The Red Flannel Rag

worried a lot about you kids being deaf so the first thing I did when you all were born

was to check to see if you could hear. I clapped my hands close to your ears and if you

didn’t jump, I screamed into your ears. That made you jump awake.”

Grandpa Austin and Grandma Molly were very serious people with little to say. It

always seemed that they were angry because they were born and had to survive and

raise children. There was little fun and no laughter in their house. It seemed that all

they did was cook and wash dishes, but that was because I mostly saw them on Sundays.

I also noticed a huge vegetable garden, a barn, several cows, a chicken house, and a hog

pen. There was a root cellar filled with potatoes and canned vegetables, fruit, and pork.

They obviously worked hard during the weekdays.

They cooked the same thing all the time. Breakfast was bird-egg beans known

today as cranberry beans, home-canned peaches, homemade bread, sausage, and gravy.

Grandpa Austin loved bird-egg beans, and bought them by the one hundred pound sack.

He often placed his order with my daddy before we left for home on Sundays. He would

say, “Norman, how about bringin’ me a hundred ‘lubs’ of beans next Sunday?”

(Grandpa thought the abbreviation for pounds, lbs., was pronounced as “lubs.)

Grandpa Austin Shifflett (left) with his brother, Warnie Shifflett

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