Orvil and Maxine Davis

My aunts are putting together this book to give my Grandma. I've been putting off the requested materials for several months now. This weekend I finally sent the family picture, I helped my son put together the family group sheet, and last night I wrote down some of my memories of them. Afterwards, I thought that it would be a good thing to post here. So.....

Being the oldest grandson of Orvil and Maxine Davis, I have close to 39 years of fond memories of my grandparents. More importantly, besides the memories I have lots of life's lessons that I an attribute to both of them.

Since for the first several year of my life, my family lived in Southern California. I remember any visits from Grandma and Grandpa for birthdays, baptisms and blessings. When they weren't coming down to visit we would be traveling to Utah to visit them.

Christmas time was especially memorable. Everything about their home spoke of Christmas time. The window paintings, the gingerbread houses, and all of the other decorations. Of course there was always the tradition of doing the nativity scene in Grandma's living room.

One of my most memorable visits is when I got to spend a few weeks one summer at Grandma and Grandpa's home. I think I was probably 9 or 10 and it was such a memorable time. I spent many hours irrigating the pasture and yard with Grandpa. The big black boots barely stayed on. I was fascinated how this whole irrigating thing worked. I can really say that to some extent, those days spent with Grandpa created that desire to become and engineer (a water engineer no less). It wasn't easy (irrigating) and I learned to work hard. Pulling the pipe around, hooking things up, and moving the boards ONLY when Grandpa said it was time. Grandpa taught me the value of work.

Besides playing in the water, I also had "fun" weeding the garden, picking fruit, snipping beans, and canning everything you could think of. I am just amazed at how much we did and how much we could accomplish when we all worked together. It is just something my children will never know or understand. Today seems so far distant from those days of canning and bottling.

Grandpa is THE person that taught me how to milk a cow, how to feed the farm animals, and what it meant to have a farm. No one else taught me that.

Grandma did her share of teaching too. From her I learned how to make yummy bread, yummy strawberry jam, and of course the best homemade ice cream. Like I said before, it just seems so far in the past the days of skimming the cream off the gallon jars of milk (that you helped milk earlier in the day).

Another fond memory that I have of my Grandpa is that every time we visited, he would give me and my sister some kind of notebook. You know those red spelling tablets or maybe one of those green stenographer books. My grandparents always wanted us to study hard and learn and do our best. I bet Grandpa handed out hundreds if not thousands of those spelling tablets. I loved the cool unit conversions and facts that the tablets had on the backs of them.

Family was always so important to Grandma and Grandpa. We got together often. Birthdays, Easter, Memorial Day, 4th of July, 24th of July, and of course Thanksgiving and Christmas.
I learned the tradition of visiting the graves on Memorial Day of all of these relatives (many of whom I had never met). Grandpa and Grandma would tell stories about these people because they thought it was important that we knew about it. That had an impact on my life and now I continue that with my own family and tell stories to my children about my relatives that have passed on. Get togethers weren't just limited to just cousins, aunts and uncles. At least twice a year we would get together with Grandpa and Grandma's extended family. This usually was on the morning of the 24th of July (up at Canyon Glen park for breakfast) and then on the 26th of December at some school. Grandma and Grandpa taught me the importance of family and remembering our ancestors.

Another fond memory that I had with Grandma and Grandpa is spending the week of the 4th of July down at Clear Creek. Last year I had the opportunity to spend a couple of days at the same Alpine School District with my son, Jake. Boy, a flood of memories came back. Each family would stay in a cabin. I usually got to bring a friend. There were games, lots of crafts (like shrinky-dinks) and of course the campfires and weenie roasts. None of this wouldn't have happened without Grandpa and Grandma. After several years of going to Clear Creek we started going up above Heber City. This was more of the camping experience and there were lots of fond memories those years as well. When I close me eyes I can easily picture everyone gathered around Grandpa and Grandma with everyone wearing their Camp Davis t-shirt.

The last memory that I wanted to recount (I think I have gone on long enough) is the famous Easter tree story. One Easter weekend, we had gone up to the foothills about Grandpa's house for a weenie roast. After eating and playing around in the hills, the teenagers wanted to go back to the house. So we walked down the hill. On the way, we found an old dried up Christmas tree someone had dumped in the fields. I got the great idea of taking it to the house. I thought it would be so funny to put the tree up in Grandma's living room and decorate it. So we did. It became a lovely Easter tree. Imagine Grandma's face when she returned to see this dried up tree in her living room. We laughed so hard and we will always remember that Easter. I do not believe there has ever been such a tree. There were probably many other pranks pulled over the years but I will always remember that one.

Grandpa and Grandma, I love you and I'm grateful for all that you have taught me.

Jeff