Baby Paul Arrives

Imagine, if you can, the excitement that was caused by the birth of Paul Bunyan!

It took five giant storks, working overtime, to deliver him to his parents.

He cut his teeth on a peavy pole and grew so fast the after one week he had to wear his father's clothes. His lungs were so strong that he could empty a whole pond of frogs with one "holler".

Paul's Cradle in the Deep

Paul's clothing was so large they had to use wagon wheels for buttons. They used a lumber wagon drawn by a team of oxen as a baby carriage. When he outgrew this his parents put him on a raft off the coast of Maine.

It is said that rocking in his sleep he caused huge waves which sunk many ships.

He would eat forty bowls of porridge just to whet his appetite.

Paul and Babe the Blue Ox

As a child, Paul played with an axe and crosscut saw like other children played with toys. On his first birthday his father gave him a pet blue ox named Babe.

Babe grew to be seven axehandles and a plug of tobacco wide between the eyes and as a snack would eat thirty bales of hay...wire and all.

Paul and Babe were so large, the tracks they made galivanting around Minnesota filled up and made the 10,000 lakes.

Johnny Inkslinger, The Head Clerk

Johnny Inkslinger was the camp's head clerk. He invented bookkeeping about the same time that Paul invented logging. He kept track of everything down to the last bean.

He used a pen (his own invention) connected to a barrel by a hose. In one week he saved twelve barrels of ink by not crossing his t's or dotting his i's.

Sharpening The Axes

Paul like to work with big men. The most famous were his seven axemen. They were all named Elmer, so when he called they all came running. No grindstone was large enough to grind the axes so they sharpened them by holding them against large stones rolling down hill.

Each of these men was over six feet tall sitting down and weighed over 300 pounds.

Elmer, The Axeman

The year of the two winters it got so cold the axeman let their beards grow full length. They wrapped the beards around them for warmth. In the spring Paul cut all the beards with a large scythe. The whiskers were stacked like hay and later sold for making mattresses.

The Year of The Two Winters

The year of the two winters the snow was so deep Paul had to dig down to the trees to continue logging operations.

It got so cold that the boiling coffee froze so fast it was still hot when frozen.

When the men spoke, their words froze in mid-air and when it thawed in the spring there was a terrible chatter for weeks.

Paul's Giant Pipe

During the slack season, Paul's men made him a pipe. This wasn't easy. They had to select a special giant hickory tree and haul it in on two flatcars so they could work on it.

In the early days Paul's smoking never bothered anyone, but in later years he started blowing his smoke west to keep his forest air fresh. This is what caused the smogs on the west coast.


The Troublesome Mosquitoes

Mosquitoes were a problem. The men fought them off with pike poles and axes. Paul brought in big bees to destroy them, but they intermarried and became worse. Their craving for sweets caused them to swarm a fleet of ships bringing sugar to Paul's cam. They ate so much they couldn't fly, and drowned. Paul saved two of the mosquitoes which he used for drilling holes in maple trees.

Paul's Trained Ants

When Paul was short of help, he trained some enormous ants to do all kinds of logging work.

They weighed over 2,000 pounds and ate nothing but the best imported Swedish snuff.

The ants did the work of 50 ordinary men. In the winter, Paul had them fitted with warm mackinaws to keep them from hibernating.

Lucy, the Purple Cow

Lucy, the Purple Cow, was a champion producer and furnished Paul's dairy products. She was contented so long as the grass was green, so in the winter Paul fitted her with green glasses to make the snow look like grass.

The year of the two winters it got so cold her milk turned to ice cream before it hit the pail. That was the winter Paul invented the double-deck ice cream cone.

Ole, the Blacksmith

Ole, the blacksmith, was the only man who could shoe Babe, the Blue Ox. Every time he made shoes for Babe they had to open a new iron mine. One time he carried a pair of Babe's shoes and their weight made him sink knee deep into the hard earth with every step.

In his spare time Ole punched the holes in the donuts for the cook.

Sourdough Sam

Sourdough Sam, the cook, fed Paul's logging crews. He made everything except coffee from sourdough. He lost one leg and one arm when a sourdough barrel blew up. A load of pork and beans with the ox team pulling it went through the ice on a nearby lake. Sam had large fires built along the shore and boiled the lake making bean soup. All winter he fed the men bean soup with an ox-tail flavor.

The Pancake Griddle

Paul's axemen ate so many flap-jacks they couldn't supply the demand. Ole, the Blacksmith, made a griddle so large you couldn't see across it when the smoke was thick. Sourdough Sam had fifty men with pork rinds tied to their feet skating around the griddle to grease it. The batter was mixed in large barrels and it took a strong cook just to turn the flapjacks, let alone get them to the table.

Sport, the Reversible Dog

Sport, the Reversible Dog, was the camp pet and the best hunter.

One of the axemen accidentally cut Sport in two with an axe. In his haste to mend the dog, he had him sewed up before he realized it was wrong. This didn't bother Sport. He ran on his front legs until they were tired, then flopped over and ran on his hind legs.

END