Mama Hattie stood a scant five feet. She never learned to drive. She didn’t go to college. She stuck around the community—a cluster of houses and stores alongside a bend in the road. But she towers in my memory because of the magical summers spent with her in the north Georgia mountains.
Tag: north Georgia
Space Enough for God, Mama Hattie, and a Whale (Part One)
It’s the small things that keep a person alive. Take my grandmother, Mama Hattie. She made it to ninety-five. She was born in a wagon-and-mule era and died the day an astronaut stepped from the space shuttle to test heating devices in the toe caps of his boots.
Her obituary said she was somebody’s wife, mother, grandmother, great-grandmother, sister, and aunt. But she was so much more.
You Can’t Take the Country Boy out of the Man
Was I lucky to have a dad obsessed with transplanting north Georgia mountain tradition to Alabama soil? I didn’t think so, especially on Saturday afternoons. While the neighbors’ kids played kickball on the cul-de-sac, our family tended the crops on the utility easement. There was nothing sentimental about growing squash, zucchini, cucumbers, tomatoes, okra, corn, and beans, beans, beans—until now.