Never Say Genius (11 page)

“This is
it
?” Dr. McDonald asked as he walked up to the egg, somewhat disappointed.

“What do you mean, Ben?” the easily impressed Mrs. McDonald enthused. “This is
amazing
! How many people can say they saw the largest egg in the world in person?”

Dr. McDonald shook his head and went back to wait for the rest of the family in the RV.

“It’s really not that big, Mom,” Pep said. “And it’s not even an egg. It’s an egg-shaped object.”

“I don’t think this egg is as big as the world’s largest ball of twine,” Coke noted.

“You’re comparing apples and oranges,” Mrs. McDonald told him.

“No I’m not,” Coke said. “I’m comparing balls of twine and fake eggs. If you want me to compare the world’s largest apple and the world’s largest orange…”

Mrs. McDonald ignored him, taking some photos and notes for her website.

“It’s probably bigger than that hairball you told us about,” Pep guessed, hoping to make her mother feel like it hadn’t been a wasted trip.

“I can’t believe we passed up the world’s largest toilet bowl to see
this
,” Coke complained. “Let’s blow this pop stand.”

So they did. There’s only so much time you can spend looking at a gigantic concrete egg.

“What’s next, Mom?” asked Pep as they drove out of Mentone.

“Oh, you’re going to like
this”
, she replied mysteriously.

Thirty miles directly south of Mentone, on the banks of the Wabash River, is the town of Peru, Indiana. Peru is called the “Circus Capital of the World,” because it used to be the winter home of Ringling Brothers and other circuses. But the McDonald family didn’t come to Peru to see lions or tigers or bears.

They came to see a pair of pants. “Do you kids remember a couple of days ago, when Dad and I went to that shoe store in Illinois to see the shoes of the tallest man in the world?” Mrs. McDonald asked as they turned onto North Broadway in Peru.

“Yeah.”

“Well, his pants are here.”

Coke and Pep looked at each other as their dad pulled into the parking lot at Miami County Museum.

“We came here to see a pair of
pants
?” Coke asked. “You gotta be kidding me.”

“Well, they’re overalls actually,” Mrs. McDonald replied.

They went inside the museum and looked all over for an extremely large pair of overalls.

“Hey, check this out,” Coke said as he spotted a giant skull. “Maybe this is that guy’s head.”

In fact, the skull was labeled “Big Charley the Killer Elephant.” Apparently, Big Charley was a circus elephant that got mad at his trainer one day in 1901 and drowned him. So Big Charley was shot, and his skull was put in the museum. The bullet holes were plainly visible.

“That’s gross,” Pep said, with obvious fascination.

Mrs. McDonald took some photos and notes for
Amazing but True
. But not far from the giant skull, she found what she was looking for.

“Feast your eyes,” she told the family, “and behold … the pants … of the tallest man in the world!”

There they were. The pants belonged to Robert Wadlow, the Illinois man whose body produced too much growth hormone. When he was thirteen years old, the sign on the wall said, he was seven feet four inches tall. At age twenty-two, he was eight feet eleven inches tall.

“Those are some
big
pants,” Dr. McDonald admitted. “That guy must have been some basketball player,” Coke marveled.

“Actually, he could barely stand up,” Mrs. McDonald said. “He died when he was just twenty-two, in 1940.”

“That’s sad,” Pep said quietly.

“Okay, can we get out of here now?” asked Coke. “This place is creepy.”

Mrs. McDonald insisted on stopping in the gift shop before leaving. She gave each of the kids money to get a souvenir. Pep bought a book about circus animals, and Coke bought a can of Silly String.

By the time the McDonalds got out of the museum, it was afternoon. They still had a long way to go to get through Indiana. So it was quick ham and cheese sandwiches in the RV and back on the road, heading east along Route 24 thirty-five miles to the town of Huntington. That’s where they saw this sign:

“No!” Coke hollered from the back. “Not another museum!”

“Do we have to go?” asked Pep. “I never even heard of Dan Quayle.”

“Calm down,” Dr. McDonald told the kids. “We’re not taking you to another museum.”

