Rootabaga Pigeons

By Carl Sandburg

"Rootabaga Pigeons" by Carl Sandburg. Published by Good Press. Good Press publishes a wide range of titles that encompasses every genre. From well-known classics & literary fiction and non-fiction to forgotten−or yet undiscovered gems−of world literature, we issue the books that need to be read. Each Good Press edition has been meticulously edited and formatted to boost readability for all e-readers and devices. Our goal is to produce eBooks that are user-friendly and accessible to everyone in a high-quality digital format.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Good Press
• Release date: Dec 8, 2020
• ISBN: 4064066065751

Carl Sandburg

CARL SANDBURG (1878–1967) was twice awarded the Pulitzer Prize, first in 1940 for his biography of Abraham Lincoln and again in 1951 for Complete Poems. Before becoming known as a poet, he worked as a milkman, an ice harvester, a dishwasher, a salesman, a fireman, and a journalist. Among his classics are the Rootabaga Stories, which he wrote for his young daughters at the beginning of his long and distinguished literary career.

Book preview

Carl Sandburg

Rootabaga Pigeons

Published by Good Press, 2022

[e-mail]

EAN 4064066065751

Table of Contents

The Skyscraper to the Moon and How the Green Rat with the Rheumatism Ran a Thousand Miles Twice

Slipfoot and How He Nearly Always Never Gets What He Goes After

Many, Many Weddings in One Corner House

Shush Shush, the Big Buff Banty Hen Who Laid an Egg in the Postmaster's Hat

How Ragbag Mammy Kept Her Secret While the Wind Blew Away the Village of Hat Pins

How Six Pigeons Came Back to Hatrack the Horse After Many Accidents and Six Telegrams

How the Three Wild Babylonian Baboons Went Away in the Rain Eating Bread and Butter

How Six Umbrellas Took Off Their Straw Hats to Show Respect to the One Big Umbrella

How Bozo the Button Buster Busted All His Buttons When a Mouse Came

How Googler and Gaggler, the Two Christmas Babies, Came Home with Monkey Wrenches

How Johnny the Wham Sleeps in Money All the Time and Joe the Wimp Shines and Sees Things

How Deep Red Roses Goes Back and Forth Between the Clock and the Looking Glass

How Pink Peony Sent Spuds, the Ballplayer, Up to Pick Four Moons

How Dippy the Wisp and Slip Me Liz Came in the Moonshine Where the Potato Face Blind Man Sat with His Accordion

How Hot Balloons and His Pigeon Daughters Crossed Over into the Rootabaga Country

How Two Sweetheart Dippies Sat in the Moonlight on a Lumber Yard Fence and Heard About the Sooners and the Boomers

The Haystack Cricket and How Things Are Different Up in the Moon Towns

Why the Big Ball Game Between Hot Grounders and the Grand Standers Was a Hot Game

The Huckabuck Family and How They Raised Pop Corn in Nebraska and Quit and Came Back

Yang Yang and Hoo Hoo, or the Song of the Left Foot of the Shadow of the Goose

How a Skyscraper and a Railroad Train Got Picked Up and Carried Away from Pig's Eye Valley Far in the Pickax Mountains

Pig Wisps

Kiss Me

Blue Silver

FULL-PAGE ILLUSTRATIONS

Table of Contents

1.Two Stories Told by the Potato

Face Blind Man

The Skyscraper to the Moon and How the Green Rat with the Rheumatism Ran a Thousand Miles Twice

Table of Contents

Rootabaga Pigeons - Story 1 headpiece p3.png

The Skyscraper to the Moon and How the Green Rat with the Rheumatism Ran a Thousand Miles Twice

Blixie Bimber's mother was chopping hash. And the hatchet broke. So Blixie started downtown with fifteen cents to buy a new hash hatchet for chopping hash.

Downtown she peeped around the corner next nearest the postoffice where the Potato Face Blind Man sat with his accordion. And the old man had his legs crossed, one foot on the sidewalk, the other foot up in the air.

​The foot up in the air had a green rat sitting on it, tying the old man's shoestrings in knots and double knots. Whenever the old man's foot wiggled and wriggled the green rat wiggled and wriggled.

The tail of the rat wrapped five wraps around the shoe and then fastened and tied like a package.

On the back of the green rat was a long white swipe from the end of the nose to the end of the tail. Two little white swipes stuck up over the eyelashes. And five short thick swipes of white played pussy-wants-a-corner back of the ears and along the ribs of the green rat.

They were talking, the old man and the green rat, talking about alligators and why the alligators keep their baby shoes locked up in trunks over the winter time—and why the rats in the moon lock their mittens in ice boxes.

I had the rheumatism last summer a year ​ago, said the rat. I had the rheumatism so bad I ran a thousand miles south and west till I came to the Egg Towns and stopped in the Village of Eggs Up.

So? quizzed the Potato Face.

"There in the Village of Eggs Up, they asked me, 'Do you know how to stop the moon moving?' I answered them, 'Yes, I know how—a baby alligator told me—but I told the baby alligator I wouldn't tell.'

"Many years ago there in that Village of Eggs Up they started making a skyscraper to go up till it reached the moon. They said, 'We will step in the elevator and go up to the roof and sit on the roof and eat supper on