Volume I

 
I regret to say that in my case I went through the age of puberty a good many years ago.  Living a long life has its pluses and minuses.  On the plus side, there are many recollections that remain in my mind and which, taking one thing with another, constitute pleasant memories.  The unpleasant ones tend to be overlooked and, I hope, forgotten.
This essay could be long and thus may be divided into parts.  It has to do with recollections of things that were said to me or about me or about some current event.  Those statements have intruded upon my memory, and in this essay I hope to recall a good many of them.  I suspect that if you have read Ezra’s Essays closely, you may recognize that, in some instances, the remarks made to or about me are familiar.  The idea in this essay is to put all those remarks into a series of essay so that they may be found by going to one place.
In this collection of thoughts or remarks made to or about me or about some current event, you might find familiar thoughts as well as four or five new thoughts that have never been recorded in my essays. With that background as a base, suppose we launch into an exploration of things that have been said to me or about me or comments made upon a special event.  I wish to point out that there is no order, chronological or otherwise, in these remarks.  They are recorded as my memory recalls them.
 
No memory of mine can be complete without a statement made to me which was really a demand which took place on a dusty afternoon in the summer of 1942 on a hot and dusty day in Las Vegas, New Mexico.
With the country being at war, I had enlisted in the American Army.   On that occasion, I was undergoing basic training.  The training consisted of marching perhaps eight or nine hours a day with the instructors urging us to keep the lines straight and also not to be confused between the left foot and the right foot.  I thought that this was a grossly goofy way to prepare to meet the German army, the Japanese army and navy, and all of the other forces that were to be deployed against us in World War II.  But on we marched, with the corporal in my case urging us to keep the lines straight in the hope that we would be noticed by a colonel who would then pronounce us fit for battle.
My low regard for the American Army started at that moment.  We had mastered forward march and by the left flank and by the right flank successfully.  The turns in these cases were 90 degree turns.  At that point the regular army corporal who was our instructor decided to teach us some fancy marching.  It was called an “oblique march,” which amounted to nothing more than turning at an angle of 45 degrees rather than 90 degrees.  The corporal became hopelessly confused and I tried to be helpful.  In this confusion, I said to the corporal, “Corporal, I think I can —-.”  What I intended to say was, “I think I can help you.”  The corporal cut me off and said, in a loud stentorian voice, “Soldier, you don’t get paid for thinking.  You get paid to do what you are told.”  That incident happened more than 68 years ago.  It remains fresh in my memory.  I think that it qualifies for this essay which has to do with “He said that…”
While we are on Army stories, there is this one from two or three years later than the “You don’t get paid for thinking” remark.  It took place at a major air base in Accra in the country that is now called Ghana.  In the beginning, this was a British base which had been taken over by the American Air Force.  I can remember that I was assigned to the barracks called G-17.  There may have been 40 or 50 soldiers in our wing of the barracks who for a time were regularly regaled by an aircraft electrician who liked to show pictures of his wife.  The main attraction was that his wife was quite buxom.  The buxomness did nothing for this aircraft electrician who was located in a barracks several thousand miles away from home.  When he bragged about how this buxom woman turned him on, there was an elder statesman in that barracks.  His name was Werner Friedli.  Werner had been drafted into the army to fill out a quota by his local Chicago draft board that had been determined by Army Headquarters in Washington.  Werner was 37 or 38.  The rest of us in that barracks were probably aged 22 to 23, so Werner was the elder statesman.
As time went on, Werner had had enough of the electrician’s bragging.  Finally he said to the electrician, “Tell me, what can you do with a large breast that you cannot do with a small breast?”  This was a put down to end all put downs.  From that time forward, we did not receive reports about the buxom wife.  I can only hope that when the electrician got home, he and his buxom wife lived happily ever after.  In the meantime, I thought that Werner Friedli was a worldly man who enunciated the remark about the buxom wife in grand fashion.  I thoroughly liked Werner Friedli.  I liked him even more after his remark to the electrician.
I told you at the beginning that there is no chronological order to these memories.  If you jump light years ahead, there is an attendant at the Whole Foods Market in Millburn, New Jersey, who had become a special favorite of my wife and myself.  Jackie tends to be a bit loud and she is quite willing to share her opinions with everyone in the vicinity.  I am very fond of Jackie.  We kibitz back and forth about my desire to have liquorice.  Recently I was told by Paul Byfield, another attendant at the store, that a customer had searched at great length for a product that he wanted to buy.  The search was in vain and Jackie told the potential customer, “If you don’t see it, we ain’t got it!”  This clearly comes under the heading of “She really said that?”  Jackie, a tough black woman, is among my good friends and her philosophy of life inspires me.
I believe that these samples of “They really said that?”  are enough of a start that they will provide three or four more essays.  And so at this point I believe I will adjourn the first essay on “They really said that?” and try to prepare for future editions.
 
 
E. E. CARR
October 3, 2010
Essay 500
~~~
Kevin’s commentary: Parts 2 and 3 coming soon! This is a great little series.
Now, I misread the very end of this essay at first and got the impression that Jackie told Pop that if he didn’t see it, they didn’t have it. Of course this would be about as problematic as me offering to show Pop pictures of my 2010 trip to China. Thankfully for everyone he has a very good sense of humor about these things.