Late again, but here’s my attempt to meet this week’s Carrot Ranch Literary Community’s blog challenge. It involved writing about someone taking charge. As usual, I was to do it in 99 words, no more, no less.

Sometimes it’s just the little things people remember

You wouldn’t call her meek, but Hazel avoided confrontation when she could. Standing on the doorstep of the home place, though, an old neighbor told of a time when she didn’t.

“I was helpin’ out at your place at dinnertime. Dad had said I wasn’t to eat there, but she sat me down at the table. Well, here comes Pop, rarin’ mad. Hazel met him on the step. Told him, ‘On this place, if he works, he eats.’

“Now Pop was used to getting’ his way, but he shut up and waited for me to finish Hazel’s apple pie.”

Here’s Hazel in 1995, not too long before her 99th birthday.