Family Grandstand (Nancy Pearl's Book Crush Rediscoveries)

by Carol Ryrie Brink

  PARK 250

  Perhaps because she felt envious, Susan was a little bit critical. “You’ve got the cents sign wrong,” she said.

  “What you mean we’ve got the sense wrong?” asked Tim. “It says ‘Park,’ don’t it? That’s all it’s got to say.”

  On the other sign they had printed:

  PUPCORN 100

  “And you’ve spelled popcorn wrong, too,” Susan said. “You’ve got it pupcorn like dog food.”

  “Dog food!” said George. “Terence!” He gave a long and wistful sigh.

  When the Ridgeway children went home, just as a matter of scientific curiosity, just to see, George got a yardstick and measured the driveway and turnabout.

  “Four and a half,” George said. “Yes, four and a half cars we could park. That would be one dollar and twelve and a half cents.”

  “But who would ever let us park half a car?” wondered Susan.

  “Who would ever let us park any cars?” returned George. “If it’s only playlike, we might as well use all the space we’ve got.”

  “Like playing food,” said Dumpling.

  “We must think,” said Susan. “There must be some way.”

  “Father,” Susan said at dinner, “what if the Dean liked to see professors’ children parking cars? Did you ever think of that?”

  “The issue is closed,” said Professor Ridgeway firmly.

  “The Dean is a reasonable man,” said Mother unexpectedly, “at least a reasonably reasonable man, and he’s a pushover for football.”

  “I thought it was a touchdown instead of a pushover,” said Dumpling.

  “It is true that the Dean is interested in football,” Father said, “but I know that academic dignity would come first, especially as a quality in his professors and their children.”

  “My goodness!” Mother said. “I can remember Pinkie Ambrose—”

  “Dean Ambrose,” said Father.

  “—before he was a dean,” Mother said. “He was a substitute guard on the football team when I was in college, and he took it very seriously.”

  “That’s what I mean,” said Father. “The Dean is a serious man. He takes everything very seriously.”

  “I see,” said Dumpling.

  “Daddy, if George and I would just go to him,” suggested Susan, “and explain that the salary he gives you is not very big for five people, and that we could easily stretch it by parking cars on football days, and that we need the extra money because we have a very large dog to feed—”

  “No!” said Father. “Forget it, Susan. Turn the dial to another station.”

  “It was just an idea, Daddy,” said Susan meekly.

  “Oh, the affliction of living next block to a football stadium!” Father said. “And another thing: I am reminded of the fact that Halloween and the Homecoming Eve celebration fall on one and the same night this year. I want you to strip the backyard of anything that might be carried away. Garbage cans, clotheslines, wagons, anything you value had better be carried into the cellar or locked up in the carriage house on that night. The backyard must be absolutely empty. Have I made myself quite clear?”

  “Yes, Daddy,” said Susan and George, but Dumpling had a worrisome thought. What will the Gimmicks do? she wondered.

  However, the thought of Halloween and the Homecoming bonfire occurring on one and the same night was so delightful that it drove out any worries connected with the state of the Gimmick’s backyard or the sad fact that professors’ children were too refined to park cars.

  “Halloween and Homecoming!” George yelped eagerly. “Oh boy! Oh boy! Oh boy!”

  Of all the football games of the season the Homecoming game was the best. It was a time when students who had graduated from the University came home to visit. The houses where students lived were all decorated for the occasion, and prizes were given for the best and most original decorations. There was usually a parade with floats and the college band. On the night before the Homecoming football game there was a big bonfire on the practice field with speeches and cheering and much excitement.

  For several days before the bonfire students went around collecting fuel. They took old boxes and broken down fences and everything they could find that was no longer useful and that would make a good blaze. Sometimes, of course, they made mistakes and took things which were still useful, if they saw them lying around. Halloween is a great time for making mistakes about other people’s property, too, and that was what Father had in mind when he said that the backyard must be cleared of things that could be carried away.

