Cheaper by the Dozen

Dad whispered as we sat down. "You spend hours figuring out ways to gang up on me, don't you? I've got a good mind to leave you all home next week and come to the show by myself."
    The picture that made the biggest impression on Dad was atwelve-reel epic entitled Over the Hill to the Poor House, or something like that. It was about a wispy widow lady who worked her poor old fingers to the bone for her children, only to end her days in the alms house after they turned against her.
    For an hour and a half, while Dad manned the pumps with his handkerchief, the woman struggled to keep her family together. She washed huge vats of clothes. She ironed an endless procession of underwear. Time after time, single-handed and on her hands and knees, she emptied all the cuspidors and scrubbed down the lobby of Grand Central Station.
    Her children were ashamed of her and complained because they didn't have store-bought clothes. When the children were grown up, they fought over having her come to live with them. Finally, when she was too old to help even with the housework, they turned her out into the street. There was a snowstorm going on, too.
    The fade-out scene, the one that had Dad actually wringing out his handkerchief, showed the old woman, shivering in a worn and inadequate hug-me-tight, limping slowly up the hill to the poor house.
    Dad was still red-eyed and blowing his nose while we were drinking our sodas after the movie, and all of us felt depressed.
    "I want all of you to promise me one thing," he choked. "No matter what happens to me, I want you to take care of your mother."
    After we promised, Dad felt better. But the movie remained on his mind for months.
    "I can see myself twenty years from now," he'd grumble when we asked him for advances on our allowances. "I can see myself, old, penniless, unwanted, trudging up that hill. I wonder what kind of food they have at the poor house and whether they let you sleep late in the mornings?"

    Even more than the movies, Dad liked the shows that we staged once or twice a year in the parlor, for his and Mother's benefit. The skits, written originally by Anne and Ernestine, never varied much, so we could give them without rehearsal.
    The skits that Dad liked best were the imitations of him and Mother.
    Frank, with a couple of sofa pillows under his belt and a straw hat on the back of his head, played the part of Dad leading us through a factory for which he was a consultant. Ernestine, with stuffed bosom and flowered hat, played Mother. Anne took the part of a superintendent at the factory and the younger children played themselves.
    "Is everybody here?" Frank asked Ernestine. She took out a notebook and called the roll. "Is everybody dry? Do you all have your notebooks? All right, then. Follow me."
    We paraded around the room a couple of times in lockstep, like a chain gang, with Frank first, Ernestine next, and the children following by ages. Then we pretended to walk up a flight of stairs, to indicate that we had entered the factory. Anne, the superintendent, came forward and shook hands with Dad.
    "Christmas," she said. "Look what followed you in. Are those your children, or is it a picnic?"
    "They're my children," Ernestine said indignantly. "And it was no picnic."
    "How do you like my little Mongolians?" Frank leered. "Mongolians come cheaper by the dozen, you know. Do you think I should keep them all?"
    "I think you should keep them all home," Anne said. "Tell them to stop climbing over my machinery."
    "They won't get hurt," Frank assured her. "They're all trained engineers. I trained them myself."
    Anne shrieked. "Look at that little Mongolian squatting over my buzz saw." She covered her eyes. "I can't watch him. Don't let him squat any lower. Tell him to stop squatting."
    "The little rascal thinks it's a bicycle," Frank said. "Leave him alone. Children have to learn by doing."
    Someone off stage gave a dying scream.
    "I lose more children in factories," Ernestine complained. "Now the rest of you keep away from that buzz saw, you hear me?"
    "Someone make a note of that so we can tell how many places to set for supper," Frank said. He turned to Fred. "Freddy boy, I want you to take your fingers out of yourmouth, and then explain to the superintendent what's inefficient about this drill press here."
    "That thing a drill press?" Fred said with an exaggerated lisp. "Haw."
    "Precisely," said Frank. "Explain it to him, in simple language."
    "The position of the hand lever