hear him, I remember one November when I was a boy.
One night in November when the harvest moon was shining and stacking
gold cornshocks in the sky, I got lost. Instead of going home I was
going away from home. And the next day and the next night instead of
going home I was going away from home.
That second night I came to a haystack where a yellow and gold cricket
was singing. And he was singing the same songs the crickets sing in the
haystacks back home where the Hummadummaduffers raise hay and corn, in
the corn belt near the Shampoo river.
And he told me, this cricket did, he told me when he listened soft if
everything was still in the grass and the sky, he could hear golden
crickets singing in the cornshocks the harvest moon had stacked in the
sky.
I went to sleep listening to the singing of the yellow and gold crickets
in that haystack. It was early in the morning, long before daylight, I
guess, the two of us went on a trip away from the haystack.
We took a trip. The yellow and gold cricket led the way. “It is the call
of the harvest moon,” he said to me in a singing whisper. “We are going
up to the moon towns where the harvest moon stacks the cornshocks on the
sky.”
We came to a little valley in the sky. And the harvest moon had slipped
three little towns into that valley, three little towns named Half Moon,
Baby Moon, and Silver Moon.
In the town of Half Moon they _look_ out of the doors and _come in_ at
the windows. So they have taken all the doorbells off the doors and put
them on the windows. Whenever we rang a door-bell we went to a window.
In the town of Baby Moon they had windows on the chimneys so the smoke
can look out of the window and see the weather before it comes out over
the top of the chimney. And whenever the chimneys get tired of being
stuck up on the top of the roof, the chimneys climb down and dance in
the cellar. We saw five chimneys climb down and join hands and bump
heads and dance a laughing chimney dance.
In the town of Silver Moon the cellars are not satisfied. They say to
each other, “We are tired of being under, always under.” So the cellars
slip out from being under, always under. They slip out and climb up on
top of the roof.
And that was all we saw up among the moon towns of Half Moon, Baby Moon
and Silver Moon. We had to get back to the haystack so as to get up in
the morning after our night sleep.
“This time of the year I always remember that November,” said the old
man, Feed Box, to his daughter, Sky Blue.
And Sky Blue said, “I am going to sleep in a haystack sometime in
November just to see if a yellow and gold cricket will come with a
singing whisper and take me on a trip to where the doorbells are on the
windows and the chimneys climb down and dance.”
The old man murmured, “Don’t forget the cellars tired of being under,
always under.”
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
Why the Big Ball Game Between Hot Grounders and the Grand Standers Was a
Hot Game
Up near the Village of Cream Puffs is a string of ball towns hiding in
the tall grass. Passengers in the railroad trains look out of the
windows and the tall grass stands up so they can’t see the ball towns.
But the ball towns are there and the tall grass is full of pitchers,
catchers, basemen, fielders, short stops, sluggers, southpaws and
backstops. They play ball till dark and after dark they talk ball. The
big fast ballplayers in the Rootabaga Country all come from these ball
towns in the tall grass.
The towns used to have names like names in books. But now the names are
all like ball talk: Knock the Cover Off, Home Plate, Chest Protector,
Grand Stand, Nine Innings, Three Balls and Two Strikes, Bases Full and
Two Out, Big League, Bush League, Hot Grounder, Out Drop, Bee Liner,
Muffs and Pick Ups, Slide Kelly Slide, Paste It On the Nose.
Now the Night Policeman in the Village of Cream Puffs stopped in at the
Cigar Store one night and a gang of cub ballplayers loafing and talking
ball talk asked him if there was anything in the wind. And he told them
this happening:
“I was sitting on the front steps of the postoffice last night thinking
how many letters get lost and how many letters never get answered. A
ballplayer came along with a package and said his name was Butter
Fingers and he was the heavy hitter, the hard slugger, for the Grand
Stand ball team playing a championship game the day before with the Hot
Grounders ball team. He came to the Village of Cream Puffs the day
before the game, found a snoox and a gringo and got the snoox and the
gringo to make him _a home run shirt_. Wearing a home run shirt, he told
me, you knock a home run every time you come to bat. He said he knocked
a home run every time he came to bat, and it was his home runs won the
game for the Grand Standers. He was carrying a package and said the home
run shirt was in the package and he was taking it back to the snoox and
the gringo because he promised he wouldn’t keep it, and it belonged to
the snoox and the gringo and they only rented it to him for the
championship game. The last I saw of him he was hot-footing it pitty-pat
pitty-pat up the street with the package.
