The Red Flannel Rag

The house had a fairly large living room and one small bedroom on the right as

you entered the front door. As you walked toward the back of the house, there was a

narrow dining room then a kitchen. A steep staircase dropped from the kitchen door

into the back yard. A huge black-heart cherry tree stood beside the steps and provided

shade for us as we played in the back yard. There was no basement just a dirt crawl

space under the house.

I would get on my tricycle at the front door of the house and speed through the

living room, the dining room, and kitchen. When I reached the kitchen door, I would

“put on my brakes” so I didn’t roll down the seventeen steps that d ropped rapidly from

the kitchen door to the back yard below. Mom warned me many times that my “brakes

would fail,” and for sure they did fail one day. My tricycle and I rolled down the steps

resulting in a huge goose egg knot on my forehead. Until the day she died, when I told

Mom I am going to do something like ride a raft down the Grand Canyon, I could see the

fear in her eyes. She caught herself, curbed her protective impulses, and gently said,

“Remember the time when your brakes failed.”

Mom and Da d’s marriage was a bit rocky at first because he still had a taste for

whiskey. Occasionally, he came home late from work and reeked of alcohol. They

argued, and Mom told him he had to stop drinking or he would be sorry. Well, lots of

Hopkins Gap women threatened their husbands with various consequences, so Dad, I

guess, assumed she wasn’t serious. He came home drunk one more time.

When he parked his car on the cement slab that was the front porch, she knew he

was drunk again. Instead of running out to the car and helping him in the house, Mom

just waited. After he sobered up some, he staggered to the door and opened it. She was

just inside the door. She balled her fist up and the first blow landed on the side of his

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