Publisher's Synopsis
MAGIC IN THE AIR
"We have got to get off this train and go back--we have missed our stop somewhere," I shouted.The conductor smiled, put his arm around me and said, "Don't worry, young man. Our next stop is Eden, Idaho. Then the long trip for you and your Mom, all the way from Indiana to the Magic Valley, will be over."
"How did you know that we are from Indiana?" I asked in surprise.
"Well, Mrs. Hannebaum just told me," he replied.
"And why did you call it the 'Magic Valley'?" I asked, with my mind now working overtime.
"You'll find out if you stay here long enough," the conductor replied, with a mysterious look in his eyes.
"Maybe we will be living in this Magic Valley from now on," I told him, adding, "if my Dad comes out here, too." He nodded and smiled.
"Have a good time on your visit to Idaho, ma'am," he said to Mom, touching his hat. "And you enjoy yourself, too, Mr. Indiana Hannebaum!" he said to me, ruffling my hair. No one had ever called me that before, but I kind of liked the sound of it!
I missed my comfortable life as a kid in Indiana, which you can read about in Early Lessons in Inventing, but I quickly adapted to being suddenly transplanted into the Magic Valley of Idaho.
My Mom and most of her Jones side of the family loved Idaho with its wild Snake River and breathtaking Sawtooth Mountains. Deep down my Dad and I preferred our beautiful one-hundred-and-sixty-acre Hannebaum farm in the rolling hill country of southern Indiana.
But Dad loved Mom more than any farm, so he sold our place near Metamora, Indiana, to his son, Addie, and our family of seven was finally all together again in Idaho. It was 1920, and I was ten years old. -- Harold W. "Indiana" Hannebaum
