Because the Greyhound bus stopped in front of their house, people were always sitting around on the porch or in the living room. This combined with the number of Neighbor Dorothy’s fans that dropped by all day caused the man to make an honest mistake. When he saw everyone going in and out and the radio call letters written on the front window, he naturally assumed the place was a restaurant called WDOT and decided to stop by later and have a bite to eat before driving on to Poplar Bluff. At around 5:30 he parked his car, strolled in, and sat down in the living room with Doc and Jimmy, who were reading the paper, and asked, “What time is dinner served?” Doc did not know who he was but pleasantly told him, “In about thirty minutes.” Then the man asked where the men’s room was and went down the hall and came back, sat down, and picked up a magazine and waited. As far as Doc knew, he could have been one of Dorothy’s sponsors come to town. When Dorothy called out that dinner was on the table the man got up and went in. Nobody asked him who he was, all thinking he was a friend of someone else’s, and Neighbor Dorothy quietly put out another place setting. He thoroughly enjoyed the pot roast and mashed potatoes and happily chatted away all through dinner, entertaining everyone with his tales of life as a professional poultry inspector for the state of Missouri. And how people always kidded him about being a poultry inspector with Fowler for a last name. He amazed them with how many different breeds of chickens were in the world. After finishing his second piece of coconut cake, he pushed himself back from the table and announced, “Well, folks, I better get on the road before it gets too late,” and dug into his pocket and asked Dorothy how much he owed.
A surprised Dorothy said, “Why, you don’t owe a thing, Mr. Fowler—we were just happy to have you. I hope you’ll be sure to drop in and see us again anytime you are passing through.”
That night Mr. Charlie Fowler left town thinking that Elmwood Springs was the friendliest place he had ever been. He did come back often and they were always glad to see him.
An Ordinary Day
ON AN ORDINARY weekday Jimmy Head, the Smiths’ boarder, is usually the first person awake. He gets up around 4:30, goes out to the kitchen, puts on the coffee, drinks a cup, then heads out the door before five. The only other lights on in town are at Nordstrom’s bakery, which opens at 7:30, but Jimmy has a big breakfast crowd and has to get the Trolley Car Diner ready to go by 6:00. Doc and Mother Smith are also early risers and usually come into the kitchen and have a cup of coffee together around 5:30. Dorothy is up and dressed by 6:30, comes in, and starts her day by putting a batch of radio cookies in the oven for her guests and then feeds Princess Mary Margaret and her two yellow canary birds, Dumpling and Moe. If it is summer Bobby is up by 7:00 and Anna Lee tends to float into the kitchen around 8:00 or 8:30. She needs her beauty sleep. Doc is down at the drugstore by 7:30, which opens at 8:00.
The milkman, the iceman, and the bread man have already been there by 9:20 and Beatrice, the Little Blind Songbird, who sings on the show every day, has come over from next door. She and Mother Smith, who accompanies her on the small organ, go on into the living room to run through Beatrice’s song. Dorothy and Princess Mary Margaret arrive for the broadcast around 9:25.
Princess Mary Margaret greets anyone else who is in the living room to see the show with a wagging tail and often jumps up and sits in someone’s lap during the show. Or if she is not in the mood she gets into her basket under Dorothy’s desk (many have remarked how the dog is much better trained than Bobby). Then Dorothy says hello to her guests and welcomes her live audience, usually people waiting to catch the bus or ladies from women’s clubs. Dorothy sits down and runs over the format and her commercials for a last-minute check and looks out the window so she can give her radio audience the very latest weather update. At 9:30 on the dot the red light on the organ blinks, the on-air signal, and Mother Smith hits the first strains of the theme song, the show begins . . . and everyone in town and thereabouts is usually tuned in.
Today, fifteen miles outside of town Mrs. Elner Shimfissle, a large-boned farm woman with a plain but pleasant face, dipped her hand into a blue-and-white speckled pan filled with Purina feed and threw it to the chickens in her yard. The chickens, mostly Rhode Island Reds, ran every which way with their heads down close to the ground, trying their best to beat all the other chickens to each grain. She wore a new green-checked apron over her somewhat faded floral-print dress and comfortable old-lady white tie-up shoes.
She shielded her eyes from the sun and looked far out into the fields and saw her husband plowing behind the reins of their two black mules and called out, “Whoo hoo, Will!” The small man in the large straw hat stopped and waved back and then continued plowing. After she emptied the pan she walked over to the water pump and rinsed it out and hung it on a nail on the side of the house by the big tin washtub. She looked up at the sun again, wiped her hands on her apron, and guessed that it was getting to be about that time and went on back in the house. She had been up since four A.M. and had already done the milking, gathered the eggs, gotten her husband’s breakfast, scrubbed the kitchen floor, done some washing, hung it up on the line, put a pair of overalls to soaking, killed a fryer, and put up sixteen jars of fig preserves. She figured she could afford to sit down and relax awhile and went over and poured herself a cup of coffee and got her pencil and pad ready to take down the receipts. She turned on the radio—it was always set on WDOT, the only station that comes in clear this far out—and heard The Neighbor Dorothy Show, the same program that she had been listening to for the past sixteen years.
It was the only show other than Gospel Time, U.S.A., the farm report, and the Grand Ole Opry that Mrs. Shimfissle listened to on a regular basis. And this morning Neighbor Dorothy started the show as she always did with a cheery “Good morning, everybody, it’s a pretty day over here in Elmwood Springs and I hope it’s just as pretty where you are. We’ve got so many wonderful things to tell you about on the show this morning . . . so many special guests . . . that I can hardly contain myself. And sitting right here in the living room with me is somebody I know you are going to want to hear from. Mr. Milo Shipp, who has traveled all the way from New York City to tell us about his brand-new book, Hilltop in the Rain, and we can’t wait to hear about that. And also we want to welcome our in-studio visitors.
“We have six ladies from the Claire De Lune Garden Club with us and they are headed all the way up to St. Louis for the big flower show later this morning”—Mother Smith played a few strains of “Meet Me in St. Louis”—“and I know you all are going to have a big time up there. We have a good show for you today. Along with our regulars, Nurse Ruby Robinson and Beatrice, the Little Blind Songbird, who will be singing . . . what? ‘I’m in Love with the Man in the Moon’ . . . and also on our musical menu this morning the Goodnight sisters have promised to drop by later to sing a song in honor of our out-of-town guest, entitled ‘My Sweetheart Went Down with the Ship.’ They say it’s a sad song but it was the only one they could find with ship in the title.
“But before we get to our interview I want to say a big hello to one of my brand-new sponsors, Verna Clapp’s original strained baby food, and we’ll be talking a lot more about that a little later in the program. First, just in case you’re wondering what you are hearing, it’s not your radio. Poor Tot’s fox terrier got out again and that noise is coming from a box of twelve of the cutest puppies you have ever seen—don’t you think so, Mr. Shipp? He says he does.”—Mother Smith played a bar or two of “How Much Is That Doggie in the Window” and Dorothy laughed.—“Well, they are absolutely free and all Tot wants is to find good homes for them. She says there are five boys and seven girls but not to hold her to it. We know who the mother is but she says she has no idea about the father. As far as I can tell from the look of them, I think the honors will go to that Airedale up the street, so come on by and get yourself one.