Tales from Rootabaga Country

In this episode we’re celebrating the pure, nonsensical joy of Carl Sanburg’s Rootabaga Stories and Rootabaga Pigeons.  Know for his monumental 6 volume biography of Abraham Lincoln, Sandburg also wrote poetry and children's fairy tales.  These stories are set in a world where the railroad tracks run off into the sky and the Village of Cream Puffs floats away in the wind! Join me to step into this whimsical past together letting our imaginations soar with the echoes of these delightful tales!

• How Gimme the Ax Found Out About the Zigzag Railroad and Who Made It Zigzag
• How to Tell Corn Fairies If You See ’Em
• Many, Many Weddings in One Corner House”
• How Six Pigeons Came Back to Hatrack the Horse After Many Accidents and Six Telegrams
• Never Kick a Slipper at the Moon

When you subscribe to Narrated Archives you get at least 2 bonus episodes each month. 

Transcript

Welcome to Narrated Archives! I’m your host, Sally Barron, and I am so thrilled to have you here! Grab your favorite cozy drink and join me as we skip through the magical shelves of history to rediscover the world’s most wonderful literary gems.

Each week, we get to breathe sparkly new life into public domain masterpieces—everything from hidden-treasure short stories to heartwarming, timeless essays. Let’s take a joyful step back in time together and listen to the beautiful echoes of the past!

This week, we’re celebrating the pure, nonsensical joy of Carl Sandburg’s Rootabaga Stories and Rootabaga Pigeons.

Carl Sandburg  was a prominent American poet, biographer, and journalist born in 1878 to Swedish immigrants in Galesburg, Illinois. Forced to leave school at thirteen, he worked various odd jobs—including a stint as a hobo—which later deeply influenced his writing about the American working class. He eventually settled in Chicago, where he gained national fame for collections like Chicago Poems and his monumental, Pulitzer Prize-winning biography of Abraham Lincoln. Sandburg's work on Abraham Lincoln is considered one of the most influential and widely read biographies in American history. What began as a plan for a simple children's book evolved into a lifelong obsession and a monumental six-volume series. 

Beyond his serious historical and urban works, Sandburg harbored a playful side, famously creating a series of whimsical children’s tales known as the Rootabaga Stories published in 1922. He wrote these "American fairy tales" specifically for his daughters, replacing traditional European motifs with imagery from the American landscape, such as skyscrapers, trains, and cornfields. His children's repertoire also included poetry collections like Early Moon and Wind Song, which adapted his lyrical style for younger readers. Sandburg’s ability to capture both the grit of industry and the wonder of childhood made him a beloved figure until his death in 1967. Over his long career, he earned three Pulitzer Prizes, solidifying his legacy as "the voice of America". 

Now let’s step into the world of Rootaba Country. It’s a world where the railroad tracks run off into the sky and the Village of Cream Puffs floats away in the wind! So, here we go into this whimsical past together letting our imaginations soar with the echoes of these delightful tales!

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’ll hear about something happening last night w hen 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 butter-milk 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 postoffice and around, looking around. 

“It’s 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 blue prints, 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.”

How to Tell Corn Fairies If You See ’Em

If you have ever watched the little corn begin to march across the black lands and then slowly change to big corn and go marching on from the little corn moon of summer to the big corn harvest moon of autumn, then you must have guessed who it is that helps the corn come along. It’ s the corn fairies. Leave out the corn fairies and there wouldn’t be any corn.

All children know this. All boys and girls know that corn is no good unless there are corn fairies.

Have you ever stood in Illinois or Iowa and watched the late summer wind or the early fall wind running across a big cornfield? It looks as if a big, long blanket were being spread out for dancers to come and dance on. If you look close and if you listen close you can see the corn fairies come dancing and singing—sometimes. If it is a wild day and a hot sun is pouring down while a cool north wind blows—and this happens sometimes—then you will be sure to see thousands of corn fairies marching and countermarching in mocking grand marches over the big, long blanket of green and silver. 

Then too they sing, only you must listen with your littlest and newest ears if you wish to hear their singing. They sing soft songs that go pla-sizzy pla-sizzy-sizzy, and each song is softer than an eye wink, softer than a Nebraska baby’s thumb.

And Spink, who is a little girl living in the same house with the man writing this story, and Skabootch, who is another little girl in the same house—both Spink and Skabootch are asking the question, “How can we tell corn fairies if we see ’em? If we meet a corn fairy, how will we know it?” 

