He Gets His Hair Cut By Angry Squirrels January 9th, 1892

I couldn't believe my eyes. Neither could Mr. Cooks, the owner of the Pitchfork bookstore. "Hey, kid!" he called to me from inside. "Get your eyeballs off my display window! They're smudging up the glass!"

"Sorry."

I ripped my eyes from the display window before flinging open the door and rushing inside the bookstore. "Where's the latest Sheriff Hoyt Graham adventure novel?" I demanded, pointing to the empty space on the shelf where the Sheriff Hoyt Graham adventure novels could usually be found. "The new shipment was supposed to come in today!"

I guess you could say that I'm a bit of a bookworm — though I wish people would have asked my opinion before they came up with that nickname for readers who really love books. If they had asked me, I would have voted for us to be called "book dragons," or "book wolverines," or even "book anteaters," anything other than worms. I have very little in common with worms. Worms are gross. They crawl around in mud, they ruin apples by making them mushy, and you can't tell their heads from their backsides.

Only one of those things is true about me.

Anyway, I'm what you might call a bit of a "book wolverine," so I take my reading very seriously. For the past few years, my favorite books have been novels about the adventures of Sheriff Hoyt Graham, the bravest, smartest, strongest, and most heroic sheriff in history.

The books are loosely based on a real sheriff named Sheriff Hoyt Graham, who is the sheriff here in the Wild West town of Pitchfork, Arizona Territory. The real Sheriff Graham was a nice old man, but he wasn't much of a law officer. He never stopped robberies, or caught bandits, or won gunfights. And he wasn't particularly strong.

In fact, he was so weak that he often needed help bringing his soup spoon to his mouth if the spoon held anything heavier than a pea. And as far as intelligence was concerned, it was fair to say that he wasn't the shiniest fork in the sink, if you know what I mean. There was a family of skunks living under his house that frequently outsmarted him. It wasn't unusual here in Pitchfork to see a family of skunks run down Main Street, dressed in a law officer's clothing, with a furious Sheriff Hoyt Graham dressed in his holey long johns running after them while shaking his tiny fist.

But other than that, Sheriff Graham was practically identical to the sheriff in the books.

Mr. Cooks rolled his eyes and snorted at me, as though I had just said the daftest thing he'd ever heard.

"Sheriff Hoyt Graham books?" he asked snidely. "Nobody reads those anymore, kid. Those books are duller than ice water soup." He reached behind the counter and picked up a large box of books, which he emptied onto the countertop. "This is what everyone is reading nowadays. You're lucky I just got a new shipment in this morning. They've been selling out every day."

I looked at the cover of one of the books, and for the second time that morning, I couldn't believe my eyes.

I gasped in shock, though to tell you the truth, I'm not a very good gasper, so the noise that came out of my mouth just sounded like a normal breath. Since I couldn't properly express my surprise through gasping, I had to do the opposite of a gasp, which, after a moment of thought, I decided was a sneeze.

I sneezed in shock.

"If you sneeze on a book, then that means you've bought it," Mr. Cooks warned. "These books are more popular than those silly sheriff stories ever were. And they're much more entertaining. I nearly busted a gut reading the last one!"

He picked up one of the books and handed it to me. I slowly read the title on the cover out loud.

"The Hilarious Mis-Adventures of the Ridiculous Baron Family."

The cover illustration showed a wild haired inventor with crazy eyes, along with his stern and serious looking inventor wife. There was also an evil cowgirl carrying a gun, and a chubby little boy dressed in a fool's costume.

All four of them were hanging from the balcony of a vaguely familiar flying home, which puttered across the sky in the middle of a wacky race around the country.

Mr. Cooks looked from my face, to the cover of the book, and then back to my face again.

"Say," he said as he scratched his chin, "you and the chubby fool on the cover look like you could be twins!"

* * *

There's a very good reason why the fool on the cover and I looked identical to one another — except, of course, for the fool's costume. Although, come to think of it, I did used to own a pair of pajamas that looked a bit like that costume, due to the multicolored patches that were sewn all over it. And the jingly bells sewn into the neckline. And then there was the rather unfortunate sleeping hat (which was also adorned with several jingly bells, and had the word "FOOL" stitched across the front).

The drawing of the fool on the cover of the book was actually a drawing of me. The family on the cover was my family. We are the ridiculous Baron family. Though we prefer just to be called the Baron family.

Let me try to explain this as quickly as I can ...

My name is Waldo Baron, but since I'd rather be shot out of a cannon and into a briar patch than hear anyone call me that, I prefer to go by the name W. B. I'm eleven years old. My parents, Sharon and McLaron Baron (whom I call M and P, instead of Ma and Pa), are two of the cleverest inventors who have ever lived. In the past year, they've invented a winged flying machine, a Shrinking Machine, a Bigging Machine, a coal powered submarine, a rocket, and a device that can transform you into someone else with the simple press of a button. They also transformed our home into a giant flying machine, which we used to participate in a race around the country. We didn't win the race, but we still had a marvelous time.

My parents have invented many other fantastic things as well, but unfortunately, I can't really remember any of those inventions right now. Sorry. And in case you're wondering, I have no idea how any of my parents' inventions work, so please don't ask me to explain them to you. I know even less about science and mathematics than I know about ... actually, I can't think of anything I know less about than science and mathematics. Maybe Japanese tea ceremonies. But that's about it.

We live in a large house on the outskirts of Pitchfork, and our property is called the Baron Estate. Also living with us at the Baron Estate is my parents' trusty assistant, a woman by the name of Rose Blackwood. Rose is a former villain (who once tried to kidnap my family), and her older brother is Benedict...