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Survivor - The Benny Turner Story

Survivor - The Benny Turner Story

Benny Turner, Bill Dahl

 

Verlag BookBaby, 2017

ISBN 9781543901290 , 252 Seiten

Format ePUB

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11,89 EUR


 

Gilmer, Texas sits about 125 miles east of Dallas, in Upshur County. That’s where I came into the world on October 27, 1939.
Baby Benny
Mother and Me
My older brother was born there too. If you’re reading this book, you’ve probably heard of him. Freddie King would eventually be acclaimed around the world as one of the greatest guitarists in the history of the blues, a genuine Texas legend. I played electric bass with him for a long time. He was five years older than me, and he was always big physically. When we were kids, Freddie took me everywhere he went. We were absolutely inseparable, just like Laurel and Hardy.
Ben Turner was my father’s name, and legally I’m Ben Turner, Jr. Freddie’s dad was J.T. Christian, who was with my mother Ella Mae King before my dad met her. J.T. deserted her after Freddie came along. Then my dad met my mom, and he took her and Freddie and raised him as his own. My mother gave Freddie the name of King. That’s what’s on his birth certificate. Although some reference books claim otherwise, he never had the last name of Christian.
My father’s father had been a white plantation owner, and Dad and his brother Willie were half-white and half-black. They both had straight hair, and Willie’s features were even more white than my dad’s. One day, after my dad came home from World War II, he was in the bathroom shaving. He was standing there looking in the mirror, and I looked up at him and said, “Who was your father?” Without hesitating, he said, “Richard Fields.” Of course, Richard was who my grandmother was married to at that time, but he wasn’t my dad’s actual father. Richard Fields was a black man, and his children were black with curly hair.
With Uncle Richard Fields, 2014
The difference in their hair alone let me know that something wasn’t right about that, but I never could make my father tell me anything different. When I asked him, he never would answer. I always knew that there was something different between him and his brothers, because they looked different.
There’s a discrepancy about the identity of my dad’s actual father. I was always told that his name was Buster Mathis. Recently I asked my father’s brother’s wife (Mabel Dee Fields), and she said that my father’s mother told her that the guy’s name was Reese Covin, so I’m really not sure. The Mathis connection would explain why I’ve long been told that the legendary pop vocalist Johnny Mathis, who’s another native of Gilmer, is my cousin. When my father passed away, me and Freddie came down to the services from Canada. At the funeral, Freddie told me again, “You look like your homeboy Johnny Mathis, that’s your cousin!” He and I do kind of look alike, so I never questioned it.
Cousin Katherine Peoples, Mabel Dee Fields and me. Diana, TX, 2014
My paternal grandmother
Clora Fields, my father’s mother, had lived a life of servitude, although slavery had officially been abolished by that time. She didn’t talk to us much about that, although she did mention how the white men would get on their horses and ride at night and take a black woman. She was a quiet woman, especially around people she didn’t know. My mother always told me she had 25 children, so she had a hard life in many ways. On the weekends, my dad and I would walk about 15 miles round trip to see her, and we did it every week. It took a whole day to go there and back. My father brought home a .45 automatic from the war and gave it to her. She would say, “Oh, I’m safe because everybody knows that’s here,” and she’d point at that .45.
My grandmother’s house, as it remains today. Diana, TX
We lived out in the country when I was little, about twelve miles outside of Gilmer. It was just me and Freddie and my mother and father at that point. We lived on the property of a man named Jim Lester. My dad worked for him on his spread, and he let us move into a little house that was located right across the road. My mom worked as the Lesters’ housekeeper. Mr. Lester and his wife didn’t have any kids, so Mrs. Lester babysat me. She loved me. I stayed with her more when I was little than I did with my mother. She treated me like I was her own, which was a little unusual for white people back then. Mr. Lester owned horses, and he had a corral. They had a silver saddle, and Mrs. Lester would put me on that pretty saddle and let me ride one of their horses around the yard.
My parents, Ella Mae and Ben Turner
One day some of our neighbors came over to the house to shell peas. I was only a couple of years old, just old enough to walk but already nosy and curious. Me and Freddie didn’t have anything to do but sit around. Finally I got bored, so I said, “I’m going to go find me a snake!” I was gone for awhile, and my mother said, “Fred, you’d better go see about Junior.” My family called me Junior. When they found me, I was face to face with a big diamondback rattlesnake. Just a little bit of his head was sticking out from under the house, and the rest of his body was underneath. Not only was I face to face with him, every time he’d stick his tongue out, I would hit it with my finger.
Freddie came around the corner and he saw this big snake, and my finger was almost in its mouth. The snake had his eyes closed. He was kind of like playing with me. I guess he took a liking to me or something. So Freddie ran back, and even though he was almost out of breath, he shouted, “Mother! He found a snake! And not just any snake--he found the biggest snake in Texas!” My mother freaked and said, “What? Where’s he at?” So they went around the corner and peeked, and there I was, sitting with the snake. My mother whispered to Freddie, “Go get the garden hoe.” When Freddie came back, she said, “Just sneak over and pull him back. When you reach and grab him, I’m going to come down with the garden hoe.” So Freddie eased up, and he grabbed me and pulled me back. My mother came down with the garden hoe and chopped that rattlesnake’s head off, just as she had planned.
Mrs. Lester and me
Freddie picked cotton after he got old enough so he could start earning money. Of course, since we were inseparable, I had to go along with him. He’d come out with this eleven-foot cotton sack, and I sat on the sack while he’d pull it along and put the cotton he picked inside it. He’d keep me right there with him because otherwise I would go out and dig up worms and snakes. One time there was a big green worm that had to have been about two inches long. I had gotten off the sack and was looking for a snake. Freddie decided to teach me a lesson, so he went and got the worm and put it down my back inside my shirt, and it stung me. After I cried out, he said, “Now, that’s a snake!” You can bet I didn’t go looking for a snake again! A p-scale was used to weigh the cotton after it was picked, and to this day I keep one hanging on my wall as a visual reminder of where I came from. When I feel like times are tough, it’s a symbol of what hard times really are. Keeps everything in perspective!
Freddie picking cotton with me riding on the sack. Illustration by Valerie McCreary.
P-scale weighing my bass
P-scale
I still have an inch-long scar on my right cheek from an accident when I was maybe four years old. My mother told Freddie to go out and chop some wood for the stove. We burned wood in there to cook with, and used the stove for heat as well. Freddie was annoyed that he had to do it, so he stormed out of the house and wasn’t paying attention to anything around him. As usual, Freddie and I were together, so I was only a few steps behind him.
He wasn’t looking where he was swinging that axe, and when he drew it back to chop the wood he hit me right on the cheek bone. You can imagine how shocked and upset he was right after he hit me. He quickly threw the axe down, grabbed me and ran to the house. They sat me on the stove, and they turned one of the burners over because you had to take that iron thing off when you put the wood in there. They removed that and flipped it over, and they got some soot off the bottom of the stove and rubbed it in the cut with their fingers to stop the bleeding.
My cheek scar
Soot was only one of many home remedies that my mother used on us kids. The doctors were all white and didn’t give a shit about black people, so we had to figure out how to take care of ourselves. I guess even if the doctors would have helped us, we were too poor to pay the bills and too far away anyway. I can remember when Freddie had the mumps. He was in so much pain. My mom rubbed sardine oil into his jaws and wrapped...