Hattie & The Road Crew

The crew that came to pave the road was prepared to be resented and distrusted. They were ready for the fog that so often would make their work impossible. They were warned they would not be welcomed. But they were not ready for Old Hat and her shotgun.

“I'd have a care,” Sparrow advised the crew foreman, “She's a dead shot. Why, she kin shoot a flea off'n a damn frog at a hunnert yards and she's meaner 'n a cross-eyed snake.”

The foreman shrugged. He'd been building roads for 3o years, he told Sparrow, and he knew a thing or two about doing it.

“They ain't made anybody can stop a dozer or a hot tar spreader,” he said with a careless grin,

“Sure as hell, not one damn fool old woman with a scattergun.”

“I 'spect you know your business,” Sparrow persisted, “Ain't sayin' you don't. But she don't like strangers and she don't like change.”

“Come hell or high water, this here road's gon' be paved by next week,” the foreman said calmly,

“The province says so and that's that.”

“Ayuh,” Sparrow said and winked at us, “Reckon it's your funeral.”

Hattie's first shot bounced harmlessly off the dozer's shovel. Her second whined past the driver's ear. Her third knocked his hard hat off and sent him scurrying for the floorboards. There was no fourth, Sparrow reported to my grandmother.

“That boy give up right and proper once she aimed that shotgun the last time,” he laughed, “He rammed that thing into park and come outta it like a longtailed cat in a room full of rockin' chairs. Ain't been seen since.”

It couldn't stand, of course, progress was slated for the village and progress it would be. The province was not about to be bullied or put off my one little old lady with a mean temper and a couple of days later the Mounties arrived. Hattie was duly arrested and carted off to the mainland - it was said she fought like a mule and wailed like a banshee - and while she was gone, the road crew returned and quickly finished the paving job. Hattie came home in a fine rage, swearing death and destruction to the province and revenge on anyone who'd helped them but there was no one to go after and she soon wore herself out with threats and temper that no one listened to. By August, she retreated to the shelter of her shack and shotgun and there she stayed. The road had won, albeit on a technicality most folks agreed, since not one inch had ever made it onto Hattie's land. Years later, folks still talked about hearing her old shotgun break the silence of moonlit summer nights as she took potshots at the pavement and cackled with every pull of the trigger. The road may have won, but Old Hat considered it a draw and that was close enough.