Ezra's Essays

Category: War

  • DOUBLE WIDE UPLIFT BRASSIERES FOR OUR 800 GENERALS

    From 1929 until the beginning of 1942, the United States was in the grip of a vicious economic depression. Job opportunities rarely existed. Unemployment figures were at an all time high. The stock market was barely stumbling along. Bankruptcies and home foreclosures were a common place. Those dozen years of the Depression were dismal for…

  • THE AMERICAN ARMY: AN EXERCISE IN TREACHERY

    This essay is being written during the first week in March, 2007. I am assuming that by this time every American knows about the scandal at the Walter Reed medical facilities in Washington. The commanding general of the hospital, as well as his successor, and the Secretary of the Army have been relieved of their…

  • SOLDIER SPEAK

    This is an essay about usages of the English language as employed by soldiers of Great Britain and secondly by soldiers of the United States. Kindly stay with me, rather than turning me aside on the ground that the language used in this essay is scatological and perhaps slightly lewd. Actually, it is nothing of…

  • EZRA’S CLEAVAGE

    The reference to cleavage in the title of this essay is mainly a snare and a delusion. The cleavage reference was used as a titillating device to persuade the reader to wrestle with the rest of the essay. I offer no apologies for the misleading title in that the cleavage reference and the titillation will…

  • BITS AND PIECES: WHEN ENGLAND WAS A PUP (OR YES, MASTER)

    This is the final Bits and Pieces essay in this current series. Originally, it was intended to immortalize a poem quoted on many occasions by Lillie Carr, my mother. Mrs. Carr was an Irishwoman who wanted desperately to throw off the yoke that England had on Ireland. She never set foot in England or in…

  • CANDIDATE EZRA’S FIRST DAY AS PRESIDENT OF THE US OF A

    The last time I ran for an office of any kind was in January of 1950. In that case, I ran to be the president of Local 6350 of the Communications Workers of America, which was located in my home town of St. Louis. As it turned out, my candidacy was successful but my tour…

  • IT GOES WITH THE TERRITORY

    In July of 1951, I accepted a transfer from St. Louis to Kansas City.  I knew that Kansas City had hot weather in July and other summer months, but St. Louis was no bargain either.  One of my colleagues told me that in Kansas City during the summer, it gets “hotter than the hubs of…

  • STAR SPANGLED PONDERINGS

    In this 232nd year of American independence, as I sit here on Independence Day 2008, I often wonder why we have given so little credit to the French for our freedom from the English. The French cheered George Washington’s efforts against George III, and in the final battles their fleet was anchored off the Virginia…

  • STUFF THAT IS HARD TO MAKE UP

    The Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board of the United States testified last week, on July 17, that difficult times in terms of the American economy would be with us for a long time to come. In his play Richard III, William Shakespeare had a line that referred to the “winter of our discontent.” If…

  • IN DEFENSE OF BUTTONS

    It is possible but unlikely that there are men and women around the world whose memory is so long that they can remember a time when the existence of zippers was completely unknown. Zippers today appear in a multiplicity of places. They are on our clothes as well as on some of our plastic bags…