‘Hit the road, Jack!’

When her elderly next-door neighbor died in November, it was official: Big Mama was now the oldest person on her street. For 36 years, she has lived in Holland Blackwell’s dream home: a split-level with wall-to-wall carpeting and family photos on every wall.

She is both feisty and tender-hearted — sometimes to a fault.

The same doctor who recommended nursing-home placement would probably be none too happy to see Big Mama barreling past him in her old Subaru wagon. When she can’t find a relative to do it for her, she insists on driving to the store for the orange juice she needs to stave off her low blood-sugar attacks.

Benita Taylor, a home-care aide, holds a jacket for Lucille Blackwell as Blackwell eases out of her front door.

This is how Big Mama inches her way to the Subaru: with the help of strategically placed walkers and lawn chairs, slowly, one shuffle at a time, with time-outs to sit and rest up for the next part of the journey. Once she’s made it to the car — the process can take as long as 15 minutes — she’s good to go.

“Any time I feel like going out, I hit the road, Jack!” she declares, pumping her fist on the arm of the recliner where she spends most of her time.

When her grandson calls her from the Roanoke City Jail — collect — she thinks nothing of driving downtown to give him $20. “The devil got into him,” she says. “But when he needs the money, I will carry it to him. What you do comes back to you, sweetheart!”

But lately she hasn’t felt up to driving. Her legs swell from gout. Her right eye works worse than it did before they removed the cataract.

When she misplaces a medicine bottle or two, she feels out of sorts. (“Be thankful, sweetheart, that you don’t have nothing like this to worry about!”)

Last year, relatives organized caregiving shifts: Daughter Vivian did grocery shopping, paid her bills for her and stayed with her most weekend nights. Granddaughter Portia and sister Elizabeth Stokes filled in most other nights.

Her son Herbert Blackwell called daily on his cellphone on his way home from the New York City parking garage where he works. He helps out financially, too.

“My mother has done so much for so many, and sometimes I don’t think enough people show her the appreciation for what she and my father struggled for all those years,” he says in a phone interview.

“It’s at that stage where she has raised so many people, but she really can’t depend on that many of them to return the favor.”