Free Standing in the Rainbow by Fannie Flagg Page A

America’s was to bring enlightenment not only to Elmwood Springs but to the entire world until even in the farthest igloo at the North Pole and the wilds of the deepest darkest jungles in Borneo people everywhere would know that the fork belongs on the left and that fresh flowers on a table supply a delightful treat for the eye, that a clean house is a happy house, and come to embrace the fact that raising one’s voice in anger is rude and uncalled for on any occasion.
    Ida always said, “Remember, Norma, in America a person of quality and class is not judged by aristocracy of birth but by his or her behavior.” Norma figured that by that standard her mother must have thought she was the duchess of Kent by now.
    Norma loved her mother but, as Norma said to Anna Lee, “You try living with her twenty-four hours a day. You just don’t know how lucky you are to have your mother and not mine.” In fact, Norma spent the night at Anna Lee’s as often as possible, as did Monroe. The house was always full of people and fun things to do and the food was delicious. And most important, over at Neighbor Dorothy’s house you could actually sit on the living room furniture, something Ida never let Norma or her father do. In Ida’s house the living room was only shown to people as they passed by and was called the formal room. It was so formal that nobody had been in it since she had decorated it eighteen years before.
    On one of the numerous occasions when Norma was spending the weekend over at Anna Lee’s house, she helped Anna Lee pull a good one on Bobby and Monroe. One Saturday afternoon, Bobby and Monroe were in the parlor with the blinds and shades drawn, sitting in the dark eating peanut-butter-and-banana sandwiches and listening to their favorite scary detective shows on the radio. They had just heard
Yours Truly
,
Johnny Dollar
;
Boston Blackie
; and
The Whistler
and now a new show was just starting.
    First strange and weird chords played on an organ, then a voice came through:

    WOMAN : There he goes into . . . that drugstore. He’s stepping on the scales.
    (Sound: Clink of a coin.)
    WOMAN : Weight, two hundred and thirty-seven pounds.
    (Sound: Card dropping.)
    WOMAN : Fortune.
Danger!
    Organ: (Stinnnng
!
)
    WOMAN : Whooo is it?
    MAN : The Fat Man!!!

    As promised, this week’s program was chock-full of suspense and mystery. Near the end both boys were literally sitting on the edge of their seats. Just as the strange man in the raincoat was being followed down a wet, dead-end street, with the sound of footsteps following behind him, growing louder and louder . . . click click . . . footsteps . . . closer and closer . . . louder and louder . . . nowhere to run . . . nowhere to hide . . . just at the very moment when the terrified man, his heart pounding, turned to face his fiendish killer, suddenly two figures wearing hideous rubber masks popped up from behind the couch with green flashlights shining under their chins, shouting
BAAA! BAAA!
    It scared them so badly that both boys shot straight up in the air and screamed like two little girls. They almost knocked each other down trying to get out of the room, falling over the coffee table and chairs while they scrambled for the door and ran down the hall.
    Norma’s boyfriend, Macky, had rigged the flashlights with green bulbs and the masks had come from last Halloween. The girls had been hiding behind the couch all afternoon, just waiting for the right moment. When Anna Lee gave the signal, all the waiting had been worth it.
    The Winner

     
    N eighbor Dorothy started with a great big “Good morning, everybody! Well, I could hardly wait to get on the air this morning because as Gabriel Heatter says, ‘Ah, there’s good news tonight!’ or in our case, today, and we are just tickled pink and chomping at the bit to tell you about it. But first let me ask you this: Does your soap powder make you sneeze?
    “Mrs. Squatzie Kittrel of Silver Springs, Maryland, says,