On Friday, after the big Christmas 2002 snowstorm had passed, the people at the opticians called to say my new eye glasses were ready to be picked up. Standing across the busy street waiting for the light to change, a man came up behind me and said, “How about the weather?” As I turned around with the thought in mind to say, “It’s ok now that the snow is out of here”, the words never left my tongue. The man behind me was talking on his cell phone and in point of fact, no question had ever been addressed to me.
As a writer of occasional essays, an event of this kind would probably be the subject of a short note in my files with the thought that someday it might be well to write about cell phone usage in public. For more than five years now, short notes such as this to remind me of events that could be a subject for essays have found a home in my files for future essays. Many of these notes would not support a full essay, so it was my intention to include them in a collection to be known as “Bits and Pieces.” These short essays would stand alone and would not be related one to another. As one “Bits and Pieces” story ended, there would be a line under it and then there would be a new story or essay with a different title.
My first “Bits and Pieces” essay was to start with my recollection of a lovely woman who worked with me in Chicago. This lady had apparently seen hundreds of movies and often, she would answer questions by quoting a line from a movie as though it were her own. No attempt at attribution would be made. And some of her responses were quite enigmatic and puzzling.
Well, as thoughts of the movie quoting woman filled my head, it was inevitable that my mother, who considered going to “picture shows” as a sinful evil causing the American public to stray from righteousness, would come into my mind. That was only one item on my mother Lillie’s forbidden list. Dancing, card playing, Sunday ball games, whiskey drinking, cigar smoking are a few more that were considered as the obvious work of Satan. Of necessity, it seemed that my background or experience with movies was a natural to go with the Chicago lady who responded to questions by using a line from a movie. So my mother became a sort of “Bits and Pieces” issue.
Then, before anyone could put the fire out, the Chicago movie lady caused me to write about one of her fellow workers who had her hair done each week. When she emerged into public view after what must have been three or four hours at the hairdresser, she was a sight to see. Her hair was almost always piled on top of her head to a height of a least three to five inches. There were arches and tunnels through her blond Swedish hair that made Cy Hill, my engineering friend gasp. He considered it not as an artistic triumph of hair styling, but as an engineering masterpiece.
So the thoughts of little essays under the heading of “Bits and Pieces” will have to wait for another day. This one involves the previously mentioned women. I believe it is reasonable to call it “Three Interesting Women.”
Because Lillie, my mother, was older than the other two women, it is proposed that we start with her.
RIGHTEOUSNESS AND PICTURE SHOWS
For purposes of honesty and integrity, it is necessary for this essayist to reveal that he has a long standing aversion to the products produced by the world wide movie industry. It is impossible for me to fanticize that some of the plots described to me are worth my while. The advertisements shown on television only increase my animosity. In short, a decent book is 1000 times more enjoyable to me than any movie.
Two thoughts go into my attitude on motion pictures. In the first instance, my parents attended fundamentalist churches like the Pentecostal or the Nazarene or of the Free Will Baptist variety. It would be more appropriate to describe them as primitive as distinguished from fundamental. Among other things, my parents, particularly my mother, tried to ban the children from card playing, drinking, dancing and going to what were called in the 1930’s, “Picture Shows.” Similarly banned was cigar smoking and watching ball games on Sundays.
In the second instance, her bans were observed in the breech once the older children had jobs. My older sister was a regular member of a bridge club that met in our house when it was my sister’s turn to hostess the event. My other sister became a singing waitress in a road house or saloon or tavern run by Joe Gonella in Brentwood, Missouri. My two elder brothers liked bridge and poker and – heaven forbid – they drank whiskey and even worse, they actually danced with girls.
But those older siblings were somewhere between eight and fifteen years older than the youngest member of the family, namely me. So the bans on any type of enjoyment eventually fell on me. While the other Carr children were off on their absolutely sinful ways, it was left to me, a youngster of less than 13 years, to survive my mother’s attempts to make a pietist out of me. The proper phrase should be “to pietize me”, but Webster insists on other terms. She did not succeed in that endeavor to make a holy child out of me, as the thought that I should become a preacher was rebuffed – by me.
