In God We Trust (33 page)

“Follow the bouncing ball and sing along with the world-famous Orpheum Wurlitzer.”

A beautiful moonlit scene appeared, sailboat in the middle foreground, two silhouetted couples mooning against the sky, and above.

“Red Sails in the Sunset.…”

The white ball bounced from word to word as the audience, conditioned by countless hours of Kate Smith, Harry Horlich and the A & P Gypsies, Jessica Dragonette and the Silver Masked Tenor, belted it out. A Depression audience did not mess around. When that bouncing ball bounced, they belted!

Beside me in the darkness my mother giggled self-consciously but sang on, curlers rattling, eyes shining as the mighty Orpheum organ bellowed. The empty coal bin and next month’s rent forgotten as slide after slide marched across Mr. Doppler’s Sing-Along screen. The only time I ever heard my Old Man sing was when the mighty Wurlitzer, like some demonic pipe of Pan, drove him on.

“Betty Coed has lips of red for Harvard,

“Betty Coed has eyes of Yale’s deep blue,

“Betty Coed.…”
^*

And on screen a cheerleader in white sweater and white ice-cream pants, with big block Y, held his megaphone high as a golden-haired coed, Betty herself, tilted her perky profile toward an orange sky, as the ball bounced.

So went Thursday. And after Thursday, inevitably, Friday, and it was Friday that finally proved to be Mr. Doppler’s Armageddon.

For years theater owners everywhere had struggled bravely
to keep the seats filled. Not that people didn’t want to go to the movies. They did, even more maniacally than now. But cold cash was hard to come by, especially cash to be used for Fred MacMurray Viewing and Mickey Mouse Ogling. A moviegoer had to have a real excuse for buying a ticket; an investment in Reality, a utilitarian expense. And one historic night Mr. Doppler came up with his master stroke.

A spectacular display in a gleaming glass case appeared without warning in the Neo-Mosque lobby of the beloved Orpheum. For extra dramatic effect the lobby had been especially darkened, with strategically placed baby pink, blue, and amber spots focused on the cause of the eventual downfall of Mr. Doppler and the Orpheum, too. Above the case in fuchsia-tinseled letters the simple, stark, meaningful word blazed forth:

FREE!!

The motley throng who gathered in stunned silence on that fateful night stood slack-jawed and bedazzled by the incredible riches displayed before them, and it was all to be theirs, free, just for coming to the movies!

Artistic sights are rare in hamlets of the Midwest, slumbering quietly in the shade of the steel mills, caught in the tangled spider web of endless railroad tracks and groaning under the weight of vast acres of junkyards, but when they do appear the natives respond with voracity. Starving travelers in a wasteland of an artistic desert, they devour each scrap of beauty with a relish that warms the cockles. Tonight was no exception. The Three Stooges forgotten, they stood clogging up the lobby in dark silent clumps of humanity, eyes shining, unbelieving.

Row on row of radiant, magnificent works of pure beauty lay displayed before them, cushioned on dark, blood-red velvet and setting each observer’s soul on fire with instant desire. They stood, silent, almost afraid to believe the evidence before their very eyes. A simple, tasteful placard spelled it out unmistakably so that even the dimmest wit could comprehend:

FREE! FREE!

The amber spot played sinuously and enticingly over cascading ledge upon ledge of pearlescent, sparkling, grape and floral encrusted tureens and platters, saucers and gravy boats, celery holders and soup bowls. It was a display potent enough to bring moisture to the eye of a Middle Eastern caliph.

It would probably have been difficult to knock together a complete set of
any
kind of dinnerware from among the entire audience of that night. My mother stood gazing at the artistic opulence, her breath coming in short pants, her eyes glowing like coals. Our cupboards were filled with a collection of jelly jars, peanut butter containers, plastic cottage cheese cups, and the assorted eating effluvia of the period. Her prized possession, which she brought out only for State occasions, was a matched Shirley Temple sugar and creamer of dark blue glass. Our silverware consisted of Tom Mix spoons, Clara Bow pickle forks, and a Betty Crocker bread knife with rubber handle and cardboard blade.

