To Garry on the Toot-Toot
Oh, I want to go to Garry
On the toot-toot, toot-toot,
You and I together
On the toot-toot, toot-toot.
Go run and ask your mother
For some kind of cake or other,
And a bit of cotton wadding
For your ball-suit.
Get your bobber and a bat,
And be back as quick as scat,
For we’ve got to go to Garry
On the toot-toot.
First published in The Peter Patter Book of Nursery Rhymes (1918).
There’s so much energy packed into this rhyme, you can almost hear the train whistle. To Garry on the Toot-Toot feels like a child’s call to adventure — spontaneous, impatient, and full of excitement over a trip that might not even be real.
It’s that classic kind of childhood planning where you decide, right now, that you’re going somewhere — and everything else must fall into place. The mother’s cake, the “cotton wadding for your ball-suit,” even the bat and bobber — none of it makes perfect sense, and that’s what makes it wonderful.
In Blanche Fisher Wright’s illustration, the two children look caught mid-plan: one giving serious orders, the other listening wide-eyed, toy train ready at their feet. It’s a perfect capture of how seriously children take their own adventures — how a backyard journey can feel like a grand expedition.
