The Red Flannel Rag

me one Sunday afternoon as if to insure she would wear it to her grave. She lived

another twenty years and then some after showing me that dress; but when she died, she

was buried in it.

Grandma Molly was a Granny Woman, a community healer. She claimed her

power to be a Granny Woman came from being born after her father drowned in a creek

when flooding waters washed his horse and wagon downstream. She talked about her

powers as if to legitimize her skills, much the same as modern doctors display diplomas

on the walls of their offices. She would say, "Here's how you can get the powers. You

can be born the seventh child in the family, you can be born the seventh child of the

seventh child, you can be born on Christmas day, or you can be born after the death of

your father. That's how I got my powers. I was born after my daddy died."

She was a quiet woman, dwelling mainly within herself until she was addressed.

Community members could not conduct any major event such as a butchering, cherry-

seeding, apple-butter boiling, or birthing a baby without her presence. I remember

hearing many times, "Who's going to pick up Grandma Molly?" That was her

community name. She cured numbers of babies with "liver-grown and she measured

many children for "undergrowth," including me. She cured warts and mixed sheep

manure tea to bring out the measles. She could swipe her hand under a child's chin and

move the mumps to both sides of the jaws.

Tobacco, in the form of snuff, was her second drug of choice; and, when her snuff

spit was rubbed on a wart, she knew it was going to soon be gone. One day, she said to

me, "Let me see your hand." When I held my hand out for her to look, she spit a big glob

of snuff on my knuckle where a major wart had been growing. I got so mad, I cried. She

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