Well you need USB support in kernel RedHat 8/9 are pretty old versions.
Anyways try to update it to kernel 2.6 from kernel.org and following commands should help you to mount usb stick or pen, remember your usb device assigned as mass USB storage and accessible as SCSI device
Code:
mkdir –p /mnt/pen
mount /dev/sda1 /mnt/usbhd
sda1 is your first SCSI USB pen mass storage device partition # 1, for partition # 2 use the sda2 and so on… use fdisk –l command to get list of devices and you must be root user to run mount command