http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HitSwv6g0ko&feature=related
You have probably
never heard of John Henry. Or maybe you heard of him but don’t know the ins and
outs of his comings and goings. Well, that’s why I’m going to tell you about
him.
When John Henry
was born, birds came from everywhere to see him. The bears and panthers and
moose and deer and rabbits and squirrels and even a unicorn came out of the
woods to see him. And instead of the sun tending to his business and going to
bed, it was peeping out from behind the moon’s skirts trying to get a glimpse
of the new baby.
*****
Before long the
mama and papa come out on the porch to show off their brand-new baby. The birds
“oooohed” and the animals “aaaaahed” at how handsome the baby was.
Somewhere in the
middle of one of the “oooohs,” or maybe it was on the backside of one of the
“aaaaaaahs,” that baby jumped out of his mama’s arms and started growing.
He grew and he
grew and he grew. He grew until his head and shoulders busted through the roof
which was over the porch. John Henry thought that was the funniest thing in the
world. He laughed so loud, the sun got scared. It scurried from behind the
moon’s skirts and went to bed, which is where it should’ve been all the while.
*****
The next morning
John Henry was up at sunrise. The sun wasn’t. He was tired and had decided to
sleep in. John Henry wasn’t going to have none of that. He hollered up into the
sky, “Get up from there! I got things to do and I need light to do’em by.”
The sun yawned,
washed its face, flossed its teeth, and hurried up over the horizon.
That day John
Henry helped his papa rebuild the porch he had busted through, added a wing
onto the house with an indoor swimming pool and one of them jacutzis. After
lunch he chopped down an acre of trees and split them into fireplace logs and
still had time for a nap before supper.
*****
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a8TP5aMO04A&feature=related
The next day John
Henry went to town. He met up with the meanest man in the state, Ferret-Faced
Freddy, sitting on his big white horse. You know what he was doing? He was
thinking of mean things to do. Ferret-Faced Freddy was so mean, he cried if he
had a nice thought.
John Henry said,
“Freddy, I’ll make you a bet. Let’s have a race. You on your horse. Me on my
legs. If you and your horse win, you can work me as hard as you want for a whole
year. If I win, you have to be nice for a year.”
Ferret-Faced
Freddy laughed an evil laugh. “It’s a deal, John Henry.” His voice sounded like
bat wings on tombstones.
*****
The next morning
folks lined up all along the way the race would go. John Henry was ready.
Ferret-Faced Freddy and his horse were ready.
BANG! The race was
on.
My
great-granddaddy’s brother’s cousin’s sister-in-law’s uncle’s aunt was there
that morning. She said everybody saw Ferret-Faced Freddy ride by on his big
white horse and they were sho’ ‘nuf moving. Didn’t nobody see John Henry.
That’s because he was so fast, the wind was out of breath trying to keep up
with him. When Ferret-Faced Freddy crossed the finish line, John Henry was
already on the other side, sitting in a rocking chair and drinking a soda mom.
After that
Ferret-Faced Freddy was so nice, everybody called him Frederick the Friendly.
*****
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t65q87sCA_c&feature=related
John Henry decided
it was time for him to go on down the big road. He went home and told his mama
and daddy good-bye.
His daddy said,
“You got to have something to make your way in the world with, Son. These
belonged to your granddaddy.” And he gave him two twenty-pound sledgehammers
with four-foot handles made of whale bone.
A day or so later,
John Henry saw a crew building a road. At least, that’s what they were doing
until they came on a boulder right smack-dab where the road was supposed to go.
This was no ordinary boulder. It was as hard as anger and so big around, it
took half a week for a tall man to walk from one side to the other.
*****
John Henry offered
to lend them a hand.
“That’s all right.
We’ll put some dynamite to it.”
John Henry smiled
to himself. “Whatever you say.”
The road crew
planted dynamite all around the rock and set it off.
KERBOOM
BLAMMITY-BLAMMITY BOOMBOOM BANGBOOMBANG!!!
That dynamite made
so much racket, the Almighty looked over the parapets of Heaven and hollered,
“It’s getting too noisy down there.” The dynamite kicked up so much dirt and
dust, it got dark. The moon thought night had caught her napping and she
hurried out so fast, she almost bumped into the sun who was still climbing the
steep hill toward noontime.
When all the
commotion from the dynamite was over, the road crew was amazed. The boulder was
still there. In fact, the dynamite hadn’t knocked even a chip off it.
*****
The crew didn’t
know what to do. Then they heard a rumbling noise. They looked around. It was
John Henry, laughing. He said, “If you gentlemen would give me a little room, I
got some work to do.”
“Don’t see how you
can do what dynamite couldn’t,” said the boss of the crew.
John Henry
chuckled. “Just watch me.” He swung one of his hammers round and round his
head. It made such a wind that leaves blew off the trees and birds fell out of
the sky.
RINGGGG!
The hammer hit the
boulder. That boulder shivered like you do on a cold winter morning when it
looks like the school bus is never going to come.
RINGGGG!
The boulder
shivered like the morning when freedom came to the slaves.
John Henry picked
up his other hammer. He swung one hammer in a circle over his head. As soon as
it hit the rock – RINGGG! – the hammer in his hand started to make a circle and
– RINGGG! Soon the RINGGG! of one hammer followed the RINGGG! of the other one
so closely, it sounded like they were falling at the same time.
RINGGGG! RINGGGG!
RINGGGG! RINGGGG!
