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<img src="https://brian.carnell.com/wiki/_media/etext:w:wb-laughead-marvelous-exploits-paul-bunyan-i001.jpg" width="400" height="610" alt="Paul Bunyan And His Big Blue Ox" title="Paul Bunyan And His Big Blue Ox" />
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<hr style="width: 95%;" />

<p class="center"><i>The Marvelous Exploits of</i></p>

<h1><span class="smcap">Paul Bunyan</span></h1>

<p class="center">AS TOLD IN THE CAMPS<br />
OF THE WHITE PINE LUMBERMEN FOR<br />
GENERATIONS</p>

<p class="center">DURING WHICH TIME THE LOGGERS<br />
HAVE PIONEERED THE WAY THROUGH<br />
THE NORTH WOODS<br />
FROM MAINE TO CALIFORNIA</p>

<p class="center"><i>Collected from Various Sources and<br />
Embellished for Publication</i></p>

<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;">
<img src="https://brian.carnell.com/wiki/_media/etext:w:wb-laughead-marvelous-exploits-paul-bunyan-i002.jpg" width="400" height="498" alt="" title="" />
</div>

<p class="center">Text and Illustrations<br />
By<br />
W. B. Laughead</p>

<p class="center"><i>Published for the Amusement<br />
of our Friends by</i></p>

<h1>The RED RIVER LUMBER COMPANY</h1>
<p class="center">MINNEAPOLIS, WESTWOOD, CAL., CHICAGO,<br />
LOS ANGELES -:- SAN FRANCISCO</p>

<p class="center"><i>NINETEEN TWENTY-TWO</i>
</p>

<hr style="width: 95%;" />

<p class="cap">PAUL Bunyan is the hero of lumbercamp whoppers that have been
handed down for generations. These stories, never heard outside
the haunts of the lumberjack until recent years, are now being
collected by learned educators and literary authorities who declare
that Paul Bunyan is "the only American myth."</p>

<p>The best authorities never recounted Paul Bunyan's exploits in
narrative form. They made their statements more impressive by
dropping them casually, in an off hand way, as if in reference to
actual events of common knowledge. To over awe the greenhorn
in the bunkshanty, or the paper-collar stiffs and home guards in
the saloons, a group of lumberjacks would remember meeting each
other in the camps of Paul Bunyan. With painful accuracy they
established the exact time and place, "on the Big Onion the winter
of the blue snow" or "at Shot Gunderson's camp on the Tadpole the
year of the sourdough drive." They elaborated on the old themes
and new stories were born in lying contests where the heights of extemporaneous
invention were reached.</p>

<p>In these conversations the lumberjack often took on the mannerisms
of the French Canadian. This was apparently done without
special intent and no reason for it can be given except for a similarity
in the mock seriousness of their statements and the anti-climax
of the bulls that were made, with the braggadocio of the <i>habitant</i>.
Some investigators trace the origin of Paul Bunyan to Eastern Canada.
Who can say?</p>

<div class="figcenter" style="width: 556px;">
<img src="https://brian.carnell.com/wiki/_media/etext:w:wb-laughead-marvelous-exploits-paul-bunyan-i003.jpg" width="556" height="400" alt="Logging Road near Westwood, California. White Pine and
Old Fashioned Winters made Paul Bunyan feel at home." title="" />
<span class="caption">Logging Road near Westwood, California. White Pine and
Old Fashioned Winters made Paul Bunyan feel at home.</span>
</div>

<hr style="width: 95%;" />

<p class="cap">PAUL Bunyan came to Westwood, California in 1913 at the suggestion
of some of the most prominent loggers and lumbermen
in the country. When the Red River Lumber Company announced
their plans for opening up their forests of Sugar Pine and California
White Pine, friendly advisors shook their heads and said,</p>

<p>"Better send for Paul Bunyan."</p>

<p>Apparently here was the job for a Superman,&mdash;quality-and-quantity-production
on a big scale and great engineering difficulties
to be overcome. Why not Paul Bunyan? This is a White Pine job
and here in the High Sierras the winter snows lie deep, just like the
country where Paul grew up. Here are trees that dwarf the
largest "cork pine" of the Lake States and many new stunts were
planned for logging, milling and manufacturing a product of supreme
quality&mdash;just the job for Paul Bunyan.</p>

<p>The Red River people had been cutting White Pine in Minnesota
for two generations; the crews that came west with them were
old heads and every one knew Paul Bunyan of old. Paul had followed
the White Pine from the Atlantic seaboard
west to the jumping-off place in Minnesota,
why not go the rest of the way?</p>

<div class="figcenter" style="width: 200px;">
<img src="https://brian.carnell.com/wiki/_media/etext:w:wb-laughead-marvelous-exploits-paul-bunyan-i004.jpg" width="200" height="245" alt="TRADE MARK REGISTERED" title="" />
</div>

<p>Paul Bunyan's picture had never been
published until he joined Red River and this
likeness, first issued in 1914, is now the Red
River trademark. It stands for the quality
and service you have the right to expect from
Paul Bunyan.</p>

<hr style="width: 45%;" />

<p class="cap">When and where did this mythical hero get his start? Paul
Bunyan is known by his mighty works; his antecedents and
personal history are lost in doubt. You can prove that Paul logged
off North Dakota and grubbed the stumps, not only by the fact that
there are no traces of pine forests in that State, but by the testimony
of oldtimers who saw it done. On the other hand, Paul's parentage
and birth date are unknown. Like Topsy, he jes' growed.</p>

<p>Nobody cared to know his origin until the professors got
after him. As long as he stayed around the camps his previous history
was treated with the customary consideration and he was asked
no questions, but when he broke into college it was all off. Then he
had to have ancestors, a birthday and all sorts of vital statistics.
For now Paul is recognized as a regular Myth and students of folk-lore
are making scientific research of the Paul Bunyan Legend.</p>

<p>R. R. Fenska, Professor of Forest Engineering, New York State
College of Forestry, Syracuse University, an authority on Paul
Bunyan, writes: "He is not only an all-American myth but as far as
can be determined, the only myth or legend in this country. It is
all-American because Paul's exploits are all accomplished on this
continent and there is no counterpart in the Old World. The origin
of Paul is as much a myth as the legend itself. There are some who
feel that he was known in the Northeastern forest back in the early
19th century but the best available evidence points to the pineries
of the Lake States as the "Mother" of Paul Bunyan. It is certain
that he developed to the zenith of his powers in that region during
the '80s and '90s."</p>

<p>Professor Fenska points out that Paul was a "Northerner" for
when the virgin forests of the Lake States began to wane and the
lumberjack shifted to the Southern Yellow Pine region, little was
heard of him for nearly a decade. Noting his reappearance on the
Pacific Coast, this authority discounts the rumors that Paul has gone
to Alaska and expresses the opinion that his greatest exploits will take
place in the vast forests of the west.</p>

<p>Esther Shepherd, Department of English, Reed College, Portland,
Oregon has traced the Paul Bunyan legend back to Maine but
finds evidence of beginnings that antedate the Maine epoch and is
still carrying on her painstaking search for the ultimate source.
Writing in the <i>Pacific Review</i>, Mrs. Shepherd relates this one about
Paul's babyhood.</p>

<p>"Paul Bunyan was born in Maine. When three weeks old he
rolled around so much in his sleep that he destroyed four square
miles of standing timber. Then they built a floating cradle for him
and anchored it off Eastport. When Paul rocked in his cradle it
caused a seventy-five foot tide in the Bay of Fundy and several villages
were washed away. He couldn't be wakened, however, until
the British Navy was called out and fired broadsides for seven hours.
When Paul stepped out of his cradle he sank seven warships and the
British government seized his cradle and used the timber to build
seven more. That saved Nova Scotia from becoming an island, but
the tides in the Bay of Fundy haven't subsided yet."</p>

<p>"Seeing that this North American Continent has only one myth
that is entirely it's own" J. M. Leever of the Pacific Lumber Company
writes in a San Francisco paper, "It is a pity that it should
have been in danger of being forgotten."
After paying tribute to the work
of Prof. Fenska and the University of
Oregon Mr. Leever continues, "Where
the tradition of this Davy Crockett of
the axe, this superman of the camps
originated, nobody can tell exactly. But
it is probable that the stories of his
courage and impossible feats started
on the St. Lawrence among the French
Canadians and filtered into the woods
of the Adirondacks, Michigan and Wisconsin.
Although at times very human,
Paul Bunyan in his bigger moments
far surpassed any of the figures of
classical Scandinavian or Celtic legend. For the sake of the young
of the land his memory ought to be kept forever fresh."</p>

