Dear Steve, Love, Grandpa Chris

Steve,
I was born in 1949, don’t remember much about that. But I grew up on the Sandhill rd. My grandfather’s farm had 100 acres there. There were about 20 acres of fruit trees along where 1640 S and 1680 S are now, also east of 400 W and south of 1640 S. There where open fields along where 1600 S. is. We sometimes grew potatoes there. There was no interstate highway and our fields on the west of the Sandhill went from about 1500 S. (where Steven’s Henegar College is now) to about 1855 S. and from the Sandhill to the canal (west union) my dad also had ground between the railroad tracks.

When I was as little as 3, I would leave the house before anyone else was up and follow the work crews around the farm. It wasn’t a normal farm. My uncle Calie grew trees; evergreens, shade trees and many, many fruit trees. Utah valley used to be a big fruit growing area and most of the fruit trees were grown right there on the Sandhill rd. My dad grew potatoes, pop corn and grain. When I was your age I would milk the cow by hand before I went to school in the morning and change or move the water on the potatoes as soon as I got home from school. My dad did the water in the morning and sometimes I did it in the night with a flash light.

My dad had a potato chip factory and my jobs when I was your age were popping corn and printing labels. We had an old letter press and I printed labels for popcorn bags and big chip bags 1 ½ and 2 lbs. I sometimes ran the bagger but my sister, Marian, usually did that because she was so good at it and fast, but I would adjust the auto scale on it and run the sealer. When I was about your age I started helping my dad boil and clean the chip cooker. I liked that job because it was just me and my dad. One time we got a lot of water in some electrical boxes and things started blowing up all around my dad. At first I was scared, but then I remembered where to turn off the power so I ran and climbed up on the boiler and hit a great big fuse box that killed the power to the pump and stuff that was throwing sparks. My dad was really proud of me.

I went to Westmore School. The Sandhill was gravel then and we rode a bus, but in good weather I would walk home. I would walk south on main street with my friends to what is now hidden hollow drive. It was the Orem railroad tracks then. Then I’d go down the tracks to 1600 S. and then west on 1600 until it dead ended at a driveway but I went straight down the drive and it dead ended at my grand fathers farm. In the fourth grade, in the spring, we all went to the state capital. I saw the race car the Mormon Meteor (Check it out on u-tube). I had got a little camera for Christmas and had a little darkroom set up. When I went back to school the next day with my pictures, almost no one believed I did it my self. Oh I forgot in the fourth grade I had some roller skates (the kind that clamp to your shoes with a key) and I would skate on Main street on the way home. There wasn’t a side walk but the street was really new black top and there was a walk way painted on the west side.

My dad made most of the machinery for the Potato chip factory. When I was about 9, he didn’t have a truck big enough to haul the steel he needed so he took the international H tractor with a trailer behind to Mountain States Steel at 325 S Geneva Rd. I got to go and watch them sheer the steel to the right size. Some guy got up set because a kid was in the work area where things went “boom-bang” but my dad helped him to understand that Mountain States Steel was not the only place to buy steel. At the time that old tractor had a dead battery. It had a shaft that stuck out the front for a crank but no crank. My dad would start it with a pipe wrench. When I was older I could start it with a pipe wrench, but it was easier to fix the battery. Most of our neighbors thought we were rolling in the money because we had our own business but I don’t think my dad had the money for a tractor battery.

When is was about 8 the railroad replaced all of It’s ties. Some of the neighbor kids and my oldest brother, Jay, got a bunch of the old ties and made rafts out of them on the canal. We had a ball that summer with our own private navy on the west union canal. It seems like my parents decided that this was too dangerous an activity so I was given the privilege of delivering potato chips with my dad. This was so they would know where I was and what I was doing, but it was actually fun because I was with my dad in a grownup world.

It has been fun to think of this old stuff. I’ll need to do more later.
Love Grandpa Chris ;o)

Grandpa Jeppesen wrote this for Steve when Steve was working on a scout project.