There was only one problem. Bob had no money. Bob had no car. Bob didn’t even have a motorcycle. (But he did have a motorcycle jacket for some reason…) And he most certainly did not have any other form of transportation, such as: Jet Ski, boat, plane, catamaran, yacht, commercial jet, or rocket ship. How to get to Velvetta’s house??? Bob paused in his driveway, thought for a moment (this was hard for him.) turned and ran the 10 yards back into his cute little sub-rural lower-upper-middle class farm house. “MOM!!” he screamed. “Can I borrow the car by chance?”  “No way, sweetie. It’s Thursday, you know your dad has to go into town on Thursdays to pick up more feed for the Steve-Cows.” (A very specific breed of cattle for those who aren’t in the ranching business. They’re pink, with green polka dots and say “Boooooorrrraaaaa” instead of moo. Not to mention the fact that when you milk them, it comes out as a cherry limeade…) “Oh. Right.” Bob was let down. His brilliant idea hadn’t worked. Wait! Another thought! “Hey mom, can I borrow the tractor?” Bob ventured. “Well..I guess so dear, but what ever for? You haven’t developed a sudden interest in farming have you? Because your father would be so happy to hear that, he wouldn’t have to leave the farm to your little brother Emmanuel.” 

Bob was at a loss. Should he lie to his mother, follow his dream, and go to Pennsylvania??? Or should he tell her the truth, and hope that she’d still let him use the family’s only tractor??

“Actually..well..I..uh…yeah, sure.” Bob couldn’t believe it. He’d just lied to the woman who gave birth to him. Well, he’d just have to call her the minute he crossed the county line at the south end of their property and tell her exactly what he did. That should be far enough away that they surely wouldn’t come after him.

Bob’s mother handed him the keys to the tractor, and he merrily went on his way, picking up his discarded things on the way to the barn. (And no, he did not whistle a happy tune the whole way.) Bob started up the good old John Deer and chugged off down the fence line. He waved at a few Steve-Cows on his way, and had to chase away a few limeade thieves. (The smart thieves knew that cherry limeades do not taste good right out of the Steve-Cow. The ones Bob chased away should be thankful he came along when he did.)

Bob hopped out of the tractor and propped open the gate to get out onto the service road. He drove right on through like he knew what he was doing, and forgot to close the gate. About 100 feet from the gate he screamed like a girl, jumped out of the tractor (while it was in drive) and ran back to shut the gate. Then, feeling like an idiot, he ran to catch up with the tractor. After a bit of a struggle with the rather floppy door, Bob got back into the cab without sustaining any major injuries. 

Before he knew it, he was in Hickory Pear. (And the only reason he knew this is because he passed the sign for the grade/middle/high school. There was only one school in Hickory Pear. That’s how small the town was.) And that was 35 miles from the county line that was also his property line. (Unknown to most people at the time, the McLugie farm took up the entirety of Dylan Proctor County. Steve-Cows need a lot of room to move.) And he still hadn’t called his mom. But he was making pretty good time. So he figured he could wait and call his mom from Prickly Oak on down the road. He had started pretty early, and farm work takes awhile, so maybe they wouldn’t notice….

But his mom had noticed. There was no hum of the tractor engine coming from the south fields any more, there wasn’t a haze of hay stuff hanging in the air. Something was up. For some reason, Bob had stopped the tractor. She went out to check it out. Bob wasn’t there. Bob was nowhere to be seen. The tractor was nowhere to be seen. And the gate onto South County Line Road (that’s just what the farm family called it, because it made sense. Bob called it “Old Dirt Road” and the official name for it was in fact “Tractor Avenue.”) was slightly ajar. Bob was gone. And he had taken the tractor too. What on earth were they going to do when it was time to make hay? That was three weeks from now. The Steve-Cows would be hungry and they couldn’t be milked. Oh, this was a bad, bad thing. Bob’s mom sighed and went to find Bob’s dad to tell him that his baby was gone. After they cried over the tractor, she told him Bob was gone too, that he had taken the tractor. Bob’s dad got very angry/happy at this. He was happy that Bob had finally left the nest, but angry that he had taken off his pride and joy, that beautiful shiny green John Deer tractor that he bought barely used (the previous owner was a little old lady who only drove it on Sundays.) at an estate auction last summer. But he wanted his tractor back. 

