VOLUME II
This is the second volume of “They Said That?” This essay will lean heavily on my experience in the labor relations field and on my work as an attendant in the filling station business. In the labor relations field, there are some rich quotations.
There was a division accounting manager for AT&T in Atlanta who demanded that his clerks give unwanted overtime to the company. One clerk, Retha B. Queen, gave birth to a child and she wanted to go home from work on time to attend to the needs of that child. The accounting manager was Gray Madrey, who told Retha B. Queen that “We don’t have time for frivolities such as home life.” I believe that you can understand that when it came time to arbitrate that case, we made sure that Gray Madrey was nowhere to be found.
At that point, I was the Labor Relations Manager, a job I held for seven years. The company conceded the outcome and Mrs. Queen began to work normal hours. My recollection is that Gray Madrey was transferred to a headquarters location and soon retired. Good riddance!
A second arbitration case involved Augie McCoy and Floyd Evans, who worked in the St. Louis district office. Augie McCoy had a coveted job as a line inspector, which required him to walk every mile of the pole line and the cables to insure that troubles in his district were fixed. Each inspector had a small pickup truck given him for his work. I believe it must be said that Augie McCoy was less than diligent in pursuit of his duties.
His boss at the time was a gentleman named Floyd Evans who had once held the inspector job himself. I was very fond of Floyd Evans and soon became infected with the country style of his speech. As we were preparing for the arbitration case, Floyd Evans was asked a question about Augie McCoy to which he replied, “He has set in that truck so long that his legs is growed together.”
The arbitrator in that case came from New York and aside from his legal practice, he taught law at New York University. The company counsel was a gentleman named H.W.W. Caming. He had graduated from Harvard Law School.
Caming was certain that the New York arbitrator could not stomach that line coming from Floyd Evans. Caming thought that the line was too inelegant. I was the Labor Relations Manager and I intervened as strongly as I could to overrule Caming. I told Caming that anything artificial coming out of this Evans’s country-boy style would strike the arbitrator as contrived and artificial.
When the case was brought to trial, Floyd Evans repeated his remark about Augie McCoy “setting in his truck so long that his legs just growed together.” The arbitrator came within half an inch of laughing out loud and made a note of Floyd’s comments. I am absolutely certain that in his law practice and in his teaching of law at New York University, the arbitrator would cite that line on many occasions. I believe that this is the king of country speech and is to be treasured.
Now we turn to my misspent youth as an attendant in filling stations. I first went to work for Carl Schroth, who ran a Mobil gas station catering to a largely wealthy clientele in Clayton, Missouri. I was a youngster at the time and not familiar with the ways of the world. You may recall Carl as the man who used a piece of plywood in the front of his pants instead of buying a truss for his ruptured intestines. On more than one occasion late in the day Carl would say to me, “Eddy, you are much too valuable a man to be walking the streets of St. Louis. I want you to work tonight.” Would you believe that I bought that line on perhaps half a dozen occasions? I pumped the gas and fixed the tires while Carl, the owner, went home to have dinner with his wife. But I was flattered to know that Carl thought that I was much too valuable a man to be walking the streets of St. Louis.
In later years, I moved to a Sinclair station run by Eddy Williams. The car washer at that station was Dell van Buren Barbee. Dell had a second-grade education in a segregated Mississippi school. In spite of his lack of formal education, Dell was possessed of practical knowledge.
On a cold rainy afternoon, Dell van Buren Barbee and I were sitting in the office of Eddy Williams’s Sinclair filling station. There was not much to do in view of the rain that foreclosed the washing of automobiles. As our bull session proceeded, Dell said the famous quotation that I have used for many years. Dell said, “If God invented something better than effing, He kept it to hisself.” I thought that that [sic] remark contained superior wisdom. Dell may not have been a graduate of an Ivy League college, but when it came to common sense, old Dell was right there. That remark was made in about fall of 1940. It has survived in my memory for more than 70 years. It might be said that you don’t get wisdom like that every day.
And finally, we turn to the speech of my mother. She greatly disliked, or even hated the British for what they had done in their 800 year occupation of Ireland. This is a thrice or quadruple told tale. On the morning that I left home to go to Jefferson Barracks to enlist in the American Army, my mother told me about trying to take care of myself in these perilous times. I told Lillie, my mother, that we would have all kinds of help from other nations. I mentioned the French and the Poles. She was always fond of people from Poland. And then, stupidly, I mentioned the British. In a stern voice, Lillie said to me, “Do you mean the English?” I must have shrugged my shoulders in response. At that point, Lillie said to me, “In that case, Son, you will have to do the best you can.” With that, she turned around and marched from the driveway back into the house and I was left to ponder once more her hatred of the English on my two hour street car trip to Jefferson Barracks to enlist in the American Army.
As you can see, my memory is long on remarks that have been addressed to me. But nothing cut more than the stupidity of my having brought up the British Army who would be our allies.
Now we proceed to Volume III of these recollections.
E. E. CARR
October 3, 2010
Essay 501
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Kevin’s commentary:
Searching for most of these phrases in quotes on Google next to the phrase “Site:Ezrasessays.com” will turn up, in some cases, entire essays devoted to the topics and phrases raised here.
Related to the post about the British, I am somewhat confused. So far as I know, Lillie Carr was not herself an immigrant. Her family had been in the country for at least one generation if not many more. Hopefully Pop can be of use in clarifying this point. That being the assumed case, I really don’t understand too well the utter contempt for the British. Sure they were assholes to Ireland a few hundred years ago but — again to the best of my knowledge — they never wronged Mrs. Carr personally during her lifetime.
I mean, you’re reading the words of a kid whose favorite bedtime song was “four green fields”; British douchebaggery toward the Irish has been being drilled into my head since I was a few months old, but I still just can’t bring myself to get riled up about it.