HOW TO FEED THE BABY
Ann S. Brown c 2025
It was a late summer morning about like any other. I was five years old and I lived with my Grandma and Grandpa Sturgill at their farm on Helton. Every morning Grandma got up and built a fire in the wood cook stove. Then she started frying either ham or shoulder meat and scrambling eggs. I didn’t need an alarm clock. That wonderful smell always got me up and to the table. After putting a big platter of ham and eggs in the warming cabinet of the cook stove, she would continue cooking, making the biscuits and gravy. By then the whole family was at the table, anxious to eat and get started with the day’s work.
As the morning sun came up over the hill, the men folk had already started the day’s work and it was only me and Grandma left at the table. Every morning she would set down at the table to finish her coffee before washing the breakfast dishes. She drank it with a cup and saucer, you know, like old folks did back then. And every morning when she was finished she would turn the cup upside down in the saucer and twist it back and forth a few times. Then Grandma would set the cup on the table, look at the ring of coffee in the saucer and foretell the day. I don’t know how she done it, but she did.
Usually she didn’t say much about what she saw in the coffee ring, but that day was different. Grandma said, “There’s two men coming today. One is tall. The other short. And they are bringing bad news.” Sure enough, about three o’clock in the afternoon, here they came. One tall, one short and looked so solemn that they did not seem to fit into the sunny afternoon. The men walked past the big rock and right on out the road to the house. I was at my Grandma’s side on the front porch where we had stepped out to greet them. She knew them to be two preachers from Marion, Virginia where some of her family lived and invited them in. After short “niceties” they softly stated their business. My Grandma seemed to hold her breath as they started to speak. Her daughter in law had died giving birth to her fourth child. Simply put, she had bled to death. But the baby was alive and he was a beautiful blonde headed boy with big blue eyes that we would later call “Dewey.”
Besides being overwhelmed with grief, everyone was worried sick. How would they feed the baby? But that didn’t bother Grandma none. She knew how to feed that baby. Grandma sent them for some of the cows milk out of the can where they had milked that morning. She mixed a little bit of Karo syrup with that and heated it and let it cool some. And THAT is how they fed the baby.
Dewey, his three sisters and his dad, Uncle Herbert moved back to the home place with me and my Grandparents. A man alone could not take care of four children and make a living. Back on the Stugill’s farm he could do all of the farm work, while having Grandma to help with the children. I was delighted to have all the kids to play with and we were soon like brothers and sisters. We all stayed on the farm together until I was 17 years old and what good times we did have. We all grew up and they began their own lives and moved away.
That has been almost 80 years ago now since the bad news day and I am still here on the Sturgill’s farm. We have had many a sunny day here and more than a few frosty mornings. And sometimes on a late summer day I look out the driveway past the big rock and can almost see the men coming. One tall. One short. Too solemn for a sunny day.
This is an old family story as told by Cousin Edward
