Then they’ve still got a lot of bullets left over so they have to keep finding more people to shoot.
Also, I think someone writes a constitution?
Anyway, that’s where America comes from.
So the moral of the story
is that the primary ingredient for a successful nation
is guns.
JOHN HENRY WAS A STEEL-DRIVIN’ MAN
I SAID, JOHN HENRY WAS A STEEL-DRIVIN’ MAN.
Do you guys know what that means?
That means that he was a dude who worked on a railroad
and his job
was to KILL MOUNTAINS.
Now, the way he did this
was that some poor sonofabitch named Little Bill
would hold a steel drill in place against the rock
while John Henry BEAT ON IT AS HARD AS HE COULD
WITH A TWENTY-POUND HAMMER
and Bill had to keep turning the drill after every strike
and eventually the drill would get dull
so he had to swap it out
for another drill
that someone would hopefully hand to him at about that time
WITHOUT MISSING A BEAT
and then they would bring the old drill to a blacksmith
so the blacksmith could fix it
and then bring it back to Bill so he could switch it out AGAIN
and meanwhile John Henry’s hammer is just whistling right past Bill’s junk
or face, or ribs, or wherever he has to hold the drill
in order to make sure the rock is getting brutalized in the right direction.
Meanwhile, John Henry has it easy.
All HE has to do is heft a TWENTY-POUND HAMMER
over and over again
with perfect accuracy
all day
through solid rock
never stopping, never getting tired
under constant threat of rockslides and disfigurement.
So this is this guy’s job.
Now John Henry works for a pack of rat bastards called the C&O Railroad Company.
I know they are rat bastards because one day John Henry’s railroad team
rolls up on this big, big mountain
and the railroad crew is all like “Oh wow, bummer.
Guess we better start going around this mountain, huh?”
And aforementioned rat bastards from C&O
are like “NOPE.
GOIN’ STRAIGHT THROUGH THE MOUNTAIN.
IT IS ONLY LIKE A MILE AND A HALF THICK.
YOU GUYS LIKE HAVING JOBS, RIGHT?
SO DO IT.”
So they do it
most of these guys are freed slaves
so they don’t exactly have their pick of the crop as far as employment opportunities go.
This goes double for John Henry
who is not only a freed slave
but also an UNSTOPPABLE BADASS WHO NEVER QUITS.
So every day all the steel drivers go to work
and they fling themselves mercilessly at this mountain
and like twenty people die
but John Henry just keeps abusing that stone
making a solid ten-foot tunnel every day, at LEAST.
So, you know, great for him
but all his friends are still dead
and the dicks at C&O are getting impatient
so when this traveling salesman shows up with a steam-powered drill machine
they are like “SIGN US UP.
P.S.: Everyone who works for us is fired now.
ESPECIALLY JOHN HENRY.”
Now John Henry is the kind of man who takes absolutely no guff from anybody.
It is unreal how little guff this man takes.
Like, if there were a great big pile of guff by the side of the road
and John Henry walked by
that pile would remain completely undisturbed
because he would take none of it.
So when he sees this guff coming his way he just sidesteps the lot of it
and then he turns around like “Hey, traveling salesman
I bet I can drill harder, better, faster, AND stronger than your candyassed machine.”
And the traveling salesman is like “YOU’RE ON.”
So the next day John Henry lines up next to this machine
along with his trusty shaker Little Bill
and TWO twenty-pound hammers
and they get. to. work.
So John and the drill are staying pretty much neck and neck
even though the drill doesn’t have a neck.
Maybe the drill is even doing a little better
but then it gets STUCK in a hole in the rock
and John Henry just goes grunting and flailing and sweating
FOURTEEN FEET INTO THE HEART OF THAT MOUNTAIN.
BAM CLINK CACHANG POW BOOM PEW PEW PEW.
I DON’T KNOW WHAT SOUND A HAMMER MAKES.
So, final score:
Newfangled steam drill: nine feet.
One man armed with nothing but sweat and hammers: fourteen feet.
Oh wait.
Did I forget to mention
that since John Henry is using two hammers, he drilled TWO HOLES
while the steam drill only made ONE??
So really, the score was nine to TWENTY-EIGHT.
Yeah.
But there’s some bad news too.
See, as soon as he finds out his score
John Henry puts down his hammers and dies
because he just hammered that rock so hard
he gave himself a stroke.
It doesn’t say in the ballad
but I like to think that his last words were something like
“. . . Damn right.”
