down in the winter.  We would get going pretty fast, probably 20-30 miles per hour, and our skateboards would start to wobble before got to the bottom of the hill.  One day as we were doing this I was most of the way down this hill and hit a rock and slid for quite a ways on the concrete.  My body was so ripped up from the crash that I had to wear gauze padding over most of my body for around a month if I remember right, and I don't think we ever skateboarded down the hill again after that.  We did talk about it and I even got tempted, but never did do it again.

This same hill had a very steep decline, and my father would sometimes take us off of it in the car or motorcycle at 40-50 miles per hour so we would catch air and get butterflies in our stomachs.  We would look down and see the valley below and feel like we were going to fall until we hit the street again and would slow down before the road ended down below.  I can remember a few things about this, but will simply say the memories were amazing, and I truly loved them.

Another memory I will write about is when I was breaking my horse.  We had a tree out in our field and we would sometimes climb it or swing on the branches.  In this memory those branches ended up being my enemy.  I was riding my horse and he decided he was not wanting to be ridden at this time, but I wanted to show him I was in charge and got on and rode anyway.  We went around the corral a few times and then he headed for the tree and ran right under it and ducked clipping me right off his back with one of the lower hanging branches and I ended up on the ground with the air knocked out of me.  I suppose I was lucky to not have gotten hurt more.

We used to high jump and pole vault out in our corral as well and that was where we would jump hurdles, and run. and dig holes...  One day while we were out pole vaulting I decided to raise the bar and go for a new high.  The bad thing was that we didn't have real pads behind the bar, we only had a few old mattresses, and not only did I clear the bar, but also cleared the mattresses and landed on my back on the hard ground of the corral.  I honestly thought I was going to die, I think it took me around 30-45 seconds before I could catch my breath.  To me it seemed like 5 minutes.  I had enough time to stand up once I realized what was going on, and run toward the house in pure panic.  I remember thinking I would die because I couldn't breath.  After climbing over the fence my breath finally caught and I ran to my dad sobbing.

Perhaps I will share more experiences from this time in my life in another post, but for now I need to wrap up and save them for later.

A taste of the stories are getting attacked by our billy goat, our mean rooster, preparing chickens, raising rabbits, and some memories with our dogs (dog getting pulled down the river).

Hope everyone enjoyed this post, if so let me know and I will gladly read and reply to your comments.

1 comment:

  1. I remember some of the stories you told but i also remember a little nephew of mine named Ben that Id just got back from the store and had bought 2 cartons of smokes and my sweet little nephew took both cartons and tore them up in little pieces and hid them under the couch cushions so I wouldnt find them and when i did you said it was because you didnt want them to kill me do you remember that sweetheart well i quit smoking now so you won lol

    ReplyDelete