In God we trust_ all others pay cash - Jean Shepherd [105]
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