Anyway, then he’s dead
so I think they end up using the steam drill anyway
although they have to cancel work for like a week
because everyone is convinced that John Henry’s ghost lives in the tunnel
also later on it turns out that the tunnel is notoriously unstable
because it is a bad idea to use contests to construct structurally delicate railway tunnels.
But none of that matters
because the real hero of this story
is Little Bill
who held two drills
right next to all the tenderest parts of his body
against a solid stone wall
while an absurdly muscular dude repeatedly charged toward him
flailing two twenty-pound hammers.
And he kept holding those drills
and turning them
and shaking out the stone debris
and switching out the drills when they got dull
FOR THIRTY-FIVE MINUTES
AND TWENTY-EIGHT FEET
and he didn’t have a stroke
or even poop himself a little.
So let’s hear it for Little Bill
the real American hero.
PAUL BUNYAN WAS A LOG-DRIVIN’ MAN
We all know that lumberjacks are badasses.
But have you ever stopped to wonder how we know that?
I’LL TELL YOU HOW.
PAUL BUNYAN IS HOW.
Because that dude
was big.
HOW BIG WAS HE?
He was SO BIG
that it took three storks to deliver him to his parents.
He was SO BIG
that when he was old enough to laugh and clap his hands
he DESTROYED HIS HOUSE.
He was SO BIG
&
nbsp; that one time he dragged his ax behind him when he was walking
and made the Grand Canyon.
This guy was BIG.
But all of that is baby stuff, compared with the time he tamed the Whistling River.
So the Whistling River
is a river that has somehow come into possession of some rudimentary intelligence
and a WHOLE LOT OF GUFF which it hands out to all comers
because as you may have noticed
guff is America’s chief natural resource.
See, this river likes to rear up at random times throughout the day
and let out a piercing whistle that annoys the crap out of everyone for MILES AROUND.
This river is also a total dick.
It breaks up log rafts
it drowns loggers
it does everything a river is not supposed to do and laughs about it
or whistles about it, I guess.
But then the river makes a crucial mistake
because one day Paul Bunyan is sitting by the river, eating some flapjacks
when the river rears up
and chucks FOUR HUNDRED AND NINETEEN GALLONS OF MUDDY WATER
INTO HIS BEARD.
Now I’m sure I don’t have to tell you
that a lumberjack’s beard is NOT TO BE TRIFLED WITH
but Paul Bunyan gives the river a pass.
He just goes back to his pancakes and figures the river will behave itself.
But that river rears up
and chucks FIVE THOUSAND AND NINETEEN MORE GALLONS
AND SOME TURTLES AND SOME FISH AND SOME MUSKRAT
DIRECTLY INTO PAUL BUNYAN’S ALREADY SOAKING WET BEARD
plus his flapjacks are pretty wet.
This is the kind of thing any self-respecting lumberjack cannot ignore.
So what does Paul Bunyan do?
Does he get up and move someplace where the river can’t soak him?
NO.
Instead, he decides to TAME the river.
But how?
Well, Paul Bunyan settles down to do some serious thinking
and the way lumberjacks think
is they sit down and they eat popcorn
for DAYS.
Paul Bunyan eats so much popcorn
that after a week, the ground is covered with eighteen inches of popcorn scraps
for THREE MILES AROUND
and animals that wander into the area immediately think it is winter
and freeze to death before they have a chance to actually think about what they are doing.
Anyway, finally Paul Bunyan leaps up like “AHA!
I bet if I took all the bends out of the river it would straighten up and fly right.
So I’ll just tie it to Babe, my massive blue ox and she’ll tow it straight.
Oh wait, it’s made of water.
How am I going to attach my ox to it?
HMM.”
So Paul Bunyan and his ox go to the North Pole
and he makes a box trap baited with icicles
and then goes and plays fetch with Babe for a while using GLACIERS
but he has to stop because he floods Florida.
Then he goes back to check on his trap
and finds that he has caught SIX BLIZZARDS.
Man, I wish I had a box big enough to catch six blizzards.
I’d open up a blizzard stand
and no one would buy any
BECAUSE BLIZZARDS ARE A THING THAT NOBODY WANTS.
But Paul Bunyan doesn’t see it that way.
He grabs two of those blizzards and he takes them back to his logging camp
and has his friend Ole—
who is not a lumberjacking matador but rather a big Swede—
make two huge logging chains to attach to the blizzards.
Then he goes to the river and jams the blizzards into it
which freezes it FOR SEVENTEEN MILES
then he hooks the river up to Babe
and it is GO TIME.
But that river is TOOOO ornery
it won’t budge
even though Babe pulls those chains into solid iron bars
and digs ruts into the solid rock she is running on.
