Free Guestward Ho! by Patrick Dennis Page A

and happy family and, conversely, I guess they felt that they were a part of ours. They certainly would have been welcome addi tions. In fact, they even took over the management of Rancho del Monte for a couple of days while Bill and I went to Juarez to do some shopping.
    Maybe I should tell you why we went to Juarez, which is just across the border in regular, or old, Mexico.
    The laws in New Mexico are very stringent, as they should be, about how dishes are washed in hotels and restaurants. If you ever spot a greasy plate or a lipsticky cup in the state, you can rest assured that the inspector isn't far behind and that a summons will be slapped on the restaurant within the next forty-eight hours. So all public eating places have automatic dishwashers. And I don't mean those pretty pastel dishwashers you see ad vertised in the magazines, where a gorgeous model wear ing a chiffon apron and an inane smile stands in the third position of ballet admiring her pale hands. I mean a rough-and-tumble, hell-for-leather, professional automatic dishwasher, bristling with gauges and dials and thermome ters and heating units and safety valves. Par for rinsing in ours was 220° F.
    Now, one of my weaknesses has always been the best in china, crystal, linen, and silver. (That is to say, it used to be a weakness and a pretty fatal one at that.) I'd rather drink out of a toilet bowl than one of those heavy crockery cups sold to the restaurant trade because they are prac tically indestructible. Naturally, Rancho del Monte had a full gross of heavy restaurant ware, but I was ever so much smarter than Bess Huntinghouse. Me serve guests on hash-house plates? Not on your life! So as soon as I got my own china unpacked—and what a lot there used to be!—I started swanking with Wedgwood and Spode and Limoges at every meal.
    Mother always told me: "Barbara, you only have to touch Limoges for it to chip." Mother was wrong. You don't have to touch Limoges at all; just stare at it hard and it disintegrates before your very eyes. But in spite of the manhandling my good china got from Curly and Buck and Evangeline, the only casualty was a butter plate— until the night I decided to take matters into my own hands.
    "I wouldn't touch that dishwashing machine if I were you," Bill said, eyeing the monster suspiciously.
    "Nonsense," I said, very much the little Hausfrau. "Curly's been mending fences all day and it's silly to leave this stack of sticky dishes until tomorrow morning when Buck and Evangeline get back." I can't think why I was feeling so chipper that night, but I was using one of those irritatingly bright cooking-school voices and even hum ming. Bill gave me one of those who-do-you-think-you're- kidding looks and asked if I'd ever tried to use the machine.
    "Oh, lots of times!" I said. That wasn't exactly true. The dishwasher and I had met before, but never without a chaperone. "It's perfectly simple! Any fool could run it."
    "Have it your way," Bill said and sauntered out of the kitchen.
    I started stacking my Limoges china into the maw of the dishwasher. I tossed in the soap, set all the gadgets the way I thought they should be set, turned up the heat ing unit full tilt, let the water gush in, closed the top, and let her rip.
    Then I sat down at the kitchen table to read the day's mail. There was an invitation to a wedding in New York, an announcement of a one-man show at the Associated American Artists gallery, a summons from a Madison Avenue hairdresser urging me to do something about my dry scalp before the depredations of the Newport season made me look any worse, and a card from a dress shop I'd never been able to afford begging me to come in and just rob them blind at their end-of-the-season clearance. Since distance seemed to preclude my accepting any of these offers, I turned to the letters. There was one from an old school friend who had married the U.S. Mint. Her problem was that she was torn between the exertion of packing a trunk