Daniel Pinkwater, The Snarkout Boys and the Avocado of Death:

“This is my hi-fi,” Rat said. “I’ll bet you guys have never seen anything like this. My Uncle Flipping put this together about thirty years ago. In those days, they really knew something about sound. My father helped me fix up this soundproof room when Uncle Flipping gave me all this equipment. Behind the drapes there’s twelve inches of fiberglass batting, and the walls and floor are floating on rubber mountings. There’s an electric fan that goes on with the lights to change the air, or it would get plenty stuffy in here.”

“Is that the speaker?” I asked.

“That is the Klugwallah 850-ohm Sound Reproducing System,” Rat said, “and this is a custom-built amplifier. Don’t stand too near it when I turn it on; it can electrocute you at a distance of a foot on a humid night. This, here,” Rat said, indicating another giant piece of wooden furniture, “is a free-standing Fluchtzbesser turntable. Inside that wooden cabinet is an eleven-hundred-pound piece of granite. Yes, sir, this is about the finest hi-fi ever assembled in the city of Baconburg.”

“And it only has the one speaker?” Winston Bongo asked.

Rat gave Winston a sideways look. “Stereo is for sissies,” she said.