“Well, I just said tra-la-loo to Butter Fingers when along comes another
ballplayer. He had a package too, and he said his name was Three
Strikes, and he was the left-handed southpaw pitcher for the Hot
Grounders team the day before playing a game against the Grand Stand
team. He said he knew unless he put over some classy pitching the game
was lost and everything was goose eggs. So he came to the Village of
Cream Puffs the day before the game, found a snoox and a gringo and got
the snoox and the gringo to make him _a spitball shirt_. A spitball
looks easy, he told me, but it has smoke and whiskers and nobody can
touch it. He said he handed the Grand Standers a line of inshoots close
to their chins and they never got to first base. Three Strikes was
carrying a package and he said the spitball shirt was in the package,
and he was taking it back to the snoox and the gringo because he
promised he wouldn’t keep it and it belonged to the snoox and the gringo
and they only rented it to him. The last I saw of him he was hot-footing
it pitty-pat pitty-pat up the street with a package.”
The gang of cub ballplayers in the Cigar Store asked the Night
Policeman, “Who won the game? Was it the Grand Standers or the Hot
Grounders took the gravvy?”
“You can search me for the answer,” he told the boys. “If the snoox and
the gringo come past the postoffice to-night when I sit on the front
steps wondering how so many letters get lost and how so many never get
answered, I will ask the snoox and the gringo and if they tell me
to-night I’ll tell you to-morrow night.”
And ever since then when they talk ball talk in the ball towns hiding in
the tall grass they say the only sure way to win a ball game is to have
a pitcher with a spitball shirt and over that a home run shirt, both
made by a snoox and a gringo.
[Illustration]
8. Two Stories Out of Oklahoma and Nebraska.
_People_: Jonas Jonas Huckabuck
Mama Mama Huckabuck
Pony Pony Huckabuck
A Yellow Squash
A Silver Buckle
A Chinese Silver Slipper Buckle
Pop Corn
Yang Yang
Hoo Hoo
Their Mother
The Shadow of the Goose
The Left Foot of the Shadow of the Goose
An Oklahoma Home
[Illustration]
The Huckabuck Family and How They Raised Pop Corn in Nebraska and Quit
and Came Back
Jonas Jonas Huckabuck was a farmer in Nebraska with a wife, Mama Mama
Huckabuck, and a daughter, Pony Pony Huckabuck.
“Your father gave you two names the same in front,” people had said to
him.
And he answered, “Yes, two names are easier to remember. If you call me
by my first name Jonas and I don’t hear you then when you call me by my
second name Jonas maybe I will.
“And,” he went on, “I call my pony-face girl Pony Pony because if she
doesn’t hear me the first time she always does the second.”
And so they lived on a farm where they raised pop corn, these three,
Jonas Jonas Huckabuck, his wife, Mama Mama Huckabuck, and their
pony-face daughter, Pony Pony Huckabuck.
After they harvested the crop one year they had the barns, the cribs,
the sheds, the shacks, and all the cracks and corners of the farm, all
filled with pop corn.
“We came out to Nebraska to raise pop corn,” said Jonas Jonas, “and I
guess we got nearly enough pop corn this year for the pop corn poppers
and all the friends and relations of all the pop corn poppers in these
United States.”
[Illustration: She carried the squash into the kitchen]
And this was the year Pony Pony was going to bake her first squash pie
all by herself. In one corner of the corn crib, all covered over with
pop corn, she had a secret, a big round squash, a fat yellow squash, a
rich squash all spotted with spots of gold.
She carried the squash into the kitchen, took a long sharp shining
knife, and then she cut the squash in the middle till she had two big
half squashes. And inside just like outside it was rich yellow spotted
with spots of gold.
And there was a shine of silver. And Pony Pony wondered why silver
should be in a squash. She picked and plunged with her fingers till she
pulled it out.
“It’s a buckle,” she said, “a silver buckle, a Chinese silver slipper
buckle.”
She ran with it to her father and said, “Look what I found when I cut
open the golden yellow squash spotted with gold spots—it is a Chinese
silver slipper buckle.”
“It means our luck is going to change, and we don’t know whether it will
be good luck or bad luck,” said Jonas Jonas to his daughter, Pony Pony
Huckabuck.
Then she ran with it to her mother and said, “Look what I found when I
cut open the yellow squash spotted with spots of gold—it is a Chinese
silver slipper buckle.”
