Her yard was immaculate. Her grass never looked as though it needed to be cut but it was cut at least twice a week with a push mower. The marvel of her pushing the push mower up the ditch bank with one arm seemed bionic. Her riding a mower seemed to be a natural progression of her getting older. Until she let it slip one day on the phone with grandma that she had seen me cut with a riding mower and thought “if that little girl can do it so can I!”
Her and Sarah Mae often talked on the phone and shared as neighbors do. Most of the time she would stop by with her cane while she was walking for “exercise”, down to Jesse’s; leaving with “well I will get on back down the road!”
In Sarah Mae’s eyes, Hazel Bass was “one smart lady” cause she could do anything she wanted.
As Sarah Mae started to decline she called several times to check on her and sometimes talked to her or a caregiver. The last time they talked on the phone, grandma was already in the hospice bed. I was there and when they hung up Grandma said, “Hazel has been a good neighbor to me all these years.”
Now as they have both moved to heaven this year, I hope they live in a place like Hobbsville and they are still neighbors.
