After Tot left, with profuse thanks, Doc had to wait on several other people who'd come in and wanted to get things as well. But he did not charge them. Everything was free on Christmas Eve, he said.
It was an hour later by the time he could get home. Finally, Bobby was able to rip open the big box from his parents. Inside was a great record player, and his grandmother gave him the two records he wanted most, Mule Train and Ghost Riders in the Sky.
And underwear.
He received money from Jimmy, a Rover Boy book from Betty Raye, and Anna Lee surprised him with a genuine Jungle Jim pith helmet.
Dorothy got a robe, a cameo, and new curtains, Doc a new pipe and pajamas and slippers and, from Bobby, a fishing-tackle box. Mother Smith's presents were handkerchiefs, perfume, and a beautiful new boxed set of playing cards. Jimmy got his yearly twelve cartons of Camel cigarettes and, from Bobby, a toenail clipper. The girls got perfume, clothes, and cash money, toenail clippers from Bobby, and Dorothy had bought them both scrapbooks. Minnie and Ferris Oatman, who were doing a Christmas-week gospel sing in North Carolina, sent Betty Raye a white leather Bible with her name embossed in gold on the front. And she unwrapped a lovely silk scarf that had her name on the name tag but not the name of who it was from. Later they all went out on the porch and waited for the bus with Jimmy and at 11:45 it pulled up in front and he got on.
As usual, Dorothy was the last one up and when she finished doing a few final things in the kitchen she went into the living room to turn off all the Christmas lights. She stood there for a moment and looked at them glowing, blinking, and bubbling in the dark and they looked so pretty she decided to leave them on all night.
Two days after Christmas, Dorothy was on the air when the phone rang. Betty Raye, walking by, picked up and to her surprise it was her mother. Minnie Oatman was on the other end, calling long-distance from the office of the Talladega, Alabama, Primitive Baptist Church and she was hysterical.
"Oh, Betty Raye, honey, something terrible has happened, brace yourself for bad news."
"Momma, what is it?"
"Honey," Minnie sobbed, "we lost Chester last night. Chester's gone and your Uncle Floyd is locked his self in the men's room, blaspheming the Lord, and he won't come out."
"What men's room?" said Betty Raye.
"Over at the seafood place. One minute we was happy without a care in the world eating fried shrimp and the next thing we knowed Floyd was running around the parking lot, screaming like a banshee. In the time it took to eat twelve fried shrimp Chester had been snatched right out of his little suitcase in broad daylight and was gonded… kidnapped just like the Lindberger baby. And the next thing we knowed Floyd run in the men's room and locked the door and threatened to drown his self We all tried to pry him out, Beatrice and everybody there, but he won't budge. The boys tried to get in the window to him but he throwed water on them and wouldn't let them in. We had to leave him at the restaurant and come over here to do our show last night. Floyd's still holed up over there and your daddy is besides his self We've got bookings all this week."
"Oh, Momma, what are you going to do?"
"We've got the highway police looking for him right now. If we don't find Chester your uncle is liable to never come out of that bathroom."
Then she wailed, "Poor little Chester, who would steal a poor little dummy? I got to go, your daddy's waiting… Pray for us, baby," she said and hung up.
Later, Minnie and Ferris went over and formed an emergency prayer circle at the restaurant while an eight-point missing-person bulletin was being released across the state. Missing: One ventriloquist's dummy known professionally as Chester the Scripture-quoting dummy.
Blond wig, blue eyes, and freckles. Last seen in a car parked in the parking lot of Wentzel's Sea Food on Highway 21 wearing a cowboy suit and small cowboy hat.
Ferris was convinced that Chester's disappearance was the work of the devil, while some of the hard core of the congregation wondered if he had been taken up in the Rapture. Bervin, Vernon, and Beatrice did not know what to make of it but Minnie just kept praying and holding on to her faith that he would come back. Floyd stayed in the men's room at WentzePs Sea Food Restaurant for seventy-two hours until finally Chester was returned safe and sound.
