I had made me a little plan to get rich, a plan to get rich quick, and to get rich easy. All ‘cause of my job as a janitor down at the Institute and the little ring of keys that I got with the job. I ain’t a crook. No, that ain’t what I want to say. I ain’t a thief. I weren’t gonna steal nuthin’. I was just gonna borrow a time machine. Maybe I’d better tell y’all a little more, so y’all can understand.
I used to work down at The Kentucky Institute of Technology, and one of the professors was kinda eager. He’s a local boy, born right here in town, and he figured if he could prove Albert Einstein was wrong, he could become somebody, and maybe earn a little walkin’ round money while he was at it. He meant to call ole’ Mr. Einstein a liar with math, but when he found out how easy he could do it for real, he built this here machine.
The way he tells it, the measuring of time is really the measuring of the decay of the universe. What this Professor, Hiram Apollo Crumbegger Jr. (could I make that up?), did was to figure out a way to reverse or speed up this decay, at a speed he could figure out, in a little bitty area. Don’t ask me to get any more particular, I can’t, I’m just the janitor. But I do know how to set the decay reverser and hit the start button.
I was startin’ to be clean the old boiler room that the professor was usin’ as a lab one night, somethin’ I hated to do after dark, ‘cause of the coffin the professor was using to build his time machine outta, when I notices the coffin ain’t there. Just as soon as I notice it ain’t there, it was there, and the professor was climbin’ out of it. He was white as a ghost, somethin’ I am just being around that durn thing, much less bein’ in it, and he starts to tellin’ me about his trip.
“Terrible, Mr. Hoshang, terrible I tell you” He stuttered.
“Well”, says “That much I got so far. What’s terrible?”
“The future,” says he, “As bad as it can get.”
He was shakin’ like a drunk in a Revival tent, as colorless as a sheet a’ window glass, and trying to drink a glass water, most a’ which was down the front of his shirt. I had to agree with him you see. My rent was due in the very near future, and I was some dollars short a’ what the landlord wanted. But nice a man as he was, I didn’t figure me bein’ a’ dollar or two short on my rent money was what had him lookin’ like he’d seen his mother-in-law lackin’ her make-up.
“Just what is so durn terrible there Per’fessor? We get overrun by them godless Commies like we been a’ fearin’?” I ask.
He looked over at the box, like he was afraid somethin’ would crawl outta it, and talked in a tone of voice that sounded like the preacher just afore the end of a funeral.
“I have seen something I did not ask to see, want to see, or should have seen. It is a sight I cannot inflict on another, least of all my friends.”
He never said another word about it, to anybody, as far as I know. But I did sneak a look at the log book he kept on his trips, and he wrote down what he saw in the future. The way the Professor described it scared the daylights outta me. Seems what the professor did was went about a year into the future, and when he stepped outta the time machine he saw all of the possible futures at once. Since the future isn’t set down yet, everything that coulda happened at a set time did happen. So like take cleaning the Professor’s Lab. It coulda been me doing it, or I coulda took a sick day and Sam did the cleaning; or both me and Sam wasn’t there, and they had a new guy.
Or the Professor wasn’t there anymore, and it was somebody else’s Lab. And all of this was happening at once. The Professor figured that the further into the future he went, the more permutations (ain’t that a fancy word. I had to look it up. It means possible outcomes, or possibilities.) would increase, as each possible future had several possible futures. So a feller couldn’t even go into the future to see how a ballgame ended, because the ballgame could end any one of a dozen ways, even if you waited until the last inning.
The professor had made about a dozen time trips, the one forward, which scared the living daylights out of him, and the rest backward, one all the way back to 1776, by the time I had made my plan. The bad thing about the machine is that it only controls time, and not space, so when he went to 1776 he wound up in the middle of the Kentucky wilderness, and not in Philadelphia, like he wanted. The other problem was its size. The time machine is actually made out of a solid bronze coffin. I don’t understand the science, but it has something to do with the way other metals rust, and speed that they handle electricity. The point is there ain’t much room.
