As a general proposition, I often warn my readers about the essays that appear on these pages. And so it is that in this case, I will tell you that the essay that follows is about Irish music and also about my father. My father could not sing worth a lick. That applied to Irish music as well as to Protestant hymns. Simply put, he could not sing worth two whoops, which is the equivalent of a lick.
This essay, in my illogical mind, has divided itself into three parts. The first part is about my father. The final part has to do with two renditions of “The Orchard,” one by the composer Kevin Evans and the other by Liam Clancy, whom I consider to be the most beloved singer of Irish music in recent years.
In the middle, there are two songs by the Fureys and Davey Arthur, a very popular singing group in Ireland. While the Fureys are excellent instrumentalists and arrangers of music, none of them can sing worth a lick. They are a little better than my father but that is being damned by faint praise.
On the last bookend, there are some thoughts about my father, some of which you may have heard before. But nonetheless, they apply forcefully in the essay that follows.
When you hear the attached CD, you will find that the Fureys have two contributions. The first is “Belfast Mill” and the second is “Yesterday’s Men.” It is those two songs that have made me think a great deal about my father, who departed this earth about 52 years ago.
I should state at the beginning that in 47 years’ employment, I have been extremely fortunate in that I have never been laid off or fired. I am quite certain that there are people who would have loved to have fired me, particularly as the President of the local union, but I escaped for 47 years, never having been laid off or fired. I know now this was a case of great good fortune. Other people, through no fault of their own, have had to struggle with unemployment caused by forces unknown to them. So I am a lucky man, but I have all kinds of sympathy for those who have not been so fortunate.
One of those men who was not so fortunate was my father. When the Fureys and Davey Arthur sing about the “Belfast Mill” and about “Yesterday’s Men,” my thoughts go racing back to the tribulations that were my father’s misfortune. My father came to St. Louis, after having been a fireman on the Illinois Central Railroad for a while, which was getting him nowhere, and which was backbreaking work. This was in the days before there were stokers. My father, as other firemen did, used to take a shovel full of coal and then turn around and put it on the grates on the fire in the steam engine.
He came to St. Louis to work on the World’s Fair, which was supposed to start in 1902. but it was delayed. The Fair actually took place in 1904. After the fair finished, my father took employment with Sam and Dwight Davis, the proprietors of the Lilac Roost Dairy Farm in Clayton, Missouri. My father had only a second-grade education in a country school but he was a willing worker. Some time before the year 1910, he became the superintendent of the Lilac Roost Dairy Farm. This job provided only rare days off, because, as you can imagine, the cows have to be milked every single day. There was one compensation on the fringe side. The superintendent of the Lilac Roost Dairy Farm was provided with a large house on the top of a hill in Clayton, not far from the barns that held the milking cows. All eight of the Carr children were delivered in that house.
My father liked to be around livestock and apparently he was a success as the superintendent of the Lilac Roost Farm. However, in 1925, Sam Davis stopped my father in his tracks when he told him that before long there would be trucks that would pick up the milking cows to take them away. Sam Davis also told my father that he had elected to make a subdivision out of the property owned by the farm. Further, Davis would like my father to move out of the house provided for the superintendent’s use, because it was to be torn down. The title of this essay is “Where Shall We Go Now, My Family and I?” which must have been the thought in my father’s mind. At that point, he had a wife and five children to care for and he found himself not only without a job, but also homeless.
The old man was a go-getter and in a short while, he found employment with the Evans-Howard Refractories. Evans-Howard manufactured firebricks which was dirty work but provided employment. When we left the Lilac Roost Farm, my father was able to find a very small house on North and South Road in Clayton, Missouri and squeezed all of us into perhaps four or five rooms. As I said, my father was a go-getter and he made arrangements with the St. Louis County National Bank to provide funds so that he could oversee the building of a new home about three quarters of a mile south of the building where the Carr children had all been born.
But bad luck seemed to follow my father. When the Depression came in late 1929, there was no demand for firebricks and the refractory closed down, never to open again. I hope that you can see why thoughts of my father occurred to me as I was listening to “Belfast Mill.” The “Belfast Mill” closed down and never reopened. The same thing happened to the Evans and Howard factory in Brentwood, Missouri.
During the Depression, there was absolutely no work at all to be had. When the winter came, there was no coal to put in the furnace. Both my father and I cut trees and split them so that the home on Frances Place in Richmond Heights could be heated. Wood burns quite a bit quicker than coal, and I can assure you that on many winter mornings, the members of our family had to survive the shivers.
Eventually, after about four or five years of unemployment, my father found a job in University City, which had to do with mowing lawns, shoveling snow, and other matters which tended to make the residents of those buildings feel proud. As I have related before, in 1947 my father was too well advanced into blindness to climb a tree to trim it. He stepped on an imaginary branch, and then fell to the ground and fractured his skull. That was the end of his working career.
My father’s accident happened in the spring of 1947 when telephone workers such as myself were on strike. When I went to visit him while he was confined to the hospital, my father said that I had been without a paycheck for a while and he had a few dollars that he would like to give to me. That is the kind of person that he was. I told him that I had saved some money in anticipation of the strike and that if I ran low in the money department I would come back to see him.
