A listener in Burlington, Vermont, remembers being punished as a youngster for talking during class. His teacher forced him to write out this proverb dozens of times: “For those who talk, and talk, and talk, this proverb may appeal. The steam that blows the whistle will never turn the wheel.” Translation: If you’re talking, then you’re not getting work done. This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “Steam that Blows the Whistle Never Turns the Wheel”
Hello, you have A Way with Words.
Hello. Nice of you to take my call. My name is Joe, and I’m calling from Burlington, Vermont.
Hi, Joe.
So what’s on your mind today?
Despite my age, which is in the early 80s, I do recall that my ninth grade English teacher at Burlington High School in Burlington, Vermont, who sported a Phi Beta Kappa key and was an excellent teacher, was also a stern disciplinarian, of which I was a victim. When she first detected me whispering to the classmate who sat in front of me, she announced that I was to write the poem 50 times. And the poem, which I can still recite so many years later, went this way. For those who talk and talk and talk, this proverb may appeal. The steam that blows the whistle will never turn the wheel. Well, it took me an hour or more to write that out 50 times and turn it in the next day. But then she caught me a second time and meted out the same punishment. So I did it a second time. And then, unfortunately, there came a third time. She again administered the same punishment.
And it was burned into your memory, clearly.
What does it mean to you? Why is it referring to steam and whistles?
The phrase, the seam that blows the whistle will never turn the wheel, was an analogy to side conversation in a class that was never going to amount to anything. So if you’re talking, you’re not working. It would not be productive work. Useless chatter.
I can find some uses of this in books about Proverbs as far back as 1910. There are a couple variations I see on this in books of proverbs and aphorisms and old sayings. One of my favorites is, the fellow who blows his horn the loudest is likely in the biggest fog.
Oh, boy, that is good.
But I think that one has more to do with just dominating the conversation than it does with having any kind of chit-chat when you should be doing other work. If you look in old teaching manuals over the last several hundred years, there are often these sorts of sayings that are little humorous, like column fillers or things that are listed to kind of lighten the content a little bit. And I’m quite sure that teachers would borrow those to use on their students.
So not a highfalutin literary reference or anything like that?
No, not really. As far as I know, that’s not Shakespeare or anything like that.
All right.
You were doing this in cursive, I take it?
I wrote it out. It takes over an hour to write that poem out 50 times.
Joe, thank you so much for your call, buddy. Really appreciate it.
My pleasure. Good to talk with you folks, and I enjoy the show.
Thank you very much. Take care.
Bye-bye.
Take care. Bye now.
Joe’s Punifant brought back a lot of memories for me of the things that my parents would say and the things my parents would have me do, having to do with language. And if you’ve got some of those, we’d love to hear about them.
Or tell us about the terrible writing assignment you had to do.
An email to words@waywordradio.org.
