From Rootabaga
Stories by Carl Sandburg
Gimme the Ax lived in a house where
everything is the same as it always was.
“The chimney sits on top of the house and
lets the smoke out,” said Gimme the Ax. “The doorknobs open the doors. The
windows are always either open or shut. We are always either upstairs or
downstairs in this house. Everything is the same as it always was.”
“The first words they speak as soon as
they learn to make words shall be their names,” he said. “They shall name
themselves.”
When the first boy came to the house of
Gimme the Ax, he was named Please Gimme. When the first girl came she was named
Ax Me No Questions.
And both of the children had the shadows
of valleys by night in their eyes and the lights of early morning, when the sun
is coming up, on their foreheads.
And the hair on top of their heads was a
dark wild grass. And they loved to turn the doorknobs, open the doors, and run
out to have the wind comb their hair and touch their eyes and put its six soft
fingers on their foreheads.
And then because no more boys came and no
more girls came, Gimme the Ax said to himself, “My first boy is my last and my
last girl is my first and they picked their names themselves.”
Please Gimme grew up and his ears got
longer. Ax Me No Questions grew up and her ears got longer. And they kept on
living in the house where everything is the same as it always was. They learned
to say just as their father said, “The chimney sits on top of the house and
lets the smoke out, the doorknobs open the doors, the windows are always either
open or shut, we are always either upstairs or downstairs—everything is the
same as it always was.”
After a while they began asking each other
in the cool of the evening after they had eggs for breakfast in the morning,
“Who’s who? How much? And what’s the answer?”
“It is too much to be too long anywhere,”
said the tough old man, Gimme the Ax.
And Please Gimme and Ax Me No Questions,
the tough son and the tough daughter of Gimme the Ax, answered their father,
“It is too much to be too long anywhere.”
So they sold everything they had, pigs,
pastures, pepper pickers, pitchforks, everything except
their ragbags and a few extras.
When their neighbors saw them selling
everything they had, the different neighbors said, “They are going to Kansas,
to Kokomo, to Canada, to Kankakee, to Kalamazoo, to Kamchatka, to the
Chattahoochee.”
One little sniffer with his eyes half shut
and a mitten on his nose, laughed in his hat five ways and said, “They are
going to the moon and when they get there they will find everything is the same
as it always was.”
All the spot cash money he got for selling
everything, pigs, pastures, pepper pickers, pitchforks, Gimme the Ax put in a
ragbag and slung on his back like a rag picker going home.
Then he took Please Gimme, his oldest and
youngest and only son, and Ax Me No Questions, his oldest and youngest and only
daughter, and went to the railroad station.
The ticket agent was sitting at the window
selling railroad tickets the same as always.
He opened the ragbag and took out all the
spot cash money
“Do you wish a ticket to go away and come
back or do you wish a ticket to go away and never come back?” the ticket
agent asked wiping sleep out of his eyes.
“We wish a ticket to ride where the
railroad tracks run off into the sky and never come back—send us far as the
railroad rails go and then forty ways farther yet,” was the reply of Gimme the
Ax.
“So far? So early? So soon?” asked the
ticket agent wiping more sleep out his eyes. “Then I will give you a new
ticket. It blew in. It is a long slick yellow leather slab ticket with a blue
spanch across it.”
Gimme the Ax thanked the ticket agent
once, thanked the ticket agent twice, and then instead of thanking the ticket
agent three times he opened the ragbag and took out all the spot cash money he
got for selling everything, pigs, pastures, pepper pickers, pitchforks, and
paid the spot cash money to the ticket agent.
Before he put it in his pocket he looked
once, twice, three times at the long yellow leather slab
ticket with a blue spanch across it.
Then with Please Gimme and Ax Me No
Questions he got on the railroad train, showed the conductor his ticket and
they started to ride to where the railroad tracks run off into the blue sky and
then forty ways farther yet.
The train ran on and on. It came to the
place where the railroad tracks run off into the blue sky. And it ran on and on
chick chick-a-chick chick-a-chick chick-a-chick.
Sometimes the engineer hooted and tooted
the whistle. Sometimes the fireman rang the bell. Sometimes the open-and-shut
of the steam hog’s nose choked and spit pfisty-pfoost, pfisty-pfoost,
pfisty-pfoost. But no matter what happened to the whistle and the bell and the
steam hog, the train ran on and on to where the railroad tracks run off into
the blue sky. And then it ran on and on more and more.
Sometimes Gimme the Ax looked in his
pocket, put his fingers in and took out the long slick
yellow leather slab ticket with a blue spanch across it.
“Not even the Kings of Egypt with all
their climbing camels, and all their speedy, spotted, lucky lizards, ever had a
ride like this,” he said to his children.
