The Red Flannel Rag

No matter what season, the smells from the kitchen were the same. The whiff of

wood smoke announced a new fire in the kitchen stove. Then there was the smell of

sausage made from the hogs--raised, fattened, and butchered the year before. Mom

always fried the sausage before she milked the cows. The aroma of fresh perked coffee

would slowly waft its way to the bedroom I shared with my sister.

When Mom returned to the kitchen with the morning milk, she strained it

through a clean cotton cloth into a glass pitcher. She reheated the iron skillet where she

had fried the sausage, mixed in some flour, and browned it. Then she poured in a

portion of the morning milk to make a huge skillet of milk gravy to eat with fresh,

homemade biscuits. While her gravy was boiling, she completed our breakfast with fried

eggs, gathered from the hen house the day before. A pot of oatmeal with raisins

simmered on the back of the stove. Each day began with a comforting sense of

predictability, a sense of routine that started with the sounds and smells from the

kitchen and ended with Mom, Dad, my brothers and sister and me gathering around the

table to partake of this early morning feast.

I was the oldest of five children, so I was twenty-one years old, working as a

secretary while living at home, when this daily routine suddenly changed. My brother

Larry decided to take a wife.

Most men in my mountain community had married girls in their teens and the

couple lived with the male’s parents for a period of time, mostly until the first baby was

born. I know that Uncle Shirley married Aunt Ethel when she was fifteen, and Aunt

Goldie became a wife at age twelve. I often heard it said that a man wanted his own

mother to train his new wife to cook, clean, and take care of babies.

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