Cheaper by the Dozen

take his pictures indoors. He seemed to have a special affinity for flashlight powder, and the bigger the flash the more he enjoyed it.
    He'd pour great, gray mountains of the powder into the pan at the top of his T-shaped flash gun, and hold this as far over his head as possible with his left hand, while he burowed beneath a black cloth at the stem of the camera. In his right hand, he'd held the shutter release and a toy of some kind, which he'd shake and rattle to get our attention.
    Probably few men have walked away from larger flashlight explosions than those Dad set off as a matter of routine. The ceilings of some of the rooms in Montclair bore charred, black circles, in mute testimony to his intrepidity as an exploder. Some of the professional photographers, seeing him load a flash gun, would blanch, mutter, and hasten from the room.
    "I know what I'm doing," Dad would shout after them irritably. "Go ahead, then, if you don't want to learn anything. But when I'm through, just compare the finished product with the kind of work you do."
    The older children had been through it so often that, while somewhat shellshocked, they were no longer terrified. It would be stretching a point to say they had developed any real confidence in Dad's indoor photography. But at least they had adopted a fatalistic attitude that death, if it came, would be swift and painless. The younger children, unfortunately, had no such comforting philosophy to fall back on. Even the Latest Model was aware that all hell was liable to break loose at any time after Dad submerged under the black cloth. They'd behave pretty well right up to the time Dad was going to take the picture. Then they'd start bellowing.
    "Lillie, stop those children from crying," Dad would shout from under the black cloth. "Dan, open your eyes and take your fingers out of your ears! The idea! Scared of a little flash! And stop that fidgeting, all of you."
    He'd come up in disgust from under the cloth. It was hot under there, and the bending over had made the blood run to his head.
    "Now stop crying, all of you," he'd say furiously. "Do you hear me? Next time I go under there I want to see all of you smiling."
    He'd submerge again. "I said stop that crying. Now smile, or I'll come out and give you something to cry about. Smile so I can see the whites of your teeth. That's more like it." He'd slip a plate holder into the back of the camera. "Ready? Ready? Smile now. Hold it. Hold it. Hooold it." He'd wave the toy furiously and then there'd be an awful, blinding, roaring flash that shook the room and deposited a fine ash all over us and the floor. Dad would come up, sweaty but grinning. He'd look to see whether the ceiling was still there, and then put down the flash gun and go over and open the windows to let out a cloud of choking smoke that made your eyes water.

    "I think that was a good picture," he'd say. "And this new flash gun certainly works fine. Don't go away now. I want to take one more as soon as the smoke clears. I'm not sure I had quite enough light that time."
    For photographs taken in the sunlight, Dad had a delayed-action release that allowed him to dick the camera and then run and get into the picture himself before the shutter was released. While ouI'door pictures did away with the hazard of being blown through the ceiling, they did not eliminate the hazards connected with Dad's temper.
    The most heavily relied upon prop for ouI'door pictures was the family Pierce Arrow, parked with top down in the driveway,
    Once we were seated to Dad's satisfaction, he would focus, tell us to smile, click the delayed-action release, and race for the driver's seat. He'd arrive there panting, and the car would lurch as he jumped in. When conditions were ideal, there would be just enough time for Dad to settle himself and smile pleasantly, before the camera clicked off the exposure.
    Conditions were seldom ideal, for the delayed action release was unreliable. Sometimes it went off too soon, thus featuring y Dad's blurred but ample stern as he climbed into the car. Sometimes it didn't go off for a matter of minutes, during which we sat tensely, with frozen-faced smiles, while we tried to keep the younger children from squirming. Dad, with the camera side of his mouth twisted into a smile, would issue threats from the other side about what he was going to do to all of us if we so much as twitched a muscle or batted an eye-lash.
    Occasionally, when the gambling instinct got the