Belles on Their Toes

by Frank B. Gilbreth

  It seemed like a lot of money, and both Bill and Frank thought it would be cheaper to make the trip by car. They felt sure that, once they had arrived in Washington and had explained to Mother about the savings, she would approve too.

  The two oldest boys and Martha were the possessors of a Model T touring car. The vehicle was an antique when they had acquired it the year before for $20, and it had aged perceptibly under its new ownership.

  The car had neither top nor fenders. The body was painted airplane silver. A six-inch red stripe, none too expertly applied, ran waterline fashion around the hull at a point equidistant from the running boards at the top of the doors.

  Starting the motor was a two-man proposition, with one person turning the crank and jiggling a wire loop choke which protruded from the front of the radiator, and the other sitting in the driver’s seat to retard the spark as soon as the engine coughed. But the three owners had done a good deal of work on the motor; it was reliable and purred like a kitten, only louder.

  There was no doubt in anyone’s mind that the car could make the trip to the Capital. As a matter of insurance, though, a pump, tire patches, spare spark coils, and miscellaneous tools were stowed under the seats. And the boys decided to start the journey before dawn.

  The day before departure, Frank held a dress rehearsal to make sure that the delegation had the proper clothes. All of the boys, with the exception of Frank, owned blue serge suits. Frank had handed down his blue serge to Bill that autumn, and had replaced it with a collegiate number purchased at the Campus Toggery Shop, in Ann Arbor.

  The suit had padded shoulders, wasp waist, 23-inch cuffs on the trousers, and a double-breasted vest with lapels. The color was something between tan and yellow, without many of the best features of either. The material was as heavy and hairy as an army blanket. It had cost $28, and Frank was immensely pleased with it.

  From the consistency of the cloth, it was apparent that the suit would wear forever. It was this aspect that appealed least to the other boys, when Frank appeared at dress rehearsal.

  “Good Lord, what’s that,” Bill whinnied when Frank walked into the parlor. “I hope you didn’t throw away the sales slip. Take it off quick, before you muss it up.”

  “What’s the matter with it?” Frank asked with hurt feelings.

  “If it’s going to be a party like Halloween,” said Bob, who was nine, “can I wear my cowboy suit?”

  Bill felt the material. “It’s your own business what you buy when you get something thin that you can wear out yourself,” he complained. “But when you pick out a heavy suit like that, you’re supposed to have me with you.”

  “For something as heavy as that, he’s supposed to take all of us with him,” Fred added. “That one will go all the way down the line to Bob.”

  “What’s the matter with you kids’ taste?” Frank marveled. “How far behind the times is this town, anyway? This color is the latest thing at Michigan.”

  “It looks,” said Bob, “like what happens to the mustard jar when you forget to screw the top back on.”

  “It does not,” Frank told him, “and you keep out of this. It just happens I’ve had a lot of compliments on it at Michigan.”

  “You mean you’ve worn it before?” asked Bill, deflated. “Then you can’t take it back?”

  “I wore it all fall.”

  “How come I didn’t see it in your closet after you unpacked?”

  “Because I know you,” Frank said. “That’s why. Every time I get a new suit, the first thing I know you’re borrowing it and spilling things on it.”

  “If he spilled mustard,” Bob insisted, “you wouldn’t have to worry, once it dried.”

  “It sheds, too,” Bill said accusingly, picking nap off the sleeve of his blue serge, where it had brushed against Frank. “You’re going to leave yellow hairs all over Mr. Hoover.”

  “I don’t intend to be brushing up against anybody,” Frank replied. “It sheds a little, I’ll admit. That’s because it’s still comparatively new.”

  “Don’t think I’m going to walk through the reception line with you,” Bill warned. “I’m not going to watch Cabinet officers and the Diplomatic Corps tiptoeing through great piles of nap that you’ve deposited all the way from the South Portico to the Blue Room.”

  “Do you think all the nap will be gone by the time it’s handed down to me?” Bob asked.

  “I doubt it,” Bill replied. “I promise you one thing. I’ll never help get rid of any of it.”

