The Genius Files #4 (10 page)

“You won't bother us anymore?” Pep asked.

“Cross my heart and hope to die,” said the
mustachioed bowler dude. “We won't follow you. We won't chase you. All we ask is that you keep quiet so we can start new lives for ourselves without any fear of prosecution. Okay?”

“Okay.”

Coke and Pep took a few steps backward, watching the bowler dudes the whole time to see if they were going to try something. The dudes put their hands in the air, as if to say they were not going to throw anything, and they were not going to shoot anything.

“Go, Pep!” Coke shouted, and they just about broke the land speed record running down Cavanal Hill.

S
o the coast was truly clear. The bowler dudes weren't going to hurt them. Mrs. Higgins wasn't going to hurt them. Dr. Warsaw wasn't going to hurt them.

“This is the best vacation I ever had,” Coke told his parents enthusiastically. “I just wanted to let you guys know that I'm having a wonderful time.”

“Me too,” Pep added brightly. “Driving cross-country is so much more of an enriching experience than going to some dumb theme park.”

In the front seat, the parents looked at each other
suspiciously. Something had to be up. Neither of them could remember the last time the twins were so cheery and cooperative.

After a fantastic dinner at Western Sizzlin in Poteau, the McDonalds pulled into the parking lot at the Holiday Inn Express.

“How is this place any different from a
regular
Holiday Inn?” Pep asked as her parents checked in at the front desk.

“Maybe you sleep faster here,” Coke cracked.

When they got to their room, Pep was careful to hide the birthday present she had gotten for her mother, a box of soothing bath salts she had picked up back in Hot Springs, Arkansas. Coke, who remembered just about every
other
thing he had ever experienced, never remembered anybody's birthday. Pep knew her present would have to be from the two of them.

“Only a few more hours until the big day, Bridge,” said Dr. McDonald as he unpacked his suitcase. “Tomorrow, you're in charge. We do whatever
you
want to do. You can boss us around all you want.”

“Really?”

“Sure,” said Dr. McDonald. “Do you want to go out to a fancy restaurant for dinner? Fine. You want to sit around the hotel pool all day? That's okay too. Whatever your heart desires, honey.”

Mrs. McDonald thought it over. The money she made from
Amazing but True
was paying for the trip, and she pretty much decided what they would do
every
day. But she was always conscious of the rest of the family's boredom level, and tried not to drag them to places that wouldn't interest them.

But it was her birthday. All bets were off. This was going to be
her
day. She decided to make the most of it.

“I can do anything I want?” she asked.

“
Anything
,” said Dr. McDonald.

“Okay,” Mrs. McDonald said. “Everybody needs to be ready to get on the road at seven o'clock.”

“Where are we going, Mom?” Pep asked.

“You'll see.”

While the others slept, Mrs. McDonald spent the next two hours with a guidebook, a map of Oklahoma, and her laptop computer. In the morning, after the presents, singing “Happy Birthday,” and a quick continental breakfast, they piled into the car and drove a very fast eighty miles north to Tahlequah, Oklahoma.

Usually, Mrs. McDonald was telling her husband to slow down and observe all the speed limit signs. Not today.

“Faster, Ben!” Mrs. McDonald kept urging. “You drive like a glacier!”

“I'm doing seventy miles an hour,” Dr. McDonald complained. “If I go any faster, we're gonna get pulled over.”

“Why did you buy a Ferrari if you didn't want to drive fast?” she replied.

“What's your rush?” asked Dr. McDonald. “We've got all day.”

“Floor it, Dad!” Coke hollered from the backseat.

It only took an hour and a half to reach Tahlequah, in the foothills of the Ozark Mountains. Just outside town, Mrs. McDonald directed them to a little ranch house, which appeared to be abandoned. Dr. McDonald parked across the road and they walked around back, where there was a metal shed.

“This place is creepy,” Pep said.

On the ground to the left of the shed was a large tombstone. It looked like it had once been standing up, but somebody knocked it over. This is what it said on the tombstone. . . .

Mister ED

“Who's Mister Ed?” Coke asked.

“You never heard of Mister Ed?” his mother replied.

When the twins shook their heads no, both parents spontaneously broke into a silly song that began with the words “A horse is a horse, of course, of course. . . .”

Once again, I wish I could give you all the lyrics, but financial considerations as well as personal laziness prevent that from happening. Instead, go to YouTube and search for “Mister Ed theme song.”

Go ahead, we'll wait for you here.

“
Mister Ed
was my favorite show when I was a kid,” said Dr. McDonald.

“They made a TV show about a talking horse?” Coke asked.

“Well, he only talked to Wilbur, his owner,” explained Dr. McDonald.

“Sometimes he talked on the phone too,” Mrs. McDonald added. “I heard they made him talk by putting a nylon thread in his mouth and pulling on it.”

The tombstone had an etching of Mister Ed poking his head through a barn door. Mrs. McDonald took some photos and explained that Mister Ed's original name was Bamboo Harvester.