Dish Borrowing and Dish Bringing were major social customs in the neighborhood. It was well known that my Aunt Clara had a set of six matched Mexican-motif coffee cups which she carried with her for any full-scale family ceremonial dinner. My mother, on the other hand, was the owner of a magnificent white meat platter with tiny violets spilling over the edges that had provided the underpinning for every turkey dinner in the family for years.

The effect of the Orpheum’s incredible offer, hence, was galvanic. The word spread like the bubonic plague, and by the end of the week of waiting the air had become tense and fretful. It was as though the whole town was waiting for Christmas
morning, which, like all great days, approached slowly and creakily.

It was announced in the local paper that, along with the first Free Dish offering,
Tarzan and the Pygmies
would be shown, along with Selected Short Subjects. Doppler was going all out!

Friday morning dawned crisp and clear. By 7
P.M
. a nervous serpentine line wound its way halfway around the block, past the poolroom, the Bluebird Tavern, Nick’s Hardware Store, and almost to the Willys-Overland showroom, a full football field length away from the Orpheum. Our family, about halfway back in the mob which had begun to gather early in the afternoon, was surrounded by a great waiting mass of suspicious skeptics. It was hard to believe that it would really happen, that a real
dish
would be given out free just to watch Tarzan and Lady Jane swing from the vines, and another paralyzing fear gripped the waiters—would the dishes run out before we got inside?!

Rumors spread. The Pearleen DeLuxe display was a phony, just a come-on, and the dishes we’d get would be cheap, hollow reproductions of the truly beautiful original.

Finally the doors opened and the mob surged forward. The Box Office roared with activity as we pushed and stumbled toward the marquee. Just inside the door Mr. Doppler and two ushers stood, packing cases stacked behind them, handing out to each lady a beautiful, gleaming butter dish.

What a start! Doppler, the master showman, realized that a smash opening was imperative for the success of any Big Time act. He could have opened with a prosaic cup or saucer, but his selection of a butter dish as an opener was little short of total inspiration. Handing a butter dish to housewives who came, almost to a woman, from Oleomargarine families was masterful. In fact, few people in the crowd had ever even
seen
a butter dish before and some had to be told how to use it. My mother, a reader of
Good Housekeeping
, recognized the rare object for what it was, a symbol of Gentility, Good Taste, and the Expansive Life. She was delighted. And my kid brother had to be forcibly restrained in his desire to look at it and feel it.

We were Oleo people, and my mother would mix the white,
lard-like butter substitute in a glass mixing bowl, adding coloring from the gelatin capsules which accompanied the package. We always referred to this as “butter,” and it was invariably served on a cracked white saucer used only for that purpose. Our new butter dish was a step into the affluent world of the twentieth century.

Mr. Doppler beamed, his black suit crinkling as he clanked out butter dish after butter dish, distributing largess to the multitude.

“Next week there’ll be a different piece, lady,” he said over and over.

“Maybe a bun warmer, who knows?”

Thus he insidiously planted the seed in the mind of each butter-dish clutcher that next week could be even more Exotic. The hackles of desire rose even higher as they filed into the darkened auditorium.

“What is a bun warmer?”

“You warm buns in it, you idiot!”

Snatches of complex Table Etiquette debates drifted back and forth as the mob went up the aisle, butter dishes clanking.

The Tarzan movie began. The popcorn bags ripped open, and the evening was complete.

As soon as the kitchen light went on, even before my mother had taken off her coat after the movie, she feverishly slammed open the refrigerator door and the butter dish was put into action. Loaded with Oleo, its Pearleen finish lighting up the linoleum for yards around, it rested in the center of the white enamel kitchen table. Dish Night had come to Hohman, Indiana.

The incredible news of Mr. Doppler’s largess spread through the neighborhood almost instantly. Over back fences, through tangled jungles of clotheslines, up alleys, into basements, up front porches, into candy stores and meat markets, the winged word spread. Red, chapped, water-wrinkled hands paused on clothes wringers and washboards; bathrobe-clad figures hunched over sinks nodded in amazement. Neighbors trooped into kitchens
all over town to observe firsthand the beautiful works of art that somehow had come into our lives.

