Cheaper by the Dozen

intricacies of our automobile. It was a gray Pierce Arrow, equipped with two bulb horns and an electric Klaxon, which Dad would try to blow all at the same time when he wanted to pass anyone. The engine hood was long and square, and you had to raise it to prime the petcocks on cold mornings.
    Dad had seen the car in the factory and fallen in love with it The affection was entirely one-sided and unrequited. He named it Foolish Carriage because, he said, it was foolish for any man with as many children as he to think he could afford a horseless carriage.
    The contraption kicked him when he cranked, spat oil in his face when he looked into its bowels, squealed when he mashed the brakes, and rumbled ominously when he shifted gears. Sometimes Dad would spit, squeal, and rumble back. But he never won a single decision.
    Frankly, Dad didn't drive our car well at all. But he did drive it fast. He terrified all of us, but particularly Mother. She sat next to him on the front seat—with two of the babies on her lap—and alternated between clutching Dad's arm and dosing her eyes in supplication. Whenever we rounded a corner, she would try to make a shield out of her body to protect the babies from what she felt sure would be mutilation or death.
    "Not so fast, Frank, not so fast," she would whisper through clenched teeth. But Dad never seemed to hear.
    Foolish Carriage was a right-hand drive, so whoever sat to the left of Mother and the babies on the front seat had to be on the lookout to tell Dad when he could pass the car ahead.
    "You can make it," the lookout would shout.
    "Put out your hand," Dad would holler.
    Eleven hands—everybody contributing one except Mother and the babies—would emerge from both sides of the car; from the front seat; rear seat, and folding swivel chairs amidships. We had seen Dad nick fenders, slaughter chickens, square away with traffic policemen, and knock down full-grown trees, and we weren't taking any chances.
    The lookout on the front seat was Dad's own idea. The other safety measures, which we soon inaugurated as a matter of self-preservation, were our own.
    We would assign someone to keep a lookout for cars approaching on side streets to the left; someone to keep an identical lookout to the right; and someone to kneel on the rear seat and look through the isinglass window in the back.
    "Car lining from the left, Dad," one lookout would sing out.
    "Two coming from the right."
    "Motorcycle approaching from astern."
    "I see them, I see them," Dad would say irritably, although usually he didn't. "Don't you have any confidence at all in your father?"
    He was especially fond of the electric horn, an ear-splitting gadget which bellowed "kadookah" in an awe-inspiring, metallic baritone. How Dad could manage to blow this and the two bulb horns, step on the gas, steer the car, shout "road hog, road hog," and smoke a cigar—all at the same time— is in itself a tribute to his abilities as a motion study expert.
    A few days after he bought the car, he brought each of us children up to it, one at a time, raised the hood, and told us to look inside and see if we could find the birthe in the engine. While our backs were turned, he'd tiptoe back to the driver's seat—a jolly Santa Claus in mufti—and press down on the horn.
    "Kadookah, Kadookah." The horn blaring right in your ear was frightening and you'd jump away in hurt amazement Dad would laugh until the tears came to his eyes.
    "Did you see the birdie? Ho, ho, ho," he'd scream. "I'll bet you jumped six and nine-tenths indies. Ho, ho, ho."
    One day, while we were returning from a particularly trying picnic, the engine balked, coughed, spat, and stopped.
    Dad was sweaty and sleepy. We children had gotten on his nerves. He ordered us out of the car, which was overheated and steaming. He wrestled with the back seat to get the tools. It was stuck and he kicked it. He took off his coat, tolled up his sleeves, and raised the left-hand side of the hood.
    Dad seldom swore. Ah occasional "damn," perhaps, but he believed in setting a good example. Usually he studs to such phrases as "by jingo" and "holy Moses." He said them both now, only there was something frightening in the way he tolled them out.
    His head and shoulders disappeared into the inside of the hood. You could see his shirt, wet through, sticking to his back.
    Nobody noticed Bill. He had crawled into the front seat. And then—"Kadookah. Kadookah."
    Dad jumped so high he actually toppled