From the year 1776, the United States depended on the United States Army (USA) to fight its battles. The Army fought in the Revolutionary War, the Civil War, and in the First World War and acquitted itself very well. However, shortly after the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, the Army brass determined that it was necessary to create a second army. This army was to be called not the United States Army but rather the Army of the United States. I hope you are holding on tightly as we maneuver through this jungle of bureaucracy. There is no known incident whereby German or Japanese soldiers inquired of our personnel as to whether they belonged to the United States Army or the Army of the United States. They must have figured one dead American was as good as the other.
All of this comes into focus on an evening shortly after my 20th birthday when I was preparing to be sworn in on a voluntary enlistment in the Army of the United States (AUS). It was a two-hour streetcar trip from my home in Richmond Heights, Missouri to Jefferson Barracks where my enlistment would begin. I was committed to serve for the “duration of hostilities plus six months.” What I did not know was that the “duration of hostilities” actually continued until a peace treaty was signed. Usually that ceremony takes place four or five years after peace has been achieved. But I gave that little thought as I prepared to leave my home and become a soldier.
I was standing in my bedroom going through my possessions trying to determine what I could take with me as military service beckoned. Shortly before 9 PM, my father entered my bedroom. I was aware of the time because he always went to bed no later than 9 PM, after having read a chapter or so in his Bible. My father was a taciturn man who did not waste words needlessly. He said, “Son, I have a little something here that I believe you might like to have.” When I looked at my father’s gift, it was an 1881 silver dollar. He went on to say, “As long as you carry this in your pocket, you will never be broke.” Being broke was a nightmare to my father. He had been through hard times in the Depression and he was genuinely concerned about becoming bankrupt. We may have shaken hands after that ceremony, but I don’t recall doing so. He had delivered his gift to me and given me some advice. That being done, he went to bed because 5:30 in the morning “comes mighty early.”
A few words about my father are in order here. For all the years that I knew him, we were largely strangers. There was no hostility between us ever at all. Yet there was no great warmth either. Try as I might, I can think of no better word than strangers.
There may be several reasons for this situation. My father was wed to rural life. If he had had his way, he would have been a farmer until the day of his death. I, of course, had no use for rural life because I was a city kid. My father had completed the McGuffy Second Grade Reader when he quit school at age 16 or 17. I had by that age finished high school. And finally, our sense of strangeness must have had something to do with religion. My father believed that every word in the Bible was true and accurate. I held no such beliefs. When all things are taken into consideration, my father considered me to be a very “strange duck.”
My father spoke a dialect of the English language which I call “country speak.” It has Elizabethan overtones as well as echoes of Appalachia. And it contains several deliberate mispronunciations. For example my father’s name was Ezra, which usually is pronounced as Ez-rah. When he rendered that name aloud, he always referred to himself as Ez-reee. That great state on the west coast was not California but was called in his lingo “Californee.” If he were to go into a restaurant and order a bottle of soda, it would be pronounced “so-dee.” That was not the end of it. He believed that when something was necessary, it should be pronounced as “need-cessity.” Then there was the case where he always considered the past tense of dining as “et.” If someone were to ask him to enjoy a meal, he might well reply, “Thank you; I have already et.” A good host would have knowed about the previous meal. I hope you can see why I considered “country speak” as a dialect of the English language. I do not speak country-speak, but I understand it perfectly.
Then there was the matter of his name, which is my name as well. In 1881, my father was the fourth or fifth child of Susan Dent and William Meredith Carr. Both of them were children of Irish immigrants. One way or another, they named that child Ezra, which is a Hebrew name, and Edgar, which is an English name. It has always been my belief that those two names for an Irish child are wildly inappropriate. Only people named the Holy Ghost would rival Ezra Edgar for inappropriateness.
