Rootabaga Stories | Page 9

was full, till the washtub was full. Then he put the shovel into
the wheelbarrow and went up Main Street.
Six o'clock that night Pick Ups came along. The Potato Face Blind Man
said to him, "I have to carry home a heavy load of money tonight, an
aluminum dishpan full of silver dollars and a galvanized washtub full
of silver dollars. So I ask you, will you take care of Poker Face the
Baboon and Hot Dog the Tiger?"
"Yes," said Pick Ups, "I will." And he did. He tied a pink string to their
legs and took them home and put them in the woodshed.
Poker Face the Baboon went to sleep on the soft coal at the north end
of the woodshed and when he was asleep his face had something
faraway in it and he was so quiet he look like a dummy with brown hair
of the jungle painted on his black skin and a black nose painted on his
brown face. Hot Dog the Tiger went to sleep on the hard coal at the
south end of the woodshed and when he was asleep his eyelashes had
something hungry in them and he looked like a painted dummy with
black stripes painted over his yellow belly and a black spot painted
away at the end of his long yellow tail.
In the morning the woodshed was empty. Pick Ups told the Potato Face
Blind Man, "They left a note in their own handwriting on perfumed
pink paper. It said, 'Mascots never stay long.'"
And that is why for many years the Potato

Face Blind Man had silver dollars to spend—and that is why many
people in the Rootabaga Country keep their eyes open for a
Watermelon Moon in the sky with a green rim and red meat inside and
black seeds making spots on the red meat.

The Toboggan-to-the-Moon Dream of the Potato Face Blind Man
One morning in October the Potato Face Blind Man sat on the corner
nearest the postoffice.
Any Ice Today came along and said, "This is the sad time of the year."
"Sad?" asked the Potato Face Blind Man, changing his accordion from
his right knee to his left knee, and singing softly to the tune he was
fumbling on the accordion keys, "Be Happy in the Morning When the
Birds Bring the Beans."
"Yes," said Any Ice Today, "is it not sad every year when the leaves
change from green to yellow, when the leaves dry on the branches and
fall into the air, and the wind blows them and they make a song saying,
'Hush baby, hush baby,' and the wind fills the sky with them and they
are like a sky full of birds who forget they know any songs."
"It is sad and not sad," was the blind man's word.
"Listen," said the Potato Face. "For me this is the time of the year when
the dream of the white moon toboggan comes back. Five weeks before
the first snow flurry this dream always comes back to me. It says, 'The
black leaves are falling now and they fill the sky but five weeks go by
and then for every black leaf there will be a thousand snow crystals
shining white.'"
"What was your dream of the white moon toboggan?" asked Any Ice
Today.
"It came to me first when I was a boy, when I had my eyes, before my
luck changed. I saw the big white spiders of the moon working, rushing

around climbing up, climbing down, snizzling and sniffering. I looked
a long while before I saw what the big white spiders on the moon were
doing. I saw after a while they were weaving a long toboggan, a white
toboggan, white and soft as snow. And after a long while of snizzling
and sniffering, climbing up and climbing down, at last the toboggan
was done, a snow white toboggan running from the moon down to the
Rootabaga Country.
"And sliding, sliding down from the moon on this toboggan were the
White Gold boys and the Blue Silver Girls. They tumbled down at my
feet because, you see, the toboggan ended right at my feet. I could lean
over and pick up the White Gold Boys and the Blue Silver Girls as they
slid out of the toboggan at my feet. I could pick up a whole handful of
them and hold them in my hand and talk with them. Yet, you
understand, whenever I tried to shut my hand and keep any of them
they would snizzle and sniffer and jump out of the cracks between my
fingers. Once there was a little gold and silver dust on my left hand
thumb, dust they snizzled out while slipping away from me.
"Once