Help Wanted
Back to Bonanza Dreaming - Back to Giggly Sister Stories
Ben Cartwright came downstairs to discover the Giggly Sisters busily arranging
yet another bunch of hothouse flowers on the dining table. Their pet bear, Paw,
was helping out by biting off the thorns on the roses.
“Where do all these bouquets come from?” the blonde asked curiously. The
Ponderosa was never without at least one floral decoration that rivaled the
displays seen at state banquets at Buckingham Palace.
Ben chuckled merrily. “Haven’t you noticed the preponderance of flowers around
here? Not only inside, but outside too?”
“There’s the everlasting geraniums on the windowsill outside the study window,”
the redhead volunteered. Of course, these were reserved for the occasions when
the study window was on the back wall, behind Ben’s desk. No one was quite sure
where they went when the window swapped places with the bookcase and moved to
the sidewall. It was mutually agreed that it was probably best not to ask such
questions.
“And then there’s the climbing rose at the front of the house,” the blonde
remembered. “It really is quite remarkable, isn’t it? These harsh winters by
Lake Tahoe never seem to do it one iota of damage.” She realised that Ben was
shaking his head with pity and remembered that the show was in fact filmed on
the Paramount lot in California, whereupon she went rather quiet.
“It’s all quite simple: we have a full-time gardener,” Ben explained kindly.
“Dead-heading the rose bush alone takes him one day a week and it has to be
carefully scheduled in with exterior filming. We can’t have viewers seeing him
scrabbling all over the porch roof after all. The rest of the time, he’s busy
tending the apple orchards and vegetable gardens and tending the herbaceous
borders.”
The redhead looked rather skeptical. “And exactly where would they be?”
“Round the side of the house!” Joe said, coming downstairs in his bare feet. The
blonde almost swooned. “You never see the side of the house or even the back, do
you?”
“And did you never wonder what happened to all the manure from the horses?
Wonderful fertilizer and so cost-effective!” Ben shook his head in wonder. He
never liked to waste anything and still had several boxes of clothes that Adam
and Hoss had grown out of, packed away in mothballs, hoping against hope that
Joe would grow into them. One day. However, even Ben was beginning to
acknowledge that Joe was destined to remain the smallest (and cutest) of the
Cartwrights. Except of course for the boy’s ears, which were just a smidgeon too
big and stuck out ever so slightly.
“Do you have any other people helping around the house?” the blonde asked,
slightly breathlessly. Joe was now sitting down and pulling on his socks.
“Well, there’s the guy who nips out and lights the porch light every evening. He
uses the gardener’s stepladders to do that, of course, because it’s far too high
to reach.”
“I’d often wondered about that!” the redhead enthused. “Do you leave it on all
night?” Ben and Joe just shrugged at this. “And then what about the outside
bell? Why don’t you have a bell-pull and have the bell inside the house? It
would be a lot more convenient, wouldn’t it?”
“Not if you’ve been badly maimed!” Joe answered smartly, thinking of that
traumatic time in First Born. What would he have done without the bell to pull
on? Why, he could have lain out there all night. “Very useful.”
“Then why don’t people use it?” asked the redhead. “They all seem to knock on
the door, or just walk in.”
“I’ve never quite understood that myself,” Ben muttered, reluctant to go into
it. This was yet another of those things about living on the Ponderosa that one
didn’t enquire too deeply into. How he wished the sisters weren’t quite so
observant. Ben cleared his throat. “And we have the ranch hands, of course,” he
said, reverting back to the original subject.
“The ranch hands who live in the disappearing bunkhouses?” asked the blonde,
watching avidly as Joe slid his boots on. The redhead thought what lovely clean,
unbitten fingernails Joe had. “Isn’t that rather inconvenient?”
“There always seem to be some around when we need them,” Ben muttered.
“But not when you’re maimed,” Joe put in. “There’s never been a single hand
standing around when I’ve ridden in maimed.” He made a face and the sisters
sighed. “They always seem to be out on the range.”
“There is the little man who does the horses,” Adam suggested, coming into the
room.
“Which little man is that?” asked the redhead, while the blonde stopped Joe from
going over and bopping Adam one on the nose. Not that he didn’t deserve it, but
he might get blood all over the flowers and that would be such a waste when
they’d gone to all the bother of arranging them prettily.
“Well, I haven’t seen him personally,” Adam admitted. This was a novelty. Adam
seldom admitted he didn’t know or hadn’t seen something. Joe hoped someone would
record this fact for posterity. “But someone takes the horses and puts them away
in the barn. It’s never us.”
“We’d noticed that,” said the redhead, who wished there was a similar system at
her riding school, where she always had to tack and untack her horse. A little
man who did that would be invaluable. Ben recalled how he had unjustly accused
Joe of leaving his horse intended to in The Deadly Ones. Of course, the dear boy
had been brutally maimed, causing his father a great degree of angst.
“There’s something else I’ve been wondering about,” the blonde ventured
tentatively. “You know the coffee pot?”
Ben, Adam and Joe all nodded vigorously. That wonderful coffeepot that kept
beverages hot for hours on end! And way before the thermos flask was even
thought of! Quite remarkable.
