Polysyndeton (pol-y-syn’-de-ton): Employing many conjunctions between clauses, often slowing the tempo or rhythm. (Asyndeton is the opposite of polysyndeton: an absence of conjunctions.)
I had an SUV, and a pickup truck, and a motorcycle, and an ATV, and a motor scooter, and a lawn tractor, and an electric scooter, and a shopping cart I stole from Hannaford—the grocery store.
Due to all the wheeled vehicles I own, I got the nickname “Johnny Wheels,” or just plain “Wheels.” Ever since I first rolled down my street on my birthday Big Wheels, rolling conveyances have been my thing: “Roll ‘em, roll ‘em, roll ‘em, get those Big Wheels rollin’, tho’ the traffic’s swollen, roll it to the end of the line.” I wrote this tribute to my Big Wheels to the tune of “Rawhide,” my favorite TV show at the time. I sang it as I rode to the playground, one block from where I lived.
On my sixteenthg birthday I was still riding my Big Wheels. I didn’t have the resources to buy bigger wheels—like a car. so I got a job polishing marbles at the Chinese Checkers parlor on the outskirts of town. Riding my Big Wheels out there every day was making me crazy. Finally, I saved enough money to buy a used car. I went to “Chariots On Fire,” a used car lot run by a high school friend named “Bastard” Johnson.
Bastard asked me how much I had to spend. I told him $532.00. He laughed for about 2 minutes and then told his assistant Gomer to get “it” from behind the garage.
Gomer drove out from behind the garage in a green car that looked like it had a toilet seat for a grill. Bastard said “It’s called an Edsel and I can’t even give it away. Give me $495.00 and it’s yours. I’m giving you a $5.00 trade-in credit for your Big Wheels.” I said, “If you can’t give it away, why do you want $495.00 from me?” He told me that “can’t give it away” is a figure of speech “asshole.” I gave him $the 495.00 and drove off in the Edsel, leaving my Big Wheels behind.
I still have the Edsel and it’s worth $90,000.00.
I’m opening a wheels museum called “Roll” in a barn outside of town. It opens on a diorama of the wheel’s invention. We make it interesting by having my cousin Bart dressed like a caveman and making a stone Big Wheels. Then, as you walk through you see examples of everything with wheels—from a Peterbuilt truck to a roller skate, to a medieval battering ram, to a wheelchair, to the famous wheeled shroud of Turin, to a wheel of fortune, and 100s and 100s more artifacts.
I’m 78 years old and I hope to keep on rollin’ for a few more years. But when the time comes, I’m sure I’ll be rolling on casters to the cemetery, pulled by a team of Big Wheels and a small troupe of bagpipers playing “Rawhide.”
Definitions courtesy of “Silva Rhetoricae” (rhetoric.byu.edu).
Daily Trope is available in an early edition on Amazon in paperback under the title of The Book of Tropes for $9.95. It is also available in Kindle format for $5.99.
The Daily Trope 