One of the joys of fatherhood is the ability to ponder questions raised by your children. Two or three weeks ago, my daughter raised a question that has left me pondering prodigiously.
It stems from the fact that my daughter has peculiar reading habits. When I get a batch of essays together and mail them, my readers have reported to me that some of them read the essays as soon as they are retrieved from the mailbox. There are others who like to read one or two at a time, in sort of a rationing system. But Suzanne, the Texas daughter, apparently stacks the essays up and then she reads several of the mailings. This strikes me as a peculiar system but how do I know what peculiarity is as applied to a resident of Texas, as my daughter now is?
The question that has caused me to ponder is about the essays themselves. My daughter contends that over the years, I have written about my mother and father and various friends but that there have been no essays having to do with my siblings. As I try to reconstruct 11 years of essays, I suspect that Suzanne seems to have reached the proper conclusion. There have been no essays about my siblings which she contends she and her children might like to look into. I did not regard siblings as compelling subjects but if there is a request such as this one, I am willing to indulge in an essay about my siblings.
One thing that you will notice, because of the age spread of the children, and due to the need for everyone to go to work as soon as possible, I did not have the opportunity to play with my siblings. My memory of playing is with one of my nephews, Bob Carr.
For whatever it is worth, there were eight children born to Ezra and Lillie Carr. All were born in the farmhouse in Clayton, Missouri and were delivered by a fellow named Dr. Leon. As it turns out, your old essayist is the seventh child of the Carr children. In 1920 there was a stillborn who was named either Ruth or Martha. In 1924, there was another stillborn who was named either Ruth or Martha. As you can tell, I am not so sure of my facts in this matter. In 1924 as well, my parents lost Laurence, an eleven and a half year old school boy, to first appendicitis and then, while he was in the hospital, he contracted pneumonia. So in that period between 1920 and 1924, my parents suffered three casualties. For whatever it is worth, I was born in 1922, right in the midst of these problems.
It is a curious matter that in all of the years that I knew my parents, they declined to discuss Ruth and Martha. I suspect that having a stillbirth was a sort of social disgrace in those times.
Now we move on to the five children who survived. The oldest daughter was named Verna Eva, who was my senior by at least 15 years. She was named Verna Eva by my father, who said that he named her after “the ‘purdiest’ girl he ever saw.” Verna had a tendency to try to dominate her other siblings. Over the years, Verna’s contentious attitude alienated the other members of the sibling family. As a matter of fact, I believe that she and the second child, Charlie, had a permanent dispute over her combative attitude. But perhaps this is the role that is often played by the senior member of the sibling group.
One way or another, I avoided the combat with Verna until my first marriage in 1945. What the bone of contention was now escapes me entirely. But we did not communicate again until my father’s death in 1958.
It was Verna’s desire to be an opera singer. She became a member of the St. Louis Grand Opera Chorus, and I was delegated to accompany her to the rehearsals and to the performance itself to protect her on the street car coming home. I was nine or ten years of age, and I have no idea of how much protection I could have provided, but I learned great music.
Verna married a young gentleman who worked for the Ford Motor Company named Carter Rayfield. She was close to 30 at that time. He apparently died somewhere along the line and then she married a fellow named Max Lamm, who was her boss in some government position. I last saw Verna in the 1960s when she told me that she was coming to New York to board a cruise ship. I arranged a luncheon at the Stanhope Hotel, for noon on Saturday. Unhappily, Verna showed up about 90 minutes late, with no apology whatsoever. But what the Hell! She was the senior person in the array of Carr siblings and I let the matter rest there.
Because I had moved from St. Louis in 1951, it was easy for me in later years not to become involved in family matters. But I suspect that anyone who can sing a few bars from Traviata can’t be all bad. At the end of her life, Verna moved in with a preacher and his wife and lived a reclusive life from that point on. She was visited from time to time by my nephew, Bob Carr, and unfortunately I was unaware of her passing.
The second member of the Carr sibling association was named Charles Halley, who was named by my grandmother after the comet in the sky. For a large part of his life, Charlie went by the name of Halley but while I was away in the Army, he began to call himself Charlie. Getting his name straight took some thinking, just as in my case. I was always called Junior because I was named after my father. To this day, when I communicate with my nephew Bob Carr I sign my communiqués with the name Uncle Junior.
