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Adventure Planet like the rumor says, he had no idea how he was going to feed his family. I looked at his name tag, it read “Jerome”. He had a face I liked, it was want you could call an honest face. He was a tall, well built and dark skinned African-American man. I was going to look for him tomorrow and give him a big tip. I couldn’t tip him tonight, because he was not our server. Besides, our server was well taken care of by Frankie. He always tipped according to service and the girl serving us was very attentive. I almost wondered if she found Frankie attractive.
    Back at the hotel I was in my room trying to read a Dorothy Gilman novel when Frankie practically burst in carrying his laptop. Why did I give him a key?
    “Holy crap, Frankie, you scared me!” I yelled at him, my heart pounding.
    “I’m sorry, Mom, but I had some things I wanted to tell you. I’ve been looking up information on this area, and I wanted to share it with you.”
    “Ok, I’ll put Mrs. Pollifax down for now.” I set my book on the night stand and gave my son my full attention. “Ok, what did you learn?”
    He sat at the edge of my bed. “First, we are in Early County. It was named after Jubal Early, a rather reckless civil war general. Adventure Planet is in a city called Neuspech. The town was named after the family who opened, and still own Adventure Planet. Apparently when it opened, Adventure Planet did quite well. I found a lot of older articles about them. Then, a year or so ago something happened and the bottom dropped out. By the way the word neuspech is a Czech word and translates to failure.”
    “Interesting,” was all I could say.
    Well, it was interesting. First, the county was named after a reckless general. Next the city was named after a family whose last name meant failure.
    “The park is currently owned by Adolf Neuspech,” Frankie continued.
    “Oh my god, that’s even worse. Why would you give our son that name?”
    “He’s named after his grandfather, the man who opened the park in the first place. In all of his photos they guy looks scared to death. I mean even when he’s smiling.”
    “Let me see.”
    Frankie handed me his laptop and I looked at the photos. In almost every picture he looked almost as if he were going to cry or wanted to run away. In most of the pictures he was with this bleached blonde, large busted woman who towered over him. Possibly because she wore six inch heels and he was always sort of hunched over.
    “Poor guy,” I said. “Who’s the blonde?”
    “That’s his wife, Barbara. According to the social column she left him about a year ago…which is not too long after the park started falling apart. I mean, according to the articles I’ve read.”
    “Yeah, marriage starts to fall apart, life starts to fall apart. I could see it.”
    “So, Mom do you still want to go tomorrow? We don’t have to. It could be a big disappointment.”
    “Could be but, I want to go. I promised myself I’d give Jerome a big tip.”
    “Who?”
    “Guy from the restaurant who was saying he works at Adventure Planet.”
    Frankie smiled at me. “Ok. We’ll go and we’ll give Jerome a big tip.”
    “He was also saying he was afraid it was going to close.”
    “The restaurant?”
    “No, Honey, Adventure Planet.”
    “Oh, wow. Good thing we’re going before it does.”
    “If it closes how will the people here make a living? I mean he said he was working two jobs and still struggling.”
    “Something else will come along.”
    “Like what, Frankie? Another big box store? A mall?”
    “I don’t know, Mom. Why are you getting so worked up about this?”
    “I don’t know. I think Jerome and the people at the restaurant are weighing on my mind. I feel for them. You’re father and I were lucky enough to never have that sort of trouble but we knew plenty of people who did and we always helped them.”
    “I get it, but it’s out of our control. We can’t keep it from closing.”
    “You’re