Page:The Family Album.pdf/56

48 Bill had twin barber chairs in his wife’s boudoir and she got used to sleeping sitting up in a beautiful chair. But it was kinda funny if she happened to get a cold. Bill would rush to the doctor and holler, “Hurry up, Doc, my wife is sick in bed on two chairs.” This got to be a standing joke among the neighbors who spoke to Bill. So Bill never heard it.

Mrs. Bill used to cook New England dinners in the boiler which Bill used to use to steam his towels. There was always a Turkish taste to the food, and Mrs. Bill could never get the soapy flavor out of the coffee mugs, which had customer’s names on ’em, but not their telephone numbers. Not that Bill was jealous, but there was some beautiful gilded cups in his dining room dinner set. They didn’t match, anyway.

The kitchen was great. The ketchup and vinegar were in bay rum bottles, and Bill used to ask his visitors to shake ’emselves another plate of soup into their consomme barber cups.

It required good bookkeeping to get your food right. Pond’s Extract was tomato sauce, and Eau de Cologne was gravy and sometimes it was Eau de Cologne.