As Lambs to His Fold

by Kurt F. Kammeyer

CHAPTER NINE

  God, our Father, Hear Us Pray....

  “Lee’triss,” I asked, as we strolled down Welcome Road, “what do you s’pose it means in the song where it says, ‘Grind up your lions, fresh cabbage take?’“

  There was something lacking in our church services — not love, or righteous teachings, or the Holy Spirit, but a lack of hymn books. There just weren’t enough to go around. The adults got them first, of course, and poor little children like Leatrice and me were left to try to figure out what the songs were saying. I knew, “Love At Home.” We sang it every night around the piano; but that good, old song, “Come, Come Ye Saints,” had me baffled.

  “Well,” said Leatrice, giving it her best, “maybe that’s what the pioneers ate while they were traveling — boiled lions an’ cabbage.”

  “But, there weren’t any lions where they were going,” I protested. “The lions were all in Africa.” Even I knew that.

  “Maybe mountain lions. Maybe they ground ‘em up an’ made mountain lion meat balls to eat with the cabbage.”

  It seemed as good an answer as any other.

  __________

  As Latter-day Saints, we believed in miracles. Why, there had been miracles right in our own family.

  Grandma’s father, on a mission for the Church in a place where Mormons were not appreciated, had been saved from death when the Voice of the Lord warned him to jump behind a tree — just as a bullet whizzed by him.

  Daddy’s grandfather was walking across the plains when he lost his way in a blinding snowstorm. He prayed for help, and in answer to his prayer an angelic Someone he couldn’t see went before him and swept the snow away to make a path so he could find his way back to civilization.

  We knew the Lord blessed the good and deserving with miracles. Our forefathers, we were certain, had been good and deserving. Well, weren’t we good and deserving, too?

  The bad luck that seemed to hang around us wasn’t our fault, was it? We didn’t tell Mooey Moocher to eat Great-Aunt Salina May Roundtree Gillis’s hat, did we? or tell her calf to do so much damage? We meant well.

  It was about time the Lord sent us a miracle.

  __________

  The late-June weather had turned hot. We tagged along after the ice wagon, which still delivered ice to people without refrigerators. We had begged some odd chips from the ice man, Mr. Poole. Now we went along sucking on our ice and walking with our feet in the gutter where a little stream of water ran.

  Leatrice and I had a problem. It involved money — or, rather, a lack of it. Our dime-a-week allowance was usually adequate for us to buy penny candy or to go to an occasional ten cent movie. Out of that dime, also, we were expected to pay tithing each month.

  We had been hit by the high cost of entertainment. Walt Disney’s Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs was coming to the Titanic Theater; and it was a movie we desperately wanted to see. We had gazed at the posters showing beautiful Snow White and the handsome prince; sighed over the darling, little dwarfs; shuddered at pictures of the wicked witch.

  But then, after all the publicity and all our anticipation, what was our shock to find that for this special event children’s prices would be hiked to twenty-five cents!

  It didn’t seem fair, and we said so often, to anybody who would listen. Our parents, however, turned deaf ears to our pleas for an advance on our allowances. They seemed to think that living within your means was good for you, or something.

  We wondered if the theater manager, Brother Yew, might hire us as ushers. Then we could watch the movie when we weren’t showing people to their seats.

  We approached the Titanic Theater. Ever since the disaster that had sunk the ocean liner of that name, people, perhaps fearing that a similar disaster might hit the theater, had been hounding Brother Yew to change the name. But he was adamant. “This theater has had the name of ‘Titanic’ ever since it was a vaudeville house. My father started it, and I’m not going to change the name.”

  Esther Malarkey was sitting in the ticket booth, chewing gum, filing her nails, and looking bored. She was wearing the latest hairdo — upswept curls like little sausages — and lipstick red enough to enrage a bull.

  She gave us a disdainful look and said, “What do you want?”

  We thought that was a pretty rude way for Esther to talk to us. For all she knew, we might be planning to buy a ticket. Well, phooey to Esther. We hadn’t come to talk to her.

  We said we wanted to talk to Brother Yew. She waved a languid hand toward a door marked “Manager.” We knocked.

  A voice said, “Come in.”

  We went in for our first job interview.

  We told Brother Yew we wanted to be his ushers. We said he wouldn’t have to pay us anything. All we wanted was a chance to see the movie, Snow White.

