Posted on 12/31/2003 9:12:50 PM PST by Bubba_Leroy
DURHAM -- When the man in Raleigh put a strange object next to his ear and started talking into it, 10-year-old Eugene Britt said he didn't know what to think.
Little did he know that over the course of his 105 years and counting, he one day would string five miles of telephone wire from Garner to Raleigh. Or that he would live to witness the evolution of communication from phones that had to be cranked to cell phones that can easily get lost in a pocketbook and that play a selection of high-pitched tunes instead of just ringing.
"Now we got so many [phones], we can't find a place to put them all," said Britt, who is celebrating his 105th birthday today.
Britt was born Jan. 1, 1899. In addition to working on telephone lines, he also sold Hoover vacuum cleaners door to door for a while, learned how to sew while selling Singer sewing machines and learned how to cook while working as a repairman and electric appliances salesman for one of Durham's early power companies.
He enjoyed selling the Hoover vacuum cleaners, Britt said.
"I liked it fine, because I made $10 a week," he said, adding that the government didn't take taxes from his earnings in those days.
"I had a good year in 1939," he said. Then he was making good money as people snapped up electrical appliances, but that didn't last long, because World War II was pending, he said.
In 1932, Britt moved into a six-room home on Ellis Road, which he had built for $1,900. The cost included digging a well and building an indoor bathroom, said Britt, whom family members described as a slightly opinionated, churchgoing man.
"One reason I lived so long is because I had a fine wife," Britt said of his 77-year marriage to Elneda Britt, 100. The couple met at a Garner church that both their families attended.
Earlier this year, Elneda Britt fell at home, and her doctor recommended that the couple move to an assisted-living facility. They had been living for three months at the home of their only child and her husband, Rita and Lunsford Williams, but they packed their belongings and then moved to Spring Arbor on Hope Valley Road.
Of the 57 residents at Spring Arbor, four are more than 100 and Britt is the oldest, said David McBurnett, Arbor Spring's executive director. Britt and his wife also are Durham's oldest voting couple, having been featured in The Herald-Sun in November for going to the polls regularly for more than eight decades.
Of the 31 men who have been president in his lifetime, Britt said he didn't have a favorite, although he did have a few least favorites.
"Clinton," he said, adding he believed the former president was a crook.
His biggest surprise over the years was watching the Wright Brothers' flying machine, he said.
Britt, a thin man who uses a walker with wheels to get around, has four grandchildren, 10 great-grandchildren and three great-great-grandchildren.
"He enjoys talking with people and getting to know all about them," Williams said. "And, of course, telling them that he is older than they are."
Britt said he did have a few regrets, but he wouldn't reveal what they were.
"I have done the best I could do, for what I was doing," he said.
"Clinton," he said, adding he believed the former president was a crook.
A wise man.
That was always a jaw-dropper for me, and for some reason, still is.
Leni
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