Rootabaga Stories

Rootabaga Stories
By Carl Sandburg
Author of "Slabs of the Sunburst West," "Smoke and Steel," "Chicago Poems," "Cornhuskers"
Illustrations and Decorations by Maud and Miska Petersham
New York
Harcourt, Brace and Company
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 When You See 'Em
How the Animals Lost Their Tails and Got Them Back Traveling from Philadelphia to Medicine Hat

To
Spink and Skabootch
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

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