What's Left Is Mainly Brown - Philip N. Becton II

What's Left Is Mainly Brown (eBook)

Philip N. Becton II (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2023 | 1. Auflage
180 Seiten
Bookbaby (Verlag)
978-1-6678-6752-6 (ISBN)

This 'smart, funny, honest telling of a life well lived' (James Patterson) spans 85 years in the fascinating life of a truly self-made man. A child of the pre-war South, Philip Becton has been everything from a cotton farmer and Navy bombardier to a Wall Street broker and corporate founder. His is a classic American story with a sweeping front-seat view to history.

In this heartfelt and inspiring memoir, Philip Becton shares insights, stories, and lessons learned from his uniquely American life. Spanning 85 years of experiences as everything from a cotton farmer and Navy bombardier to a Wall Street broker and modern-day corporate founder, Becton's is a classic American story with a sweeping front-seat view to history.

The Tennessee Bectons

The Tennessee Bectons, my mother’s family, in order of birth:

Joshua May b. 1883

Uncle Josh was the oldest, and was called Brother Josh by his siblings. He was the only brother who left the home place early. I don’t know why he left but do know that he was never quite forgiven by his brothers and sisters. He moved to Compton, California, so I did not see him regularly when I was in Tennessee, although he did visit a couple of times in the summer while I was there. I don’t remember much about him except that he was tanned and muscular and drank a lot of coffee. Looking back I suspect that the coffee had maybe been “pepped up” a little. He promised to give me a .30-30 Winchester on my fourteenth birthday if I didn’t smoke before then, but he died before I was fourteen so I never collected.

Susan Lacy b. 1884

Aunt Sue was the oldest girl, and was called Sister Sue by her siblings. She never married and came to live with us after my father died. As she never worked outside the house, she spent more time with me than my mother did and I loved her dearly. She was very frugal and a great country cook. I remember going to the “Dixie Store” on Augusta Road on Friday afternoons to buy staples for the week. They consisted of seasonal vegetables, bread, coffee, and meats. We ate pork chops, fried chicken (by Aunt Sue, thank you), steak (fried cubed steak), liver, “roast beef” (a pot roast that Aunt Sue boiled), with an occasional fish or oyster meal thrown in. When we had fish, Aunt Sue always made cornbread in a cast-iron skillet. I used to drench it in butter and drown it in honey. The week’s grocery staples got you back change from a ten-dollar bill.

Aunt Sue believed in cleaning one’s plate, so that’s what I did. I remember one particular lunch. Mother was not home and Aunt Sue and I were at the table eating lunch. Whatever I had, I didn’t want to finish.

Aunt Sue said, “You’re not leaving the table until you finish your plate.” She sat down beside me. I don’t know how long we sat there, Aunt Sue and I, but it was a long, long time. I thought I could out-wait her. I finally figured out that she was just going to sit there until I finished, no matter how long that took. I finished my plate.

She and Mrs. McKinney, who lived next door, were great friends. They used to share pots of green beans and fried peach pies. I can still remember their voices in the kitchen.

Aunt Sue’s health deteriorated when I was away in college and Uncle Ray came and took her to Murfreesboro, Tennessee, where she went into a nursing home. I actually took an emergency leave from the Navy when I was in pre-flight training in Pensacola in 1961 to go see her, when we thought death was imminent. She recovered from that incident but passed away later that year.

We did not have a television until after I left for college in 1956. But by the time I saw her in 1961 she had become hooked on professional wrestling on TV, which I found pretty amazing since she was the gentlest of creatures. Every afternoon she would take her “prescription” (a tot of whiskey, mixed with honey and vinegar) and watch “rasslin.” The whiskey was not “drinking.” It was medicine, since it was prescribed by a doctor.

Edmund Taylor b. 1889

Uncle Eddie was a veteran of World War I. He was tall for a Becton and had very blue eyes. He and Aunt Kitty, with daughters Mary and Martha, lived in a small house on a road outside Murfreesboro. They had an outhouse, a well for drinking water, a smokehouse for hams, bacon and such, a chicken coop, kept a hog, and had a garden.

On washday, Aunt Kitty poured buckets of well water in a big black iron pot, lit a wood fire under it in the backyard, dumped in the clothes to be washed, and stirred them around in the boiling water with a long wooden spoon. She made her own soap from lye, ashes, and whatever. She used a Singer sewing machine with foot pedals to power it, even though they had electricity.

Uncle Eddie was unfailingly kind to me, as were all my uncles. When I knew him, he walked with a cane, but once took several steps without it in front of me to show me that he could walk without one. He smoked a lot of Camels. He did not own a car that I remember, but could drive, and had actually taught my mother how to drive better. I can remember her practicing backing down his driveway in our 1941 Chevy.