<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;">
<img src="https://brian.carnell.com/wiki/_media/etext:w:wb-laughead-marvelous-exploits-paul-bunyan-i005.jpg" width="400" height="540" alt="
" title="" />
</div>

<p>Lee J. Smits conducted a "Paul Bunyan" column in <i>The Seattle
Star</i> and published many entertaining contributions from oldtimers.
These were turned over to the University of Washington for preservation.</p>

<p>"Standing alone in his might and inventiveness is Paul Bunyan,
central figure in America's meager folklore" Mr. Smits says editorially,
"Only among the pioneers could Paul thrive, his deeds are inspired
by such imagination as grows only in the great outdoors. For
hours at a time, lumberjacks will pile up the achievements of their
hero. Each story is a challenge calling for a yarn still more heroic.
The story teller who succeeds in eliciting a snicker is an artist, indeed,
as the Paul Bunyan legends must always be related and received
with perfect seriousness. Paul Bunyan has become a part of the
every day life of the loggers. He serves a valuable purpose in
giving every hardship and tough problem its whimsical turn."</p>

<p>Mr. Harry L. Neall, of Harry L. Neall &amp; Son, Mining Engineers
of Eureka, Cal., a student of the history of the lumber industry, has
written that beneath the phrase "invented lumbering" used in connection
with Paul Bunyan, there exists a basis of fact. Tracing the
beginnings of the industry from the cutting of "The King's Spars" in
what is now the State of Maine, before the Mayflower came to
Plymouth Rock, Mr. Neall states that "modern lumbering, as a separate
industry was really invented in New York in 1790 and that most
of the oldtime lumbermen trace their ancestry to forefathers who were
a part of this beginning of lumbering." The Red River people
were interested to learn from Mr. Neall that a Walker built a
mill in Maine in 1680; another Walker sold a two-thirds interest
in this mill in 1716 and three Walkers were saw mill
owners in New Hampshire in 1785. Following the Pine Cutters
across New York and Pennsylvania, Mr. Neall found that the land records
enable one to pick them out by their names "as distinguished
from the Palatinate settlers who came solely for the farm lands upon
which the hardwoods grew." That the Paul Bunyan stories go back to
the beginnings of the industry is the belief of Mr. Neall who heard
them in his grandfather's logging camps in Pennsylvania and quotes
this ancestor as connecting Paul with the early traditions.</p>

<p>DeWitt L. Hardy, "column conductor" on the Portland <i>Oregonian</i>,
ran a Paul Bunyan series for several months and received many
more contributions than it was possible to print, though they were
featured almost daily, writes Mr. Hardy:</p>

<p>"Paul Bunyan is, as your folklore sharks doubtless will inform
you, about the only true fable of this character we have in this
country. I do not attempt to dip into any of the real sub-surface
studies of its development, my experience with Paul having been
severely practical. I first heard of him in a soddy in North Dakota,
where I was told of his great logging operations when he stripped that
country and removed the stumps. In the mass of correspondence
I received while handling the Paul Bunyan yarns here, answers came
from all corners of the globe and from all classes of people."</p>

<p>Ida V. Turney, Department of Rhetoric, University of Oregon,
and President of the Oregon Council of English, has written a chapbook
of Paul Bunyan stories,&mdash;"gang-lore" Miss Turney classifies
them, citing technical reasons why they cannot be called "myth"
"legend" or "folk-lore."</p>

<p>"It is distinctly American" she writes, "No other country could
possibly produce a literary type just like it; for it is, at least so I
think, a symbolic expression of the forces of physical labor at work
in the development of a great country. The symbolism is, of course,
unconscious, but none the less accurate."</p>

<p>Miss Turney, the daughter of a lumberman, has known these
stories from childhood. "All Paul Bunyan stories start in a gang"
she says, "others are imitations ... Perhaps Paul Bunyan is the
great American epic; but if so it is <i>in the making</i>. In that case it
seems to me that any gang has a perfect right to create new stories.
... Paul has become astonishingly versatile in the West. He has
tried his hand at almost everything, just as the former laborers in the
camps of Michigan and Wisconsin branched into whatever big wild
untamed hard work they came across."</p>

<hr style="width: 95%;" />

<p class="cap">BABE, the big blue ox, constituted
Paul Bunyan's assets and
liabilities. History disagrees as to
when, where and how Paul first
acquired this bovine locomotive but
his subsequent record is reliably
established. Babe could pull anything
that had two ends to it.</p>

<div class="figcenter" style="width: 410px;">
<img src="https://brian.carnell.com/wiki/_media/etext:w:wb-laughead-marvelous-exploits-paul-bunyan-i006.jpg" width="410" height="400" alt="" title="" />
</div>

<p>Babe was seven axehandles
wide between the eyes according to
some authorities; others equally
dependable say forty-two axehandles
and a plug of tobacco. Like other historical contradictions this
comes from using different standards. Seven of Paul's axehandles
were equal to a little more than forty-two of the ordinary kind.</p>

<p>When cost sheets were figured on Babe, Johnny Inkslinger
found that upkeep and overhead were expensive but the charges for
operation and depreciation were low and the efficiency was very
high. How else could Paul have hauled logs to the landing a whole
section (640 acres) at a time? He also used Babe to pull the kinks
out of the crooked logging roads and it was on a job of this kind that
Babe pulled a chain of three-inch links out into a straight bar.</p>

<p>They could never keep Babe more than one night at a camp for
he would eat in one day all the feed one crew could tote to camp in a
year. For a snack between meals he would eat fifty bales of hay,
wire and all and six men with picaroons were kept busy picking the
wire out of his teeth. Babe was a great pet and very docile as a general
thing but he seemed to have a sense of humor and frequently got into
mischief. He would sneak up behind a drive and drink all the water
out of the river, leaving the logs high and dry. It was impossible to
build an ox-sling big enough to hoist Babe off the ground for shoeing,
but after they logged off Dakota there was room for Babe to lie down
for this operation.</p>

<p>Once in a while Babe would run away and be gone all day
roaming all over the Northwestern country. His tracks were
so far apart that it was impossible to follow him and so deep
that a man falling into one could only be hauled out with
difficulty and a long rope. Once a settler and his wife and baby
fell into one of these tracks and the son got out when he was fifty-seven
years old and reported the accident. These tracks, today form
the thousands of lakes in the "Land of the Sky-Blue Water."</p>

<hr style="width: 95%;" />

<p class="cap">BECAUSE he was so much younger than Babe and was brought
to camp when a small calf, Benny was always called the Little
Blue Ox although he was quite a chunk of an animal. Benny could
not, or rather, would not haul as much as Babe nor was he as
tractable but he could eat more.</p>

<p>Paul got Benny for nothing from a farmer near Bangor, Maine.
There was not enough milk for the little fellow so he had to be weaned
when three days old. The farmer only
had forty acres of hay and by the time
Benny was a week old he had to dispose
of him for lack of food. The calf was
undernourished and only weighed two
tons when Paul got him. Paul drove
from Bangor out to his headquarters
camp near Devil's Lake, North Dakota
that night and led Benny behind the
sleigh. Western air agreed with the little
calf and every time Paul looked back at
him he was two feet taller.</p>

<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;">
<img src="https://brian.carnell.com/wiki/_media/etext:w:wb-laughead-marvelous-exploits-paul-bunyan-i007a.jpg" width="400" height="552" alt="
" title="" />
</div>

<p>When they arrived at camp Benny
was given a good feed of buffalo milk
and flapjacks and put into a barn by
himself. Next morning the barn was gone. Later it was discovered
on Benny's back as he scampered over the clearings. He had outgrown
his barn in one night.</p>

<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;">
<img src="https://brian.carnell.com/wiki/_media/etext:w:wb-laughead-marvelous-exploits-paul-bunyan-i007b.jpg" width="400" height="604" alt="" title="" />
</div>

