Family Grandstand (Nancy Pearl's Book Crush Rediscoveries)

  “Popcorn! Peanuts! Soft drinks!” sang the popcorn men, and the whistles on their wagons made an exciting accompaniment.

  And all up and down the street the auto horns were honking.

  “Balloons! Balloons!” other people cried. “Get your balloons and release them at the kickoff!”

  “Park your car! Park your car! Right here to park your car!” cried the Gimmick boys, and many other people up and down the street. The only vacant space where cars were never parked was the space in the Ridgeways’ driveway.

  “Corsages! Corsages! Get your lady friend a chrysanthemum to pin on her coat!” other people shouted.

  “Hawkers and vendors,” Susan said wistfully.

  Honk! honk! honk! beep! beep! It was into the midst of this hurly-burly that Susan and Dumpling stepped when they got off of the streetcar. And, because they were going home and not to the stadium, they were the only people going in the wrong direction.

  Dumpling held tight to Susan’s hand. “It’s much nicer looking down from the Tower, isn’t it, Susie?”

  “Yes, it is,” said Susan. “Keep watching for Officer Cahill, Dumpling.”

  Their hats, which were fortunately attached with elastic, were knocked off the backs of their heads. They dodged and pushed and threaded their way through the oncoming crowd.

  “Talk about the thundering herd!” said Susan, gasping, as she clutched her box with one hand and Dumpling with the other.

  “And the maddening crowd,” said Dumpling, holding her little cardboard pail tight against the middle part of her. It was her middle part which stuck out the farthest. The pail had begun to leak a little bit, and even in her anxiety about getting home Susan could not help thinking, Yes, it must be pickles! I hope George won’t be too disappointed.

  “Susie, there’s a policeman across the street,” said Dumpling, “but it’s not Officer Cahill.” There was a strange policeman in the street. He was a fine, stalwart officer in a blue coat with a whistle in his mouth. But he was not using the whistle, because all of the cars and people wanted to go in the same direction toward the stadium. He had nothing to do but stand quietly by and watch them go, making sure that nobody got into trouble.

  Only Susan and Dumpling wanted to go in the opposite direction. They stood on the curb and tried to attract the officer’s attention, so that he could help them get across the street.

  “Officer! Officer!” called Susan, but the honking and the beeping, the whistling and the shouting, drowned out her voice completely. She tried again.

  “Help! Help! Police!”

  No result.

  “Help, police! Murder!” called Susan, who had read enough of Mother’s mystery novels to know how to attract a policeman’s attention. “Murder! Murder! Help! Help!”

  One or two people stopped to look at them, and a kindly old gentleman said, “Little girls, is anything the matter?”

  “Yes,” said Susan gratefully. “We are Professor Jonathan Ridgeway’s children, and we would like to get across the street.”

  The old gentleman shook his head. “Too bad,” he said. “I’m afraid it can’t be done until the crowd is in the stadium.”

  “But we are Professor Ridgeway’s children,” said Susan firmly. Nearly everyone knew and respected her father. Still the people who had stopped to see what was the matter shook their heads. “Too bad,” they said. Then Dumpling spoke.

  “Tommy Tucker is our friend,” said Dumpling in a clear voice, squeezing her leaky package tight against her fattest part. “Tommy Tucker mows our lawn in the summer, and we would like to get across the street.”

  “You know Tommy Tucker?” cried one of the people who stood around them. He was a young man in a red and yellow striped sweater. “Hey, she says she knows Tommy Tucker!”

  “Hey, Tommy Tucker’s friends want to get across the street. Officer! Officer! Here’s some traffic going the other way!” Everyone around them began to shout to the policeman. He blew his whistle and held up his hand. Brakes screeched and wheels stopped going around.

  “Tommy Tucker’s friends want to get across the street!”

  The policeman came himself to escort them. Everybody nearby who had heard about Tommy’s friends began to laugh or applaud. Somebody shouted, “Rah! Rah! Rah! Tommy Tucker! Tommy Tucker’s friends!”

  A wave of excited cheering rippled up and down the street. Susan and Dumpling walked sedately across the street in front of the honking cars and the impatient people. When they were safely on the other side Susan breathed a long sigh.