  The Ridgeway children always enjoyed Homecoming very much. They saved old wooden boxes all during the year, and when the time came they hauled them up to the practice field in George’s wagon. It was exciting to see their own boxes perched high up on the pile of things that would blaze on Homecoming Eve. They always decorated the Tower in honor of Homecoming, too, but they had never won a prize. From year to year the children kept strips of red and yellow tissue paper and a red pennant with a yellow M on it to hang out of the windows of the Tower. Last year, when the Homecoming game was with Michigan, Susan had made a football suit for Dumpling’s rag doll Irene, and they had hung her out of the window by her neck with a sign that said HANG MICHIGAN! pinned to her. But Dumpling said that Irene had complained all year of a pain in her neck, and she would not let George and Susan have her for Homecoming again.

  “All right, honey,” Susan said. “We’ll think of something else this year.”

  “Halloween and Homecoming!” George said happily. “We’ll think of something good. This will be the best Homecoming yet!”

  “It will,” said Susan gravely, “if Tommy Tucker plays in the game. If he doesn’t—”

  They went and stood around Dorothy as she was gathering up the dishes. “Dorothy, do you think Tommy will play in the Homecoming game, Dorothy?”

  “That’s two weeks off yet, isn’t it?” Dorothy said. “He’s got to take his mid-terms before that, and anything can happen. Anything at all! Now am-scray, kids. I’m busy.”

  A Turtle Picnic

  Dumpling stood beside the big zinc washtub looking mournfully at the turtles. They were not sitting happily on their rocks nor swimming peacefully around in the water: they were trying to get out.

  “Oh, George,” said Dumpling sadly, “the turtles are trying to get out!”

  George was beginning to be a little tired of moving the turtles. They seemed more ungrateful and dissatisfied than any well-brought up turtles should be. But George liked to see everybody happy, including Dumpling and turtles, so he said, “Well, Dumpling, there is only one bigger place to put them that I can think of, and that is the bathtub.”

  “I’ll help you put them there, George,” Dumpling said.

  Mother’s typewriter was going clickety-clack in the Tower. Father and Dorothy were at the University, and Susan was taking her music lesson. So there was nobody to ask unless they bothered Mother, and George and Dumpling were too polite to do that.

  “We’ll just have to go ahead and move them without permission, I guess,” George said.

  It was quite a task to move all of the rocks and the sand and the moss and tufts of grass and the Japanese pagoda upstairs to the bathtub. George and Dumpling and Terence made at least five trips up and downstairs carrying the wet and dripping housekeeping arrangements of the turtles. Terence was not really much help, but he galloped along very enthusiastically. He kept wanting to carry a turtle or two in his mouth, but George said, “No, Terence. You mean well, but you are big and they are little. Somebody might get hurt.”

  “Not me!” Terence seemed to say, wagging his long, strong tail and looking fondly at the turtles.

  But at last the turtles were all moved and installed in the bathtub where they had lots of room. “Of course,” George said sensibly, “when anyone wants to take a bath, we’ll have to move them. But then we can put them back again. It will give them a change of scene. They’ll be happy now.”

>   “You think so, George?” asked Dumpling.

  “Sure,” George said, “of course!”

  Just then they heard Susan coming home from her music lesson, and they dashed down to greet her.

  “I got two gold stars on my lesson this week,” Susan said. “And I have a new piece, ‘The March of the Hobgoblins.’ That will be good for Halloween, George, won’t it?”

  George and Dumpling thought that it would, and they sat on the piano bench on either side of Susan to hear her practice the new piece. Terence sat beside the piano and wagged his tail, wham! wham! wham! It almost seemed as if he were keeping time with the hobgoblins’ marching. The piece was quite a noisy one, requiring the use of the loud pedal, and there was something about the sound of a loud piece played on the piano that also made Terence want to sing. Presently he added his voice to the music, “Who-o-o-o-o—”

  The children and Terence were so interested and were making so much noise that they did not hear Professor Ridgeway come home from the University, put his books and papers on his desk, and go upstairs. It had been a warm day for October, and Professor Ridgeway was hot and tired. He thought to himself, Now for a bath! A fresh cool tub, some clean clothes, and I’ll be a new man.