<p>Benny was very notional and
would never pull a load unless there
was snow on the ground so after the
spring thaws they had to white wash
the logging roads to fool him.</p>

<p>Gluttony killed Benny. He had
a mania for pancakes and one cook
crew of two hundred men was kept
busy making cakes for him. One
night he pawed and bellowed and
threshed his tail about till the wind
of it blew down what pine Paul had
left standing in Dakota. At breakfast
time he broke loose, tore down
the cook shanty and began bolting
pancakes. In his greed he swallowed
the red-hot stove. Indigestion set
in and nothing could save him. What disposition was made of his
body is a matter of dispute. One oldtimer claims that the outfit he
works for bought a hind quarter of the carcass in 1857 and made
corned beef of it. He thinks they have several carloads of it left.</p>

<p>Another authority states that the body of Benny was dragged to
a safe distance from the North Dakota camp and buried. When
the earth was shoveled back it made a mound that formed the Black
Hills in South Dakota.</p>

<hr style="width: 45%;" />

<p class="cap">THE custodian and chaperon
of Babe the Big Blue
Ox was Brimstone Bill. He
knew all the tricks of that
frisky giant before they happened.</p>

<div class="figcenter" style="width: 436px;">
<img src="https://brian.carnell.com/wiki/_media/etext:w:wb-laughead-marvelous-exploits-paul-bunyan-i008.jpg" width="436" height="400" alt="" title="" />
</div>

<p>"I know oxen" the old
bullwhacker used to say, "I've
worked 'em and fed 'em and
doctored 'em ever since the ox
was invented. And Babe, I
know that pernicious old reptyle
same as if I'd abeen through him with a lantern."</p>

<p>Bill compiled "The Skinner's Dictionary", a hand book for
teamsters, and most of the terms used in directing draft animals
(except mules) originated with him. His early religious training
accounts for the fact that the technical language of the teamster
contains so many names of places and people spoken of in the Bible.</p>

<p>The buckskin harness used on Babe and Benny when the weather
was rainy was made by Brimstone Bill. When this harness got wet
it would stretch so much that the oxen could travel clear to the landing
and the load would not move from the skidway in the woods.
Brimstone would fasten the harness with an anchor Big Ole made for
him and when the sun came out and the harness shrunk the load
would be pulled to the landing while Bill and the oxen were busy at
some other job.</p>

<p>The winter of the Blue Snow, the Pacific Ocean froze over and
Bill kept the oxen busy hauling regular white snow over from China.
M. H. Keenan can testify to the truth of this as he worked for Paul
on the Big Onion that winter. It must have been about this time that
Bill made the first ox yokes out of cranberry wood.</p>

<hr style="width: 95%;" />

<div class="figcenter" style="width: 540px;">
<img src="https://brian.carnell.com/wiki/_media/etext:w:wb-laughead-marvelous-exploits-paul-bunyan-i009.jpg" width="540" height="400" alt="" title="" />
</div>


<p class="cap">FEEDING Paul Bunyan's crews was a complicated job. At no two
camps were conditions the same. The winter he logged off North
Dakota he had 300 cooks making pancakes for the Seven Axemen
and the little Chore-boy. At headquarters on the Big Onion he had
one cook and 462 cookees feeding a crew so big that Paul himself
never knew within several hundred either way, how many men he had.</p>

<p>At Big Onion camp there was a lot of mechanical equipment and
the trouble was a man who could handle the machinery cooked
just like a machinist too. One cook got lost between the flour bin and
the root cellar and nearly starved to death before he was found.</p>

<p>Cooks came and went. Some were good and others just able to
get by. Paul never kept a poor one, very long. There was one jigger
who seemed to have learned to do nothing but boil. He made soup
out of everything and did most of his work with a dipper. When the
big tote-sled broke through the ice on Bull Frog Lake with a load of
split peas, he served warmed up lake water till the crew struck. His
idea of a lunch box was a jug or a rope to freeze soup onto like a
candle. Some cooks used too much grease. It was said of one of these
that he had to wear calked shoes to keep from sliding out of the cook-shanty
and rub sand on his hands when he picked anything up.</p>

<p>There are two kinds of camp cooks, the Baking Powder Bums and
the Sourdough Stiffs. Sourdough Sam belonged to the latter school.
He made everything but coffee out of Sourdough. He had only one
arm and one leg, the other members having been lost when his sourdough
barrel blew up. Sam officiated at Tadpole River headquarters,
the winter Shot Gunderson took charge.</p>

<p>After all others had failed at Big Onion camp, Paul hired his
cousin Big Joe who came from three weeks below Quebec. This
boy sure put a mean scald on the chuck. He was the only man who
could make pancakes fast enough to feed the crew. He had Big Ole,
the blacksmith make him a griddle that was so big you couldn't see
across it when the steam was thick. The batter, stirred in drums like
concrete mixers, was poured on with cranes and spouts. The griddle
was greased by colored boys who skated over the surface with hams
tied to their feet. They had to have colored boys to stand the heat.</p>

<p>At this camp the flunkeys wore roller skates and an idea of the
size of the tables is gained from the fact that they distributed the
pepper with four-horse teams.</p>

<p>Sending out lunch and timing the meals was rendered difficult
by the size of the works which required three crews&mdash;one going to
work, one on the job and one coming back. Joe had to start the bull-cook
out with the lunch sled two weeks ahead of dinner time. To call
the men who came in at noon was another problem. Big Ole made a
dinner horn so big that no one could blow it but Big Joe or Paul himself.
The first time Joe blew it he blew down ten acres of pine. The
Red River people wouldn't stand for that so the next time he blew
straight up but this caused severe cyclones and storms at sea so Paul
had to junk the horn and ship it
East where later it was made into
a tin roof for a big Union Depot.</p>

<div class="figcenter" style="width: 261px;">
<img src="https://brian.carnell.com/wiki/_media/etext:w:wb-laughead-marvelous-exploits-paul-bunyan-i010.jpg" width="261" height="300" alt="" title="" />
<span class="caption"><i>MT. LASSEN, CALIFORNIA<br />
The only active Volcano in America.<br />Where Big Joe cooks the beans.</i>
</span>
</div>

<p>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.</p>

<div class="figcenter" style="width: 552px;">
<img src="https://brian.carnell.com/wiki/_media/etext:w:wb-laughead-marvelous-exploits-paul-bunyan-i011.jpg" width="552" height="400" alt="" title="" />
</div>

<p>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."</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>"That's a heck of a place to land logs" he remarked.</p>

<p>"Them aint logs" grinned a bull-cook "them's sausages for the
teamsters' breakfast."</p>

<p>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:</p>

<p>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 <i>somewhere</i>, 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.</p>

<div class="figcenter" style="width: 267px;">
<img src="https://brian.carnell.com/wiki/_media/etext:w:wb-laughead-marvelous-exploits-paul-bunyan-i012.jpg" width="267" height="700" alt="" title="" />
</div>

<p>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.</p>

<p>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&mdash;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.</p>

<p>Like other artists, cooks are temperamental and some of them
are full of cussedness but the only ones who could sass Paul Bunyan
and get away with it were the stars like Big Joe and Sourdough Sam.</p>

<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;">
<img src="https://brian.carnell.com/wiki/_media/etext:w:wb-laughead-marvelous-exploits-paul-bunyan-i012a.jpg" width="400" height="448" alt="" title="" />
</div>

<p>The lunch sled,&mdash;most popular institution
in the lumber industry! It's arrival
at the noon rendezvous has been hailed with
joy by hungry men on every logging job
since Paul invented it. What if the warm
food freezes on your tin plate, the keen cold
air has sharpened your appetite to enjoy it.
The crew that toted lunch for Paul Bunyan
had so far to travel and so many to feed
they hauled a complete kitchen on the lunch
sled, cooks and all.</p>

<hr style="width: 95%;" />

<p class="cap">OVER thirty years ago The Red River
Lumber Company, foreseeing the end
of their White Pine which was reached in
1915, set out to find the pine that would
supply a trade that demands the qualities
found in White Pine. All the forests of
North America were examined and exhaustively
studied and the selection was Sugar
Pine and California White Pine,&mdash;"the
largest pines that ever grew" and production
started at Westwood in 1914.</p>

