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 there was no town anywhere near her place of birth. There is a community called Lusk but it is not a town, just a community. So when anyone asked her to list her hometown, she said Pope County. That was as close as she could get to a hometown.
Lillie was born in 1882 to a family of eight or ten children. Her parents were immigrants from Ireland who suffered the effects of the famine that started around 1850. Although the family was Irish, as far as I can tell, they were never involved with the Catholic Church. I simply do not know why that situation occurred.
Pope County is about as close to the end of the line as you can get. Tennessee Ernie Ford, he of fine voice and ready wit, used to say that his family came from so far out in the country, that nobody lived behind them. And so it was for Pope County. One of the products of living so far off the beaten path is that new ideas and other civilizing influences never reached the local inhabitants. One of the old products was the imposition of fundamentalist religious beliefs. In retrospect, those beliefs were more primitive than fundamental.
Even after she married and moved to St. Louis County, she continued to hold those primitive or fundamental beliefs. To her the devil was a real person who caused havoc to all those who believed. She believed in demons although her fear of demons was less than her fear of the devil. But look at it this way. Lillie died in 1961. Some 38 years later I heard Billy Graham start a sermon on the subject of demons. I moved to another channel as soon as his subject became clear. The Catholic Church believes so much in demons that it sponsors exorcisms of them to this day. So maybe Lillie had something there.
Folks in Pope County of Lillie’s generation were simple people. They were miners and farmers and education was treasured less than the ability to contribute to the family’s survivability. Lillie completed the “Third Reader” meaning something like the famed McGuffey Reader of early America. I suppose it could now be said that she finished the country equivalent of the third grade.
These simple folks attended meetings at “The Meeting Place.” No one called it a church. It was where people went to worship or, on other occasions, to deal with community problems. At worship services, there were no musical instruments such as an organ or a piano. Somebody with smaller inhibitions than the rest of meeting place people would stand up and lead the singing. I’ve heard some of that singing. They couldn’t read music so the hymns sounded very much the same as far as the tunes went.
The same informality extended to the preacher. Please note that the people called him “The Preacher.” There was none of that uptown stuff such as Pastor, Doctor or Minister. He was “The Preacher.”
Before starting to preach to the little assemblage, one or more of the men would say that he had a call from God asking him to deliver the message. Obviously, theology training had nothing to do with the message. And equally obvious was that the calls from God were limited to men. Female churchgoers got no calls from Jehovah. Maybe it was that the Heavenly Host got only busy signals or don’t answers from female worshipers. But female preachers did not exist.
Even after she married and moved to Clayton, Missouri in St. Louis County, Lillie patronized largely unlettered preachers. Some were Nazarene. Some were Pentecostal. Others preachers had no affiliation and simply called their churches “Brother Tom’s House of Worship” or the “Preacher Joe’s Spiritual Healing Center.” Again, she had nothing to do with upscale stuff such as Pastors or Ministers; she dealt only in preachers. At the end she and my father moved to a Free Will Baptist Church which was a grim move for all of us.
Now you may be wondering how I grew up in this environment. When I was about five or six years of age, Lillie concluded that I had reached the “age of accountability.” That was one of her church terms. So in back of our house was a grove of trees. Lillie took me out there among the trees clad in my little sun suit. She instructed me to get on my knees and pray, pray, pray until Jesus appeared to save me. I thought this was a dubious exercise and rather than pray, I wanted to play baseball. Lillie led the prayers. After a time the rocks started to hurt my knees but she said that if I stood up, the prayers would count for nothing. I suppose this charade went on for 15 or 20 minutes. Finally, it dawned on me that I was going to be down there with the rocks hurting my knees all day unless I said that I was saved. So I made my big announcement that I was SAVED. That made us all happy. Lillie clapped her hands and thanked the Lord. I was pleased to stand up. In honor of the occasion, Lillie saved my sun suit in her trunk for many years.
In point of fact, from the experience of being saved, I never again believed in the Holy Ghost, original sin, Heaven and Hell, the Devil or Demons as well as the resurrection. The idea of the Immaculate Conception and the doctrine of Papal Infallibility were also rejected. So from age 5 or 6, my mind has been free of those troubling theological thoughts.