As it turned out, it had all been a harmless prank. Another gospel group passing by saw the Oatman car and, knowing how much Floyd loved that dummy, one of them had snuck in the back and grabbed it. Chester had ridden all the way to Marianna, Florida, where they bought him a child's ticket on the Greyhound bus and sent him back.
That night in Loxley, Alabama, Chester returned to the stage and sang "Riding the Range for Jesus" and "When It's Roundup Time Up Yonder."
"Thank the Lord he's back with us," said a much-relieved Minnie to Dorothy on the phone. "I just knowed He wasn't gonna desert us in our time of need… I tell you, Dorothy, when I saw little Chester come off that bus, oh, it touched my heart so. It was just like the Bible says… Once he was lost but now he's been found…"
Later that night Dorothy confided to Mother Smith, "She may be loud and she may mangle the English language to a fare-thee-well, but I'll tell you the truth if I ever really needed someone to pray for me, or someone I loved, Minnie Oatman would be the first person I would call."
As it turned out, the Three Little Pigs cafeteria not only brought more good food to town, it brought romance as well. The new owners from St. Louis had a daughter who was now in the sixth grade with Bobby. Her Italian father and her Greek mother had produced a dark-eyed, olive-skinned beauty named Claudia Albetta, who soon had all the boys acting silly. In a town that was made up of mostly Swedish and Norwegian and Irish stock she was an exotic creature, as glamorous as Yvonne De Carlo and Dorothy Lamour rolled into one. By February, Bobby was a goner as well. They should have guessed something was up by his recent change in behavior. For one thing, he was using a lot of Wildroot Cream Oil on his hair, and he had put a brand-new shiny dime in his penny loafers.
When Dorothy came home from the grocery store she was surprised to see Bobby still sitting in the kitchen, the table littered with a pack of penny valentines he had bought at the dime store.
"Haven't you picked one out yet?"
"No," he said, pushing them around. "These are all too silly. It has to be just right."
"And, may I ask who this valentine is going to or is it private?"
"Claudia Albetta," he told her but added quickly, "It's not my idea to send some stupid card. Miss Henderson made us all pick a name out of a hat she wants to make sure everybody in class gets a valentine."
"Weren't you lucky to get the name of a girl you like."
"I didn't," Bobby admitted. "I swapped Monroe my Boy Scout knife and an Indian bracelet for it. He kind of likes her, too."
"Oh, I see." She sat down beside him. "Well, you have a big selection here." She looked through the cards and picked up one. "Here is a picture of a kitten with a basket of hearts that a nice one, don't you think?"
Bobby looked at it again. "I want it to be more serious than that."
"Ahh… I see." She shuffled through the cards and picked up one with a cupid, looked at it, and put it back down. "No, you don't want that; what we need is something in the middle, a cross between an adult valentine and a child's valentine. Not silly… but not too mushy."
She chose another card. "Well… let's see, no, you don't want that either. All right, here's one… Look, it just has a nice simple heart on it and a nice simple message. You Are My Ideal Valentine… Be Mine."
Bobby took it from her and studied it. "Do you really think this is a good one?"
"Oh yes, very tasteful, understated but to the point."
"Are you sure?"
"Oh yes."
Bobby seemed pleased and took his pen and wrote across the bottom: "Guess Who." His mother looked at what he had signed. "Do you mean to tell me that you have gone through all this agony and you're not even going to sign your name?"
Bobby was horrified. "I don't want her to know it's from me! Besides, we're not supposed to sign our names."
"Well, how about giving her a hint, just a little one? That would be O.K., wouldn't it?"
"What kind of hint?"
"I don't know. Maybe you could narrow it down for her just a tad."
"Like what?"
"You could say, From your admirer, the boy with the brown hair."
"Oh, Mother, that's stupid."
"No, it's not. Think about it. Wouldn't you hate it if a girl liked you and never let you know? You have to have courage about this… Remember, you have to take a chance on romance."
"What if she throws up or something?"
"Oh, for heaven's sake, Bobby, I can't believe with all the noise you make that now suddenly you've gone shy and retiring. What's happened to you?"