<div class="figcenter" style="width: 250px;">
<img src="https://brian.carnell.com/wiki/_media/etext:w:wb-laughead-marvelous-exploits-paul-bunyan-i013.jpg" width="250" height="700" alt="" title="" />
</div>

<p>SUGAR PINE,&mdash;"cork pine's big
brother," is botanically a White Pine with
all the family virtues that have made White
Pine the standard from the days of the Pilgrim
Fathers to the period of "cork" White
Pine in the Lake States. It is light, soft,
even-textured, easy-to-work, durable and
will not warp or check.</p>

<p>CALIFORNIA WHITE PINE ranks
second only to Sugar Pine in size and is
close to it in White Pine qualities. Botanically
a Yellow Pine, its texture has been so
changed by climate and altitude that it in
no way resembles the Yellow Pines and is
so much like White Pine that its trade name
is necessary to prevent confusion on the
part of the consumer.</p>

<p>WHITE FIR is light, straight grained
and easily worked. A smaller percentage of upper grades than the
big pines, but with knots so small that the commons offer exceptional
values and advantages. It is used for concrete forms, sheathing,
studding and for dairy containers and packages that must be odorless
and tasteless. It also makes a handsome interior finish.</p>

<p>INCENSE CEDAR is used chiefly for pencils and chests&mdash;a
soft, straight-grained red cedar.</p>

<p>The Red River people strive for a quality of manufacture
worthy of such magnificent trees. The Westwood plant, electrically
operated throughout, is a new departure in its field, with a capacity
of 200 million feet a year. Planned by our own engineers, much
of the machinery and equipment is of our own design and new standards
of efficiency, economy and precision of cutting have been set.
Modern dry-kilns handle a
large part of the output and
yield perfectly seasoned
lumber, free from drying defects,
in a few days instead
of the months required for
air drying.</p>

<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;">
<img src="https://brian.carnell.com/wiki/_media/etext:w:wb-laughead-marvelous-exploits-paul-bunyan-i014.jpg" width="400" height="430" alt="" title="" />
<span class="caption">One of the Westwood Crane Crews Piling
Lumber for Air-drying. One board at a Time
is Too Slow. The Record for One Crane&mdash;10
Hours is 678,900 Feet, Board Measure.</span>
</div>

<p>The plant operates the
year 'round, logging, sawing,
manufacturing and shipping.
Handicaps of a severe
winter climate are overcome
and frozen logs are thawed
in a steam-heated pond.
Continuous operation gives
steady employment to skilled
and experienced men and
a rapid replacement of
stocks that makes Westwood
a dependable source of supply for the trade.</p>

<p>The large Red River factories at Westwood are equipped to
supply every known need of the trade and made-to-order specialties
are quickly turned out. The most modern machinery is used for cutting,
finishing, glueing and other operations.</p>

<p>Our moldings, sash and doors and similar products are superior
in their clean-cut workmanship as well as the texture of the wood.
Box shooks, sash and door cuttings, boards for winding fine textiles
or making organ pipes, piano keys and key-beds, curtain poles
and shade rollers are some of our products. Cutting out the knots
and waste at the source of supply affords economies that are profitable
to all wood consuming industries.</p>

<div class="figcenter" style="width: 700px;">
<img src="https://brian.carnell.com/wiki/_media/etext:w:wb-laughead-marvelous-exploits-paul-bunyan-i014b.jpg" width="700" height="236" alt="" title="" />
<span class="caption"><i>One of the Edgers, Westwood Mill, California.</i></span>
</div>

<hr style="width: 95%;" />

<p class="cap">WHEN Paul invented logging
he had to invent all the tools
and figure out all his own methods.
There were no precedents. At the
start his outfit consisted of Babe
and his big axe.</p>

<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;">
<img src="https://brian.carnell.com/wiki/_media/etext:w:wb-laughead-marvelous-exploits-paul-bunyan-i015.jpg" width="400" height="676" alt="" title="" />
</div>

<p>No two logging jobs can be
handled exactly the same way so
Paul adapted his operations to
local conditions. In the mountains
he used Babe to pull the kinks out
of the crooked logging roads; on
the Big Onion he began the system
of hauling a section of land at a
time to the landings and in North
Dakota he used the Seven Axemen.</p>

<p>At that time marking logs was
not thought of, Paul had no need
for identification when there were
no logs but his own. About the
time he started the Atlantic Ocean
drive others had come into the industry
and although their combined cut was insignificant compared
to Paul's, there was danger of confusion, and Paul had most to lose.</p>

<p>At first Paul marked his logs by pinching a piece out of each
log. When his cut grew so large that the marking had to be detailed
to the crews, the "scalp" on each log was put on with an axe, for
even in those days not every man could nip out the chunk with his
fingers.</p>

<p>The Grindstone was invented by Paul the winter he logged off
North Dakota. Before that Paul's axemen had to sharpen their axes
by rolling rocks down hill and running along side of them. When
they got to "Big Dick," as the lumberjacks called Dakota, hills and
rocks were so hard to find that Paul rigged up the revolving rock.</p>

<p>This was much appreciated by the Seven Axemen as it enabled
them to grind an axe in a week, but the grindstone was not much of a hit
with the Little Chore Boy whose job it was to turn it. The first stone
was so big that working at full speed, every time it turned around
once it was payday.</p>

<p>The Little Chore Boy led a strenuous life. He was only a kid
and like all youngsters putting in their first winter in the woods, he
was put over the jumps by the oldtimers.
His regular work was heavy
enough, splitting all the wood for
the camp, carrying water and packing
lunch to the men, but his hazers
sent him on all kinds of wild goose
errands to all parts of the works,
looking for a "left-handed peavy"
or a "bundle of cross-hauls."</p>

<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;">
<img src="https://brian.carnell.com/wiki/_media/etext:w:wb-laughead-marvelous-exploits-paul-bunyan-i016.jpg" width="400" height="540" alt="" title="" />
</div>

<p>He had to take a lot of good
natured roughneck wit about his
size for he only weighed 800
pounds and a couple of surcingles
made a belt for him. What he
lacked in size he made up in grit
and the men secretly respected his gameness. They said he might
make a pretty good man if he ever got any growth, and considered
it a necessary education to give him a lot of extra chores.</p>

<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;">
<img src="https://brian.carnell.com/wiki/_media/etext:w:wb-laughead-marvelous-exploits-paul-bunyan-i016_2.jpg" width="400" height="582" alt="" title="" />
</div>

<p>Often in the evening, after his day's work and long hours put
in turning the grindstone and keeping up fires in the camp stoves&mdash;that
required four cords of wood apiece to kindle a fire, he could be
found with one of Big Ole's small 600-pound anvils in his lap pegging
up shoes with railroad spikes.</p>

<p>It was a long time before they
solved the problem of turning logging
sleds around in the road.
When a sled returned from the
landing and put on a load they had
to wait until Paul came along to
pick up the four horses and the
load and head them the other way.
Judson M. Goss says he worked for
Paul the winter he invented the
round turn.</p>

<p>All of Paul's inventions were
successful except when he decided
to run three ten-hour shifts a day
and installed the Aurora Borealis.
After a number of trials the plan
was abandoned because the lights
were not dependable.</p>

<hr style="width: 95%;" />

<p class="cap">"THE Seven Axemen of the Red River" they were called because
they had a camp on Red River with the three-hundred cooks and
the Little Chore Boy. The whole State was cut over from the one
camp and the husky seven chopped from dark to dark and walked
to and from work.</p>

<div class="figcenter" style="width: 700px;">
<img src="https://brian.carnell.com/wiki/_media/etext:w:wb-laughead-marvelous-exploits-paul-bunyan-i017.jpg" width="700" height="291" alt="" title="" />
</div>

<p>Their axes were so big it took a week to grind one of them.
Each man had three axes and two helpers to carry the spare axes
to the river when they got red hot from chopping. Even in those
days they had to watch out for forest fires. The axes were hung on
long rope handles. Each axeman would march through the timber
whirling his axe around him till the hum of it sounded like one of
Paul's fore-and-aft-mosquitoes, and at every step a quarter-section
of timber was cut.</p>