At age 12 or 13 years, there was no urge for me to take up dancing, card playing, going out with girls or drinking whiskey. On the other hand, the wealthy kids who attended the Clayton, Missouri Public Schools with me often discussed motion pictures that they had seen at the Shady Oak Theater in Clayton. There was nothing for me to contribute in such a discussion because at age 13 years, a picture show was on my forbidden list. It might be supposed that I devoted my attention to books and baseball as a means of making up for my deficiencies in the entertainment field.
During my 13th year which occurred in 1935, a stroke of genius embraced me. From reading the St. Louis Post Dispatch, it was clear that a new film called, “The Sign of the Cross” was attracting big crowds to theaters in St. Louis. Its release was timed to occur at Easter. So my treasury had a few dollars from cutting grass and baby sitting. My proposition to my mother was that any trip to see a picture show would be financed by me. If anyone was going to hell, it was clear that I would pay that price. You must remember that at age 13, I was in my seventh year of complete religious disbelief, so hell had no fury for me.
Secondly, my mother was told that this was a picture show about Jesus. As far as I know, very few, if any, depictions of Jesus had ever been filmed by Hollywood. My effort were assisted by my sinful brothers who seemed to assure our mother that seeing “The Sign of the Cross” might bring me back to righteousness. They knew me better than that; it was simply a sales pitch to permit me to go see the film at the Shady Oak Theater. So after a time, Mrs. Carr reluctantly said go ahead. She was yielding to the inevitable because she knew in a short time, her last child would certainly become involved in the “ways of the world.”
It would be nice to inform you that the 1935 film “The Sign of the Cross” was a blockbuster. It most assuredly was not. It was an overwhelming 2½ to 3 hour bore. The words I heard in the Shady Oak Theater that day were the among the same ones that I had rejected in my forced encounters with preachers and Protestant religious thought. It might be believed that that first experience turned me off movies forever. In any case, it did not help Hollywood’s cause with me.
My next encounter with movies came during the war in Africa and Italy. Once in a while, the Army branch in charge of morale, would ship us a light hearted film. At the beginning, they shipped us war films which were laughed out of existence. They simply had no relevance to soldiers in combat situations. Later, they sent us some sophomoric films about romance among the high school set. Many of the men told the base communication’s officer that they would much prefer writing to the folks back home as distinguished from another moon-spoon-jitterbug movie. So they were simply shut down. So my GI experience as far as movie watching was a big zero.
After the United States Army reluctantly released me in November, 1945, no movie theaters had me as a customer. There were two major league ball clubs in St. Louis. There was a well know outdoor theater where light opera was presented during the summer months. In the winter, there were hockey games and the Grand Opera Association of St. Louis which offered three productions per year. And there were books and a first class newspaper. So there was no need to look for a picture show, so thoughts of movies never entered my head.
During the war, other soldiers had said that Boston was a good town. Being a “good town” may have been favorable eating establishments. Or it might have been a good bar scene. Or it could have been willing females. So never take the word of a soldier. Go see for yourself. And so the summer of 1948 found me in Boston during a very uncomfortable, humid heat wave. Remember, there was no such thing as
air-conditioning then as we know it today. Hotels responded by providing windows that could be opened. Restaurants had large fans, but it was still hot.
In the midst of a hot humid afternoon, a Boston theater appeared with the promise of being air-cooled. That term probably referred to tubs of ice with fans blowing over them. The picture being shown was the “Babe Ruth Story.” So to escape the humid heat, it seemed that an afternoon with the Babe was our best bet. The movie did nothing to change my view of the offerings of Hollywood. The theater though offered some relief from the heat, but not much. Before long that Boston experience will be 55 years old. It must have satisfied my curiosity about movies because in the intervening 55 years, there has been no temptation on my part to attend a showing of any of the latest Hollywood extravaganzas. As far as motion pictures are concerned, I’ve seen all I care to see. So for the rest of my life, it will be books, newspapers and some essays. Perhaps my mother was on to something when she barred me from seeing picture shows. But remember, it all started with “The Sign of the Cross.”
It was a very different situation with a very nice woman I worked with in Chicago. She must have seen every movie that was released during her working life, including the “The Sign of the Cross.”
THE WOMAN WHO RESPONDED IN METRO-GOLDWYN-MAYER SPEAK
For a two year period and starting in 1953 when I was involved with the Chicago #2 Traffic Office, AT&T and the Illinois Bell Telephone Company provided operators who handled long distance calls. Local calls were handled exclusively by the Illinois Company.

