By Vikki Bynum
Although my new book, Deep Roots, Broken Branches, A History Memoir, centers primarily on my grandmother and me, I chronicle the joys and sorrows of many more lives than ours from Old-World immigration to the post-Vietnam era. I tell my father’s story from the perspective of a historian and a daughter subjected to his alcoholic tirades, while remembering his final years with empathy and love. On this, the thirty-fifth anniversary of his death, and just two days after the official release of Deep Roots, Broken Branches, it seems fitting that Stanley Bynum is the centerpiece of today’s post.
Rather than introduce the father of my youth or as an old man approaching death, the selection below presents a much younger Stanley Bynum—the man I never knew—who escaped Depression-ridden Mississippi and a broken family by joining the navy at age seventeen. Discharged in New York and sent home, Stanley headed right back to New York to forge a new life:
“Living in urban New York plunged Dad into a far different social world. He thrilled to the sounds of big band music and enjoyed the jazz and blues clubs that hearkened back to his early childhood living near New Orleans. He shed his Mississippi accent and Baptist upbringing, A sharp dresser, he wore carefully tailored shirts and well-shined shoes out on the town. On the dance floor, he threw his partners up over his head, then down between his legs without ever losing the beat. From 1938 to 1942, Stanley was a true city boy.“
In his later years, Dad lived and worked in Monterey, California, a city he dearly loved. Between 1966 and 1982, he cleaned Monterey’s streets, driving his giant sweeper truck as the city slept. After his retirement, he rose every morning at 4:00 am to walk the short distance from my parents’ house to Cannery Row and Fisherman’s Wharf, where he scavenged for lost coins, jewelry, and souvenirs.
This coming May, I will visit Monterey for the first time in twenty years. I look forward to retracing Dad’s steps from his David Avenue home to the bay, the wharf, and cannery row.
To learn more about Deep Roots, Broken Branches, or to purchase it, visit the University Press of Mississippi. The book is also available from Amazon and Barnes & Noble.