<p>The height, weight and chest measurement of the Seven Axemen
are not known. Authorities differ. History agrees that they kept
a cord of four-foot wood on the table for toothpicks. After supper
they would sit on the deacon seat in the bunk shanty and sing "Shanty
Boy" and "Bung Yer Eye" till the folks in the settlements down on
the Atlantic would think another nor'wester was blowing up.</p>

<div class="figcenter" style="width: 700px;">
<img src="https://brian.carnell.com/wiki/_media/etext:w:wb-laughead-marvelous-exploits-paul-bunyan-i017_2.jpg" width="700" height="340" alt="" title="" />
</div>

<p>Some say the Seven Axemen were Bay Chaleur men; others
declare they were all cousins and came from down Machias way.
Where they came from or where they went to blow their stake after
leaving Paul's camp no one knows but they are remembered as husky
lads and good fellows around camp.</p>

<div class="figcenter" style="width: 700px;">
<img src="https://brian.carnell.com/wiki/_media/etext:w:wb-laughead-marvelous-exploits-paul-bunyan-i018.jpg" width="700" height="328" alt="" title="" />
</div>

<p>After the Seven Axemen had gone down the tote road, never to
return, Paul Bunyan was at a loss to find a method of cutting down
trees that would give him anything like the output he had been getting.
Many trials and experiments followed and then Paul invented
the two-man saw.</p>

<p>The first saw was made from a strip trimmed off in making
Big Joe's dinner horn and was long enough to reach across a quarter
section, for Paul could never think in smaller units. This saw
worked all right in a level country, in spite of the fact that all the
trees fell back on the saw, but in rough country only the trees on the
hill tops were cut. Trees in the valleys were cut off in the tops and
in the pot holes the saw passed over the trees altogether.</p>

<p>It took a good man to pull this saw in heavy timber when Paul
was working on the other end. Paul used to say to his fellow sawyer,
"I don't care if you ride the saw, but please don't drag your feet."
A couple of cousins of Big Ole's were given the job and did so well
that ever afterward in the Lake States the saw crews have generally
been Scandinavians.</p>

<p>It was after this that Paul had Big Ole make the "Down-Cutter."
This was a rig like a mowing machine. They drove around eight
townships and cut a swath 500 feet wide.</p>

<div class="figcenter" style="width: 700px;">
<img src="https://brian.carnell.com/wiki/_media/etext:w:wb-laughead-marvelous-exploits-paul-bunyan-i018_2.jpg" width="700" height="340" alt="" title="" />
</div>

<hr style="width: 95%;" />

<p class="cap">THE Winter of the Deep Snow
everything was buried. Paul
had to dig down to find the tops
of the tallest White Pines. He had
the snow dug away around them
and lowered his sawyers down to
the base of the trees. When the
tree was cut off he hauled it to the
surface with a long parbuckle
chain to which Babe, mounted on
snowshoes, was hitched. It was
impossible to get enough stove
pipe to reach to the top of the
snow, so Paul had Big Ole make
stovepipe by boring out logs with
a long six-inch auger.</p>

<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;">
<img src="https://brian.carnell.com/wiki/_media/etext:w:wb-laughead-marvelous-exploits-paul-bunyan-i019.jpg" width="400" height="507" alt="" title="" />
</div>

<p>The year of the Two Winters
they had winter all summer and then in the fall it turned colder.
One day Big Joe set the boiling coffeepot on the stove and it froze
so quick that the ice was hot. That was right after Paul had built
the Great Lakes and that winter they froze clear to the bottom. They
never would have thawed out if Paul had not chopped out the ice and
hauled it out on shore for the sun to melt. He finally got all the
ice thawed but he had to put in all new fish.</p>

<p>The next spring was the year the rain came up from China.
It rained so hard and so long that the grass was all washed out
by the roots and Paul had a great time feeding his cattle. Babe
had to learn to eat pancakes
like Benny. That was the
time Paul used the straw hats
for an emergency ration.</p>

<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;">
<img src="https://brian.carnell.com/wiki/_media/etext:w:wb-laughead-marvelous-exploits-paul-bunyan-i019_2.jpg" width="400" height="378" alt="" title="" />
</div>

<p>When Paul's drive came
down, folks in the settlements
were astonished to see all the
river-pigs wearing huge straw
hats. The reason for this was
soon apparent. When the fodder
ran out every man was
politely requested to toss his
hat into the ring. Hundreds
of straw hats were used to
make a lunch for Babe.</p>

<hr style="width: 95%;" />

<div class="figcenter" style="width: 615px;">
<img src="https://brian.carnell.com/wiki/_media/etext:w:wb-laughead-marvelous-exploits-paul-bunyan-i020.jpg" width="615" height="400" alt="" title="" />
</div>

<p class="cap">TALK about a job for Paul Bunyan! In 1913 the site of Westwood
was primeval forest, sixty mountainous miles from the nearest
railroad. Tractors, trucks and hundreds of horses freighted in
materials before the railroad was extended and when the future
residents arrived the town was complete to the last detail.</p>

<p>Not a shack in the town. Modern houses, sanitary sewers,
waterworks, electricity, grade and high schools, hospital, church,
clubs, up-to-date department store, cafeteria, dairy, packing house,
and cold storage, theatre, soda fountains, garage and ball park&mdash;the
5,400 citizens of Westwood enjoy comfortable homes, good schools,
year 'round employment at good wages, low living costs, and form
one of the most-up-and-coming communities in the progressive State
of California.</p>

<div class="figcenter" style="width: 700px;">
<img src="https://brian.carnell.com/wiki/_media/etext:w:wb-laughead-marvelous-exploits-paul-bunyan-i020_2.jpg" width="700" height="331" alt="" title="" />
</div>

<hr style="width: 95%;" />

<p class="cap">LUCY, Paul Bunyan's cow, was not, so far as we can learn, related
in any way to either Babe or Benny. Statements that she was
their mother are without basis in fact. The two oxen had been in
Paul's possession for a long time before Lucy arrived on the scene.</p>

<p>No reliable data can be found as to the pedigree of this remarkable
dairy animal. There are no official records of her butter-fat
production nor is it known where or how Paul got her.</p>

<p>Paul always said that Lucy was part Jersey and part wolf. Maybe
so. Her actions and methods of living seemed to justify the allegation
of wolf ancestry, for she had an insatiable appetite and a
roving disposition. Lucy ate everything in sight and could never be
fed at the same camp with Babe or Benny. In fact, they quit trying
to feed her at all but let her forage her own living. The Winter of
the Deep Snow, when even the tallest White Pines were buried,
Brimstone Bill outfitted Lucy with a set of Babe's old snowshoes and
a pair of green goggles and turned her out to graze on the snowdrifts.
At first she had some trouble with the new foot gear but once she
learned to run them and shift gears without wrecking herself, she
answered the call of the limitless snow fields and ran away all over
North America until Paul
decorated her with a bell
borrowed from a buried
church.</p>

<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;">
<img src="https://brian.carnell.com/wiki/_media/etext:w:wb-laughead-marvelous-exploits-paul-bunyan-i021.jpg" width="400" height="624" alt="" title="" />
</div>

<p>In spite of short rations
she gave enough milk to
keep six men busy skimming
the cream. If she had been
kept in a barn and fed regularly
she might have made
a milking record. When she
fed on the evergreen trees
and her milk got so strong of
White Pine and Balsam that
the men used it for cough
medicine and linament, they
quit serving the milk on the
table and made butter out
of it. By using this butter
to grease the logging roads
when the snow and ice thawed
off, Paul was able to run
his logging sleds all summer.</p>

<hr style="width: 95%;" />

<p class="cap">THE family life of Paul
Bunyan, from all accounts,
has been very happy.
A charming glimpse of Mrs.
Bunyan is given by Mr. E. S.
Shepard of Rhinelander, Wis.,
who tells of working in
Paul's camp on Round River
in '62, the Winter of the Black
Snow. Paul put him wheeling
prune pits away from the
cook camp. After he had worked
at this job for three months
Paul had him haul them all
back again as Mrs. Bunyan,
who was cooking at the camp,
wanted to use them to make
the hot fires necessary to cook
her famous soft nosed pancakes.</p>

<div class="figcenter" style="width: 324px;">
<img src="https://brian.carnell.com/wiki/_media/etext:w:wb-laughead-marvelous-exploits-paul-bunyan-i022.jpg" width="324" height="700" alt="" title="" />
</div>

