by Eric Bower
Titles in The Bizarre Baron Inventions
The Magnificent Flying Baron Estate
The Splendid Baron Submarine
The Wonderful Baron Doppelgänger Device
The Tremendous Baron Time Machine
Praise for
The Magnificent Flying Baron Estate
“Kids will want to come along for this action-packed flight as Waldo defines his true character and learns how to be his best self.”
—Story Monsters Ink
“The Magnificent Flying Baron Estate is an enjoyable old-school Western with a contemporary feel . . . kids aged 9–12 are bound to enjoy this topsy-turvy tale with its funny moments of slapstick comedy.”
—The Children’s Book Review
Praise for
The Splendid Baron Submarine
“Delightfully absurd, imaginative, and fun, W. B.’s adventures will make for great read-aloud fare.”
—Foreword Reviews, Starred Review
“Fans of the first book will be eager to read this sequel.”
—School Library Journal
Amberjack Publishing
1472 E. Iron Eagle Dr.
Eagle, Idaho 83616
http://amberjackpublishing.com
This book is a work of fiction. Any references to real places are used fictitiously. Names, characters, fictitious places, and events are the products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, places, or events is purely coincidental.
Copyright © 2018 by Eric Bower
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book, in part or in whole, in any form whatsoever without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.
Publisher’s Cataloging-in-Publication data
Names: Bower, Eric, author.
Title: The tremendous Baron time machine / by Eric Bower.
Description: New York ; Idaho : Amberjack Publishing, [2018] | Series: Bizarre Baron Inventions; 4 | Summary: After W.B. discovers a popular series of books that depict the Barons as bumbling fools, ruining their reputation and leaving them without an income, P invents a time machine so W.B. can set things right.
Identifiers: LCCN 2018002156 (print) | LCCN 2018009347 (ebook) | ISBN 9781944995775 (eBook) | ISBN 9781944995782 (hardcover : alk. paper) Subjects: | CYAC: Time travel--Fiction. | Inventors--Juvenile fiction. | Family life--Fiction. | Humorous stories.
Classification: LCC PZ7.1.B685 (ebook) | LCC PZ7.1.B685 Tr 2018 (print) | DDC
[Fic]--dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018002156
Cover Design & Illustrations: Agnieszka Grochalska
Printed in the United States of America
For Laura. For everything.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
CHAPTER 1: He Gets His Hair Cut by Angry Squirrels
CHAPTER 2: Like a Sneeze in the Wind
CHAPTER 3: Seriously, No One Has a Mint?
CHAPTER 4: Something Went Boing!
CHAPTER 5: My Mother Had Always Looked Like a Muffin Hadn’t She?
CHAPTER 6: I Really Hate Not Existing
CHAPTER 7: Like a Hot Knife Through Butter
CHAPTER 8: The Grand Canyon Was No Longer Filled to the Brim with Water
CHAPTER 9: What a Dope
CHAPTER 10: It Was Because of Squirrels
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS: No Man Is an Island
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: If Found, Call for Reward
ABOUT THE ILLUSTRATOR: Bringing Words to Life
HE GETS HIS HAIR CUT BY ANGRY SQUIRRELS
JANUARY 9TH, 1892
Icouldn’t believe my eyes. Neither could Mr. Cooks, the owner of the Pitchfork bookstore. “Hey, kid!” he called to me from inside. “Get your eyeballs off my display window! They’re smudging up the glass!”
“Sorry.”
I ripped my eyes from the display window before flinging open the door and rushing inside the bookstore. “Where’s the latest Sheriff Hoyt Graham adventure novel?” I demanded, pointing to the empty space on the shelf where the Sheriff Hoyt Graham adventure novels could usually be found. “The new shipment was supposed to come in today!”
I guess you could say that I’m a bit of a bookworm— though I wish people would have asked my opinion before they came up with that nickname for readers who really love books. If they had asked me, I would have voted for us to be called “book dragons,” or “book wolverines,” or even “book anteaters,” anything other than worms. I have very little in common with worms. Worms are gross. They crawl around in mud, they ruin apples by making them mushy, and you can’t tell their heads from their backsides.