*****
Chips and dust
were flying from the boulder so fast that John Henry vanished from sight. But
you could still hear his hammers -- RINGGGG! RINGGGG!
The air seemed to
be dancing to the rhythm of his hammers. The boss of the road crew looked up.
His mouth dropped open. He pointed into the sky.
There, in the air
above the boulder, was a rainbow. John Henry was swinging the hammers so fast,
he was making a rainbow around his shoulders. It was shining and shimmering in
the dust and grit like hope that never dies. John Henry started singing:
I
got a rainbow
RINGGGG!
RINGGGG!
Tied
round my shoulder
RINGGGG!
RINGGGG!
It
ain’t gon’ rain,
No,
it ain’t gon’ rain.
RINGGGG!
RINGGGG!
*****
John Henry sang
and he hammered and the air danced and the rainbow shimmered and the earth
shook and rolled from the blows of the hammer. Finally it was quiet. Slowly the
dust cleared.
Folks could not
believe their eyes. The boulder was gone. In its place was the prettiest and
straightest road they had ever seen. Not only had John Henry pulverized the
boulder into pebbles, he had finished building the road.
In the distance
where the new road connected to the main one, the road crew was John Henry
waving good-bye, a hammer on each shoulder, the rainbow draped around him like
love.
*****
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=76tJU_C5Thw&feature=related
John Henry went on
his way. He had heard that any man good with a hammer could find work building
the Chesapeake and Ohio Railroad through West Virginia. That was where he had
been going when he stopped to build the road.
The next day John
Henry arrived at the railroad. However, work had stopped. The railroad tracks
had to go through a mountain, and such a mountain. Next to it even John Henry
felt small.
But a worker told
John Henry about a new machine they were going to use to tunnel through the
mountain. It was called a steam drill. “It can hammer faster and harder than
ten men and it never has to stop and rest.”
The next day the
boss arrived with the steam drill. John Henry said to him, “Let’s have a
contest. Your steam drill against me and my hammers.”
The man laughed.
“I’ve heard you’re the best there ever was, John Henry. But even you can’t
out-hammer a machine.”
“Let’s find out,”
John Henry answered.
Boss shrugged.
“Don’t make me no never mind. You start on the other side of the mountain. I’ll
start the steam drill over here. Whoever gets to the middle first is the
winner.”
*****
The next morning
all was still. The birds weren’t singing and the roosters weren’t crowing. When
the sun didn’t hear the rooster, he wondered if something was wrong. So he rose
a couple of minutes early to see.
What he saw was a
mountain as big as hurt feelings. On one side was a big machine hooked up to
hoses. It was belching smoke and steam. As the machine attacked the mountain,
rocks and dirt and underbrush flew into the air. On the other side was John
Henry. Next to the mountain he didn’t look much bigger than a wish that wasn’t
going to come true.
He had a
twenty-pound hammer in each hand and muscles hard as wisdom in each arm. As he
swung them through the air, they shone like silver, and when the hammers hit
the rock, they rang like gold. Before long, tongues of fire leaped out with
each blow.
*****
*****
On the other side
the boss of the steam drill felt the mountain shudder. He got scared and
hollered, “I believe this mountain is caving in!”
From the darkness
inside the mountain came a deep voice: “It’s just my hammers sucking wind. Just
my hammers sucking wind.” There wasn’t enough room inside the tunnel for the
rainbow, so it wrapped itself around the mountain on the side where John Henry
was.
*****
All through the
night John Henry and the steam drill went at it. In the light from the tongues
of fire shooting out of the tunnel from John Henry’s hammer blows, folks could
see the rainbow wrapped around the mountain like a shawl.
The sun came up
extra early the next morning to see who was winning. Just as it did, John Henry
broke through and met the steam drill. The boss of the steam drill was flabbergasted.
John Henry had come a mile and a quarter. The steam drill had only come a
quarter.
Folks were
cheering and yelling, “John Henry! John Henry!”
John Henry walked
out of the tunnel into the sunlight, raised his arms over his head, a hammer in
each hand. The rainbow slid off the mountain and around his shoulders.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ICQnDRUH1g8&feature=related
With a smile John
Henry’s eyes closed, and slowly he fell to the ground. John Henry was dead. He
had hammered so hard and so fast and so long that his big heart had burst.
Everybody was
silent for a minute. Then came the sound of soft crying. Some said it came from
the moon. Another one said she saw the sun shed a tear.
*****
Then something
strange happened. Afterward folks swore the rainbow whispered it. I don’t know.
But whether it was a whisper or a thought, everyone had the same knowing at the
same moment: “Dying ain’t important. Everybody does that. What matters is how
well you do your living.”
First one person
started clapping. Then another, and another. Soon everybody was clapping.
The next morning
the sun got everybody up early to say goodbye to John Henry. They put him on a
flatbed railroad car, and the train made its way slowly out of the mountains.
All along the way folks lined both sides of the track, and they were cheering
and shouting through their tears:
“John Henry! John
Henry!”
John Henry’s body
was taken to Washington, D.C.
*****
Some say he was
buried on the White House lawn late one night while the President and the Mrs.
President was asleep.
I don’t know about
none of that. What I do know is this: If you walk by the White House late at
night, stand real still, and listen real closely, folks say you just might hear
a deep voice singing:
I
got a rainbow
RINGGGG!
RINGGGG!
Tied
round my shoulder
RINGGGG!
RINGGGG!
It
ain’t gon’ rain,
No,
it ain’t gon’ rain.
RINGGGG!
RINGGGG!