<p>Mrs. Bunyan, at this time
used to call the men to dinner
by blowing into a woodpecker
hole in an old hollow stub that
stood near the door. In this
stub there was a nest of owls
that had one short wing and
flew in circles. When Mr.
Shepard made a sketch of Paul,
Mrs. Bunyan, with wifely solicitude
for his appearance, parted
Paul's hair with a handaxe and combed it with an old crosscut saw.</p>

<p>From other sources we have fragmentary glimpses of Jean,
Paul's youngest son. When Jean was three weeks old he jumped
from his cradle one night and seizing an axe, chopped the four posts
out from under his father's bed. The incident greatly tickled
Paul, who used to brag about it to any one who would listen to him.
"The boy is going to be a great logger some day," he would declare
with fatherly pride.</p>

<p>The last we heard of Jean he was working for a lumber outfit
in the South, lifting logging trains past one another on a single
track railroad.</p>

<hr style="width: 95%;" />

<p class="cap">IT is no picnic to tackle the wilderness and turn the very forest itself
into a commercial commodity delivered at the market. A
logger needs plenty of brains and back bone.</p>

<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;">
<img src="https://brian.carnell.com/wiki/_media/etext:w:wb-laughead-marvelous-exploits-paul-bunyan-i023.jpg" width="400" height="645" alt="" title="" />
</div>

<p>Paul Bunyan had his setbacks
the same as every logger only his were
worse. Being a pioneer he had to invent
all his stuff as he went along.
Many a time his plans were upset by
the mistakes of some swivel-headed
strawboss or incompetent foreman.
The winter of the blue snow, Shot Gunderson
had charge in the Big Tadpole
River country. He landed all of his
logs in a lake and in the spring when
ready to drive he boomed the logs
three times around the lake before he
discovered there was no outlet to it.
High hills surrounded the lake and the
drivable stream was ten miles away.
Apparently the logs were a total loss.</p>

<p>Then Paul came on the job himself and got busy. Calling in
Sourdough Sam, the cook who made everything but coffee out of
sourdough, he ordered him to mix
enough sourdough to fill the big
watertank. Hitching Babe to the
tank, he hauled it over and dumped
it into the lake. When it "riz", as
Sam said, a mighty lava-like stream
poured forth and carried the logs
over the hills to the river. There is
a landlocked lake in Northern Minnesota
that is called "Sourdough
Lake" to this day.</p>

<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;">
<img src="https://brian.carnell.com/wiki/_media/etext:w:wb-laughead-marvelous-exploits-paul-bunyan-i023_2.jpg" width="400" height="648" alt="" title="" />
</div>

<p>Chris Crosshaul was a careless
cuss. He took a big drive down the
Mississippi for Paul and when the
logs were delivered in the New Orleans
boom it was found that he had
driven the wrong logs. The owners
looked at the barkmarks and refused
to accept them. It was up to Paul
to drive them back upstream.</p>

<p>No one but Paul Bunyan would ever tackle a job like that. To
drive logs upstream is impossible, but if you think a little thing like
an impossibility could stop him, you don't know Paul Bunyan. He
simply fed Babe a good big salt ration and drove him to the upper
Mississippi to drink. Babe drank the river dry and sucked all the
water upstream. The logs came up river faster than they went down.</p>

<hr style="width: 95%;" />

<p class="cap">BIG Ole was the Blacksmith at
Paul's headquarters camp on
the Big Onion. Ole had a cranky disposition
but he was a skilled workman.
No job in iron or steel was
too big or too difficult for him. One
of the cooks used to make doughnuts
and have Ole punch the holes.
He made the griddle on which Big
Joe cast his pancakes, and the dinner
horn that blew down ten acres
of pine. Ole was the only man who
could shoe Babe or Benny. Every
time he made a set of shoes for
Babe they had to open up another
Minnesota iron mine. Ole once
carried a pair of these shoes a mile
and sunk knee deep into solid rock
at every step. Babe cast a shoe
while making a hard pull one day, and it was hurled for a mile and
tore down forty acres of pine and injured eight Swedes that were
swamping out skidways. Ole was also a mechanic and built the
Downcutter, a rig like a mowing machine that cut down a swath
of trees 500 feet wide.</p>

<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;">
<img src="https://brian.carnell.com/wiki/_media/etext:w:wb-laughead-marvelous-exploits-paul-bunyan-i024.jpg" width="400" height="650" alt="" title="" />
</div>

<hr style="width: 95%;" />

<p class="cap">IN the early days, whenever Paul Bunyan was broke between logging
seasons, he travelled around like other lumberjacks doing any
kind of pioneering work he could find. He showed up in Washington
about the time The Puget Construction Co. was building Puget
Sound and Billy Puget was making records moving dirt with droves
of dirt throwing badgers. Paul and Billy got into an argument over
who had shovelled the most. Paul got mad and said he'd show Billy
Puget and started to throw the dirt back again. Before Billy stopped
him he had piled up the San Juan Islands.</p>

<hr style="width: 95%;" />

<p class="cap">WHEN a man gets the
reputation in the
woods of being a "good
man" it refers only to physical
prowess. Frequently
he is challenged to fight
by "good men" from other
communities.</p>

<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;">
<img src="https://brian.carnell.com/wiki/_media/etext:w:wb-laughead-marvelous-exploits-paul-bunyan-i025.jpg" width="400" height="520" alt="" title="" />
</div>

<p>There was Pete Mufraw.
"You know Joe Mufraw?"
"Oui, two Joe Mufraw,
one named Pete."
That's the fellow. After
Pete had licked everybody
between Quebec and Bay
Chaleur he started to look
for Paul Bunyan. He
bragged all over the country
that he had worn out six
pair of shoe-pacs looking
for Paul. Finally he met up with him.</p>

<p>Paul was plowing with two yoke of steers and Pete Mufraw
stopped at the brush-fence to watch the plow cut its way right
through rocks and stumps. When they reached the end of the furrow
Paul picked up the plow and the oxen with one arm and turned
them around. Pete took one look and then wandered off down the
trail muttering, "Hox an' hall! She's lift hox an' hall."</p>

<hr style="width: 95%;" />

<p class="cap">PAUL Bunyan started travelling before the steam cars were invented.
He developed his own means of transportation and the
railroads have never been able to catch up. Time is so valuable to
Paul he has no time to fool around at sixty miles an hour.</p>

<p>In the early days he rode on the back of Babe, the Big Blue Ox.
This had it's difficulties because he had to use a telescope to keep
Babe's hind legs in view and the hooves of the ox created such havoc
that after the settlements came into different parts of the country
there were heavy damage claims to settle every trip.</p>

<p>Snowshoes were useful in winter but one trip on the webs cured
Paul of depending upon them for transcontinental hikes. He started
from Minnesota for Westwood one Spring morning. There was still
snow in the woods so Paul wore his snowshoes. He soon ran out of
the snow belt but kept right on without reducing speed. Crossing
the desert the heat became oppressive, his mackinaws grew heavy
and the snowshoes dragged his feet but it was too late to turn back.</p>

<p>When he arrived in California he discovered that the sun and hot
sand had warped one of his shoes and pulled one foot out of line at
every step, so instead of travelling on a bee line and hitting Westwood
exactly, he came out at San Francisco. This made it necessary for
him to travel an extra three hundred miles north. It was late that
night when he pulled into Westwood and he had used up a whole day
coming from Minnesota.</p>

<p>Paul's fast foot work made him a "good man on the round stuff"
and in spite of his weight he had no trouble running around on the
floating logs, even the small ones. It was said that Paul could spin
a log till the bark came off and then run ashore on the bubbles. He
once threw a peavy handle into the Mississippi at St. Louis and
standing on it, poled up to Brainerd, Minnesota. Paul was a "white
water bucko" and rode water so rough it would tear an ordinary man
in two to drink out of the river.</p>

<hr style="width: 95%;" />

<p class="cap">JOHNNY Inkslinger was Paul's headquarters clerk. He invented bookkeeping
about the time Paul invented logging. He was something of a
genius and perfected his own office appliances to increase efficiency.
His fountain pen was made
by running a hose from a
barrel of ink and with it he
could "daub out a walk"
quicker than the recipient of
the pay-off could tie the
knot in his tussick rope.</p>

