My mother, Mamie, was courageous, beautiful, adaptive and knew how to hang on when circumstances were challenging. She grew up in the prolonged economic depression that enveloped the south after World War I, hard times that persisted until she married in 1939. But then came the war years of the forties, putting her generation’s life on hold and dominating the early years of her marriage. She was sweetness on the outside and steel on the inside. The following anecdote will demonstrate her coolness under fire. She remained vivacious and and cheerful through her 92nd birthday. She was known to her husband Hugh and to her children and grandchildren as “Baby.” Her funeral in the tiny village of Vidette, where she had attended high school, was attended by over 100 people, including her favorite teacher.

     We are traveling a red clay road in dry September. Dust roils though the car windows. We close them only to suffocate in the heat. The Henry J coup has felt seats. With every rut and bump we hit, they exhale a choking plume of dust. The car vibrates on the washboard road.

     Baby is driving slowly and carefully though the bottoms, where sand has collected – deep enough to grab and twist the front tires so that the steering wheel in Baby’s hands jerks to one side and the car leans and tilts over on its side, like a horse, lazy and slow, and we all fall to the driver’s side.

     Baby’s hands clinch the steering wheel as we look at the bare dirt road only inches from our faces through the side windows. My father is a strong man. He climbs out the window toward the sky and I follow .Together we push against the roof of the car. An old truck stops ahead. A whole family of five gets out. Dressed in bibb overalls, they stand in a row and watch our struggle in sllence.

       Leaning agaist the roof of the overturned car, my father and I push and rock the car. I am a small boy, so my effort counts for little. Miraculously, the car rights itself and bounces, stretching its legs like a horse getting up from a roll in the grass. We get in.

My mother is still griping the steering wheel, ignoring what happened. She offers no comment. The motor is still running and my father says to drive away. We pass the idle gawkers standing barefoot beside their truck. My father says, “Don’t wave at them.” He is a proud man and occasionally unforgiving.

Now, I look back at this event though the lens of decades and ask myself, “What would I do if my car turned over on a lonely dirt road?” Would it occur to me to try to right the car? What would you do? My father faced danger with a shrug. My mother just tried to hold on. It was what she had been taught by her parents and by life: to endure hard times and carry on.