What's Left Is Mainly Brown

By Philip N. Becton II

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.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Jul 17, 2023
• ISBN: 9781667867526

Book preview

Prologue

My father was a Becton, as was my mother. Some of my waggish friends say that explains a lot.

I was born in Greenville, South Carolina, on November 16, 1938, to Emma Barton Becton and Philip Neal Becton and was their only child. Mother was born on September 27, 1900, in Middle Tennessee, on a farm near the community of Readyville in Cannon County. Daddy was born on September 22, 1883, in Eastern North Carolina, in the same farm house where his father had been born, in rural Craven County, near the small settlement of North Harlowe.

Becton was my mother’s maiden name, as well as her married name. She was a Tennessee Becton, descended from a group that had left my father’s birthplace of Craven County, North Carolina, in the early 1800s. Bectons had lived in Craven County since John Becton arrived in this country in the early 1700s.

Mother was one of nine children who lived to adulthood. They were Joshua May (Uncle Josh) b. 1883, Susan Lacy (Aunt Sue) b. 1884, Edmund Taylor (Uncle Eddie) b. 1889, Fannie Armstrong (Aunt Fannie) b. 1892, Robert Albert (Uncle Robert) b. 1893, Willie Hall (Uncle Bill) b. 1895, Raymond Thomas (Uncle Ray) b. 1897, Emma Barton (Mother) b. 1900, and Allie Clarke (Aunt Logan) b. 1902.

Daddy was one of seven children who lived to adulthood. They were Mary Elizabeth b. 1875, James Bristowe b. 1880, Philip Neal (Daddy) b. 1883, Edwin Lee b. 1886, Mittie Irene b. 1889, Susie Rose b. 1892, and Furnie Simon b. 1896. Daddy passed away when I was three, so I have no real memory of him.

Mother, Aunt Sue, who came to live with us after my father died, and I would go to Middle Tennessee to see their family during the summer and Christmas vacations. My first memory was going there, way before interstate highways, in our 1941 Chevrolet. During World War II, gas was rationed starting in December, 1942, and we were issued a ration card with coupons which had to be presented at the filling station to buy gas. No ration coupons, no gas. Mother’s class of driver was issued coupons allowing them to buy three gallons a week, which she diligently hoarded to allow us to have enough gas to make the trip to Tennessee. She always stopped at the Pure Oil stations. I guess she thought it was pure.

I’m not sure I knew this at the time, but gas rationing was put into effect not because there was a shortage of gas. There was plenty of gas in the country. What there was a shortage of was rubber, because most of the natural-rubber-producing parts of the world were now under Japanese control. Gas was rationed to curtail driving and thereby conserve rubber.

Later trips were in the 1951 Chevrolet (replacing the 1941, and which was itself replaced by the 1961). Mother would drive with Aunt Sue in the front seat beside her and me in the back, until I got my driver’s license. From then on, I drove with Mother by me in the front seat and Aunt Sue in the back. Every other year or so, for about a week in the summer, Mother and I would go to Eastern North Carolina to see my father’s Bectons. While we didn’t spend as much time in North Carolina as we did in Tennessee, Mother wanted to make sure I knew Daddy’s side of the family.

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, David Turner, rabbit hunting on Uncle Robert’s farm. David and I drove to Uncle Robert’s from Murfreesboro in his Corvette which I’m pretty sure was the first time a Corvette had been there. It was in late December and very cold. There were no rabbits.

We came back to the house after the morning hunt empty handed and freezing. In the winter, as there was no central heat, Uncle Robert and Aunt Eunice closed off most of the house. Left operating was the kitchen, with a hall down the side of the house linking it to their bedroom. Both the kitchen and bedroom had fireplaces in them. Aunt Eunice cooked up a big, Southern-style, noon-day meal in the kitchen, and we ate it off card tables in front of the fire in their bedroom. My friend, from Michigan, had never had a lunch like that and was most impressed.

By then I knew that Uncle Robert drank, and that he liked to go into Woodbury which was in the opposite direction from the way we were going to Murfreesboro, but not that far. I said, Aunt Eunice, that was a wonderful lunch. Thank you very much. We need to be getting on back to Murfreesboro, but Uncle Robert, I’d be happy to run you into Woodbury if you’ve got something you need to do there.

Uncle Robert replied, Why Philip, that would be very nice of you.

Aunt Eunice, short and snippy, Robert! Robert! You’ve been lying around this house for a week, saying you were sick! Now you want to go into Woodbury!

Eunice, I’d just as soon be sick in Woodbury as be sick here.

Willie Hall Becton b. 1895

Uncle Bill was married to Aunt Pauline and they had four children who lived to adulthood, Albert, Irene, Violet, and Allen. Allen was best man at my wedding to Betsy Hall.

Uncle Bill lived in a big white house in the community of Christiana, Tennessee. He and my Uncle Hollis Westbrooks (married to Allie Clarke Becton, Aunt Logan) owned and operated the Becton and Westbrooks Grocery that stood on the square in Murfreesboro, the county seat of Rutherford County. He drove from Christiana to Murfreesboro every day the store was open (they closed then on Wednesday afternoons and of course on Sundays), leaving early and returning late. The first vehicle I remember his going in was a black 1941 Chevrolet panel van. My cousin Albert, when he returned from the Navy in World War II, and Cousin Allen also worked at the store.