For many years, Lillie had nourished the idea that one of her four sons would become a preacher. Charlie and Earl seemed disinclined to take up pastoral duties. She then turned to Lawrence who seemed like her best bet. But unfortunately, Lawrence died at age 13 from pneumonia and appendicitis. That happened when I was two years of age so she put her hopes on me. Unfortunately, she bet on another loser because by the time I reached my 13th birthday, I was so fed up with all churches, with salvation and with the Free Will Baptist church, I simply announced that I was no longer willing to attend church services. With great grumbling, my parents seemed to say there was nothing they could do about it except to pray harder. Their prayers must have fallen on deaf ears. That happened in 1935 and I have been unchurched the last 66 years. And I have never been happier.
In spite of all the religious business, I believe that what ever sense of humor I have probably came from my mother. These qualities got me through the war so I appreciate her contribution very much.
Lillie was a red hot Irish nationalist. Her words about old Mother England were scornful. She had nothing to say about England or English people that was even remotely praiseworthy. But since 1917, she reserved the top spot in her hate list for Germany because in World War I, Germany had used gas on two of her soldier brothers. So in race-track terms, her contempt list had Germany and England running as an entry with the Krauts#1 and Limeys running as #1A.
In 1940 and 1941, England was in bad shape. France was lost. Belgium and Holland were gone. Poland was over run. In short it was the United Kingdom against the world. Only they were keeping the Nazi hordes at bay. We owe them for that.
The question was could the British Empire hold out until help arrived. That help had to come from the United States. And so it was that the British government sent many emissaries to Washington to plead for help. Because of the isolationists in Congress, Roosevelt had a difficult situation on his hands.
Early in 1941, the United Kingdom sent their top man to Washington to plead for help. The St. Louis Post-Dispatch, which my mother read every day, reported in one headline “British Prime Minister Appeals To Washington For Help.” That dispatch was written by the Post-Dispatch’s Chief Washington correspondent, Marquis Childs.
That headline set my mother off. In the first place, that headline should have read “English,” not “British” she said. Now remember, she was barely used to having preachers called ministers. So it was that she concluded that the British Prime Minister was some sort of high level preacher. She took great umbrage at the thought that the English would send a “Big Bug Preacher” to these shores to lecture us about Christianity. For her, the English had no right to speak to anybody about decent behavior.
It took a good bit of effort to convince her that the British Prime Minister was not a preacher at all, but was simply a government figure. The “Big Bug” prime minister was Winston Churchill. He spoke to Franklin Roosevelt on that occasion.
Now about that “Big Bug” appellation. When I was transferred after some years with AT&T to New York, Lillie said that I had now become a “Big Bug.” She didn’t love me less or more. By virtue of being in New York, I had simply become a “Big Bug.” Not so bad for a fellow who made $750 a month after the promotion to the Big Apple.
The second episode had to do with my leave-taking to join the United States Army. My parents did not want their 19-year-old son to be put in harms way. They had had enough sorrow to last a lifetime by losing three of their eight children. I was their seventh child. The eighth and sixth children died shortly after birth. And Lawrence died at thirteen before he ever had a chance at life. I was their last child. And so in 1942, I was off to become a soldier.
I believe that my parents, particularly my mother, secretly applauded the thought that I had volunteered to serve. In the First World War, two of my father’s brothers volunteered for service. They were Clyde and Cleve Carr. My mother had watched as her brothers, Joe, Harry and Ade (Adlai) had done the same thing. Harry and Ade were gassed by the Germans earning Lillie’s hatred forever. Both of my parents seemed to say by their actions that volunteer enlistment was the honorable thing to do. I agreed. I think my mother would have choked had I waited for the draft call which did not come for 15 to 18 months after my enlistment.
My decision to enlist came fairly easily. The AT&T Company had a practice of many years standing, to grant permanent status to employees who had completed a year of service. Permanent status meant being able to take a leave of absence with full service credit. It may also have carried a death benefit award. So I planned to enlist shortly after achieving permanent status as an AT&T employee.