<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;">
<img src="https://brian.carnell.com/wiki/_media/etext:w:wb-laughead-marvelous-exploits-paul-bunyan-i026.jpg" width="400" height="536" alt="" title="" />
</div>

<p>One winter Johnny left
off crossing the "t's" and
dotting the "i's" and saved
nine barrels of ink. The
lumberjacks accused him of
using a split pencil to charge
up the tobacco and socks
they bought at the wanagan
but this was just bunkshanty
talk (is this the origin of
the classic term "the
bunk"?) for Johnny never
cheated anyone.</p>

<hr style="width: 95%;" />

<p class="cap">HAVE you ever encountered the Mosquito of the North Country?
You thought they were pretty well developed animals with keen
appetites didn't you? Then you can appreciate what Paul Bunyan
was up against when he was surrounded by the vast swarms of the
giant ancestors of the present race of mosquitoes, getting their first
taste of human victims. The present mosquito is but a degenerate
remnant of the species. Now they rarely weigh more than a pound
or measure more than fourteen or fifteen inches from tip to tip.</p>

<p>Paul had to keep his men and oxen in the camps with doors and
windows barred. Men armed with pike-poles and axes fought off the
insects that tore the shakes off the roof in their efforts to gain entrance.
The big buck mosquitoes fought among themselves and
trampled down the weaker members of the swarm and to this alone
Paul Bunyan and his crew owe their lives.</p>

<p>Paul determined to conquer the mosquitoes before another
season arrived. He thought of the big Bumble Bees back home
and sent for several yoke of them. These, he hoped would destroy
the mosquitoes. Sourdough Sam brought out two pair of the bees,
overland on foot. There was no other way to travel for the flight
of the beasts could not be controlled. Their wings were strapped
with surcingles, they checked their stingers with Sam and walking
shoes were provided for them. Sam brought them through without
losing a bee.</p>

<p>The cure was worse than the original trouble. The Mosquitoes
and the Bees made a hit with each other. They soon intermarried
and their off-spring, as often happens, were worse than their parents.
They had stingers fore-and-aft and could get you coming or going.</p>

<div class="figcenter" style="width: 700px;">
<img src="https://brian.carnell.com/wiki/_media/etext:w:wb-laughead-marvelous-exploits-paul-bunyan-i027.jpg" width="700" height="380" alt="" title="" />
</div>

<p>Their bee blood caused their
downfall in the long run. Their
craving for sweets could only be
satisfied by sugar and molasses in
large quantities, for what is a flower
to an insect with a ten-gallon stomach?
One day the whole tribe flew
across Lake Superior to attack a
fleet of ships bringing sugar to
Paul's camps. They destroyed the
ships but ate so much sugar they
could not fly and all were drowned.</p>

<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;">
<img src="https://brian.carnell.com/wiki/_media/etext:w:wb-laughead-marvelous-exploits-paul-bunyan-i028.jpg" width="400" height="557" alt="" title="" />
</div>

<p>One pair of the original bees
were kept at headquarters camp and
provided honey for the pancakes for
many years.</p>

<hr style="width: 95%;" />

<p class="cap">IF Paul Bunyan did not invent Geography he created a lot of it.
The Great Lakes were first constructed to provide a water hole
for Babe the Big Blue Ox. Just what year this work was done is not
known but they were in use prior to the Year of the Two Winters.</p>

<p>The Winter Paul Bunyan logged off North Dakota he hauled
water for his ice roads from the Great Lakes. One day when Brimstone
Bill had Babe hitched to one of the old water tanks and was
making his early morning trip, the tank sprung a leak when they were
half way across Minnesota. Bill saved himself from drowning by
climbing Babe's tail but all efforts to patch up the tank were in vain
so the old tank was abandoned and replaced by one of the new ones.
This was the beginning of the Mississippi River and the truth of this
is established by the fact that the old Mississippi is still flowing.</p>

<p>The cooks in Paul's camps used a lot of water and to make
things handy, they used to dig wells near the cook shanty. At headquarters
on the Big Auger, on top of the hill near the mouth of the
Little Gimlet, Paul dug a well so deep that it took all day for the
bucket to fall to the water, and a week to haul it up. They had to run
so many buckets that the well was forty feet in diameter. It was
shored up with tamarac poles and when the camp was abandoned Paul
pulled up this cribbing. Travellers who have visited the spot say that
the sand has blown away until 178 feet of the well is sticking up into
the air, forming a striking landmark.</p>

<hr style="width: 95%;" />

<div class="figcenter" style="width: 533px;">
<img src="https://brian.carnell.com/wiki/_media/etext:w:wb-laughead-marvelous-exploits-paul-bunyan-i029.jpg" width="533" height="400" alt="" title="" />
</div>

<p class="cap">WHAT is camp without a dog? Paul Bunyan loved dogs as well
as the next man but never would have one around that could
not earn its keep. Paul's dogs had to work, hunt or catch rats. It
took a good dog to kill the rats and mice in Paul's camps for the
rodents picked up scraps of the buffalo milk pancakes and grew to
be as big as two year old bears.</p>

<p>Elmer, the moose terrier, practiced up on the rats when he was
a small pup and was soon able to catch a moose on the run and finish
it with one shake. Elmer loafed around the cook camp and if the
meat supply happened to run low the cook would put the dog out the
door and say, "Bring in a moose." Elmer would run into the timber,
catch a moose and bring it in and repeat the performance until, after
a few minutes work, the cook figured he had enough for a mess and
would call the dog in.</p>

<p>Sport, the reversible dog, was really the best hunter. He was
part wolf and part elephant hound and was raised on bear milk.
One night when Sport was quite young, he was playing around in the
horse barn and Paul, mistaking him for a mouse, threw a hand axe
at him. The axe cut the dog in two but Paul, instantly realizing what
had happened, quickly stuck the two halves together, gave the pup
first aid and bandaged him up. With careful nursing the dog
soon recovered and then it was seen that Paul in his haste had twisted
the two halves so that the hind legs pointed straight up. This proved
to be an advantage for the dog learned to run on one pair of legs for
a while and then flop over without loss of speed and run on the other
pair. Because of this he never tired and anything he started after
got caught. Sport never got his full growth. While still a pup he
broke through four feet of ice on Lake Superior and was drowned.</p>

<p>As a hunter, Paul would make old Nimrod himself look like a
city dude lost from his guide. He was also a good fisherman. Oldtimers
tell of seeing Paul as a small boy, fishing off the Atlantic
Coast. He would sail out early in the morning in his three-mast
schooner and wade back before breakfast with his boat full of fish
on his shoulder.</p>

<p>About this time he got his shot gun that required four dishpans
full of powder and a keg of spikes to load each barrel. With this
gun he could shoot geese so high in the air they would spoil before
reaching the ground.</p>

<p>Tracking was Paul's favorite sport and no trail was too old or
too dim for him to follow. He once came across the skeleton of a
moose that had died of old age and, just for curiosity, picked up
the tracks of the animal and spent the whole afternoon following its
trail back to the place where it was
born.</p>

<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;">
<img src="https://brian.carnell.com/wiki/_media/etext:w:wb-laughead-marvelous-exploits-paul-bunyan-i030.jpg" width="400" height="689" alt="" title="" />
</div>

<p>The shaggy dog that spent most
of his time pretending to sleep in
front of Johnny Inkslinger's counter
in the camp office was Fido, the
watch dog. Fido was the bug-bear
(not bearer, just bear) of the greenhorns.
They were told that Paul
starved Fido all winter and then,
just before payday, fed him all the
swampers, barn boys and student
bull-cooks. The very marrow was
frozen in their heads at the thought
of being turned into dog food. Their
fears were groundless for Paul
would never let a dog go hungry or
mistreat a human being. Fido was
fed all the watch peddlers, tailors'
agents, and camp inspectors and
thus served a very useful purpose.</p>

<hr style="width: 95%;" />

<div class="figcenter" style="width: 700px;">
<img src="https://brian.carnell.com/wiki/_media/etext:w:wb-laughead-marvelous-exploits-paul-bunyan-i031.jpg" width="700" height="338" alt="" title="" />
</div>

