Excerpt: SEMI-PSEUDO-SUPERHEROES
Four days before we werescheduled to leave England, we made a stop in Cornwall at a "select academyfor young women" that shall otherwise remain unidentified. Don't for a momentthink that description makes it easy to identify, because in England they grow selectacademies like the average Midwestern front lawn grows dandelions.
The academy was supposedto be one of our first stops when we arrived in England, to go through the archives.Just before our flight, we learned our visit would have to be either postponed orcanceled. The academy's librarian, Mum and Pop's contact, Dr. Butterfield, had totake care of an emergency in New Guinea. Nobody else on the staff was qualifiedto oversee the search. We learned later, that actually meant no one was willingto work with Yanks. They changed their minds fast enough to make Linda Blair's headspin in the opposite direction, when Dr. Butterfield returned and the staff foundout who they had snubbed.
We had planned to spendthe last day in England doing the shopping-tourist thing (Harrod's, Selfridges,other landmark and famous stores). Instead, we packed up and zipped down the coastto a truly beautiful and rocky and wild section of Cornwall. From the top of thecliff that bordered the school grounds, we could see the coastline and the crashingwaves. If it had been near dusk, I might have taken a chance of floating down tothe water's edge, maybe get some water-smoothed rocks for souvenirs.
We spent about eight hoursat the academy. Dr. Butterfield had already done the preliminary work, narrowingdown the specific hand-written, ancient books and loose-leaf stacks of records.My folks "only" had five books to look through out of the enormous, nine-hundred-year-oldarchives.
Once again, the Zephyrreputation worked for and against my folks. The academy administration finally linkedDr. Butterfield's long-distance research friends with the authors who, accordingto the papers, had been taking England by storm. The humanities and arts teacherbegged Dr. Butterfield to bring my folks down to the school immediately, for anextended stay. She claimed she wanted to provide a "delightful educationalexperience for the girls," but based on her fan-girl reaction to Mum and Pop,the real reason was for her to go nuts. She was just giddy enough to confess, giggling,that she had “mistakenly” considered them "filthy, foreign intruders, unableto appreciate the treasures of the academy's archives." Until Dr. B returnedand revealed his friends' identities.