“It means our luck is going to change, and we don’t know whether it will
be good luck or bad luck,” said Mama Mama Huckabuck.
And that night a fire started in the barns, crib, sheds, shacks, cracks,
and corners, where the pop corn harvest was kept. All night long the pop
corn popped. In the morning the ground all around the farm house and the
barn was covered with white pop corn so it looked like a heavy fall of
snow.
All the next day the fire kept on and the pop corn popped till it was up
to the shoulders of Pony Pony when she tried to walk from the house to
the barn. And that night in all the barns, cribs, sheds, shacks, cracks
and corners of the farm, the pop corn went on popping.
In the morning when Jonas Jonas Huckabuck looked out of the upstairs
window he saw the pop corn popping and coming higher and higher. It was
nearly up to the window. Before evening and dark of that day, Jonas
Jonas Huckabuck, and his wife Mama Mama Huckabuck, and their daughter
Pony Pony Huckabuck, all went away from the farm saying, “We came to
Nebraska to raise pop corn, but this is too much. We will not come back
till the wind blows away the pop corn. We will not come back till we get
a sign and a signal.”
They went to Oskaloosa, Iowa. And the next year Pony Pony Huckabuck was
very proud because when she stood on the sidewalks in the street she
could see her father sitting high on the seat of a coal wagon, driving
two big spanking horses hitched with shining brass harness in front of
the coal wagon. And though Pony Pony and Jonas Jonas were proud, very
proud all that year, there never came a sign, a signal.
The next year again was a proud year, exactly as proud a year as they
spent in Oskaloosa. They went to Paducah, Kentucky, to Defiance, Ohio;
Peoria, Illinois; Indianapolis, Indiana; Walla Walla, Washington. And in
all these places Pony Pony Huckabuck saw her father, Jonas Jonas
Huckabuck, standing in rubber boots deep down in a ditch with a shining
steel shovel shoveling yellow clay and black mud from down in the ditch
high and high up over his shoulders. And though it was a proud year they
got no sign, no signal.
The next year came. It was the proudest of all. This was the year Jonas
Jonas Huckabuck and his family lived in Elgin, Illinois, and Jonas Jonas
was watchman in a watch factory watching the watches.
“I know where you have been,” Mama Mama Huckabuck would say of an
evening to Pony Pony Huckabuck. “You have been down to the watch factory
watching your father watch the watches.”
“Yes,” said Pony Pony. “Yes, and this evening when I was watching father
watch the watches in the watch factory, I looked over my left shoulder
and I saw a policeman with a star and brass buttons and he was watching
me to see if I was watching father watch the watches in the watch
factory.”
It was a proud year. Pony Pony saved her money. Thanksgiving came. Pony
Pony said, “I am going to get a squash to make a squash pie.” She hunted
from one grocery to another; she kept her eyes on the farm wagons coming
into Elgin with squashes.
She found what she wanted, the yellow squash spotted with gold spots.
She took it home, cut it open, and saw the inside was like the outside,
all rich yellow spotted with gold spots.
There was a shine like silver. She picked and plunged with her fingers
and pulled and pulled till at last she pulled out the shine of silver.
“It’s a sign; it is a signal,” she said. “It is a buckle, a slipper
buckle, a Chinese silver slipper buckle. It is the mate to the other
buckle. Our luck is going to change. Yoo hoo! Yoo hoo!”
She told her father and mother about the buckle. They went back to the
farm in Nebraska. The wind by this time had been blowing and blowing for
three years, and all the pop corn was blown away.
“Now we are going to be farmers again,” said Jonas Jonas Huckabuck to
Mama Mama Huckabuck and to Pony Pony Huckabuck. “And we are going to
raise cabbages, beets and turnips; we are going to raise squash,
rutabaga, pumpkins and peppers for pickling. We are going to raise
wheat, oats, barley, rye. We are going to raise corn such as Indian corn
and kaffir corn—but we are _not_ going to raise any pop corn for the pop
corn poppers to be popping.”
And the pony-face daughter, Pony Pony Huckabuck, was proud because she
had on new black slippers, and around her ankles, holding the slippers
on the left foot and the right foot, she had two buckles, silver
buckles, Chinese silver slipper buckles. They were mates.
Sometimes on Thanksgiving Day and Christmas and New Year’s, she tells
her friends to be careful when they open a squash.
