Rob is caught up in his friend Soup's plan to help their town of Learning, Vermont, celebrate the Fourth of July with a suitable pageant that sets the record straight about several of the town's citizens.
A radio contest, the impending visit of actor Sinker O. Sailor to their small Vermont town, and rumors of a black pearl in Wet Lake spur Soup and Rob on to a spectacular nautical disaster.
Soup's crazy plan to help his town's basketball team to victory includes constructing a musical instrument called a spitzentootle and snaring the evil Janice Riker in an unpleasant trap.
Although Arly Poole seems bound to follow in his father's footsteps as a field worker in Jailtown, Florida, where his family lives in 1927 in the shadow of a cruel boss, his world suddenly seems larger when a schoolteacher comes to town.