And this is the explanation the man gave to Spink who is older than Skabootch, and to Skabootch who is younger than Spink:—

All corn fairies wear overalls. They work hard, the corn fairies, and they are proud. The reason they are proud is because they work so hard. And the reason they work so hard is because they have overalls.

But understand this. The overalls are corn gold cloth, woven from leaves of ripe corn mixed with ripe October corn silk. In the first week of the harvest moon  coming up red and changing to yellow and silver the corn fairies sit by thousands between the corn rows weaving and stitching the clothes they have to wear next winter, next spring, next summer.

They sit cross-legged when they sew. And it is a law among them each one must point the big toe at the moon while sewing the harvest moon clothes. When the moon comes up red as blood early in the evening they point their big toes slanting toward the east. Then towards midnight when the moon is yellow and half way up the sky their big toes are only half slanted as they sit cross-legged sewing. And after midnight when the moon sails its silver disk high overhead and toward the west, then the corn fairies sit sewing with their big toes pointed nearly straight up.

If it is a cool night and looks like frost, then the laughter of the corn fairies is something worth seeing. All the time they sit sewing their next year clothes they are laughing. It is not a law they have to laugh. They laugh because they are half-tickled and glad because it is a good corn year.

And whenever the corn fairies laugh then the laugh comes out of the mouth like a thin gold frost. If you should be lucky enough to see a thousand corn fairies sitting between the corn rows and all of them laughing, you would laugh with wonder yourself to see the gold frost coming from their mouths while they laughed.

Travelers who have traveled far, and seen many things, say that if you know the corn fairies with a real knowledge you can always tell by the stitches in their clothes what state they are from.

In Illinois the corn fairies stitch fifteen stitches of ripe corn silk across the woven corn leaf cloth. In Iowa they stitch sixteen stitches, in Nebraska seventeen, and the farther west you go the more corn silk stitches the corn fairies have in the corn cloth clothes they wear.

In Minnesota one year, there were fairies with a blue sash of corn-flowers across the chest. In the Dakotas the same year all the fairies wore pumpkin-flower neckties, yellow four-in-hands and yellow ascots. And in one strange year it happened in both the states of Ohio and Texas the corn fairies wore little wristlets of white morning glories.

The traveler who heard about this asked many questions and found out the reason why that year the corn fairies wore little wristlets of white morning glories. He said, “Whenever fairies are sad they wear white. And this year, which was long ago, was the year men were tearing down all the old zigzag rail fences. Now those old zigzag rail fences were beautiful for the fairies because a hundred fairies could sit on one rail and thousands and thousands of them could sit on the zigzags and sing pla-sizzy pla-sizzy, softer than an eye-wink, softer than a baby’s thumb, all on a moonlight summer night. And they found out that year was going to be the last year of the zigzag rail fences. It made them sorry and sad, and when they are sorry and sad they wear white. So they picked the wonderful white morning glories running along the zigzag rail fences and made them into little wristlets and wore those wristlets the next year to show they were sorry and sad.”

Of course, all this helps you to know how the corn fairies look in the evening, the night time and the moonlight. Now we shall see how they look in the day time.

In the day time the corn fairies have their overalls of corn gold cloth on. And they walk among the corn rows and climb the corn stalks and fix things in the leaves and stalks and ears of the corn. They help it to grow.

Each one carries on the left shoulder a mouse brush to brush away the field mice. And over the right shoulder each one has a cricket broom to sweep away the crickets. The brush is a whisk brush to brush away mice that get foolish. And the broom is to sweep away crickets that get foolish.

Around the middle of each corn fairy is a yellow-belly belt. And stuck in this belt is a purple moon shaft hammer. Whenever the wind blows strong and nearly blows the corn down, then the fairies run out and take their purple moon shaft hammers  out of their yellow-belly belts and nail down nails to keep the corn from blowing down. When a rain storm is blowing up terrible and driving all kinds of terribles across the cornfield, then you can be sure of one thing. Running like the wind among the corn rows are the fairies, jerking their purple moon shaft hammers out of their belts and nailing nails down to keep the corn standing up so it will grow and be ripe and beautiful when the harvest moon comes again in the fall.

