lumber wagon drawn by a team of oxen was Paul's baby carriage. By the time Paul was one year old his clothing was so large that he had to use the wagon wheels for buttons. Only the great outdoors was big enough to accommodate Paul — so it was only natural that he should become the World's Greatest Lumberjack.

n his first birthday, Paul's father gave him a pet blue ox which Paul named Babe. Like Paul, Babe grew fast, and soon was seven-axe-handles-and-a-plug-of-tobacco-wide between the eyes. For a between-meals snack, Babe would eat 30 bales of hay. Paul and Babe were so large, the tracks they made galivanting around Minnesota filled up and made the 10,000 lakes

abe hauled the huge camp tank wagon which was used to pave the winter logging roads with ice. When it sprung a leak one day it created Lake Itasca, south of Bemidji, and the overflow flows all the way down to New Orleans and is the Great Mississippi River. Since Babe refused to haul logs unless there was snow on the ground, Paul had to whitewash the roads in summer.

abe had many jobs around the logging camp where the laundry man hung out the wash on Babes horns. But perhaps Babe's biggest job was pulling kinks out of crooked logging roads.

aul and Babe were a good team and no feat of strength or courage was beyond them. No obstacles ever stumped them. Paul could cut down acres of timber single handedly in a few minutes by tying his huge ax to the end of a long rope and swinging it in circles. Babe could haul the logs away as fast as Paul could cut them.

aul's booming voice forced his lumberjacks to wear earmuffs the year-round. His lung power was so great that he called his logging crews together by whistling through a hollow tree. Once he whistled too hard and blew down 12 acres of jack pine. Every time Paul sneezed, he blew the roof off the bunkhouse. Paul's logging crew was made up of giants too, but none as big nor as strong as the "King of the Lumberjacks." Nevertheless, his loggers were all over six feet sitting down, and they sharpened their axes by holding them against huge stones rolling down a hill. Also each one of Paul's crew of seven was named Elmer so when Paul called they all came running

his brings us to the time in Bemidji when it got so cold that it came to be known as the "Year of the Two Winters." The snow was so deep that Paul had to dig down to find the trees. It was so cold that the boiling coffee froze so fast, it was still hot when frozen.

he loggers let their beards grow full length that year and some had to tuck them in their boots to keep from tripping. In the spring, Paul stacked them like hay and sold them for making mattresses. During the "Year of the Two Winters" it was so cold at the camp on Lake Bemidji that words froze in midair. When the words thawed out in the spring there was a huge roar of conversation that could be heard 600 miles away in Chicago.

hat was the year, too, when all the fish went south for the winter. Paul Bunyan then crossed the walleyes and northern pike with bobcats and ever since, the fish in the Bemidji area grow fur coats in winter.

ne time Paul's men started the logs down a new river which they had never seen before. They began to notice that they were seeing familiar places over and over and over again. They finally realized that they were on the Round River which naturally went round and round and had no end. Paul knew that this was a bad thing so he shoveled out the center of the river and made it into a big lake which is now known as Round Lake.

aul's camp crew is deserving of mention. There was Sourdough Sam, the camp cook, for instance. He made flapjacks on a griddle so big it had to be greased by skaters with slabs of bacon tied to their feet. One time, when a load of pork and beans went through the ice in Lake Bemidji, Sam had huge trees built along the shore and boiled the lake to make soup. 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.

ourdough Sam’s son Biscuit Slim was a champion bicycle rider. Ole Olafson rigged up the giant eggbeater with pedals and a chain, and Biscuit Slim rode that eggbeater all around the lake, frothing up the batter for the flapjacks. Now, there’s no type of flapjack better than a blueberry flapjack. Paul’s sweetheart hiked from Hackensack with two hearty handfuls of blueberry bushes in her humongous hands. She shook all the blueberries off the bushes into the mix.

le, 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.

ohnny Inkslinger was the camp's head clerk. He invented bookkeeping about the same time that Paul invented logging. He kept track of everything down to the last bean. He used a pen (his own invention) connected to a barrel by a hose. In one week he saved twelve barrels of ink by not crossing his t's or dotting his i's.

port, the Reversible Dog, was the camp pet and the best hunter. One of the axemen accidentally cut Sport in two with an axe. In his haste to mend the dog, he had him sewed up with his back half twisted opposite. This didn't bother Sport. He ran on his front legs until they were tired, then flopped over and ran on his hind legs.

uring the slack season, Paul's men made him a pipe. This wasn't easy. They had to select a special giant hickory tree and haul it in on two flatcars so they could work on it. In the early days Paul's smoking never bothered anyone, but in later years he started blowing his smoke west to keep his forest air fresh. This is what caused the smogs on the west coast.