On the fourth morning, while most of the workers walked to a press conference hoping to see Jimmy Carter, Edna Mae Yates stayed behind and picked up cans.
If a few people kept working on her house, she would too. She has never been afraid of work. Most days she walks to her job at Regional Medical Center. It is a few miles. She is 75.
Anyway, she couldn’t leave the ones who are building her new house. Some of them, she suspects, are angels.
“The Word says, ‘Be careful if your entertaining strangers, they might be angels,’” she said.
“I ain’t met no stranger. Everybody in west Anniston knows me.”
She wasn’t wearing white shoes anymore. Instead she had a black pair of zip-up snow boots. No socks, so someone walked up and gave her a pair. An hour later she was still holding them.
A bulldozer grumbled by and started dumping dark soil in her yard. Men smoothed it with rakes. Yates spied an Old Milwaukee can, pulled it from the dirt, twisted it and tossed it to the curb.
The little blue house was looking nearly finished, but inside there were problems. The work was being held up because the drywall contractors hadn’t shown. That was all right, Yates supposed. She won’t be moving in for awhile.
Habitat for Humanity requires their homeowners to work 375 “sweat equity” hours as a down payment. She has plenty more to go.
At least she’ll be able to nod with pride when she passes it every afternoon on the way to the hospital.
“It looks pretty,” she said.
And her yard was as smooth as her confidence – the fourth day.
