BS: ogden nash poem...The Unwinged Ones

Subject: BS: ogden nash poem...
From: tarheel
Date: 21 May 07 - 07:29 PM

does anyone remember the ogden nash poem..."i dont travel on planes,i travel by train!
or something like that...
it's a really neat poem because i used it in a tv news story about the dying railroad passenger service in the USA,in 1969.
i actually rode the southern railway passenger train from Charlotte,N.C.,to Atlanta,Georgia, to film and gather info on the story.
but,i had to FLY back to Charlotte,N.C., in order to get my story on tv news that night!
(everything was produced on film in those days...no video tape or satelite news trucks then!)
and,i had a copy of the poem for years,but someway it's been lost or misplaced over the years...
thank you one and all for your help!
Tar...

Subject: RE: BS: ogden nash poem...
From: Bobert
Date: 21 May 07 - 07:31 PM

Candy's dandy
Liquir's quicker

Thta's the extent of my Ogden Nash knowledge...

Subject: RE: BS: ogden nash poem...
From: Peace
Date: 21 May 07 - 07:36 PM

The title of Nash's poem is "The Unwinged Ones".

Subject: RE: BS: ogden nash poem...
From: Peace
Date: 21 May 07 - 07:40 PM

Google

[PDF] ENGLISH FOR JUNIOR STUDENTS

The poem is on pp 66-7 (or 67-8). I do not know how to cut or copy and paste from a PDF file.

Subject: RE: BS: ogden nash poem...
From: Micca
Date: 21 May 07 - 07:41 PM

Is it this one? by any chance? its the only one I know that might come close to the sense you expressed.

Subject: RE: BS: ogden nash poem...
From: Amos
Date: 21 May 07 - 07:42 PM

The Unwinged Ones
(by Ogden Nash)
I don't travel on planes.
I travel on trains.
Once in a while, on trains,
I see people who travel on planes.
Every once in a while I'm surrounded
By people whose planes have been grounded
They feel that they have to explain
How they happen to be on a train.

They grumble and fume about how
They'd have been in Miami by now,
By the time that they're passing through Rahway
They should be in Havana or Norway,
And they strongly imply that perhaps,
Since they're late, the world will collapse.

Sometimes on the train I'm surrounded
By people whose planes have been grounded.
That' the trouble with trains:
When it fogs, when it smogs, when it rains,
You get people from planes.

Subject: RE: BS: ogden nash poem...
From: Peace
Date: 21 May 07 - 07:45 PM

That took 13 minutes from the first post to the printed-out poem on the thread. What's the hold-up here?

Subject: RE: BS: ogden nash poem...
From: Micca
Date: 21 May 07 - 07:47 PM

OOps, its this one!!!

Subject: RE: BS: ogden nash poem...
From: SINSULL
Date: 21 May 07 - 08:33 PM

Reminded me of a LONG journey by train from Buffalo to NYC when fog grounded planes all across the Northeast. I sat next to an alcoholic Lesbian who begged for my phone number while another passenger without a seat took the last stall in the Ladies Room. A long night.

Subject: RE: BS: ogden nash poem...
From: Peace
Date: 21 May 07 - 08:39 PM

Train travel has become more expensive than plane travel in Canada. Sorry bloody state of affairs.

Subject: RE: BS: ogden nash poem...
From: Donuel
Date: 21 May 07 - 09:05 PM

Sinsull you jogged my memory of the time the train left for Buffalo with over 30 people/stow aways who had merely helped friends and family with their luggage.

Many oddly paired strangers ended up taking a taxis back to Rochester late that night. Some got lucky.

Subject: RE: BS: ogden nash poem...
From: Jeri
Date: 21 May 07 - 09:12 PM

A related poem, perhaps:

RIDING ON A RAILROAD TRAIN
Ogden Nash

Some people like to hitch and hike;
They are fond of highway travel;
Their nostrils toil through gas and oil,
They choke on dust and gravel.
Unless they stop for the traffic cop
Their road is a fine-or-jail road,
But wise old I go rocketing by;
I'm riding on the railroad.