  THERE WERE TWO FLAT TIRES between Montclair and Philadelphia, but the boys patched them and the car ran well. Frank tried to make up some of the time they had lost in fixing the tires. Shortly before they reached Baltimore, a motorcycle patrolman came up behind them and waved them down for speeding.

  “I congratulate you for bringing that heap all the way from New Jersey,” he said, copying the license number into his ticket book. “If I didn’t see it with my own eyes, I’d never believe you could get sixty miles an hour out of it.”

  “We can do seventy on the hills,” Bob volunteered proudly. “Frank and Bill did something to make the engine run faster.”

  “Shut up,” Bill whispered, leaning forward and beaning Bob with his knuckles. “Do you want to get us all sent up the river?”

  “Sent up the river?” Jack sneered. “They can’t do that to us. We don’t take nothing from nobody, understand? Nothing from nobody!”

  Bill beaned him, too.

  “Seventy, eh?” said the policeman, making a note of it. He looked at the patched, treadless tires and shook his head. “What are you trying to do, Buddy, kill all those kids?”

  At that point, Frank thought killing them was a pretty sensible suggestion. But he shook his head, gulped, and wondered how Mother would explain to the Hoovers that her sons couldn’t attend the reception, on account of being sent up the river.

  “Where do you think you’re going, anyway?” the policeman asked, thrusting his face up near Frank’s.

  “We’re going to Washington, Officer.”

  “And what are you going to Washington for?”

  Frank thought that one over, and concluded that if he knew what was good for him he’d better come up with a more convincing explanation than the truth.

  “Why nothing in particular,” he said. “Just to sight-see, I guess.”

  “Go ahead and tell him,” Jack said contemptuously. “Don’t let him buffalo you like that.”

  Bill beaned him again.

  “Yeah, tell me,” the policeman ordered.

  “All right,” said Frank. “We’re going to see President Hoover.”

  “I love wise guys, particularly in suits like that one,” the patrolman leered. “I suppose the President invited you, personal, to drop in and have tea with him at the White House? Sure he did.”

  Frank nodded sheepishly.

  “Nothing from nobody,” Jack repeated from the back seat, putting his hands over his head to try to stave off Bill’s knuckles.

  “That’s right, honest,” Frank said desperately. “We’ve had some flat tires, and we’re late.”

  “You,” said the policeman, pointing to Jack. “Is that right? Are you going to see the President?”

  “Not just the President,” Jack told him. “Mrs. Hoover and some judges from the Supreme Court, too. Why don’t you shove off, Buddy?”

  The patrolman surveyed the car, the airplane paint job, the red waterline. He looked at us individually—Frank, Bill, and Fred, greasy from changing tires. Dan pale and about to be car sick. Jack and Bob, wrinkled and dirty.

  “I guess you’re telling the truth,” he said. “The President doesn’t get many laughs, and I ain’t going to be responsible for his missing this one. Go ahead. But not more than forty-five miles an hour.”

  The weather had been fair when the boys left Montclair, but it was cloudy in Baltimore, and between Baltimore and Washington it started to rain. The boys were wet through by the time Frank pulled up in fro
nt of Mother’s hotel.

  Even the Joad family never received a more wrathful reception from a doorman. He wouldn’t let the boys alight until Frank promised to park the car down the street, a block away from the hotel.

  Mother was sitting in an arm chair, reading and knitting, when the boys entered her room. She had already changed clothes, and was ready for the reception.

  “Oh, my,” she said.

  “It’s my fault, Mother,” Frank told her. “I thought it would be cheaper and easier to drive.”

  “I don’t mean that,” Mother said. “Come here, Dan. You’re pale as a sheet. You don’t feel at all well, do you, dear?”

  Dan explained that he had been car sick, but that he felt all right now that he was on firm land again.

  “You had me worried for a while,” she smiled, kissing the boys. “You mean you drove all the way from Montclair in that gray thing. Won’t Mr. Lindbergh be jealous!”

