The pink-chalk late winter sunrise peeked through the trees beyond my office window as I played out a chapter of my literary life’s version of “all good things come to an end.” Behind me stood a tower of storage containers. I’d begun packing up ten years of research that went into my novel The River by Starlight, more than eighty books, clippings from thirty newspapers across fifty years, maps, photos, antique curios, and a tub of over a hundred pencils from dozens of libraries and archives visited. How I loved every minute of that research. Many writers talk of “going down the rabbit hole,” warning of its distractions and frittered time, but it was never that to me. The hunt for one more fact or one more insight was always exhilarating. The rabbit hole led to a fuller picture of the story I was trying to tell. It brimmed with wonder and delight.
As I closed up those boxes, the chalky dawn triggered the memory of a passage from my book that had met with the Delete button during revision.
The house’s backyard is a patch of dirt packed hard as rock. Annie decides it would take a stick of dynamite to break ground for a garden. Instead she buys a few sticks of chalk to make hopscotch squares for the girls.
Hipscotch, hopscotch, hip-hip-hooray…
Templehupfen, her mother called the game. Trampled-house-pen? Annie’s young tongue twisted the foreign sounds helplessly. Ma glared, rolled her eyes. The last square, she explained as if talking to an imbecile, is the safe square—the temple. You want to get to the temple because you want to be safe.
Amanda’s fear of the Lord pervaded even a child’s jumping game.
I’d forgotten that bit of research about children’s games in 19th century Europe. But I smiled because my writer’s fascination with the obscure comes as easily as … child’s play.
Several years later, I’m still sifting through piles of files because I’m constantly stopping to admire some long-forgotten tidbit I’d saved. Peeks at the past with headlines like “Beer Causes Insanity” and “The Canned Green Pea Bomb” were just too choice to toss.
So I launched an occasional series on my blog called Horse Sense and Nonsense from the Rabbit Hole. “Shut Your Ashpan” originally appeared as filler in a Minnesota newspaper in 1909. I knew the phrase to be a railroad fire prevention instruction. But as a metaphor-loving wordmeister, I also knew the piece would sport a sharp elbow of opinion.
And indeed, across the eleven decades since, up to our lamentably uncivil present-day public discourse, train buffs, and etymology lovers alike might agree that “Shut your ashpan” is advice for the ages.
That irresistible rabbit hole—an infinite trove of timeless relevance, and always time well spent.
SHUT YOUR ASHPAN
Pine Island Record, April 1909
On almost every railroad the old sign, “Shut Your Ashpan,” occasionally has puzzled the traveler who sees it flash past the window and does not understand its meaning: yet it is very simple, indeed, and the motto might well be adopted as a daily maxim by a good many of us who are prone to hasty speech . . . “Shut your ashpan” signifies that a train is nearing a wooden bridge and warns the fireman to take precaution against live coals setting it on fire. There are occasions in daily life that closely compare with the wooden bridge. Words of almost any kind are sparks to tinder in some situations, and every time that happens the man who keeps still has all the advantage over the man who is quick with the retort. It would reduce friction a whole lot and make life a great deal happier if the average citizen would learn to recognize the danger signals in such instances and practice the railroad advice, “Shut your ashpan.”
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