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The story text can be found in the following location, where D is the CD-
ROM drive letter:
Location Compact Disc
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D:\Supplmnt\Bunyan\Buntext.wri Paul Bunyan compact disc
PAGE 1
A lot of people will tell you about Paul Bunyan
like they know the straight story. But they don't
know an ax handle from an ox yoke in my book.
Paul flat-out invented loggin', and by the time he
got done, the United States was fit for livin'.
PAGE 2
Listen up, and I'll tell you about Paul Bunyan, the
greatest loggin' man there ever was.
Now, first time I saw Paul Bunyan was the Winter of
the Blue Snow.
Me and the boys were sittin' in our cabin, huddled
around the pot-belly stove.
PAGE 3
Outside, the snow was fallin' fast, furious, and
blue. That's right.
It's a fact, the snow came outta the sky as blue as
a Robin's egg.
That's why they called it the Winter of the Blue
Snow.
PAGE 4
Pancakes was our dinner for the three-hundred-and
tenth night in a row.
We was concentrating on talkin' and chewin' with
our mouths closed, when it started thunderin'
outside.
Then I seen him. He was carryin' the biggest,
mightiest, dang-darndest ax I ever seen.
PAGE 5
We all ran outside to get a better look at what was
coming our way. And there he stood, large as a
mountain.
"Sorry to intrude, boys," he said, real friendly
like. "Name's Paul Bunyan."
PAGE 6
"What do you fellas got cookin'? I've been eatin'
beans all winter long, and when I got a whiff of
your vittles, I had to stop by."
Well, now, we happened to have the greatest cook
this side of Kalamazoo: Hot Biscuit Sally.
PAGE 7
And her pancakes were such good eatin' that we had 'em mornin', noon, and
night.
So Sal made up a king-sized batch of pancakes for
our guest, and in no time at all he was eatin' and
talkin'.
PAGE 8
"I'm clearin' the timber off of Sulfur Mountain,"
Paul explained.
Me and the boys knowed that Sulfur Mountain was so
steep that a person trying to walk up it would fall
over backwards.
PAGE 9
"You mean you're clearin' off Sulfur Mountain by
yourself?" I says.
"Yup," says Paul.
The boys didn't know what to think. Either this lad
had beans in his head, or he knowed a few things
about loggin' that we didn't.
PAGE 10
Brimstone Bill was gettin' a little hot under the
collar.
Brimstone could cuss a blue streak, and he got
especially perturbed when he thought a body was
braggin'.
PAGE 11
"How in tarnation do you expect us to believe that
you is clearin' that land by your lonesome," he
snarled.
"I always work alone," said Paul.
PAGE 12
"Dad-blame-it!" cried Brimstone. "Then show us how
you does it, 'cause I think you're full of soup!"
Paul got up, hefted his ax, and walked into the
woods.
PAGE 13
"Alrighty, boys, stand clear."
Paul spat into his hands and choked the end of his
ax handle. He wound up and swung. He felled twenty
three trees with that first swing.
PAGE 14
Any one of those trees would have taken you or me
at least six hours of choppin'.
Then he got his rhythm, and he started swingin'
like a tornado goin' through a toothpick factory.
PAGE 15
Paul cleared forty acres during his little
demonstration, and when the dust settled, any trees
that were left standin' took one look around and
laid down in fright.
"Well, that's how I do it," says Paul.
He wasn't braggin', either.
PAGE 16
That boy was just the biggest, bestest, toughest,
strongest, ding-dandiest logger there ever was.
And that's how we all come to join up with Paul
during the Winter of the Blue Snow.
PAGE 17
One fine winter's day, while Paul was out scoutin'
the countryside, he came across a baby ox, buried
in the blue snow.
That calf had been in the snow so long that his
hide was dyed solid blue.
PAGE 18
Paul blew three warm breaths into the calf, and
that critter opened his eyes like he'd just been
born.
Well, sir, when he looked up with them big blue
eyes, somethin' inside of Paul began to melt.
PAGE 19
"Now there's nothin' to worry about -- I'm takin'
care of you, babe, and I always will."
That's what everybody called the calf from then on:
Babe.
PAGE 20
From the git-go, Babe ate a ton of grain a day, and
was always lookin' for more. The fellers noticed
that if they watched Babe for five minutes, they
could see him grow right before their eyes.
PAGE 21
By the time Babe stopped growin', the distance
between the tips of his horns measured one-hundred
forty-two ax handles,
four bottles of sassafras soda, a plug of chewin'
tobacco, and a hard-boiled egg.
PAGE 22
We was cuttin' through the woods like nobody's
business, when one day Paul got a letter from Teddy
Roosevelt, the President of the United States.
Seems Mr. Roosevelt was in a fix, and he needed a
hand.
This is how the letter read:
PAGE 23
The White House
Washington, D.C.
I wish to congratulate you on the bully job you
and your crew have done clearing the great
states of Wisconsin and Minnesota. We just
don't have enough room in this country for all
our people to live. I understand the Dakota
Territory would make a perfect place for
settlers' homes. Unfortunately, the entire
place is covered with trees.
With the power vested in me by the American
people, I hereby order you to clear the Dakotas
by next spring.
Thank you in advance for your help, and bully
for you.
Yours truly,
Teddy Roosevelt
The President
PAGE 24
"Well, if that ain't a kick in the britches," Paul
said to the boys.
And with that, Paul dashed off a letter to Teddy
Roosevelt:
The Woods
Somewhere near Minnesota
Consider the job DONE. I'll take care of
clearing The Dakotas, presently, forthwithly,
hence.
