Cheaper by the Dozen

Anne said. "They really hate to see us go. Imagine! They're crying just as hard as we are."
    The train pulled out of the station, and Mother did her best to cheer us up.
    "I didn't bring a single Sterno can with me," she said. 'Things will be much better going home than they were coming out. Lill's foot is all better, and I don't think Freddy's going to be sick any more. We can go into the diner and..."
    "Whoop," Martha coughed. "Whoop. Whoop."
    "You don't suppose that child's caught whooping cough, do you?" Mother asked. "Let me feel your forehead."
    By the tune we reached Salt Lake City, all seven of us had whooping cough. Our berths couldn't be made up, and no one in the same car with us got much sleep.
    Dad had managed to obtain leave from Fort Sill, and surprised us by boarding the train at Chicago. He helped with a bucket and mop Mother had borrowed from the porter, and brought us soup heated over recently acquired Sterno cans.
    "Thank you, Daddy, dear," we told him.
    "Daddy, dear?" he said. "Daddy, dear? Well! I guess I ought to send you kids to California every summer."
    "Not with me, you don't," Mother put in. "I can't tell you how much I enjoyed seeing the dear folks. But the next time you take the children out West, and I'll go to war."

Chapter 10
Motion Study Tonsils

    Dad thought the best way to deal with sickness in the family was simply to ignore it.
    "We don't have time for such nonsense," he said. "There are too many of us. A sick person drags down the performance of the entire group. You children come from sound pioneer stock. You've been given health, and it's your job to keep it. I don't want any excuses. I want you to stay well."
    Except for measles and whooping cough, we obeyed orders. Doctors' visits were so infrequent we learned to identify them with Mother's having a baby.
    Dad's mother, who lived with us for awhile, had her own secret for warding off disease. Grandma Gilbreth was born in Maine, where she said the seasons were Winter, July and August She claimed to be an expert in combatting cold weather and in avoiding head colds.
    Her secret prophylaxis was a white bag, filled and saturated with camphor, which she kept hidden in her bosom. Grandma's bosom offered ample hiding space not only for the camphor but for her eyeglasses, her handkerchief, and, if need be, for the bedspread she was crocheting.
    Each year, as soon as the first frost appeared, she made twelve identical white, camphor-filled bags for each of us.
    "Mind what Grandma says and wear these all the time," she told us. "Now if you bring home a cold it will be your own blessed fault, and I'll skin you alive."
    Grandma always was threatening to skin someone alive, or draw and quarter him, or scalp him like a red Indian, or spank him till his bottom blistered.
    Grandma averred she was a great believer in "spare the rod and spoil the child." Her own personal rod was a branch from a lilac bush, which grew in the side lawn. She always kept a twig from this bush on the top of her dresser.
    "I declare, you're going to catch it now," she would say. "Your mother won't spank you and your father is too busy to spank you, but your grandma is going to spank you till your bottom blisters."
    Then she would swing the twig with a vigor which belied her years. Most of her swings were aimed so as merely to whistle harmlessly through the air. She'd land a few lights licks on our legs, though, and since we didn't want to hurt her feelings we'd scream and holler as if we were receiving the twenty-one lashes from a Spanish inquisitor. Sometimes she'd switch so vigorously at nothing that the twig would break.
    "Ah, you see? You were so bad that I had to break my whip on you. Now go right out in the yard and cut me another one for next time. A big, thick one that will hurt even more than this one. Go along now. March!"
    On the infrequent occasions when one of us did become sick enough to stay in bed, Grandma and Dad thought the best treatment was the absent treatment.
    "A child abed mends best if left to himself," Grandma said, while Dad nodded approval. Mother said she agreed, too, but then she proceeded to wait on the sick child hand and foot.
    "Here, darling, put my lovely bed jacket around your shoulders," Mother would tell the ailing one. "Here are some magazines, and scissors and paste. Now how's that? I'm going down to the kitchen and fix you a tray. Then I'll be up and read to you."
    A cousin brought measles into the house, and all of us