THE GREAT CADILLAC TREASURE HUNT

Some weeks ago, we at D Magazine were surprised to find a small clasp envelope outside the door of our offices. It bore evidence of rough handling and appeared to have been folded several times. Bright red and yellow stains blotched its surface. There was no return address or postmark, only a name: Homer Cassapien.

But why should all this concern you, the readers of D? Because, although we didn’t know it at the time, this mysterious envelope was the beginning of Dallas’ greatest giveaway: D Magazine’s Great Cadillac Treasure Hunt. The lucky (and thoughtful and shrewd) winner of this contest will be the proud owner of a brand-new 1983 Eldorado from Sewell Village Cadillac in the color of his or her choice. How do you win? Read on.

Inside that envelope was a brief sketch of the life of Homer Cassapien, a Dallas native who, by his own account, may be the most brilliant mind ever produced by this or any other city. Cassapien was so smart that he graduated from high school at age 11 and entered Belkroften College in Brussels when he was 13 years old. He graduated with highest honors from Belkroften before he was 17; a book developed from his master’s thesis (which dealt with the effects of hydraulic envalvula-tion on isoltic illithium) won him the prestigious Prix Ingénioux when he was just 20 years old.

But Homer Cassapien’s superhuman intellect did not bring him happiness. Instead, he felt increasingly alienated from his fellow men as he became convinced that he would never find a problem sufficiently difficult to challenge him.

“I grew bored and restless,” Cassapien wrote. “Ennui seized my mind. I was paralyzed by the thought that there might be no intellectual problem under the sun that I might not solve with ridiculous ease. In desperation, I turned to the unanswered paradigms of Einstein, only to see them dissolve before my relentless mind in one afternoon. I threw myself into a Yiddish translation of War and Peace, thinking to complicate the matter by using only words with three syllables. Again, it was child’s play. And it was the same with every challenge I undertook: All were too easy.”

So Homer Cassapien returned to the city of his birth. He rented a tiny efficiency on lower Worth Street and gave up any serious use of his mind, choosing instead to while away the hours constructing grotesquely complicated word puzzles, acrostics, a 320-word palindrome and trivia questions about The Tibetan Book of the Dead.

But most of the time, Homer just sat on a lumpy daybed and stared out the window. And then one day, as he was glancing through an old copy of D Magazine, he came upon a story that would change his life. There in the headline was the question that would engage Homer’s massive intellect in one final, awe-inspiring quest:

CENTRAL EXPRESSWAY: WHO’S GOT THE ANSWER?

“At that moment,” Homer wrote, “I felt the scattered fragments of my mind drawn together like metal filings under the influence of a giant magnet. Here, in my own city, was a problem so convoluted, a mess so humongous as to offer a fitting match for my mental powers.”

We will not summarize the pages and pages of abstract scientific analysis that Homer sent us. Frankly, we don’t understand his calculations. Impatient, we skipped ahead in the manuscript until we reached the last page. At the bottom was this note: “Eureka! I have found the answer!”

And then, nothing. Not one word more. We went back through the manuscript, thinking that perhaps the pages were out of order, but there was nothing else. Angered at the waste of our precious time that otherwise could have been spent reviewing restaurants, most of us dismissed Homer as a harmless crackpot and forgot about him until just a few days ago, when we got another letter from him.

Well, not exactly from him. Actually, the letter was from Homer’s psychiatrist, a Dr. Lemuel Krantz of Springline, Massachusetts. We quote:

Please be advised that the man you know as Homer Cassapien has been under my care for the past six weeks. He is suffering from acute delusional maladjustment syndrome and a rare nervous disorder known as Polymath’s Twitch. Mr. Cassapien (if that is his real name) maintains that he can talk to cabbage, that he can fly and that he has a solution to Dallas’ traffic problems.

I am working to help him give up these absurd fantasies, but progress has been slow. That is why 1 am writing to you. Apparently, Homer had been planning to unveil his “solution” to Dallas traffic problems in your magazine. He has high regard for your publication. Perhaps you can help him.

In a recent session, as I was attempting to take Homer back through the chain of events that led to his breakdown, he told me he had been making a study of Dallas intersections in order to determine something or other -he would not elaborate. Then he broke off and would not continue.

The next day, Homer brought me the three “puzzles” – I don’t know what else to call them -which I am sending you under separate cover. He hopes the puzzles will “lead Dallasites to a higher consciousness of the locational and topographical realities of their city”-whatever that means. Anything you or your readers could do would be greatly appreciated. Perhaps if we humor him – show him that we take his ideas seriously-he will adjust to reality.

Sincerely,

Lemuel Krantz, Ph.D.

We at D want to help Homer, a loyal Dallasite who simply bit off more than he could chew. And we know you’d like to help him, too. But having looked at Homer’s puzzles, we find them to be so mind-bendingly difficult that we seriously doubt whether anyone will go to the trouble of solving them just for the mental thrill of it – or for the prize Homer sent us: a copy of his philosophical cookbook, Hors D’oeuvres of the Gods.

So, we’ve decided to sweeten the pot.

We’re putting a magnificent prize at the end of Cassapien’s rainbow: a 1983 Cadillac Eldorado from Sewell Village Cadillac.

For Part One of The Great Cadillac Treasure Hunt, which begins in this issue, all you need is a current city map or Mapsco and a well-stocked imagination. Parts Two and Three, unveiled in our May and June issues, will take you out of your living room and into the city in search of the keys to your new Eldorado. Get ready to furrow your brow and pace your floor – and, in May and June, to put a few last miles on your old car.



THE HUNT

How to Start:

Each of Homer’s numbered lines on page 117 gives clues to the names of two intersecting streets somewhere within the Dallas city limits, including the Park Cities. Usually, each line contains two clues, one to each street name. For instance, if Homer had two streets in mind such as Texas and Andrews, his clue might be “Lone Star Sisters.” For Lucy Drive and Helena Street, Homer might give us “I Love Montana.” Getting tougher, he might clue us in to Burma Road and Trojan with “a tricky Indian horse.”

Once your brain begins to work like old Homer’s, the fun will really begin. Print the names of the two intersecting streets in the corresponding blank in the list of answers. There will be no spaces between words, so if the answer to number 38 was