  “Whew!” she said.

  George was hanging on the front gate, watching for them. “My, you’re late!” he said. “Lunch is all ready, and Mother is worried about you.”

  “Well, we’re here,” said Susan.

  “I see you have some packages,” George said cordially.

  “Oh, the bottom’s coming out!” cried Dumpling and she began to run.

  “Can I help you?” cried George and Susan in one breath.

  “No,” said Dumpling, “it’s a surprise, but I’ve got to get a fruit jar quick!”

  She disappeared at top speed into the basement.

  Susan went into the kitchen where Mother and Dorothy were dishing up luncheon.

  “Oh, Mother, what a day!” she cried.

  “You poor lamb,” said Mother, “I never thought it would take you so long. Did you spend too much time downtown?”

  “No, it was the clinic,” Susan said. “They took hours, it seemed like. When we got to town we just hurried right along.”

  “Were there so many other children ahead of Dumpling?”

  “No, they took her right in, but they kept her and kept her. And, Mother, do you know what?”

  “No. What?”

  “I heard them talking afterward, and Dumpling is a child progidy.”

  “You mean prodigy?”

  “P-r-o-d-i-g-y,” spelled Dorothy.

  “That’s right.”

  “No,” said Mother. “Impossible!”

  “It’s perfectly true,” said Susan. “That isn’t bad, is it? It means she’s tremendously smart, doesn’t it?”

  “Yes, yes,” said Mother, “but I’m sure there’s some mistake, Susan.”

  “But she really is smart,” said Susan. “She knew enough to tell them we were friends of Tommy Tucker’s, and then everybody helped and they stopped traffic and let us go right across the street.”

  Mrs. Ridgeway took the milk and butter out of the refrigerator. “My goodness!” she said. “Where is Dumpling?”

  “She’s gone down to the cellar to put her present in a fruit jar.”

  “A fruit jar? What did she get?”

  “She wouldn’t tell me,” Susan said, “but the carton it was in leaked. I think it must be pickles.”

  “Ssh!” said Mother. “Here comes George.”

  “She wouldn’t let me in the laundry room,” George said. “She’s doing something with water.”

  “Oh, dear!” said Susan. “She must have dropped them and had to wash them off.”

  “What’s ‘them’?” asked George.

  “Now, George,” said Mother, “you know you don’t want to find out until tomorrow, dear. It would spoil all the surprise.”

  “Don’t I?” asked George. He was not sure.

  Susan was washing her hands for lunch, and words kept running through her mind. “Progidy—prodigy,” murmured Susan.

  “P-R-O-D-I-G-Y,” spelled Dorothy firmly, and Mother said, “Learn to spell it, Susan, and then forget about it. I’m sure we haven’t any such in this family.”

  “Mother, we’re going to miss the kickoff,” George said. “It’s almost time for the game to begin.”

  “Well, put your luncheon on trays,” said Mother, “and take it to the Tower.”

  “Oh, a picnic!” they cried, hurrying to get trays.

  “Mother, aren’t you coming with us?” Susan asked.

  “No, thank you, dear. I’m going to do my Saturday
baking.

  “Can Dorothy come?” asked Susan.

  “Yes, of course,” said Mother. “Wouldn’t you like to take your lunch to the Tower, too, Dorothy, and watch the football game?”

  “Football?” said Dorothy. “I’ve got a lot of studying to do after I’m through with the lunch dishes. Football is just for people who want to kill time.”

  “How can you kill time?” asked Dumpling.

  “With an ax, probably,” said George.

  “Tut-tut!” said Mother. “You’ve been at the manuscript of my novel again, George.”

  “But, Dorothy,” said Susan, “honestly you ought to come. It’s more fun!”

  “I didn’t come to college for fun,” Dorothy said. “I came for an education, and I’ve worked like a trooper to get this far. I can’t let down now and waste my Saturday afternoons.”

  The children sighed. There was really nothing you could do about a girl like Dorothy.