“So, there's a horse buried under here?” Coke asked.

“Yes, but nobody is sure it's Mister Ed,” Mrs. McDonald told them. “Some people say he died in 1970 in California. Others say he died here in Oklahoma, in 1979.”

“With all due respect, Mom,” Pep said, “a TV show about a talking horse sounds really dumb to me.”

“You're lucky you never saw
My Mother the Car
,” said Dr. McDonald.

“And they say
today's
TV shows are lame,” Coke said, shaking his head.

“Okay, let's go, gang,” Mrs. McDonald announced.

“That's it?” asked Coke. “I wanted to look around.”

“Sorry,” his mother said. “It's my birthday and what I say goes.”

In no time they were pushing the speed limit on Route 62 West, heading for downtown Muskogee. They made it in half an hour. Dr. McDonald found a parking spot a block from Three Rivers Museum. But they didn't go inside the museum. Mrs. McDonald walked over to a bronze statue of a little girl out front.

“Behold!” she said with a sweep of her arm. “The site of the first Girl Scout cookie sale!”

The statue was of a Girl Scout, with her sash covered in merit badges, and three fingers raised. There were four boxes of Girl Scout cookies at her feet. Mrs. McDonald pulled out her camera to shoot photos for
Amazing but True
. A few people ducked out of the way to avoid getting into the shot.

“Oh man!” Coke whined. “We drove all the way over here to see
this
?”

“Today is
Mom's
day,” his father whispered, pulling him to the side. “So we're going to do whatever Mom wants to do. No complaining, understand?”

Mrs. McDonald explained that just five years after Juliette Gordon Low started Girl Scouting in 1912, the first Girl Scout cookies were sold in Muskogee, Oklahoma. The Mistletoe Troop baked the cookies themselves, and the profits were used to send gifts to American soldiers fighting in World War I.

The family had only been looking at the statue for a few minutes when Mrs. McDonald abruptly announced it was time to “blow this pop stand.”

Following her, the family hopped in the car and drove sixty-eight miles, mainly on I-40 West, to the town of Okemah. It took about an hour. A mile off the exit, Mrs. McDonald directed them to Highland Cemetery. After a few minutes of searching, she found what she was looking for.

“Behold!” she said grandly.

“What is this?”

It was an ordinary-looking tombstone of a woman named Barbara Sue Manire. But right next to it, sticking out of the granite, was something you wouldn't expect to see in a cemetery—a parking meter.

On the meter were the words: 64
YEAR TIME LIMIT
.
TIME EXPIRED
.

“She died on her sixty-fourth birthday,” Mrs. McDonald said solemnly. “Her time ran out.”

“The parking meter was invented right here in Oklahoma, y'know,” Coke said. “A guy named Carl Magee patented it in Oklahoma City, in 1935.”

“Only a true dork would know that,” Pep said.

“Don't call your brother a dork,” her father warned.

“Okay, let's get out of here,” Mrs. McDonald said, putting away her camera.

“Can we go someplace for lunch now?” Coke asked when they were back in the car. “I'm starved.”

“Have a sandwich,” she said, flipping two into the backseat. “No time for stops today. Hit the gas, Ben!”

Heading west, it took less than an hour to reach the famous Route 66. When they saw the sign, Dr. and
Mrs. McDonald broke into song again, warbling the classic “(Get Your Kicks on) Route 66.”

YouTube it. Dozens of people have recorded this song. I recommend the Nat King Cole version.

Before the interstate highway system was built, Route 66 was the longest road in America, and was called “the Mother Road.” Just two lanes, it stretched 2,500 miles, all the way from Chicago to Los Angeles.

Mrs. McDonald directed them along Route 66 to what looked like an old gas station in the tiny town of Warwick. It
was
a gas station a long time ago. Today, it's the Seaba Station Motorcycle Museum.

“Choppers are cool!” Coke said as he rushed inside.

The museum has more than sixty vintage motorcycles dating back to 1908, as well as racing uniforms,
magazines, posters, parts, tools, toys, signs, and an Evel Knievel pinball machine. But almost as soon as they walked in the door, Mrs. McDonald was hurrying the family out again.

“Let's go! Let's go!” she shouted. “You've seen one motorcycle, you've seen 'em all.”

By this time, Coke and Pep had almost completely forgotten that for much of this trip, a team of psychos had been trying to kill them.

Only nineteen miles west of the motorcycle museum, they came to
another
old gas station along Route 66, in the picturesque town of Arcadia. This one still pumps gas, but it is also a convenience store and restaurant called Pops. Standing in front of it is “Bubbles”—the world's largest pop bottle.

“It is . . .
huge
!” Mrs. McDonald said as she reached for her camera.

The bottle is sixty-six feet tall. (That is, if you include the giant straw sticking out the top.) If they had been there at
night, the McDonalds would have seen it glowing.