Cheaper by the Dozen

back there. Do you all want to walk home?"
    By this time, most of us did, but no one dared say so. Things would quiet down for a while. Even Anne would relax and forget her responsibilities as the oldest. But finally there'd be trouble again, and we'd fed pinches and kicks down underneath the robe.
    "Cut it out, Ernestine, you sneak," Anne would hiss.
    "You take up all the room," Ernestine would reply. "Why don't you move over. I wish you'd stayed home."
    "You don't wish it half as much as I," Anne would say, with all her heart. It was on such occasions that Anne wished she were an only child.
    We made quite a sight tolling along in the car, with the top down. As we passed through cities and villages, we caused a stir equaled only by a circus parade.
    This was the part Dad liked best of all. He'd slow down to five miles an hour and he'd blow the horns at imaginary obstacles and cars two blocks away. The horns were Dad's calliope.
    "I seen eleven of them, not counting the man and the woman," someone would shout from the sidewalk.
    "You missed the second baby up front here, Mister," Dad would call over his shoulder.
    Mother would make believe she hadn't heard anything, and look straight ahead.
    Pedestrians would come scrambling from side streets and children would ask their parents to lift them onto their shoulders.
    "How do you grow them carrot-tops, Brother?"
    "These?" Dad would bellow. "These aren't so much, Friend. You ought to see the ones I left at home."
    Whenever the crowds gathered at some intersection where we were stopped by traffic, the inevitable question came sooner or later.
    "How do you feed all those kids, Mister?"
    Dad would ponder for a minute. Then, rearing back so those on the outskirts could hear, he'd say as if he had just thought it up:
    "Well, they come cheaper by the dozen, you know."
    This was designed to bring down the house, and usually it did. Dad had a good sense of theater, and he'd try to time this apparent ad lib so that it would coincide with the change in traffic. While the peasantry was chuckling, the Pierce Arrow would buck away in clouds of gray smoke, while the professor up front rendered a few bars of Honk Honk Kadookah. Leave 'em in stitches, that was us.
    Dad would use that same "cheaper by the dozen" line whenever we stopped at a toll gate, or went to a movie, or bought tickets for a train or boat.
    "Do my Irishmen come cheaper by the dozen?" he'd ask the man at the toll bridge. Dad could take one look at a man and know his nationality.

    "Irishmen is it? And I might have known it. Lord love you, and it takes the Irish to raise a crew of red-headed Irishmen like that. The Lord Jesus didn't mean for any family like that to pay toll on my road. Drive through on the house."
    "If he knew you were a Scot he'd take a shillalah and wrap it around your tight-fisted head," Mother giggled as we drove on.
    "He probably would," Dad agreed. "Bejabers."
    And one day at the circus.
    "Do my Dutchmen come cheaper by the dozen?"
    "Dutchmen?Ach. And what a fine lot of healthy Dutchmen."
    "Have you heard the story about the man with the big family who took his children to the circus?" asked Dad. "'My kids want to see your elephants,' said the man. That's nothing,' replied the ticket-taker, 'my elephants want to see your kids.' "
    "I heard it before," said the circus man. "Often. Just go in that gate over there where there ain't no turnstile."
    Mother only drew the line once at Dad's scenes in Foolish Carriage. That was in Hartford, Connecticut, right in the center of town. We had just stopped at a traffic sign, and the usual crowd was beginning to collect. We heard the words plainly from a plump lady near the curb.
    "Just look at those poor, adorable little children," she said. "Don't they look sweet in their uniforms?"
    Dad was all set to go into a new act—the benevolent superintendent taking the little orphan tykes out for a drive.
    "Why bless my soul and body," he began loudly, in a jovial voice. "Why bless my buttons. Why bless..."
    But for once Mother exploded.
    "That," she said, "is the last straw. Positively and emphatically the ultimate straw."
    This was something new, and Dad was scared. "What's the matter, Lillie?" he asked quickly.
    "Not the penultimate, nor yet the ante-penultimate," said Mother. "But the ultimate."
    "What's the matter, Lillie? Speak to me, girl."
    "The camel's back is broken," Mother said. "Someone has just mistaken us for an orphanage."
    "Oh, that," said Dad.