CLEARWATER BEACH — Benjamin B. Bennett — "Ben" to his friends — is a creature of habit. Every morning he eats the same breakfast: peanut butter on whole wheat toast, the same breakfast he enjoyed as a boy.
Ben toasts the bread in the same McGraw Electric Co. Toastmaster his parents, the late Benjamin V. and Elizabeth Bennett, received as a wedding gift in October 1937. Their son was born the following year, and from the moment his teeth were up to the task he was eating toast produced by the shiny Toastmaster.
"It's never failed, although in 1956 my dad brought it in to get a new cord. But that's the only thing it's needed in almost 72 years. Every once in a while I turn it upside down and shake out the crumbs. And today I cleaned the chrome with Windex. That's about it.''
The machine, $16 in 1937, looks like it's ready for another million or so slices of bread. It may be morbid to mention this, but the toaster might even outlive its owner, still robust at age 70.
"Back in the old days they built things to last,'' he said at his condo at Clearwater Beach. "Not like now. I have friends who have had to buy three or four toasters in the last decade. I've bought three outboard motors in the last six years. Things are made these days to break.''
Don't ask about his bad luck with modern coffeemakers. He wishes he had his mother's old tin pot, which never let the family down.
Luckily, he has his mother's three cast iron frying pans. He has her waffle iron and her Savoy Roaster. He uses them all the time. He lights the hall with a half-century old lamp, a priceless Miller, which belonged to his grandmother. He is always on time because he depends on his Revere Westminster Chime Telechron clock. It has kept time for his family for seven decades.
"I have never collected anything,'' said Bennett, a retired Chevron marketer. "But I don't throw anything away either. It's a way I have with staying connected with people I loved who are long gone.''
When he was 6, his dad told him he would never receive a bicycle for Christmas. Bikes were dangerous, his dad said; his dad had once known a friend who was killed riding a bike.
"I don't want you to cry,'' his dad told him every Christmas Eve, "but you're not getting a bike this year either.''
When he was 10, his dad gave him the bad news once more. Ben did not cry. He unwrapped an erector set, a nice present, and smiled.
A few minutes later, on the Christmas of 1948, Ben heard someone at the door. A friend of his dad's walked in with a new Schwinn.
"It's the only bike I've ever owned or ever needed,'' Ben said the other day. "I still ride it around. I'll never get rid of it.''
Jeff Klinkenberg can be reached at klink@sptimes.com or (727) 893-8727.
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