The room don’t matter much when a feller is just out seeing the sights, but this is bad news when making a time travel for profit. I really only had about enough room for a case of beer. And even then I had to split it into six-packs. I had to find things that were small and cheap in the past, and small and expensive in the here and now. The other catch was I had to be able to find them close. I could trust the time machine alone for a couple of hours, but I sure couldn’t take a trip up to Cincinnati to look around for gee-gaws.
I went looking around the antique shops and flea markets just to see what kinda stuff was possible to make a quick, well sorta quick, buck on. One of the first things I laid eyes on was old Matchbox and Hot Wheels cars. I can remember paying about 25 cents apiece for them. I saw folks fork over $50.00 for one in pretty good shape. I knew what to fetch back from around 1970.
That night I went through my normal clean up, down to the lab in the basement of Old Home Hall. The Dean had let the Professor use what used to be an old coal bunker for his experiments, I guess ‘cause he figured there weren’t much to damage down there. The room worked out real well for the professor. He didn’t have no windows to watch out for, and the thick walls kept the noise down so the folks outside couldn’t hear anything. It worked well for me too. Only the professor and me had keys to the room, and he was always in bed by 9:00, and not in the lab until 8:00. So I could launch the machine when I was done cleaning, and get back the minute after, and still have time to haul my fortune home.
My first trip was kinda spur of the moment. I had to work up the courage to see if I could handle just climbing into that Death Box. Like I heard a feller say one time, that plumb scared the bejeebers outta me, and I ain’t a feared a’ nothing. The way the professor had the works set up was like this; I had to set the time I wanted to go back to on a computer on the outside of the box, climb in, and pull the lid down. When the lid hit bottom, the circuit was made, and the box lit out for pasts unknown.
I had figured out that I wanted to go to around the first of February, in 1968. February was when the tobacco money hit town, and lots of folks was dollars rich and sense poor. That’s when Mr. Waldenschmidt down at the drug store made sure he had as many of them little cars as he could, figuring that folks would be spending money like it was found, instead of worked for. I checked to see if I had a couple of bucks in my pocket, punched in the date and time I wanted, climbed into the coffin, took what felt like my last deep breath, and pulled the lid to.
I felt a shiver run through me like I touched a bare wire, the lid popped up, and was in room full of coal. I come up outta that thing like my pants was on fire, and looked around. The time machine was laying in the coal, kinda uneven, and buried up to the handles. I told myself right then and there, next time was not gonna be when they might have coal in here, where it might be ceiling high. The next thing was to go down town and start getting rich.
When I started down the hall, I got to thinking about some body seeing the time machine, and moving it before I got back, I still had my keys with me, and sure enough, the one I had still fit the lock. I locked the door behind me, and walked out like I owned the place.
It seemed like it took longer to get to town than normal, but then I hadn’t walked it in a while. The drug store was open, and I had no trouble finding the rack by the front door where Mr. Waldenschmidt kept his toy cars. After all, I had bought them there myself in ‘68. I grabbed my favorites, the ones I knew I had played with until they were nothing but junk. I figured that at four cars for a dollar, I could get about 20 cars with my $5.00, so that’s how many I grabbed.
I had plumb forgot that my eldest sister ‘Lizabeth worked the cash register for Mr. Waldenschmidt. I remembered when I ran into her at the checkout. She kept looking at me like she thought I was nuts, a growed up man buying toys.
“These are fer my nephews” I told her, “They worked awful hard on my tabacca.”
She nodded, then ask, “You look kinda familiar to me, do I know y’all? “
I almost told her yes, but figured that would cause nothin’ but trouble, so I said “I wouldn’t think so, I live ‘round Pickensville, I was just stoppin’ for lunch, and thought I’d do a little shoppin.’”
“That’ll be $5.25, includin’ tax.”
I handed over my five-spot, fished a quarter from my pocket, and waited for my bag.
