THE BAG LADY AND THE SHEEPHERDER

This handsome couple (who loved each other dearly) were my grandparents. Pearl Grant and David Lee.
Pearl was actually an educated lady, she went to the Brigham Young Academy and was an elementary school teacher, in Duchesne County until she got married and started a family. David and Pearl had seven children 4 boys and 3 girls.
David had a sixty acre homestead in the Rock Creek area of Duchesne and had a sizable herd of sheep. During the mid to late 1920's David sold his homestead so he could open an auto repair business in town, with his brother. Not long after getting the business up and going the country was hit with the "great depression" and the Lees lost everything they had. David and Pearl moved into a home in Charleston, Utah in an area that is now beneath Deer Creek Reservoir. After a house fire that destroyed their home David moved his family around several times but eventually went to work for US Steel in Orem, Utah, and built a home in the river bottoms area of Provo.
I was eight years old when Grandpa died so I don't remember much about him except that he had a mop of white hair that reminded me of Mark Twain, and it seemed that he smoked a lot.
I remember visiting Grandma in her home in Provo, where she had moved the bed into the living room next to the kitchen so she would not have to heat the whole house. She was always afraid that if the house was too warm it would start on fire (in addition to house fire in Charleston Pearl had been burned badly as a child, when her dress got too close to the stove). Grandma was a bit of an eccentric artistic type. She would walk the streets of Provo gathering "stuff" that she could make crafts with. I remember her making artificial flowers out of cellophane bread wrappers (her sons refused to let her leave them on any graves at the cemetery). She once gave us grand-kids small necklaces that she had made out of old tooth brushes by cutting the handles into small squares and stringing them together. She always had coffee cans full of buttons, broken ceramics or anything else that she found interesting. Just before Grandma died she was moved into a rest home, I remember that my Dad and his sister's husband took their trucks to her house and just loaded everything she had and took it to the dump. I don't think anybody even went through anything to see if there was something of value, either monetary or sentimental. In general I think most of Grandma's family (at least her children) saw her as a bit of a kook or nut case. But I always saw something more. I was captivated by her artistic talents and her ability to see beauty in what others saw as junk.

HOW BLESSED WE ARE

In the right hand side bar of my blog you will see a "flag counter" it tracks where in the world people are located that view this blog. Recently a flag appeared for a country I have never heard of. This prompted me to learn more.
The country is in Western Africa North of Ghana, and is known as Burkina Faso.
The country has a population of just over 15 million, and is about the size of Colorado. The life expectancy for a Male in this country is 50. They have an unemployment rate of 77% and about a 20% literacy rate.
They have very little industry and almost no agriculture. Most of the working adults leave the country for seasonal work in surrounding countries.
This is the first hit on my blog from the entire Continent of Africa and it amazes me that anyone is over there setting at a computer surfing the web at all.
I am so thankful that I was born and live in the United Sates,we are so blessed, or maybe even spoiled a little. We take so much for granted about our life style and the beauty that surrounds us. The ability we have to get in a car and go. We have houses to live in and food to eat. And even those that we call poor, are better off than the people of Bukina Faso.