bazoo while the
TV's on is gonna find hisself cut off without a dollar--" his voice
suddenly softened and sweetened--"when they wave that checkered flag at
the Indianapolis Speedway, and old Gramps gets ready for the Big Trip Up
Yonder."

He sniffed sentimentally, while his heirs concentrated desperately on
not making the slightest sound. For them, the poignancy of the
prospective Big Trip had been dulled somewhat, through having been
mentioned by Gramps about once a day for fifty years.

"Dr. Brainard Keyes Bullard," continued the commentator, "President of
Wyandotte College, said in an address tonight that most of the world's
ills can be traced to the fact that Man's knowledge of himself has not
kept pace with his knowledge of the physical world."

"_Hell!_" snorted Gramps. "We said _that_ a hundred years ago!"

"In Chicago tonight," the commentator went on, "a special celebration is
taking place in the Chicago Lying-in Hospital. The guest of honor
is Lowell W. Hitz, age zero. Hitz, born this morning, is the
twenty-five-millionth child to be born in the hospital." The commentator
faded, and was replaced on the screen by young Hitz, who squalled
furiously.

"Hell!" whispered Lou to Emerald. "We said that a hundred years ago."

"I heard that!" shouted Gramps. He snapped off the television set and
his petrified descendants stared silently at the screen. "You, there,
boy--"

"I didn't mean anything by it, sir," said Lou, aged 103.

"Get me my will. You know where it is. You kids _all_ know where it is.
Fetch, boy!" Gramps snapped his gnarled fingers sharply.

Lou nodded dully and found himself going down the hall, picking his way
over bedding to Gramps' room, the only private room in the Ford
apartment. The other rooms were the bathroom, the living room and the
wide windowless hallway, which was originally intended to serve as a
dining area, and which had a kitchenette in one end. Six mattresses and
four sleeping bags were dispersed in the hallway and living room, and
the daybed, in the living room, accommodated the eleventh couple, the
favorites of the moment.

On Gramps' bureau was his will, smeared, dog-eared, perforated and
blotched with hundreds of additions, deletions, accusations, conditions,
warnings, advice and homely philosophy. The document was, Lou reflected,
a fifty-year diary, all jammed onto two sheets--a garbled, illegible log
of day after day of strife. This day, Lou would be disinherited for