In those days, a customer who wished to make a long distance call would dial “211” and a light would be illuminated on the switchboard in front of a long distance operator. All the operators were women at that time. She would answer the signal by asking what number in the distant city you wished to call. If she had a direct unused circuit in front of her, say for a call from Chicago to Milwaukee, she would go into that circuit and the call would be immediately completed. If she had no direct circuit in her switchboard in front of her, say in the case of a Chicago to Reno, Nevada call, she would dismiss the customer. When she reached the called party in Reno, she would call back the originating Chicago customer and tell him to go ahead with his call. Remember, all this was before long distance toll dialing by customers.
Getting the right number of operators into the right positions on the switchboard was an exacting science. All the assignments were broken down into 15 minute segments. The idea was to leave operators in a position for as long as they were not needed in another position, say during the busy hour. In that case, the operator might be asked to move to another location for all or part of the busy hour. Every operator knew exactly where she was going to be at any time of the day because she received a “trick card” at the beginning of her shift which told her where she would be for the duration of her shift.
It is clear that “Trick Card” has picked up some unsavory connotations in recent years. But in the 1950’s, it was the backbone of the system which told operators where to work and for how long. The assignment of operators to work the switchboards was the function of Force Clerks who reported not to Chief Operators, but to the District Superintendent of the Traffic Office. That tells anyone of the importance of the function. The work of the Chief Force Clerk and her staff was complex. It would be difficult for me to remember that their work was ever overturned or even amended. When the Chief Force Clerk would show her work to me every week, I would clear my throat and pretend that I understood it. Before long, she would have my approval. In point of fact, unless you did the work yourself, there was no way for an outsider to improve upon the final result, much less to criticize it.
The Chief Force Clerk, when AT&T asked me to take over the Chicago #2 Office, was a very nice lady who went by the name of Rosalie Larson. If one wishes to engage in polite circumlocution, it might be said that
Miss Larson was of Swedish extraction. The people of Chicago are plain spoken. No fancy stuff for them. Rosalie and many thousands of other Chicagoans were usually identified as Swedes, just as another large group of Chicagoans were identified as Poles. Everyone understood that people such as the ones we are talking about were Americans; the ethnic identification, when necessary, simply made it easier to identify the person under discussion. It was like saying that woman over there in the red blouse. The ethnic identification was just that simple.
Before my thoughts are overlooked or forgotten, Chicago and its people are favorites of mine. It is a first class town peopled by first class citizens. I liked that place so much that a baby Chicago girl was adopted into our family. Soon, she will celebrate her 50th birthday.
Now, back to Rosalie. For reasons unknown to me, Miss Larson apparently spent her off hours in movie theaters. Remember, this was in the 1953-1955 span of years when there was no such thing as a rented movie. If you wanted to see a movie, you went to the theater and paid at the box office to enter the theater.
Rosalie saw so many movies that other AT&T traffic employees would ask her opinion as to what film they should see. Her breaks and lunch hours were punctuated by requests for a review of a movie that Rosalie had seen. Rosalie was an accommodating reviewer of movies. If she ever chased a movie buff away, it was probably while she was wrestling with a weekly force program.
It seemed to some of us that Rosalie spent so much time in movies that she consciously or unconsciously began to talk like characters she had seen. On one occasion that comes to mind, she apparently was asked if she had ever married. Rosalie was an attractive woman and the question was a fair one. Before anyone ever heard of “Ms,” Miss Larson responded by saying, “I called him my husband.” So when someone mentioned the remark to me, it seemed that Rosalie had been married – but who knows? Another person in the office said that the husband line came from a year old film. When it came time for me to report to my next job in New York, I had no idea about the husband – or the lack thereof – in Rosalie’s life. There was no point in wondering about these complications; that’s just the way Rosalie talked.
On another occasion, Rosalie said something to the effect that a certain man was “the other half of the apple” to a certain woman. When this statement was presented to me for discerning its meaning, it seemed to me that perhaps – when an apple is broken in half longitudinally, that only those two apple halves will ever fit together again. That was only my guess.
My father had strong arms from firing on the Illinois Central Railroad as a young man. He often took an apple, larger ones preferred, held it in his hands with the stem sticking upward, and twisted the left half in one direction and the right half in the other direction. And invariably, the apple came apart in two halves. My father always carried a pocket knife. It would have been much more simple to cut the apple in half, but perhaps he wanted to let the children know that he could break an apple in two. In any case, that is where my expertise about apples fitting back together came from. Pretty dubious expertise, I suppose.
