Welcome to the World, Baby Girl! Read Free Page A

and sit down if they want to. Neighbor Dorothy’s house is on the corner where the Greyhound bus stops, so it makes it nice while people are waiting for the bus to go in and watch the show or sit on the front porch and wait, particularly if it’s raining. The floors are dark wood and Neighbor Dorothy has some nice scatter rugs here and there. The curtains are green with a yellow and deep pink floral print with what looks like might be palm trees. She has recently put up brand-new venetian blinds, a Christmas present from Doc.
    The dining room has a nice brass chandelier with four milk-glass shades with a little Dutch scene on them, and some lovely lace swag curtains on the bay window, and a pretty white tablecloth. The kitchen is still where everybody usually eats. It has a large white wooden table in the middle with a hanging lightbulb over it. The stove is a white enamel-and-chrome O’Keefe & Merritt with a clock and red and white plastic salt and pepper shakers to match. There is a large sink and drain board in a skirt of floral print plus a big Kelvinator icebox. The walls are beaded board painted a light green. Off the kitchen to the back is a large screened porch; Bobby sleeps there in the summer. On the other side is a group of miniature tables and chairs where all the children in town have their birthday parties and where Anna Lee and her friend run a nursery school in the summerto make extra money for clothes. The other two rooms on the left side of the house are Anna Lee’s bedroom, a seventeen-year-old girl’s room with a white canopy bed and a dresser with a mirror and a Kewpie doll with sparkle dust and a feather on its head sitting on top of a chest of drawers. There is a sunroom that Neighbor Dorothy and Mother Smith use as a sewing room and where Anna Lee keeps her scrapbooks on Dana Andrews, the movie star she is in love with this year. Three bedrooms are off the hall, Doc and Neighbor Dorothy’s, Mother Smith’s, and Bobby has the last room down at the end. Also living in the house is Princess Mary Margaret, who has free run of every room in the house and is famous in her own right. She is a ten-year-old cocker spaniel that Neighbor Dorothy got from Doc as a Christmas present the first year she was on the air. She was named through a name-the-puppy contest and when all her listeners sent in their choices, the name Princess Mary Margaret won first prize. A good name, because not only does England have a Princess Margaret, but Missouri has its own little princess, Margaret Truman, the daughter of Missouri-born president Harry S Truman and his wife, Bess. In 1948, Princess Mary Margaret is quite a celebrity. Not only does Neighbor Dorothy spoil her, so do her listeners. She has her own fan club known as the Princess Mary Margaret Club and all the dues money goes to the Humane Society. Princess Mary Margaret has received birthday cards from Lassie in Hollywood and many other famous people.
    The other two residents of the house are Dumpling and Moe, the Smiths’ yellow singing canary birds. Their white cage hangs in the living room and they can be heard chirping away all through the broadcast. Neighbor Dorothy’s backyard is, as mentioned, like everybody else’s except for the radio tower, with lots of open space all the way back to the railroad tracks and behind that are the cornfields. There are no fences so you might say that the whole town just has one big backyard and one leads into the other. The only difference between Neighbor Dorothy’s house and the others is the clothesline that runs from her back door to her next-door neighbor’s back door. Beatrice Woods, the little blind songbird, lives next door and that’s how she gets back and forth to Neighbor Dorothy’s house, byholding on to the clothesline. Apart from the fact that it has WDOT painted on the front window in gold and black letters, an organ in the living room, a radio tower in the backyard, and is a Greyhound bus stop and has a