This piece is being written largely at the request or demand of Miss Chicka. She makes editorial suggestions and tries to correct my grammar. And she does all the typing. So as you can see, I pay attention to her.
After I wrote “Lillie,” the piece about my mother and my enlistment, Miss Chicka suggested that I should write a little more about my mother. So here are some random thoughts that come to mind 40 years after her death.
 
AMAZING GRACE
One of my earliest memories concerns Lillie’s singing. She sang in the country style which is a high, nasal sound. All the women who went to her churches sang that way. I am at a loss to tell you why they favored that sort of singing.
The song that most always came from Lillie’s lips was “Amazing Grace.” My memory of my mother goes back to the 1920’s. All during the 1920’s, the 1930’s and the 1940’s, “Amazing Grace” was almost never heard at all in mainstream churches, particularly in the New York area. It would be sung at Nazarene or Pentecostal churches. It would often be sung when traveling evangelists would hold revivals. But certainly it would never be heard in Episcopal or Anglican churches in New York or thereabouts. The Catholic Church never heard of it then.
My mother sang it all the time. She promised that it would be sung at her funeral. This was 40 years before her funeral occurred.
Sometime around 1960, “Amazing Grace” began to be played in Protestant mainstream churches. I say it was the work of the British Army’s Royal Scots Dragoon Guards who played in a concert in Madison Square Garden about that time.
For several years, British Army Regimental bands appeared in concert in many locations in this country. They would offer band music and precision marching. The Black Watch Regiment was greatly favored by American audiences. It raised money for the Brits and was enjoyed by American audiences.
The Royal Scots Dragoon Guards raised the ante. They had a large trumpet section that played ruffles and flourishes and other fancy stuff. But most of all the Royal Scots had a band of 10 – 15 bagpipe players who played “Amazing Grace” about three or four times during their concert. They played it at Madison Square Garden and at the Long Island Nassau Coliseum and all across the country until they got to San Francisco. I am absolutely certain that those concerts got Protestant mainstream churches to include “Amazing Grace” in their services and hymnals. The Catholics came somewhat later.
In the mid to late 1970’s I attended a funeral in a Catholic church. When the organist started “Amazing Grace,” I said to myself that sounds a lot like what Lillie used to sing. Well he played the whole song and I was clearly astounded. “Amazing Grace” had arrived.
Lillie passed away in 1961 not long after her 79th birthday. The funeral was held at Jay B. Smith Funeral Home in Maplewood, Missouri. Her five surviving children were there as were her grandchildren. Long before she died she had specified that “Amazing Grace” would be sung at her funeral. It was not only the offering of a forceful soprano, but as the family left the room, the pianist played “Amazing Grace” as a recessional. I always thought that song was a mighty fine piece of work. Maybe memories of Lillie have something to do with that thought.
 
GOLD JEWELRY IN BAKING SODA CANS
My mother was given to eccentric behavior at times. Often her eccentricities were associated with her reading of scripture.
Before the depression occurred while my father had the superintendent’s job at the Lilac Roast Farm and after that when he worked at the Evans-Howard Brick Refractory, he brought occasional gifts to my mother. He favored gold so he brought her a lovely gold lapel watch. There were also some pins and some brooches.
After being unceremoniously dropped by the Davis brothers at the Lilac Roost Farm after 25 years of service, he built a house in Richmond Heights, perhaps a half a mile south of the Lilac Roost Farm home. In the basement, he constructed a fruit cellar. It was meant to hold fruits and vegetables canned during the summer.
As soon as my father gave my mother gold jewelry, she put it in baking soda cans and stored it in the fruit cellar. On the rarest of occasions, she might wear the lapel watch or one other piece of gold jewelry. For all but those rare occasions, the gold jewelry stayed in the fruit cellar down in the basement.
She said her conduct was in accordance with the Bible. I suspect that some illiterate preacher must have told her that it was a grievous sin to wear gold jewelry. She even growled at my father because on Sunday, he would put his gold pen and pencil set in the outside pocket of his suit. According to Lillie, that was an unseemly display that offended the Lord.
When she died, she left three or four of those baking cans in the fruit cellar. Now while she would not wear gold jewelry, she chewed snuff. It would seem to me as an unchurched outsider that chewing snuff would be a greater sin in the eyes of the Lord than wearing gold jewelry. But I have never been conversant with what constitutes a sin in the eyes of the Lord, so I guess my thoughts count for nothing.
 