This was before supermarkets. Clerks stood behind counters and would retrieve from shelves behind them what the customer asked for. The floor was wood. There were no credit cards. They had a separate meat department which sold, among other things, bologna, which I liked a lot. They also sold soft drinks, including my favorite, a Grapette, now extinct, which I used to wash down my bologna with.

They also sold a number of tobacco products, which in those days in Tennessee included a lot of chewing tobacco, including ‘twists" of locally-grown product. Just about the sickest I ever remember being is after sampling one of them.

Uncle Hollis, who would later serve as mayor of Murfreesboro for 25 years, was in charge of winding the courthouse clock, on top of the courthouse in the middle of the square, across the street from the store. This was done by hand weekly, with a big key, after climbing up the tower to the clock. I went with him a couple of times. It was pretty amazing up there. In the dark there were bats, scurrying things, nesting birds, spider webs and who knows what else.

I would stay at Uncle Bill’s frequently while we were in Tennessee at Christmas and during the summer. Cousin Allen made a prolonged attempt one of those summers to teach me how to ride a bike. I had a hard time comprehending the idea that you had to get the thing moving to keep it from falling over when you had your feet on the pedals.

They had scuppernongs in the backyard. I remember picking and eating those grapes lying on my back on the ground, and feeding corn shucks over the fence to the horse in the pasture next to the house.

And the cats. These were country cats, not the city cats I was used to. They were not house cats, but barn cats. They earned their keep by mousing. That being said, one would occasionally come inside where one of the dogs would run after it in a fury. The cat was smart enough to run over the slick sections of the floor where it could maneuver pretty well. Dogs do not run well on slick surfaces, particularly if they are trying to change direction as well. We witnessed some pretty hilarious chases. No catches.

The other cousins and I slept upstairs in a big feather bed and, although the house had running water, there were no bathrooms on our floor, so we had a slop jar to tide us over if we had to go to the bathroom overnight. Just let me say that when the liquid in your slop jar freezes, it is cold in your bedroom.

Raymond Thomas b. 1897

Uncle Ray was married to Aunt Dovie King. They had four children, Thomas, Wilma, Blanche, and Frances. Frances was only three years older than I was so she and I played a lot together when I would stay at their house. Frances, go play with Philip.

I’m pretty sure that Frances would have rather been doing something else, but she did her duty dutifully. Years later, I asked her if she remembered what we played. She said, A lot of cowboys and Indians. She also said we played another game, involving the use of long sticks. I have no memory of this game which is probably a good thing.

Uncle Ray lived in a farmhouse outside the community of Readyville, very near where he and his other brothers and sisters had been born and raised. They had an outhouse, a big chicken coop that held over fifty (a hundred?) chickens in rows sitting on their eggs in their nests, and a big barn. The barn was a classic old country barn, a big open area in the middle of the ground floor with stalls on both sides for farm animals and a loft for storing corn and other stuff. There was an icebox on the porch, for which the iceman delivered blocks of ice.

Their phone had a wooden case with a crank on it. If you wanted to make a call, you lifted the earpiece (it was on a cord coming out of the case) from its holder and turned the crank, which rang the local operator, and spoke into the mouthpiece. The conversation started something like this, Good morning Alice (the operator’s name), this is Dovie Becton. Please connect me to the Barkers.

I don’t know what you did if you had to call outside Readyville.

They had a small herd of dairy cows, ten to fifteen of them if I remember correctly, which had to be milked twice a day EVERY day. When I first started going there the cows were milked by hand, and the whole family went out to the barn in the dark in the morning to milk.

I have a great memory of Uncle Ray squirting a stream of milk from a cow he was milking into the mouth of a cat that was waiting nearby. They let me try milking, but I was so inefficient that they didn’t let me spend a lot of time at it.

At some point toward the end of the milking, Aunt Dovie would go back to the house and prepare breakfast for everybody. She had an electric stove by this time, but she preferred her wood stove, and she made fresh biscuits every morning. The fire wood was cedar. I can still taste her biscuits.

I loved her a lot. I loved her voice, the way she looked, her food, and everything about her. I don’t know why I felt so attached to her, but I know I did.

Uncle Ray operated the R. T. Becton & Son country grocery store on the paved road going from Murfreesboro to Woodbury through Readyville. It was about ten minutes or so by car, driving between twenty and thirty miles per hour, from the house down a dirt road. He was a champion checker player, chewed tobacco, and smoked King Edward cigars. He was something else. He called me Sport, for reasons I’ve never been sure of.

He had a herd of sheep, consisting of both ewes (mother sheep) and lambs. One time when I was about ten or eleven, he and a bunch of his neighbors were weighing the lambs and cutting off their tails. The ewe’s tails had already been cut off when they had been lambs. One of the men would pick out a lamb and carry it over to the scale where it would be weighed and have its tail cropped.

Uncle Ray said to me, Sport, go get us one. So I went and grabbed one, or maybe it grabbed me. It was almost as big as I was, had a full coat of dirty wool, and did not want to be weighed. We struggled mightily but I finally got it to the scales. Uncle Ray said, Sport, you went and brought us a ewe. I think his buddies may still be laughing.

Emma Barton b. 1900

Mother was a teacher both before she married my father and after his death until hers. She had a master’s degree from Peabody College for Teachers in Nashville and began her career as an English teacher. I don’t know how to describe her. She was a force. She did not like her name, Emma (although it is today one of the most popular names for a girl), and preferred to be called Becky. I attended my sixtieth Greenville Senior High reunion in 2016, and almost all of