Cheaper by the Dozen (18 page)

"Wait a minute, Mr. Gilbreth," he said. "Before you bury my wringer I want to oil it good, so I can get the sand off it when we dig it up again."

"That might not be a bad idea," Dad admitted. "After all," he added defensively, "I bought you a washing machine for Montclair. I can't have washing machines scattered all along the Atlantic seaboard, you know."

"I didn't say nothing," said Tom. "I just said I wanted to oil my wringer good, that's all. I didn't say nothing about a washing machine for Nantucket." He started to mutter. "Efficiency. All I hear around this house is efficiency. I'd like to make one of them lectures about efficiency. The one best way to ruin a wringer is to bury the God-damned thing in the sand, and then dig it up again. That's motion study for you!"

"What's that?" asked Dad. "Speak up if you have anything to say, and if you haven't keep quiet."

Tom continued muttering. "Motion study is burying a God-damned wringer in the sand and getting the parts all gummed up so that it breaks your back to turn it. That's motion study, as long as it's someone else's motions you're studying, and not your own. Lincoln freed the slaves. All but one. All but one."

The pictures and writeups sometimes put us on the defensive in school and among our friends.

"How come you write with a wooden pencil in school, when I saw in the newsreel how your father and all you kids buried a whole casket of them in a grave?"

Sometimes, and this was worst of all, the teachers would read excerpts from writeups about the process charts in the bathroom, the language records, and the decisions of the Family Council. We'd blush and squirm, and wish Dad had a nice job selling shoes somewhere, and that he had only one or two children, neither of whom was us.

The most dangerous reporters, from our standpoint, were the women who came to interview Mother for human interest stories. Mother usually got Dad to sit in on such interviews, because she liked to be able to prove to him and us that she didn't say any of the things they attributed to her, or at least not many of them.

Dad derived considerable pleasure from reading these interviews aloud at the supper table, with exaggerated gestures and facial expressions that were supposed to be Mother's.

"There sat Mrs. Gilbreth, surrounded by her brood, reading aloud a fairy tale," Dad would read. "The oldest, almost debutante Anne, wants to be a professional violinist. Ernestine intends to be a painter, Martha and Frank to follow in their father's footsteps.

" 'Tell me about your honorary degrees,' I asked this remarkable mother of twelve. A flush of crimson crept modestly to her cheeks, and she made a depreciating moue."

Here Dad would stop long enough to give his version of a depreciating moue, and hide his face coyly behind an upraised elbow. He resumed reading:

" 'I am far more proud of my dozen husky, red-blooded American children than I am of my two dozen honorary degrees and my membership in the Czechoslovak Academy of Science,' Mrs. Gilbreth told me."

"Mercy, Maud," Mother exploded. "I never said anything like that. You were there during that interview, Frank. Where did that woman get all that? If my mother should see that article, I don't know what she'd think of me. That woman never asked me about honorary degrees. And two dozen? No one ever had two dozen, unless it was poor Mr. Wilson. And I never said a thing about Czechoslovakia. And I hate and detest people who make depreciating moues. I never made one in my life, or at any rate not since I've been old enough to know better."

Meanwhile, both Anne and Ern were near tears.

"I can't go back to school tomorrow," Anne said. "How can I face the class after that business about the violin?"

"How about me?" moaned Ern. "At least you own a violin and can make noises come out of it. 'Ernestine wants to be a painter.' How
could
you tell her that Mother? And my teacher is sure to read it out loud. She always does."

"I didn't tell her that or anything else in the article," Mother insisted. "Where do you suppose she dreamed up those things, Frank?"

Dad grinned and went on reading.

"Mr. Gilbreth, the time study expert, entered the room on tiptoe so as not to disturb his wife's train of thought. Plump but dynamic, Mr. Gilbreth..."

The grin faded and Dad tossed the newspaper from him in disgust. "What unspeakable claptrap," he grunted. "Of all the words in the English language, the one I like least is 'plump.'The whole article is just a figment of the imagination."

One newsreel photographer, who visited us in Nantucket, deliberately set out to make us look ridiculous. It wasn't a difficult job. If he was acting under instructions from his employers, he should have been paid a bonus.