Meanwhile, Bob had passed Prickly Oak, White Nose, North Uptown, and DoNotDrop. He was headed right for ThisEndUp, which was the last town on this side of the Oheyo border. And he still hadn’t called his mom. He was betting she’d be pretty mad by this point, and he was going to put off calling her until tomorrow. He hoped she wouldn’t be as angry-like then. 

It was getting late, like, 8:00 PM, and Bob decided he’d better call it a night before he got too tired to drive. He couldn’t believe he’d gone so far in one day. He’d come the 160 miles to the border, and he’d only started at noon. Amazing! Bob thought it must be some kind of record, to get that far in only 8 hours. He thought he might call the Guinness Book people when he got to Velvetta’s house. Or then again, maybe not. Then his parents would know where he was, and where their precious tractor was. And that probably wouldn’t be such a good thing.  But Bob still really wanted to call them. The Guinness people that is. Not his parents. His parents would kill him. The nice Guinness people would just send out a camera crew and a reporter to interview him. And Bob thought that was much nicer than being dead.

He stopped in a place called SunflowerSeed to refuel the tractor and have some dinner. It was in the state next to Oheyo, West Vir-Gin-Ee-Uh, which was not where Velvetta lived. But it was close. Bob was still in the west. Way in the west actually. He stopped for the night in Pittsburgh.  (Yes, Pittsburgh is in W. Va. Has been ever since the war of 1812 and a half. But we don’t tell the Pittsburgh-ians that.)

And, someone stole his tractor.

Now Bob had no way to get to Velvetta’s house. He was stuck in a state that wasn’t his home, all alone in a really big noisy city, with no wheels. Bob thought this state of affairs frankly sucked, so he called Velvetta and told him the deal. (Yes, I know some of you are probably saying “Why isn’t Bob crying?” “Why isn’t he screaming ‘HOLD ME!!!!’  to Melvin?” Well folks, these events occurred at a time in Bob’s life that he hadn’t met Melvin yet. {But actually, he had. He just didn’t really realize it, and neither did Melvin. It was a weird cosmic thing, okay?} And it was also before the traumatic events that caused Bob to start screaming “HOLD ME!!!!” at anyone, not just Melvin. But that is another story. Anyway.)

Velvetta was surprised to hear from Bob, of course, and didn’t really expect him to be coming so soon after he sent the letter. He realized Bob’s predicament and sent a car to get him. (Yes, Velvetta sent a car to get him. He used to be very wealthy. He farmed light bulbs. {Yes, light bulbs. They grow on light trees. I thought everyone knew that???} Then, one day in 1989, the light bulb market crashed, and he had to find a new business. Yes sir…it really sucked to be him that day.) Velvetta told Bob it might take a few minutes for the car to get there, because he had sent his butler out for some cucumbers. But Bob didn’t have to wait long, because the butler had Velvetta’s special car. It was a super fast car and had a really cool engine (that was what made it go really really fast).  And the cucumber store was just down the street. So in actuality, it only took the butler about 1.73 minutes to get there. (That included the time it took Velvetta to get hold of him.) 

Bob was incredibly impressed with Velvetta’s house. It had a lot of rooms. And there were 6 floors. And 12 chimneys. And 412 doors. (Bob thought that was an awful lot of doors for one guy. The farmhouse only had 4 doors. One for each person in it.) And he had his own movie theatre, bowling alley, and a beautiful rose garden. Not to mention the stables, and all the funny men deaf men in dark suits running around. And it was so darn white that it was almost annoying. 
But Bob still thought the bowling alley was really cool.

Velvetta introduced Bob to a lot of people. Bob figured they were probably really important, because most of them had their own deaf men in dark suits, and nice shoes. (Bob always noticed shoes. You can tell a lot about a person from their shoes. Really.)  He didn’t remember any of their names, because some were really long, and others were just downright weird.

Bob asked Velvetta why there were so many hard of hearing people around him all the time. He just looked at Bob like he’d grown a third foot, and it was coming right out of his ear. Velvetta explained to Bob that the “deaf men” really had special devices in their ears that made them hear voices, and they were called the Secret Service. Bob wondered why they need devices to hear voices, he heard the voices in his head just fine without one. And he also wondered service they could be doing that was so secret.

Because of his remote Oheyo farm life, Bob had totally missed the last election, and therefore did not know that one of his good buddies had become  the most powerful man in the world. Relatively speaking, that is. 

But he still thought the bowling alley was cool.