The best known folk hero of the North Woods is the giant lumberjack, Paul Bunyan. A product of rugged humor, wit and spontaneous exaggeration, his 'legend' was created in the bunkhouses of ordinary logging camps, by ordinary working men, while they gathered around the glowing woodstoves on cold winter evenings. It was from there that stories about Paul and his blue ox Babe spread throughout the pine shanties of the North Woods. The lumberjacks heard and then retold the fables, often weaving in local or personal embellishments as they passed the tales on.

It was said that it took five giant storks, working overtime, to deliver him to his parents. Three hours after his birth he was reported to weigh a full eighty pounds and they used a lumber wagon drawn by a team of oxen as a baby carriage. He grew so fast that after one week he had to wear his father's clothes. He would eat forty bowls of porridge just to whet his appetite. His lungs were so strong that he could empty a whole pond of frogs with one "holler".

Paul rescued Babe, as a calf, from drowning during the Winter of Blue Snow. Babe grew to be twenty-four axe handles and a plug of tobacco wide between the eyes and as a snack would eat thirty bales of hay...wire and all. Babe was so strong that he could pull anything that had two ends, except Paul (Paul could never be pulled, and he could only be pushed so far). It is said that it took a crow a full day to fly from the tip of one horn to the other. Paul once used Babe to straighten out thirty miles of crooked town road. When all the twists and curves were pulled straight there were an extra twelve miles of road left over. Paul rolled it all up and gave it back to the town to use elsewhere.

His logging camp was so big that when Sourdough Sam, the cook, made soup, he rowed out into the center of the big kettle with boatloads of cabbages, turnips and potatoes and shoveled them into the boiling water. The dining room tables were so long that Tiny Tim, the chore boy, usually drove the length of the table with the salt and pepper wagon, stayed all night and drove back in the morning for a fresh load. The cookhouse boys took to wearing rollerskates just to keep up with the serving.

It was said that Paul ate so many flap-jacks that the cook and his helpers couldn't supply the demand. Ole, the Blacksmith, made a griddle so large you couldn't see across it when the smoke was thick. Sourdough Sam had fifty men with bacon slabs tied to their feet skating around the griddle to grease it. The batter was mixed in large barrels and it took a strong cook just to turn the flapjacks, let alone get them to the table. Sourdough Sam's son, Hot Biscuit Slim, was credited with the idea of adding popcorn to the batter to make the flapjacks self-flipping.

Ole, the blacksmith, was the only man who could shoe Babe, the Blue Ox. Every time he made shoes for Babe they had to open a new iron mine. One time he carried a pair of Babe's shoes and their weight made him sink knee deep into the hard earth with every step. In his spare time Ole punched the holes in the donuts for the cook.

Tall Tales???? You betcha! Can you make a logging camp object large enough for Paul Bunyan to use??????

Barbara	Cait
Candace	Cindy
Karen	Lorraine