alligators—and they were saying the alligator A B C while she was saying
the A B C of the Cracked Heads. At last she said good-by to me, good-by
and come again soon, good-by and stay longer next time.’
“‘When I went out of the door all the baby alligators climbed up the
ladder and bingety blinged good-by to me. I buzzed home fast because I
was lonesome. I am so, _so_ glad to be home again.’”
The Potato Face looked up and said, “This is nice as the rats on the
moon in the middle of the winter locking their mittens in the ice box.
Tell us next about that blue-violet bumblebee, Jesse James.”
“Jesse James,” said Dippy the Wisp, “Jesse James came buzzing home with
a postage stamp on his nose. And Jesse James buzzed, ‘I flew and I flew
and buzzed and buzzed far, far away till I came where I met the King of
the Paper Sacks who lives in a palace of paper sacks. I went inside the
palace expecting to see paper sacks everywhere. But instead of paper
sacks the palace was full of pink and purple peanuts walking up and down
the stairs washing their faces, stitching handkerchiefs.’
“‘In the evening all the pink and purple peanuts put on their overshoes
and make paper sacks. The King of the Paper Sacks walks around and
around among them saying, “If anybody asks you who I am tell them I am
the King of the Paper Sacks.” And one little peanut flipped up one time
in the King’s face and asked, “Say it again—_who_ do you think you are?”
And it made the King so bitter in his feelings he reached out his hand
and with a sweep and a swoop he swept fifty pink and purple peanuts into
a paper sack and cried out, “A nickel a sack, a nickel a sack.” And he
threw them into a trash pile of tin cans.
“‘When I went away he shook hands with me and said, “Good-by, Jesse
James, you old buzzer, if anybody asks you tell them you saw the King of
the Paper Sacks where he lives.”
“‘When I went away from the palace, the doors and the window sills, the
corners of the roofs and the eave troughs where the rain runs off, they
were all full of pink and purple peanuts standing in their overshoes
washing their faces, stitching handkerchiefs, calling good-by to me,
good-by and come again, good-by and stay longer next time. Then I came
buzzing home because I was lonesome. And I am so, _so_ glad to be home
again.’”
The Potato Face looked up again and said, “It _is_ a misty moisty
evening in the moonshine. Now tell us about that blue-violet honeybee,
Spanish Onions.”
And Dippy the Wisp tied a slipknot in the pearl-color handkerchief
around the yellow neck of Spanish Onions and said, “Spanish Onions came
buzzing back home with her face dirty and scared and she told us, ‘I
flew and flew and I buzzed and buzzed till I came where I met the Queen
of the Empty Hats. She took me by the foot and took me across the City
of the Empty Hats, saying under her breath, “There is a screw loose
somewhere, there is a leak in the tank.” Fat rats, fat bats, fat cats,
came along under empty hats and the Queen always said under her breath,
“There is a screw loose somewhere, there is a leak in the tank.” In the
houses, on the street, riding on the rattlers and the razz cars, the
only people were hats, empty hats. When the fat rats changed hats with
the fat bats, the hats were empty. When the fat bats changed _those_
hats with the fat cats, the hats were empty. I took off my hat and saw
it was empty. _I began to feel like an empty hat myself._ I got scared.
I jumped loose from the Queen of the Empty Hats and buzzed back home
fast. I am so, _so_ glad to be home again.’”
The Potato Face sat hugging his accordion. He looked up and said, “Put
the bees back in the bee-bag—they buzz too many secrets, syllables and
snitches.”
“What do you expect when the moon is a gold door with silver transoms?”
asked Slip Me Liz.
“Yes,” said Dippy the Wisp. “What do you expect when the bumblebees and
the honeybees are chasing each other over the gold door of the moon and
up over the silver transoms?”
And the two tough pony girls, the two limber prairie girls, went away
humming a little humpty dumpty song across the moonshine gold on the
tops of the rainpools.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
How Hot Balloons and His Pigeon Daughters Crossed Over into the
Rootabaga Country
Hot Balloons was a man who lived all alone among people who sell slips,
flips, flicks and chicks by the dozen, by the box, by the box car job
lot, back and forth to each other.
Hot Balloons used to open the window in the morning and say to the rag
pickers and the rag handlers, “Far, far away the pigeons are calling;
far, far away the white wings are dipping in the blue, in the sky blue.”
And the rag pickers and the rag handlers looked up from their rag bags
and said, “Far, far away the rags are flying; far, far away the rags are
whistling in the wind, in the sky wind.”