<p class="cap">WHEN Paul Bunyan took up efficiency engineering he went at
the job with all his customary thoroughness. He did not fool
around clocking the crew with a stop watch, counting motions and
deducting the ones used for borrowing chews, going for drinks,
dodging the boss and preparing for quitting time. He decided to
cut out labor altogether.</p>

<p>"What's the use," said Paul, "of all this sawing, swamping, skidding,
decking, grading and icing roads, loading, hauling and landing?
The object of the game is to get the trees to the landing, ain't it?
Well, why not do it and get it off
your mind?"</p>

<p>So he hitched Babe to a section
of land and snaked in the
whole 640 acres at one drag. At
the landing the trees were cut off
just like shearing a sheep and the
denuded section hauled back to it's
original place. This simplified
matters and made the work a lot
easier. Six trips a day, six days
a week just cleaned up a township
for section 37 was never hauled
back to the woods on Saturday
night but was left on the landing
to wash away in the early spring
when the drive went out.</p>

<p>Documentary evidence of the
truth of this is offered by the
United States government surveys.
Look at any map that shows the
land subdivisions and you will
never find a township with more
than thirty-six sections.</p>

<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;">
<img src="https://brian.carnell.com/wiki/_media/etext:w:wb-laughead-marvelous-exploits-paul-bunyan-i031_2.jpg" width="400" height="545" alt="" title="" />
<span class="caption">Westwood, Cal. Dec. 32 (Special) Hauling
in the last section 37 in California today.
Brimstone Bill, the bullwhacker in
charge of Babe, the Big Blue Ox, met
with an accident that would have been
fatal but for the prompt action of Paul
Bunyan. The section skidded on a bad
turn and buried Brimstone against the
mountain side. Mr. Bunyan hitched
Babe to the mountain and pulled it
away, releasing Brimstone who is recovering
in the Westwood Hospital.</span>
</div>

<p>The foregoing statement, previously published, has caused some
controversy. Mr. T. S. Sowell of Miami, Florida wrote to us citing
the townships in his State that have sections numbered 37 to 40.
He said that the government survey had been complicated by the old
Spanish land grants. We put the matter up to Paul Bunyan and from
his camp near Westwood came this reply:</p>

<blockquote>
<p>
Red River Advertising Department.<br />
</p>

<p>Dear Sir: Yes sir, I remember those sections and a lot
of bother they made me too. One winter when I was
starting the White Pine business and snaking sections
down to the Atlantic Ocean, a man from Florida came
along and ordered a bunch of sections delivered down to
his place. He wanted to see if he could grow the same
kind of White Pine down there. I yarded out a nice bunch
of sections and next summer when my drive was in and
I wasn't busy I took a crew of Canada Boys and Mainites
and poled them down the coast. When I come to collect
they said this man was gone looking for a Fountain of
Youth or some fool thing.</p>

<p>I don't know what luck he had with his White Pine
ranch. I never seen them again. I had a lot of other
things to tend to and clean forgot it till you sent me Mr.
Sowell's letter. Maybe that man was a Spaniard I don't
know.</p>

<p>
Yours respectively,<br />
<br />
P. BUNYAN.</p>
</blockquote>

<hr style="width: 95%;" />

<p class="cap">FROM 1917 to 1920 Paul Bunyan was busy toting the supplies
and building camps for a bunch of husky young fellow-Americans
who had a contract on the other side of the Atlantic, showing a
certain prominent European (who is now logging in Holland) how
they log in the United States.</p>

<p>After his service overseas with the A. E. F., Paul couldn't get
back to the States quick enough. Airplanes were too slow so Paul
embarked in his Bark Canoe, the one he used on the Big Onion the
year he drove logs upstream. When he threw the old paddle into
high he sure rambled and the sea was covered with dead fish that
broke their backs trying to watch him coming and going.</p>

<p>As he shoved off from France, Paul sent a wireless to New York
but passed the Statue of Liberty three lengths ahead of the message.
From New York to Westwood he travelled on skis. When the home
folks asked him if the Allegheney Mountains and the Rockies had
bothered him, Paul replied, "I didn't notice any mountains but the
trail was a little bumpy in a couple of spots."</p>

<hr style="width: 95%;" />

<p class="cap">BACK in the early days, when his camps were so far from anywhere
that the wolves following the tote-teams got lost in the woods,
Paul Bunyan made no attempt to keep in touch with the trade. What's
the use when every letter that comes in is about things that happened
the year before?</p>

<p>Since he came to Westwood Paul has renewed old friendships,
formed new ones and kept close contact with the world. Everyone
expects great things of Paul Bunyan and with the Red River outfit
back of him he has the chance of his life to make good. Continuous
production keeps a full assortment of stock on hand. Customers in
all parts of America find Westwood a dependable source of supply.</p>

<p>Here is an instance. This old friend of Paul's, a prominent
furniture manufacturer in the Lake States, was disappointed because
an item he wanted for immediate shipment was not in stock in the
grade and thickness required. He wrote the letter shown below and
was given an explanation of the facts in the case in the accompanying
reply.</p>

<div class="figlinked" style="width: 400px;"><a href="https://brian.carnell.com/wiki/_media/etext:w:wb-laughead-marvelous-exploits-paul-bunyan-i032big.jpg">
<img src="https://brian.carnell.com/wiki/_media/etext:w:wb-laughead-marvelous-exploits-paul-bunyan-i032.jpg" width="400" height="368" alt="" title=""/></a>
</div>

<p class="center"><i>Click on the image to enlarge</i></p>

<hr style="width: 95%;" />

<p class="center">PAUL
BUNYAN'S
PINE</p>

<p class="center">CALIFORNIA WHITE
<i>And</i> SUGAR PINES</p>

<p class="center">"<i>Specified where
economy is a vital
factor, or where the
best is used regardless
of cost.</i>"</p>

<p class="center">WHITE FIR INCENSE CEDAR</p>

<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;">
<img src="https://brian.carnell.com/wiki/_media/etext:w:wb-laughead-marvelous-exploits-paul-bunyan-i033.jpg" width="400" height="366" alt="" title="" />
</div>

<p class="center">"<i>The old-fashioned White Pine our grandfathers used!</i>"</p>

<p>How often have you wished for it, the soft, even textured, easy-working
wood that took paint so well and weathered the years without
a warp or a check?</p>

<blockquote><p>Here it is, friends, better than ever,&mdash;clear plank 48 inches wide if you
want them. Red River products excel in workmanship, precise cutting,
perfect seasoning. YARD STOCKS, all items and grades, boards, dimension,
moldings, lath and sidings. FACTORY LUMBER, sash and door cuttings
and industrial cuttings for any requirement. BOX SHOOKS and crate stocks
of every description. SASH AND DOORS, standard and made to order.
PATTERN STOCK, large sizes, easy working, durable.</p>

<p>Saving in working-up costs, by hand or machine; light weight and the
superior quality,&mdash;grade for grade, make PAUL BUNYAN'S PINES the
most profitable to buy, to work or to sell. Distributed to all parts of
America and to foreign countries.</p></blockquote>

<p class="center"><i>Largest Manufacturers of California Pines.</i></p>

<p class="center">"Producers of White Pine for over Half a Century."</p>


<p class="center">The RED RIVER LUMBER CO.</p>

<p class="center">
T. B. WALKER, <span class="smcap">President</span>.</p>

<p class="center">GILBERT M. WALKER, <span class="smcap">Vice President</span> FLETCHER L. WALKER, <span class="smcap">Treasurer</span><br />
WILLIS J. WALKER, <span class="smcap">Vice President</span> ARCHIE D. WALKER, <span class="smcap">Secretary</span><br />
<br />
Mills, Factories &amp; Sales Office,  R. F. Pray, Resident Mgr.  WESTWOOD CALIF.<br />
General Office and Sales,         807 Hennepin Ave.,         MINNEAPOLIS, MINN.<br />
Yards and Sales Office,           2452 Loomis St.,           CHICAGO, ILL.<br />
Sales Office,                     307 Monadnock Bldg.,       SAN FRANCISCO, CALIF.<br />
Sales Office,                     832 Union Oil Bldg.,       LOS ANGELES, CALIF,
</p>

<p class="center"><i>Extra Copies of This Book Mailed Free Upon Request.</i></p>
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