Cheaper by the Dozen

Beach. Besides our place, there was only one other house in the vicinity. This belonged to an artist couple named Whitney. But after our first summer at Nantucket, the Whitneys had their house jacked up, placed on rollers, and moved a mile away to a vacant lot near the tip of Brant Point . After that, we had the strip of land all to ourselves.
    Customarily, en route from Montclair to Nantucket, we spent the night in a hotel in New London, Connecticut. Dad blew the hotel manager and all of the men at the desk, and they used to exchange loud and good-natured insults for the benefit of the crowds that followed us in from the street.
    "Oh, Lord, look what's coming," the manager called when we entered the door. And then to an assistant. "Alert the fire department and the house detective. It's the Gilbreths. And take that cigar cutter off the counter and lock it in the safe."
    "Do you still have that dangerous guillotine?" Dad grinned, "I know you'll be disappointed to hear that the finger grew in just as good as new. Show the man your finger, Ernestine."
    Ernestine held up the little finger of her right hand. On a previous visit, she had pushed it inquisitively into the cigar cutter, and had lost about an eighth of an inch of it. She had bled considerably on a rug, while Dad tried to fashion a tourniquet and roared inquiries about whether there was a doctor in the house.
    "Tell me," Dad remarked as he picked up a pen to register in the big book, "do my Irishmen come cheaper by the dozen?"
    "Irishmen! If I were wearing a sheet, you'd call them Arabs. How many of them are there, anyway? Last year, when I went to make out your bill, you claimed there were only seven. I can count at least a dozen of them now."
    "It's quite possible there may have been some additions since then," Dad conceded.
    "Front, boy. Front, boy. Front, boy. Front, boy. You four boys show Mr. and Mrs. Gilbreth and their seven—or so— Irishmen to 503, 504, 505, 506, and 507. And mind you take good care of them, too."

    When we first started going to Nantucket, which is off the tip of Cape Cod, automobiles weren't allowed on the island, and we'd leave the Pierce Arrow in a garage at New Bedford, Massachusetts. Later, when the automobile ban was lifted, we'd take the car with us on the Gay Head or the Sankaty, the steamers which plied between the mainland and the island. Dad had a frightening time backing the automobile up the gangplank. Mother insisted that we get out of the car and stand clear. Then she'd beg Dad to put on a life preserver.
    "I know you and it are going into the water one of these days," she warned.
    "Doesn't anybody, even my wife, have confidence in my driving?" he would moan. Then on a more practical note. "Besides, I can swim."
    The biggest problem, on the boat and in the car, was Martha's two canaries, which she had won for making the best recitation in Sunday school. All of us, except Dad, were fond of them. Dad called one of them Shut Up and the other You Heard Me. He said they smelled so much that they ruined his whole trip, and were the only creatures on earth with voices louder than his children. Tom Grieves, the handyman, who had to clean up the cage, named the birds Peter Soil and Maggie Mess. Mother wouldn't let us use those full names, she said they were "Eskimo." (Eskimo was Mother's description of anything that was off-color, revolting, or evil-minded.) We called the birds simply Peter and Maggie.
    On one trip, Fred was holding the cage on the stem of the ship, while Dad backed the car aboard. Somehow, the wire door popped open and the birds escaped. They flew to a piling on the dock, and then to a roof of a warehouse. When Dad, with the car finally stowed away, appeared on deck, three of the younger children were sobbing. They made so much noise that the captain heard them and came off the bridge.
    "What's the trouble now, Mr. Gilbreth?" he asked.
    "Nothing," said Dad, who saw a chance to put thirty miles between himself and the canaries. "You can shove off at any time, captain."
    "No one tells me when to shove off until I'm ready to shove off," the captain announced stubbornly. He leaned over Fred. "What's the matter, son?"
    "Peter and Maggie," bawled Fred. "They've gone over the rail."
    "My God," the captain blanched. "I've been afraid this would happen ever since you Gilbreths started coming to Nantucket."
    "Peter and Maggie aren't Gilbreths," Dad said irritatedly. "Why don't you just forget about the whole thing and