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In the early days, whenever Paul Bunyan was broke between logging seasons, he traveled 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 shoveled 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.
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.
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.
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.”
Paul Bunyan started traveling 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.
In the early days he rode on the back of Babe, the Big Blue Ox. This had its 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.
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.
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 traveling 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.
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.
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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.
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.
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.
Paul had to keep his men and oxen in the camps with doors and windows barred. Men armed with pikepoles 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.
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 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.
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.
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.
One pair of the original bees were kept at headquarters camp and provided honey for the pancakes for many years.
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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 his work was done is not known but they were in use prior to the Year of the Two Winters.
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 halfway 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.
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. Travelers 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.
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 stovepipe 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.
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.
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.
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.
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 stopwatch, 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.
“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?”
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 its 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.
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.
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:
Red River Advertising Department.
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.
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.
Yours respectively,
P. BUNYAN.
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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.
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.
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 traveled 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.”
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In the forests of the Red River Lumber Company Paul Bunyan can cut his lumber for many future years in the region where Nature found conditions exactly suited to the growth of pine of the finest texture and largest size.
Early in the closing decade of the nineteenth century the Red River people took a long look into the future. Foreseeing the exhaustion of their Minnesota white pine, which came a quarter of a century later, they set out to find the pine that would take its place. Their search covered several years and reached all the important stands in the western States. This was well in advance of the westward movement of the industry and Red River had the pioneer’s opportunity for choice and rejection.
Sugar Pine, “cork pine’s big brother,” is botanically and physically true white pine, with all the family virtues. It is the largest of all pines.
California Pine is the trade name for pinus ponderosa or western yellow pine from certain regions where conditions of growth have so modified the nature of the wood that it is more like white pine than it is like its botanical brothers that grow elsewhere. Some say this change is due to volcanic soil. Whatever the cause, California Pine from Red River’s forest is exceptionally light, brightly colored, soft and even textured and second only to Sugar Pine in size.
Red River “Paul Bunyan’s” California Pine and Sugar Pine meet the strict requirements of trades that have made white pine their standard. Where freedom from distortion is essential, as for example piano actions, organ pipes, foundry patterns and the best sash and doors, Red River pines are used. They finish economically with paints, stains and enamels and are highly valued as cores for fine hardwood veneers. They work easily, smoothly and cleanly with edged tools and do not nail-split.
The durability of these California pines is shown by their sound condition in California buildings that have stood for generations, many of them in regions where climatic conditions are more conducive to decay than in the middle western and eastern states.
Paul Bunyan tackled a real problem when he came to Westwood. The site of the mill and town was unbroken forest in 1913, sixty mountainous miles from the nearest railroad. Trails were graded into passable roads and materials and machinery were freighted in. When the railroad arrived in 1914 the first mill was in operation and the town well under construction. Town and plant had been detailed on the drafting boards in Minneapolis. Sanitary sewers, water system, electric lights and telephones were extended as the forest was cleared and Westwood, with a population of 5,000, enjoys all the facilities of a modern American community.
The electrically operated sawmill has an annual capacity of 250 million board feet. Dry kilns, one of the largest plywood factories in the country, sash and door factory and re-manufacturing departments round out production of a complete line of lumber products.
Red River operates its own logging railroad, 20 miles of which are electrified, hydro-electric plants and the foundry and machine shops, where many units of the logging and plant machinery are designed and built.
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?
Since he came to Westwood Paul has renewed old friendships, fo
rmed 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.
Aleksandr Grin (1880–1932) was born Aleksandr Stepanovich Grinevsky in Kirov Oblast, Russia. With his first publication in 1906, Grin began publishing mainly poetry and short stories. His work was exotic and romantic at a time when most Russian writers used satire to dissect the political climate. A domovoi is a protective, typically unseen house spirit and in Slavic culture is sometimes called the “master” of the house. And as in many Slavic folktales, a family could bribe this spirit with milk. “Talkative Domovoi” is reminiscent of Scarlet Sails, Grin’s most iconic novel, because it is also set in an unnamed fantasy land.
Talkative Domovoi
Aleksandr Grin
Translated by Ekaterina Sedia
I stood by the window, whistling a song about Annie.
—E. W. Hornung
I
THE DOMOVOI SUFFERING a toothache—doesn’t it seem like libeling the being whose services are sought by so many witches and miracle-workers that you’d think he could scarf sugar by the barrel? But it was so, it was the truth—small and sad domovoi sat by the cold stove, its fire long forgotten. He shook his head rhythmically, held onto his bandaged cheek and moaned pitifully, like a child, and suffering pulsed in his red and cloudy eyes.
The Big Book of Classic Fantasy Page 129