The children were not at school. They were in the phone booth. Both of them - Kit and Lemuel. They just couldn't keep out of that phone booth, located on the corner of Samuel and Lane Street. Lord knew why. Maybe it was because of the peanuts.

Kit was 8 and Lem was 7 and they were both s'posed to be at Lincoln Elementary. But that phone booth called to them.

"Who should we call today?" asked Kit.

"Let's choose a name out of the phone booth at random," says Lem.

So they open up the white pages and Lem stabs a finger down and he's pointing to REFKIN, P, address is 176 Main. They call P Refkin up.

"Hello," says an old man on the other end.

"Is this P Refkin?" asks Kit.

"This is Peter Refkin, yes. What are you selling?"

Kit doesn't know what to say. Most of the time folks just hang up.

"Uhhh, we just called you at random," says Kit.

"Well ain't that nice?" says P Refkin. "I'm an old man, yanno. Just turned 87. Spent most of my life in the tuna canning plant. Now everything smells like tuna. Even roses. Folks say I smell like tuna too. Prob'ly why no one pops by anymore." He laughed a little and drank something.

"I'm Kit," says Kit. "I wanna be an astronaut some day. My brother, Lem, he wants to be a baseball player."

"It's nice to have dreams," says P Refkin. "Tell me, boy. Do you study hard in school?"

"No sir. I spend all my time in the phone booth."

"Well that's no good, son. Your sole responsibility in life right now is to do well in school. You oughta get back lest you wind up spending your life in the tuna canning plant too. Not too many astronauts are high school dropouts, you know."

"I wanna play for the Atlanta Braves," says Lem.

"Then go to school," says