[wdfifteen]

Paul's posts about Mr. Curtis reminded me of men I have known who had a strong impression on me for one reason or another. I dug up three paragraphs from the stories and I'm posting them here.

“To the account of Brown. Mistu E. Brown.”

Mr. Brown had a charge account at the hardware store where I worked when I was 16 and 17. He would come in occasionally and buy something and ask me to charge it. I can hear his tenor voice to this day, “Please charge this to the account of Brown. Mistu E. Brown.”
Mr. E. Brown was a short man with skin the color of polished walnut. He always wore a spotless white shirt and dark tie under pressed OshKosh bib overalls with the cuffs rolled up and pressed. His shoes were highly polished round-toed black oxfords. Always.
He carried himself as a proud and gentle man who would brook no nonsense from anyone.
I went to Mr. E Brown’s house once. He lived alone in a house outside of town on a well -groomed half acre. I was there to install a water heater. Everything from the mailbox to the laundry room was immaculately cared for. While I worked, Mr E. Brown sat a table cracking and eating walnuts and talking. He said, “I needs to eat these here nuts because I don’t eat no meat. I just eat nuts and rice. I don’t eat no meat so I gots to eat a lot of nuts.”
After 50 years I look back at Mr. E. Brown with respect and admiration. He lived an unpretentious life, but was quiet and proud, with a sure-as-hell sense of who he was. I never knew his first name, but he is one of the men in my life that I have striven to emulate.