Stevie
Today is my little brother’s birthday. On this date back in 1956, Daddy, Mama, and I lived near the intersection of a state highway and an old country road in rural Cheatham County, Tennessee. Daddy Leland had recently built his modern grocery store seven miles away in Ashland City. His abandoned country store, with its gas pumps out front and its big red Coca-Cola cooler inside, sat on one corner of the intersection. Their new red brick house sat on another. Our house was up on a little hill on the lot beside the country store.
Chickens pecked in our backyard near the outhouse which was still in use since we didn’t have a bathroom inside.
Ray and I decided to quit celebrating Halloween with our children many years ago, but on this date back in 1956, Daddy took me trick-or-treating. We went to my Great-Great-Aunt Lizzie’s house which sat way off the road beside the farmland on another corner of the intersection. We visited with Aunt Lizzie, and probably with her unmarried children Cousin Dudley and Cousin Ethel, and I came home with an apple.
Mama was not very happy with Daddy when we got home because she was more than ready to get to the clinic in Ashland City to have my little brother. Of course, back then we had no idea he would be a little brother.
They named their little boy Stephen Francis Boyd–Stephen for the doctor who delivered him and Francis for one of Daddy’s buddies in the army. Pretty soon he became Stevie, or “Judge.” That’s what Bunch the butcher at Daddy Leland’s store called him because he really did look like a little judge.
In time I learned how to play army with Steve. He always let me be the nurse. He danced the Mexican Hat Dance and the Bunny Hop with me to tunes on a little 45-rpm record we played on Daddy’s record player.We played church and Monopoly. We went swimming with Mama in Marrowbone Creek. We went sledding and built snowmen. We rode the highways and backroads of Tennessee in the backseat of our two-door Ford Fairlane with Daddy at the wheel.
I’m glad God thought of little brothers and big sisters. Happy Birthday, Steve.
Whenever a woman is in labor she has pain,
because her hour has come;
but when she gives birth to the child,
she no longer remembers the anguish
because of the joy
that a child has been born into the world.
John 16:21