  Brother Yew passed his hand over the few hairs lying on his scalp and looked regretful. He said we were too young to be ushers. He said it wasn’t his fault the price of a ticket was so high. Someone else set the prices.

  We left, disappointed. It seemed to us extremely unbrotherly of him not to have found a way to slip us in. We examined our resources. Six cents between us. And it was only the middle of the week. By the time we saved twenty-two cents each from anticipated allowances, Snow White would have come and gone.

  Sunk in gloom, we wandered down to Woolworth’s, hoping we might forget our sorrow by squatting down and reading all the Big-Little Books.

  To us, Woolworth’s was a red-and-gold place of magic. Mr. Hobbs, the manager, was the magician who made all its wonders happen. We seldom bought anything. Why should we, when we could wander around endlessly touching and marveling?

  Mr. Hobbs did not consider our presence as any kind of blessing. In fact, whenever we came through the door, he would look agonized. It never occurred to us that his expression was on our account. We thought he just looked that way naturally. Now, as we entered, Mr. Hobbs gave a mournful sigh, rolled his eyes toward heaven, folded his arms resignedly, and braced for our usual aimless and profitless wanderings.

  All at once, we clapped eyes on a lavish Snow White display; books, dolls, wax figures of all the dwarfs, cardboard fairy castles, celluloid poison apples — and a magic wand.

  Leatrice, fascinated, picked up the wand. It was painted gold and was sprinkled with something glittery. Best of all, the red tip lighted up when you pressed a button. Leatrice couldn’t put it down.

  Mr. Hobbs hurried over, concern on his long, hound-dog face.

  “Don’t keep switching it on and off, girls,” he pleaded. “You’ll wear out the battery.”

  “How much is it?” Leatrice burst out.

  “Fifty cents.”

  I felt a rising tide of resentment toward the whole adult world that put everything nice out of the reach of kids.

  “How come it’s so much?”

  “Well, it was shipped all the way from Japan, and that’s a long way to come. I only got the one.”

  We ambled home mournfully. Welcome Road was just a country lane at that time. It was not paved, and the water wagon came by several times a week to sprinkle water on the dust. On this hot day the road was dry and powdery, and we kicked the dust as we walked, each kick symbolizing our feelings toward things we were helpless to do anything about.

  In front of our house was parked a battered, blue Ford. I ran up the walk and rushed into the house. Unky Doodle was there! I threw my arms around him, and he lifted me off the floor and gave me a big bear hug.

  As he set me down, he winked at Mamma and said, “You gotta watch that one, or she’ll go around hugging every man she sees.”

  His name was Parley Dooley; but ever since I could remember, he had been Unky Doodle to Irene and me. A long, lean, warmhearted man with his head poking through a gray fringe of hair, he had been a vaudeville performer for years. He had never played the big-time, but he had done all right until vaudeville went out with talking pictures.

  Unky Doodle had never married. When he came to to
wn, he always headed for our place. He was an old beau of Mamma’s, and when he came by, she would serve a good dinner. Daddy would ask him if he could stay overnight. He would shake his head n-o-o, kind of slowly, and look regretful.

  Then, when Mamma and Daddy urged him to stay, he would grin, and nod, and say, “Well — since you’re twisting my arm — O.K.”

  After breakfast the next morning, he would give Mamma a hug; and Mamma would blush and hug him quickly in return. And then Unky Doodle would drive away; and Daddy would kid Mamma about missing a good bet. Mamma would smile and shake her head. It was one kind of teasing she didn’t seem to mind. She and Daddy would end up hugging each other.

  It was a quality of making people happy when he was around that endeared Unky Doodle to us; that and the shows he put on for us.

  He made his living these days selling Fuller brushes. Mamma had all kinds of brushes he had given her. But he carried his old costumes and props in a battered suitcase and often put on benefit performances.

  If we were lucky, he would perform for us. Leatrice and her family would come over. We’d arrange all the dining room chairs in the parlor, and we would sit in anticipation of the program.

  Unky Doodle would come in from the hall wearing a checkered vest and a false moustache, and walking like Charlie Chaplin. He could do the soft shoe and the strut, with a cane under his arm and waving a straw hat. He knew about a million jokes, and we never got tired of them. He had at least a dozen variations on “Why does the chicken cross the road” and “Who was that lady I saw you with last night?”

  When Unky Doodle sang, Mamma would play the piano for him and look all pink-cheeked and girlish.

