Boomtown (21 page)

Dominating the center of the room had to be the strangest-looking dinosaur skeleton I'd ever seen. It stood at least ten feet high and about twenty feet long. It had a long neck and tail, a squat body, and a narrow head full of short, rounded teeth. The strangest thing of all were the three legs—two on the sides and one at the front. The brass plaque on the railing said TRIPODOSAURUS.

“A
tripodosaurus
?” I said. “There's no such thing.”

“Of course there is. It's standing right there in front of us.”

“That's not what I meant. I mean there's no such thing as a three-legged dinosaur.”

“This is the only one ever found, as far as I know. It was Chang who discovered this particular specimen accidentally during one of his mining digs. After he found the skeleton, Chang turned it over to my great-grandfather, and he and his team of paleontologists spent years uncovering what became one of the most important finds in recent history.

“The entire western Washington plain used to be home to millions of ancient creatures, including the tripodosaurus, the only dinosaur on record with three legs.”

“But how did it walk?”

“My great-grandfather and his fellow scientists believed it used its head as a fourth leg. Notice the flat forehead bone and the long neck. The tripodosaurus would bend its neck down and shuffle forward using its head.”

“That's ridiculous!”

“Not ridiculous—just
impractical
. With only three legs, the tripodosaurus couldn't move very fast. It would have been a natural target for predators. Not too many of them could have existed. Probably why this is the only one ever found.”

“Is it possible Dr. Losotu made a mistake? Maybe he couldn't find the fourth leg when he dug up the skeleton.”

“Don't be silly,” was Samora's answer. “Who ever heard of a
four-
legged Tripodosaurus?”

Sarah thought that was very funny. While she laughed, we moved along to a glass display case showing various insects and small animals embedded in blobs of amber. There were leaves and beetle-like creatures and other fairly common samples, but then we saw something very unusual.

Ruth asked, “What's
that
? It looks like a grasshopper, except for the horn sticking out of its head that looks like a screw.”

“That's another animal you probably won't see anyplace else. My great-grandfather gave it the Latin name
torqueo
orthoptera
. In English, it's called the screwhopper. The perfect name for it, if Mfana was right.

“He believed the screwhopper fed on the water and nutrients found in the stalks of sap-producing plants. It would hop over to a plant, grab hold of the stalk with its strong front claws and then use its hard, screw horn to gouge a hole in the stalk. Then it would eat the sap as it oozed through the hole. Of course it's only an educated guess, since this is the only one of its kind ever found.”

We stopped to look at the three-dimensional map. It had little stickpin flags showing where some of the more important dinosaurs and fossils had been found. One of the flags was red—that's where the tripodosaurus had been discovered. One of the flags was blue with a yellow star on it.

“What was found there?”

“Come over here and I'll show you.” Samora guided us to a glass case that hung on the wall. Inside was the skeleton of what looked like a kite. In the center of the delicate wing structure was the small skeleton that looked almost batlike in its appearance. Next to this was an artist's conceptual drawing of what the “bird” might have looked like. The stretched skin of the wings looked like a dragon's. When they were fully extended, the creature looked like a kite made out of greenish-gray leather.

“This is the
milvus vespertilionid
, or, in English, the batkite. The only three complete skeletons found in the entire world are owned by this museum. The other two are on loan to the Harvard Museum of Natural History and the University of Oslo in Norway.

Sarah said, “It looks just like a kite—without the string.”

“That's right. When the wings are folded in, the bat-kite looks like a closed umbrella, with its small body at the top and the wings extended down toward the back. But in a strong wind, the batkite would rotate its ‘arms' forward. The wind would snatch it up into the air like a kite. It sailed back and forth and caught flying insects for food. When the wind stopped blowing, it would land on the ground or in a tree.”

After we finished looking at the dinosaur exhibit, Jonny was allowed to pull the INVENTIONS knob. The displays and cabinets descended into the floor and disappeared into the walls only to be replaced with more displays and cabinets. With a whir and a hum and hiss, we watched the inventions exhibit ascend into place. This time some of the ceiling panels retracted, and several flying machines dropped into the room from above.

Samora pointed up. “You know that the Wright Brothers accomplished the first manned flight on December 17, 1903, at Kitty Hawk. That was more than forty years ago. What few people know is that my great-grandfather was experimenting with flight here in Boomtown as early as 1895. He wasn't quite as successful as the Wrights.”

“That one looks like a bathtub with wings,” Jonny said, looking up.

“It
is
a bathtub—the wooden one from the old bath-house here on the property. My great-grandfather added the wood and canvas wings. He mounted a seat inside the bathtub and then installed the gears and pedals from a bicycle and put tires on the side so it would roll. When he was finished, he built a launching ramp and drove it over the side of Rocket Ridge. His wife found him at the bottom of the cliff crashed into the top of a tree. It took four months for his broken leg and arm to heal. She was so upset that she didn't talk to him for a month.

“That didn't stop him, though. He tried a few more designs, but none of them worked. His last attempt is hanging up over there.”

She indicated a T-shaped frame with puffy wings on the sides and a propeller in the back. It looked like the pilot would lie down in the middle with his face forward. From that position, he controlled the flaps on the wings and tail and pedaled the mechanism that turned the propeller.

