Thank you for including this funny story as a change of pace. Mattie was a “pistol”, as my father-in-law would have described her. Even though she talked frequently of “slowing down”, she was still a dynamo compared to everyone else in the story. She reminds me of a lot of really energetic people I have known – blissfully unaware than not everyone wants to be as busy as they are. Mattie had a very positive effect on the dogcatcher and on Wesley, but her own children probably found it hard to live comfortably with her. Her son Robert became just a lazy pudge and her daughter Elaine took refuge in feminism and stubbornness. Mattie’s burning desire for grandchildren reminds me of someone in our family who pushed her children to provide grandchildren that she can take care of as soon as she retires from work. I was pretty shocked by Mattie’s statement to Elaine than she intended to marry Wesley. Hopefully, it was only meant to prod Elaine to get married and have children. But I pity poor Wesley if Mattie ever took that notion seriously. He was confused and inexperienced enough that she might have coaxed him into it as a way of staying out of the detention center.

Many stories portray strongly religious people as harmful zealots or shallow hypocrites or emotional crazies. But in this story, religion is a very positive force in Mattie’s life. She responds very strongly to the call to service to others – that call gives her purpose and focus and connection with other people, so that she doesn’t sit around feeling lonely or neglected. It also gives her the justification to do something out of her normal routines, like visiting Wesley in the detention center. Food is her way of reaching out. But she is such a good cook that even the reluctant people end up glad to be sharing her table.

As I was reading, the situations and dialogue seemed like scenes from a movie. The scene at the end, where Mattie coaxes Wesley, the deputy, the sheriff, her son and his new girlfriend, her nosy neighbors, her sister Pearl, the man whose car was stolen, her rebellious daughter, and finally the dogcatcher to eat while calmly clarifying the saga of Wesley’s morning in church, reminded me a of similar scene from an old Cary Grant movie. Sometimes I visualized Mattie looking like Vicki Lawrence’s “Mama” on the “Carol Burnette Show.” But often she called to mind the older women who come into the reference room to ask questions about their family history. They are nice and very chatty about their families, but they are also quite determined to get the information they are looking for. No doubt about it!