Now two pigeons came walking up to the door, the door knob and the door
bell under the window of Hot Balloons. One of the pigeons rang the bell.
The other pigeon, too, stepped up to the bell and gave it a ring.
Then they waited, tying the shoe strings on their shoes and the bonnet
strings under their chins, while they waited.
Hot Balloons opened the door. And they flew into his hands, one pigeon
apiece in each of his hands, flipping and fluttering their wings,
calling, “Ka loo, ka loo, ka lo, ka lo,” leaving a letter in his hands
and then flying away fast.
[Illustration: One of the pigeons rang the bell]
Hot Balloons stepped out on the front steps to read the letter where the
light was good in the daylight because it was so early in the morning.
The letter was on paper scribbled over in pigeon foot blue handwriting
with many secrets and syllables.
After Hot Balloons read the letter, he said to himself, “I wonder if
those two pigeons are my two runaway daughters, Dippy the Wisp and Slip
Me Liz. When they ran away they said they would cross the Shampoo river
and go away into the Rootabaga country to live. And I have heard it is a
law of the Rootabaga country whenever a girl crosses the Shampoo river
to come back where she used to be, she changes into a pigeon—and she
stays a pigeon till she crosses back over the Shampoo river into the
Rootabaga country again.”
And he shaded his eyes with his hands and looked far, far away in the
blue, in the sky blue. And by looking long and hard he saw far, far away
in the sky blue, the two white pigeons dipping their wings in the blue,
flying fast, circling and circling higher and higher, toward the Shampoo
river, toward the Rootabaga country.
“I wonder, I guess, I think so,” he said to himself, “I wonder, I think
so, it must be those two pigeons are my two runaway daughters, my two
girls, Dippy the Wisp and Slip Me Liz.”
He took out the letter and read it again right side up, upside down,
back and forth. “It is the first time I ever read pigeon foot blue
handwriting,” he said to himself. And the way he read the letter, it
said to him:
Daddy, daddy, daddy, come home to us in the Rootabaga country where
the pigeons call ka loo, ka loo, ka lo, ka lo, where the squirrels
carry ladders and the wildcats ask riddles and the fish jump out of
the rivers and speak to the frying pans, where the baboons take care
of the babies and the black cats come and go in orange and gold
stockings, where the birds wear rose and purple hats on Monday
afternoons up in the skylights in the evening.
(Signed) DIPPY THE WISP,
SLIP ME LIZ.
And reading the letter a second time, Hot Balloons said to himself, “No
wonder it is scribbled over the paper in pigeon foot blue handwriting.
No wonder it is full of secrets and syllables.”
So he jumped into a shirt and a necktie, he jumped into a hat and a
vest, and he jumped into a steel car, starting with a snizz and a snoof
till it began running smooth and even as a catfoot.
“I will ride to the Shampoo river faster than two pigeons fly,” he said.
“I will be there.”
Which he was. He got there before the two pigeons. But it was no use.
For the rain and the rainstorm was working—and the rain and the
rainstorm tore down and took and washed away the steel bridge over the
Shampoo river.
“Now there is only an air bridge to cross on, and a _steel_ car drops
down, falls off, falls through, if it runs on an _air_ bridge,” he said.
So he was all alone with the rain and the rainstorm all around him—and
far as he could see by shading his eyes and looking, there was only the
rain and the rainstorm across the river—and the _air_ bridge.
While he waited for the rain and the rainstorm to go down, two pigeons
came flying into his hands, one apiece into each hand, flipping and
fluttering their wings and calling, “Ka loo, ka loo, ka lo, ka lo.” And
he could tell by the way they began tying the shoestrings on their shoes
and the bonnet strings under their chins, they were the same two pigeons
ringing the door bell that morning.
They wrote on his thumb-nails in pigeon foot blue handwriting, and he
read their handwriting asking him why he didn’t cross over the Shampoo
river. And he explained, “There is only an _air_ bridge to cross on. A
_steel_ car drops down, falls off, falls through, if it runs on an _air_
bridge. Change my _steel_ car to an _air_ car. Then I can cross the
_air_ bridge.”
The pigeons flipped and fluttered, dipped their wings and called, “Ka
loo, ka loo, ka lo, ka lo.” And they scribbled their pigeon feet on his
thumb-nail—telling him to wait. So the pigeons went flying across the
Shampoo river.
They came back with a basket. In the basket was a snoox and a gringo.
And the snoox and the gringo took hammers, jacks, flanges, nuts, screws,
bearings, ball bearings, axles, axle grease, ax handles, spits,
spitters, spitballs and spitfires, and worked.