The following Friday the Orpheum drew crowds from a three-county area, a jostling throng that stood in long expectant lines to see
Blondie Takes a Trip
starring Penny Singleton and Arthur Lake and to receive as compensation for that trial by fire a Pearleen-finish Bun Warmer. Mr. Doppler did not fail his public. Bun Warmers flooded Lake County in a massive deluxe Hollywood Finish tide. There were few buns to warm, but the Calumet region was ready.

The movies, and the Orpheum in particular, had never known such total and complete popularity. It was more than popularity; it was verging on True Love. The other movie in town, the Paramount, desperately tried to stem the rising tide of Mr. Doppler’s popularity. A huge, glowing sign appeared on their marquee announcing that they were prepared to offer free a 187-piece set of Movieland Mexican Plasto-Ware, designed personally by Gilbert Roland and including his permanent, indelibly embossed, raised signature on each and every piece. It was too late. The incandescent Pearleen beauty of Mr. Doppler’s dinnerware had a grip on the aesthetic fancy of the population that was unbreakable. A whole new dimension had been added to Art Appreciation in Northern Indiana, and even Gilbert Roland was swept under.

The first evening we actually used our bun warmer was a red-letter day in the family annals. Mr. Doppler was in the saddle and his power grew from week to week as each succeeding piece was added to the growing collection that began to gleam from practically every kitchen cupboard in town, crowding jelly glasses and peanut butter jars further and further and further to the rear.

The third week saw the first cup and saucer combination, a two-piece bonus. The fourth week a petite, delicately modeled egg cup, the first ever seen in the Midwestern states. Week by week the crowds grew larger. The tension mounted as piece after piece was added to family collections.

Speculation was rife as to what the next week would bring.
Doppler usually just hinted as he and his aides passed out celery dishes and consommé bowls.

“Maybe next week an Olive Urn, with pick.”

He never exactly said it
would
be an Olive Urn, with pick, just hinted. A sort of question. Well, the audience would squirm in their seats as the sound track engulfed them, speculating, already anticipating next Friday.

The weeks flew by. The town was hooked. They had the Free Dinnerware monkey, a 112-piece specimen clamped on their backs and growing heavier every week. Ladies in the last stages of childbirth were wheeled into the Orpheum, gasping in pain, to keep the skein going. Creaking grandmothers, halt and blind, were led to the Box Office by grandchildren. Ladies who had not seen the light of day since the Crimean War were pressed into service. They sat numbly, deafly in the Orpheum seats, their watery eyes barely able to perceive the shifting, incomprehensible images on the screen, their gnarled talons clasping a sugar bowl for dear life.

I remember particularly the night we got The Big Platter, as it became known in our family over the years. The Big Platter—a proper name, like The House On The Hill, The Basement, The Garage. The Big Platter was important. There was only one Big Platter in every complete set of dinnerware, the crowning jewel in Doppler’s diadem. For weeks we had filed past the magnificent display in the lobby and there in the exact center, catching the amber spots, glowing like the sun, was The Big Platter. And tonight it was ours!

One of the saddest sounds I have ever heard was the crash in the darkness as some numb-fingered housewife, carried away by a brilliantly executed scene by Joe E. Brown loosened her grip in laughter. A sudden panic and her platter was no more, scattered in a million Pearlescent slivers among the peanut shells and Tootsie Roll butt ends that formed a thick compost heap underfoot. Recriminations, suppressed sobs, and the entire family rose and filed out, their only reason for being there gone in a single split second. My mother held ours with both hands clamped over her chest in a death grip.

Few of us at the time realized in the exultation of the moment that the end of the party was already in sight. Without warning one night the patrons were handed a finely sculptured grape-encrusted Gravy Boat. This windfall was greeted with hosannas in our innocence.

The following week a strangely furtive Doppler dealt out to each female patron
another
Gravy Boat, all the while mumbling something over and over about:

“The shipment was wrong this week. You can exchange this Gravy Boat for a dinner plate next week.”