Chapter 1: The New Kid

It has been three months since the fire. It all started when my uncle Earl was cooking a hamburger and he splattered grease onto the stove, which caught his bolo tie on fire.

When he noticed that he was on fire, he started running around in circles and screaming like a little girl. His tie dropped off onto the carpet and set IT on fire.

Being the smart guy that he is, he then threw gasoline on it thinking it would put the fire out but it exploded instead. (Good thing uncle Earl was only visiting for one day).

Anyway, that's how my house in Oklahoma burned to the ground and pretty much the reason why we had to move to Philadelphia to live with my Grandpa.

I didn't like Philadelphia at all at first. It was cold. It was big. It smelled like rotten scrambled eggs and moldy blue cheese. I don't know if you ever smelled that but it would curl your hair. Anyway, it was sort of hard being a new fifth grader at Benjamin Franklin Elementary School when all I had ever known was good old Oklahoma.

My first day of school didn't go so well but it was also the best day of my life. Let me explain. School was okay, if you like frog livers for school lunch, and teachers with hair growing out of their nose. I thought of telling Mr. Bob that he could braid his nose hair, but then decided it wouldn't be such a good idea on day one.

Then after school, I was walking across the schoolyard wearing my favorite Oklahoma football jersey and three idiots stopped me for no reason. They started playing pinball using me as the ball! They were also saying mean things which I cannot repeat because this book is rated PG. (Results may vary. May include some tense moments. Batteries not included. See back for details. No peeking. I SAW YOU PEEK, MISTER! Void in Indiana and the District of Columbia).

Just when I thought they were going to use my head to play soccer, my day suddenly got better. Emma Lincoln showed up. Emma was my next-door neighbor only I didn't know it then. She was, by far, the toughest and cutest 5th grader I had ever seen.

Emma had shoulder length, blondish brown hair, green eyes and freckles across her nose that seemed to light up when she scrunched her nose in anger or disgust. This was one of those times. She also had a way with words.

She said "HEY YOU MORONS! Did they cancel your Idiots Club meeting?" The leader of the pinball gang snorted and coughed "Heclachth". She laughed and said, "Nice response Mr. Monkey-brains, why don't you find a house to jump off."

Our friend, Mr. Monkey wasn't the sharpest knife in the drawer – if you know what I mean. He DID know that he had just been insulted and he didn't like it. So he did the only thing he could think of which was to push a girl. Now, my mom taught me to be a gentleman. But my dad, taught to defend myself and others. So, watching banana breath push Emma really made me mad. So I said, "Two things Mr. Not-so-smarty pants, 1) your train of thought has obviously has not left the station, 2) Here's 25 cents, go buy a brain."

At that, the moron goon and his monkey minions skipped off happily to purchase some cerebral material. Emma giggled and started to thank me but she was interrupted by Mr. Monkey who shouted from half way down the block, "Hey, where's the brain store?" We both burst out in uncontrollable laughter and began to run.

See what I mean? The day was getting pretty good. We walked and talked all the way home. When she found out we were neighbors, she got really excited and said, "You mean to tell me, that you live in the George Clymer house"?

I was a little confused because I had never heard of George Clymer. When I told her so, she said, "Where are you from? Don't you know anything?" I wasn't going to answer that after the way she handled the three brainless morons. So I asked her in my best "well, you are going to tell me anyway" voice – who was George Clymer?

She explained, "George Clymer was one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence. He helped to support the Colonial armies during the Revolutionary War. Legend has it, that during the war, he got a visit in the middle of the night from Henry Knox, a gun expert. Knox explained that they had intercepted information that the British were going to transport a shipment of weapons, including several hundred 'Brown Bess' guns right past Philadelphia within the week. Knox and his comrades planned to steal the shipment for the Colonial Army.

They needed someplace to hide the guns until Colonel Anthony Wayne could come get them. Some people think that the guns were hidden in the basement of the Clymer house but nobody has ever been able to find a basement! Knox and his men were supposedly successful in stealing the guns but nobody knows for sure because Wayne never got them and there is no record of them being hidden. The only clue is a coded letter that Knox wrote to Colonel Wayne. But they think that this letter never reached Wayne because a copy of the original was published in an English newspaper 50 years later."

Emma finished speaking just as we walked in front of my house. All I could say was "Wow". Then I thought that I better say something else before I went inside so I muttered, "Uh, thanks for your help with the Pinball gang… I guess I'll see you tomorrow." And I went inside.