Instead, he pulled into the Tel-Hy Nature Preserve. The kids assumed they would be observing nature, but Dr. McDonald drove down the road a bit until he stopped in front of a row of little shacks.

“It’s
amazing
!” said Mrs. McDonald.

“I give up,” Coke said. “What is it?”

“Back in 1960,” Mrs. McDonald informed them, “a couple named Hy and Lorry Goldenberg bought an outhouse for three dollars. They liked it so much that they started collecting outhouses. When Hy died, Lorry donated seventeen of them here. It’s probably the largest collection of outhouses in the world!”

“It’s also probably the
only
collection of outhouses in the world,” Dr. McDonald commented.

The outhouses were lined up in a row, and the family examined most of them. One of them seated three people at a time, which must have been interesting. Mrs. McDonald took photos and notes.

“Fascinating,” said Dr. McDonald. “Let’s get out of here.”

The grave site of Johnny Appleseed was only thirty miles away near Fort Wayne, but Mrs. McDonald decided to skip it, because there is some dispute over where Mr. Appleseed is actually buried. Instead, they headed north on Route 3 to Kendallville, home of the Mid-America Windmill Museum.

“No!” Coke screamed. “Not another museum! I’ll
die
if I have to visit another museum.”

“Someday,” Dr. McDonald lectured him, “wind power, solar power, and other forms of renewable energy will replace coal, oil, and gas. You kids should learn about this stuff.”

Dr. McDonald had a special interest in the subject, having authored
The Impact of Coal on the Industrial Revolution
.

“Can’t Pep and I just stay in the RV?” Coke begged.

“Fine!” Dr. McDonald said.

By the way, anytime someone says a sentence that consists of just the word “fine,” they mean the exact opposite of fine. The situation is
not
fine, and they are not happy about it.

Mrs. McDonald insisted on locking the doors of the RV, just to be on the safe side.

“Don’t worry about us, Mom,” Coke said. “We can take care of ourselves.”

The grown-ups went off to tour the windmill museum. Coke listened to his iPod, while Pep worked on a crossword puzzle. After about fifteen minutes, she suddenly looked up.

“I have a bad feeling,” she said.

Coke took off one earbud so he could hear her.

“What?”

“Somebody’s out there,” Pep told him. “I have a feeling.”

They both looked out the windows. Nobody was around. It was just a parking lot, and there were no other vehicles in it.

“It’s nothing,” Coke told his sister. “You’re paranoid.”

But in fact it wasn’t nothing, because ten minutes later a black pickup truck pulled into the parking lot and stopped about twenty yards away. A man wearing a baseball cap got out.

“Look!” Pep shouted.

The twins got out of their seats and crept to the window, keeping their heads low.

“Is it Archie Clone?” Coke asked.

“No,” Pep replied, “and it’s not one of the bowler dudes either. This guy is too big. I’ve never seen him before.”

The guy in the baseball cap rooted around in the back of his truck for about five minutes, like he was trying to find something. Then he pulled something out.

A chain saw.

“He’s got a
chain saw
!” Coke yelled, grabbing his sister.

“So what?”

“Didn’t you ever see
The Texas Chain Saw Massacre
?” Coke said. “A lunatic named Leatherface murders a bunch of people with a chain saw!”

“Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!” both twins screamed.

The guy with the chain saw was walking slowly toward the RV.

“Help! Help!” Pep shouted. “What are we gonna do?”

“We’re gonna die!” moaned Coke. “He’s gonna tear our limbs off!”

The guy with the chain saw was getting closer.

And closer.

“This is it,” Pep said, sobbing uncontrollably. “We’re trapped in here. There’s no way out!”

“It’s all over,” Coke said, trying his best not to break down. “I never thought it would end this way. Oh no, he’s almost here! Here he comes!”

And then the guy with the chain saw walked past the RV without stopping. He opened the door to a shed on the side of the museum and went inside.

Coke and Pep collapsed on the floor of the RV, panting and sweating.

“I guess he’s going to cut down a tree,” Pep said.

“Yeah, probably.”

A few minutes later, their parents came out of the windmill museum.

“Oh, you kids missed a good time,” Mrs. McDonald said. “We learned all about windmills.”