“Squashes make your luck change good to bad and bad to good,” says Pony
Pony.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
Yang Yang and Hoo Hoo, or the Song of the Left Foot of the Shadow of the
Goose in Oklahoma
Yang Yang and Hoo Hoo were two girls who used to live in Battle Ax,
Michigan, before they moved to Wagon Wheel Gap, Colorado, and back to
Broken Doors, Ohio, and then over to Open Windows, Iowa, and at last
down to Alfalfa Clover, Oklahoma, where they say, “Our Oklahoma home is
in Oklahoma.”
One summer morning Yang Yang and Hoo Hoo woke up saying to each other,
“Our Oklahoma home is in Oklahoma.” And it was that morning the shadow
of a goose flew in at the open window, just over the bed where Yang Yang
and Hoo Hoo slept with their eyes shut all night and woke with their
eyes open in the morning.
The shadow of the goose fluttered a while along the ceiling, flickered a
while along the wall, and then after one more flutter and flicker put
itself on the wall like a picture of a goose put there to look at, only
it was a living picture—and it made its neck stretch in a curve and then
stretch straight.
“Yang yang,” cried Yang Yang. “Yang yang.”
“Hoo hoo,” sang Hoo Hoo. “Hoo hoo.”
And while Hoo Hoo kept on calling a soft, low coaxing hoo hoo, Yang Yang
kept on crying a hard, noisy nagging yang yang till everybody in the
house upstairs and down and everybody in the neighbor houses heard her
yang-yanging.
The shadow of the goose lifted its left wing a little, lifted its right
foot a little, got up on its goose legs, and walked around and around in
a circle on its goose feet. And every time it walked around in a circle
it came back to the same place it started from, with its left foot or
right foot in the same foot spot it started from. Then it stayed there
in the same place like a picture put there to look at, only it was a
living picture with its neck sometimes sticking up straight in the air
and sometimes bending in a long curving bend.
Yang Yang threw the bed covers off, slid out of bed and ran downstairs
yang-yanging for her mother. But Hoo Hoo sat up in bed laughing,
counting her pink toes to see if there were ten pink toes the same as
the morning before. And while she was counting her pink toes she looked
out of the corners of her eyes at the shadow of the goose on the wall.
And again the shadow of the goose lifted its left wing a little, lifted
its right foot a little, got up on its goose legs, and walked around and
around in a circle on its goose feet. And every time it walked around in
a circle it came back to the same place it started from, with its left
foot or right foot back in the same foot spot it started from. Then it
stayed there in the same place where it put itself on the wall like a
picture to look at, only it was a living picture with its neck sticking
up straight in the air and then changing so its neck was bending in a
long curving bend.
And all the time little Hoo Hoo was sitting up in bed counting her pink
toes and looking out of the corners of her eyes at the shadow of the
goose.
By and by little Hoo Hoo said, “Good morning—hoo hoo for you—and hoo hoo
again, I was looking at the window when you came in. I saw you put
yourself on the wall like a picture. I saw you begin to walk and come
back where you started from with your neck sticking straight up and your
neck bending in a bend. I give you good morning. I blow a hoo hoo to
you. I blow two of a hoo hoo to you.”
Then the shadow of a goose, as if to answer good morning, and as if to
answer what Hoo Hoo meant by saying, “I blow two of a hoo hoo to you,”
stretched its neck sticking up straight and long, longer than any time
yet, and then bended its neck in more of a bend than any time yet.
And all the time Hoo Hoo was sitting in bed feeling of her toes with her
fingers to see if she had one toe for every finger, and to see if she
had one pink little toe to match her one pink little finger, and to see
if she had one fat flat big toe to match her one fat flat thumb.
Then when the room was all quiet the shadow of the goose lifted its left
foot and began singing—singing just as the shadow of a goose always
sings—with the left foot—very softly with the left foot—so softly you
must listen with the softest little listeners you have deep inside your
ears.
And this was the song, this was the old-time, old-fashioned left foot
song the shadow of the goose sang for Hoo Hoo:
Be a yang yang if you want to.
Be a hoo hoo if you want to.
The yang yangs always yang in the morning.
The hoo hoos always hoo in the morning.
Early in the morning the putters sit putting,
Putting on your nose, putting on your ears,
Putting in your eyes and the lashes on your eyes,
Putting on the chins of your chinny chin chins.
And after singing the left foot song the shadow of the goose walked
around in a long circle, came back where it started from, stopped and
stood still with the proud standstill of a goose, and then stretched its
neck sticking up straight and long, longer than any time yet, and then
bended its neck bent and twisted in longer bends than any time yet.
