Part 2
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:
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 _somewhere_, 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.
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.
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--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.
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.
The lunch sled,--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.
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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,--"the largest pines that ever grew" and production started at Westwood in 1914.
SUGAR PINE,--"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.
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.
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.
INCENSE CEDAR is used chiefly for pencils and chests--a soft, straight-grained red cedar.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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."
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.
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--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.
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.
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.
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"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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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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.
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.
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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.
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--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.
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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.
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.
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.
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.
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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.
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.
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.
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.
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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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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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.
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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.
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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."
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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.
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.
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 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.