JOHN GUALDONI – A PRINCE OF A MAN
The depression was very tough on a lot of people. My family was no exception. When the Evans-Howard Brick Refractory closed down in 1930, my father was again out of work through no fault of his own. It took my father until 1934 or 1935 to find a full time job – and it paid depression era wages. Those years were tough for us.
In the good years when my father had a good job at Evans-Howard, John Gualdoni provided us with our groceries. When the Brick Refractory shut down and my father was out of work, John Gualdoni still provided us with groceries. When my mother would worry about paying his bills, John would say “don’t worry about it.” When my father found work again, he began to pay John back. But one way or another, John Gualdoni saw to it that the Carr family got through the depression. He was a prince of a man.
 
EGGS – 25¢ A DOZEN
During the depression to help with the food problem, my mother kept chickens. The eggs were good but taking care of the chickens was a mess. Much of the responsibility fell on my young shoulders. Aside from the mess the chickens made, my mother would serve chicken perhaps three or four times a week. Fried, boiled or whatever. I hated chicken. And I still do to this day.
Two or three other ladies got into the chicken business in competition with my mother during the depression. My mother was often soft hearted and would extend credit to customers, particularly black customers who were temporarily down on their luck.
One of the competitors of my mother got into a debate with her about the pricing of eggs. The competitor, a white lady, claimed she could sell eggs for less than my mother. I think she said she could sell eggs for 25 cents a dozen which was somewhat below market pricing. There was some debate about whether she really had eggs to sell.
Now this is not grammatically correct, but it got the job done. Lillie looked this woman in the eye and told her, “If I didn’t have no eggs, I could sell them for 25 cents a dozen just like you.” Faced with logic like that, the competitor folded her tent and walked away.
 
I’D BE ASHAMED
I mean no disrespect to my mother or her two sisters. But if three more inept cooks ever lived, I’d be astounded.
All three learned from their mother. Irish cooks are hopeless. Let’s repeat that. Irish cooks of that generation were clueless and couldn’t boil water.
For example, I never drank coffee at Lillie’s house. She used a percolator and when she served the coffee, a half-inch of grounds fell to the bottom. That made it undrinkable for me. When I joined the Army, the cooks at Jefferson Barracks served coffee without the grounds. Can you imagine that? Army coffee was drinkable. That was at the outset of my Army career. I thought I was really going to like being a soldier with the food and the good coffee.
As I’ve already told you, Lillie served chicken in several styles. I hated every one of them. To this day I still hate them.
Nora, her older sister, made home brew during the era of Prohibition. I gagged when it was served to me. It was bad. I was seven or eight at the time. There is one virtue to this story about Nora. The home brew she made was so foul that I rarely drank beer even during my days in the Army. When we were in a place with a PX or with the British where they have a NAAFTI (Navy, Army, Air Force Trade Institute) store that sold beer, I gave my coupons to other soldiers. This is now pretty close to June 30, 2001. So far this year, I expect I have consumed perhaps three bottles of beer when we have chili for dinner. Three beers in six months. So Nora set me on the straight and narrow.
When she wasn’t making home brew, Nora like to cook geese. If there is anything I dislike more than chicken, it is a goose.
Finally, there was Grace, who lived in the bad lands of Pope County, Illinois. Grace lived and cooked on a wood stove pretty much as her mother had done. I know that William Grimes in the New York Times never uses the term “nadir” to describe a restaurant he dislikes, but I believe if he had ever feasted with Grace and her children, I believe “nadir” would jump to his lips and to his pen.
Now I tell you about Lillie, Nora and Grace because individually and collectively, they led me into a statement of Irish nationalism. As a child, the three of them individually and collectively would catch me and demand to know, “Boy, if you weren’t Irish, what would you be?” As I had been taught, I would reply, “I’d be ashamed.” Lillie and Nora and Grace seemed to like my answer so this colloquy continued for maybe five years. I like the “ashamed” part a lot better than the chickens or geese they cooked.
♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦
So these are the random thoughts I set out to write in this piece about my mother. Now that I have written about my mother, my father and the United States Army, I think I’ll take some time off until another idea percolates up in my brain.
E. E. CARR
June 24, 2001
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Hahahah, that last part is fantastic. Also, gives me ideas about how to turn my kids off beer later in life. Re: his aversion to poultry, I can confirm that he didn’t exaggerate one bit in this story. The man would eat fish for Thanksgiving; he was simply that opposed to consuming any sort of bird. I wonder just how many times in a row he ate chicken as a kid. It must have been extraordinary.