Only one of those things is true about me.
Anyway, I’m what you might call a bit of a “book wolverine,” so I take my reading very seriously. For the past few years, my favorite books have been novels about the adventures of Sheriff Hoyt Graham, the bravest, smartest, strongest, and most heroic sheriff in history.
The books are loosely based on a real sheriff named Sheriff Hoyt Graham, who is the sheriff here in the Wild West town of Pitchfork, Arizona Territory. The real Sheriff Graham was a nice old man, but he wasn’t much of a law officer. He never stopped robberies, or caught bandits, or won gunfights. And he wasn’t particularly strong.
In fact, he was so weak that he often needed help bringing his soup spoon to his mouth if the spoon held anything heavier than a pea. And as far as intelligence was concerned, it was fair to say that he wasn’t the shiniest fork in the sink, if you know what I mean. There was a family of skunks living under his house that frequently outsmarted him. It wasn’t unusual here in Pitchfork to see a family of skunks run down Main Street, dressed in a law officer’s clothing, with a furious Sheriff Hoyt Graham dressed in his holey long johns running after them while shaking his tiny fist.
But other than that, Sheriff Graham was practically identical to the sheriff in the books.
Mr. Cooks rolled his eyes and snorted at me, as though I had just said the daftest thing he’d ever heard.
“Sheriff Hoyt Graham books?” he asked snidely. “Nobody reads those anymore, kid. Those books are duller than ice water soup.” He reached behind the counter and picked up a large box of books, which he emptied onto the countertop. “This is what everyone is reading nowadays. You’re lucky I just got a new shipment in this morning. They’ve been selling out every day.”
I looked at the cover of one of the books, and for the second time that morning, I couldn’t believe my eyes.
I gasped in shock, though to tell you the truth, I’m not a very good gasper, so the noise that came out of my mouth just sounded like a normal breath. Since I couldn’t properly express my surprise through gasping, I had to do the opposite of a gasp, which, after a moment of thought, I decided was a sneeze.
I sneezed in shock.
“If you sneeze on a book, then that means you’ve bought it,” Mr. Cooks warned. “These books are more popular than those silly sheriff stories ever were. And they’re much more entertaining. I nearly busted a gut reading the last one!”
He picked up one of the books and handed it to me. I slowly read the title on the cover out loud.
“The Hilarious Mis-Adventures of the Ridiculous Baron Family.”
The cover illustration showed a wild haired inventor with crazy eyes, along with his stern and serious looking inventor wife. There was also an evil cowgirl carrying a gun, and a chubby little boy dressed in a fool’s costume.
All four of them were hanging from the balcony of
a vaguely familiar flying home, which puttered across the sky in the middle of a wacky race around the country.
Mr. Cooks looked from my face, to the cover of the book, and then back to my face again.
“Say,” he said as he scratched his chin, “you and the chubby fool on the cover look like you could be twins!”
There’s a very good reason why the fool on the cover and I looked identical to one another—except, of course, for the fool’s costume. Although, come to think of it, I did used to own a pair of pajamas that looked a bit like that costume, due to the multicolored patches that were sewn all over it. And the jingly bells sewn into the neckline. And then there was the rather unfortunate sleeping hat (which was also adorned with several jingly bells, and had the word “FOOL” stitched across the front).
The drawing of the fool on the cover of the book was actually a drawing of me. The family on the cover was my family. We are the ridiculous Baron family. Though we prefer just to be called the Baron family.
Let me try to explain this as quickly as I can . . .
My name is Waldo Baron, but since I’d rather be shot out of a cannon and into a briar patch than hear anyone call me that, I prefer to go by the name W. B. I’m eleven years old. My parents, Sharon and McLaron Baron (whom I call M and P, instead of Ma and Pa), are two of the cleverest inventors who have ever lived. In the past year, they’ve invented a winged flying machine, a Shrinking Machine, a Bigging Machine, a coal powered submarine, a rocket, and a device that can transform you into someone else with the simple press of a button. They also transformed our home into a giant flying machine, which we used to participate in a race around the country. We didn’t win the race, but we still had a marvelous time.
