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    Rootabaga Stories
    Rootabaga Stories
    Rootabaga Stories
    Ebook158 pages1 hour

    Rootabaga Stories

    By Carl Sandburg

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    About this ebook

    American author and poet Carl Sandburg (1878-1967), best known for the poetry that attributed to two of his three Pulitzer Prizes, also wrote histories, biographies, novels, and children's stories. Born in Illinois, Sandburg spent most of his life in the Midwest before moving to North Carolina in 1945, where he lived till his death. In the early 1920s Sandburg began writing children's stories for his three daughters, beginning with his "Rootabaga Stories", one of three collections of stories set in the small towns and farms of the American Midwest. The stories were widely read and enjoyed for their unique nonsensical style and distinctly American feeling. Sandburg wanted to create something different than the traditional European fairy tales, explaining that he was "tired of princes and princesses and I sought the American equivalent of elves and gnomes." He certainly succeeded with "Rootabaga Stories". The beautifully nonsensical writing, illogical grammar, and fantastical settings set the stage for such memorable characters as the Potato Face Blind Man, Hatrack the Horse, and Red Slippers.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherDigireads.com Publishing
    Release dateJan 1, 2011
    ISBN9781420940046
    Rootabaga Stories
    Author

    Carl Sandburg

    Carl Sandburg was an American poet, biographer, journalist, and editor. He is the recipient of three Pulitzer Prizes: two for his poetry and one for his biography of Abraham Lincoln. During his lifetime, Sandburg was widely regarded as “a major figure in contemporary literature,” especially for his volumes of collected verse, including Chicago Poems (1916), Cornhuskers (1918), and Smoke and Steel (1920). He enjoyed “unrivaled appeal as a poet in his day, perhaps because the breadth of his experiences connected him with so many strands of American life,” and, upon his death in 1967, President Lyndon B. Johnson said about the writer: “Carl Sandburg was more than the voice of America, more than the poet of its strength and genius. He was America.”

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      Book preview

      Rootabaga Stories - Carl Sandburg

      ROOTABAGA STORIES

      BY CARL SANDBURG

      ILLUSTRATIONS AND DECORATIONS

      BY MAUD AND MISKA PETERSHAM

      A Digireads.com Book

      Digireads.com Publishing

      Print ISBN 13: 978-1-4209-3920-0

      Ebook ISBN 13: 978-1-4209-4004-6

      This edition copyright © 2012

      Please visit www.digireads.com

      CONTENTS

      1. Three Stories About the Finding of the Zigzag Railroad, the Pigs with Bibs On, the Circus Clown Ovens, the Village of Liver-and-Onions, the Village of Cream Puffs.

      How They Broke Away to Go to the Rootabaga Country

      How They Bring Back the Village of Cream Puffs When the Wind Blows It Away

      How the Five Rusty Rats Helped Find a New Village

      2. Five Stories About the Potato Face Blind Man

      The Potato Face Blind Man Who Lost the Diamond Rabbit on His Gold Accordion

      How the Potato Face Blind Man Enjoyed Himself on a Fine Spring Morning

      Poker Face the Baboon and Hot Dog the Tiger

      The Toboggan-to-the-Moon Dream of the Potato Face Blind Man

      How Gimme the Ax Found Out About the Zigzag Railroad and Who Made It Zigzag

      3. Three Stories About the Gold Buckskin Whincher

      The Story of Blixie Bimber and the Power of the Gold Buckskin Whincher

      The Story of Jason Squiff and Why He Had a Popcorn Hat, Popcorn Mittens and Popcorn Shoes

      The Story of Rags Habakuk, the Two Blue Rats, and the Circus Man Who Came with Spot Cash Money

      4. Four Stories About the Deep Doom of Dark Doorways

      The Wedding Procession of the Rag Doll and the Broom Handle and Who Was in It

      How the Hat Ashes Shovel Helped Snoo Foo

      Three Boys With Jugs of Molasses and Secret Ambitions

      How Bimbo the Snip's Thumb Stuck to His Nose When the Wind Changed

      5. Three Stories About Three Ways the Wind Went Winding

      The Two Skyscrapers Who Decided to Have a Child

      The Dollar Watch and the Five Jack Rabbits

      The Wooden Indian and the Shaghorn Buffalo

      6. Four Stories About Dear, Dear Eyes

      The White Horse Girl and the Blue Wind Boy

      What Six Girls with Balloons Told the Gray Man on Horseback

      How Henry Hagglyhoagly Played the Guitar with His Mittens On

      Never Kick a Slipper at the Moon

      7. One Story—Only the Fire-Born Understand Blue

      Sand Flat Shadows

      8. Two Stories About Corn Fairies, Blue Foxes, Flongboos and Happenings That Happened in the United States and Canada

      How to Tell Corn Fairies If You See 'Em

      How the Animals Lost Their Tails and Got Them Back Traveling From Philadelphia to Medicine Hat

      1. Three Stories About the Finding of the Zigzag Railroad, the Pigs with Bibs On, the Circus Clown Ovens, the Village of Liver-and-Onions, the Village of Cream Puffs.

      People:  Gimme the Ax

        Please Gimme

        Ax Me No Questions

        The Ticket Agent

        Wing Tip the Spick

        The Four Uncles

        The Rat in a Blizzard

        The Five Rusty Rats

      More People: 

        Balloon Pickers

        Baked Clowns

        Polka Dot Pigs

      img1.png

      How They Broke Away to Go to the Rootabaga Country

      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.

      So he decided to let his children name themselves.

      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.

      img2.png

      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

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