  He went into the bedroom and began to undress in a leisurely way. He was thinking over the very good lecture which he had just given on “Magna Charta and the Emancipation of the Humble Man,” and he was feeling very happy. A good lecture just given, a good bath in prospect! He began to hum a tune. Unfortunately Terence’s singing, “Who-o-o-o-o—” came up through the floor from the room below and drowned out Professor Ridgeway’s happy humming.

  It is too bad, Father said to himself, that Terence cannot be taught to howl in the right key. I should say, offhand, that the piece Susan is playing is in C sharp major, but Terence is certainly howling in B flat minor. A great pity—a great pity! But as I just said in my very good lecture, “The rights of the individual are sacred, et cetera, et cetera—”

  Professor Ridgeway, thinking eagerly of his bath in a nice clean tub, did not bother to hunt up his bathrobe and slippers, but wrapped a large bath towel around his middle and went into the bathroom. The light from the window was shining in his eyes, and he did not look into the tub, because he knew that Mother always kept it nice and clean, so he just stepped in and reached up to turn on the shower.

  Suddenly above the noise of “The March of the Hobgoblins” and Terence’s howling and whamming, the Ridgeway children heard a terrible shout.

  Susan stopped playing. “It’s Daddy!” she cried. “Something awful has happened to him!” The children ran upstairs from the living room. Mother ran downstairs from the Tower.

  “What is it? What is it?” they cried in alarm.

  Father was dancing about the bathroom, dressed only in his towel.

  “Who put these intolerably obnoxious crustaceans into my tub?” he roared. “Who put these—who put these—” Even big words failed him.

  “Daddy,” George said, “they aren’t crustaceans. Crustaceans are shellfish; turtles are chelonians.”

  “George,” cried Father, “did you put these—these abominable chelonians into my bath?”

  “They wanted to get out, Daddy,” Dumpling said.

  “Daddy,” George said, “we didn’t know you were going to take a bath. We planned to take them out in plenty of time.”

  Dumpling looked over the side of the tub. She said in despair, “They still want to get out!”

  “Oh, they do, do they?” cried Father. “Well, I want to get in. But I won’t get in until they’re out, and that’s final!”

  “Be calm, dear,” said Mother. “The turtles have become a problem. We have a problem on our hands.”

  “All right! All right!” Professor Ridgeway said. “So we have a problem on our hands. But I won’t have it in my bath. Have I made myself quite clear?”

  “Yes, Daddy,” everybody said.

  Although Susan had not helped to put the turtles and all their rocks, grass, sand, pagodas, and so forth, into the tub, she was kind enough to help George and Dumpling remove everything and put it all back in the washtub in the backyard.

  But quite a bit of sand got away from them and went down the drain pipe, and the next day the plumber had to come.

  By dinnertime Father had overcome his desire to have a bath. He was dressed in clean clothes and he was grave and serious.

  “Father, we are very sorry this had to happen,” George said.

  “I want you all to come here and sit down and let me tell you something,” Father said.

  George and Susan sat on the floor at Professor Ridgeway’s feet, and Dumpling climbed upon his lap.

  “Daddy,” Dumpling said, “the poor little turtles wanted to get out.”

  “That is the five-millionth time you have said that, Dumpling,” cried George in exasperation. “I’m getting tired of it.”

  “Let Father talk,” said Susan. “He’s got something to tell us.”

  “Thank you, Susan,” said Father. “Now it’s like this: Turtles are wanderers. They don’t care about a home. The fact is, as you can plainly see, they carry their homes with them on their backs. If something frightens them and they want protection, they just draw in heads and legs and there they are, safe at home. The same thing is true when they wish to sleep. They don’t need a goldfish bowl or a dishpan or a washtub or a—a”—here he seemed to be swallowing a mild sensation of seasickness—“or a bathtub.”