  __________

  Unky Doodle had come and gone. Leatrice and I were sitting on her steps teasing dumb, ol’ Titty-Poo. We had tied a string to his tail, and every time he whirled around to grab it, we would jerk the string, causing him to do a flip. Dorajean came out of the house, screaming at us to stop persecuting her cat. She scooped up Titty-Poo and marched back into the house, slamming the screen door to show us how mad she was. Actually, we had only been entertaining Titty-Poo. At least, we thought he was enjoying it.

  I was about to get up and find something more interesting to do; but then I saw that Leatrice was sitting with her chin in her hands, a sign that she was thinking furiously.

  “D’ya’ know how we can make piles an’ piles of money?”

  From the way she spoke, I knew she already had the answer.

  “We can put on a show like Unky Doodle’s an’ make people pay to see us.”

  I thought it over. I knew most of Unky Doodle’s jokes, especially the chicken ones. And I could do the strut — sort of.

  “But we don’t have any costumes,” I pointed out. “We’d have to have a hat — an’ a cane!”

  “A cane!” Leatrice leaped to her feet. “That magic wand in Woolworth’s! It’d be perfect! We could put on the show at night, an’ I’d carry the wand an’ keep pressing the button while I danced an’ sang.”

  I was beginning to feel left out. He was my Unky Doodle; and I was the one he had taught to do the strut. I had noticed before that Leatrice, while generous in most things, became very greedy in any matter that involved show business. I put it down to her having been named for an old-time movie queen, Leatrice Joy.

  “How’re we going to get the wand?” I objected.

  “Well,” Leatrice panted as we raced down the dusty road, “Maybe Mr. Hobbs will let us borrow it long enough to put on our show; an’ if we charge kids two cents an’ grownups a nickel, we’ll make enough money to see Snow White an’ maybe even get some candy, too.”

  Mr. Hobbs was firm. If we wanted the wand, we would have to pay for it.

  “Could we pay you in a month?” begged Leatrice.

  Mr. Hobbs shook his head.

  We went into a huddle. Maybe we could sell something to get the fifty cents. But what did we have that was worth that much? We couldn’t think of anything.

  I had been doing some thinking on my own. I was quicker than Leatrice at arithmetic, and I had figured out that if we had the fifty cents, we could go to the movie without needing to buy the wand, or put on a show, or anything. I tried to point this out to her; but Leatrice was enchanted with the magic wand. The way she reasoned, if we could just buy it, we could put on our show, and have movie money and the wand, besides.

  Back we went to Mr. Hobbs, who was sadly cleaning his nails behind the counter.

  “Is there anything we can do to earn it?” we asked hopefully.

  “Well,” Mr. Hobbs considered. “My helper is home sick today. If you girls’ll sweep out my store room and stack some things for, say, two hours, I’ll give you the wand.”

  We almost kissed him in gratitude.

  Never did sweeping seem so hard, or a room so big, or boxes so heavy, or shelves so high, or two hours so long as that afternoon. We dragged home exhausted and dirty, but with the wand clutched firmly in Leatrice’s hand.

  We would put on our performance in the evening after supper, when the wand would show to best effect. We made paper tickets and took them around to everyone we knew — two cents for kids and five cents for grownups.

  The adults we approached were not interested; but we got some promises from youngsters we knew; and we never doubted that our relatives would fork over handsomely. With Grandma and Grandpa, that would make six adults, times five would be thirty cents — plus whatever our juvenile friends brought in.

  We dragged out all the chairs from our two houses and set them on the lawn. With their permission, we borrowed our fathers’ straw hats. Without my quite realizing it, our show had turned into a sort of Laurel and Hardy routine, with Leatrice impersonating the smart Hardy, and me playing the stupid Laurel. I got hit over the head with a banana and shot in the face with a water gun. When I objected, Leatrice reminded me that she was named for a movie star and was two months older than I was. Therefore, she got to pick the part she wanted.

  She did allow me, generously, to tell the chicken joke. I was the one who had told it to her in the first place.

  Leatrice wanted me to practice falling down for more laughs; but that was more than I wanted to try.

  The show would start with both of us strutting on, waving our hats, with Leatrice holding the wand and blinking the light on the end of it. From there, she managed to include the wand in everything we did. She even wanted to substitute the wand for the banana when I got hit on the head, and have it go blink! blink! blink! every time she whacked me. I balked at that, and we went back to the ripe banana.

