The Red Flannel Rag

before he finished; but, then he just put ‘it’ right back in again.” Obviously, “coitus

interruptis” doesn’t work if it is practiced as “coitus interruptis coitus!

Grandpa John was a strong man and was respected as a good worker. Uncle

Shirley often told me his daddy was “the workinest man he had ever seen.” His labors

included carpentry, butchering, and apple orchard tending. One of the houses he built

for his family still stands in Hopkins Gap. When I drive past it now, I am always

reminded of my mother pointing out the crooked windows in the second-story level.

Her face beamed with pride as she told me, “I think he did a good job. His only tools

were a hammer, a handsaw, and a carpente r’s square.”

Uncle Shirley told me that Grandpa John butchered for everybody in Hopkins

Gap. He sometimes butchered for folks across Little North Mountain in the Valley. “He

never got any pay except for a ‘mess’ of meat for his family; but, I guess wi th the size of

his family that would have been a lot of meat.”

Grandpa John moved his family out of Hopkins Gap for a short time to take an

orchard job in Twin Mountain, West Virginia. While he and Grandma Mary lived there

my mother was born. She was child number fifteen. Uncle Charlie was old enough by

that time to help in the orchards. Uncle Shirley said, “My daddy could take care of two

rows of trees and help Charlie with his row. He was a ‘work horse’.”

When Grandma Mary died, Grandpa John tried to take care of his smaller

children with the help of his oldest daughters. He lived in a house that he had built just

across the road from his brother Joseph Morris and his wife, Millie. Aunt Goldie and

Aunt Dorothy were still at home, and they tried to cook for the family. Mom, who was

five years old at the time, told me that everything they prepared to eat was not fit to eat.

"I used to get up from the table and go stand on the porch so I could smell Aunt Millie's

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