Like father like son.  I loved the Encyclopedia Brown mystery book series as I was growing up, and now my son Elliot has become similarly fascinated with these stories by Donald J. Sobol.  He got four of the books at the beginning of last week, as a prize for completing his English reading workbook (a supplementary home study to his education in the Dutch schools) -- and by the end of the week, he had already read all four of the books at least once (and in a some cases, more than once).

And of course, as should probably be expected after such eager consumption of the stories, Elliot decided that he wanted to establish his own detective agency -- just like Encyclopedia Brown.

So he started by asking me why we don't have a garage.  Because Encyclopedia Brown runs his little detective agency out of his garage in Idaville.  Knowing where Elliot was going with this, I explained that most houses in Amsterdam don't have garages, but since we lived on the ground floor he could still advertise himself in our dining room's front window.  That possibility seemed to satisfy Elliot, so he made the next logical step, asking for a piece of paper which he would turn into the sign for his detective agency.  Encyclopedia Brown always had his sign hanging out for everyone to see, announcing:  "No case too small."  So Elliot had to have the same -- except his sign had some minor modifications.

Unfortunately, though, there have been no clients over the last five days or so.  Apparently, no one requires the services of "Elliot's Junior Brain Skills."  I've tried to tell him that it probably helped Encyclopedia Brown that his dad was the chief of police for Idaville -- while I'm only a pastor.  Elliot thought he might try to ask his friend Timo's mom, who works for the Amsterdam police -- to see if she needs any help with her tough, unsolved cases.  But in the meantime, "Elliot's Brain Skills" are going unused.

So if you've got any tough mysteries that need to be solved, well, you know where to find help.  I'm sure Elliot would be overjoyed to help -- provided you can manage the agency's going rate of "25 cents per day, plus expenses."