The Red Flannel Rag

They told him he had been reported for hauling moonshine hidden in his junk. He

invited them to unload his truck and search it.

“I’ve placed this load on the truck so it won’t fall off,” he said. “If you unload it,

you have to put it back exactly as you find it.”

The police sized up the daunting task and decided to just get on top of the load

and look around. They walked all over the top of Uncle Jim’s junked cars and got down.

They told him to drive on. He laughed as he told me, “They walked right over top of fifty

gallons of moonshine I was taking to a Jewish man in Philadelphia. All they had to do

was lift up one old car hood, and they would have had me.”

Uncle Jim frequently expressed the fact that he remained sexually active into his

older years. He said, “I can still cut the mustard.” “I may not be able to plow as deep,

but I can plow just as long;” and, bragging about no loss of virility, he said, “The older

the buck, the stiffer the horn.”

Goldie Morris Crawford

Aunt Goldie was a sister to Shirley and Jim. She was my window on the world of

possibilities for women. She could not read or write; and after I learned to read and

write, I became her scribe and her window on the world. This wonderful illiterate

woman unknowingly instilled in me a desire to further my education. When I read the

letters to her that I had writ ten, she always smiled and said, “That sounds really good.”

She was widowed at twenty-eight with four children. Uncle Rob died when he was

thirty-six years old, and I was five years old. He went into the hospital with a gall

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