“What kinda joke are you trying to pull?” She asks, as she handed back my money, “Come in with the real stuff next time.”
“What’s wrong with my cash, ain’t it green enough fer ya?”
“Them’s the worst fake money I ever saw. Look at ole Abe’s picture. Its way too big, and ain’t even in the center of the bill. ‘Sides, its 1968, not 1998. Take this phony-baloney junk and give me the real stuff, if ya got it or git afore I call the law!”
I got afore she called the law. I had plumb forgot that they had changed the way money looks a couple of years back. It appears there was more to this time travelin’ than I could think about. The next time I needed some old money.
Money was turnin’ out to be a bigger problem than I thought it could be. See, in the 18 and 80’s the common money was a $20 gold piece. To get twenty dollars to spend in 18 and 80, I’d have to spend about $450 today. Change was gonna cause me a problem up to 19 and 64, when they quit makin’ coins outta silver. A 19 and 64-quarter is worth about $.50. Even some of them old dollar bills are worth more than what’s printed on ‘em. So I had to find things that were more valuable now than they were some years back, and find the cheap money to buy them with.
On the next trip I went through all my old change, tryin’ to find coins from before 19 and 64, and went back to then to buy a Beatles lunch box. It only cost me $1.98. Which was a good thing, ‘cause the only coins I could find were nickels and pennies. Silver dimes and quarters would have cost me double what they was worth, so to speak, so I had to go with the pennies and nickels. When I came back to this time, I sold that “like new” lunch box for a little over $1000. A slick bit of money, but not what I was hoping for.
I decided that my next trip would be to the 19 and 50’s. Before I headed back to the fifties to see what I could buy, I had to find out what things could be worth today. I saw on TV somewhere that the first magazine they printed of Sports Illustrated was worth about 350 bucks, and sold on the newsstand for a quarter. I exchanged my thousand bucks for Silver certificates, all of them printed before 1954. I walked into the coin shop with four one hundred dollar bills, and walked out with 3 twenty-dollar certificates. I went back to 1954 and I cleaned out every magazine rack I could find. I had to make two trips in the time machine just to get them all back, but a hundred copies cost me twenty-five bucks, in certificates, and netted me $30,000.
I had other money I had to spend too, while I was at it, it wasn’t all clear profit. One reason I had to start close to this year and work back was clothes. I had to look like I belonged when I went back in time. The county around the Institute is hard on the lookout for anybody who don’t belong. Back in the ‘50’s it was even worse, ‘cause of the moonshinin’ and the law. If I’d a showed up in clothes that didn’t look right, I’d a had a short trip into the woods. So I bought clothes in 1964 that were about ten years old, so they looked right in 1954.
I made about 15 trips that way, buying small items back there and selling them here. I made a few bad deals, trying to collect coins and stamps, but even they made me money, just not enough. People will ask why I didn’t go into the future and bring back a list of winners in baseball or football, or even some big time lottery numbers. There were two problems; first, how far forward should I go, and second, if the professor was scared of what he saw, I sure wasn’t taking any chances. Besides, the past I was more sure of. I could look at old pictures and know how to dress. I could read old books and know the slang, and any new happenings. Plus, I knew where I would land, and what would be here.
I didn’t know anything about being in the future. The spot I was in could have been at the bottom of a garbage dump for all I knew. And since the control panel was on the outside of the time machine, being buried would make it real hard to open the lid and get to the control. I also had no idea what the clothes looked like, what the money would be like, or how the folks would talk. I was just more comfortable in the past.
But it was getting to be too easy. And too hard. To call my janitor’s pay poverty level would be like calling a miner’s shack the Governor’s Mansion. So trying not to spend any of my new money was kinda difficult. But if I suddenly spent like I was rich, I couldn’t keep on being a janitor, and then I would lose my keys to the time machine. I needed one big score, so I could retire rich, and no longer need the time machine.