Spink and Skabootch ask where the corn fairies get the nails. The answer to Spink and Skabootch is, “Next week you will learn all about where the corn fairies get the nails to nail down the corn if you will keep your faces washed and your ears washed till next week.”

And the next time you stand watching a big cornfield in late summer or early fall, when the wind is running across the green and silver, listen with your littlest and newest ears. Maybe you will hear the corn fairies going pla-sizzy pla-sizzy-sizzy, softer than an eye wink, softer than a Nebraska baby’s thumb.

Many, Many Weddings in One Corner House

There was a corner house with corners every way it looked. And up in the corners were bugs with little bug houses, bug doors to open, bug windows to look out of.  

In the summer time if the evening was cool or in the winter time if the evening was warm, they played games—bugs-up, bugs-down, run-bugs-run, beans-bugs-beans.

This corner house was the place the Rag Doll and the Broom Handle came to after their wedding. This was the same time those old people, Hammer and Nails, moved into the corner house with all the little Hammers and all the little Nails.

So there they were, the young couple, the Rag Doll and the Broom Handle, and that old family, Hammer and Nails, and up in the corners among the eave troughs and the roof shingles, the bugs with little bug houses, bug doors to open, bug windows to look out of, and bug games—bugs-up, bugs-down, run-bugs-run, or beans-bugs-beans.

Around the corner of the house every Saturday morning came the Hot Cookie Pan with a pan of hot cookies for Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and the rest of the week.

The Ice Tongs came with ice, the Coal Bucket came with coal, the Potato Sack came with potatoes. And the Bushel Basket was always going or coming and saying under his breath, “Bushels, bushels, bushels.”

One day the bugs in the little bug houses opened the bug doors and looked out of the bug windows and said to each other, “They are washing their shirts and sewing on buttons—there is going to be a wedding.”

And the next day the bugs said, “They are going to have a wedding and a wedding breakfast for Jack Knife and Kindling Wood. They are asking everybody in the kitchen, the cellar, and the back yard, to come.”

The wedding day came. The people came. From all over the kitchen, the cellar, the back yard, they came. The Rag Doll and the Broom Handle were there. Hammer and Nails and all the little Hammers and all the little Nails were there. The Ice Tongs, the Coal Bucket, the Potato Sack, were all there—and the Bushel Basket going and coming and saying under his breath, “Bushels, bushels, bushels.” And, of course, the Hot Cookie Pan was there hopping up and down with hot cookies.

So Jack Knife and Kindling Wood began living in the corner house. A child came. They named her Splinters. And the Hot Cookie Pan and Splinters met and kissed each other and sat together in cozy corners close to each other.

And the bugs high up in the corners in the little bug houses, they opened the bug doors, looked out of the bug windows and said, “They are washing their shirts and sewing on buttons, there is a wedding again—the Hot Cookie Pan and Splinters.”

And now they have many, many children, the Hot Cookie Pan and Splinters. Their children have gone all over the world and everybody knows them.

“Whenever you find a splinter or a sliver or a shiny little shaving of wood in a hot cookie,” the bugs in the little bug houses say, “whenever you find a splinter or a sliver or a shiny little shaving of wood in a hot cookie, it is the child of the Hot Cookie Pan and the girl named Splinters, the daughter of Jack Knife and Kindling Wood, who grew up and married the Hot Cookie Pan.”

And sometimes if a little bug asks a big bug a quivical, quizzical question hard to answer, the big bug opens a bug door, looks out of a bug window and says to the little bug, “If you don’t believe what we tell you, go and ask Hammer and Nails or any of the little Hammers and Nails. Then run and listen to the Bushel Basket going and coming and saying under his breath, ‘Bushels, bushels, bushels.’”

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

Six crooked ladders stood against the front of the shanty where Hatrack the Horse lived.

Yellow roses all on fire were climbing up and down the ladders, up and down and crossways.

And leaning out on both sides from the crooked ladders were vines of yellow roses, leaning, curving, nearly falling.

Hatrack the Horse was waiting. This was the morning Wiffle the Chick was coming.

“Sit here on the cracker box and listen,” he said to her when she came; “listen and you will hear the roses saying, ‘This is climbing time for all yellow roses and climbing time is the time to climb; how did we ever learn to climb only by climbing? Listen and you will hear—st..th..st..th..st..th..it is the feet of the yellow roses climbing up and down and leaning out and curving and nearly falling ..st..th..st..th..’”