“It’s a hot job,” said the snoox to the gringo. “I’ll say it’s a hot
job,” said the gringo answering the snoox.
“We’ll give this one the merry razoo,” said the snoox to the gringo,
working overtime and double time. “Yes, we’ll put her to the cleaners
and shoot her into high,” said the gringo, answering the snoox, working
overtime and double time.
They changed the steel to air, made an _air_ car out of the _steel_ car,
put Hot Balloons and the two pigeons into the air car and _drove the air
car across the air bridge_.
And nowadays when people talk about it in the Rootabaga country, they
say, “The snoox and the gringo drove the air car across the air bridge
clean and cool as a whistle in the wind. As soon as the car got off the
bridge and over into the Rootabaga country, the two pigeons changed in a
flash. And Hot Balloons saw they were his two daughters, his two runaway
girls, Dippy the Wisp and Slip Me Liz, standing and smiling at him and
looking fresh and free as two fresh fish in a free river, fresh and free
as two fresh bimbos in a bamboo tree.”
He kissed them both, two long kisses, and while he was kissing them the
snoox and the gringo worked double time and overtime and changed the
_air_ car back into a _steel_ car.
And Dippy the Wisp and Slip Me Liz rode in that car—starting with a
snizz and a snoof till it began running smooth and even as a
catfoot—showing their father, Hot Balloons, where the squirrels carry
ladders and the wildcats ask riddles and the fish jump out of the rivers
and speak to the frying pans, where the baboons take care of the babies
and the black cats come and go in orange and gold stockings, where the
birds wear rose and purple hats on Monday afternoons up in the skylights
in the evening.
And often on a Saturday night or a New Year Eve or a Christmas morning,
Hot Balloons remembers back how things used to be, and he tells his two
girls about the rag pickers and the rag handlers back among the people
who sell slips, flips, flicks, and chicks, by the dozen, by the box, by
the box car job lot, back and forth to each other.
[Illustration]
How Two Sweetheart Dippies Sat in the Moonlight on a Lumber Yard Fence
and Heard About the Sooners and the Boomers
Not so very far and not so very near the Village of Liver-and-Onions is
a dippy little town where dippy people used to live.
And it was long, long ago the sweetheart dippies stood in their windows
and watched the dips of the star dippers in the dip of the sky.
It was the dippies who took the running wild oleander and the cunning
wild rambler rose and kept them so the running wild winters let them
alone.
“It is easy to be a dippy ... among the dippies ... isn’t it?” the
sweetheart dippies whispered to each other, sitting in the leaf shadows
of the oleander, the rambler rose.
The name of this dippy town came by accident. The name of the town is
Thumbs Up and it used to be named Thumbs Down and expects to change its
name back and forth between Thumbs Up and Thumbs Down.
The running wild oleanders and the running wild rambler roses grow there
over the big lumber yards where all the old lumber goes.
The dippies and the dippy sweethearts go out there to those lumber yards
and sit on the fence moonlight nights and look at the lumber.
The rusty nails in the lumber get rustier and rustier till they drop
out. And whenever they drop out there is always a rat standing under to
take the nail in his teeth and chew the nail and eat it.
For this is the place the nail-eating rats come to from all over the
Rootabaga country. Father rats and mother rats send the young rats there
to eat nails and get stronger.
If a young rat comes back from a trip to the lumber yards in Thumbs Up
and he meets another young rat going to those lumber yards, they say to
each other, “Where have you been?” “To Thumbs Up.” “And how do you
feel?” “_Hard as nails._”
Now one night two of the dippies, a sweetheart boy and girl, went out to
the big lumber yards and sat on the fence and looked at the lumber and
the running wild oleanders and the running wild rambler roses.
And they saw two big rusty nails, getting rustier and rustier, drop out
of the lumber and drop into the teeth of two young rats.
And the two young rats sat up on their tails there in the moonlight
under the oleanders, under the roses, and one of the young rats told the
other young rat a story he made up out of his head.
Chewing on the big rusty nail and then swallowing, telling more of the
story after swallowing and before beginning to chew the nail again, this
is the story he told—and this is the story the two dippies, the two
sweethearts sitting on the fence in the moonlight, heard:
Far away where the sky drops down, and the sunsets open doors for the
nights to come through—where the running winds meet, change faces and
come back—there is a prairie where the green grass grows all around.
And on that prairie the gophers, the black and brown-striped ground
squirrels, sit with their backs straight up, sitting on their soft paddy
tails, sitting in the spring song murmur of the south wind, saying to
each other, “This is the prairie and the prairie belongs to us.”