Then, just by chance, I read a small bit in the paper about a guy who filled an old warehouse with cars in 19 and 50, and his son just pulled them all out, and made a king’s ransom. Now I had my plan. All I needed was the warehouse, the cars, and few days in ‘47.
Trying to find a warehouse was like trying to find a parking spot on court day. I had to find a place that could store these cars for 50 years without two much damage. It also had to be there in 1947, still be here today, and have an owner willing to be paid for storage 50 years in advance. Finding a place that fit this bill was harder than sin on a Sunday. Could I go back there and build a place, and have it still standin’ when I went to collect? This is also a tough spot, metaphysically. Ain’t that a big word? The professor taught it to me. It sort of means I have to be careful in the past not to change the future. This is something I have kind of worried ‘bout since I came back with all those Sports Illustrated and found that folks ‘round here didn’t read it. Seems that since the first issue didn’t make it into folks’ hands, nobody was interested in the rest of ‘em. But I made money, so I guess it was no harm done.
But I don’t need to worry about that; I need to worry about this. Could I go back to the past, build the building I needed, and not screw up time too badly? And if I did, would anybody but me notice that time was different? I just couldn’t figure out how to test it out. If I just built the building, came back, and found out things were changed, and didn’t have the cars, then I would have changed time and not made a red cent. But if I did buy the cars, things changed, and my building disappeared, I would be back to square one.
I also had to make sure I would still own them things when I got to the here and now. I decided to find a lawyer who had been practicing for the last 55 years in the same office. That was easy, at least in our part of the world. Then I had to find a piece of ground to build my barn on. It had to be fur ‘nough out to make sure folks didn’t find it, and cheap enough to buy, and there couldn’t be a building there now. No sense messin’ with time anymore than I needed to. That was pretty easy, too.
For this trip I decided to take the long way back, for the sake of my money. It was pretty easily change my bills into pre-1967 money, without losing too much on the trade. I went to 1967, where I changed it again, into 1955 bills, and I didn’t lose very much of the count. Another stop in 1955, and change again for the last jump into 1947. Of my original $140,000, I arrived with $128,000.
My first stop was the lawyer. I had been time traveling for almost a year, once a month or so, but it was still kind of a shock to see the man I knew as old and kinda frail as a hale and hearty young ball player. My business was short and to the point. I had him buy the plot of land I wanted, and I had him draw up my will.
The will was pretty simple. I would leave everything to my little sister’s first born son. I used my own name, and gave my mothers name as my little sister. I myself wouldn’t be born for another 15 years and in 1948 Mom was only 8 herself. The other clause was that the will could not be probated until 2001, even if reports of my death came before then. I also left a sum of money for the repair and upkeep on my building, until the time of probate.
I had to spend a couple of weeks in 19 an’ 47, while the buyin’ of the ground went thru, and the buildin’ of the barn. I spent the time gonna over every newspaper and car lot I could. In ‘47 cars were cheap. In particular the cars I was lookin’ for. Cadillac’s with V-16 engines and custom bodywork, in running condition, were selling for about $150. In 2001, the same car in the same condition was worth about $25,000.My building would have room for about 35 cars. Am I gonna to clean up or what? I bought Packards, Cords, Auburns and Chryslers. I bought a Model A Town Car for $25. I bought a big Stutz Limousine, just to say I did. I even managed to lay my hands on a Dusenberg Sport coupe for $250. The same car in the same shape today is worth almost a million bucks. I was gonna to be rich.
After all the cars were in the barn, I took a week to make sure they all were properly stored. I put oil in all the engines to make sure they wouldn’t rust. I Put mothballs in all the interiors to make sure they weren’t destroyed. I drained all the gas out of the tanks and ran each car until it ran dry the lines and carburetor. I waxed the paint, oiled the leather and polished the chrome. The tires weren’t gonna to last anyway, but I put each car up on blocks and let almost all the air out of the tires to try and get them to last.