  Frank said he was sorry that, because they were wet, they wouldn’t be able to go to the reception. But Mother said they had to go, and that she thought she could dry them out on time.

  “Everyone will look fine once they’re dry,” she added, “except … What’s the matter with your suit, Frank? Did the rain fade it?”

  “That’s the way it looks all the time,” Bill said resentfully.

  “There’s nothing the matter with it,” Frank pouted. “It’s the latest thing.”

  Mother said she was sure it was. She stripped her bed and gave each of the boys a sheet or blanket. They went into the bathroom, took off their clothes, and then sat around in bedware while they waited their turns to get baths.

  Mother called the desk and made arrangements for an iron and ironing board to be sent up to her room, and for the boys’ shoes to be taken down to the boiler room to dry.

  “Oh, yes,” she added as an apparent afterthought, “and send up a newspaper too, if you will.”

  After the board had been set up, Mother started pressing the boys’ underwear, socks, shirts and suits until they were dry. She saved Frank’s suit until the last. When she had finished with his coat and vest, and was in the middle of his pants, she stopped long enough to phone the desk again and ask that the shoes be returned.

  A musty odor of burned dye and scorched wool permeated the room.

  “Hey,” shouted Frank. “My pants!”

  Mother put down the phone quickly and ran to the board.

  “Now look what I’ve done,” she reproached herself. “I’ve burned a hole right through your beautiful trousers.”

  “Hot dog,” Fred gloated.

  “Ruined,” Frank choked. “I’ll never be able to match them.”

  “There’s no argument there,” Bill said.

  “I don’t know how I could be so stupid,” Mother complained, looking at her watch. “We still have fifteen minutes, though. We’ll pick up a new suit for you. I’ll take along a needle and thread, and hem the cuffs so they’ll do for the time being.”

  “Do you think we can find one with that heavy kind of material?” Frank asked.

  “I hope we can. Say, it’s lucky I had them send up a newspaper! Look through it and see if anyone’s having a sale.”

  “Wait a minute,” Frank said accusingly. “That business of ordering a newspaper. Are you sure that was just luck? You didn’t burn those pants on purpose, did you?”

  “For goodness’ sake,” Mother laughed. “Do you think I like to buy you boys new clothes? Do you think I’m naturally destructive?”

  The shoes arrived from the boiler room. With Frank selfconsciously holding down his coat, to hide a wedge-shaped hole in his trousers, Mother and the boys walked to a department store that had advertised a clothing sale. Frank found a suit of heavy material, not unlike his old one, except that it was conservatively cut and dark blue instead of yellowtan. Even Bill admitted it was handsome. The coat and vest fitted well enough, and Mother basted in the cuffs.

  They stopped in a barber shop for shoe shines, and then hailed a cab.

  “To the White House, please,” Mother said. She looked as cool and unruffled as she had when the boys first arrived at her hotel.

  The boys were on their especial good behavior as they waited to go through the receiving line. But when Bill saw an immensely dignified, bearded figure, he stage-whispered excitedly to Mother:

  “Say, isn’t that Charles Evans Hughes?”

  The Chief Justice, who had heard his name, turned toward Bill and bowed formally from the waist.

  “Good afternoon, Sir,” he said, “and Madam.”

  If that was the way you behaved at the White House, the boys weren’t going to be outdone. All six of them bowed from the waist, and said good afternoon, Sir.

  The President and Mrs. Hoover were cordial and hospitable.

  “They look just as if they’d stepped out of a bandbox,” said Mrs. Hoover. “I never thought young boys could look that pressed.” She turned to Frank. “You’re the oldest, aren’t you?”

  Frank said he was, Madam.

  “Then I guess you were the one who looked after everybody on the trip down. I guess you’re the one I really ought to compliment about stepping out of a bandbox.”

  Frank said thank you, Madam. The boys bowed from the waist, and moved along the receiving line.

  MOTHER HAD PLANNED to return home by train that afternoon. Although she had always before avoided the Model T, she allowed herself to be talked into making the return trip in the car.

