Tall Tales

The Whistling River - so named because twice a day, it reared up to a height of two hundred feet and let loose a whistle that could be heard for over six hundred miles - was the most ornery river in the U.S. of A. It took a fiendish delight in plaguing the life out of the loggers who worked it. It would tie their logs into knots, flip men into the water then toss them back out onto the banks, and break apart whole rafts of logs as soon as the loggers put them together.

This fact by itself might not have been enough by itself to get Paul Bunyan involved. But one day Paul was sitting on a hill by the river combing his beard with a large pine tree when without warning the river reared up and spat four hundred and nineteen gallons of muddy water onto his beard. This startled Paul somewhat, but he figured if he ignored the river, it would go away and leave him alone. But that ornery river jest reared up again and spat five thousand and nineteen gallons of muddy water onto his beard, adding a batch of mud turtles, several large fish and a muskrat into the mix. Paul Bunyan was so mad he jumped up and let out a yell that caused a landslide all the way out in Pike's Peak.
"By jingo, I am gonna tame that river or bust a gut trying!" he cried.
So Paul sat for four days eating popcorn and trying to figure out how to tame that river. He ate so much popcorn that the air was soon filled with white bits and the ground for three miles around was covered with eighteen inches of popcorn scraps. This caused several hundred small animals and a few dozen birds to conclude that they were in a blizzard and so they froze to death. This furnished the loggers at the camp with pot pies for several days.
Just as he ran out of popcorn, Paul decided that the way to tame the river was to pull out the kinks. He would hitch the river to Babe the Blue Ox and let him yank it straight. Of course, Paul knew that an ordinary log chain and the skid hook wouldn't work with water. So he and Babe took a short walk up to the North Pole. There, Paul made a box trap baited with icicles that he set near a blizzard trail. Then he and Babe wandered away. Paul started to throw icebergs out into the ocean so Babe could play fetch. But he had to stop the game since each time Babe jumped into the water a tidal wave threatened to swamp the coast of Florida. After lunch, Paul went back to check the trap. He had caught six young blizzards and an old nor'wester. He put two of the young blizzards in his sack and released the rest. Then he and Babe went back to their camp.
As he walked into camp, Paul yelled to Ole, the Big Swede to build him the largest log chain that's ever been built. Then he staked out the two blizzards, one on each side of the river. Right away, the river began to freeze. By morning, the river had a tough time rearing up to whistle because it was frozen solid for more than seventeen miles. When Paul Bunyan finished his breakfast, he harnessed Babe and wrapped the chain seventy-two times around the foot of the frozen Whistle River. Yelling to the men to stand clear, he shouted at Babe to pull. Babe pulled that chain into a solid bar and sank knee deep into solid rock, but that ornery river refused to budge. So Paul grabbed the chain and he and Babe gave such a yank that the river jerked loose from its banks and they dragged it across the prairie so fast it smoked. After a while, Paul looked back and saw the river was as straight as a gun barrel. But the river was much shorter with the kinks out, and all the extra lengths that used to be in the kinks were running wild out on the prairie. So Paul got his big cross-cut saw and a lot of baling wire and sawed the extra lengths of river into nine-mile pieces, rolled them up and tied them off with the baling wire. He later used them to float his logs when he logged out the desert.
But now that it was straight, the Whistling River lost its gimp and refused to whistle. Which made everyone mad at Paul Bunyan, because now they didn't know when to wake up in the morning. Paul might have been in real trouble if Squeaky Swanson hadn't showed up right about then. Squeaky's speaking voice was no louder than a whisper. But when he yelled, you could hear him clean out in Kansas. So each morning Squeaky got up at the crack of dawn and yelled the blankets off of every bed in camp. Naturally, the men found it hard to sleep in the cold without their blankets, so they got up. Squeaky was a great success, and for the rest of his life he did nothing but get up at dawn and let out one really loud yell.
Read More......

