The Red Flannel Rag

recommended she not have any more children. She had an operation. While she was in

the hospital, Dad took the rest of us to two movies showing at a theater in Harrisonburg.

One movie was “Old Yeller,” and the other one was “The Lawless Breed” starring

Rock Hudson and James Garner. The reason I remember this is that Dad made us so

mad we could have killed him. He made us leave the theater about five minutes before

the movies ended. We didn’t get to see Old Yeller get shot at the end of the movie. Just

as he made us leave, the little boy in the movie was crying as he pointed the gun at Old

Yeller.

Dad told us he had to have a cigarette; but at a later time, I heard him say he

couldn’t stand to be in a crowd of people. Learning that he didn’t like crowds helped me

rethink my anger toward him for taking us out of the theater before the end of Old

Yeller, and I promised myself at that moment that I would see Old Yeller again. Later in

my life, I rented the movie and watched it all the way through to relieve my feelings of

having missed something important because of my dad.

Two years later in 19 53, a farm near Goldie’s house came up for sale. Mom talked

Dad into buying it. She tried to get Dad to apply for a Veteran’s Loan because the

interest was lower, but in a mountain man’s way, he told her he didn’t trust the

government, “Sometime or another, they’ll come and take the farm away from us.” So

he borrowed twenty-eight hundred dollars from a bank and bought the farm.

We moved into our new home in August of 1953. The home that they bought was

known as the old “Shifflett” place. At least fif ty years before, it had been built by a

Shifflett family. The early Shiffletts lived there and raised their family. When they died,

the farm was sold and used as rental property. It had received minimal upkeep over the

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