Laird Smith talks about his grandfather Frank Smith’s severe case of Tuberculosis that caused the doctor to move with his family to Grand Junction, Colorado. He describes the apartment next to a saloon where the family lived on Main Street, where drunken men would sometimes crawl in through the windows by mistake. He discusses his father Silmon Smith’s “spartan” upbringing, his camping alone on the Grand Mesa for long stretches when he was thirteen, and how he became an authority on water law by lawyering to ranchers. He tells stories of Frank Smith’s medical practice, including an amputation conducted with the aid of Silmon. He remembers his mother Lina (Brunner) Smith, and an incident when she threw his clothes out of the window because she tired of picking up after him. He speaks about the Pest House in Grand Junction, the standpipe at 7th Street and Ouray Avenue that delivered water, and the building of Land’s End Road. He talks about his father’s love of nature and how that love was passed onto him. The interview was conducted by the Mesa County Oral History Project, a collaboration of Mesa County Libraries and the Museums of Western Colorado.
*Photograph from 1936 Colorado College yearbook