I love to loll like a limp rag doll
In a peripatetic salon;
To think and think of a long cool drink
And cry to the porter, allons!
Now the clickety clackety clicker:
The line is clear for the engineer
And it mounts to his head like liquor.

Oh give me steel from roof to wheel,
But a soft settee to sit on,
And a cavalcade of commerce and trade
And a drummer to turn the wit on.
Stuyvestant chats with Kelly and Katz,
The professor warms to the broker,
And life is good in the brotherhood
Of an air-conditioned smoker.

With a farewell scream of escaping steam
The boiler bows to the Diesel;
The Iron Horse has run its course
And we ride a chromium weasel;
We draw our power from the harnessed shower,
The lightening without the thunder,
But a train is a train and will so remain
While the rails glide glistening under.

Oh, some like trips in luxury ships,
And some in gasoline wagons,
And others swear by the upper air
And the wings of flying dragons.
Let each make haste to indulge his taste,
Be it beer, champagne or cider;
My private joy, both man and boy,
Is being a railroad rider.

Subject: RE: BS: ogden nash poem...
From: Leadfingers
Date: 21 May 07 - 09:19 PM

Ogden Nash writes the sort of poems that I would read - IF I read poems , that is . But I DO love his four liners - like :-

Sure ! Deck thy limbs in pants my love

Thine ARE the limbs my sweeting

You look divine as you advance

Have you seen yourself retreating ?

Subject: RE: BS: ogden nash poem...
From: The PA
Date: 22 May 07 - 03:21 AM

My husband said he wrote;

"it wasn't the cough that carried him of, but the coffin they carried him off in"

He swears he's a relation of his - but I think he telling porkies.

Subject: RE: BS: ogden nash poem...
From: GUEST,Paul Burke
Date: 22 May 07 - 03:49 AM

My dad's favourite was:

A one-L lama,he's a priest,
A two-L llama he's a beast.
But you can bet your silk pyjama
That there isn't any three-L lllama.

The Boy's favourite was Custard the Dragon.

Subject: RE: BS: ogden nash poem...
From: cptsnapper
Date: 22 May 07 - 05:30 AM

How about one of my favourite Ogden Nash classics

Two nudists from Dover
who were purple all over
were munched by a cow
in mistake for some clover>

Subject: RE: BS: ogden nash poem...
From: GUEST,redhorse at work
Date: 22 May 07 - 08:42 AM

His best poem was the one that begins;

"Middle-aged life is merry and I love to lead it,
But there comes a time when your eyes are all right but your arm isn't long enough to hold the telephone directory where you can read it........"

It also includes the bit about having one pair of glasses for ".......reading Keats's Endymion with" and another pair for "...saying hello to strange wymion with"


nick

Subject: RE: BS: ogden nash poem...
From: GUEST,Mingulay at work
Date: 22 May 07 - 11:32 AM

I like the one that goes

"I think that I shall never see
a billboard , lovely as a tree,
Perhaps, unless the billboards fall
I'll never see a tree at all".

Subject: RE: BS: ogden nash poem...
From: Liz the Squeak
Date: 22 May 07 - 12:23 PM

Ogden had a way with words and a thing about food....

If you do not shake the bottle - none'll come and then a lot'll.

Peace - it's the same in the UK. To get 3 people from London to Inverness and back in October on the train would have taken 8-10 hours and cost anywhere between £241 and £600+. By aeroplane it takes 5 hours and about £250. Driving ourselves it would have taken about that much in petrol and an extra 4 days.

