The Red Flannel Rag

I tried to assure her that when God measures her sins, that can of Vienna

sausages would not keep her out of heaven. I said to her, “Besides, half of that sin

belongs to Bonnie Crawford.”

Mom married Dad in a ceremony with two other couples. As I said before, it was

a kind of group marriage. When my mother got mad at my dad over their fifty-four

years of marriage, she would tell me she really wasn't married to him because her mind

had drifted when it was time to say “I do.” The preacher never knew she didn't say it,

because the other two couples said it very loudly at the right time. That bit of

information was somewhat upsetting to me as a child. I expected my mother might

leave my dad at any moment.

While Dad was a wonderful worker and didn’t waste his money, he was also an

intellectual type. He simply was not good with a handsaw and a hammer. Mom

discovered this problem early in their marriage when she asked him to nail a board over

a hole in the cow barn. He didn’t do a very good job. She took the hammer and

handsaw to the barn and fixed the hole the way she wanted it fixed.

From that point on, when she wanted something done that involved measuring

and carpentry, she didn’t ask Dad anymore. She simply said, under her breath, “I’ll do it

myself said the little red hen.” One day I asked her, “What does that mean, Mom?” She

answered, “When I was in school, I read a story about a little red hen who couldn’t get

any other chickens to help her around the chicken house. After a while, she got tired of

asking and said to herself, ‘I’ll do it myself’. So I’m like the lit tle red hen. If I go on and

do it myself, it’ll be done right in the first place and save me time in the long run.” Mom

was extremely talented with her hands and could repair most anything. My brother,

John, always asked her to fix his broken toys. His pet name for her was “Mama fix it.”

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