Now far back in the long time, the gophers came there, chasing each
other, playing the-green-grass-grew-all-around, playing cross tag, hop
tag, skip tag, billy-be-tag, billy-be-it.
The razorback hogs came then, eating pignuts, potatoes, paw paws,
pumpkins. The wild horse, the buffalo, came. The moose, with spraggly
branches of antlers spreading out over his head, the moose came—and the
fox, the wolf.
The gophers flipped a quick flip-flop back into their gopher holes when
the fox, the wolf, came. And the fox, the wolf, stood at the holes and
said, “You _look_ like rats, you _run_ like rats, you _are_ rats, rats
with stripes. Bah! you are only _rats_. Bah!”
It was the first time anybody said “Bah!” to the gophers. They sat in a
circle with their noses up asking, “_What_ does this ‘Bah!’ mean?” And
an old timer, with his hair falling off in patches, with the stripes on
his soft paddy tail patched with patches, this old timer of a gopher
said, “‘Bah!’ speaks more than it means whenever it is spoken.”
Then the sooners and the boomers came, saying “Bah!” and saying it many
new ways, till the fox, the wolf, the moose, the wild horse, the
buffalo, the razorback hog picked up their feet and ran away without
looking back.
The sooners and boomers began making houses, sod houses, log, lumber,
plaster-and-lath houses, stone, brick, steel houses, but most of the
houses were lumber with nails to hold the lumber together to keep the
rain off and push the wind back and hold the blizzards outside.
In the beginning the sooners and boomers told stories, spoke jokes, made
songs, with their arms on each other’s shoulders. They dug wells,
helping each other get water. They built chimneys together helping each
other let the smoke out of their houses. And every year the day before
Thanksgiving they went in cahoots with their post hole diggers and dug
all the post holes for a year to come. That was in the morning. In the
afternoon they took each other’s cistern cleaners and cleaned all the
cisterns for a year to come. And the next day on Thanksgiving they split
turkey wishbones and thanked each other they had all the post holes dug
and all the cisterns cleaned for a year to come.
If the boomers had to have broom corn to make brooms the sooners came
saying, “Here is your broom corn.” If the sooners had to have a gallon
of molasses, the boomers came saying, “Here is your gallon of molasses.”
They handed each other big duck eggs to fry, big goose eggs to boil,
purple pigeon eggs for Easter breakfast. Wagon loads of buff banty eggs
went back and forth between the sooners and boomers. And they took big
hayracks full of buff banty hens and traded them for hayracks full of
buff banty roosters.
And one time at a picnic, one summer afternoon, the sooners gave the
boomers a thousand golden ice tongs with hearts and hands carved on the
handles. And the boomers gave the sooners a thousand silver wheelbarrows
with hearts and hands carved on the handles.
Then came pigs, pigs, pigs, and more pigs. And the sooners and boomers
said the pigs had to be painted. There was a war to decide whether the
pigs should be painted pink or green. Pink won.
The next war was to decide whether the pigs should be painted checks or
stripes. Checks won. The next war after that was to decide whether the
checks should be painted pink or green. Green won.
Then came the longest war of all, up till that time. And this war
decided the pigs should be painted both pink and green, both checks and
stripes.
They rested then. But it was only a short rest. For then came the war to
decide whether peach pickers must pick peaches on Tuesday mornings or on
Saturday afternoons. Tuesday mornings won. This was a short war. Then
came a long war—to decide whether telegraph pole climbers must eat
onions at noon with spoons, or whether dishwashers must keep their money
in pig’s ears with padlocks pinched on with pincers.
So the wars went on. Between wars they called each other goofs and
snoofs, grave robbers, pickpockets, porch climbers, pie thieves, pie
face mutts, bums, big bums, big greasy bums, dummies, mummies, rummies,
sneezicks, bohunks, wops, snorkies, ditch diggers, peanuts, fatheads,
sapheads, pinheads, pickle faces, horse thieves, rubbernecks, big pieces
of cheese, big bags of wind, snabs, scabs, and dirty sniveling snitches.
Sometimes when they got tired of calling each other names they scratched
in the air with their fingers and made faces with their tongues out
twisted like pretzels.
After a while, it seemed, there was no corn, no broom corn, no brooms,
not even teeny sweepings of corn or broom corn or brooms. And there were
no duck eggs to fry, goose eggs to boil, no buff banty eggs, no buff
banty hens, no buff banty roosters, no wagons for wagon loads of buff
banty eggs, no hayracks for hayrack loads of buff banty hens and buff
banty roosters.