AT&T hired me as a draftsman in the St. Louis Division office for $17 a week. After six months, I got a raise to $19 per week. When the year rolled around, I expected to be told that my pay would be $21 but the boss told me that the Company was not granting any more permanent status to employees in my situation. It soon became clear that AT&T had calculated that denying permanent status would mean that employees would stay with the Company rather than going into the military. How’s that for patriotism? I got the raise to $21 per week but not the permanent status.
So I said to hell with AT&T and marched over to the Federal Building at 12th and Market in St. Louis and made an agreement to enlist in the United States Army Air Corps. AT&T responded by removing my name from all its mailing lists. No more monthly Long Lines Magazine. No more Company newspapers. No more notices of promotions, transfers and deaths. It took an act of Congress in 1944 to restore employees like me to the leave of absence rolls.
When I was restored to a leave of absence from the Company, I was somewhere in Italy. Pretty soon, all the magazines and newspapers began to show up. I regret that I failed to tell the Germans that I was back in AT&T’s good graces. If Field Marshal Kesselring, who was responsible for Hitler’s forces in Italy, had known that he would probably have ordered a general retreat for all the German forces and would have apologized for disrupting my young life.
Well, now back to my departure to join the Army. It was early in the morning as I had a long trip from my parent’s house to Jefferson Barracks, Missouri. There was the Kirkwood–Ferguson street car with a transfer to the University street car. That was followed by transfers to the Forest Park line and finally to the South Broadway line which took me to Jefferson Barracks. The trip probably took two hours but it only cost a dime as I recall it.
Getting to the Barracks by car was out of the question. That would have meant that my father or my brothers would have missed work and they would have been docked for that.
So I strolled out to the driveway before setting off for the Kirkwood – Ferguson street car. Lillie walked with me to the driveway and planned to say her farewell there. She urged me to be careful and to write often. Sensing that she was distraught at this parting, I attempted to cheer her up by telling her that the American forces would not be alone. There would be plenty of help. I mentioned the French Army. Then the Belgians whom she remembered as being very brave from the earlier war. I mentioned the Canadians whom she liked. And I told her that the Poles would help us. She liked the Poles because they were good workers back on the Lilac Roost Dairy farm in Clayton which she helped run prior to 1925.
And then I made a fatal mistake. I told her we would be helped by Great Britain. I knew better than to say that but I suppose my mouth ran away from my mind. Lillie seemed stunned. Then she said, “You mean the English?” I must have shrugged my shoulders in agreement. Then she went on to say, “In that case, Son, you will have to do the best you can.” The interview was clearly over so I set out for the streetcar. I suppose she went back into the house.
Lillie meant no harm by her statement. I was the one who brought up the English business. I saw her once at Jefferson Barracks before I left for New Mexico. We joked a little bit and she was as supportive as she had always been. But we never mentioned England or English soldiers.
In the final analysis, the joke was on Lillie. In my 26 months overseas, I was attached to British forces for much of that time for rations and quarters – meaning a tent or barracks and mutton at the mess hall. I’m sure Lillie would have figured that the mutton diet was my penance for bringing up the English in my farewell appearance.
Like every one else, Lillie had her shortcomings. I rebelled at her views on my soul – assuming that anyone has such a thing. But in the end, she was good to me. I admired her most because she stuck up for her children, even after some of us had become adults. Simply put, Lillie had guts. When you add that quality to someone who had a good sense of humor, I think you’ve got a rare bird indeed. And Lillie was that rare bird.
This essay is being written on the fortieth anniversary of her death.
E. E. CARR
May 22, 2001
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“I believe that what ever sense of humor I have probably came from my mother” is the key takeaway here for me, because Pop’s sense of humor is unmistakable, and my mother inherited it in spades. Which was of course handed down to me. What’s surprising about hearing that it comes from Lillie is that Carr family humor is known for chiefly for being dry, vulgar, and occasionally brusque; before reading the essay, I never got the sense that Lillie would have approached situations that way. But I guess someone who has that tough of a life has to find humor even in dark things, which I think explains a lot.
Also, I’m not sure I’d ever heard of many of the family members mentioned in this essay. If I ever decide to document family tree, I’ll have to come back to it!