In good faith, Dad moved the dining room table, the chairs, and his pew out onto the beach grass at the side of our cottage, where the newsreel man said the light would be best. There, amid the sandflies, we ate dinner while the cameraman took pictures.

The newsreel, as shown in the movie houses, opened with a caption which said, "The family of Frank B. Gilbreth, timesaver, eats dinner." The rest of it was projected at about ten times the normal speed. It gave the impression that we raced to the table, passed plates madly in all directions, wolfed our food, and ran away from the table, all in about forty-five seconds. In the background was the reason the photographer wanted us outside—the family laundry with, of course, the diapers predominating.

We saw the newsreel at the Dreamland Theater in Nantucket, and it got much louder laughs than the comedy, which featured a fat actor named Lloyd Hamilton. Everyone in the Dreamland turned around and gaped at us, and we were humiliated and furious. We didn't even want to go to Coffin's Drug Store for a soda, when Dad extended a half-hearted invitation after the show.

"I hope it never comes to the Wellmont in Montclair," we kept repeating. "How can we ever go back to school?"

"Well," Dad said, "it was a mean trick, all right, and I'd like to get my hands on that photographer. But it could have been worse. Do you know what I kept thinking all the way through it? I kept thinking that when it was over they probably were going to show it again, backwards, so that it would look as if we were regurgitating our food back on our plates. I'll swear, if they had done that I was going to wreck the place."

"And I would have helped you," said Mother. "Honestly!"

"Come on, it's water over the dam," Dad shrugged. "Let's forget it. Let's go up to Coffin's after all and get those sodas. I'm ready for a double chocolate soda. What do you say?"

Under such relentless arm-twisting, we finally gave in and allowed ourselves to be taken to Coffin's.

Dad's theories ranged from Esperanto, which he made us study because he thought it was the answer to half the world's problems, to immaculate conception, which he said wasn't supported by available biological evidence. His theories on social poise, although requiring some minor revision as the family grew larger, were constant to the extent that they hinged on unaffectation.

A poised, unaffected person was never ridiculous, at least in his own mind, Dad told us. And a man who didn't feel ridiculous could never lose his dignity. Dad seldom felt ridiculous, and never admitted losing his dignity.

The part of the theory requiring some revision was that guests would feel at home if they were treated like one of our family. As Mother pointed out, and Dad finally admitted, the only guest who could possibly feel like a member of our family was a guest who, himself, came from a family of a dozen, headed by a motion study man.

When guests weren't present, Dad worked at improving our table manners. Whenever a child within his reach took too large a mouthful of food, Dad's knuckles would descend sharply on the top of the offender's head, with a thud that made Mother wince.

"Not on the head, Frank," she protested in shocked tones. "For mercy sakes, not on the head!"

Dad paid no attention except when the blow had been unusually hard. In such cases he rubbed his knuckles ruefully and replied:

"Maybe you're right. There must be softer places."

If the offender was at Mother's end of the table, out of Dad's reach, he'd signal her to administer the skull punishment. Mother, who never disciplined any of us or even threatened discipline, ignored the signals. Dad then would catch the eye of a child sitting near the offender and, by signals, would deputize him to carry out the punishment.

"With my compliments," Dad would say when the child with the full mouth turned furiously on the one who had knuckled him. "If I've told you once, I've told you a hundred times to cut your food up into little pieces. How am I going to drive that into your skull?"

"Not on the head," Mother repeated. "Mercy, Maud, not on the head!"

Anyone with an elbow on the table might suddenly feel his wrist seized, raised, and jerked downward so that his elbow hit the table hard enough to make the dishes dance.

"Not on the elbow, Frank. That's the most sensitive part of the body. Any place but on the elbow."

Mother disapproved of all forms of corporal punishment. She felt, though, that she could achieve better results in the long run by objecting to the part of the anatomy selected for punishment, rather than the punishment itself. Even when Dad administered vitally needed punishment on the conventional area, the area where it is supposed to do the most good, Mother tried to intervene.

