 |
Thomas and Janice Bratton
have been involved in collecting antiques for 15 of
their 47 years of marriage.
|
Thomas and Janice Bratton of Henry County
have slightly differing stories of how their
joint love of collecting and restoring antiques
has turned their homeplace into a virtual
museum; a repository of culture that spans the
years of civilization in West Tennessee. "When
I was a kid growing up Daddy had an A-model
coupe like that," he says, his gaze washing over
more than half a dozen Model-T and Model-A Fords
packed into the huge |
This spring loaded barber pole once twirled outside the
door of a barber's enterprise. The milk glass globe covers
a candle or gas flame.
|
workshop that also houses old Ford trucks besides an
eclectic variety of yesteryear memorabilia in diverse
states of repair and disrepair.
The cars, renovated to the peak of their old-time
perfection by Thomas' loving care, won local recognition
as the vehicles that were used in the popular Tom Hanks
movie, "The Green Mile".
Tom Hanks drove the black 1926 T-Model, while the warden
Hal Moores (James Cromwell), Bratton, and neighbor James
"Bud" Cook and others drove Bratton's other 1920s and
early '30's model cars.
Bratton and Cook played deputy sheriffs in the movie
though their fun was interrupted when their scenes were
cut from the nevertheless nearly three and a half hour
movie.
"We worked on it two and a half to three months," Thomas
relates, unconcerned about the loss of his claim to
fame. Readers can tie the local boys into the movie with
the knowledge that, in the cut scene, they jumped into
the cars and raced to the railroad trestle, where they
ran down to the spot where big guy John Coffey (Michael
Clarke Duncan) was discovered after losing his bid to
help the two children he was mistakenly arrested for
harming.
Thomas
relaxes at the door of his 1926 Model-T Ford which was
driven by Tom Hanks in the movie "The Green Mile".
Thomas is more excited about the attention his cars
received from McKenzie Technology Center's automotive
students who were thrilled with the workings of the cars
which feature cranks inserted near the bottom of their
wide grills.
"They had a ball over it," declares Thomas, explaining
the crank's function was to save the battery, which was
optional on early automobiles.
"After they warm up they crank themselves," he says,
sharing the oddities of the Model-A's engineering.
"That's why women liked them; when they got ready to go
somewhere all they had to do is get in and step on the
gas."
His explanation conjures images of exciting years when
women were stretching their boundaries while still
reaping the benefit of gentlemen who apparently braved
whatever weather to warm the engines before their loved
ones set forth.
"A-oooo-ga!" the vehicle sounds as grinning Thomas
demonstrates the horn.
"I said if I ever found one I was going to get it,"
Thomas says, continuing his explanation of the roots of
his hobby. "I over-did it, I guess," he grins
sheepishly, "It just didn't stop; I love tinkering with
them."
His collection continued with another by-product of his
parents' - Robert and Myrtle Bratton's - early farming
years in Puryear: tractors.
Spilling over outside the shop are a goodly number of
steel-wheeled, International Harvester forerunner
McCormick-Deering tractors and one lonely 1918 Fordson
model.
At the front of the shop, tall, thin Crown gasoline
pumps stand like sentries, topped by red and blue
painted crowns on milky glass globes. The red and blue
colors signified various octane levels, explains Thomas,
who also has a gold crowned pump, but hesitates to
disrupt the symmetry of the two monuments to days gone
by.
Amid hundreds of items is a tribute to Janice's
heritage: her grandfather's horse drawn cotton seed
planter that Thomas says was the first one to come to
Cottage Grove.
Janice's take on how the two got started in their joint
venture doesn't preclude her husband's theory. "I used
to have a booth down at Hazel (Kentucky) where I sold
antiques," she shares, "Then he got interested in it and
he's the one that's gone completely crazy."
Janice explains she started with the glassware that
graces the couple's museum-quality dining room which is
centered by an antique big-family sized table and faced
with complementary pieces including the china cabinet in
which the glassware is displayed.
