Cheaper by the Dozen by Gilbreth Frank B. & Gilbreth Carey Ernestine

Author:Gilbreth, Frank B. & Gilbreth Carey, Ernestine [Gilbreth, Frank B.; Gilbreth Carey, Ernestine]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2013-09-16T16:00:00+00:00

Dad had promised before we came to Nantucket that there would be no formal studying—no language records and no school books. He kept his promise, although we found he was always teaching us things informally, when our backs were turned.

For instance, there was the matter of the Morse code.

"I have a way to teach you the code without any studying," he announced one day at lunch.

We said we didn't want to learn the code, that we didn't want to learn anything until school started in the fall.

"There's no studying," said Dad, "and the ones who learn it first will get rewards. The ones who don't learn it are going to wish they had."

After lunch, he got a small paint brush and a can of black enamel, and locked himself in the lavatory, where he painted the alphabet in code on the wall.

For the next three days Dad was busy with his paint brush, writing code over the whitewash in every room in The Shoe. On the ceiling in the dormitory bedrooms, he wrote the alphabet together with key words, whose accents were a reminder of the code for the various letters. It went like this: A, dot-dash, a-BOUT; B, dash-dot-dot-dot, BOIS-ter-ous-ly; C, dash-dot-dash-dot, CARE-less CHILD-ren; D, dash-dot-dot, DAN-ger-ous, etc.

When you lay on your back, dozing, the words kept going through your head, and you'd find yourself saying, "DAN-ger-ous, dash-dot-dot, DAN-ger-ous."

He painted secret messages in code on the walls of the front porch and dining room.

"What do they say, Daddy?" we asked him.

"Many things," he replied mysteriously. "Many secret things and many things of great humor."

We went into the bedrooms and copied the code alphabet on pieces of paper. Then, referring to the paper, we started translating Dad's messages. He went right on painting, as if he were paying no attention to us, but he didn't miss a word.

"Lord, what awful puns," said Anne. "And this, I presume, is meant to fit into the category of 'things of great humor.' Listen to this one: 'Bee it ever so bumble there's no place like comb.' "

"And we're stung," Ern moaned. "We're not going to be satisfied until we translate them all. I see dash-dot-dash-dot, and I hear myself repeating CARE-less CHILD-ren. What's this one say?"

We figured it out: "When igorots is bliss, 'tis folly to be white." And another, by courtesy of Mr. Irvin S. Cobb, "Eat, drink and be merry for tomorrow you may diet." And still another, which Mother made Dad paint out; "Two maggots were fighting in dead Ernest."

"That one is Eskimo," said Mother. "I won't have it in my dining room, even in Morse code."

All right, boss," Dad grinned sheepishly. "I'll paint over it. It's already served its purpose, anyway."

Every day or so after that, Dad would leave a piece of paper, containing a Morse code message, on the dining room table. Translated, it might read something like this: "The first one who figures out this secret message should look in the right hand pocket of my linen knickers, hanging on a hook in my room.

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