“Imagine!” Maisie overheard a woman say, “Iced tea! Who would have ever thought to drink tea over ice?”
“As for me,” her male companion said, “I found what they call a ‘club sandwich’ to be perhaps the most delicious sandwich I’ve ever eaten. Toasted bread, turkey, more toast, lettuce and tomato, more toast, and bacon with mayonnaise!”
“Where did you get that?” the woman said as if he’d just described the most remarkable thing. “I ate a spread made out of ground peanuts that I didn’t care for. So thick!”
“Ground peanuts?” the man repeated, surprised.
“Are you listening to these two?” Maisie asked Felix.
“Where are we that introduces food like this?” Felix wondered out loud.
“And when are we that iced tea and club sandwiches and peanut butter are new to people?”
“And ice-cream cones,” Felix said, remembering the little girl.
“Well,” Maisie said, “maybe we’re in Minnesota, after all. Maybe Minnesota didn’t get regular food until later than everybody else.”
“Maybe,” Felix said, even though he didn’t believe that for a second. Why wouldn’t Minnesota have ice-cream cones when every place else did?
“We should keep an eye out for Charles Lindbergh, right?” Maisie asked eagerly.
“Right,” Felix said, scanning the crowd as if Lindbergh might be somewhere nearby.
Maisie noticed that many people held maps, which they checked frequently.
“Excuse me,” Maisie said to two women who stood side by side in pale, ruffled dresses, each studying a map. “May I take a look at one of those, please?”
“It is confusing, isn’t it?” the woman in the white dress said as she handed Maisie her map. “We’re on the Plaza of St. Louis, that I know for sure because there’s the statue of St. Louis of France right over there.”
“Uh-huh,” Maisie said, trying to make sense of this information.
Felix pointed to the heading at the top of the map.
“The Louisiana Purchase Exposition,” he read out loud. “We’re in Louisiana?”
The woman in the white dress laughed.
“The exposition is celebrating the one hundredth anniversary of Thomas Jefferson’s vision of a continental United States by purchasing the Louisiana Territory.”
Her friend, a confection in pale yellow ruffles, added, “And to honor Lewis and Clark’s journey west.”
“Okay,” Maisie said, frustrated. “We’re not in the Philippines. We’re not in France, even though that statue is of some guy from France. And we’re not in Louisiana even though the name of this . . . exposition . . . is the Louisiana Purchase.”
The women laughed.
“Stop teasing us!” the one in yellow scolded playfully. “You know you’re in St. Louis, Missouri, at the 1904 World’s Fair.”
Maisie and Felix looked at each other, their hearts sinking.
“Missouri?” Felix said. “Not Minnesota?”
“Silly!” the one in yellow laughed.
“Let’s go to the Palace of Transportation next, Myrtle,” the other one said.
She glanced down at Maisie and Felix and her map.
“They have all one hundred and forty automobiles that have been driven to the fair under their own power in there,” she told them.
“Under their own power?” Maisie asked. “What does that mean?”
“It means a man got into one of those automobiles and drove it here!” the woman exclaimed.
Maisie and Felix looked at each other.
“Okay,” Maisie said.
“They drove from as far away as Chicago!” the woman said.
When Maisie and Felix didn’t look impressed, she added, “And Philadelphia! And Boston!”
“Wow,” Felix said, to be polite.
“Harumph,” the woman said, taking back the map. “Considering that just last year someone drove an automobile all the way across the entire country, I find it impressive that all of a sudden men are driving them everywhere.”
With that, she and her friend started down the six-hundred-foot-wide plaza.
Maisie peered at the monument that rose at the other end. One hundred feet high, a winged sculpture sat on top of a big globe. On a hill at that end, people streamed into a building with a giant, gold-leafed dome.
“Let’s go down there and see what’s going on,” Maisie suggested.
But before Felix could reply, a group of teenagers rushed by them, shouting: “Geronimo! Geronimo!”
One of the boys paused long enough to grab Maisie’s arm.
“He’s on display in the Ethnology Exhibit!” the boy said excitedly. “Autographs are only ten cents!”
Maisie let herself get swept up in the group of teenagers.