Cheaper by the Dozen Read Free Page B

slightly more lurid. We were en route from Montclair to New Bedford, Massachusetts, and Frank, Jr., was left behind by mistake in a restaurant in New London. His absence wasn't discovered until near the end of the trip.
    Dad wheeled the car around frantically and sped back to New London, breaking every traffic rule then on the books. We had stopped in the New London restaurant for lunch, and it had seemed a respectable enough place. It was night time when we returned, however, and the place was garish in colored lights. Dad left us in the car, and entered. After the drive in the dark, his eyes were squinted in the bright lights, and he couldn't see very well. But he hurried back to the booths and peered into each one.
    A pretty young lady, looking for business, was drinking a highball in the second booth. Dad peered in, flustered.
    "Hello, Pops," she said. "Don't be bashful. Are you looking for a naughty little girl?"
    Dad was caught off guard.
    "Goodness, no," he stammered, with all of his ordinary poise shattered. "I'm looking for a naughty little boy."
    "Whoops, dearie," she said. "Pardon me."
    All of us had been instructed that when we were lost we were supposed to stay in the same spot until someone returned for us, and Frank, Jr., was found, eating ice cream with the proprietor's daughter, back in the kitchen.
    Anyway, those two experiences explain why Dad always insisted that the roll be called.
    As we'd line up in front of the house before getting into the car, Dad would look us all over carefully.
    "Are you all reasonably sanitary?" he would ask.
    Dad would get out and help Mother and the two babies into the front seat. He'd pick out someone whose behavior had been especially good, and allow him to sit up front too, as the left-hand lookout. The rest of would pile in the back, exchanging kicks and pinches under the protection of the lap robe as we squirmed around trying to make more room.
    Finally, off we'd start. Mother, holding the two babies, seemed to glow with vitality. Her ted hair, arranged in a flat pompadour, would begin to blow out in wisps from her hat. As long as we were still in town, and Dad wasn't driving fast, she seemed to enjoy the ride. She'd sit there listening to him and carrying on a rapid conversation. But just the same her eats were straining toward the sounds in the back seats, to make sure that everything was going all right. She had plenty to worry about, too, because the more cramped we became the more noise we'd make. Finally, even Dad couldn't stand the confusion.
    "What's the matter back there?" he'd bellow to Anne. "I thought I told you to keep everybody quiet."
    "That would require an act of God," Anne would reply bitterly.
    "You are going to think God is acting if you don't keep order back there. I said quiet and I want quiet."
    "I'm trying to make them behave, Daddy. But no one will listen to me."
    "I don't want any excuses; I want order. You're the oldest. From now on, I don't want to hear a single sound from back there. Do you all want to walk home?"
    By this time, most of us did, but no one dared say so. Things would quiet down for a while. Even Anne would relax and forget her responsibilities as the oldest. But finally there'd be trouble again, and we'd fed pinches and kicks down underneath the robe.
    "Cut it out, Ernestine, you sneak," Anne would hiss.
    "You take up all the room," Ernestine would reply. "Why don't you move over. I wish you'd stayed home."
    "You don't wish it half as much as I," Anne would say, with all her heart. It was on such occasions that Anne wished she were an only child.
    We made quite a sight tolling along in the car, with the top down. As we passed through cities and villages, we caused a stir equaled only by a circus parade.
    This was the part Dad liked best of all. He'd slow down to five miles an hour and he'd blow the horns at imaginary obstacles and cars two blocks away. The horns were Dad's calliope.
    "I seen eleven of them, not counting the man