Charlie, shortly after high school, took a job with Emil Kronsberg who was a surveyor in Clayton, Missouri and who ran a blueprint shop. On many occasions as I was walking home from grade school, I would go by the Kronsberg establishment hoping to see my brother. On a good many occasions, Charlie would come to the street and we would converse for a minute or two. Charlie was at least 13 years older than I was, and, while we got along well, there was no real emotional tie between the two of us. If there is one thing that would be said about Charlie, it was that he was dogmatic to the extreme.
There was an occasion when Charlie, who had no military experience, told me that the C-47s ,which were the backbone of the U. S. fleet of supply ships, were powered by Wright engines. I spent a good part of my stint in the US Army working on C-47 engines. Please believe me when I tell you that they were powered by Pratt & Whitney engines called R-1800. That designation means that they were radial engines and that they had 18 cylinders. When I called this to Charlie’s attention, he became adamant, as he often did. I realized that there was no hope of persuading Charlie, so I abandoned my explanation and departed the scene as soon as possible.
Later in life Charlie became dogmatic about the Christian religion and seemed to change churches because of the sermons. Perhaps the best that can be said about Charlie was that he was persistent about the dogma of his beliefs. Charlie was about 13 years my senior.
I last saw Charlie when I lived in Bethesda, Maryland and he invited me to a pork chop dinner served in the country style. Later he came to my house in Bethesda and made his first long-distance telephone call. It was a pleasure for me to see Charlie’s elation over the call he had just placed. It was to our brother Earl.
Charlie died at approximately his 60th birthday. There was no great warmth between the two of us, but in the end, he was my brother and thats all that counts.
The third member of the sibling association of the Carr family is named Alvia Earl. Earl was my senior by 12 years. By all odds, Earl was my favorite sibling. When I got arrested for speeding from one job going to another, it was Earl who rescued me. In 1945, it was Earl who loaned me his car so that we could at least get to our honeymoon location. Loaning a car in those days was a risky business because there was no way to replace it if something happened to it. But Earl did it and I was truly grateful.
Later in life, the curse of the Carr family, glaucoma, blinded him. Not only that, but Earl was felled by Parkinson’s disease. Earl lived until his 81st year. Earl was a good man who bore his troubles valiantly. As Will Rogers said, Earl “never met a man he didn’t like.” The world could use a lot more of the likes of Earl Carr.
The next person is Opal Audrey, who was about seven years my senior. Opal was a free spirit who clashed repeatedly with her sister Verna. I fear that Opal did not graduate from high school. I remember that she was a waitress at Joe Gonella’s saloon and after a while she became a singer there.
Opal was a good-looking woman, as I recall her, but men seemed to take advantage of her. In her life, she was married at least twice, or at least we were led to believe that the marriages actually existed. Whether they did or not remains to be determined. One of her marriages was to a gentleman who raced greyhounds in Arizona and then in Florida during the winter months. I last saw Opal in 1945. From what I have been told, she began to race her own greyhounds and lived in a trailer near the race track. The end of the line came when Opal was about 61 or 62, in that she fell dead in the trailer and was not discovered for a week or so. That was a life wasted that need not have been.
In my own case, I knew that there was never a chance that I could ever attend college so I went to work at age 15, working for Carl Shroth and Ed Williams and Harold Bauer in the filling station business. I was headstrong and I suppose that it took the United States Army to knock some sense into my head. It was during this period that I started smoking in 1938, a habit which lasted until March of 1953. I wish someone had told me never to touch a cigarette.
As you can see, the onset of the Depression of 1929 had a gripping effect upon myself and my siblings. The idea was to complete schooling while also pursuing employment. Fortunately, we were able to secure some employment which tended to carry us over this very rough period in our lives.
That is the lineup of the Carr siblings. I suspect that in every family the degrees of collegiality will vary. The Carr family was not known for big get-togethers. More than anything else, each member went his own way and no one else seemed to take great offense. On the other hand, it should be noted that my brother Earl and his wife Josephine were the sponsors of family get-togethers. Again, as Will Rogers said, Earl never met a fellow that he didn’t like. Earl seemed to like all of his siblings and the time spent with Earl and Josephine was well spent.
As I have recorded earlier, my father completed the second reader about age 16 or 17. It had to do with the planting seasons and the harvest of course, and no school work took place. My mother was able to complete the third reader, which does not amount to an impressive educational record between my parents. But they were doing the best they could.
