Two Stories about Letter X, How It Got into the Alphabet

01Today, we tell two stories that come from Rutabaga Pigeons, a book for children by American writer Carl Sandburg.

02Sandburg won three Pulitzer Prizes, two for his poetry and another for a history of President Abraham Lincoln.

03His most famous poems are about Chicago, where he worked as a reporter for a time.

04Rutabaga Pigeons was published in 1923.

05The stories make liberal use of repetition and nonsense words.

06These tales use a mixture of poetic words and language linked to rural parts of America.

07Such words include oyster, the name of an ocean animal, axe, a tool used to split wood, and timber, wood that is used in building.

08Sandburg wrote three stories about how the letter X got into the alphabet.

09Today, we present two of them.

10Here is Mario Ritter Jr.

11with the stories Pig Wisps and Kiss Me by Carl Sandburg.

12There was an oyster king far in the south who knew how to open oysters and pick out the pearls.

13He grew rich, and all kinds of money came rolling in on him because he was a great oyster opener and knew how to pick out the pearls.

14The son of this oyster king was named Shovel Ears, and it was hard for him to remember.

15He knows how to open oysters, but he forgets to pick out the pearls, said the father of Shovel Ears.

16He is learning to remember worse and worse, and to forget better and better, said the father of Shovel Ears.

17Now in that same place was a little girl with two braids of hair twisted down her back, making a playful face and saying, Here we come, where from?

18And her mother called her Pig Wisps.

19Twice a week, Pig Wisps ran to the butcher shop for a soup bone.

20Before starting, she crossed her fingers, and then the whole way to the butcher shop kept her fingers crossed.

21If she saw playmates who asked her to a game like Cross Tag or Jack Stones or All Around the Mulberry Bush, she told them, My fingers are crossed, and I am running to the butcher shop for a soup bone.

22One morning, running to the butcher shop, she bumped into a big, strange boy and knocked him flat on the sidewalk.

23Did you look where you were running?

24she asked him.

25I forgot again, said Shovel Ears.

26I remember worse and worse.

27I forget better and better.

28Cross your fingers like this, said Pig Wisps, showing him how.

29He ran to the butcher shop with her, watching her keep her fingers crossed until the butcher gave her the soup bone.

30After I get it, then the soup bone reminds me to go home with it, she told him.

31But until I get the soup bone, I keep my fingers crossed.

32Shovel Ears went to his father and began helping his father open oysters.

33Shovel Ears kept his fingers crossed to make him remember to pick out the pearls.

34He picked a hundred buckets of pearls the first day and brought his father the longest slippery, shiny rope of pearls ever seen in that oyster country.

35How do you do it?

36his father asked.

37It is the crossed fingers like this, said Shovel Ears, crossing his fingers like the letter X.

38This is the way to remember better and forget worse.

39It was then the oyster king went and told the people who changed the alphabets just what happened.

40When the people who changed the alphabets heard, they decided to put in a new letter, the letter X, near the end of the alphabet, the sign of the crossed fingers.

41On the day pig-wisps and shovel Ears were to marry, the people who changed the alphabets all came to the ceremony with their fingers crossed.

42Pig-wisps and shovel Ears stood up at the ceremony.

43They crossed their fingers.

44They told each other they would remember their promises.

45And pig-wisps had two ropes of pearls twisted down her back, making a playful face and saying, Here we come, we're from.

46Many years ago, when pigs climbed chimneys and chased cats up into trees, there was a lumber king who lived in a river city with many wild cats in the timber nearby.

47The lumber king said, I am losing my hair and my teeth, and I am tired of many things.

48My only joy is a daughter who is a dancing shaft of light on the axe-handles of morning.

49She was quick and wild, the lumber king's daughter.

50She had never kissed.

51Not her mother, nor father, nor any sweetheart ever.

52Proud she was.

53They called her Kiss Me.

54She did not like that name, Kiss Me.

55They never called her that when she was listening.

56If she happened to be listening, they called her Find Me, Lose Me, Get Me.

57They never spoke of kisses, because they knew she would run away.

58But when she was not listening, they asked, Where is Kiss Me today?

59Or they would say, Every morning Kiss Me gets more beautiful.

60I wonder if she will ever get a kiss from a man good enough to kiss her.

61One day Kiss Me was lost.

62She went out on a horse, with a gun, to hunt wild cats in the forest.

63She was gone all day.

64All night she was out in a snowstorm with a horse and a gun hunting wild cats.

65The blowing snow was worse on the second day.

66It was then the lumber king called in a long, loose young man with a leather face and hay in his hair.

67The king said, Flax eyes, you are the laziest, most careless man in the river lumber country.

68Go out in the snowstorm now, among the wild cats, where Kiss Me is fighting for her life, and save her.

69I am the hero.

70I am the man who knows how.

71I am the man who has been waiting for this chance, said Flax eyes.

72On a horse with a gun, out into the snowstorm, Flax eyes rode that day.

73Far away he rode, to where Kiss Me, the quick wild Kiss Me, was standing with her back against a big rock, fighting off the wild cats.

74In that country, the snowstorms make the wild cats wilder.

75And Kiss Me was tired of shooting wild cats, tired of fighting in the snow, and almost ready to let the wild cats have her.

76Then Flax eyes came.

77The wild cats jumped at him, and he threw them off.

78More wild cats came, jumping straight at his face.

79He took hold of those wild cats by the necks, and threw them over the big rock, up into the trees, away into the snow and the wind.

80At last he took all the wild cats one by one, and threw them so far they could not return.

81He put Kiss Me on her horse, rode back to the lumber king, and said, lazy and careless, This is us.

82The lumber king saw the face of Flax eyes was all covered with cross marks, like the letter X.

83And the lumber king saw the lumber king saw the wild cats had torn the shirt off Flax eyes, and on the skin of his chest, shoulders, arms, were the cross marks of the wild cats' claws, cross marks like the letter X.

84So the king went to the people who changed the alphabets, and they put the cross marks of the wild cats' claws, the letter X, near the end of the alphabet.

85At the wedding of Kiss Me and Flax eyes, the people who changed the alphabets came with wild cat claws crossed, just like the letter X.

86The end of the wedding of Kiss Me and Flax eyes, the people who changed the alphabets came with wild cats' claws, the people who changed the alphabets came with wild cats' claws, the people who changed the alphabets came with wild cats' claws, the people who changed the alphabets came with wild cats' claws,