So Wiffle the Chick sat there, early in the summer, enjoying herself, sitting on a cracker box, listening to the yellow roses climb around the six crooked ladders.

Hatrack the Horse came out. On his shoulders were two pigeons, on his hands two pigeons. And he reached his hand around behind his back where his hat was hanging and he opened the hat and showed Wiffle the Chick two pigeons in the hat.

“They are lovely pigeons to look at and their eyes are full of lessons to learn,” said Wiffle the Chick. “Maybe you will tell me why you have their feet wrapped in bandages, hospital liniment bandages full of hospital liniment smells? Why do you put soft mittens on the feet of these pigeons so lovely to look at?”

“They came back yesterday, they came back home,” was the answer. “They came back limping on their feet with the toes turned in so far they nearly turned backward. When they put their bleeding feet in my hands one by one each one, it was like each one was writing his name in my hand with red ink.”

“Did you know they were coming?” asked Wiffle.

“Every day the last six days I get a telegram, 2:37six telegrams from six pigeons—and at last they come home. And ever since they come home they are telling me they come because they love Hatrack the Horse and the yellow climbing roses climbing over the six crooked ladders.”

“Did you name your pigeons with names?” asked Wiffle.

“These three, the sandy and golden brown, all named themselves by where they came from. This is Chickamauga, here is Chattanooga, and this is Chattahoochee. And the other three all got their names from me when I was feeling high and easy. This is Blue Mist, here is Bubbles, and last of all take a look at Wednesday Evening in the Twilight and the Gloaming.”

“Do you always call her Wednesday Evening in the Twilight and the Gloaming?”

“Not when I am making coffee for breakfast. If I am making coffee for breakfast then I just call her Wednesday Evening.”

“Didn’t you tie the mittens on her feet extra special nice?”

“Yes—she is an extra special nice pigeon. She cries for pity when she wants pity. And she shuts her eyes when she doesn’t want to look at you. And if you look deep in her eyes when her eyes are open you will see lights there exactly like the lights on the pastures and the meadows when the mist is drifting on a Wednesday evening just between the twilight and the gloaming.

“A week ago yesterday they all went away. And they won’t tell why they went away. Somebody clipped their wings, cut off their flying feathers so they couldn’t fly—and they won’t tell why. They were six hundred miles from home—but they won’t tell how they counted the six hundred miles. A hundred miles a day they walked,

six hundred miles in a week, and they sent a telegram to me every day, one writing a telegram one day and another writing a telegram the next day—all the time walking a hundred miles a day with their toes turned in like pigeon toes turn in. Do you wonder they needed bandages, hospital liniment bandages on their feet—and soft mittens?”

“Show me the telegrams they sent you, one every day, for six days while they were walking six hundred miles on their pigeon toes.”

So Hatrack the Horse got the six telegrams. The reading on the telegrams was like this:

1. “Feet are as good as wings if you have to. Chickamauga.”

2. “If you love to go somewhere it is easy to walk. Chattanooga.”

3. “In the night sleeping you forget whether you have wings or feet or neither. Chattahoochee.”

4. “What are toes for if they don’t point to what you want? Blue Mist.”

5. “Anybody can walk hundreds of miles putting one foot ahead of the other. Bubbles.”

6. “Pity me. Far is far. Near is near. And there is no place like home when the yellow roses climb up the ladders and sing in the early summer. Pity me. Wednesday Evening in the Twilight and the Gloaming.”

“Did they have any accidents going six hundred miles walking with their little pigeon toes turned in?” asked Wiffle.

“Once they had an accident,” said Hatrack, with Chattahoochee standing in his hat, Chickamauga on his right shoulder, Chattanooga on his left, and holding Blue Mist and Bubbles on his wrists. “They came to an old wooden bridge. Chattahoochee and Wednesday Evening both cried out, ‘The bridge will fall if we all walk on it the same time!’ But they were all six already on the bridge and the bridge began sagging and tumbled them all into the river. But it was good for them all to have a footbath for their feet, Wednesday Evening explained.”

“I got a suspicion you like Wednesday Evening in the Twilight and the Gloaming best of all,” spoke up Wiffle.

“Well, Wednesday Evening was the only one I noticed making any mention of the yellow roses in her telegram,” Hatrack the Horse explained, as he picked up Wednesday Evening and reached her around and put her to perch on the shoulder bone on his back.

