The Red Flannel Rag

q uality that made it useful for the folks in Hopkins Gap. White oaks provided “splits”

for chair bottoms and baskets and wood for furniture.

In the hands of a good craftsman with a shaving bridge and a sharp froe, red oak

wood split into thin slabs that were used as roofing shingles. In the dry, hot summer

months, the shingles shrank and allowed air to flow in and out of the house. When a

thunderstorm came over the mountain or a spell of rain began to move into the Gap, the

humidity preceding the rain swelled the red oak shingles and closed the air holes. Not

one drop of rain fell into a Hopkins Gap house with a good red oak shingle roof.

Hickory trees provided nuts for the squirrels, a major source of meat in the diet of

Gap folks. Mom boiled the squirrel meat until it was tender. Then she rolled the pieces

in salt and pepper seasoned flour and fried them until they were crisp. She made thick

white gravy from the squirrel broth. We ate the meat and gravy with warm bread —

biscuit dough baked in a family-size oval chunk.

Hickory wood was used to make rocking chairs because it could be bent and

shaped when green. It held its shape after it dried. American chestnut trees provided

huge logs for cabins. Some of the old cabins are still standing. The hand-hewn chestnut

logs were as much as three feet thick. Thin rails of chestnut were used for fences. The

wood became harder with age.

Chestnuts were gathered in the fall for roasting and making flour before the great

chestnut blight in the early 1900s. Even after the blight killed all the chestnut trees, the

dead logs provided “wormy” wood for handcrafted furniture that is now nearly priceless.

Walnut trees, much like the chestnut, provided both nuts for food and wood for sturdy

furniture made to survive many generations. Pie safes, tables, and chairs, with white-

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