I have said on more than one occasion that my father and I were strangers to the end. There was never ever an argument between the two of us. He regarded me as a “strange duck;” but I was one of his children and he loved me. In my own perverse way, I loved him too. From the vantage point of 52 years after his death, I can see the travails that he went through having a large family without a job. And so the songs about the “Belfast Mill” and “Yesterday’s Men” should have been published when my father could have heard them. I have listened to those songs, which are now provided to all my readers on the CD that is attached. In my mind, there is a special poignancy about those songs.
Well, so much for my father. Now we must turn to the two songs that are sung by the Fureys and Davey Arthur. Listening to at least one of the songs, there is a reference to “craic” Friday nights. “Craic” is a Gaelic word that has nothing whatsoever to do with cocaine. It is translated into English as fun or great fun. “Craic” would occur when men needled each other on a Friday night after a few beers. “Craic” is usually accompanied by great laughter. So please remember that “craic” has nothing to do with cocaine.
In discussing my father in the first third of this essay, I can now see that to a large extent we have covered the second part of the essay having to do with the two songs that caused me to think of my father. The Fureys are a very interesting group of musicians who can play a wide variety of instruments and play them well. The only thing that is lacking is that none of the Fureys can sing. But they give it a try. Their words are intelligible and as you can see from the “Belfast Mill” and “Yesterday’s Men,” they have made a very deep impression upon this old reprobate’s mind as he endures the second Depression of his life.
That leaves us with only the final third of this essay to work on. Liam Clancy died a short while ago. Liam Clancy was probably the most beloved of all Irish folk singers. My collection of records that he has done is fairly extensive. I never tire of hearing him. Liam was born in 1935 and in the end, he suffered from a pulmonary disease which I imagine would make it very difficult for a singer to endure. But in any event, the enterprise that Liam Clancy founded, Liam Clancy Productions, could be passed on to his chosen successor, Kevin Evans.
In my last mailing of essays, there was a recording of Kevin Evans singing his own composition, “The Orchard.” It has a number of racy lyrics such as making love before marriage. In that song, the singer is identified as having lived into his 91st year. Now we have Liam Clancy singing the same song in what I suppose would be called an expurgated version. There is no reference to making love in the orchard without the benefit of clergy. In Liam Clancy’s version, he wants to die at the age of 81, not 91. As a public service, I have provided both versions of “The Orchard” so that you can make your own comparison.
For myself, I declare the two versions a tie. I like them both and regard “The Orchard” as one of the most important contributions to the musical scene in the past several years. Remember that the comeraghs are apples grown in Ireland. The action takes place in a town called Dungarven in County Waterford on the southeast coast of Ireland. A further translation in both versions is potcheen which is bootleg Irish whiskey. Anyone who drinks potcheen is entitled to the violent headache which follows, for which I have very little if any sympathy at all.
And so in this essay I have introduced you to the Fureys and Davey Arthur, Liam Clancy, and the songs of the Fureys that made me think about my father. It might be said that memories of my father hijacked this whole essay but that is not the case at all as I view it. My father would be glad to be remembered and I am honored to do that. I am quite certain that he would have liked to have heard the Fureys, Kevin Evans, and most especially Liam Clancy. But as the saying goes, you never appreciate them until they’re gone. I regret that my epiphany on memories of my father did not occur while he was still alive. But in all honesty, my father could not sing worth a lick, even when compared to the vocalists in the Fureys. But all of the people involved in this essay, including the musicians, were full-fledged Irish. From my standpoint, that has to count for something.
E. E. CARR
March 1, 2010
Essay 441
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Kevin’s commentary: Heck of a learning experience. Songs, new words, and autobiographical bits I’d never head before.
So far is the CD is concerned, that may have been lost to history. Nearly all of the songs, however, are available on the internet and are well worth listening to. I personally have experience with the Clancy brothers that goes back all the way to 1990; my father liked to sing me lullaby songs preformed by Makem and Clancy. That particular song was “four green fields” (a very cheery song to sing to a baby) but some of the songs mentioned in this essay have a similar feel.
It’s also entertaining to me to think about the generational differences that become apparent within just a few steps down the family tree. My mother’s father’s father was a hard working man who made ends meet with physical labor and determination. My mother’s father was similarly hardworking, but as a rather “strange duck” he was also intelligent and charismatic enough to rise through the ranks of the union and the AT&T corporation. He got enough money together to let my mother go to college, from which she graduated to become a lawyer. And that chain has continued; I’ve gotten through college and now work at a technology startup. My older brother has his own company. Trying to explain either of our jobs to Pop’s father would be a difficult proposition.
That said, the total generational distance between something as concrete as shoveling coal and something as abstract as doing sales for an internet sales product that didn’t exist two years ago is surprisingly small. What’s more, I think it’s a mistake to assume that any of these professions are more or less worthwhile than any others. Every single day of my great grandfather’s work, he could sit back and feel confident that he had made a train move, or kept a bunch of cows milked and happy, or something similarly tangible. Many days of the week, I don’t know whether or not I’ve actually brought any value to anyone. There is certainly something to be said for all these different kinds of work.