Hippomobile! Read Online Free Page A

that sometimes his sister would write him of other news she heard about. Things going on elsewhere in the country. And one piece of news was about a new kinda machine that you could sit on and make go from point A to point B without you having to do none of the work. Kinda like a horse. Only it was a machine. You get what I’m gettin’ at?”
    This time we said we did.
    â€œGood. Because when Gottfried read about that idea, he thought it sounded kinda nifty. Because remember, here’s a man walked all over Alaska, freezin’ his toes black. So if he could contrive up some sorta somethin’ that would allow him to sit on his backside while this somethin’ did all the work and brought him to where he wanted it to take him, wouldn’t that sound good to you, too?”
    We told him it would.
    â€œWell, there you go. Gottfried Schuh got to work on his McKay machine, and took out the motor, and added some nuts and bolts, and put on a gear here and a belt there, and plopped that whole new engine on the front of a three-wheeled horse wagon. Then he slapped a horn to the front of it for safety purposes, and you kids ain’t never gonna guess what he had hisself.”
    We could see in the mirror that both him and Grandpa Virgil were getting pretty excited, and we figured it had to be the big moment of the story. And so we just took a stab at it and said, “You mean a hippomobile?”
    Well, our guess surprised them more than a four- cornered egg. In fact, we clean knocked them speechless, something that had probably never happened to those linguisters before.
    It took them a minute to get their tongues back. And when they did, Grandpa Virgil said, “Them kids are as smart as new paint, Homer.”

 
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    SO NOW YOU KNOW that the word “hippomobile” we saw in the letter ain’t got anything to do with the hippo you see in the zoo. It just means an old-fashioned car that looks more like a horse-drawn carriage. But what we still wanted to know was how come Gottfried Schuh gave it a name like “hippomobile.”
    â€œGood question, kids,” said Grandpa Homer.
    â€œWell, what’s the answer?” we asked.
    â€œAin’t no one knows,” said Grandpa Homer. “Does they, Virgil?”
    â€œAin’t nobody I knows who knows,” said Grandpa Virgil.
    â€œTheories abound, though,” said Grandpa Homer.
    â€œWhat are theories?” we asked.
    â€œTheories? Well, them are like guesses. Ain’t they, Virgil?”
    â€œI’d call ’em guesses, Homer.”
    Then they went on to tell us some of the theories. One theory was that Gottfried called it a hippomobile on account of its gigantic size because the horse carriage he picked out for it was a mighty big one. Another theory was that his English just never got no good and he thought he was calling it something else altogether. The problem with this theory is that it didn’t explain what he thought he was really calling it. Then there was the theory put forth by the librarian Grandma Henrietta. She said that in one of her dictionaries hippo means “horse” in a language called Greek. So according to her, Gottfried Schuh called it a hippomobile because it was made out of a horse wagon.
    That made a light bulb turn on in our heads, but then Grandpa Homer asked, “Why in the world would hippo mean ‘horse’ in any language?”
    That sounded like a good question to us, but we didn’t know the answer and shrugged our shoulders. We were in kindergarten, after all, and didn’t even know there was any other language outside of the one we talked.
    Even Grandpa Virgil nodded his head and said, “Point well took, Homer.”
    And Grandpa Homer said, “I’m at the conclusion that why Gottfried Schuh called it a hippomobile is just gonna remain one of them mysteries of nature.”
    Since we both liked mysteries and thought nature