I realized that my father was not in the habit of bestowing gifts on everybody. The gift of a silver dollar with his birth year on it meant something to him and it meant something to me, even though we were basically strangers. I put that silver dollar in my pocket and carried it there until December 8, 1943, when it was taken from me by a German soldier in a prisoner-of-war camp in northern Italy. In those circumstances, having lost my silver dollar from my father, I relied upon an ancient Irish expression. I said, under my breath, “I hope you never have a day’s luck for the rest of your life.” The fact of the matter is that the prison guard’s life lasted less than two weeks. When the Italian Partisans raided the compound, they shot every German soldier in sight. So I suppose that the man who lifted my silver dollar enjoyed it for only a fortnight. If he sent that silver dollar back to one of his relatives in Germany, perhaps that person will not enjoy great fortune as long as I am alive.
As soon as I could do it, I replaced that silver dollar and carried it in my pocket until my retirement. Unfortunately, the Army paymasters in Italy had no 1881 silver dollars, so a 1922 silver dollar, the year of my birth, was accepted in its place. By the time I retired, that silver dollar’s engraving and the picture of Miss Liberty were worn almost to smoothness. At the time, I owned a suit or two with vests. My wife took that silver dollar and had a gold ring placed around its edges. The gold ring was attached to a gold chain which was attached to a pocket watch that AT&T had given me for having completed 40 years of service. If my luck holds out, following this is a picture of the silver dollar, the chain, and the gold watch.

For several years, the silver dollar, the watch, and the chain have been laying helplessly in my top dresser drawer. Now it is time to put them to work. There are five Carr grandsons and there are two Costa Rica grandsons who have adopted me as their “Grandpa in America,” as well as their new sister Melissa. And then there is Daniel Commodore, who works at the fish counter in a supermarket that we patronize. Daniel is a native of Accra, Ghana. He says that when I approach his workplace, he thinks of his own father. I am greatly flattered.
If and when any of the forgoing eight gentlemen elect to take a bride, I hope that they will buy or rent a suit with an appropriate vest. In one pocket of the vest, the watch should be placed. The gold chain must be snaked through button holes until it reaches the opposite side of the vest wherein the silver dollar will be used as a fob. If a vest is unavailable, the watch and the fob may be worn on the shirt or suit as long as the gold chain is prominently visible.
Similarly, if the young men have a pair of high-waisted pants, they may wear the jewelry with the watch in one pocket and the fob in the other, so long as the chain is apparent. The idea is to announce to the world that the wearer carries a watch and a fob, which accounts for the prominence that the chain should display.
This offer is not for permanent possession; it is simply a free rental. If there is a significant graduation or some other achievement of that sort, the silver dollar, fob, and watch may also be used to mark such a happy occasion, providing that the chain is similarly displayed.
These items are masculine in nature. When Señorita Melissa becomes a bride, or achieves some other significant step in her life, her grandparents in America will make proper recognition of those achievements.
As long as I carried the silver dollar in my pants pocket, I was reminded of my father. When I paid for lunch or bought a newspaper, the change would come out of my pocket, which would include the silver dollar. On every occasion, I thought of my father. I hope that when my grandchildren wear the silver dollar fob, they will think of him as well. None of them have ever met him but he was a strong and decent person. In the final years of his life, glaucoma overtook my father’s eyes and he spent the last eleven or twelve years in blindness. During those years, I can never recall my father ever complaining about his blindness. Nor can I recall his complaining about the loveless marriage that his arrangement with my mother had long since become.
So you see that in the end my father’s gesture to me on that evening in 1942 has lived on and will survive me as I lend this gift to my grandchildren. He was a good man.
Beyond all of the accolades that my father has generated, it is my hope that sooner or later every university in this country will begin to offer courses in “country speak”. There is something lyrical about a “country speaker” saying to a host who offers food, “No, thank you; I have already et. You should have knowed that.” Even Queen Elizabeth or the Archbishop of Canterbury would find it very difficult to approach that level of eloquence in the English language.
E. E. CARR
October 27, 2007
Essay 266
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Kevin’s commentary: Clearly, all the grandsons need to work on this whole “getting married” thing; I don’t think many of us are particularly close. Beautiful watch and chain, though. Maybe they’ll come back into fashion sometime.
My main takeaway here is as someone of largely Irish blood, I apparently have access to a friggen leprechaun-style luck curse and I’m just now finding this out at age 23.