“Mfana thought his earlier designs were too heavy, so he came up with this new idea. You see the baggy balloons in the wings? Those were filled with helium. It was supposed to make the entire airplane lighter than air.”

“What happened?”

“It was
lighter
all right! The airplane went
up
, but it didn't come
down
! Not for a whole week anyway. He nearly starved before enough of the helium finally escaped. He landed about three hundred miles southeast from here—in Horseshoe Bend, Idaho. He's considered a bit of a folk hero down there. But when he got back home, my great-grandmother made him sleep out in the barn. He promised to stop after that.”

Along the walls were examples of preliminary and final drawings for some of Dr. Losotu's more famous inventions. “Many of these were done in partnership with Chang,” Samora explained, “such as the Ding-Dong-So-Long, the Hotcakes, and the Drain Gun. There were also some other inventions that hadn't worked so well. Two of them were the Rocket Shoes and the Shower Bed.”

“What can you tell us about these?” Janice asked.

Our guide laughed. “My great-grandfather was always looking for fun ways to use steam power or to make mundane household chores automatic. These were two of his less-than-successful attempts. As you can see from that photograph, the Rocket Shoes had a frame with four small wheels that could be attached and adjusted to fit an average man's shoes. A tank of highly compressed air was strapped to the person's back and tubes ran from the tank to each of the shoes. When the person was ready to go, he pulled on a starter cord. That released the compressed air and propelled the person forward.”

“That sounds like fun!”

“It
would
have been fun if it worked. Unfortunately, the wearer would usually flip upside down. His shoes would fly off and land as far as a mile or two down the road. One set of shoes flew across the river and kicked a boat around until it sank! Another pair zoomed down the road and crushed one of our berry fields into grape juice! It was a real mess.

“Mfana had to give up on the idea when a third pair got loose and ran around town for about thirty minutes. They broke into the town hall, chased the mayor up the stairs, and finally ran out of steam, but not before they'd kicked the mayor over his desk.”

“Sound like the Rocket Shoes were a problem from the very start,” I said.

“Not as bad as the Shower Bed. It worked most of the time—with one small problem. Probably why Mfana couldn't find anyone who was willing to use it.”

“What did it do?” Ruth wanted to know, staring at the drawing.

“As you can see, it was a single bed with a tub underneath and surrounded by a waterproof roof and curtain. A person would lie down on the bed, set the alarm, and go to sleep. When the alarm went off, an agitator pulled the blankets and sheets off the bed and down into the tub. The sprayer turned on and the sleeper got a morning wake-up shower—and his pajamas, blankets, and sheets got washed all in one operation.”

“Who'd want to wake up like that?” I tried to imagine waking up in the shower wearing wet pajamas.

Samora chuckled. “The real problem was when a per-son's pajamas got caught in the sheets and he got pulled down into the tub. A small flaw in the design.”

Jonny laughed. “We ought to get one of these for Ruth. She has trouble getting up in the morning.”

“Very funny,” Ruth mumbled, punching Jonny in the shoulder.

Samora continued “Come over here to the center of the room. This is something my great-grandfather invented that
everyone
loves.”

She took us over to a flat platform covered in what appeared to be a deflated hot-air balloon or parachute. She bent over and flipped a switch. We could hear the sound of air being pumped and we watched as the balloon began to inflate. As it filled it took on a square shape, like a huge slice of bread, about ten feet square and two feet thick. It quickly rose into the air, trailing ropes underneath.

“Even though the helium-filled wings of the airplane were a failure, my grandfather's one-week trip to Idaho gave him plenty of time to think. Without food or water or a bed to sleep on, he thought how nice it would be to f loat up in the sky, carrying some basic provisions, with a means to descend at will. That's when he came up with the idea for the Sky Camper. Jonny, hurry up and climb in!”

Jonny scrambled over the edge of the platform and through the door of the camper. Soon the flat balloon rose up to the ceiling, taking Jonny and the expandable room with it. The sleeping area of the camper had been hidden underneath, but was now fully expanded. It was complete with small, net-covered windows and a helium-filled floor. A tether hung down through a hole in the floor and was anchored firmly to the platform.

“The camper is able to hold one average-sized person and enough supplies for one overnight stay. The balloon and helium tanks are portable, so you can travel out to a remote location, fill the balloon, climb aboard, and enjoy an evening aloft. You see the tether coming through the floor from inside? Pull on the tether when you want to descend; release it to return aloft. The windows zip down so you can look out. The balloon acts as a roof to keep you dry in case it rains. It even comes with a battery-powered lantern so you can read at night. Until you've spent an evening camping out in the sky, you haven't been camping!”

Jonny looked down at us from above. “Dad! We've got to
buy
one of these!”

The drifting Sky Camper made me feel queasy. “What happens when it gets windy?”

Samora answered, “That's when it
really
gets exciting!”

“I can only imagine.” I shuddered at the thought.

The kids were delighted with the invention and took turns in the floating Sky Camper. But there was still so much to see. Nearby was a long glass case with four strange objects inside. The first one was a dome-shaped box, with latches on the side, a round opening at one end, and a fan unit on top. Samora pulled the deflate cord on the Sky Camper and came over and joined us.