paul bunyan source                                            The North Woods
Paul Bunyan and his trusty ax

I want to tell you boys about the time I spent in the North Woods.  I bet y’all are wondering about how I got all the way up there.  Well it wasn’t easy.  I heard that there was quite a bit of money to be made up north in the logging business.  I figured with my height and strong build, I should have no trouble finding work.  So I made my way up to the North Woods.  I was surprised to see that I was the tiniest man there.  Why every one of them loggers stood seven feet tall and must have weighed 350 pounds.  I started to lose hope and was just about on my way back home to Texas when a man stopped me and asked if I was looking for work.  He told me that I was too small to be a logger, but they needed somebody to feed all of these men.  He asked me if I could flip flapjacks.  I demonstrated my ability, and he told me I was the fastest flapjack flipper around.  I had the job.  I was very excited about being the camp cook.  Somehow I knew that I was in store for something extraordinary.

  paul and babe source
Paul Bunyan and his big blue ox Babe

One night I was in my kitchen and I saw the strangest thing.  I couldn’t tell what it was, but something was coming my way.  When it got closer I couldn’t believe my eyes.  It was a man.  A giant man, I was barely taller than his boots.  I don’t know where he came from but he told be that he was a logger named Paul Bunyan.  He looked mighty hungry so I asked him if he would like some supper.  He accepted and I got a crew of twenty-two men together to get his supper ready.  There was more food than I had ever seen.  Old Paul had pounds of beef, several hams, a venison, loaves of bread, fried potatoes, flapjacks, eggs, and gallons of coffee.  I couldn’t believe my eyes when Paul Bunyan finished that dinner.  He looked at me after he had eaten that massive meal and do you know what he said?  “What about my ox?”  I looked at him like he was plum crazy and asked him “what ox, all I see is that mountain covered with snow.  Paul laughed and said “That is my ox, Babe”.  That ox was nearly as big as that giant of a man Paul Bunyan.  I got one of the boys to show Paul and Babe to the stables.  Babe was given as much hay as he wanted, and Paul knocked over a few hundred trees, and they went to sleep.

source paul and babe 2
Another drawing of Paul Bunyan and his faithful ox Babe

The next morning Paul and his ox woke up to perfect logging weather.  The thermometer read sixty below.  It was a little chilly for me, probably just because I’m a Texan, but the loggers loved it.  Now, the trees in the North Woods were the biggest trees in the world.  Why, two men would be sawing on one side of a tree for days before they would meet up with the other two sawing on the other side.  It wasn’t that hard for Paul Bunyan.  He didn’t even use a saw.  He would take that big ax of his and chop down a tree in a single stroke.  Now Paul thought that this was a terrible way to get the job done.  They had to chop down the trees then haul them off to the river.  That clever Paul had an idea.  He grabbed Babe’s leather harness and wrapped it around the whole section of trees.  It must have been over six hundred acres.  Why, that big blue ox dragged the land, trees and all down to the river.  After the men cut the trees, Babe hauled the land back to where it belonged.  I shouldn’t have to tell you that it was the best winter we’d ever had.  Paul and I became good friends; he didn’t want me mad at him, who else could feed a man that big!
Intro
Frametale
Me and Pecos Bill
Me and that Steel Driving Man
Me and Gib Morgan
My Pal Johnny Appleseed
Pecos Bill and Slue-Foot Sue
e-mail me!
Jennifer Kirkwood
Bibliography:
Walker, Paul Robert
1993  Big Men, Big Country: A collection of American tall tales.  New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Publishers.
I used a section of the Paul Bunyan story from this book.  I changed the character of Joe Muffreau to the narrator Slim.  I changed the language of the story to fit with Slim's style of speech and feelings about his friend.

Images: Halogram.com.  Drawing of Paul Bunyan and his ax.  Websource:  http://hallogram.com/paulbunyan/
Delano.citisite.com.  Drawing of Paul Bunyan and his ox Babe.  Websourse: http://delano.citisite.com
Brentwood.k12.ca.us.  Drawing of Paul Bunyan and his ox Babe.  Websource:  http://www.brentwood.k12.ca.us/



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