PAUL
BUNYAN TALES
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PAUL BUNYAN, AN
AMERICAN LEGEND |
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Paul Bunyan, the
mythical king of lumberjacks, lives on in Bemidji! |
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The greatest outdoorsman who ever lived was
Paul Bunyan and the tall stories invented by fisherman and
hunters to this day can never equal the 'truth' to Paul's
exploits in the north woods. |
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This legendary superman and woodsman, hero of the early
logging days, was born in Bemidji, Minnesota. The actual
site of his birth is marked today by giant statues of both
Paul Bunyan and his Blue Ox, Babe, standing on the shoreline
of Lake Bemidji. |
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Old-time loggers recall the excitement of
Paul's birth when it took five giant storks, working in
relays, to deliver Paul to his parents. And what a baby
Paul was; his lungs were so strong that he could empty a whole
pond full of frogs with one holler when he was hungry.
It took a whole herd of cows to keep his milk bottle filled
and he could eat forty bowls of porridge just to whet his
appetite. |
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Paul cut his teeth on a peavy pole and grew so
fast that one week after being born, he had to wear his father's
clothes. A lumber wagon, drawn by a team of oxen, was
Paul's baby carriage and by the time Paul was one year old, his
clothing was so large he had to use the wagon wheels for
buttons. Only the great outdoors was big enough to
accommodate Paul, and it was natural that he should become the
World's Greatest Lumberjack. |
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In the year of the 'Blue Snow' when it was so
cold the geese flew backward, Paul found a baby ox in the snow.
It was so cold, the ox and snow was blue. After Paul took him
home and warmed him, his color stayed blue. Paul named him
Babe. Like Paul, Babe grew fast and soon was seven
ax handles and a plug of tobacco wide between the eyes.
For a between meals snack, Babe would eat thirty bales of hay,
wire and all. It took six men with picaroons to pick the
wire out of his teeth. |
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Babe hauled the huge camp tank wagon which was
used to pave the winter logging roads with ice. When it
sprang a leak one day, it created Lake Itasca south of Bemidji
and the overflow trickled down to New Orleans to form the
Mississippi River. And since Babe refused to haul logs
unless there was snow on the ground, Paul had to whitewash the
roads in the summer |
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Babe had many jobs around the logging camp
where the laundryman hung out the wash on Babe's horns.
But perhaps Babe's biggest job was pulling the kinks out of
crooked logging roads. |
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Paul and Babe were a good team, no feat of
strength or courage was beyond them. No obstacles ever
stumped them. Paul could cut down acres of timber single-handedly
in just a few minutes by tying his huge ax to the end of a
long rope and swinging it in circles. Babe could
haul the logs away as fast as Paul could cut them. |
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Paul's booming voice forced his lumberjacks
to wear earmuffs the year round. His lung power was so
great, he called his logging crews together by whistling
through a hollow tree. Once, he blew too hard and blew
down 12 acres of jack pine. Every time Paul sneezed, he
blew the roof off the bunkhouse. |
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Paul's logging crew was made up of giants too,
but none as big nor as strong as the "King of the Lumberjacks".
Never the less, his loggers were all over six feet sitting down
and they sharpened their axes by holding them against huge
stones rolling down a hill. |
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That brings us to the time when it was so
cold in Bemidji, it was called the 'Year of Two Winters'.
The snow was so deep, Paul had to dig down to find the trees.
It got so cold, the boiling coffee froze so fast it was still
hot when frozen. |
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The loggers let their beards grow full
length that year and soon had to tuck them in their boots to
keep from tripping. In the spring, Paul cut the beards
with a large scythe, stacked them like hay and sold them for
making mattresses. |
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During the 'Year of Two Winters', it was so
cold at the camp on Lake Bemidji, words froze in
mid-air. When the words thawed out in the spring, there
was a huge roar of conversation heard 600 miles away in
Chicago. |
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That was the year, too, when all the fish
went south for the winter. Paul Bunyan then crossed the
Walleyes and Northern Pike with bobcats and ever since, the
fish in Bemidji grow fur coats in the winter. To this
day, the skin from one fur-bearing fish is enough to make a
full-length coat. |
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Paul's camp crew is deserving of
mention. There was Sourdough Sam, the camp cook, for
instance. He made flapjacks on a griddle so big it had
to be greased by skaters with slabs of bacon tied to their
feet. Once, when a load of pork and beans, pulled by a
team of oxen, went through the ice of Lake Bemidji, Sam had
huge fires built along the shore and boiled the lake to make
soup. All that winter, he fed the loggers bean soup with
an ox-tail flavor. |
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Johnny Inkslinger, the camp bookkeeper,
invented the fountain pen by running a hose from a barrel of
ink to his pen. He saved five barrels of ink one summer
by not dotting his "i's" or crossing his "t's". |
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Big Ole, the camp blacksmith, was the only
man besides Paul who was strong enough to make shoes for Babe,
the Blue Ox. In his spare time, Big Ole was kept busy
punching holes in doughnuts so big, two men could carry only
three of them on a long pole. |
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There was Shot Gunderson, the giant camp
foreman, who once dropped logs into a lake without an outlet
and had to empty the tank wagon to float the logs overland to
New Orleans. And Chris Crosshaul, the straw boss, who
once sent the wrong logs to New Orleans. Paul brought
them back to Bemidji by having Babe take a huge gulp from the
waters of the Mississippi River to reverse the current. |
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Finally, there was Sport-the-Reversible
dog. One of the loggers accidentally cut this camp pet
in two with an ax. In his haste to sew him up, the
logger stitched Sport's hindquarters on upside down.
This didn't hinder Sport who ran on his front legs until they
were tired, then he flipped over and ran on his back
legs. Sport's diet consisted mainly of door-to-door
salesmen and Internal Revenue agents who visited the camp. |
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Paul wandered far from Bemidji at times and
when his crew logged off North and South Dakota, there was the
problem of what to do with the stumps. Paul solved the
problem by having Big Ole make a two-ton maul with which Paul
beat the stumps into the ground. This is why there are
so few trees today in the Dakotas. When Babe died, he
was buried in South Dakota, his burial mound forming what is
now known as the Black Hills. |
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But Paul Bunyan, the King of the
Lumberjacks, lives on. Each year he returns to Bemidji
to fish and play in the hundreds of lakes in his
birthplace. For those who miss his annual visit, a huge
statue of Paul, 18 feet tall weighing 2 1/2 tons, stands on
the shore of beautiful Lake Bemidji. Next to Paul,
stands a statue of Babe, the Blue Ox, all five tons of the
mightiest Ox that ever lived! |
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