The Sandburg Treasury

by Carl Sandburg

  “It is a good day, a lucky day, and I am sure many people will stop and remember the Potato Face Blind Man,” he sang to himself like a little song as he began running his fingers up and down the keys of the accordion like the yisters of the lingering leaves in the elm trees.

  Then came Pick Ups. Always it happened Pick Ups asked questions and wished to know. And so this is how the questions and answers ran when the Potato Face filled the ears of Pick Ups with explanations.

  “What is the piece you are playing on the keys of your accordion so fast sometimes, so slow sometimes, so sad some of the moments, so glad some of the moments?”

  “It is the song the mama flummywisters sing when they button loose the winter underwear of the baby flummywisters and sing:

  “Fly, you little flummies,

  Sing, you little wisters.”

  “And why do you have a little thimble on the top button of your coat?”

  “That is for the dimes to be put in. Some people see it and say, ‘Oh, I must put in a whole thimbleful of dimes.’”

  “And the tin copper cup?”

  “That is for the baseball players to stand off ten feet and throw in nickels and pennies. The one who throws the most into the cup will be the most lucky.”

  “And the wooden mug?”

  “There is a hole in the bottom of it. The hole is as big as the bottom. The nickel goes in and comes out again. It is for the very poor people who wish to give me a nickel and yet get the nickel back.”

  “The aluminum dishpan and the galvanized iron washtub—what are they doing by the side of you on both sides on the sidewalk?”

  “Sometime maybe it will happen everybody who goes into the post office and comes out will stop and pour out all their money, because they might get afraid their money is no good any more. If such a happening ever happens, then it will be nice for the people to have some place to pour their money. Such is the explanation why you see the aluminum dishpan and galvanized iron tub.”

  “Explain your sign—why is it, ‘I Am Blind Too.’”

  “Oh, I am sorry to explain to you, Pick Ups, why this is so which. Some of the people who pass by here going into the post office and coming out, they have eyes—but they see nothing with their eyes. They look where they are going, and they get where they wish to get, but they forget why they came, and they do not know how to come away. They are my blind brothers. It is for them I have the sign that reads, ‘I Am Blind Too.’”

  “I have my ears full of explanations, and I thank you,” said Pick Ups.

  “Good-by,” said the Potato Face Blind Man as he began drawing long breathings like lingering leaves out of the accordion—along with the song the mama flummywisters sing when they button loose the winter underwear of the baby flummywisters.

  POKER FACE THE BABOON AND HOT DOG THE TIGER

  WHEN THE MOON has a green rim with red meat inside and black seeds on the red meat, then in the Rootabaga Country they call it a Watermelon Moon and look for anything to happen.

  It was a night when a Watermelon Moon was shining. Lizzie Lazarus came to the upstairs room of the Potato Face Blind Man. Poker Face the Baboon and Hot Dog the Tiger were with her. She was leading them with a pink string.

  “You see they are wearing pajamas,” she said. “They sleep with you tonight, and tomorrow they go to work with you like mascots.”

  “How like mascots?” asked the Potato Face Blind Man.

  “They are luck bringers. They keep your good luck if it is good. They change your bad luck if it is bad.”

  “I hear you, and my ears get your explanations.”

  So the next morning when the Potato Face Blind Man sat down to play his accordion on the corner nearest the post office in the Village of Liver-and-Onions, next to him on the right-hand side sitting on the sidewalk was Poker Face the Baboon and on the left-hand side sitting next to him was Hot Dog the Tiger.

  They looked like dummies—they were so quiet. They looked as if they were made of wood and paper and then painted. In the eyes of Poker Face was something faraway. In the eyes of Hot Dog was something hungry. Whitson Whimble, the patent clothes wringer manufacturer, came by in his big limousine automobile car without horses to pull it. He was sitting back on the leather-upholstered seat cushions.

  “Stop here,” he commanded the chauffeur driving the car.

  Then Whitson Whimble sat looking. First he looked into the eyes of Poker Face the Baboon and saw something faraway. Then he looked into the eyes of Hot Dog the Tiger and saw something hungry. Then he read the sign painted by the Potato Face Blind Man saying, “You look at ’em and see ’em; I look at ’em and I don’t. You watch what their eyes say; I can only feel their hair.” Then Whitson Whimble commanded the chauffeur driving the car, “Go on.”