Well now Paul Bunyan scouted around the north woods of Wisconsin for quite a while afore he found the perfect spot for his winter lumber camp. It was right next to a fast river, and Paul figured they could pile the logs up right next to it and come spring time it would be mighty easy to tumble the logs into the river and float ‘em down to the mill.
Soon the woods beside that mighty river were bustling with activity, and calls of “timber!” as the lumberjacks felled the huge trees. Babe the Blue Ox and his cousin Little Benny were kept busy from dawn to dusk hauling logs to the river, and Sourdough Sam the cook hardly stepped foot outside his cooking shanty neither, working all day and most of the night to keep all them lumberjacks fed. Took about twenty cooking assistants alone just to make enough flapjacks for Paul Bunyan!
Well, by the time spring rolled around, they had logs piled up so high folks passing through Wisconsin mistook them for a mountain range and thought they’d reached the Rockies. The mighty river was free of ice, and Paul declared himself ready to take the first big batch of logs down-river to the saw mill the very next morning.
In preparation for his journey to civilization, Paul struggled out of his huge red long johns and took a bath in Lake Superior. Then he washed the long johns and strung them up to dry on the flagpole. When they flapped in the breeze, it scared the migrating birds so much they turned around and went back South.
Paul Bunyan, the shanty cook Joe Murphy, and the other river drivers all piled up onto the log raft and set off down the river. It was a pleasant ride overall, and it didn’t take more than three days for them to spot smoke rising above the woods.
“Can’t be the saw mill,” Paul Bunyan told his men. “That’s still a couple weeks away. Must be another lumber camp. I thought we were the only ones up this far. ”
The fellers watched awhile as the camp drew nearer and nearer. It had a huge cooking shanty more than an acre long and a great big barn and a fellow that looked jest like Sourdough Sam came out and rang the dinner bell to call the lumberjacks in to supper. There was even a pair of red long johns hanging from the flagpole.
“Looks like a nice place,” Joe Murphy said. “Just like our camp. Funny how they’ve got a pair of red long johns up on their flagpole, jest like us.” And the men all agreed. It was too bad they couldn’t stop and rest awhile, but they needed to get to the saw mill lickety split, so they jest kept going.
The river drivers were kept busy fighting the rapids and portaging over shallow spots for the next couple of days. On the third day they spotted smoke coming over the top of the trees.
“Another lumber camp!” Paul Bunyan exclaimed in irritation. “Jiminy! If this keeps up Wisconsin will be lumbered out in no time!”
The log raft floated past a huge cooking shanty more than an acre long, and a fellow what looked jest like Sourdough Sam waved to them from the doorway. Then they floated beside a huge barn big enough to fit Babe the Blue Ox. Finally, they rounded a bend and saw a tall flagpole with a pair of red long johns strung up at the top.
“These lumber camps all look alike,” Joe Murphy complained. “You’d think they’d have some variety or something!”
“And there’s too many of them,” Paul Bunyan replied as they floated on down the river toward the saw mill. “They are gonna put us out of business. I’ll have to look into it when we get back from the mill!”
At that moment they hit some rapids, just like they had right after seeing the first lumbercamp, and they were too busy working to say anymore about it.
But three days later, when they spotted yet another lumber camp, Paul Bunyan got mad. He was the first scout in these spots. How dare all these lumberjacks invade his territory without talking to him first! After all, the north woods were only so big.
“This dad-gum camp is jest like the rest!” exclaimed Joe Murphy as they poled the raft toward shore. “Same cooking shanty, same big barn, same flagpole with the long johns on top. Jiminy! Get some variety, folks!”
Paul Bunyan jumped out as soon as they reached the bank and went storming toward the main building to complain to the boss. But halfway there, Sourdough Sam himself came out of the cooking shanty to ring the supper bell.
“Sourdough! What are you doin’ here?” Paul Bunyan asked in astonishment.
“I work here,” said Sourdough Sam. “And so do you!”
“Dad-gum! You mean this is my camp?” asked Paul Bunyan.
“Sure ‘tis!” said Sourdough Sam. “We’ve been watchin’ you fellers floating past the camp every couple of days with the lumber and we’ve been wondering where you think yer going! I though you was headed south to the saw mill!”
“So we’ve been going round in a circle all this while,” mused Paul Bunyan. Then he started laughing and slapped his leg with his huge hand. “We musta been logging next to the Round River! I heard there was a big ol’ river in the north of Wisconsin that ran in a perfect circle with no way out. Guess this must be it!”
“That explains why we never reached a saw mill,” Joe Murphy said as he and the boys from the lumber raft came ashore to see what was keeping Paul Bunyan. “And why all the lumber camps looked the same!”
All the lumberjacks laughed heartily when they realized that Mother Nature had played a good joke on them. Who’d have ever guessed they were working on the only round river in the world!
Then they went into the cooking shanty and ate flapjacks until they were ready to burst. And Paul Bunyan went scouting around ‘til he found a river that really did run south to the saw mill, and they took the logs out that way instead. The next year Paul Bunyan was careful to avoid the Round River when scouting out a camp for the winter logging. Once was enough. Read More......