As far as anyone could figure out, Rosalie’s line about “the other half of the apple” had to do with a cleaved apple. None of us knew any more than Rosalie’s response. In the interest of fair reporting, it should be noted that at least one of the folks in the Chicago #2 Office said it also came from a movie.
Well there you have it. Rosalie was a nice person who occasionally resorted to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer forms of speech. Knowing nothing about movies, it seemed to me that such movie-speak while enigmatic, was pretty colorful stuff. And I never did figure out if Rosalie ever married – or remarried – as the case may be.
Now we turn to a colleague of all of us in the Chicago #2 Office who employed the most innovative hair dresser in Chicago, or as Bertie MacCormick, the publisher of the Chicago Tribune would say, “In all Chicagoland.”
THE WOMAN WITH BREATH-TAKING HAIR
This lady was a fun loving woman who had her hair done once each week. Like Rosalie, Dorothy Anderson was a Swede and perhaps she spent as much on her hairdresser as Rosalie did on movies.
There was considerable interest on Mondays when Dorothy would appear in the office with her latest hairdo creation. As a general observation, it seemed to me that her hair was always on top of her head. There were arcs and spirals and tunnels and round things like spoked wheels all over Dorothy’s head. As was said earlier, Cy Hill, a hard bitten engineer used to marvel at how the hairdresser had fixed Dorothy’s hair to defy gravity. Cy Hill had no hair that anyone could discern so I paid a diminished amount of attention to him.
Cy and some other male cynics who admired the innovations of the hairdresser, nevertheless contended that there was no way for Miss Anderson to recline peacefully, or un-peacefully, in a bed. They argued that the creations on top of Dorothy’s head were so important to her that she must have slept in an upright position in a chair or in a similar device. I took no clear position on this delicate subject. But it seemed reasonable to me that when single men debated about taking her out on a date, the problem of preserving the engineering marvels atop Dorothy’s head would become a significant issue. I listened to the cynic’s discussion, but I had nothing of import to add, publicly. Such a discussion would have run afoul of my mother’s forbidden list.
It has been nearly 50 years since Dorothy attracted all the attention of everyone at the Chicago #2 Traffic Office. If somehow we should meet today, you may be sure that it would be necessary for me to review her latest hair creation. Cy Hill is gone now, but Dorothy ought to have a latter day creation to honor the old engineer and the other interested male cynics.
 
Well, there you have the story of three women who impressed me back in the 1950’s and, in the case of my mother, back in the 1920’s and 1930’s. Whatever happened to my friends Rosalie and Dorothy is unknown to me as we enter 2003. I hope they are happily retired, going to the movies and to the hairdresser or what ever their latter day penchant might now be.
As for my mother, it was not in the cards for me to become a preacher as she had hoped and wanted. On the other hand, speaking of cards, during my more than three years in the American Army, I never ever sat at a poker table or in any other card game. When we were given ration cards for beer from the British run shops (NAAFTI), which were like the U. S. Army PX’s, I always gave my beer rations to someone else. Please don’t consider these acts as a return to righteousness on my part. I was just doing what came naturally to me. Card playing comes in as low as movies with me. I guess the proper word is nadir. And after trying to like beer, it just didn’t become the “other half of the apple.” As for cigar smoking, perhaps five or six cigars found their way into my lips. I hated every puff of every cigar I ever smoked.
So I hope my long departed mother will now view me in a more sympathetic light in view of my thoughts about card playing, movies, dancing, beer drinking and smoking cigars. I believe that my credentials for sainthood are well established and clearly beyond questioning. Perhaps the Protestants will now compose a new eight part hymn or an oratorio to sing my praises far and wide. I might even sing the baritone or bass part of such a hymn of praise.
E. E. CARR
December 31, 2002
~~~
Sorry for the break in essays! It’s been a crazy work week.
I can’t help but feel that Ed didn’t really give movies a fair shot. For a man who disliked both fiction and Christianity, The Sign of the Cross may have represented a poor introduction to the medium. Though, thinking about it, even now I’d be hard-pressed to come up with a movie that Pop would have enjoyed more than a book, so maybe he had it right after all.
Also noteworthy: I’ve been eating apples incorrectly all along. Gotta start just tearing them apart, I suppose.