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I’D BE ASHAMED
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…
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EZREE
The World War II Memories Project caused me to write “Lillie,” an essay about my mother. So now I thought I’d say something about my father. He and I share our names. His parents, an immigrant Irish couple named William Meredith Carr and Susan Dent Carr gave my father a Hebrew name (Ezra) and an…
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LILLIE
This little recollection has to do with World War II. Both incidents have to do with my mother, Lillie. I write these thoughts down so that her grandchildren and great grandchildren may know a little more about her. Lillie was born in Pope County, Illinois. She doesn’t have a home town in Pope County because…
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IN MEMORIAM TO SPC
In Memoriam Shannon P. Catt A beloved lap cat who gave his family love and devotion without reservation for nearly 15 years. And said…“no chains shall sully thee, Thou soul of love and bravery, Thy songs were made for the pure and free, They shall never sound in slavery” Final verse of “The Minstrel Boy,”…
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THE THREE I LEAGUE
When we were young, many of my compatriots had their sights set on a professional baseball career. Unrealistically, as it turned out. But we didn’t know that then. In the Midwest, one of the leagues to which we aspired had clubs in Illinois, Indiana and Iowa. And so it became the Three I League. It…
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EHHH… WHAT’S THAT YOU SAID?
Here is a little Missouri story that has no effect on the current state of the world. It is memorialized here not because it is a great story; but rather, as time takes its toll on my brain, I may forget all about it. So if I write these thoughts down now, when the television…
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SING NO SAD SONGS FOR THIS OLD GEEZER
When it became obvious that my sight would be permanently impaired, Judy and I faced a small concern about how to announce it to our friends and people whom we deal with in various functions in a business sense. We had no intention of sending out cards announcing my blindness, but on the other hand,…
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FADING TO GRAY
As this essay is being started, it is a cold, rainy, Sunday afternoon in late April. It means that most people are home bound which is the bad news on a Spring weekend. The good news is that the Boston Red Sox took three straight from the New York Yankees over the past three days…
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AN ADOPTED GRANDPA
Over a long span of years, I have been a son, a brother, a grandson, a husband, a father, a grandfather, an uncle, and a brother-in-law. Over that same span of years, I have been a filling station attendant, a soldier, a telephone worker, a union president, a lobbyist, and an international telecommunications representative. But…