The Red Flannel Rag

At that time, some animal feed and flour was sold in printed cotton sacks.

Sometimes they had flowers on them or little designs and sometimes they were solid

colors in red or yellow. Mom told Dad to always get her cow feed and flour in printed

sacks. She washed them and made our school clothes out of them. By the time school

started in September, she had all our clothes made including our underwear. She saved

the scraps and made comforters to keep us warm in the cold weather.

Mom was known far and wide as a good cook. Folks in and out of Hopkins Gap

sought her food, especially her fried chicken and banana cake. Often when people

pushed back from her table, they said, “That meal was so good it would make your

tong ue slap your brains out.” She was rewarded adequately by those comments.

She knew more about oven temperatures and the effect of altitude on baking

than anyone. One of my favorite memories is of the time when she was trying out her

oven at the new altitude, shortly after we moved to where she lived the remainder of her

life. The first cake she took out of the oven immediately fell flat. She adjusted her oven

temperature, mixed another cake and put it in to bake. When she removed the second

cake, it immediately fell. Since she was persistent, she adjusted the temperature again

and went through the whole process the third time. I was in the kitchen watching her

because it was like watching a scientist solving a major problem. I knew how much her

cook ing meant to her. If she couldn’t bake a banana cake, she no longer needed to live.

Well, the third cake came out of the oven as flat as a pancake. I could tell she was

mad, because she started to cry. Crying made her even madder. I kind of hung around

the door, because I knew something was going to happen. My little sister, Brenda, was

innocently playing in the kitchen for the warmth of the stove. She had no idea that

something loud and destructive was about to happen.

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