The Marvelous Exploits of Paul Bunyan: As Told in the Camps of the White Pine Lumbermen for Generations During Which Time the Loggers Have Pioneered the Way Through the North Woods From Maine to California. Collected from Various Sources and Embellished for PublicationLaughead, William B.
General
The Marvelous Exploits of Paul Bunyan: As Told in the Camps of the White Pine Lumbermen for Generations During Which Time the Loggers Have Pioneered the Way Through the North Woods From Maine to California. Collected from Various Sources and Embellished for Publication
Laughead, William B.
Bunyan, Paul (Legendary character)
When Big Joe came to Westwood with Paul, he started something. About
that time you may have read in the papers about a volcanic eruption at
Mt. Lassen, heretofore extinct for many years. That was where Big Joe
dug his bean-hole and when the steam worked out of the bean kettle and
up through the ground, everyone thought the old hill had turned volcano.
Every time Joe drops a biscuit they talk of earthquakes.
It was always thought that the quality of the food at Paul's Camps had a
lot to do with the strength and endurance of the men. No doubt it did,
but they were a husky lot to start with. As the feller said about fish
for a brain food, "It won't do you no good unless there is a germ there
to start with."
There must have been something to the food theory for the chipmunks that
ate the prune pits got so big they killed all the wolves and years later
the settlers shot them for tigers.
A visitor at one of Paul's camps was astonished to see a crew of men
unloading four-horse logging sleds at the cook-shanty. They appeared to
be rolling logs into a trap door from which poured clouds of steam.
"That's a heck of a place to land logs," he remarked.
"Them ain't logs," grinned a bull-cook, "them's sausages for the
teamsters' breakfast."
At Paul's camp up where the little Gimlet empties into the Big Auger,
newcomers used to kick because they were never served beans. The bosses
and the men could never be interested in beans. E. E. Terrill tells us
the reason:
Once when the cook quit they had to detail a substitute to the job
temporarily. There was one man who was no good anywhere. He had failed
at every job. Chris Crosshaul, the foreman, acting on the theory that
every man is good somewhere, figured that this guy must be a cook, for
it was the only job he had not tried. So he was put to work and the
first thing he tackled was beans. He filled up a big kettle with beans
and added some water. When the heat took hold the beans swelled up till
they lifted off the roof and bulged out the walls. There was no way to
get into the place to cook anything else, so the whole crew turned in to
eat up the half cooked beans. By keeping at it steady they cleaned them
up in a week and rescued the would-be-cook. After that no one seemed to
care much for beans.
It used to be a big job to haul prune pits and coffee grounds away from
Paul's camps. It required a big crew of men and either Babe or Benny to
do the hauling. Finally Paul decided it was cheaper to build new camps
and move every month.
The winter Paul logged off North Dakota with the Seven Axemen, the
Little Chore Boy and the 300 cooks, he worked the cooks in three
shifts--one for each meal. The Seven Axemen were hearty eaters; a portion
of bacon was one side of a 1600-pound pig. Paul shipped a stern-wheel
steamboat up Red River and they put it in the soup kettle to stir the
soup.
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