  Fifteen minutes later a man in overalls came down Main Street with a wheelbarrow. He stopped in front of the Potato Face Blind Man, Poker Face the Baboon, and Hot Dog the Tiger.

  “Where is the aluminum dishpan?” he asked.

  “On my left side on the sidewalk,” answered the Potato Face Blind Man.

  “Where is the galvanized iron washtub?”

  “On my right side on the sidewalk.”

  Then the man in overalls took a shovel and began shoveling silver dollars out of the wheelbarrow into the aluminum dishpan and the galvanized iron washtub. He shoveled out of the wheelbarrow till the dishpan 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 iron 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 looked like a dummy withbrown 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 post office.

  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 ba
ck 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 I heard a White Gold Boy and a Blue Silver Girl whispering. They were standing on the tip of my right-hand little finger, whispering. One said, ‘I got pumpkins—what did you get?’ The other said, ‘I got hazel nuts.’ I listened more, and I found out there are millions of pumpkins and millions of hazel nuts so small you and I cannot see them. These children from the moon, however, they can see them, and whenever they slide down on the moon toboggan, they take back their pockets full of things so little we have never seen them.”

  “They are wonderful children,” said Any Ice Today. “And will you tell me how they get back to the moon after they slide down the toboggan?”

  “Oh, that is easy,” said Potato Face. “It is just as easy for them to slide up to the moon as to slide down. Sliding up and sliding down is the same for them. The big white spiders fixed it that way when they snizzled and sniffered and made the toboggan.”

  HOW GIMME THE AX FOUND OUT ABOUT THE ZIGZAG RAILROAD AND WHO MADE IT ZIGZAG

  ONE DAY GIMME the Ax said to himself, “Today I go to the post office and around, looking around. Maybe I will hear about something happening last night when I was sleeping. Maybe a policeman began laughing and fell in a cistern and came out with a wheelbarrow full of goldfish wearing new jewelry. How do I know? Maybe the man in the moon going down a cellar stairs to get a pitcher of buttermilk for the woman in the moon to drink and stop crying, maybe he fell down the stairs and broke the pitcher and laughed and picked up the broken pieces and said to himself, ‘One, two, three, four, accidents happen in the best-regulated families.’ How do I know?”

  So with his mind full of simple and refreshing thoughts, Gimme the Ax went out into the backyard garden and looked at the different necktie poppies growing early in the summer. Then he picked one of the necktie poppies to wear for a necktie scarf going downtown to the post office and around looking around.

  “It is a good speculation to look nice around looking around in a necktie scarf,” said Gimme the Ax. “It is a necktie with a picture like whiteface pony spots on a green frog swimming in the moonshine.”

  So he went downtown. For the first time he saw the Potato Face Blind Man playing an accordion on the corner next nearest the post office. He asked the Potato Face to tell him why the railroad tracks run zigzag in the Rootabaga Country.

  “Long ago,” said the Potato Face Blind Man, “long before the necktie poppies began growing in the backyard, long before there was a necktie scarf like yours with whiteface pony spots on a green frog swimming in the moonshine, back in the old days when they laid the rails for the railroad, they laid the rails straight.”

  “Then the zizzies came. The zizzy is a bug. He runs zigzag on zigzag legs, eats zigzag with zigzag teeth, and spits zigzag with a zigzag tongue.

  “Millions of zizzies came hizzing with little hizzers on their heads and under their legs. They jumped on the rails with their zigzag legs and spit and twisted with their zigzag teeth and tongues till they twisted the whole railroad and all the rails and tracks into a zigzag railroad with zigzag rails for the trains, the passenger trains and the freight trains, all to run zigzag on.

  “Then the zizzies crept away into the fields where they sleep and cover themselves with zigzag blankets on special zigzag beds.

  “Next day came shovelmen with their shovels, smooth engineers with smooth blueprints, and water boys with water pails and water dippers for the shovelmen to drink after shoveling the railroad straight. And I nearly forgot to say the steam and hoist operating engineers came and began their steam hoist and operating to make the railroad straight.