Then something happened. They met another
train running on the same track. One train was going one way. The other was
going the other way. They met. They passed each other.
“What was it—what happened?” the children
asked their father.
“One train went over, the other train went
under,” he answered. “This is the Over and Under country. Nobody gets out of
the way of anybody else. They either go over or under.”
Next they came to the country of the
balloon pickers. Hanging down from the sky strung on strings so fine the eye
could not see them at first, was the balloon crop of that summer. The sky was thick with balloons. Red, blue, yellow balloons,
white, purple and orange balloons—peach, watermelon and potato balloons—rye
loaf and wheat loaf balloons—link sausage and pork chop balloons—they floated
and filled the sky.
The balloon pickers were walking on high
stilts picking balloons. Each picker had his own stilts, long or short. For
picking balloons near the ground he had short stilts. If he wanted to pick far
and high he walked on a far and high pair of stilts.
Baby pickers on baby stilts were picking
baby balloons. When they fell off the stilts the handful of balloons they were
holding kept them in the air till they got their feet into the stilts again.
“Who is that away up there in the sky
climbing like a bird in the morning?” Ax Me No Questions asked her father.
“He was singing too happy,” replied the
father. “The songs came out of his neck and made him so
light the balloons pulled him off his stilts.”
“Will he ever come down again back to his
own people?”
“Yes, his heart will get heavy when his
songs are all gone. Then he will drop down to his stilts again.”
The train was running on and on. The
engineer hooted and tooted the whistle when he felt like it. The fireman rang
the bell when he felt that way. And sometimes the open-and-shut of the steam
hog had to go pfisty-pfoost, pfisty-pfoost.
“Next is the country where the circus
clowns come from,” said Gimme the Ax to his son and daughter. “Keep your eyes
open.”
They did keep their eyes open. They saw
cities with ovens, long and short ovens, fat stubby ovens, lean lank ovens, all
for baking either long or short clowns, or fat and stubby or lean and lank
clowns.
After each clown was baked in the oven it was taken out into the sunshine and put up to stand like a
big white doll with a red mouth leaning against the fence.
Two men came along to each baked clown
standing still like a doll. One man threw a bucket of white fire over it. The
second man pumped a wind pump with a living red wind through the red mouth.
The clown rubbed his eyes, opened his
mouth, twisted his neck, wiggled his ears, wriggled his toes, jumped away from
the fence and began turning handsprings, cartwheels, somersaults and flipflops
in the sawdust ring near the fence.
“The next we come to is the Rootabaga
Country where the big city is the Village of Liver-and-Onions,” said Gimme the
Ax, looking again in his pocket to be sure he had the long slick yellow leather
slab ticket with a blue spanch across it.
The train ran on and on till it stopped
running straight and began running in zigzags like one
letter Z put next to another Z and the next and the next.
The tracks and the rails and the ties and
the spikes under the train all stopped being straight and changed to zigzags
like one letter Z and another letter Z put next after the other.
“It seems like we go half way and then
back up,” said Ax Me No Questions.
“Look out of the window and see if the
pigs have bibs on,” said Gimme the Ax. “If the pigs are wearing bibs then this
is the Rootabaga country.”
And they looked out of the zigzagging
windows of the zigzagging cars and the first pigs they saw had bibs on. And the
next pigs and the next pigs they saw all had bibs on.
The checker pigs had checker bibs on, the
striped pigs had striped bibs on. And the polka dot pigs had polka dot bibs on.
“Who fixes it for the pigs to have bibs
on?” Please Gimme asked his father.
“The fathers and mothers fix it,” answered
Gimme the Ax. “The checker pigs have checker fathers and
mothers. The striped pigs have striped fathers and mothers. And the polka dot
pigs have polka dot fathers and mothers.”
And the train went zigzagging on and on
running on the tracks and the rails and the spikes and the ties which were all
zigzag like the letter Z and the letter Z.
And after a while the train zigzagged on
into the Village of Liver-and-Onions, known as the biggest city in the big, big
Rootabaga country.
And so if you are going to the Rootabaga
country you will know when you get there because the railroad tracks change
from straight to zigzag, the pigs have bibs on and it is the fathers and
mothers who fix it.
And if you start to go to that country
remember first you must sell everything you have, pigs, pastures, pepper
pickers, pitchforks, put the spot cash money in a ragbag and go to the railroad
station and ask the ticket agent for a long slick yellow
leather slab ticket with a blue spanch across it.
And you mustn’t be surprised if the ticket
agent wipes sleep from his eyes and asks, “So far? So early? So soon?”
==============
From Rootabaga Stories by Carl Sandburg
ISBN: 9788835814825
URL/DownLoad Link: https://bit.ly/2SaM749
==============
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