None of my siblings were able to attend colleges. But the children who followed us are doing quite well academically. Earl had three sons. Two of them hold degrees from Culver-Stockton College in Canton, Missouri. And the elder child, Robert Joseph has an engineering degree from the University of Missouri at Rolla. Charlie’s daughter acquired an engineering degree from Washington University in St. Louis. One of my daughters has a degree from Miami University of Ohio, while the other holds a degree from Dartmouth. That daughter also acquired a degree as a lawyer in Texas.
But the achievements don’t stop there. Suzanne has a son who has graduated from Dartmouth and who has gone on to pursue a degree from a University in Yokohama attesting to his proficiency in the Japanese language. Another of Suzanne’s sons is a sophomore at Northwestern University. Her sister, Maureen, has a son who is now matriculating as a freshman at Southern Methodist University. I suspect that my parents would have no idea where these schools would be located. But I am also certain that when they look at the results of their descendants, they would say, “mighty fine.”
What with depressions and wars, I am impressed by the fact that the Carr family has progressed from the roots of the second and third grade in four generations to having graduates of prestigious institutions that are better than the McGuffey readers enjoyed by my parents ever were.
I am not sure what any student could learn in studying the Carr siblings but my daughter asked me to ponder the question of why I had discussed my parents and other persons without mentioning my siblings. The siblings all worked hard and in their own way made it possible for their children to go beyond them. Obviously they had their quirks and their blemishes but none of them ran afoul of the law. As my mother would say, they have been doing the best they can and perhaps that is all that we should ask.
But now I have written about my siblings, which I hope will satisfy my Texas daughter and provide clues to her children who wish to think about them. For myself, I had never given thought to writing about my siblings but now that it is done, I can quit my pondering. In the end, I am delighted to have this off my chest. Now that the essay has been written, I think it is fair to say that there is nothing spectacular about my siblings, but I didn’t know that until I actually dictated an essay of this sort. So my Texas daughter can go back to thoughts that don’t cause me to ponder and I can devote such time to thinking about wild girls. Pondering about girls may be more productive than thinking about my siblings. I will have to ponder that situation for a while to see if it is true.
E. E. CARR
November 25, 2009
Essay 422
__________________________
COPYRIGHT ©2009 E. E. CARR
CARR SIBLING ASSOCIATION ADDENDUM
If anyone is interested in pursuing the history of the Carr family, here are some vital statistics.
Ezra Edgar, Sr. 10-10-1881 8/21/1958 Oakhill Cmtry.
Kirkwood, MO
Lillie Holloman 4-16-1881 6/17/1961 Oakhill
Verna Eva 1-25-08 11-25-94 Sunset Burial Pk, St. Louis
Charles Halley 8-30-09 3-11-72 Hiram Cmtry, St. Louis Co.
(now named Bellerive, Creve Coeur)
Alvia Earl 1-8-11 12-29-91 Sunset Burial Pk. St. Louis
Lawrence Anthony 2-18-13 7-5-24 Oakhill family plot
Opal Audrey 2-9-17 3-20-78 Oakhill family plot
Martha 7-18-20 7-18-20 Oakhill family plot
Ezra Edgar Jr. 8-4-22
Ruth 3-11-24 3-11-24 Oakhill family plot
Bob Carr reminded me of a story about Charley. Charley had to have some work done on his lungs or his kidneys or something internally. An x-ray was taken and it was Charley’s contention that the surgeon turned the x-ray upside down and thus worked on parts of his body that did not need attention. As far as I could tell, Charley never went back to the surgeon’s office for repair work. He was dogmatic, as usual, about his charge against the surgeon.
A final thought is that the vital statistics and the reminder came from my nephew who is a 74 year old lad. I have discussions with Robert Joseph Carr from time to time and find them illuminating. Talking with Bob is a lot like talking to my departed brother Earl, his father. I suppose this proves that the acorn does not fall far from the tree.
EEC 12-7-09
~~~
Kevin’s commentary: You can read more about Pop’s siblings in the extension of this essay here. I’m with Mom — I think these types of essays are fascinating, and I really like learning more about the Carrs. I almost always learn something from each essay, but this type is basically a treasure trove. I had no idea that Pop was a smoker, for instance, or what motivated him to quit. I didn’t know where Aunt Mo went to school, or that Charlie used his first long-distance call to phone his brother Earl, who seems like a wonderful guy.
It also strikes me each time I read these that Pop had a hard, hard life growing up. Perhaps he would not categorize it this way but in comparison my upbringing seems positively cushy. There was a big quality-of-life leap made between Pop’s generation and his daughters’, and that can only be attributed to his hard work, without which I wouldn’t exist. So thanks!