He and the kids spent the next year fixing it up, complete with working drawbridge, a Vroom shake moat encircling it, and painted pickle chips hugging the turrets. No other restaurant in America looked quite like the Burger Castle. Freddy loved it. And yet almost no one ever came to eat there unless it was by accident.

But the project he was now working on for the Burger Castle float would change all that. He looked at the sign again. On either side of the words “Burger” and “Castle” were big French fries. In his secret lab, Freddy had constructed giant Fries using his father’s super-secret potatoes. Then he gave them faces, painted them fun colors, and rigged them with wires and a small battery so that with a press of a button they would wave their hands and bob their heads while they were on the float. He had even thought of a way, using a loudspeaker and an electronic gizmo he’d built, to make the Fries appear to be talking. They would tell everyone to come to the Burger Castle. With the addition of the talking Fries, and some other things Freddy was working on, he thought they would be a lock to win the float competition.

Freddy’s dream was to become a famous scientist, like his father had been. Alfred Funkhouser had worked for the U.S. Government and won lots of awards for his work. But after Freddy’s mother passed away when Freddy was three years old, his father left his job and moved them to the farm so he could spend more time with his children. Freddy believed that his father should still be a big-shot scientist in Washington, D.C., but if his father couldn’t be, then Freddy would do it for him.

Freddy looked over at Patty Cakes again, and then at the big warehouse that the Spankers owned next to their restaurant. Even from here Freddy could hear the sounds of machinery, sawing, and hammering. He watched as a big forklift carried a large wooden thing into the warehouse. Curious, Freddy slipped off his chicken costume and sneaked across the street to the warehouse.