“Well, it starts off white and pristine in the early episodes, even if the
pattern is rather indistinguishable. But later on, it gets decidedly mocha-coloured.
Almost as if the coffee had leeched through, in fact. Seems to me that you need
to have a sharp word with whoever does the dishes around here and give them a
scouring pad and some sharp words!”
“I quite agree!” Ben enthused, patting the blonde on the knee for added
emphasis. “I just wish the chap who does Joe’s hair would lend a hand in the
kitchen occasionally.”
Joe looked black affronted. He was fed-up with the hairstylist trying to brush
his curls into submission. Personally, he preferred a bit more bounce around the
sides of his head, in order to minimise the angle and size of his ears.
“It’s the walls that worry me,” Adam confided. The sisters exchanged startled
looks. Hadn’t he designed the Ponderosa in the first place? Adam sighed deeply
and pinched the bridge of his nose, always a sure sign of mental distress. “The
plaster work! Haven’t you noticed how rough it is?”
“The country look is very fashionable!” Ben protested weakly. Of course, the
fact that rough-hewn plaster work was infinitely cheaper than the smooth variety
had nothing to do with it at all. Or so he kept telling himself.
“Doesn’t exactly go with the oil paintings,” Adam commented dryly, as Hoss came
in from the barn.
“Where did ya git that picture of the scary Injun in Joe’s room from, Pa?” he
asked.
“Do you know, some people wonder why I have nightmares?” Joe asked rhetorically.
“How would you fancy waking up in the middle of the night and seeing that
staring down at you?”
Everyone decided just to ignore this little outburst. Given the least
encouragement, Joe was sure to start going on about his moving room, the
too-short bed and deplorable bed linen ad infinitum.
The redhead gave Ben a charming smile. “I’ve always loved the map of the
Ponderosa!” she said sweetly. “It’s a pity you don’t have the Ordnance Survey in
America, isn’t it? They would have been able to tell you that north generally
faces heavenwards.”
“I know that!” Ben said through gritted teeth. “And I made a stunning allusion
to heaven in A Rose for Lotta!”
“I wore that sexy black shirt in the early season credits!” Joe confided to the
girls, who remembered how cute he had been… but then Joe was cute in everything.
“I wonder what happened to that shirt,” the blonde mused.
“It got lost in the wash,” Joe confided. “I looked for it for ages, but it never
came back.”
“Came back from where?” asked the redhead. “Doesn’t Hop Sing do the washing?”
“You must be kidding,” Hop Sing said, having been eavesdropping in the kitchen.
“With all the people who arrive and depart from here, I would never have time
for housework and cooking. My number three cousin in Virginia City does the
washing.” He shook his head and scuttled off, thereby missing the pointed looks
the girls were throwing at the floor. It hadn’t seen a lick of polish in years!
“I suppose another of Hop Sing’s cousins does the ironing?” queried the blonde.
She wondered if he would tackle her ironing pile, for neither sister liked
ironing. “How useful.”
“Almost as useful as those mattresses I’m always flinging into the back of the
buckboard when Joe gits himself maimed again!” Hoss contributed helpfully.
“Where do we git them from, Pa?”
Ben sighed heavily. Why did his family insist on debating the inconsequential
minutiae of life? It was almost as bad as those pedants who wondered why there
were sturdy shutters at the downstairs windows. They weren’t content with being
told that the shutters were for security, oh no! Some people had to point out
that the kitchen had flimsy half-glass doors that could be opened with a blunt
butter knife. Mind you, he had always wondered why the curtains on the kitchen
doors were always drawn, cutting out the daylight.
He looked at his three sons, the Giggly Sisters, and Paw, who was
absent-mindedly chewing on an antimacassar. The Ponderosa was a large house and
three growing boys caused a lot of wear and tear. Not to mention the growing
list of guest stars who breathed their last within these walls, or bled with gay
abandon all over the sofa. Ben was a deeply pragmatic man and had steadfastly
refused to get a new sofa until all such dangers were passed. He was still
waiting and was fully prepared to do so for some years to come. The sofa was
consequently incredibly lumpy and avoided like the plague by all right-minded
people.
“Good, reliable help is hard to come by!” Ben proclaimed loudly. He could
vividly recall the early series, when the wooden floors had been dull and badly
scratched. Hop Sing had really picked up his standards since then. Mind you, he
still couldn’t understand why the faithful factotum left the Indian rug hanging
over the banisters, for all the world as if it were a blanket. But good,
faithful, reliable help was so hard to come by. And who else but Hop Sing would
willingly spend his evenings lovingly crafting those piles of soft cloths, so
essential for mopping down fevered bodies?
Just as he was about to extol the virtues of the faithful factotum, Ben saw a
large tumbleweed roll out from the inconvenient gap at the side of the stairs.
Quite obviously, it hadn’t been swept out for quite some time. He then noticed
that the sisters were sitting, neatly hemming some rather familiar cloths, while
Paw rolled happily across the floor, his shaggy fur buffing it up a treat.
“Hop Sing!” Ben bellowed, vowing to have a stern word with the boys and girls in
continuity. After all, he owed it to the loyal viewers, who were sure to notice
such things.
The End
Giggly Sisters Productions
July 2003