Preachers, politicians, poets, and the surgeons who perform autopsies remain clueless as to the location of the soul in the human body. Evangelical enthusiasts such as Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson claim that the soul is located in the heart. Every Fellow of the American College of Cardiologists will deny this as junk science. They say that the heart might content stents, carnality, and the evidence of bypass operations but the presence of a foreign object such as a soul would cause nothing less than perpetual atrial fibrillation. Because of my lack of religious fervor, I do not have a dog in this fight. Nonetheless, I do believe that confessions are good for the soul, regardless of where it may reside.
My confession about this essay is that it has much to do with the doctrine of bait and switch. As a strict adherent to this doctrine, I am obliged to inform the reader of where the bait is located and then where the switch appears. Whatever the cost, I am prepared to make these identities known to every reader.
We start with the bait part as a preliminary. As every historian will recall, before typewriters were invented, writers were compelled to write their compositions in ink using a pen made of a goose quill. History will also record the fact that the best goose quills came from the underside of the female goose in front of the wings. Obviously a female goose who had lost her quills and feathers to writers was entitled to complain that its modesty had been violated. But the plucking of female goose feathers such as those used to write the United States Constitution came to an end with the invention of the fountain pen.
Fountain pens contained a tank inside of the barrel which could be filled by putting the point of the pen in an inkwell or in a bottle of ink and moving a lever on the side of the pen, which would permit capillary action to cause the pen to be filled. The leading supplier of fountain pens was the Shaeffer Company, which was originally located in the great state of Iowa. The Shaeffer Company produced handsome sets of pencils and fountain pens which could be offered as gifts to graduates of all levels of the educational system. The Shaeffer Company is still in business and now even offers a fancy set that sells for a little more than $3500.
Remember that we are still in the bait section of this essay. Shortly after the First World War, my mother, Lillie Carr, acquired a fountain pen. Her handwriting was so bad that in some ways I regretted getting a letter from her when I was a soldier overseas. If Lillie asked me a question in her handwriting, it would take me several hours to deduce what she had in mind. But her handwriting is not at issue here.
Lillie was a pious woman who claimed that she was not only saved but that she was sanctified. I was at a loss to know what “sanctified” meant until some sixty years later. Howard Davis, a reader of these essays, who comes from a family where preaching is the family business, told me that being sanctified has to do with sainthood. Lillie, who may indeed be a saint in heaven, has caused me to consider whether she is still chewing snuff. My unbalanced mind can see Lillie leaning over the banister around the edges of the heavenly dance floor expectorating to relieve the pressure in her mouth. If Lillie were alive today, she would be pleased to know that the Skoal Company has now introduced its snuff with flavorings such as peppermint and brown sugar.
As I have said, Lillie was a pious woman who loved to sing “Amazing Grace.” She read her Bible on many occasions and when she came to a verse that struck her fancy, she would whip out her fountain pen and underline it. The last time I looked at her Bible, she had underlined perhaps 50% of the verses in the Bible. She did not underline those genealogical stories about “Joe begat John and John begat Yasser” etc.
Now as we come to the closing thoughts in the bait section, it should be noted that Lillie was a true believer who not only walked the walk but talked the talk. In other words, she put her money where her mouth was.
During the great American Depression of the 1930s, there were a lot of poor people, including the Carr family. The fact that the Carr family was poor did not prevent her from helping other people who were probably poorer than we were. Lillie raised chickens in the far part of our back yard and offered them for sale to favored customers. Dell Van Buren Barbee was the car washer at the filling station where I was an attendant. When Dell needed a chicken, he would go to Lillie Carr’s back door, remove his hat, shuffle his feet, and tell her that he would like to have another chicken . The fact is that Lillie charged Dell exactly half of what she would charge other customers. And she would also say to me, “Boy, we all have to be our brother’s keeper.”
It is at this point that we progress to the switch part of this essay.
And so it is that for more than 75 years, I have labored under the view that the Bible directed Lillie and even reprobates like myself that we must all be our brother’s keepers. Over those years, I have made semi-annual contributions to Centurion Ministries of Princeton, New Jersey whose director is Jim McCloskey. McCloskey devotes most of his efforts to men who have been wrongfully imprisoned. He is a close associate of the Innocence Project, which is run by Barry Scheck and Peter Neufeld. Their weapon is the analysis of DNA, which has resulted in the release of prisoners wrongfully imprisoned who have served perhaps as much as 30 years.