  “But,” said Susan, “if they weren’t enclosed in something, Daddy, they would all go away.”

  “We are reaching the crux of the matter,” said Professor Ridgeway.

  “A crux is what Grandpa had when he broke his leg,” said Dumpling.

  “That was a crutch,” corrected George.

  “Go on, Father,” said Susan.

  “My proposal is this,” continued Father: “that we behave to these turtles in the most humane way possible and let them go where they are obviously longing to go.”

  “But, Daddy,” cried George, “my birthday present!”

  “I know, George,” said Father. “But imagine yourself in prison somewhere. Would you wish to be detained against your will?”

  Dumpling’s face had been growing more and more radiant as the conversation progressed. “You mean,” she said, “let the turtles go where they want to go?”

  “That was my idea,” said Father.

  “But what would they do in winter?” asked Susan practically.

  Of course George knew the answer to that. “They bury themselves in the sand at the bottom of a lake,” he said, “and hibernate like bears.”

  “You see?” said Professor Ridgeway. “And we have no lake bigger than the bathtub, and sand is very bad for the plumbing.”

  “We could take them to South Lake Park,” said George. He thought of the turtles hibernating at the bottom of South Lake with a distinct feeling of relief. “That ought to be big enough for them!” he said.

  “Oh, goody!” cried Dumpling. “When can we go?”

  “I was just thinking,” Mother said, “that we ought to have one more picnic before this pleasant autumn weather is gone.”

  “A picnic!” everybody cried. Terence barked, and Dumpling shouted, “A turtle picnic!”

  “We could go tomorrow,” Mother said, “as soon as school is out and Daddy and Dorothy get home from the University.”

  “Me?” said Dorothy. “On a turtle picnic? Humph!”

  But still Dorothy seemed to have as nice a time as anybody on the picnic, and she ate as many wiener buns as George did.

  There were fireplaces beside South Lake where they could roast wieners and marshmallows and heat cocoa, and there was nothing much nicer than a picnic at South Lake Park. The only sad part of this picnic was saying good-bye to the turtles. Everyone was sad except the turtles and possibly Dorothy and Father, who kept remembering the bathtub. So finally the time for parting came.

  When the Ridgew
ays had all eaten well, and the turtles had been given a final treat of raw beef and all the ant eggs they were interested in, George took the five turtles to the edge of the lake and let them go. The rest of the Ridgeways stood and watched with mixed emotions. Five small turtle heads were raised as if they sniffed the air, and then, with speed, just as if they were racing in turtle tracks, the turtles began to waddle away toward the water. Hi Pal! was the last, and even after he was in the lake, swimming blissfully, he turned his head and looked at them as if to say, “Good-bye” and “Thanks for everything.” George was touched. Too late he wondered if it wouldn’t be possible to hire a boat and collect them all again and return them to the bathtub. But Father said, “No,” and Mother voiced the feelings of the others when she said, “They’ll be happier this way—and so will we.”

  On the way home in the car Dumpling took hold of Susan’s hand. George and Father were singing,

  “’Twas Friday night when we set sail,

  And our ship not far from the land—”

  Mother and Dorothy were talking about what they had better bake tomorrow.

  Susan squeezed Dumpling’s hand.

  “Susie,” Dumpling asked, “do you think that we were very, very good to let the turtles go?”

  “Yes, I think so, Dumpling,” Susan said.

  “Very, very good?” insisted Dumpling.

  “Yes, very, very good,” said Susan.

  When they reached home Tommy Tucker was there for his lesson, and Susan and George helped Mother unpack and wash the picnic things so that Dorothy could begin at once to teach him.

  Only Dumpling went away by herself. She went and stood in front of Dickie’s cage and looked at him. At the sight of her, the canary got off his swing and began to flutter and leap about, uttering cheeps and twitters of alarm. He never could or would get used to her. Dumpling stood a long time in silent contemplation, and the more she looked at Dickie, the more thoughtful she became.