  “They worked hard. They made the railroad straight again. They looked at the job and said to themselves and to each other, ‘This is it—we done it.’

  “Next morning the zizzies opened their zigzag eyes and looked over to the railroad and the rails. When they saw the railroad all straight again, and the rails and the ties and the spikes all straight again, the zizzies didn’t even eat breakfast that morning.

  “They jumped out of their zigzag beds, jumped onto the rails with their zigzag legs, and spit and twisted till they spit and twisted all the rails and the ties and the spikes back into a zigzag like the letter Z and the letter Z at the end of the alphabet.

  “After that the zizzies went to breakfast. And they said to themselves and to each other, the same as the shovelmen, the smooth engineers, and the steam hoist and operating engineers, ‘This is it—we done it.’”

  “So that is the how of the which—it was the zizzies,” said Gimme the Ax.

  “Yes, it was the zizzies,” said the Potato Face Blind Man. “That is the story told to me.”

  “Who told it to you?”

  “Two little zizzies. They came to me one cold winter night and slept in my accordion where the music keeps it warm in winter. In the morning I said, ‘Good morning, zizzies. Did you have a good sleep last night and pleasant dreams?’ And after they had breakfast, they told me the story. Both told it zigzag, but it was the same kind of zigzag each had together.”

  Three Stories About the Gold Buckskin Whincher

  PEOPLE:

  Blixie Bimber

  Peter Potato Blossom Wishes

  Jimmy the Flea

  Silas Baxby

  Fritz Axenbax

  James Sixbixdix

  Jason Squiff, the cistern cleaner

  Rags Habakuk, the ragman

  Two daughters of the ragman

  Two blue rats

  A circus man with spot cash

  A moving-picture actor

  A taxicab driver

  THE STORY OF BLIXIE BIMBER AND THE POWER OF THE GOLD BUCKSKIN WHINCHER

  BLIXIE BIMBER GREW up looking for luck. If she found a horseshoe, she took it home and put it on the wall of her room with a ribbon tied to it. She would look at the moon through her fingers, under her arms, over her right shoulder but never—never over her left shoulder. She listened and picked up everything anybody said about the groundhog and whether the groundhog saw his shadow when he came out the second of February.

  If she dreamed of onions, she knew the next day she would find a silver spoon. If she dreamed of fishes, she knew the next day she would meet a strange man who would call her by her first name. She grew up looking for luck.

  She was sixteen years old and quite a girl, with her skirts down to her shoe tops, when something happened. She was going to the post office to see if there was a letter for her from Peter Potato Blossom Wishes, her best chum, or a letter from Jimmy the Flea, her best friend she kept steady company with.

  Jimmy the Flea was a cli
mber. He climbed skyscrapers and flagpoles and smokestacks and was a famous steeplejack. Blixie Bimber liked him because he was a steeplejack, a little, but more because he was a whistler.

  Every time Blixie said to Jimmy, “I got the blues—whistle the blues out of me,” Jimmy would just naturally whistle till the blues just naturally went away from Blixie.

  On the way to the post office, Blixie found a gold buckskin whincher. There it lay in the middle of the sidewalk. How and why it came to be there, she never knew and nobody ever told her. “It’s luck,” she said to herself as she picked it up quick.

  And so—she took it home and fixed it on a little chain and wore it around her neck.

  She did not know and nobody ever told her a gold buckskin whincher is different from just a plain common whincher. It has a power. And if a thing has a power over you, then you just naturally can’t help yourself.

  So—around her neck fixed on a little chain Blixie Bimber wore the gold buckskin whincher and never knew it had a power and all the time the power was working.

  “The first man you meet with an X in his name you must fall head over heels in love with him,” said the silent power in the gold buckskin whincher.

  And that was why Blixie Bimber stopped at the post office and went back again asking the clerk at the post office window if he was sure there wasn’t a letter for her. The name of the clerk was Silas Baxby. For six weeks he kept steady company with Blixie Bimber. They went to dances, hayrack rides, picnics, and high jinks together.