Family of Fred and Lydia Sheffield, with their son Loftis standing in center front. (A fifth child came along later)
It was a summer day. I remember that day well. I must have been about 12-years-old.
My mother was fixing a picnic lunch. I asked her who was going. She told me not to worry about it, and so that told me I wouldn’t be going. I liked picnics, but tried to forget about it – and I almost did.
A little while later, my father came home from work. That was unusual for him to come home in the middle of the morning.
He went out to the woodshed. That was unusual too. He returned with his axe. Now I was curious as to what was going on.
A few minutes later, he asked me to go along with him. I accepted, of course.
“We’re going up to the mountain road land,” he said. “I want to do a little chopping there.”
We drove along in the car – just the two of us out of the family of seven. I don’t remember what we talked about, but I remember I felt comfortable.
As we arrived, I opened the gate where some oak brush had been cleared away, so that he could drive in and park the car in the shade of some larger oaks.
“I want to clear some more oak-brush for wheat,” he said.
Then he went to work with the axe and chopped down several smaller oak trees. I remember helping a little, but my efforts were about a tenth as effective as his. He was strong, and in about a half-an-hour, he had cleared a little more land.
I remember that after a while, we were both pretty tired and thirsty and hungry. He brought out the picnic lunch. There was a gallon of lemonade, with delicious sandwiches, potato chips, fresh fruit, pickles, and cake. What a picnic!
Loftis in his later teens – a few years after the picnic described here
Just the two of us sat there eating away. Boy, it was good! I couldn’t believe it – just the two of us. That was all – just the two of us. I’ll never forget that picnic and how I helped him clear some land.
I loved my father then. I always did and always will.
He died about seven years later.
Some backstory about Dad’s picnic . . .
My father, Loftis J. Sheffield, was the middle child of five, and he probably wrote this simple (but tender) narrative after he had a few children of his own. The picnic happened around 1930 when Dad’s father, Frederick A. Sheffield, was about 49.
The “mountain road land” was located on the west side of what became U.S. Highway 89 in Layton, Utah, now near East Sunset Drive. The oak brush and trees described must be scrub oak (also known as Gambel oak) that grows in shrub and small-tree thickets in the foothills and lower-mountain elevations throughout the Mountain West.
– Richard Sheffield
Below: The first page of Dad’s typed version of the story, with his penned edits
Do you fondly remember a one-on-one time with your mother or father? Or with your child?
Why was it memorable?
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