Sincerely,
Paul Bunyan
Logger
PAGE 25
In those days, the Dakotas were one gigantic
forest, so thick with trees you had to pry your way
in.
There wasn't a lick of open land in the entire
territory. The trees were tall and fat, and the
wood was so hard you'd dull your ax with just a
single swing.
PAGE 26
It didn't take long for word to get around that
Paul was doing some serious work out there.
Loggers started comin' out of the woodwork to work
those woods with Paul's crew.
PAGE 27
Johnny Inkslinger was the accountant for Paul's
loggin' enterprise, and even he couldn't count all
the men.
The loggers slept in bunk beds with ten decks.
PAGE 28
So Johnny tried countin' the bunks and multiplyin'
by ten to figure the number of men employed.
He gave up countin' at ten thousand, six hundred
and twenty-three. That's a lot of men!
PAGE 29
Poor Hot Biscuit Sally was makin' pancakes six ways
to Christmas, tryin' to keep everybody fed.
"Paul," she said, "I've burned out three griddles
this mornin' alone, and some of our boys still
don't have their breakfast. Now what are we gonna do about it?"
PAGE 30
"Sounds like we need a bigger griddle," Paul
replied.
So Paul had Ole Jolson, the blacksmith, melt down
fifty-three dozen steel plows, and forge a griddle
that was an acre-and-a-half across ... well, close
to that.
PAGE 31
Paul and Babe hauled it back to camp. When the two
of 'em got back to the peak of Thunder Mountain,
Paul decided to ride the griddle the rest of the
way.
"Look out below," he yelled. With that, he took
off, ridin' the griddle, and givin' out a whoop and
holler that darn near made the needles on the pine trees thread themselves.
PAGE 32
He roared down that mountain, slicin' through the
trees, and tore into camp and it wasn't long before
Hot Biscuit Sal was makin' her first batch of
pancakes on her new griddle.
PAGE 33
President Teddy Roosevelt wanted the Dakotas
cleared by spring. Word was out that settlers was
already headin' out there, ready to move in.
We was loggin' faster than a hog eats supper, but
come February, we wasn't even halfway through.
PAGE 34
There was no way our crew was goin' to complete the
job by spring. We were gettin' desperate.
Paul and his loggers were slowed to a standstill by
the huge pile of cut trees.
PAGE 35
We were havin' a darn-awful time haulin' the timber
out of there, 'cause the road was so crooked.
The road not only had S-turns and Z-turns, and U
turns, it had turns shaped like every letter in the
dad-blame alphabet, including a few that ain't even
been invented yet.
PAGE 36
Paul had to do somethin' about that road. So he sat
and gave it some thought.
Suddenly, Paul leaped up and cried out, "Sufferin'
sequoias! I got it!" And this was his idea.
PAGE 37
He hooked up Babe to the far end of the road, and
gave the blue ox the word to pull. It was that
simple.
Babe started gruntin', and snortin', and pawin',
and pullin', and, wouldn't you know it, the road
started to move out.
PAGE 38
That little bit of give in the road was all Babe
needed to feel.
He just started marchin' in a straight line,
draggin' that road behind him, straightenin' it as
true as a crow flies.
Once Babe straightened out the road, Paul Bunyan
and his men worked day and night to keep on
schedule. There were no breaks for chow, and no
sleepin'.
PAGE 39
When the rooster crowed at the break of dawn on the
first day of spring, Paul felled the last tree in
the Dakotas.
He had kept his bargain with Teddy Roosevelt.
PAGE 40
Paul let loose a victory holler that blew down all
the scrub pines that his men hadn't bothered to
chop.
He was so full of beans 'cause he'd finished
clearin' the Dakotas, he ran up to the top off
Mount Rushmore.
PAGE 41
He carved Teddy Roosevelt's face out of granite
with his ax, and then he added the faces of three
other presidents: Washington, Jefferson, and Lincoln.
It was Paul's way of personalizing the job for old
Teddy, and, now that the trees was gone, it gave
folks somethin' to look at.
PAGE 42
On the horizon, Paul Bunyan saw a wagon train,
bringin' settlers to their new homes where the
forest once had been.
Paul surveyed the miles of naked plains all around
him. You'd have thought he'd have been happy,
finishin' off the biggest loggin' job there ever
was.
PAGE 43
But Paul grew downright sad thinkin' how carried
away he got, clearin' the Dakota forest.
"Why these settlers will never hear the wind
rustlin' through the leaves," Paul said to no one
in particular.
PAGE 44
"They'll never ... they'll never get to sit under
the shade of an elm tree on an August afternoon."
Paul and Babe headed north that day. Just picked up
and went.
PAGE 45
Now, Paul Bunyan ain't dead or nothin',
y'understand? Shoot! That boy's like a redwood --
he just gets bigger and stronger every year.
I know, 'cause I seen him with my own eyes a winter
or two ago.
PAGE 46
Paul's done loggin', I'll tell ya that. Paul's
plantin' trees now, instead of choppin' them down.
"I chopped a billion-trillion trees," Paul told me.
"Now I'm fixin' to plant a billion-trillion."
PAGE 47
And if I know him, that's exactly what he'll do,
too.
What's that you say? You want to help? Where can
you find Paul Bunyan? Well, that's an easy one. He
ain't hard to find.
PAGE 48
Go on out there to where the woods is the deepest,
and the trees the thickest,
where the wind sings through the leaves, and the
air is rich with the smell of pine: the heart of
the forest.
That's where Paul is, that's where he was, and
doggonit, that's where he'll always be.