He made me a toy wooden pistol that was a model of a German Mauser C96 with the magazine under the barrel. I used to sit with him in the dark before dawn, listening to country music on a small radio on the table, while he drank coffee and smoked Camels.

He let me shoot his shotgun behind the house, out toward the railroad tracks. The shotgun was a twelve-gauge, double-barreled one, with rabbit-ear hammers. The target was a tin can. I remember the shotgun kicking like a mule, but I got the can.

I saw my first flypaper there. I, a helpful city boy, learned that when you go to the henhouse to gather eggs, you don’t put them in your pants pockets.

He did not own a mule, but borrowed one to plow his good-sized backyard garden. I remember walking behind the mule, reaching up to grasp the plow’s handles, looking at the mule’s rear end, with Uncle Eddie walking behind me, and the soil being turned by the plow. Not many of my contemporaries can say that they have plowed behind a mule.

I experienced the sharpest pain I had ever felt in my short life there. Aunt Kitty was a large woman. She was sitting in her rocking chair when I went over to her and she rocked onto my bare big toe. It really hurt and I burst into tears. I’ll never forget how she swooped me up into her ample lap and kissed and hugged me until the pain went away.

Uncle Eddie died while we were in Tennessee at Christmas in 1949. Although Uncle Josh had passed away earlier, he had died in California so it was far away. Uncle Eddie’s was my first real memory of a death in the family.

Fannie Armstrong b. 1892

Aunt Fannie was married to Henry Adams and they had two children, Charlotte and Henry. When I remember first going to Tennessee, they did not live there, but in Alpharetta, Georgia, where Uncle Henry was principal of the junior high school. We went to Alpharetta, which is now part of Atlanta, several times to visit them there. Alpharetta was country then. Dirt roads. There was a bull in the field behind their house, and an apple tree in their yard. Atlanta was a hike, and a different deal. It could have been Chicago, it seemed so far away.

They moved to Murfreesboro, where we went in Tennessee, sometime during my childhood. Uncle Henry was a lovely man, respected and loved by everybody. They lived in a big, old, white house on Tindal Avenue. I helped clear ground for their garden in the back of their house one summer. It was hot work, and my introduction to a grubbing hoe. I was later reacquainted with grubbing hoes in Mexico.

Aunt Fannie had a stroke somewhere in that time frame, and I remember her being fragile after that but very cheerful. A lot of “thank you, honey,” when you held open a door for her.

I have a vivid memory of us sitting around the table at my Aunt Logan’s house. Aunt Logan had lived in Murfreesboro for some time and was more “citified” than her siblings (at least she thought she was). She had all the newest electrical kitchen utensils including a blender. She had whipped potatoes in the blender. They were passed to Aunt Fannie. Aunt Fannie had never seen potatoes whipped so smoothly, and thought they were the whipped cream. She scooped out a spoonful and put it in her coffee. There was a moment of silence at the table. Then it got a good laugh.

Robert Albert b. 1893

Uncle Robert was married to Aunt Eunice, and they had four children, Jesse, Julian, Emma Jean, and Virginia. They lived in a big, old, ramshackle house on a hill by the side of the road between Readyville and Woodbury. They did not have indoor plumbing, which was not unusual in the country at that time. They did not have an outhouse either, which was pretty remarkable, and he did not own a car. I don’t remember a henhouse but do remember chickens in the yard. He had a small barn across the road where he usually kept a couple of cows.

When I first started going to Tennessee, they did not have electricity. I remember their inviting the family to witness their transition from regular kerosene lanterns to Aladdin ones with incandescent mantles. The Aladdin ones were much brighter.

I took Uncle Robert for a long ride one day. It was the only time I ever spent any time alone with him and it was delightful. We drove for hours through all the unpaved back roads that he knew well. He told me who had owned the old farms and who owned them now. As we passed one fallen down house, he pointed at it and said, “That’s the house where I heard my first fiddle.”

Uncle Robert was the only one of my uncles who drank (that I know of). He made up for the rest of them. Mother never told me that he drank but she always called before we were going to see him to see “if Robert was all right.”

Aunt Eunice, I believe, had a college degree and came from a well-respected and well-to-do family, the Davenports. She had a very snippy voice. How she ended up in that house with Uncle Robert is one of the family mysteries.

When I was in the Navy, I took one of my Navy buddies,...

Erscheint lt. Verlag	17.7.2023
Sprache	englisch
Themenwelt	Literatur ► Biografien / Erfahrungsberichte
ISBN-10	1-6678-6752-0 / 1667867520
ISBN-13	978-1-6678-6752-6 / 9781667867526

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