  Perilously balancing their trays, they climbed the many, many stairs to the Tower. Mother called after them, “Don’t disturb my papers, will you?” and then she added the other usual “don’t.” “Don’t lean out too far. I’d hate to have to collect the pieces with the broom and dust pan.”

  “We won’t, Mother,” they called back, and George added, “We haven’t leaned out too far—yet.”

  When Mother was working in the Tower they did not enter without knocking. But today the Tower belonged to them. Mother had put the cover on her typewriter and a beautiful green stone, which George had once given her, on top of her papers to keep them from flying out the open window.

  Father had a study downstairs where he wrote lectures and articles on such strange and difficult things as “The Cuneiform Signaries or Syllabaries of the Assyro-Babylonians.” The young Ridgeways did not try to read Father’s papers because his papers were far too learned, but sometimes they read Mother’s and made comments or suggestions.

  There were many things to do in the Tower besides watching football games. Susan was fond of stories, and the Tower set her imagination to work and made her dreamy. Sometimes she tried to get George to act fairy tales with her.

  “Rapunzel! Rapunzel! Let down your long hair,” or “Sister Anne! Sister Anne! Do you see anyone coming?”

  But George was not very good at fairy tales. He preferred flying kites or throwing out little twists of yellow paper to see the wind take them. He had discovered that the Tower was not quite straight by dropping a long string with a pebble tied to the end of it out of the window and observing that it did not hang even with the walls of the Tower. He had rigged up a windmill arrangement for telling how hard the wind was blowing. George had heard about Galileo and the Leaning Tower of Pisa, and he found it both scientific and amusing to experiment with falling objects and gravity when so many unsuspecting persons were conveniently passing below.

  Dumpling usually brought her dolls to the Tower and played house under Mother’s desk. “Now, Irene, deary,” she would say to her limp and shapeless favorite rag doll, “we are going to have a tea party this afternoon, deary. Call Mrs. Umpty-tumpty and ask her to bring her little children over, will you, deary? Ting-a-ling-a-ling! Is this Mrs. Umpty-tumpty? My mama says—”

  “The Tower is really no good to Dumpling,” George would say regretfully to Susan. “She could play house under Dad’s desk downstairs just as well.”

  “I know,” replied Susan, “but she’s happy.”

  Today when the Ridgeways reached the Tower with their luncheon trays, they found that the crowd in the street below had almost disappeared. The big stadium in the next block was crowded with people.

  Only Dean Ambrose was to be seen driving calmly down the street in his shiny blue Studebaker.

  “Why is Dean Ambrose always late?” George wondered. “He never rushes around to find a parking place the way other people do.”

  “It’s because he has a special parking place of his own,” Susan said. “You know that little piece of ground between the round corner of the stadium wall and the square corner of the street? The policeman saves it for him, and he always goes in there.”

  Over in the stadium they could see the red and yellow flags and pennants, and the red and yellow balloons which would be released to float away on the breeze at the moment the game started. They could hear the college band playing the college song, “Forever, Dear Midwest.”

  Mother had the old portable radio on her desk, and now George turned it on and tuned it to the football game. The music came in loud and sweet, and the excited voice of the commentator said, “The team is coming onto the field now. They’re wearing their yellow suits with the big red M’s on the jerseys. Here’s Tommy Tucker, friends. Tommy Tucker, number twenty-five. Listen to the cheer the crowd is giving him. They sure do love that guy, Tommy Tucker!”

  “Oh, boy! Oh, boy!” cried George, gulping his luncheon.

  An exciting afternoon was before them.

  Tower Seats

  The Ridgeway children enjoyed every part of the Saturday afternoon spectacle. They enjoyed the boom of the big gun that was always shot off at the first kick of the football. They enjoyed seeing the red and yellow balloons that people in the stadium had been holding suddenly float upward and drift away on the breeze, like hundreds of red and yellow flowers against the blue field of the October sky.

  Part of George’s researches in the Tower as to which way the wind was blowing were connected with balloons. He always hoped that someday the wind would be in exactly the right direction, and that all of the red and yellow balloons would come sailing right by the Ridgeways’ Tower, some of them directly into the windows. So far this had never happened, but George was always hopeful.

