As a general proposition, by the time my essays have been dictated and reread twice in the proofreading process, I grow sick of them and want them to be completed and mailed.  In the last series of essays, I thought that two or three of them were worthwhile.  One of them had to do with my daughter and her child, my grandchild, lecturing the Texas football team about the use of the word retarded.  Another had to do with the owner of a hardware store here in Berkeley Heights called Lefty.  And finally there was an essay about Vicks.  Vicks is a magic formula that can be spread on your chest or even swallowed when a cold appears on the horizon.
When these essays had been received by readers, several called me with comments.  I thought that they would comment on the forgoing three essays.  But uniformly I was completely mistaken.  The essay on my siblings clearly caused the most comment from my readers.  Mind you, I use the word comment rather than praise.  There may have been praise, but the basic response had to do with comments.
My readers largely took the essay on my daughter’s speech to the Texas football team as well as the story about Lefty, the hardware owner, in stride.  What they wished to comment on was the essay called “Pondering Family Matters.”
You may recall that my younger daughter had mentioned to me that she knew quite a bit about my parents but that she knew very little about my siblings.  And so, to satisfy my daughter’s curiosity, I attempted to write the story of my siblings, of which there were seven in number.  My daughter, for whom the story was written, said that she now understood a bit more about me and my family, and coming from her I thought that was fairly high praise.  But the comments coming from other readers who know nothing of my siblings were a surprise to me.  Apparently they found that essay of some “interest”.  I am at a complete loss to tell you why this is the case, but in the final analysis, a good many readers told me that this was one of the most “interesting” essays that I had written recently.
As you will recall, I write these essays because of a stroke-induced case of aphasia, which prevents my ability to call nouns to mind quickly.  In writing and/or dictating these essays, I try to pay particular attention to three rules which keep me away from forbidden subjects.  The forbidden subjects are the divorce of 1983, my combat experience in the Second World War, and, finally, the Depression of 1929.
I found that in writing the essay on pondering family matters, I was perilously close to violating my rule on the Depression.  The three prohibited subjects that I have mentioned are still too painful for me to recall and I wish to avoid them in their entirety.  But in the essay on pondering family matters, there really was no choice.  The Carr family, at least in my generation, was raised in the era of the 1929 Depression.  I am glad that this essay is now behind me, because I find that there was no therapeutic value in dipping so close to the brim of the Depression of 1929.  What is ironic to me is that here we are, nearly 80 years later, enduring the same sort of circumstances that took place in 1929.  Banks are closing, people are out of work, and there is general unhappiness among the citizenry.
But the point in this essay is that I am thoroughly and totally surprised by the interest that it has caused among my readers.  For the twelve years that I have been writing essays, I have not necessarily avoided mentioning my siblings, but I have not looked for ways to include them in the essays.  The facts of the matter are that there really was no choice in that the Depression was upon us and we could do very little about it.
At the moment, it appears that we can do very little about the current recession or depression, trying as hard as President Obama is to make it go away.
At this point, all of my siblings have died and are presumably angels.  I have only a few nieces and nephews left.  There is one nephew mentioned in the essay who is a callow youth of 74 years.  Bob Carr’s parents were Josephine Mollenbach and my brother Earl Carr.  From time to time, Bob and I talk.  As a matter of interest to old essay writers such as myself, it was Bob Carr who contributed the title of that essay and the birth and death records.  He remembers all of the family mentioned in the essay and I suppose he has some opinions.  But regardless of his opinions, good or bad, Bob concluded in our most recent conversation that “everyone got an honorable mention.”  In point of fact, that is exactly what I intended to do.  Whatever animosity there might have been in years past has long since gone away.
An update on the family would seem to be in order here.  Verna Eva never realized her dream of becoming an opera singer.  She sang solos around the St. Louis area.  While she had a nice voice, I suppose that the professionals did not treat it as of their quality.  Verna married twice and in the end outlived both her husbands.
The second child of Ezra and Lillie Carr was Charlie.  As time went on, Charlie quit his job with his original employer, Emil Kronsberg, and established the Carr Surveying Company, which I presume was quite successful.  Earl Carr worked for the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company and for a good many years, was the top salesman on their staff in the St. Louis area.
Opal Carr was a tragedy, but in the end she seemed to be doing pretty much as she wished to do, that is, pursuing the racing of her greyhounds.  As time went forward, Opal communicated less and less with her siblings and I learned of her passing, alone in a trailer, some time later.  I deeply regret not being in a position to help Opal through what I assume were difficult times.  I am sorry that Opal’s life took the course that it did, but at this point all I can do is to express my great regret.
In my own case, I worked four years in filling stations, and then got a job as a draftsman with AT&T in St. Louis.  I spent 43 years with the Bell System and achieved a modest amount of success in rising to the Director level, first with the New York Telephone Company, then with AT&T, and, finally, with AT&T Long Lines in its headquarters in New York City.
Bob Carr read my intentions with great precision.  It was my intention to conclude the discussion on family matters by giving everybody an honorable mention.  They were all good people doing the best they could under very trying circumstances.  In the final analysis, what more can we ask?
 
E. E. CARR
January 3, 2010
Essay 430
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Kevin’s commentary: I just spend quite a while reading the nine-page essay in question but I am not to 2009 yet so I will refrain from posting it for the time being.
That said, it was very good.  In that essay he expressed several of the same thoughts expressed here — namely surprise that his siblings could ever make for interesting essay topics. Given the wide variety of things that Pop seems to like to write about you would think that very little would qualify as too uninteresting to write about, and if that category did exist his siblings certainly would not belong there. But then, the huge age gap probably made his family dynamic very different than what I am used to, so I have no idea.  Still though, they seemed like very interesting people, as did Mr. Bob Carr, who hopefully Ms Chicka would be willing to put me in touch with.