But that’s when Paul Bunyan just cuts straight through the bullshit
by grabbing the chains and pulling them so hard
that he and Babe drag the river free of its banks and through the prairie.
When finally they stop running and turn around
they see that the river has become TOTALLY STRAIGHT
but it is also somehow much shorter
because all the elbow joints that made the bends are now scattered across the prairie.
So Paul Bunyan packs up all the extra bends
and uses them later, when he needs to float logs in the middle of the desert
even though that’s not how that works and there aren’t even any logs in the desert
because you get to ignore physics as long as you are really, really big.
Anyway, then the river refuses to whistle
because it has basically just undergone the river equivalent of traumatic castration
and strangely enough, this makes everyone really pissed off at Paul Bunyan
because it turns out that everyone was using the river as an alarm clock
and they need to wake up early
because trees are easier to cut down when you catch them snoozing.
But luckily this dude comes along named Squeaky Swanson
who has a speaking voice that is never above a whisper
but a shriek that can physically LIFT THE BLANKETS off of everyone in camp.
So every day, Squeaky Swanson wakes up at the crack of dawn
and shrieks everyone awake
thus solving every problem forever.
So once again
the real hero of the story is not Paul Bunyan
who actually ruined the whistling river
and broke physics
and littered a lot of popcorn scraps all over
and flooded Florida
but rather an unassuming man
with some kind of weird voice problem.
So God bless America
home of the little guy
as long as the little guy can yell really loud.
PECOS BILL WAS A CATTLE-DRIVIN’ MAN
All right, my friends.
It is time for you to hear about a man whose ass is SO BAD
other asses cower at the mere mention of it.
The owner of this ass is named PECOS BILL.
But Pecos Bill was not always named that.
For a while he was just named Bill.
This dude was not alive more than, say, ten seconds
before he started chewing knives and riding horses
and then crawling out of his mom’s wagon when she wasn’t looking
and wrestling BEAR CUBS
and WINNING.
But as if that wasn’t enough
the way Pecos Bill gets the Pecos part of his name
is that one day his family is crossing the Pecos River
and Bill falls out of the wagon into the water
probably because he was trying to bust out and wrestle bears at the wrong time
and his family is like “DAMMIT.
HE WAS GONNA BE SUCH A BADASS.”
And then his mom dies of being sad.
But it’s okay, guys
because Pecos Bill gets fished out of the river BY COYOTES.
THAT IS A REASSURING THING TO HAVE HAPPEN, RIGHT??
Actually, yes
&
nbsp; because in this case, the coyotes make the incredibly un-coyote-like decision
to raise this delicious human baby as one of their own for fifteen years.
Yeah, that’s right. He’s one of THOSE kids.
But then after fifteen years, Pecos Bill is drinking from the river that bears his name
when his brother comes along
punching cattle, like people do in Texas.
(I think punching cattle is an expression meaning to herd cattle or something
but I really prefer to imagine
that Pecos Bill’s brother is just SOCKING COWS IN THE FOREHEAD
ALL ACROSS THE PRAIRIE.)
Anyway, he sees Pecos Bill squatting by the river
and he’s like “HEY
Aren’t you my long lost brother?”
and Pecos Bill is like “NO.
I AM A COYOTE.
AWOOOO.”
And his brother is like “Bullshit.
If you are a coyote, then where’s your tail?”
And Pecos Bill is like “Hmm, tough question.
Well, I definitely have fleas, AND I howl at the moon.”
And his brother is like “Son
EVERYONE in Texas has fleas and howls at the moon.
Also, you clearly speak English and walk on two legs
both of which are suspiciously un-coyote-like even in Texas.
Now cut the bullshit
put on this hat
and come be a cowboy like me.”
And Pecos Bill is like “Okay, you talked me into it.”
So he becomes the best cowboy ever.
He invents branding cattle
and also sitting on cattle until they behave
and also the lasso
and his brother is like “Not bad
for some crazy asshole who thought he was a coyote for fifteen years.
Keep practicing, kid. Some day you’ll be a great cowboy.”
And he turns out to be TOTALLY RIGHT.
Which just goes to reinforce the point I’ve been making
which is that Pecos Bill is clearly not the hero of this story
(just like Paul Bunyan was not the hero of his story
and John Henry was not the hero of HIS story)
because without his brother
Pecos Bill would have farted around that river with a pack of rabid coyotes
until some poacher found this naked dirt-streaked thing
fucking a she-coyote in the underbrush
and put an end to his special crazytime.
See, this is what the United States of America is all about.
Zeus Grants Stupid Wishes: A No-Bullshit Guide to World Mythology Page 18