One winter, Paul Bunyan came to log along the Little Gimlet in Oregon. Ask any old timer who was logging that winter, and they'll tell you I ain't lying when I say his kitchen covered about ten miles of territory.
That stove, now, she were a grand one. An acre long, taller than a scrub pine, and when she was warm, she melted the snow for about twenty miles around. The men logging in the vicinity never had to put on their jackets 'til about noon on a day when Paul Bunyan wanted flapjacks.
It was quite a site to see, that cook of Paul Bunyan's making flapjacks. Cookie would send four of the boys up with a side of hog tied to each of their snowshoes, and they'd skate around up there keeping the griddle greased while Cookie and seven other men flipped flapjacks for Paul Bunyan. Took them about an hour to make enough flapjacks to fill him up. The rest of us had to wait our turn.
The table we had set up for the camp was about ten miles long. We rigged elevators to the table to bring the vittles to each end, and some of the younger lads in the camp rode bicycles down the path at the center, carrying cakes and such wherever they were called for.
We had one mishap that winter. Babe the Blue Ox accidentally knocked a bag of dried peas off the countertop when he swished his tail. Well, them peas flew so far and so fast out of the kitchen that they knocked over a dozen loggers coming home for lunch, clipped the tops off of several pine trees, and landed in the hot spring. We had pea soup to eat for the rest of the season, which was okay by me, but them boys whose Mama's insisted they bath more than once a year were pretty sore at losing their swimming hole. Read More......

Read More......

One winter, shortly after Paul Bunyan dug Lake Michigan as a drinking hole for his blue ox, Babe, he decided to camp out in the Upper Peninsula. It was so cold in that there logging camp, that one evening, the temperature dropped to 68 degrees below zero. Each degree in the camp thermometer measured sixteen inches long and the flames in the lanterns froze solid. No one, not even Paul Bunyan, could blow them out.
The lumberjacks didn't want the bunkhouse lit at night, because they wouldn't get any sleep. So they put the lanterns way outside of camp where they wouldn't disturb anyone. But they forgot about the lanterns, so that when thaw came in the the early spring, the lanterns flared up again and set all of northern Michigan on fire! They had to wake Paul Bunyan up so he could stamp out the fire with his boots. Read More......

