I shrugged. “It’s no big deal. Like I said, I’ll go over there either tomorrow or the next day and figure a few things out. You need to sweet talk Mr. Hailey into letting us use a vacuum pump. I know they have one here, but we’ll need to take it home.”
She nodded in understanding. “I’ll ask him at lunch. If he says yes, I can call Daddy and he can drive over and we can carry it out to the car. We can carry it down to the basement. How big a space do we need?”
Again, I shrugged. “I don’t know. It’s not like we’re building anything all that big.” I used my hands to measure out an area of about three feet by three feet. “I bet we could put it all together in a space like that. I mean, if you have an old table or something like that, I’m sure it can fit on that.”
“We have an old dining room table in the corner.”
“Sounds perfect. We can pull it away from the wall so we can move around it. We’ll build our own lab in the basement, just like Doctor Frankenstein did!”
She laughed at that. I put an arm around her shoulder and gave her a quick hug, and she giggled at that. Then she put an arm around my waist and hugged me back, and then pulled away. She smiled shyly and we split up, and she gave me a hip bump as she moved away. This project looked to be very educational, indeed!
The next morning I rode my bike to school. After lunch, I checked out and rode down to Towson State. At the time it was known as Towson State College. It had originally been a small teacher’s college, but over the years the size of the school and the quality of education there had grown substantially. By the time I graduated from college, it had transformed into Towson State University, and a few years later became simply Towson University, the second largest university in the state. The odds that I would be able to find relevant information were quite high.
They were even better than I thought. I quickly found an article on cigarette tar that had been co-authored by a professor there at Towson State. Figuring nothing ventured, nothing gained, I rode over to the chemistry building and locked my bike into the rack there. Once inside I found the professor was at class, but would be back in another half hour. Despite a number of curious stares from much older students, I sat down on the floor in the hallway to wait for him.
About half an hour later a middle-aged man came walking down the hallway towards me. He glanced at me curiously, and then opened the door to his office. He stopped and looked down at me as I climbed to my feet. “Can I help you?”
“Are you Professor Milhaus?” I asked.
“Yes. Are you waiting for me, Mister…?”
“Buckman, sir. Carl Buckman. Can I talk to you for a few minutes?”
“Sure.” He opened his office door and stepped inside, holding it open for me as well. “How can I help you, Mr. Booker?”
“That’s Buckman, sir.” I pulled out my wallet and handed him a business card. He stared at it in surprise, not expecting a teenager to have a card.
It had been as much a joke as anything else. Some of the guys at school had been talking about their fathers having business cards, and they seemed to think it was cool. I had commented that it was no big deal; they should get some of their own if they wanted them. That immediately started an argument about whether kids could do it, about how to get them, and about what they would say. I just said to give me a couple of weeks and I bet I could get some made for me. One loud mouth even bet me five bucks I was full of shit.
That afternoon, after school, I found a printer in Towson in the Yellow Pages. I called and asked if they did business cards and how much they were, and got the directions. The next day I rode my bike to school, and after school rode into Towson. The guy at the front desk thought I was full of shit until I laid a twenty down on the counter, at which point he blinked hard and began to help. It was a simple card really, no artwork or logos, just printed on a pebble finish heavy white stock, with
Carling Parker Buckman, II
(I’m named after my grandfather) across the center in a heavy font, and under that
Scholar Adventurer Soldier of Fortune
in a smaller serif font, and then down in the lower right hand corner, my home phone number, discreetly done in a sans serif font, all done in a glossy black. It actually looked rather classy.
I won the fiver from my friend along with some brownie points at school, but it all proved to be a bit of a mixed bag, at least at home. Hamilton got seriously bent out of shape about my business cards. First he decided to complain about them at the dinner table, and about how I was breaking the law doing this. My parents were kind of curious about why I would bother, and when they refused to have me destroy the cards and otherwise punish me, he ran down to our room and started scribbling on them with a Magic Marker. I caught him at this and called mom down to our bedroom to show her. He stood there with ink on his fingers and denied everything. That got him walloped by Dad with the oak pledge paddle. When I asked about getting paid for the cards he had ruined, Dad tossed me my brother’s wallet, and I lifted out a five. This caused Ham to start fighting and screaming, and got him spanked a second time. I took the remaining cards and locked them in a foot locker I had.
Professor Milhaus looked at my card. “Mister Buckman. Sorry about that. How can I help you?”
“Professor, I’m a student over at Towsontown Junior High and my partner and I are working on a science fair project related to tar in cigarettes. I know you’ve done at least one paper on that and I was hoping for at least a little education.”
His eyes lit up at that. “Yes, I can certainly help you. What did you have in mind?”
I quickly outlined my plans and asked for any advice he had to offer. Considering he understood what I planned, it went a lot faster than with Shelley. He followed along easily.
“Well, it’s an ambitious plan, but nothing too unusual. Ambitious at least for high school. You go to Towson High?” he asked.
“Uh, no sir, Towsontown Junior High. We’re in the ninth grade.”
“Good lord! How old are you?”
“I just turned 14 a few weeks ago.”
He stared at me for a second. “You’re only 14? I’ve had worse explanations and plans from grad students! What do you plan to study after you graduate?”
“I want to get a degree in math or computers.”
“Can I interest you in chemistry?” he asked with a smile.
Oh, Professor Milhaus, if you only knew. “Sorry, I think it’ll be math,” I said, smiling back.
“What about your partner? What are they doing?”
I must have given a wry smile at that, because he raised an eyebrow at me. “Shelley is more the facilities and logistics end of the partnership, while I handle the science portion.”
“Facilities and logistics?”
“It’s in her basement,” I said with a shrug.
He looked askance at me. “Her basement, huh. Just for the sake of idle curiosity, is Shelley pretty?”
“Scientists are human, too, Professor.” That got a good laugh from him.
We then got down to brass tacks. He made several suggestions for improving the project. He also gave me a small stack of scientific papers on cigarette tar. I asked about bringing a sample of the tar over and having it analyzed. They had a new gas chromatograph which would be useful on this, but it would end up using most of the first sample we created. Shelley and I would also list his name as an academic adviser. It was a fair request — he would get some credit for a community service type project for the college, and we could get some time from him.