The whole burdensome endeavor would cause her son—my grandfather Purnell Shields, whom we later called “Southside”—to shake his head and wonder out loud why it was that people who could afford a vacation home couldn’t also manage to buy their own sewing machine for that home, sparing Mamaw the hassle of carrying that weight. But, of course, there was no way to politely pose the question to the people in charge. And anyway, the answer was already clear: It wasn’t that they couldn’t. It was just that they didn’t. It’s likely they never even gave it a thought.