  We prayed for good weather — and got it, a hopeful beginning, and a sign that God really does answer prayers.

  On the night of the performance, we had just three adults — Mamma, Aunt Mabel, and Uncle Roland. Daddy had lifted my chin and said, “I’m sorry, honey. I’d love to see you perform, but I have a meeting.” Daddy was superintendent of the Sunday school.

  He gave me a nickel, anyway.

  Grandma and Grandpa had driven by and stopped to explain that they were on their way to the Manti Temple. But they left their nickels, too.

  Aunt Francie and Roger were in Salt Lake visiting his relatives.

  Our sisters said, “We wouldn’t watch you on a bet! And besides, we’ve got M.I.A. tonight!”

  They walked off without giving us a cent.

  But ten kids showed up; and that made, altogether, fifty cents that we collected. With the six cents we already had, it was enough to see Snow White and then some.

  We had rehearsed our show with Mamma. She would play the piano for us, looking out the window for her cues. We had really wanted to do a song from Unky Doodle’s routine called, “Where Did Robinson Crusoe Go With Friday On Saturday Night?”

  Mamma didn’t think it was suitable.

  “But, Unky Doodle sings it,” I wailed.

  “That’s different. You’re just children.”

  Now, from behind the snowball bush where we wai
ted, we gave a nod, and Mamma struck a chord. We pranced out, waving our fathers’ hats, the wand in Leatrice’s hand blinking on and off.

  We faced our audience and launched into “There are Smiles.” Then we started our comic patter.

  I asked, “Why did the chicken cross the road?”

  Leatrice replied, “I dunno. Why did the chicken cross the road?”

  “To give Fred a stare!”

  Whack! Whack! She hit me with the banana. Then she got carried away with her enthusiasm and began whacking me with the wand.

  “Cut it out!” I yelled.

  She stopped and resumed assaulting me with the banana.

  Our next song was “On The Sunny Side Of The Street” We paraded back and forth as we sang, the wand blinking as Leatrice pressed the button. Then, suddenly, and to our consternation, the wand stopped blinking. We stopped singing.

  “What’s the matter?” I asked in a loud whisper as Leatrice pressed the button again and again.

  “It’s not working!”

  Mamma was looking out the window, puzzled, waiting for us to go on.

  Leatrice began to beat the end of the wand on the ground. It gave a feeble flicker and then died for good.

  Our audience was beginning a restless shuffling of feet.

  Someone called, “Where’s the show?”

  Another voice that sounded like Norman Higpen declared, “Give us our money back!”

  The wand was really the star of our show; without it we stood helpless. Uncle Roland marched up and took the wand from Leatrice and unscrewed the end. “Battery’s burned out.”

  “Can’t you put in another one?” asked Leatrice in desperation.

  Uncle Roland shook his head. “Wouldn’t do any good. Wrong kind. This was made in Japan.”

  Meeow-Meeow Harris, our onetime friend, traitorously jumped to her feet and said, “I’m not staying for this rotten show.” She fished her two cents out of the dish and marched off. It didn’t take long for all our so-called friends to follow, taking their money with them. I stood in despair watching our audience and money disappear.

  Leatrice ran after the departing crowd, crying, “Hey! Wait! We’ve got a good show here if you’ll just stick around!”

  They ignored her and walked off. We hadn’t noticed a quiet figure slip into one of the back seats. Now he came forward. It was Unky Doodle.

  “Tough luck, kids,” he said. “But always remember this: When your audience starts to leave, drop on one knee and give ‘em ‘Mammy’. That’ll get ‘em back in their seats every time.”

  We knew he was joking to try to cheer us up. But it didn’t help. After our hard two hours work for Mr. Hobbs and then all the practicing we had done for the show, we were left with a worthless wand and still not enough money to see Snow White.

  “Well,” said Unky Doodle, seeing that his effort to make us feel good had failed, “I gotta go. Just wanted to catch your act.” He patted us on the back. “Cheer up. You’ll make it yet. You kids got class.”

  Unky Doodle was gone. We dragged the chairs back into our two houses. I sighed. Leatrice gave a mournful sniffle.

  But when we carried the money dish into the light, lo and behold, there winked a shiny fifty-cent piece. Enough to see Snow White. And with the thirty cents the grownups had left there, we could buy gazillians of Milk Duds! God had answered our prayers!