PHOTO OF BUTCH CASSIDY'S FAMILY HOME

I took this picture of the old family home on my way to Richfield the other day. Butch has become part of Southern Utah History. I took his sister, Lula Parker Bettinsen for a drive down the canyon one day when she was trying to sell some of the Parker's property in Circleville Canyon. She told stories of what she knew about Butch as she was born after he left home. At 92 she wrote the book Butch Cassidy, My Brother dictating to her granddaughter.
I wrote the following poem after reading her book.

GRANDMA PARKER

Lula, the sister of Butch,
Did what she wanted to do.
Wrote the story of LeRoy Parker
when she was 92.

Now go and read that book.
See what she had to say,
This poem is about her Granma,
The decision she made that day.

Grandma pushed a handcart
Across the lonely plain.
She pushed and pulled and tugged
Through beating sun and rain.

She crossed the many rivers
And suffered heat and cold,
She climbed the Rocky Mountains
On and On that handcart rolled.

The elders said they had made it
Would roll into Salt Lake that day.
Everything that Grandma owned
In that handcart lay.

As she pushed through Emigration Canyon
After monts on the westward road,
She suddenly couldn't take it.
She could not stand the load.

Giving a scream and a mighty shove
She pushed toward the edge
Then that handcart teetered
And she shoved it off the ledge.

All her things went flying...
The handcart broke apart.
She walked into Salt Lake City
Satisfaction in her heart.