The Red Flannel Rag

When the truck arrived to pick her up, Mom made sure Russell got her on the

truck without hurting her, and then she asked him to wait until she went inside the

house. He drove off with “Ole Jerse” looking very frantic on the back of his truck. Mom

stayed in her bedroom for a long time. We could hear her crying. When she came out

she never talked about “Ole Jerse” again for a long, long time.

By the late 1980’s Mom was over sixty years old, and her energy was declining.

She still fed her veal calves, made butter, and cottage cheese and sold raw milk. The

work was time consuming since she had developed friendships with her customers.

When they picked up their products, they frequently visited for twenty to thirty minutes.

To make up for the extra time and energy, Mom turned the milking over to her

daughter-in- law, Hilda, Larry’s wife. She paid Hilda with free milk products for her

growing family. It was quite a moving picture to watch Mom, Hilda, and Hilda’s little

girls gather the milk buckets and head to the barn to milk.

Three generations of milking women — Hilda, Vanessa, Paula, and Mom in the

back hiding from the camera. They are returning from the evening milking.

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