My parents have invented many other fantastic things as well, but unfortunately, I can’t really remember any of those inventions right now. Sorry. And in case you’re wondering, I have no idea how any of my parents’ inventions work, so please don’t ask me to explain them to you. I know even less about science and mathematics than I know about . . . actually, I can’t think of anything I know less about than science and mathematics. Maybe Japanese tea ceremonies. But that’s about it.
We live in a large house on the outskirts of Pitchfork, and our property is called the Baron Estate. Also living with us at the Baron Estate is my parents’ trusty assistant, a woman by the name of Rose Blackwood. Rose is a former villain (who once tried to kidnap my family), and her older brother is Benedict Blackwood, who is the worst criminal in the world. But Rose was never really evil to begin with, even when she was trying to be a villain. She was probably the politest kidnapper you could imagine—always apologizing whenever she had to threaten our lives. My parents hired her to be their assistant, a job she absolutely loves. And she’s quite good at it too. Rose is engaged to Deputy Buddy Graham, who is Sheriff Hoyt Graham’s son. Their wedding is in a couple of weeks, and everyone is really excited about it.
There’s another person who lives with us in the Baron Estate, but I’m currently quite mad at her, so I won’t mention her by name unless I absolutely must.
Because of my parents’ inventions and experiments, we’ve had a lot of wild adventures. Those adventures are pretty well known to most of the people in Arizona Territory. In fact, I’ve heard that our adventures are pretty well known to people all over the country. I’ve never thought of us as national heroes or anything (though we did find a lost treasure a few months ago, and returned it to its rightful owners instead of keeping it for ourselves), but I’ve certainly never considered us to be a national joke.
Which is how we all looked on the cover of these new adventure books. Like a big, fat joke.
“Wait a minute,” Mr. Cooks said as he snapped his fingers. “Your last name is Baron, too, isn’t it? And your parents are both inventors. Zow-wee! These books are about you, kid! Hah!”
There were several other people in the bookstore who looked over at me. Each one of them had the new Baron book in their hands. They looked from the book cover, to my face, and then back to the book cover again. Then, after looking at the cover and my face a few more times to be certain (people aren’t very clever here in Pitchfork), they started to laugh.
“He’s right! It is about the Baron family!” hooted one of them.
“Look, they even got little Waldo’s funny haircut right on the cover!” another one jeered.
I looked in the window and stared at my reflection. Why did people always make comments about my haircut? Had they not noticed my father’s hair? P had a terrible habit of being struck by lightning, and every time it happened, his hair turned a shade whiter and stood up in porcupine spikes. Because of that, he had the most ridiculous hairstyle this side of the Mississippi. And yet people always made fun of mine. Why? Why I ask you?
As several new people poured into the bookstore, people like Miss Danielle (my school teacher), Mr. Thorn-berry (the mayor of Pitchfork), Mr. Dadant (the town beekeeper), Mrs. Pyramus (the town weaver), and Madge Tweetie (one of my least favorite people in town, who also happened to be the best friend of . . . the person I’m refusing to mention), they each grabbed copies of the latest Baron book.
Mr. Cooks was right. The Baron books were clearly the most popular books in the shop. They were selling like two cent hotcakes with a free side of bacon.
. . .
. . .
. . . I’m sorry, I just distracted myself for a moment with thoughts of bacon. Back to the story.
“I can’t believe we never knew how funny the Barons were!” Mrs. Pyramus exclaimed as she started the first chapter.
“Wait until you get to the part about little Waldo losing his pants while hanging out of his bedroom window!” Mr. Cooks chortled.
“Hey, I lost my pants while I was hanging out of my aunt’s bedroom window!” I angrily corrected him. But no one bothered to listen to me.
They were all too busy laughing.
