She’s been 4-foot-10 most of her life, and Aline Hansen said, “I don’t think I’m going to grow anymore now.”

Today is her birthday. She was born 100 years ago in Fort Worth, Texas, weighing about 6 1/2 pounds, arriving at noon after having kept her parents and the doctor up all night. The doctor was so given out, she said, that they later found him stretched out on his desk — sound asleep.

She was about 4 years old when her mother died. Her father, who worked for the railroad, later married again and the family moved to Vicksburg. It was here that she married James Hansen. He worked for the government, and Aline refers to those times as “our Gypsy days,” for they lived all up and down the river, wherever the government was doing levee work. Her husband worked in the office, and he always told her, “You go find the apartment, so you’ll be satisfied.” That was her job, and the people in the small towns were glad to see them coming because they had apartments to rent.

Hilda, the Hansens’ only child, went to just about every school along the river in Arkansas and Louisiana — she was enrolled six times at Lake Providence but never attended school here.

Aline, who was in the first class at Carr Central, recalls her first job: “I thought I was a big shot. That was during the Depression and a lot of people were trying to get jobs. They were hard to come by.”

She filled out an application at Woolworth’s, which was on Washington Street near The Valley, and they called her the next day to come to work.

“I was so short, you could just see my head over the counter,” she said, “so if they had a customer they thought was going to purchase a lot, they would have me stand in the middle of the aisle and show my prospective buyers where the merchandise was. I put in many a mile there working in Woolworth.”

Several events stand out in Aline’s mind about when she was a little girl — Two occurred in Fort Worth. The Liberty Bell was being taken around the country on a railroad flat car, and some family friends offered to take Aline to see it. It was snowing, she said, and she was wearing a red chinchilla coat, complete with a muff and mittens, that her mother had made.

“Do you want to touch the Liberty Bell?” she was asked by the couple who had taken her. “And before I could say either yes or no, the husband picked me up, told me to pull my mittens off, and when it came by (the flatcar moved slowly past the crowd) he put my hand on it and said, ‘Pat it, just like you would a kitty cat, so when you’re a grown lady you can tell your grandchildren that you patted the Liberty Bell.’ I did just what they told me.”

The other episode happened when Buffalo Bill and his Wild West show came to town. Aline was the object of some special attention, probably because “somebody must have told him that I had recently lost my mother.”

During the show, while Buffalo Bill was in the arena with his horse, a clown made his way to the grandstand to where Aline was sitting. He took her by the hand and said, “Come on, I want you to go with me and have your picture taken with the horse.”

“I’ll never forget it,” she said. “He told me the horse wanted me to pet him. I met Buffalo Bill, and he had his horse bow to me.” She doesn’t have a copy of the picture but figures that somewhere, somebody has a photo of her petting the horse, and there might be other pictures of a little girl putting her hands on the Liberty Bell.

The first year and a half of their marriage, the Hansens lived in Louisville, Ky., in an apartment only two blocks from Churchill Downs. Aline missed by just moments meeting the Duke of Windsor and his wife, but she and James became friends with one of the guards at the main gate, so after the grounds were closed he would sometimes let them in free to see the flower gardens.

“There was a sign that said if you picked a flower, the fine was $25 for each flower. One day the gardener took out his knife and cut the most beautiful rose I had ever seen and gave it to me,” she said. “He told me not to dare tell where it came from, but I guess after all these years it’s OK to tell.”

She has always loved flowers and used to have pretty beds in the yard of her National Street home, she said, but now, “When you get to be my age, you’ll just have to look at them.”

She’s never driven a car, hasn’t needed to, for she’s always had chauffeurs — her husband, her daughter, her grandchildren. When it comes to driving, she said, “I trust all of them, but I don’t trust me.”

She has a century of memories, but Aline doesn’t live totally in the past. She loves TV and watches the weather, news and “Judge Judy” and wants to know what’s happening. She’s a member of First Presbyterian Church, where she was active in her younger years.

Keeping busy is what has contributed to her long life, she said. Though she can no longer sew and cook, she does what her doctor orders.

Her daughter, Hilda Ferron, said her mother has lived “a good, honest life, and she’s always been kind to people.” Aline has a quick wit, an alert mind and commented, “I don’t have to wear glasses.”

Friends and family will have a celebration for her today, but Aline doesn’t know what they’re going to do.

“It’s going to be a surprise,” she said.