From hauling ice in a homemade cart to selling tires, Brownie Tittsworth has been a working man all his life.

He began carrying ice during the Second World War to help his mother feed his family, and told the Review that it was a fairly lucrative business for a child of six.

"My mother (Maudell) raised six of us." he said. "My Daddy died when I was young, and he was away from home anyway. I’m sad to say that he wasn’t with us enough that I really knew a lot about him. Some of the first things I remember are from 1941, when I started hauling ice with a goat. I made a cart out of the back end of a Radio Flyer wagon and two broom handles. I could haul a 50-pound block of ice in it, and I had several older women, Stella Jacobs, Miss Vella Parker, Miss Fanny Hayes and a few others, who lived up near what we used to call Newtown. Now this was during the war, and nobody had a refrigerator. I got a dime a block for hauling ice to them."

At eight years old Tittsworth took on a paper route.

"Walter Smithwick from Lebanon, the district man from the Tennessean and the Nashville Banner, asked me to deliver papers," he shared. "There were 26 people getting the paper at the time. Mr. Edgar Evins made my bond, I think it was $25. I would get up a little before five, when my mother did, and go on my route. I delivered the paper for years, along with my sister Faye, who passed away several years ago. I would quit for a time, but every time they needed somebody to deliver the paper they would come and see me. I did it on and off for 40-50 years."

He then moved on to retail work, then a factory job at 14.

"When I was 11," he said. "I went to work for John and Orville Hayes at their store. I would sweep and clean up in the morning, then go back after school and deliver groceries, put out stock, and whatever needed to be done. At 14 I got on at the shirt factory. I couldn’t work full time, and had to go home at 10:30 a.m. at first. When I got old enough I started working full time. I stayed there nearly six years.

He worked at Bratten’s photography as well.

"I worked with Bundy and Hilda Bratten in their studio. I developed film and printed pictures. I printed and developed the school pictures."

Tittsworth, who will be 81 in June, was not quite seventeen when he married his wife Lillian, also 16, and they have been together for 63 years as of this past December. They have a daughter, Vivian Johnson, one grandchild, Bradley Johnson, and four great grandchildren.

He said owning the farm he lived on as a child seemed an impossible dream in his youth.

"We lived on the farm I now own on Tittsworth Road in 1948, in a log house with a log barn across the street from where my house is now. I never thought I would own the farm. It would have never occurred to me back then, but I bought the place 20 years later," he remembered.

"In 1948, there was no school bus. Uncle Morris, as we called him, went north and bought an old 1936 model Ford bus. He got paid whatever people could pay him to take their kids to school. He had 15-20 kids, and we would pick turnips and carry them to school. We got to trading turnip greens to pay for our ride to school. There were no commodity deals back then, and you had sweet taters and Irish taters and white beans and turnip greens, and stuff that done you good. We were never hungry, though. And that’s something to say."

Tittsworth said his love of animals began with pigeons.

"I had a few pigeons that my uncle had caught in his barn and brought to me when they were small. I raised them up, and had one that would sit on your shoulder and go anywhere you wanted to go," he said.

"Back in the early forties, when I was six or seven years old," he continued, "there was a blacksmith shop run by Peg and Henry Summers behind Evins Hotel. It was in a big barn where the shirt factory office is now. They probably got a quarter for shoeing a horse. Somebody brought them a runt pig in a sack, and traded it for some work. I was always carrying wood in or something to try and get a little change to help out, and one day I came in and they said ‘We got you a pig.’ Then I was in the hog business.

"I worked my way up to three at one time, I’d get scraps here and there, and cut down grass and weeds to feed them. I got them up to 60-80 pounds and old man Bob Snow traded me a horse my stable full of pigs, all three of them. Then I was in the horse business.

"We moved to the country and my sisters and I would ride him to school. His name was Old Tony, and I’ve got one now that’s named after him. Yeah, I’m sentimental. There’s things down through life you don’t even count as a blessing. We never had to walk."

He moved on to other ventures later in life.

"Later I got in the trailer business. I believe I had more than 60 trailers out here at one time. Then I got into the tire business. I had 800 tires in stock at one time," Tittsworth said.

He said work has never been hard for him to find.

"I’ve always had a job. A man who says he can’t find a job is not looking hard enough. You can always find something. It might not be exactly what you want, but there’s always something to do if you’re not too proud," Tittsworth advised.

"I have been blessed so it’s unreal. You don’t count your blessings as much as you should. You can always find bad things to dwell on, but the good things seem to stay with you. You’ll forget something bad, but the good memories stick around. I’ve had several bad things happen over time, but it seems like I’d always come out alright. You’ll have bumps in life, and some of them you might let last a little longer than they ought to, but if you keep your head up you’ll always come out all right," He concluded.