  The skies had cleared and the weather was mild. Frank held the Ford at a dignified forty-five, and there was no tire trouble. They stopped at Baltimore for supper, and when they emerged from the restaurant the stars were out and it was still and peaceful.

  “Why this isn’t bad at all,” Mother sighed contentedly. “I ought to let you boys drive me on all my trips.”

  They started to sing some of the songs Mother had taught them when they were younger. “Old Black Joe,” “Clementine,” “Backward, Turn Backward Oh Time in Thy Flight.”

  Half an hour out of Baltimore, a siren sounded and a motorcycle policeman pulled up along side.

  “How was tea at the White House?” the officer hollered over the roar of two exhausts.

  “Fine,” Frank shouted back.

  “How’s the kid who was sick?”

  “I’m fine,” Dan assured him.

  “And the one who don’t take nothing from nobody?”

  “Okay,” Jack grinned.

  The policeman gunned his motorcycle up the highway.

  “Good gracious,” Mother marveled. “I don’t know how you boys do it.”

  They asked her what she meant.

  “The Chief Justice of the Supreme Court bows to you, the President and his wife hold up a receiving line to chat with you, and you make friends with policemen all the way from Montclair to Washington. I’m certainly lucky to have such fine sons.”

  The boys had the good grace to think there was a slight possibility Mother might be prejudiced.

  19. Mother Was There First

  THOSE OF US WHO were away at college usually saw Mother three or four times a semester, as her lectures and business engagements took her across the country.

  Sometimes she’d be delivering a speech at the college itself, and would arrange her schedule so she’d have a free day to visit. Sometimes her speech would be at a city near one of the colleges, and it was possible to cut classes, hear her lecture, and then visit with her at her hotel.

  Mother knew most of the presidents and many of the professors at the various colleges we attended. Usually, too, she knew the location of all the campus buildings, their nicknames, and the geography of the town.

  It was somewhat disillusioning for a wide-eyed freshman, importantly taking his female parent on a sight-seeing tour of an institution which he was sure would overwhelm her with its unique traditions and maze of modern complexities, to discover that she knew more about his university than he did.

  The home
economics building? The “Home Ec” building certainly was one of the most modern in the country, Mother would agree. And it would develop that she had made a speech in the building last year, and had been on the program the year before when they dedicated it.

  The stadium? “Old Horseshoe” was mighty impressive, she would nod. Under cross-questioning, she might point out that she had received an honorary degree in ceremonies in the stadium a few years before.

  We chose our own colleges, but in most cases Mother had preceded us in the commencement parade.

  She had degrees from a dozen or more institutions, including Michigan, where Anne, Frank and Jane were graduated; Smith, Ernestine and Lillian; Rutgers, the male half of Martha’s college, New Jersey State College for Women; Purdue, Bill; and Brown, Fred.

  To finish calling the roll, Dan received his diploma from the University of Pennsylvania, Jack from Princeton, and Bob from the University of North Carolina.

  Mother never sent tuition checks directly to our colleges. At the start of each year she’d turn over to us, in one lump sum, enough money for our tuition and all other expenses. When you took out your own checkbook and paid the college registrar your tuition, you realized you were supposed to get something for your money. All of us did all right in college.

  Mother spoke most often at Purdue, in West Lafayette, Indiana, where Bill was enrolled. Purdue was opening a motion study laboratory, and Mother was going to become a professor of management there. She intended to take the new job in addition to all her old ones, and to commute from Montclair to the campus once a month, for a week or so of teaching.

  On one occasion when Mother was at Purdue, she was asked unexpectedly to speak before a large lecture class in which Bill was enrolled. Bill didn’t know about the invitation. It was an eight o’clock class, and he picked that particular morning to oversleep.

  Bill’s professor told the students they were fortunate in having a distinguished engineer in their midst. She was Dr. Lillian Gilbreth, and it was gratifying to him that one of Dr. Gilbreth’s sons was a member of that very class, and doubtless intended some day to follow in his mother’s footsteps.