The Red Flannel Rag

sitting with a group of friends. She told me to stand by the door and watch in case one of

Robert’s friends jumped on her. Ruby then walked into the bar and started yelling at him.

If a fight started, I was supposed to intervene and drag the attacker off of Ruby. Luckily, not

a single p erson jumped her, so I never had to get into a brawl in a bar when I wasn’t even

old enough to be in there in the first place.

Randy, Aunt Goldie’s oldest son, had the greatest influence on my childhood. He

brought home, from the public library, the first book I ever read. It was Zane Grey’s, The

Lone Star Ranger. As I grew older, he introduced me to Edgar Rice Burroughs’s Tarzan

books; and once a month, I would find a new Tarzan comic book in the back seat of his car.

He was an avid reader, and I caught the love of books and reading from him.

Randy loved to experiment with different kinds of sandwiches, and often used me as

a guinea pig to try his various concoctions. His basic ingredient was peanut butter. He

made peanut butter with onion, with banana, with mustard, ketchup, butter, and

mayonnaise. Banana with peanut butter was my favorite until the day he made me try a

sandwich with peanut butter and tomato. Both of us liked that mixture from the first bite,

but he was not satisfied until her perfected the peanut butter and tomato sandwich. Both

sides of the bread were spread with peanut butter, and then a thin layer of butter on top of

the peanut butter. This was followed by a thin layer of mayonnaise. A huge thick slice of

homegrown tomato, still warm from the sun, was placed between the two slices of bread.

This was, and still is, my favorite sandwich for two reasons: it has a wonderful taste, and it

takes me back to those days when Randy and I laughed and joked about the sandwiches he

invented and shared with me because I would have done anything for him.

A long time before he brought home my first book, he taught me how to make a sling

shot. We walked in the mountains searching for the perfect forked branch on mountain

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