I checked the dehumidifiers, the ventilation fans, and the strength of the lock on the door. The barn had no windows, a steel roof, and brick walls. The men who built the barn didn’t know what I put in it. The guys I bought the cars from had no idea where I put them. Everything was as secure as I could make it. All that was left was to climb in to the time machine and go home and be rich.
You may wonder about where I hid the time machine while I was in the past. The simple answer is I didn’t have to. The Kentucky Institute of Technology was around in 1947. It was called the Kentucky School of Agriculture, and was on the same acreage as it is today. The Lab where Professor Crumbegger kept the time machine was in the oldest building on campus, down in the basement. Depending on what year I was in, it was either a storage room, a boiler room, an amateur distillery, probably illegal, or, at one point, a coalbunker. Since the locks hadn’t been changed in about 90 years, I never had a problem.
In 1947 it was a boiler room. The coffin was over in the corner, behind the water tank. Since this was summer, I didn’t worry about the staff finding the time machine. The door was locked, and the time machine was way too heavy for less than 6 people to move. I had been real busy, and hadn’t been by to check on the machine in a week or two, since the sale of the property went thru, but I wasn’t worried. At least until I turned the corner around the water tank and found it was gone.
First thing I did was check the other boiler room. Maybe I had made a mistake about which one I had left it in. It wasn’t in there either. Then I walked around the boilers, walked over the coal bins, and even opened the doors of the fireboxes. Nothin’. No time machine, no sign of a time machine, not even the signs for where one had been, Not even a clean spot in the dust on the floor. Almost like it had never existed.
Now that put a kicker in the plan I hadn’t counted on. As far as I knew, the only way it could have disappeared is if somebody moved it, somebody found it and used it, or the professor had a way of calling it home if he found it gone. I knew nobody could use it, I’ll bet the Dean of the school couldn’t a’ figured out how to make the durn thing work. And the professor couldn’t a missed it, it’s a time machine for Pete’s sake, as long as I got back a minute after I left, how long I spent here wouldn’t a’ mattered.
I had locked the door to the boiler room when I left, and it was locked today. There were no windows, so that ruled everybody but the maintenance staff. In 19 an’ 47 the maintenance staff was ole’ Joe Beech. Well, he was ole’ Joe when I knew him later. In ’47 he was a young, lean and healthy. But not healthy enough to move the time machine by himself. I hadn’t heard of any odd discoveries at the school, but I wasn’t gonna to hear everything. I had to talk to Joe. I left the door unlocked and went find ole’ Joe.
Joe lived in a little house on the edge of the campus. The boilers in those days were coal fired, and Joe had go down to each building every morning in the winter and make sure the stokers worked, so he lived close. He also stayed home a lot, and was easy to find. I brought along some beer as a conversation starter, and hoped for the best.
Joe was an easy guy to talk to. It was a lot more trouble to get him to answer back. I didn’t want to come right out and ask if he had taken the time machine, so I had to go the long way around the barn, so to speak. I ask how he’d been (fine), and if the weather was warm enough (yes), and if he was keeping busy (yes). I ask if he to do any maintenance on the boilers this time of year. He told me no, he hadn’t been near them in a couple of weeks. I ask if the state had sent any inspectors down to check on them, and was told no, they weren’t due until early fall. I was done with the hard way and came right out with it.
“Joe”, I said, “I put somethin’ in boiler room number 1, and now I can’t find it.”
“Just how did you git inta Boiler room 1?”
Man, don’t ya hate it when people answer a question with a question? I already had more of one than the other, and he just dumped another onto the big pile.
“Well, I was goin’ by there t’other day an’ found the door unlocked, so I dumped the package I was carryin’ inside for a day or two, just ta store it like, an’ ta-day I went back ta git it, an’ it weren’t there.”
“An’ when y’all was ‘just passin’ by’ in the basement of Old Home Hall y’all was passin’ ta where? It ain’t like that basement is on the way to anyplace.”
“I was runnin’ an’ errand for the Dean,” I told him, “An’ needed to set down my package so’s I could carry the Dean’s stuff, an’ it took a day or two to git back ta git my own.”
