Read Eureka for Free Online Page A

idiot city councilman who had tried a few years back—unsuccessfully, thank God—to add an exclamation point to the official name of this Eureka, thus making Eureka!, Kansas, the only city or town in America—maybe the world—with an exclamation point in addition to a comma between its name and its state.
    “What about Archimedes? Do you know a lot about Archimedes?” Tonganoxie asked.
    Otis shook his head. He didn’t know a lot about Archimedes.
    “Well, sir, as an important citizen of this Eureka, you must surely know that Archimedes was a Sicilian-born Greek mathematician who coined that word, ‘eureka,’ in about the year 230 B.C. He said it after discovering for the king how much of the crown was pure gold. ‘Eureka!’ he yelled. ‘Eureka! Eureka! I found it! I found it!’ Meaning he had found the answer—”
    Tonganoxie stopped talking. And when he resumed a few secondslater, he said, “All right, all right. Let’s get on with trying to determine if you’re sick or simply a guy hit by a routine run-of-the-mill bout of Motorcycle Syndrome.”
    “Motor
scooter,”
Otis said. “I bought a Cushman motor scooter, not a motorcycle.”
    “That’s too bad. There’s a lot in the neurosis literature already on men in their fifties, sixties, and seventies buying motorcycles. It’s quite common. As men slow down in real life, they want to do something that speeds them up. Nothing on scooters, though. Scooters—Cushman or any other kind—aren’t known for their speed, are they? I wouldn’t think running away from home on a scooter would work very well. I hope you’re not thinking about doing anything like that. You’d have to stay off the interstates, that’s for sure. The trucks would blow you off the highway. I’m a Jeep man, myself.”
    Otis almost said, “Jeep?” but caught himself before there was engagement.
    Tonganoxie answered as if he had said it anyhow. “My dad was an army officer, and I grew up with a deep and abiding passion for the Jeep, believing it to be the finest motor vehicle ever made. I own four of them now. They range in age from fifty years to fifty days.”
    Otis found that interesting but still resisted a temptation to react, to participate.
    Tonganoxie continued, “Wheels, there’s something about wheels that turns on males. They’re as much a part of our standard equipment as what’s between our legs. They’ve done serious studies about it. UVA did one five years ago with eighty-two kids of all ages—forty-one boys, forty-one girls, of ages two to fourteen. They were put into rooms full of toys and gadgets. The boys, no matter the age, went immediately to the cars and trucks and trains and buses or whatever there was with wheels. Thegirls didn’t. A follow-up study done at Yale using bikes, cars, and pickups with college-age men and women had the same result. And there is good anecdotal evidence that the wheels thing continues right on through to the end of a man’s life.”
    Otis, again, had no reaction. He knew from his own experience about the importance of wheels to little boys and grown men. He didn’t need a shrink or a study to tell him anything else about it.
    “I have my wheels,” said Tonganoxie, moving on, “but I don’t own a toy fire truck or a BB gun. I used to have a baseball batting helmet, but that’s been a while. You’ve got one of those, too, is that right?”
    “It’s a Kansas City
Chiefs football
helmet.”
    “I grew up a Green Bay fan,” said Tonganoxie, tapping his Packers sweatshirt. “I can’t imagine ever rooting for any other team than the Packers.”
    Then it was back to business. Tonganoxie asked Otis to describe that first moment—the Crack Moment, he called it— when Otis had seen the toy fire engine at the antiques show.
    Otis did so in a few words, and Tonganoxie asked, “Did you feel something in you go ‘crack!’?”
    “No,” replied Otis.
    “A hot flash, a feeling of well-being, a sweep of nausea, a tear, a