Will-Power on the Road

This will do it for now for Nannie and her hoots. I'll resurrect her later, though, when I need her voice to narrate.
Here are some final thoughts at this juncture.

August 10, 1966

Dear Sarah,
…I consider my own survival one of God’s own miracles…When I was dying in 1948, Fred’s wife, Steele, said I must use will power. She little knew that I had been living by it since I was 17. Papa was stricken then. That night I analyzed will power to my own satisfaction. It is God’s will with our cooperation. Months later, a Negro maid who worked in the hospital while I was there met me on the street and exclaimed, “Nobody expected you to leave the hospital except in a box!” I fooled them again just last September. My great regret is that I am so weak that I can’t fulfill some family business instead of having to perform the routine duties of caring for an old woman. Most of my contemporary friends are mentally hazy so intend to form a club called the Doddering Dames so I am ready to join the Doddering Dames. The girls who forget their best friends’ names…
Always devotedly,
Mattie
_________________________________________________________

Nov. 2, 1966

Dear Sarah.
If I had given way to one of the habits of my early childhood, I would have yelled bloody murder when you and Bill drove off without me. Pa(Gov. Porter), Mamie, and Porter called my bluff one summer afternoon when they rode to the woods on horseback and left me squalling by the back porch in Paris (Tennessee), where Ma(Susanna Dunlap Porter) was sitting. As soon as the riders were out of earshot, Ma handed me a hearthbroom and said “Here, Mattie, sweep the brick wall.” Mattie obeyed like a lamb apropos of youth.

Please tell Bill that the animal he flushed under the dining table when you were leaving here was my pet weasel (alias Charlie). At the end of the day, he slips into my apartment and surprises me, so I give a loud cackle like a nervous hen…

The grandchildren here call me Nannie so I told George, Jr. that I would name my apartment, “Hootenannie Hall”. He advised against it because of the wild parties I’d have…
Dearest love,
Mattie

She was a hoot, in her own way. And she was wise, in that same indigenous manner. There are other things that she was also, but those things for now will remain under cover.  I'm only ending Nannie for now. Believe me, she had much more to say in the lives of those I am about to introduce.