Rags Habakuk, the Rag Man Two Daughters of the Rag Man Two Blue Rats A Circus Man With Spot Cash A Moving Picture Actor A Taxicab Driver 73 The Story of Blixie Bimber and the Powerof the Gold Buckskin Whincher Blixie Bimber grew up looking for luck. If she found a horseshoe she took it home and put it on the wall of her room with a ribbon tied to it. She would look at the moon through her fingers, under her arms, over her right shoulder but never—never over her left shoulder. She listened and picked up everything anybody said about the ground hog and whether the ground hog saw his shadow when he came out the second of February. If she dreamed of onions she knew the next day she would find a silver spoon. If she dreamed of fishes she knew the next day she 74 would meet a strange man who would call her by her first name. She grew up looking for luck. 74 She was sixteen years old and quite a girl, with her skirts down to her shoe tops, when something happened. She was going to the postoffice to see if there was a letter for her from Peter Potato Blossom Wishes, her best chum, or a letter from Jimmy the Flea, her best friend she kept steady company with. Jimmy the Flea was a climber. He climbed skyscrapers and flagpoles and smokestacks and was a famous steeplejack. Blixie Bimber liked him because he was a steeplejack, a little, but more because he was a whistler. Every time Blixie said to Jimmy, “I got the blues—whistle the blues out of me,” Jimmy would just naturally whistle till the blues just naturally went away from Blixie. On the way to the postoffice, Blixie found a gold buckskin whincher. There it lay in the middle of the sidewalk. How and why it came 75 to be there she never knew and nobody ever told her. “It’s luck,” she said to herself
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