The Red Flannel Rag

behind my sense of direction. I packed my belongings in the back of my Ford pickup.

My inventory included many cans of sauerkraut, green beans, tomatoes, hog sausage,

tenderloin, and pork ribs from Mom’s cellar. I had a half -bushel of new potatoes from

Dad’s garden.

I traveled along Interstate 81 to the southwestern end of Virginia. I stopped to

rest in Hungry Mother State Park just before entering Tennessee to make the long drive

across the state to Arkansas then on to Texas. When I got back in my truck to leave

Virginia, I broke into uncontrollable sobs. It was as if my heart was being torn from my

chest. I was thirty-four years old and had never lived anywhere except near Hopkins

Gap. The most unsettling realization was yet to come.

When I arrived in Lubbock, I found the land is very flat, like a tabletop, and the

extreme opposite of the land in the Appalachian Mountains. I couldn’t find my way

around Lubbock for the first six months. I felt so lost, vulnerable, and cold under the

big sky.

I suffered severely from homesickness. When October came, I missed the smell

of falling leaves, so I wrote to a friend back home and asked her to send me some leaves.

She mailed a shoebox full of fallen leaves to me. It helped some; but nearly every day, I

lay on the couch and cried while I listened to Dolly Parton’s song, “My Tennessee

Mountain Home.”

I never adjusted to the flat land. I was always searching for a landmark that

would guide me. There was one tall, square building on the Texas Tech University

campus. I immediately latched onto that landmark only to realize after I lost my way

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