Then the old man and the girl sat on the cracker box saying nothing, only listening to the yellow roses all on fire with early summer climbing up the crooked ladders, up and down and crossways, some of them leaning out and curving and nearly falling.

Never Kick a Slipper at the Moon

When a girl is growing up in the Rootabaga Country she learns some things to do, some things not to do.

“Never kick a slipper at the moon if it is the time for the Dancing Slipper Moon when the slim early moon looks like the toe and the heel of a dancer’s foot,” was the advice Mr. Wishes, the father of Peter Potato Blossom Wishes, gave to his daughter.

“Why?” she asked him.

“Because your slipper will go straight up, on and on to the moon, and fasten itself on the moon as if the moon is a foot ready for dancing,” said Mr. Wishes.

“A long time ago there was one night when a secret word was passed around to all the shoes standing in the bedrooms and closets.

“The whisper of the secret was: ‘tonight all the shoes and the slippers and the boots of the world are going walking without any feet in them. tonight when those who put us on their feet in the daytime are sleeping in their beds, we all get up and walk and go walking where we walk in the daytime.’

“And in the middle of the night, when the people in the beds were sleeping, the shoes and the slippers and the boots everywhere walked out of the bedrooms and the closets. Along the sidewalks on the streets, up and down stairways, along hallways, the shoes and slippers and the boots tramped and marched and stumbled.

“Some walked pussyfoot, sliding easy and soft just like people in the daytime. Some walked clumping and clumping, coming down heavy on the heels and slow on the toes, just like people in the daytime.

“Some turned their toes in and walked pigeon-toe, some spread their toes out and held their heels in, just like people in the daytime. Some ran glad and fast, some lagged slow and sorry.

“Now there was a little girl in the Village of Cream Puffs who came home from a dance that night. And she was tired from dancing round dances and square dances, one steps and two steps, toe dances and toe and heel dances, dances close up and dances far apart, she was so tired she took off only one slipper, tumbled onto her bed and went to sleep with one slipper on.

“She woke up in the morning when it was yet dark. And she went to the window and looked up in the sky and saw a Dancing Slipper Moon dancing far and high in the deep blue sea of the moon sky.

“‘Oh—what a moon—what a dancing slipper of a moon!’ she cried with a little song to herself.

“She opened the window, saying again, ‘Oh! what a moon!’—and kicked her foot with the slipper on it straight toward the moon.

“The slipper flew off and flew up and went on and on and up and up in the moonshine.

“It never came back, that slipper. It was never seen again. When they asked the girl about it she said, ‘It slipped off my foot and went up and up and the last I saw of it the slipper was going on straight to the moon.’”

And these are the explanations why fathers and mothers in the Rootabaga Country say to their girls growing up, “Never kick a slipper at the moon if it is the time of the Dancing Slipper Moon when the ends of the moon look like the toe and the heel of a dancer’s foot.”

And that, dear listeners, brings us to the end of our whimsical journey through the Rootabaga Country.

We’ve seen Gimme the Ax find the zigzag tracks, caught a glimpse of the gold-winged corn fairies, and even learned why you should never, ever kick a slipper at the moon!

I hope these tales of Carl Sandburg reminded you that even the most 'ordinary' world can be turned upside down with just a little bit of nonsense and a lot of heart.

If you enjoyed our trip to Rootabaga Country please leave us a review or share this episode with a fellow dreamer!

Follow Narrated Archives so you don't miss a single story. And if you're feeling generous, leaving a quick review is the number one way to help this podcast grow.

I am  thrilled to announce that the stories you love have found a new home in the freshly published book, 

Narrated Archives: Anthology of Stories from the Public Domain Volume 1, now available on Amazon. This collection brings our podcast's mission to life in print, featuring 298 pages of enduring classics and forgotten tales that have defined our journey through the public domain. For those who prefer to listen on the go, stay tuned—a fully narrated audiobook version is forthcoming and will be available soon! 

The public domain is a massive library, and I need your help to find the next great tale. What should we read next? Head over to narratedarchives.com or email me at sbnarration@sallybarronvoiceovers.com to send in your requests. 

Until next week, keep listening for those echoes of the past—and remember Sandburg’s words: 'The moon is a friend for the lonesome to talk to.' So tonight, look up and say "hello"! 

The story may have ended, but the archive is always open. We’ll see you in the next chapter of  Narrated Archives.

Thank you for listening.