The Red Flannel Rag

We had ham, green beans, homemade bread, homemade butter, and cold slaw quickly

made with the fresh cream from the springhouse.

I sat on the wooden bench behind the table where the kids always sat. As I

watched the grownups enjoying the homemade butter, I felt very much a part of the

family because Grandma Molly let me carry the butter to the house. She always

included me in whatever she was doing. She said kids needed to feel that they were

contributing to the family chores. I guess she let me carry the butter because I couldn’t

do too much damage if I dropped it along the way, but I was still “helpin’ out” as she

called it.

Some years later, Grandpa Austin built a house about a quarter of a mile down

the road. The house sat next to the Allegheny Mountains at the bottom of a ridge. The

cold spring was just a short walk up the ridge, but electricity came through Hopkins Gap

before they got the springhouse built. Grandma Molly bought a refrigerator to keep her

food from spoiling.

Most of the things they had in the old house were moved to the new house. They

took the bench for the kids to use behind the kitchen table. The old wood stove with the

warming closet on top went to the new house. Grandma Molly said it cooked the best

beans. She took her old poplar and walnut pie safe that smelled like moldy bread and

stale pie dough. She stored her homemade bread and leftover beans in the pie safe. She

kept leftover meat and fried potatoes in the warming closet above the stove. As I think

back to those days, I wonder why we didn’t get sick; however, we did have to move the

outside toilet real often! In those days, when the toilet hole filled up, another hole was

dug and the little building moved to set over the new hole.

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