Then the shadow took itself off the wall, fluttered and flickered along
the ceiling and over the bed, flew out of the window and was gone,
leaving Hoo Hoo all alone sitting up in bed counting her pink toes.
Out of the corners of her eyes she looked up at the wall of the room, at
the place where the shadow of the goose put itself like a picture. And
there she saw a shadow spot. She looked and saw it was a left foot, the
same left foot that had been singing the left foot song.
Soon Yang Yang came yang-yanging into the room holding to her mother’s
apron. Hoo Hoo told her mother all the happenings that happened. The
mother wouldn’t believe it. Then Hoo Hoo pointed up to the wall, to the
left foot, the shadow spot left behind by the shadow of the goose when
it took itself off the wall.
And now when Yang Yang and Hoo Hoo sleep all night with their eyes shut
and wake up in the morning with their eyes open, sometimes they say,
“Our Oklahoma home is in Oklahoma,” and sometimes they sing:
Be a yang yang and yang yang if you want to.
Be a hoo hoo and hoo hoo if you want to.
[Illustration]
9. One Story About Big People Now and Little People Long Ago.
_People_: Peter Potato Blossom Wishes
Three Whispering Cats
Hannah
Hannah More
Susquehannah
Hoom Slimmer
[Illustration]
How a Skyscraper and a Railroad Train Got Picked Up and Carried Away
from Pig’s Eye Valley Far in the Pickax Mountains
Peter Potato Blossom Wishes sat with her three cats, Hannah, Hannah
More, and Susquehannah, one spring morning.
She was asking different kinds of questions of the three cats. But she
always got the same answers no matter what she asked them.
They were whispering cats. Hannah was a yes-yes cat and always whispered
yes-yes and nothing else. Hannah More was a no-no cat and always
whispered no-no and nothing else. And Susquehannah was a stuttering cat
and whispered halfway between yes and no, always hesitating and nothing
else.
“The bye-low is whistling his bye-low and bye-low again,” Peter said to
herself with a murmur. “It is spring in the tall timbers and over the
soft black lands. The hoo hoo and the biddywiddies come north to make a
home again. The booblow blossoms put their cool white lips out into the
blue mist. Every way I point my ears there is a bye-low whistling his
bye-low and bye-low again. The spring in the timbers and black lands
calls to the spring aching in my heart.”
Now the three whispering cats heard what Peter Potato Blossom Wishes was
murmuring to herself about the spring heartache.
And Hannah, the yes-yes cat, answered yes-yes. Hannah More, the no-no
cat, answered no-no. And Susquehannah, the stuttering cat, hesitated
halfway between yes-yes and no-no.
And Peter rubbed their fur the right way, scratched them softly between
the ears, and murmured to herself, “It is a don’t-care morning—I don’t
care.”
And that morning her heart gave a hoist and a hist when she saw a speck
of a blackbird spot far and high in the sky. Coming nearer it hummed,
zoomed, hong whonged ... shut off the hong whong ... stop-locked and
drop-locked ... and came down on the ground like a big easy bird with
big wings stopped.
Hoom Slimmer slid out, wiped his hands on the oil rags, put a smear of
axle grease on Peter’s chin, kissed her on the nose, patted her ears two
pats—and then they went into the house and had a late breakfast which
was her second breakfast and his first.
“I flew till I came to Pig’s Eye Valley in the Pickax Mountains,” Hoom
Slimmer told her. “The pickax pigs there run digging with their pickax
feet and their pickax snouts. They are lean, long-legged pigs with
pockets all over, fat pocket ears ahead and fat pocket tails behind, and
the pockets full of rusty dust. They dip their noses in their pockets,
sniff their noses full of rusty dust, and sneeze the rusty dust in each
other’s wrinkly, wriggly, wraggly faces.
“I took out a buzz shovel and scraper, pushed on the buzzer, and watched
it dig and scrape out a city. The houses came to my ankles. The
factories came to my knees. The top of the roof of the highest
skyscraper came up to my nose.
“A spider ran out of a cellar. A book fell out of his mouth. It broke
into rusty dust when I took hold of it. One page I saved. The reading on
it said millions of people had read the book and millions more would
read it.”
Hoom Slimmer reached into a pocket. He took out in his hand a railroad
train with an engine hooked on ahead, and a smoking car, coaches and
sleeping cars hooked on behind.
“I cleaned it nice for you, Peter,” he said. “But the pickax pigs
sneezed rusty dust on it. Put it in your handkerchief.”