Along the same line of our being our brother’s keepers, there are dozens of other projects that I try to support, including the Central Institute for the Deaf in St. Louis. In that organization, along with paying students, they take poor children who are hearing-impaired. They forbid lip reading. They equip the children with the newest devices to aid their hearing. My wife Judy and I toured the Central Institute for the Deaf in St. Louis a few years back and were inspired. As a footnote, in 1930 or 1931, I was a patient at the Institute for perhaps six sessions. A school teacher had mistaken my shyness for deafness and had sent me to the Institute to improve my hearing. You may remember an essay that I wrote that as soon as the sessions at the Central Institute were finished, I would take my unrestricted streetcar pass and attend ball games played by the St. Louis Cardinals and the
St. Louis Browns. The kicker to the story is that the same teacher who had mistaken my shyness for deafness had promoted me a half grade ahead of myself before the end of that school year.
As a matter of information, I have thousands of worthy charities that might qualify for what I thought was the Biblical injunction to be my brother’s keeper. One I will tell you about is a college in the Appalachian Mountains called Alice Lloyd College in Pippapasses, Kentucky. The principle at Alice Lloyd College is that they take poor youngsters and provide them with a college education, provided that they work for it. Every student at Alice Lloyd is working his or her way through that school. Without this program, the high school graduates in the Appalachian Mountains would receive no college training. Judy and I made a contribution to that college because it stirred our heartstrings to know that young men and young women have the means to get a college degree. As a further matter of information, we are told that no deserving young man or woman has ever been turned down for entrance to Alice Lloyd College. And, finally, 95% of its graduates go on to post-graduate work and the bulk of them return when they are finished to work in the Appalachian Mountains where poverty abounds.
So the switch part of this essay is that if any of you are struck by the desire to make a contribution to a school where the work ethic still applies, Alice Lloyd would love to have your contribution. Our contribution met with this response from the president of the college:

Thank you for your gift of $400, which will help keep the doors of opportunity open for Appalachian youth. Without your help, many promising young people would never realize their dreams of a higher education and a better way of life.
Alice Lloyd worked for 46 years writing letters to her friends to obtain the assistance needed to provide an education for her beloved mountain students. Her idea was to instill traits such as character, leadership, duty, conscience, purpose, and the desire to serve God and others. It is nice of you to join us in our dedication to keeping their dreams alive. Thank you again, and may God bless you as you have blessed us.

So there are two switches in this bait and switch proposition that comprises this essay. The first switch is that if any of you wish to include Alice Lloyd College in your donation list, those people in Appalachia would be pleased and so would I.
Now the second switch is that for the 75 years that I have labored under the misapprehension that we must be all be our brothers’ keepers, it turns out that I was terribly mistaken.
According to one of the Bibles given to me from my mother’s estate, Genesis states in Chapter 4, Verse 9, that the Lord was given a smart-ass answer when he asked what had become of Abel. Cain replied, “Am I my brother’s keeper?” The fact of the matter is that I had it all backwards. I thought the Bible says, “I am my brother’s keeper.” I am not so impertinent as to correct the writers of the Holy Script. But in my view, that sentence should read, “I am my brother’s keeper!” That sentence should end with an exclamation mark rather than the question mark that the Bible now contains.
Finally, there is one last thought which accompanies the fact that I had my Bible quotations all wrong. In this case, after my mother was prepared to be buried, my eldest brother, Charles Halley Carr, who was the executor of her estate, asked me if I would like a memento of her life. I asked for her Bible. She was buried in Kirkwood, Missouri, and at her burial, Charlie gave me the Bible and I simply packed it in my suitcase and did not open it for several weeks after I returned to New Jersey. Unfortunately, unbeknownst to me, my mother had at least two Bibles. The Bible that I wanted was the one where she had underlined nearly half the verses with her fountain pen. But this Bible has no such markings. Instead, it lies on a credenza in front of my desk, and when I could see, I would refer to it from time to time to get my quotations correctly. Nowadays the Biblical quotations come from Judy’s computer, but in any case Lillie would approve of being everybody’s brother’s keeper and I am more than certain that she would approve of any and all support of Alice Lloyd College.
I have baited and switched you in this essay but I hope it proves to be harmless. As Lillie would say, “In this world, we all have to do the very best we can.”
E. E. CARR
January 15, 2008
Essay 284
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Kevin’s commentary: Alright first, I think it’s pretty cool that an atheist asked for his mom’s Bible to remember her by. I dunno, I just think there’s something really neat about it. Does anyone have any idea where the second bible went?
Also I’d like to know if there’s an essay dedicated entirely to the time in Pop’s life that he was falsely sent to the school for the blind, because I’d like to hear more about that experience.