"Not on the end of the spine," she'd say in a voice indicating her belief that Dad was running the risk of crippling us for life. "For goodness sakes, not on the end of the spine!"

"Where, then?" Dad shouted furiously in the middle of one spanking. "Not on the top of the head, not on the side of the ear, not on the back of the neck, not on the elbow, not across the legs, and not on the seat of the pants. Where did your father spank you? Across the soles of the by jingoed feet like the heathen Chinese?"

"Well, not on the end of the spine," Mother said. "You can be sure of that."

Skull-rapping and elbow-thumping became a practice in which everybody in the family, except Mother, participated until Dad deemed our table manners satisfactory. Even the youngest child could mete out the punishment without fear of reprisal. All during meals, we watched each other, and particularly Dad, for an opportunity. Sometimes the one who spotted a perched elbow would sneak out of his chair and walk all the way around the table, so that he could catch the offender.

Dad was quite careful about his elbows, but every so often would forget. It was considered a feather in one's cap to thump any elbow. But the ultimate achievement was to thump Dad's. This was considered not just a feather in the cap, but the entire head-dress of a full Indian chief.

When Dad was caught and his elbow thumped, he made a great to-do over it. He grimaced as if in excruciating pain, sucked in air through his teeth, rubbed the elbow, and claimed he couldn't use his arm for the remainder of the meal.

Occasionally, he would rest an elbow purposely on the edge of the table, and make believe he didn't notice some child who had slipped out of a chair and was tiptoeing toward him. Just as the child was about to reach out and grab the elbow, Dad would slide it into his lap.

"I've got eyes in the back of my head," Dad would announce.

The would-be thumper, walking disappointedly back to his chair, wondered if it wasn't just possible that Dad really did.

Both Dad and Mother tried to impress us that it was our responsibility to make guests feel at home.There were guests for meals almost as often as not, particularly business friends of Dad's since his office was in the house. There was no formality and no special preparation except a clean napkin and an extra place at the table.

"If a guest is sitting next to you, it's your job to keep him happy, to see that things are passed to him," Dad kept telling us.

George Isles, a Canadian author, seemed to Lillian to be an unhappy guest. Mr. Isles was old, and told sad but fascinating stories.

"Once upon a time there was an ancient, poor man whose joints hurt when he moved them, whose doctor wouldn't let him smoke cigars, and who had no little children to love him," Mr. Isles said. He continued with what seemed to us to be a tale of overwhelming loneliness, and then concluded:

"And do you know who that old man was?"

We had an idea who it was, but we shook our heads and said we didn't. Mr. Isles looked sadder than ever. He slowly raised his forearm and tapped his chest with his forefinger.

"Me," he said.

Lillian, who was six, was sitting next to Mr. Isles. It was her responsibility to see that he was happy, and she felt somehow that she had failed on the job. She threw her arms around his neck and kissed his dry, old man's cheek.

"You do, too, have little children who love you," she said, on the brink of tears. "You do, too!"

Whenever Mr. Isles came to call after that, he always brought one box of candy for Mother and us, and a separate box for Lillian. Ernestine used to remark, in a tone tinged with envy, that Lill was probably New Jersey's youngest gold digger, and that few adult gold diggers ever had received more, in return for less.

Dad was an easy-going host, informal and gracious, and we tried to pattern ourselves after him.

"Any more vegetables, Boss?" he'd ask Mother. "No? Well, how about mashed potatoes? Lots of them. And plenty of lamb. Fine. Well, Sir, I can't offer you any vegetables, but how about... ?"

"Oh, come on, have some more beef," Frank urged a visiting German engineer. "After all, you've only had three helpings."

"There's no need to gobble your grapefruit Like a pig," Fred told a woman professor from Columbia University, who had arrived late and was trying to catch up with the rest of us. "If we finish ahead of you, we'll wait until you're through."

"I'm sorry, but I'm afraid I can't pass your dessert until you finish your lima beans," Dan told a guest on another occasion. "Daddy won't allow it, and you're my responsibility. Daddy says a Belgian family could live a week on what's thrown away in this house every day."