TBone
January 15th, 2005, 22:59
It's funny you should mention that, JMI. Maybe I should fill people in.
Those of you who didn't grow up as a child in America probably won't quite catch the whole significance of my sig. It's a quote from a "The Little Engine That Could", which is a very famous children's book in the U.S. Almost every child read it at some point, and probably most of us actually had a copy when we were knee-high. I know I did, and my parents probably still have it somewhere in their attic.
It was originally published in 1930, so it's been around long enough that maybe even the "old man's" old man might have read it as a child. It's been a long time since I've read it, but as I recall the story goes something like this: there were a whole bunch of toys in train cars that were supposed to be sent to all the little boys and girls, but they couldn't find an engine that would pull them up the steep mountain. They asked a brand new shiny engine to pull them, but it was too vain to pull the toys, so it only told them "I can not. I can not." And then they went to a big strong engine and asked it to pull them up the mountain. But it was too haughty to pull the toys and told them "I can not. I can not." So finally, they went to a little blue switch train (a small engine that's only used to haul small loads in a switching yard) and asked her to pull them up the mountain. The little engine just told them "I think I can." So it started up the mountain saying, "I think I can, I think I can, I think I can..." getting slower and slower, "I think...I...can...I...think...I...can..." And just as it was about to wear out, they madee it over the mountain peak, and all the way down it said, "I thought I could! I though I could!..."
Well, I feel thoroughly foolish now having held "story time" for all the adults around here, but somehow I thought it might be interesting
. I don't know for sure how the book became so popular, but if you say "I think I can, I think I can," just about anyone who spent their childhood in America will recognize it. The book's authorship was attributed to "Watty Piper", but that was just a psuedonym used by a publishing company. To this day, no one really knows for sure who wrote the story. In all likelyhood, the earliest version of it dates back to the first decade of the 20th century, or maybe earlier. The original publisher finally settled a lawsuit by agreeing that Frances Ford wrote the book, but no one was able to prove it satisfactorily. There's a surprisingly well researched biography of the book here (I guess English Lit. majors must get bored
):
hxxp://tigger.uic.edu/~plotnick/littleng.htm
I don't know exactly which version JMI heard, but there are 4 or 5 recorded song versions of the story listed in the bibliography. I have no idea if the book became a classic in any other English-speaking countries, or if they just look at us like we're crazy
. Any Brits or Aussies out there want to compare notes?
Now if I could only figure out "WHEN." 
In the song it was sung like the sound of a steam engine slowly reving up and slowly getting faster and faster.