  Most of all, the Ridgeways enjoyed the magnificent playing of Tommy Tucker. They took turns watching him through the field glasses, and they cheered and applauded with the crowd. But today the opposing team was a very good one, and even with Tommy Tucker playing it looked for a while as if Midwest might not win. The afternoon was almost over, and the opposing team had a score of 13, while Midwest had only 7. Just at this exciting moment Dorothy came up to the Tower. Even in the midst of their anxiety and suspense the children were surprised to see her. She was carrying a tray with three mugs of milk and a plate of fresh cookies.

  “No, I didn’t come to see the game,” she said briskly. “Your mother’s making cookies, and she said you were always hungry again by this time in the afternoon. But how in the world you can be, I don’t know.”

  They laid down the field glasses with whoops of joy and helped themselves to milk and cookies. Dorothy set the empty tray on Mother’s desk and took up the field glasses. “I can’t imagine how you see a thing from here,” she said. “The stadium’s a block and a half away.”

  “Try it and see, Dorothy,” said Susan, her mouth full of cooky.

  Dorothy adjusted the glasses in a brisk and efficient way and turned them on the stadium. The voice of the commentator came over the radio, “It’s thirteen to seven, folks. The score is thirteen to seven in favor of Caronia. Midwest can’t seem to wake up today. Tucker doesn’t have his usual flash—”

  “Worried probably,” said Dorothy unfeelingly. “He ought to be!”

  “It’s Caronia’s ball, second and six, on the Midwest forty-two yard line,” said the announcer. “They come out of the huddle. T formation. The ball goes to Jorgenson. He’s fading back for a pass. He gets it away. It’s a long one intended for Smith on the left. The pass is—Great Gulliver! It’s intercepted! Number twenty-five came out of nowhere and picked it out of the air! Tommy Tucker’s got it! He got away from the Caronia guard! He’s up to the thirty-yard line and still going. The forty! Oh boy! Look at him dodge! He’s past midfield. He’s in the clear, folks! The twenty-five, the fifteen, the ten! He’s over! He’s over for a touchdown! And was it ever a beauty! That ties up the score and Midwest will try for the extra point.”

  The Ridgeway children were capering and cheering in a fine spray o
f flying milk. “Give us the glasses, Dorothy!” they begged. But Dorothy’s eyes were glued to the lenses. “Dorothy! Dorothy!” they cried, pulling at her skirt. “We all take turns looking, Dorothy.”

  Dorothy gave back the field glasses. She drew a deep breath.

  “Well,” she said, “he might as well go out in a blaze of glory, I s’pose. The poor, dumb kid!”

  “Dorothy!” Susan cried. “You’re just heartless! I don’t see how you can be like you are!”

  Dorothy collected the empty mugs. “Humph!” she said as she went downstairs with the tray, but somehow the word did not carry its usual scorn, and the sound of it was soon lost in the roar of applause announcing that the Midwest kick for the extra point was good, and that the Midwest team had won the game.

  As the crowds came out of the stadium after the game, George led his own cheering section in the Tower.

  “Yay! Yay! Yay! Tommy Tucker!”

  The passers-by would look up and smile, and sometimes they would join in and cheer, too.

  As soon as the parked cars had all been moved out of the Gimmicks’ backyard, the Gimmick boys started out to look for objects that had been dropped or lost.

  That was another thing that Father would not let the Ridgeway children do; but Tim and Tad usually came over to exhibit what they had found, so George and Susan did not have to die of curiosity.

  Susan and George could see the Gimmick boys now, as they moved slowly and carefully all around the outside of the stadium. They poked among the fallen leaves and the discarded line-up programs and empty popcorn boxes. They examined every inch of trampled grass. If one of them leaned over to pick up a treasure, George focused the field glasses on him and cried out to Susan, “He’s got something, Susie!”

  “What?”

  “I can’t see. Ten cents maybe, or a beautiful diamond ring most likely.”

  “Well, if it’s a diamond ring, they’ll have to turn it in to the Lost and Found Department. They can’t keep it,” said Susan. She was turning over the pages of Mother’s mystery novel to see how it was coming along.