In fact, every room of the Bratton home is a
well-designed display in what has become a real museum
of American memorabilia. A tour reveals the "1920's
bedroom", "1930's bedroom" and an "oak bedroom"
featuring undulating, serpentine front furniture.
"We have a little bit of anything everybody would ever
collect," Janice says modestly. "We just decided to
incorporate all our collections in our house; just
decorate with it. We just live among the old stuff and
we're pretty old ourselves."
The couple has been married 47 years. "I know it seems
like 97," she quips, then corrects herself, "Honestly it
doesn't. I don't know where the time has gone. We just
started out with our fun and collected as we went. It
was a piecemeal thing; we'd buy a table, then find the
chairs, then the sideboard. We went to a lot of sales
and attended auctions for a long time but we've just
about quit. Now we go and see something we like to buy
but where are we going to put it?"
Among the couple's collection are some 100 straightedge
razors, some of which are displayed in shadow boxes
while other are creatively arranged within an equally
aged container. Beautifully designed chamber pots (cold
weather respite from nighttime treks to the outhouse)
rest alongside each bed. Even in the utility room one
finds a charming miniature collection of salesman
samples of old-fashioned irons. Janice demonstrates one
sample iron with removable handle that allowed busy
women to interchange among irons kept hot on stove or
fireside. Also in that room is a charming collection of
salt and pepper shakers including a Dick Tracy and
Junior pair as well as the comic figures Maggie and
Jiggs, in which Maggie holds the rolling pin with which
she sought to "better" her husband.
 Throughout their home, the ageless allure of music is
represented. In the living room, an early radio is
masked as a beautifully crafted table. The 1920's
bedroom boasts an Edison gramophone with long, fluted
bell that played pre-recorded cylinders.
"That was a time when they were really starved for
music," Janice says enthusiastically, "They were really
excited about music."
In the 1930's room is "Thomas' pride and joy", a Regina
music box that plays notched disks rather than
cylinders.
"Yeah, I like music, but I can't even carry a tune,"
Thomas begins, and Janice finishes, "But he loves
beautiful music."
The oak bedroom sports an Edison music box that uses
cylinders similar to the ones used in the gramophone.
Each of the musical items is supported with an amazing
variety of cylinders or disks, including the player
piano in the basement - which has also been converted as
another display room in the "museum" - alongside which
is a cabinet full of 88-note punched, paper music rolls
with titles like "Glen Miller", "Square Dance Medley",
and "Shake, Rattle and Roll".
"Nobody in Carroll County can play the piano as good as
she can," Thomas declares. "Not as long as I can load
the roll!" Janice agrees jovially. Soon the sound of
"Rocky Top" dominates the room as the keys fly under the
power of the air-driven pistons inside the piano.
One roll cost a dime back in 1920's, Janice shares.
Rounding out the couple's mechanical music collection is
a fully functional Rockola juke box that lights up in
bright reds, oranges, yellows and greens as Glen
Miller's "In the Mood" swings into place beneath the
record stylus.
 Requiring more talent to handle is an ornately designed
pump organ that legend says was brought over the
Cumberland Mountains in a wagon to Shiloh Methodist
Church many years ago.
Like most of the items in the Bratton's collections, the
organ did not come into their hands in mint condition.
"I enjoy seeing this old stuff brought back to original;
I like to see stuff left like they are," says Janice.
"After all we're just caretakers of these things."
Janice, whose parents, Cooper and Avis Olive, were
farmers, grew up knowing firsthand the drudgery of the
days before modern conveniences eased the workload of
both men and women.
So complete is the couple's collection that they were
able, near the end of the last school session, to treat
Henry eighth graders to a field day in which they gained
hands-on knowledge concerning the advances of the past
two centuries since West Tennessee was settled.
Among the demonstrations were improvements in washing
machines, beginning with a large white rock polished
"just as slick as greased lightening" from the
scrubbings of pioneer women's wash loads. The washboard
was next, followed by a plunger or hand pump with which
women stirred and compressed their families' wash in a
kettle of sudsy water that was heated over a fire.