“What a load of gullyfluff !” Madge Tweetie hooted, laughing so hard that she dropped her book and nearly toppled over. “The Barons are a bunch of bull-goose fools! I always knew they were goofy, but I didn’t know they were actual buffoons!”
I knew for a fact that Madge Tweetie often misspelled her own name, and yet she was calling us buffoons? Sure, my family and I would occasionally have little missteps during our adventures. Sometimes things wouldn’t go exactly as planned. But we had still done some pretty impressive things, things that no one else in the world could do. It made me angry that these people would dismiss us as fools. After all, my parents were two of the most brilliant inventors who had ever lived! And Rose Blackwood was also quite clever and remarkably brave! And
I . . . well . . . my haircut wasn’t that bad! But that didn’t stop the people from mocking us.
“He sure does fall down and hit his head a lot in this book,” commented Mr. Dadant as he glanced at me with a frown. “I’m amazed that Waldo hasn’t suffered any permanent brain damage.”
“We don’t know for certain that he hasn’t,” my teacher Miss Danielle muttered, turning a page in her book.
“Hah! At the end of this chapter, Waldo is almost crushed by wild pigs!” Mrs. Pyramus cried out with a giggle.
“What a hilarious story!”
“Has McLaron Baron really been struck by lightning over twenty times?”
“Rose Blackwood was seriously fooled into believing that Waldo was his own aunt, just because he dressed up in one of her frilly nightgowns?”
“The Barons actually have a family happy dance that they do when they’re excited? How odd!”
“They really are ridiculous, aren’t they?”
“I can’t believe I used to admire them!”
“I can’t believe I used to be impressed with their inventions and adventures.”
“I can’t believe I used to tell my children to study hard in school, so they could be like the Barons when they grew up. Who would want to be like them?”
&nbs
p; “I was never impressed by the Barons. In fact, they deserve to have a ridiculous book written about them. Only foozlers, dalcops, scobberlotchers, dew-beaters, and vulgar nincompoops appear in books!” Madge Tweetie declared, as she turned another page with a frown on her face. “Well, how do you like this? My stupid best friend is one of the main characters in this book, and she hasn’t even mentioned me once . . .”
Soon, the entire book store was filled with nasty laughter, laughter directed at me and my parents and Rose Blackwood. With my cheeks burning bright red from shame, I reached into my pocket, and dropped a few cents onto Mr. Cooks’s counter. I grabbed my copy of The Hilarious Mis-Adventures of the Ridiculous Baron Family, and ran out of the store as quickly as I could.
I paused to catch my breath. My heart was thundering, my legs ached, my throat burned, my lungs felt like they were deflating, and my spleen felt a little swimmy.
I’d been running for about six seconds.
Alright, I’m not what you would call a “runner.” Or a “jogger.” Or even a “fast walker.” I’m more of a “sitter,” and a “lay-downer,” and a “hides-in-the-closet-so-I-won’t-be-forced-to-go-anywhere-or-do-anything-er.” My body doesn’t enjoy running, and since upsetting my body usually leads to my body upsetting me right back, I don’t often push it.
When I had finally caught my breath, I gingerly walked the rest of the way across our dusty, little western town then down the long and winding road running through the Pitchfork Desert. It was the only road leading to the Baron Estate.
The Baron Estate is the only home I’ve ever known, and I can’t imagine growing up in a better place. Sure, we’re all alone in the middle of a dry and quiet desert with no neighbors around us for miles—except for the coyotes, snakes, lizards, vultures, and scorpions, all of whom are a lot less friendly than you might think. But M is an ingenious chemist who used her talent for mixing things in beakers to come up with a special, secret chemical that allows us to grow a lush and lovely garden in the middle of the desert. Even though the land surrounding us is dead and dry, our property is covered with green grass, lovely flowers, and fruit trees all year long. Our property is always much greener than the rest of Pitchfork, which I suppose has made the townspeople resent us a bit. Whenever we go into town, they all start bragging about their dirt farms, and telling us how no one with any brains bothers to eat gross things like oranges and cherries anymore.