14 This Is Why We Travel

Chapter 14 THIS IS WHY WE TRAVEL Dr. McDonald hit the gas a little harder than necessary, because frustration needs to be expressed somehow, right? He followed Route 69 south for ten miles, and then merged onto Route 82 heading east. Paris, Texas, was a little more than an hour from Denison. The twins pulled out magazines to help pass the time. Mrs. McDonald turned on the radio, fiddling with the buttons until she stopped at a country music station. Nobody in the family was a big fan of country music, but who could resist "My Wife Ran Off with My Best Friend and I Sure Do Miss Him"? In the middle of the song, the music suddenly stopped. A male voice came on and repeated a series of letters:

"P-C-F-T-H-B-L-R-N-Y-S-T-N." There was a two-second pause, and then the voice said it again. "P-C-F-T-H-B-L-R-N-Y-S-T-N." Startled, Coke looked up from the magazine he had been reading. He recognized the voice. It was the same as the voice on the telephone the other night. It sounded vaguely computer generated. The voice repeated the letters. "P-C-F-T-H-B-L-R-N-Y-S-T-N." "It must be a broken record or something," said Mrs. McDonald. "You'd think somebody at the radio station would notice," said Dr. McDonald. "Change the station, Bridge." "Wait," said Coke. He looked over at his sister. She nodded her head. Pep grabbed the little notepad she'd bought back in Memphis and quickly wrote the letters down. On the radio, the song returned, and when it ended a new song came on—"If the Phone Don't

Ring, You'll Know It's Me." Mrs. McDonald turned it up loud and began to sing along. While their parents were occupied in the front seat, Coke and Pep put their heads together. "That sounded just like the guy on the phone who told me to look under my pillow," Coke whispered to his sister. "It's a cipher," Pep replied. "It has to be. They're coming at us over the radio now." The twins looked at the letters Pep had written in her notepad: P-C-F-T-H-B-L-R-N-YS- T-N. "Oh, come on," Coke said. "You gotta be kidding me. No way we're gonna figure this one out." "You give up too easily," his sister told him. Pep took the notepad and slid over to her side of the seat so she could concentrate. This one didn't look so hard. They had solved tougher ciphers before. Pep tried all the usual strategies that had

worked before, but none of them seemed to fit. That only made her more determined. Her forehead would wrinkle, and then she would brighten, and then her forehead would wrinkle again. The previous cipher had been easy. This was a hard one. After almost an hour, she still hadn't cracked it. She, too, was stumped. Dr. McDonald pulled off the exit marked PARIS. It looked like a pretty normal Texas town. Twenty-five thousand people. Forty-four square miles. "Why is it called Paris?" Pep asked. "It's probably in honor of Paris, France," her mother said, leafing through her guidebook. "Actually, there are fifteen American towns named Paris," Coke said, having read that on a poster at school a long time ago. I think you will agree, reader, that nobody should know how many American towns are named Paris. It's just not information that needs to be retained.

Dr. McDonald drove through the east side of town until he reached the corner of Jefferson Road and South Collegiate Drive next to the LoveCivic Center. "There it is!" Mrs. McDonald shouted, pointing. "Behold!" And there it was—a dark metal structure

that looked remarkably like the real Eiffel Tower, with the added attraction of having a ten-foot-wide red cowboy hat, slightly tilted at a jaunty angle, on top. Everybody got out of the car to get a better look. "Well," said Dr. McDonald, "I must admit you don't see that every day." "It's just like France," Pep said, "but in Texas." "I can just about smell the baguettes baking," Coke said. "Oh, wait. That's probably just a cattle ranch." "Think of it," Mrs. McDonald told the kids. "You're standing in the only place in the world that has a giant replica of the Eiffel Tower with a cowboy hat on it. This is why we travel, kids. To see things you can't see anywhere else." "Do you think they have a fake Mona Lisa wearing a cowboy hat here too?" Coke asked. Mrs. McDonald was used to her son's snarky remarks. She took out her camera to snap a few pictures, and also jotted down some notes for