As he grabbed another cold beer he said “Even with that door unlocked there couldn’t a been to many folks in that basement. An’ I can’t fig’re who left that door unlocked. Only me an’ the Dean has got a key ta the rooms in that cellar, so maybe he left it undone. Then again, if he’s got a lot a’ fellers like y’all runnin’ round with his keys, maybe one a’ them left ‘er open.”
Ole’ Joe was startin’ to ask too many questions to suit me, so I ducked as many as I could and walked back to town. I did find out a few things, and none of them were good. Nobody but Joe, an' me, an’ the Dean had keys to the boiler room. He hadn’t been near the boiler room in almost a month. He never saw the time machine, all of which meant I had no idea what could have happened to it.
I had met Dean Crumbegger a couple a’ times, ‘cause it was his place I bought to put my barn on. He was a nice enough fella, good home folks, but since he had a little education, he weren’t goin’ to be pokin’ ‘round the boilers. So I didn’t fig’re he’d hauled off my ticket home. But who else coulda?
I got to thinkin’ that maybe the Professor had found out that I was out joyriding in his toy and figured out a way to get it back. Or it could have been that because this was such a long trip, and the machine had sat for so long, that it had just rusted away. But I had looked good in that room, and if that woulda happened, I’d a’ at least found a pile a’ somethin’.
I only had one thing left that I could do. I’d have to go an’ talk to the Dean an’ see if he had somethin’ to do with my box dissappearin’. I figured I could talk to him, he was a local boy, grew up on the farm I had just bought, it was the old family home place, an’ he was alright, even if he was educated. I mean after all, the Dean was just a good ole boy at heart.
So I went to talk to the Dean. I caught him in his office the next day, right after he got off the phone, an’ he couldn’t a been happier to see me as he was long lost kin. Seems he was trying to make up his mind about an offer he had to teach in Florida, and bein’ able to unload the home place was just the thing he needed to cut his ties here and head south. He had just got off the phone with the head of a school just south of Orlando, and he was their new chancellor. He was leavin’ in two weeks, and had me to thank. For some reason I had a little trouble sharin’ in his joy. But I still congratulated Chancellor Hiram Apollo Crumbegger.
For some reason when I said that name, my heart quit beatin’. Why was it that I should know somethin’ I could just barely think of? I remembered then. The Dean was the professor’s father. There wasn’t a house up on the hill now, because it had burnt down about a year ago. The dean was decidin’ if he wanted to rebuild when my offer to buy the place came in. In real life, or I guess I should say the way I remember it now, the professor had lived up on that hill till about 5 years ago, when the place his pappy built burned when lightning hit it.
That’s why there wasn’t a house there when I left. I’m why there ain’t one there now. And I know why I don’t have a time machine. The Dean didn’t stay in the neighborhood after I bought the old home place. So his boy, if he still had a boy, wasn’t teaching at the Institute, and he had developed his time machine somewhere else. I was really up that famous creek, and no paddle in sight. I was stuck.
The professor wasn’t comin’ to teach at the Institute, an’ would never leave his time machine for me to travel in. I would grow old before I was born. I had to find another place to live, so I didn’t mess with myself as I grew up here. That would be hard enough, I ain’t ever lived anywhere but here. I still had a few bucks left, so money wasn’t a real problem, but I would eventually need a job.
I could still push a broom, but bein’ a janitor in 1947 was a lot harder than it was in 2000. I could become a mechanic, but I would need tools, and a work past, and I didn’t have either one. The more I looked at things, the worse they became. If everythin’ had worked out, I’d a’ been gone a minute, and returned a millionaire. As it worked out, I left forever, and lost my bankroll, all ‘cause I made a mistake about where to park a couple of cars.
I do have one chance left. I’m headin’ to Florida. There just might be a time machine sittin’ down there in a small college just a little southwest of Orlando. After all, who’d build anything else in that part of Florida?
