The Red Flannel Rag

My dad told the story of sleeping in a barn where a man had previously hung

himself. At about 5:00 a.m., he and Uncle Shirley were awakened by a loud thud. They

woke up and figured it was the ghost of the man had made when he hanged himself.

Uncle Shirley told me that he often slept in the barn and would hear all kinds of things

like horses pulling wagons into the loft and doors opening. My dad and Uncle Shirley

said the barn was haunted because of the tragedy of the shooting and suicide by

hanging. The rest of the story always followed. The man hung himself because he had

just murdered two people at the house that my Aunt Goldie and Uncle Rob bought

shortly after the shooting. He shot one man at the front yard gate and shot the second

man through the front door glass as he ran up the stairs to hide.

Hunting generated many tall tales. Some of my favorite times with my Uncles

Shirley and Jim were story-telling competitions with each other. They went on for hours

to see who could tell the biggest tale about their hunting escapades. I learned later that

these stories were not original with them, but had been passed down for generations just

as they were passing them to me. When I started college in 1966, I taped them telling

the stories.

Sometimes they told true stories about actual events, but the ones that had

survived through the ages were usually about fantastic feats of hunters and the strength

and size of animals. Uncle Jim told one of the best stories and perhaps the tallest tale. Of

course, he was the main character : “I was huntin’ deer at the foot of a ridge one day

when I spied a big buck. I only had two shells, and ‘cause I got ‘buck fever,’ I missed him

on the first shot. The buck turned and run around the ridge. I was anxious to have his

horns hangin’ on my wall, so I put the barrel of my rifle between two saplins’ and bent it.

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