FAIRFIELD -- When Minnie Noble and her siblings saw their grandmother coming with the castor oil, they ran.
Actually, it was their father who they ran from; it was their grandmother who convinced them it was a necessary evil to keep from getting worms from eating the pork, since the family-raised pigs ate just about anything when rooting around.
"I grew up in Tennessee and my grandmother and dad raised us," Noble said.
"She would give us castor oil to get all the food out of us, and we used to run from our dad because we hated castor oil," Noble said. "But she would say we had to take the oil, so we did, and she would give us peppermint candy."
That memory gave Noble, of Fairfield, a kind of personal connection to President Jimmy Carter, who worked for decades to eradicate Guinea worm disease around the world.
She admired Carter for that work, his work on peace, elections and issues of justice, and, of course, his work with Habitat for Humanity.
"He was a good president, but I think he did more for America when he didn't get reelected - doing all those things overseas and building all those homes," Noble said.
Noble, while serving as president of the Tri-City NAACP, had reason to write the former president, but for the life of her, she cannot remember why.
What she remembers is the four-page letter she received in return, signed by Carter and his wife, Rosalynn. There was also a card with the image of a dove from one of Carter's paintings.
"I believe you share something important with Rosalynn and me; a deep concern for the current condition of this world and its future in the 21st century," the typewritten letter begins. It is dated Nov. 20, 2012.
Carter, in the letter, relates the work being done by the Carter Center and invites Noble to join him in that work.
Noble has been an activist for a very long time, inspired by President John F. Kennedy and many of the Civil Rights events of the 1960s, noting specifically the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom in 1963. More than 250,000 individuals attended the rally on Aug. 28 at the Lincoln Memorial, at which Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. gave his famous "I have a dream" speech.
When she came out to California to finish her high school education - she had dropped out while in Tennessee - she became even more deeply aware of politics and started to get involved.
But she was still a young girl from Tennessee, where her grandmother shielded her from most of the turmoil.
As a member of the Black Student Body at Merced Junior College, she went to a demonstration at Laney College in Oakland. It was there she was first introduced to the Black Panthers organization.
"They were shouting 'Right on!" but I thought they were shouting 'ravioli;" I was so scared," Noble said with an easy smile.
Soon after that, she got involved with the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, working her way up to being a community coordinator and ultimately president of the local branch.
Over the years, Noble has received and saved a host of letters from presidents, the most of which came from President Bill Clinton.
But the Dec. 30 death of Carter - the 39th president and recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize - reminded her of one of her most cherished letters.
"As you consider my request," Carter wrote in a post-script, "please remember we will all benefit from a world filled with peaceful, healthy, hope-filled and productive people."