LTS

Subject: RE: BS: ogden nash poem...
From: open mike
Date: 22 May 07 - 01:18 PM

chromium weasel--I love it!
could this be a potential name for a band?

if you love riding trains you might want to join with
the Flying Under Radar train trip...with many wonderful
musicians...there are 2 trips coming up...one to the copper
canyon in mexico (the grand canyon of mexico) and one in
the rocky mountains on smaller steam trains...

see www.flyingunderradar.com

and also two trips across canada...one east bound,w/Alistair Fraser
scottish fiddler, and and one west...with Blackie and the Rodeo Kings.

Subject: RE: BS: ogden nash poem...
From: RangerSteve
Date: 22 May 07 - 01:32 PM

More Nash:
I had a dream, it was my dream, I dreamt it.
I dreamed my hair was kempt, and my true love unkempt it.

Subject: RE: BS: ogden nash poem...
From: Mr Red
Date: 22 May 07 - 01:38 PM

LTS

If you are in Inverness, why would you want to got to London? for a day?

d8^)

Subject: RE: BS: ogden nash poem...
From: tarheel
Date: 22 May 07 - 04:15 PM

Thank you one and all for you effort in helping me find the correct poem!
Amos found the right one and i thank you sir!!!
but all the others were worth reading and remembering ogden nash, and what a superb writer he was....
Tar

Subject: RE: BS: ogden nash poem...
From: Liz the Squeak
Date: 22 May 07 - 05:27 PM

Mr Red, I'm in London and want to get out of it for a weekend!

LTS

Subject: RE: BS: ogden nash poem...
From: Herga Kitty
Date: 22 May 07 - 07:09 PM

Wasn't there one (vaguely reminiscent of Les Barker's friend Myrtle) on the lines of

The turtle, twixt plated decks
Practically conceals its sex
I think it clever of the turtle
In such a fix to be so fertile

Kitty

Subject: RE: BS: ogden nash poem...
From: Rowan
Date: 22 May 07 - 07:38 PM

The rain it raineth on the just
and also on the unjust fella;
but more upon the just,
coz the unjust pinched the just's umbrella.

Cheers, Rowan

Subject: RE: BS: ogden nash poem...
From: Mr Red
Date: 23 May 07 - 07:05 AM

LTS
I sympathise - but there are nice places only hours away - especially if you can miss the orbital car park. Try the Cotswolds.

Rowan
An easy mistake but a luminary in another field penned that one.

Senator Sam Irvine was yer penner.

He chaired the committee looking into the excesses of McCarthy.

And if that is not luminous enough maybe chairing the committee looking into Watergate would clinch it.

Still we should be glad he had time to pen what I made into a song with slight changes. Always credited.

The rain it raineth on the just
and also on the unjust fella;
but most it raineth upon the just,
coz unjust just stole the just's umbrella.

Think tune approximating to Bold Riley. The brevity is very effective - unless the audience are hard of thinking.

Subject: RE: BS: ogden nash poem...
From: Joe_F
Date: 23 May 07 - 09:35 PM

The rain it raineth on the just
And also on the unjust fella;
But chiefly on the just, because
The unjust steals the just's umbrella.
--Charles Synge Christopher Bowen (1835–1896). The Rain It Raineth (l. 1–4). . .

Subject: RE: BS: ogden nash poem...
From: Mr Red
Date: 24 May 07 - 07:53 AM

ooer

So Sam Irvine (Ervine?) was quoting and the BBC are fibbers.

just shows the web can tell lies as well.

eg "US Senator Sam Ervin Jr (1896-1985) was the author of the Rain raineth verse, according to the Brainyquote.com website. However, he can be ruled out, since the verse was popular in the early 20th century, when Ervin was too young to have written it. from http://www.bdb.co.za/shackle/articles/rain_raineth.htm


Now I have to tell everyone I lied twice over this - dang.........

Subject: RE: BS: ogden nash poem...
From: Liz the Squeak
Date: 25 May 07 - 03:32 AM

And that chap 'Anon' is writing some perfectly lovely stuff these days...


Rainy days will surely come,
Take your friend's umbrella home!

LTS