Over the past 50 years or more, I have been involved in various business opportunities but none presented as much of a shovel-ready opportunity as this one. Because this opportunity has existed for more than 50 years, you will have to hear my story as I spin it out.
About 58 years ago in Chicago, my wife at the time, Eileen, and I became involved in an adoption procedure. We were making some headway in the adoption procedure, which was sponsored by the Illinois Children’s Home and Aid Society. They had indicated early in the game that they would be willing to give us a child. And so it was in early December of 1953 that the Children’s Home and Aid Society told us that we could pick up the child on the following Thursday. This notice was given to us on a Monday.
It seemed to us that this adoption was worthy of public notice. After all, when children are introduced to the world, an announcement is received of that event. And so on this Monday evening, my wife and I went to the great Marshall Fields store, which was the leading card-carrying business in all of Chicago land. I thought that we could go to Marshall Fields, pick out a card, and then have dinner. But this became an ordeal. Both of us searched high and low for a card that would announce the adoption of a new child. As luck would have it, my co-worker in the Chicago traffic office named Betty Kruchten was shopping on the same floor that held the card displays. Betty Kruchten, good soul that she was, came over to help us search the displays for a card announcing the adoption of a child. But the immutable fact was that there were no such cards and finally Betty Kruchten, my wife, and myself had to admit defeat. There simply were no cards announcing the adoption of children. And so it was for this reason that I wrote the announcement of the adoption of Ellen Maureen Carr by myself.
Now some 50 years later, a second incident took place that needed an announcement. Again it was in December of 2005 when the surgeons and specialists of Wills Eye Hospital in Philadelphia finally delivered the news that my eyesight was gone forever. I knew that this announcement was coming. The people at Wills Eye Hospital tried every procedure in the book but at last they concluded that there was no hope, so I was sightless.
I took some comfort in the fact that finally, at last, the trips to the hospital for blindness in my left eye which happened in 1994 and then for my right eye, which happened in 2005, were coming to a conclusion. I took joy in the fact that the physicians and surgeons and staff and any specialist staff would tend to leave me alone. This is a hell of a compromise, trading one’s eyesight for the ease that comes with having no doctor’s appointment today. But that is how I felt. Later, I dictated the essay called “Sing No Sad Songs for This Old Geezer,” which had to do with my new total blindness.
So here we are with an adoption that needed to be announced and 50 years later having blindness that needed to be announced as well, and no cards to fit the occasion. Surely and totally, this represents a made-to-order shovel-ready business opportunity. Someone must step forward to grab the bull by the horns to announce such events as adoptions and blindness. As it turns out, I have a nephew who owns a collection of card stores in Atlanta. His name is James Edgar Carr, which might lead you to believe that he was named after me. That is not the case, because he was named after my father in the middle name department. I am going to offer this made-to-order shovel-ready project to James Edgar but if he turns it down, I will be pleased to auction it off, selling it to the highest bidder.
This is a can’t-miss opportunity. I have been involved in the business world since 1935 when I took a position as a wiper of windshields at the Carl Schroth filling station in Clayton, Missouri. Never before have I seen such a vacuum as the lack of cards for adoptions and blindness. If I were a bit younger, I would take advantage of this vacuum myself. But it is clear that such a vacuum does exist and must be filled by an announcement notice.
Now, look, I do not propose to take advantage of this opportunity that you must adopt a child. Nor do I propose that you should lose your sight. On the contrary. It is a public service which will endear you to friends, relatives, and the business community.
I suspect that Betty Kruchten would leap at this tremendous business opportunity. Betty is at least 100 years of age these days if she still exists. If my nephew James Edgar turns the offer down, I intend to submit it to Betty Kruchten because it is a can’t-miss business opportunity. Millionaires and billionaires would love to have the opportunity to print announcements of adoptions and blindness for the business world. I offer this announcement as a public service, knowing that I am too old to do anything about it. And it will save me from having to write my own announcements of these monumental developments in my humdrum life.
PS: Miss Chicka, my wife, who drives the only automobile in the family these days, suggested the following. A little more than seven years ago, I approached the round-about in front of the Short Hills Railroad Station. Cars were coming at me from three directions. I decided then and there that if I could make it home, I would no longer drive. My driving career lasted from age 15 until age 83, which I would submit is plenty. But the burden of Miss Chicka’s remark goes to an announcement of this development. So you see that there are all kinds of developments that must be announced and as a result, this is a continuing golden business opportunity for risk-takers.
E. E. CARR
December 18, 2011
Essay 619
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Kevin’s commentary: If only I had read this essay before taking a job at a startup out here in California. Lazy blind people everywhere could buy my cards announcing their blindness. However my question is simply — how do I alert them as to the existence of this product? They won’t see it while walking around in the store. Some of them will have people with the, I guess, but many of them will just have dogs and canes and such. Clearly the card would just have to sing perpetually from the moment it was created until the battery died. It would be a big hit in department stores.