From that point, Thomas displays a succession of wooden
models with increasingly "modern" features, like
attached wringers that squeezed water from clothes
before the spin cycle was ever dreamed of. They range
from hand-operated models (agitated by rocking a lever
back and forth) to gas and electric powered models.
Thomas recalls living "way out in country" where they
didn't have electricity. "My mother was just like a kid
with a toy when Dad brought home a gas operated washing
machine," he recalls.
For every advance in washing machines, a different iron
was also made, Thomas teaches. The Bratton collection
grows from plain flat irons to those with
interchangeable handles to charcoal-filled ones to
others powered with small gas tanks mounted behind them.
Big, commercial irons as well as intriguing trivets are
also among their collection.
 The crowning glory of convenience for the modern,
turn-of-the century woman was the "Hoosier" style
kitchen cabinet that centralized her busy days.
"The Hoosier cabinet had everything a woman needed,"
Janice says, demonstrating the pull-down ironing board.
Once it is tucked away, the biscuit board is easily
accessible above which is located the flour bin and,
beneath that, a spice drawer with compartments for
baking powder, soda, and salt.
"It even has a grocery list," she says, opening one
cabinet to reveal a tin board upon which staples are
listed in two rows alongside sliding pegs that indicate
the need for the item.
 The innovative Hoosier-style cabinets were preceded by
Baker's cabinets or "possum belly" cabinets, a round
bottomed model also on display among the Bratton's
collections, along with coal oil stoves, coffee mills,
wooden and tin ice boxes, wood-burning cook stoves, and
- still running - General Electric refrigerators made in
1923 and 1926. The engine was located atop the
refrigerators which had a convenient step-release lever
at one leg to enable food-laden women to accomplish her
chores more easily.
Along with an old school desk, a slate board that took
the place of paper, and a round tin lunch box, Thomas
and Janice have a full set of wooden-handled teachers'
hand bells - in successive sizes - used by teachers to
call their students to class.
"Ever which bell sounds a different way," Thomas says,
explaining the different sounds signal specific classes.
"It's the only full collection I know of."
There is even a spring wound barber pole atop which a
milky globe diffused a candle or gas flame, and an old
barber's chair for effect.
The Bratton's began collecting their wares some 15 years
ago after maybe slowing down a little bit from a
work-life that still hasn't included retirement.
Thomas was Road Supervisor in Henry County for 12 years
and now works digging septic tanks while Janice stays
busy cleaning houses.
"We used to truck together for about five years, long
distance," reveals Janice, who has no inclination to
return to hard work on the road. "We drove a transport
truck across country around the clock. He'd go to bed at
10:00 and I would get under the steering wheel and take
off. We'd be at our destination the next morning and he
would be ready to unload and I'd crawl up in the bed and
sleep."
Janice rues some of the changes time has wrought. "My
kids will never know what it's like to get upon cold
snowy morning and hurry to the outhouse or draw bucket
of water. I just don't know how we made it," she says,
"But we have less time now because of T.V., it's the
ruination of our youth and the computer is next - this
Internet."
She longs for the "days of the front porch", time spent
visiting while shelling peas or shucking corn. "We miss
that; if we could go back and have those front porches
again!"
Gatherings at the Bratton home take place amid
incredible natural beauty with towering pines and other
trees gracing their huge lawn. A splendid garden
encircles a pond full of "Japanese Coy" that Janice says
is another name for "fancy carp".
The two are active members of Eastwood Church of Christ.
Their daughter Nerissa Dickson is "just about as goofy"
as her parents about antiques. She lives in Nashville
with her husband David where she is a federal police
officer.
Older daughter Felicia Bates (a first-grade teacher in
Puryear) lives at her grandparents' old homeplace with
her husband, Jimmy. They are the parents of Jennifer,
who is mom to the Bratton's great grandson, 14-month-old
Ethan Lane.
Son Timothy Bratton runs a junkyard down the road from
his parents and also enjoys renovating old cars. He and
his wife Sarah, hope to soon adopt 20-month-old
Elizabeth. |
|
