She would tell you like it is. She went out dancing on Friday nights until just a few years ago. She always looked beautiful, in well put-together outfits she usually either had made herself or gotten at Belk.
She had a magical way of making everyone around her feel light-hearted and joyous.
She also lived to be 100, living in her own home on her own terms.
A big part of her terms was mowing her lawn so that it would look just so. She loved to mow so much, she’d tell you, that the night before a mowing day she just couldn’t hardly sleep because she was so excited.
A few years ago, her doctor told her that she shouldn’t be on that riding mower anymore. Her solution: She’d hurry up and mow before her daughter LuAnn came over and could stop her. She’d tell me with a conspiratorial grin that LuAnn said she’d be coming in the afternoon, so she got out there in the morning.
My solution: I’d sit by the window or in the outdoor sitting area in full view of most of her yard, just to be around in case anything happened. Fortunately, this was during the pandemic when I could work from home. Once we were back to the office, when I knew or suspected she was planning to mow, I’d just call in to work and say, “My neighbor’s mowing again,” and stay home until she was finished and safely back in the house.
In the beginning I used to tell on her: I’d text LuAnn, tell her that her mother was mowing, but that I was watching. As time went on it just became routine, and I stopped snitching. She was always fine.
Nellie Hundley married Bob Minter after he returned from World War II. They built a sturdy one-story brick house right next to the two-story farmhouse where Bob grew up, and there she remained.
Nellie Minter was a lot of things to a lot of people – mother, granny, church volunteer, dancer, seamstress, friend.
To us, she was a neighbor – a neighbor who was more like a grandmother and a beloved friend.
We were allies, side by side. If one of us needed something, she’d go to the other for help. My daughter went over to Mrs. Minter’s if I wasn’t home and she had forgotten her key after school, or it was storming and she was scared. I changed Mrs. Minter’s light bulbs and hung her new curtains.
When I had electricity disconnected from our home for a few days – which meant no water, because we are on a well – I took my showers at her house, and there I filled 5-gallon buckets of water to haul to my house for other uses. I went in and out of her house to use water as comfortably and genially as if she were my own mother.
She was unendingly generous and friendly.
Every evening in good weather, she’d be sitting in a rocking chair on her front porch, with another chair or two beside her. If there wasn’t someone sitting beside her to visit, she’d be on the phone chatting with a friend or relative.
Her pleasant life showed the value and enjoyment of older ways that are being forgotten – porch visits, pinto beans with chow-chow accompanied by cornbread cooked stovetop in an iron skillet (usually with some to send home to us, or invite us in to share), going to church on Sunday and back again Monday to count the money, getting her hair done at 10 a.m. each Friday.
She also delved into the new. Her grandkids got her a smartphone and she had one heck of a time getting used to it. In the beginning, she’d call my daughter or me over (using the house phone, of course, or hollering from the porch) to ask for help. The craziest things would happen: The colors would be inverted (what should be green was orange; what should be orange was green); the volume was off; the buttons wouldn’t work; some sort of voice control was on, and the phone was constantly talking to her. “That woman worries the shit out of me!” Mrs. Minter exclaimed, gesturing angrily at her phone.
Even though she was 100 years old, it does not seem possible she is gone. She left this world peacefully on Tuesday, surrounded by her loving family.
Later Tuesday, B.L. Ratliff, who lived on the other side of her, stopped by.
They had been neighbors since he was born. He had never known life without her. In recent years he’s been bringing his grandchildren over to see her.
Quietly and mournfully, we looked at her house.
How can the world continue to go on without Mrs. Minter? How can that wide expanse of grass between our houses continue to be getting greener and greener and taller and taller every day?
Yet, somehow, oblivious to how the world has been turned upside down, it does.
