Cheaper by the dozen - Chapter 11 Nantucket

FRANK BUNKER GILBRETH, Jr. CHEAPER BY THE DOZEN SCANNED BY THẨM TÂM VY, March 1, 2020

CHEAPER BY THE DOZEN By Frank Bunker Gilbreth, Jr.

CHAPTER 11

Nantucket

We spent our summers at Nantucket, Massachusetts, where Dad bought two lighthouses, which had been abandoned by the government, and a ramshackle cottage, which looked if it had been abandoned by Coxey's Army. Dad had the lighthouses moved so that they flanked the cottage. He and. Mother used one of them as an office and den. The other served as a bedroom for three of the children. He named the cottage The Shoe, in honor of Mother, who, he said, reminded him of the old woman who lived one.

The cottage and lighthouses were situated on a flat stretch of land between the fashionable Cliff and the Bathing Beach. Besides our place, there was only one other house in the vicinity. This belonged to an artist couple named Whitney. But after our first summer at Nantucket, the Whitneys had their house jacked up, placed on rollers, and moved a mile away to a vacant lot near the tip of Brant Point. After that, we had the strip of land all to ourselves. Customarily, en route from Montclair to Nantucket, we spent the night in a hotel in New London, Connecticut. Dad knew the hotel manager and all of the men at the desk, and they used to exchange loud and good-natured insults for the benefit of the crowds that followed us in from the street. "Oh, Lord, look what's coming," the manager called when we entered the door. And then to an assistant. "Alert the fire department and the house detective. It's the Gilbreths. And take that cigar cutter off the counter and lock it in the safe." "Do you still have that dangerous guillotine?" Dad grinned. "I know you'll be disappointed to hear that the finger grew in just as good as new. Show the man your finger, Ernestine." Ernestine held up the little finger of her right hand. On a previous visit, she had pushed it inquisitively into the cigar cutter, and had lost about an eighth of an inch of it. She had bled considerably on a rug, while Dad tried to fashion a tourniquet and roared inquiries about whether there was a doctor in the house. "Tell me," Dad remarked as he picked up a pen to register in the big book, "do my Irishmen come cheaper by the dozen ?" "Irishmen! If I were wearing a sheet, you'd call them Arabs. How many of them are there, anyway? Last year, when I went to make out your bill, you claimed there were only seven. I can count at least a dozen of them now." "It's quite possible there may have been some additions since then," Dad conceded. "Front, boy. Front, boy. Front, boy. Front, boy. You four boys show Mr. and Mrs. Gilbreth and their seven—or so— Irishmen to 503, 504, 505, 506, and 507. And mind you take good care of them, too."

When we first started going to Nantucket, which is off the tip of Cape Cod, automobiles weren't allowed on the island, and we'd leave the Pierce Arrow in a garage at New Bedford, Massachusetts. Later, when the automobile ban was lifted, we'd take the car with us on the Gay Head or the Sankaty, the steamers which plied between the mainland and the island. Dad had a frightening time backing the automobile up the gangplank. Mother insisted that we get out of the car and stand clear. Then she'd beg Dad to put on a life preserver. "I know you and it are going into the water one of these days," she warned.

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