Mr. Lemoncello's Great Library Race: Chapters 24–37

In a flat area below a stone monument on a sandy knoll, Kyle could see several bronze figures chasing after a replica of the Wright brothers’ first-flight biplane.

Four were cheering the plane and pilot on, clumped together in a throng.

“He was the youngest of the five witnesses to the Wright brothers’ first flight on that cold and blustery December day in 1903.”

“So I had to contend with the wind-chill factor as well.”

“Most of my poems,” said the holographic Emily Dickinson, “employed what is known as the common meter.”
“We studied that in school,” said Kyle. “A meter is like six-tenths of a mile....”
“In poetry,” said Dickinson, “‘meter’ refers to the pattern of beats.”

“Why, it’s a rollicking tale of seven castaways stranded on a desert island!” said Mr. Lemoncello.

He started singing the theme song (slightly off-key): “Just sit right back and you’ll hear a tale, a tale of a fateful trip...”

Well, like today’s runners-up, you will receive lovely parting gifts including a lifetime supply of those Ohio confectionery treats known as buckeyes—chocolate-dipped peanut butter balls!

They burst into the Lemoncello-abilia Room, which was cluttered with a mishmash of knickknacks and souvenirs from Mr. Lemoncello’s past.

“Have fun frolicking with my groovy family!” was written in a cartoon balloon coming out of the blond lady’s smile.

“You are assessed fifty dollars for sewer repairs,” said Kyle, reading the top card.

There was a grainy black-and-white photo of a sweet little old lady wearing granny glasses and an apron over a checked gingham dress.

In 1969, Irma Hirschman, now a kindly grandmother residing in Smithville, Missouri, was working as a stenographer when she created a board game she called Family Frolic.

“I guess that peddler sold a game or two up in Ohio,” Mrs. Hirschman remarked over tea in a recent interview.

He says some local librarian helped him put together the prototype, lending him charms from her bracelet and trinkets she had tucked away in her desk drawer to use as playing pieces.

“Bob Lemon was an all-star Major League Baseball pitcher who had his heyday in the 1940s and fifties.”

“What did they pilfer?” asked Abia.
“My future. They stole the complete set of plans to my Fantabulous Floating Emoji game. My big hit for the holidays has gone missing!”

Google allows you to call up patents quite easily. For instance, I found Charles B. Darrow’s patent filing from 1935 for his ‘board game apparatus’ Monopoly.

The front wall of the building at Sixth Avenue and Twenty-Third Street, in the heart of downtown Manhattan, was filled with grand columns, incredible arches, and wildly imaginative gargoyles—including several that were chiseled to look like Mr. Lemoncello wearing a hooded monk’s robe, his nose stuck in a stone book.

The meter looked like the floor indicator on an old-fashioned elevator, but instead of pointing to a half circle of numbers, the ornately scrolled hand dipped from a toothy happy face past a closed-mouth-smile happy face to a straight-line-mouth semihappy face.

“He’s still in Ohio. Talking to the police.”
“About this Irma Hirschman brouhaha?”

Given its historical significance to this company and the fun-loving world, that first patent, and all the supporting materials related to it, is presently enshrined in the archives of Mr. Lemoncello’s Library.

You are even younger than Luigi was when he first traipsed into my office with a battered shoebox filled with trinkets, taped-together cardboard sheets, dice, and dreams.

But who, may I ask, is this fetching young woman with the bobbed blond hair on the box top?

“We suspect she is fabricating her charges against Mr. Lemoncello,” Abia continued. “We also suspect that someone fabricated this board game.”

However, people who are not logged into Wikipedia and wish to remain anonymous often edit articles. Even if the editor is logged in, they may be using a pseudonym.

In fact, it would be safe to say she hated, loathed, detested, abhorred, and despised him, which were all the words her son, Charles, would’ve used to describe how she felt about Kyle’s hero.

“Mr. Lemoncello is a cheap pirate, plagiarizing and pilfering other people’s patented, proprietary property.”

Her lips exploded with salvos of saliva every time she popped one of those “P” words.

“He’s also egregiously malevolent!” shouted Charles, who was sort of stuck behind the blockade of properly dressed ladies.

“To have such a cheat and charlatan affiliated with a library,” said Mrs. Chiltington, “let alone running it, is, as my son would say, egregiously improper, intolerable, and offensive.”

“It’s patently preposterous!” shouted Charles.

“It’s patently preposterous!” shouted Charles.

Why? Who knows? The man is barmy and batty. Maybe he wanted a souvenir to remind himself how deviously cunning and clever he was in his youth.

Video cameras mounted on tripods, halogen lamps already glaring, ringed the sea of seats, their lenses focused on the podium at the center of the stage beside a spindly rocking chair.

He could see two stately-looking old men in dark suits and bright white shirts escorting somebody’s grandmother up the steps to the stage.

Her lace apron looked like a doily someone’s grandmother might keep under her candy dish.

As game makers, we honor and respect the importance of ideas. Therefore, we were personally and professionally offended to hear that one of our so-called colleagues, Luigi Lemoncello, had blatantly stolen the idea for his first game—a major moneymaker—from this honest, hardworking entrepreneur, Irma Hirschman, who never received a dime after Mr. Lemoncello hijacked her intellectual property.

“Mrs. Maplebutter stopped making television commercials after the FDA informed Consolidated Corn Syrup Incorporated that it could no longer use the words ‘mapley’ or ‘maplebutter,’ since the only maple to be found in the product was trace elements of sawdust.”

As he tapped keys and entered search parameters, Kyle suddenly had a new thought: Doing research was actually fun; sort of like being a super sleuth or master detective.