Belle

Belle even looked like an older Native American woman. She had been plowing out in the field with a mule drawn hand plow when a little gray lizard ran up the handle of the plow, up her arm and down into her dress. Except for her "plowing shoes" that were old army brogans that her one of sons returning from WWII had given her for her farm work, Belle stripped right there in the field until she was totally naked. That lizard never had a chance!

Even as a young girl and walking home from school along the dusty country roads of the deep south, she would both scare and enthrall her classmates by seeking out the snakes along the way, especially those called "Black Racers" and grabbing them by the tails, she would whirl them around her head (and everyone else's) until she would suddenly stop and crack the snake like a horse whip and snap their heads off! But lizards were another story

She was one quarter Native American alright - Cherokee - we were told. Her own grandmother married to an itinerant preacher who, so the legend goes, married her to keep her from having to march across the country on "The Trail of Tears." It was this fierceness that made Belle stand out as a woman among women and sometimes mistaken for a man among women. There was hardly anything that was "dainty" about her.

And I loved her, for she was my paternal grandmother.

Bro. Hardy