Well now, one winter it was so cold that all the geese flew backward and all the fish moved south and even the snow turned blue. Late at night, it got so frigid that all spoken words froze solid afore they could be heard. People had to wait until sunup to find out what folks were talking about the night before.
Paul Bunyan went out walking in the woods one day during that Winter of the Blue Snow. He was knee-deep in blue snow when he heard a funny sound between a bleat and a snort. Looking down, he saw a teeny-tiny baby blue ox jest a hopping about in the snow and snorting with rage on account of he was too short to see over the drifts.
Paul Bunyan laughed when he saw the spunky little critter and took the little blue mite home with him. He warmed the little ox up by the fire and the little fellow fluffed up and dried out, but he remained as blue as the snow that had stained him in the first place. So Paul named him Babe the Blue Ox.
Well, any creature raised in Paul Bunyan's camp tended to grow to massive proportions, and Babe was no exception. Folks that stared at him for five minutes could see him growing right before their eyes. He grew so big that 42 axe handles plus a plug of tobacco could fit between his eyes and it took a murder of crows a whole day to fly from one horn to the other. The laundryman used his horns to hang up all the camp laundry, which would dry lickety-split because of all the wind blowing around at that height.
Whenever he got an itch, Babe the Blue Ox had to find a cliff to rub against, 'cause whenever he tried to rub against a tree it fell over and begged for mercy. To whet his appetite, Babe would chew up thirty bales of hay, wire and all. It took six men with picaroons to get all the wire out of Babe's teeth after his morning snack. Right after that he'd eat a ton of grain for lunch and then come pestering around the cook - Sourdough Sam - begging for another snack.
Babe the Blue Ox was a great help around Paul Bunyan's logging camp. He could pull anything that had two ends, so Paul often used him to straighten out the pesky, twisted logging roads. By the time Babe had pulled the twists and kinks out of all the roads leading to the lumber camp, there was twenty miles of extra road left flopping about with nowhere to go. So Paul rolled them up and used them to lay a new road into new timberland.
Paul also used Babe the Blue Ox to pull the heavy tank wagon which was used to coat the newly-straightened lumber roads with ice in the winter, until one day the tank sprang a leak that trickled south and became the Mississippi River. After that, Babe stuck to hauling logs. Only he hated working in the summertime, so Paul had to paint the logging roads white after the spring thaw so that Babe would keep working through the summer.
One summer, as Babe the Blue Ox was hauling a load of logs down the white-washed road and dreaming of the days when the winter would feel cold again and the logs would slide easier on the "ice", he glanced over the top of the mountain and caught a glimpse of a pretty yeller calf grazing in a field. Well, he twisted out of his harness lickety-split and stepped over the mountain to introduce himself. It was love at first sight, and Paul had to abandon his load and buy Bessie the Yeller Cow from the farmer before Babe would do any more hauling.
Bessie the Yeller Cow grew to the massive, yet dainty proportions that were suitable for the mate of Babe the Blue Ox. She had long yellow eyelashes that tickled the lumberjacks standing on the other end of camp each time she blinked. She produced all the dairy products for the lumber camp. Each day, Sourdough Sam made enough butter from her cream to grease the giant pancake griddle and sometimes there was enough left over to butter the toast!
The only bone of contention between Bessie and Babe was the weather. Babe loved the ice and snow and Bessie loved warm summer days. One winter, Bessie grew so thin and pale that Paul Bunyan asked his clerk Johnny Inkslinger to make her a pair of green goggles so she would think it was summer. After that, Bessie grew happy and fat again, and produced so much butter that Paul Bunyan used the leftovers to grease the whitewashed lumber roads in summer. With the roads so slick all year round, hauling logs became much easier for Babe the Blue Ox, and so Babe eventually came to like summer almost as much as Bessie. Read More......

Now I hear tell that Paul Bunyan was born in Bangor, Maine. It took five giant storks to deliver Paul to his parents. His first bed was a lumber wagon pulled by a team of horses. His father had to drive the wagon up to the top of Maine and back whenever he wanted to rock the baby to sleep.
As a newborn, Paul Bunyan could hollar so loud he scared all the fish out of the rivers and streams. All the local frogs started wearing earmuffs so they wouldn't go deaf when Paul screamed for his breakfast. His parents had to milk two dozen cows morning and night to keep his milk bottle full and his mother had to feed him ten barrels of porrige every two hours to keep his stomach from rumbling and knocking the house down.
Within a week of his birth, Paul Bunyan could fit into his father's clothes. After three weeks, Paul rolled around so much during his nap that he destroyed four square miles of prime timberland. His parents were at their wits' end! They decided to build him a raft and floated it off the coast of Maine. When Paul turned over, it caused a 75 foot tidal wave in the Bay of Fundy. They had to send the British Navy over to Maine to wake him up. The sailors fired every canon they had in the fleet for seven hours straight before Paul Bunyan woke from his nap! When he stepped off the raft, Paul accidentally sank four war ships and he had to scramble around sccooping sailors out of the water before they drowned.
After this incident, Paul's parents decided the East was just too plumb small for him, and so the family moved to Minnesota. Read More......