Dear Boo and Bubble,
As you know from the earlier Blog “Alan Shepherd,” your
great, great, great grandmother Mattie lived in an apartment in the basement of
3 Lakecrest from the time we moved there until she began the downward slide of
dementia that required moving her to a nursing home. At the time, she worked as the Greenville
office manager and personal secretary for Congressman Robert T. Ashmore, a job
she began while he was a lawyer and continued through his political climb from
county prosecutor to Congress.
Mattie didn’t drive.
Not many women did in her generation.
In fact, cars were luxuries for most families at that time, reserved for
those who could afford them. When she
came to live with us, Dad carried her to work in the mornings and picked her up
in the afternoons. Her office was in the
main post office where the Congressman had his headquarters. She depended on others for grocery shopping,
getting to church, and other various errands.
When she retired, this all changed. Perhaps out of sheer boredom or innate
restlessness or a streak of independence that bristled at reliance on others
for something she could do herself, Mattie decided that she would learn to
drive. The decision provided plenty of
family consternation because she was in her seventies. No amount of logic, cajoling or promises to
get her wherever she wanted to go whenever she wanted to go there came even
close to making a dent in her resolve.
She was going to drive.
In typical Mattie fashion, she determined that the first
logical order of business was to buy the car.
That way she could practice driving with it which would prepare her to
take the license test. Never mind that
the law dictated a vice-versa. It made
perfect sense to her and if she, heaven forbid, were stopped for driving
without a license, all she would have to do is explain it thus.
In her search for an automobile, she exhibited the same
stubborn self-reliance. Neither
Granddaddy Schaefer nor her trusted brother Gene were consulted and when she
came home driving the 1959 red and white Plymouth with sleek fins, pushbutton
transmission and no power steering, we all suspected that some wily dealer had
pawned it off on her because she didn’t know any better. It was quite literally a tank.
She proudly barreled into the driveway that day and parked
the mobile monster behind our house at the bottom of the hill in the back, just
in front of the entrance to her apartment.
When he saw it, Granddaddy stared with incredulity. Nothing he could do, though…the cash had
transferred along with the title.
The next morning, we sat at the picnic table in the kitchen
eating breakfast. From outside, we could
hear Mattie getting into her new car and turn on the ignition. Granddaddy Schaefer almost spewed his coffee
as he cringed with fear at the thought of her getting out on the street.
“Hummmm, hummmm, hummmm” went the engine. Then “VROOOOOM!”
He bolted upright to look out the sink window. “My Lord…she’s going to run into the woods!” he
screamed. But the car sat in its spot at
her door.
“Hummmm, hummm, hummmm”
the engine idled again. “VROOOOM!”
Granddaddy sat back down at the table. “I have no clue what she’s doing,” he mumbled
to us as he resumed with his coffee.
In a few minutes, the engine noise subsided completely and
we heard Mattie shut the car door. Shortly
afterwards, the clunking sound of feet on the basement steps signaled that she
was on her way upstairs. The door opened
across the hall from the kitchen. There
she stood, a look of agitation on her face with a slight bit of chagrin.
“Schaefer, I think I’m going to have to take that car back.”
“Why, mom?” he responded.
“It sounds like it’s running fine to me.”
“Well, my neutral won’t work.”
I thought Granddaddy would now choke on his coffee. (It hadn’t
been a good morning for the beverage.)
He began to chuckle. “Well,
mom, what do you think your neutral is supposed to do?”
“I don’t know, Schaefer, but it won’t work and I think I
should take the car back and demand that they fix it!”
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