And the thousand golden ice tongs the sooners gave the boomers, and the
thousand silver wheelbarrows the boomers gave the sooners, both with
hearts and hands carved on the handles, they were long ago broken up in
one of the early wars deciding pigs must be painted both pink and green
with both checks and stripes.
And now, at last, there were no more pigs to paint either pink or green
or with checks or stripes. The pigs, pigs, pigs, were gone.
So the sooners and boomers all got lost in the wars or they screwed
wooden legs on their stump legs and walked away to bigger, bigger
prairies or they started away for the rivers and mountains, stopping
always to count how many fleas there were in any bunch of fleas they
met. If you see anybody who stops to count the fleas in a bunch of
fleas, that is a sign he is either a sooner or a boomer.
So again the gophers, the black and brown striped ground squirrels, sit
with their backs straight up, sitting on their soft paddy tails, sitting
in the spring song murmur of the south wind, saying, “This is the
prairie and the prairie belongs to us.”
Far away to-day where the sky drops down and the sunsets open
doors for the nights to come through—where the running winds meet,
change faces and come back—there the gophers are playing
the-green-grass-grew-all-around, playing cross tag, skip tag, hop
tag, billy-be-tag, billy-be-it. And sometimes they sit in a circle
and ask, “What does this ‘Bah!’ mean?” And an old timer answers,
“‘Bah!’ speaks more than it means whenever it is spoken.”
That was the story the young rat under the oleanders, under the roses,
told the other young rat, while the two sweetheart dippies sat on the
fence in the moonlight looking at the lumber and listening.
The young rat who told the story hardly got started eating the nail he
was chewing, while the young rat that did the listening chewed up and
swallowed down a whole nail.
As the two dippies on the fence looked at the running wild oleander and
the running wild rambler roses over the lumber in the moonlight, they
said to each other, “It’s easy to be a dippy ... among the dippies ...
isn’t it?” And they climbed down from the fence and went home in the
moonlight.
[Illustration]
7. Two Stories Out of the Tall Grass.
_People_: John Jack Johannes Hummadummaduffer
Feed Box
Eva Evelyn Evangeline Hummadummaduffer
Sky Blue
The Harvest Moon
A Haystack Cricket
Baby Moon
Half Moon
Silver Moon
Doorbells, Chimneys, Cellars
The Night Policeman in the Village of Cream Puffs
Butter Fingers
Three Strikes
Cub Ballplayers
[Illustration]
The Haystack Cricket and How Things Are Different Up in the Moon Towns
There is an old man with wrinkles like wrinkled leather on his face
living among the cornfields on the rolling prairie near the Shampoo
river.
His name is John Jack Johannes Hummadummaduffer. His cronies and the
people who know him call him Feed Box.
His daughter is a cornfield girl with hair shining the way cornsilk
shines when the corn is ripe in the fall time. The tassels of cornsilk
hang down and blow in the wind with a rusty dark gold, and they seem to
get mixed with her hair. Her name is Eva Evelyn Evangeline
Hummadummaduffer. And her chums and the people who know her call her Sky
Blue.
The eleventh month, November, comes every year to the corn belt on that
rolling prairie. The wagons bring the corn from the fields in the
harvest days and the cracks in the corncribs shine with the yellow and
gold of the corn.
The harvest moon comes, too. They say it stacks sheaves of the November
gold moonshine into gold corn shocks on the sky. So they say.
On those mornings in November that time of the year, the old man they
call Feed Box sits where the sun shines against the boards of a
corncrib.
The girl they call Sky Blue, even though her name is Eva Evelyn
Evangeline Hummadummaduffer, she comes along one November morning. Her
father is sitting in the sun with his back against a corncrib. And he
tells her he always sits there every year listening to the mice in the
cornfields getting ready to move into the big farmhouse.
“When the frost comes and the corn is husked and put in the corncribs,
the fields are cleaned and the cold nights come. Papa mouse and mama
mouse tell the little ones it is time to sneak into the cellar and the
garret and the attic of the farmhouse,” said Feed Box to Sky Blue.
“I am listening,” she said, “and I can hear the papa mouse and the mama
mouse telling the little ones how they will find rags and paper and wool
and splinters and shavings and hair, and they will make warm nests for
the winter in the big farmhouse—if no kits, cats nor kittycats get
them.”
The old man, Feed Box, rubbed his back and his shoulders against the
boards of the corncrib and washed his hands almost as if he might be
washing them in the gold of the autumn sunshine. Then he told this
happening: