Paul Bunyan and Babe, The Big Blue Ox

So we get back to tootlin' up the highway.  It starts to snow and the wind picks up.

We turn north and head for Bemidji.  The snow gets heavier and "flakier."  It begins to build up on the highway.  Headlights come on and windshield wipers.

At Bemidji we plan to turn west and head for home, hoping to make it by nightfall.  Remember, I always go prepared, so we have food and "Big Bertha" the sleeping bag...

But, surprise, surprise (why am I ALWAYS surprised?) we have to make a stop in Bemidji to have our pictures taken with my childhood fictional folk hero friends, Paul Bunyan and Babe, his big blue ox.  Faint little memories are coming back to me that, yes, Minnesota was his home, but I don't recall Bemidji being his "hometown."  However, here they are, bigger than life (literally!)

Now I've had my picture taken on Wall Street with the Bull and in Minnesota with the Ox!

I hope the following excerpts from the folk lore will entice you to actually get some of the stories about him and read them:

Now I hear tell that Paul Bunyan was born in Bangor, Maine. It took five giant storks to deliver Paul to his parents. His first bed was a lumber wagon pulled by a team of horses. His father had to drive the wagon up to the top of Maine and back whenever he wanted to rock the baby to sleep... 

Well now, one winter it was so cold that all the geese flew backward and all the fish moved south and even the snow turned blue. Late at night, it got so frigid that all spoken words froze solid afore they could be heard. People had to wait until sunup to find out what folks were talking about the night before...  (That was the winter Babe was born.)


One winter, shortly after Paul Bunyan dug Lake Michigan as a drinking hole for his blue ox, Babe, he decided to camp out in the Upper Peninsula. It was so cold in that there logging camp, that... 


One winter, Paul Bunyan came to log along the Little Gimlet in Oregon. Ask any old timer who was logging that winter, and they'll tell you I ain't lying when I say his kitchen covered about ten miles of territory...

They were tall tales for sure, but very, very entertaining to young and old.  It was the year 1910 and America needed a hero and some cheering up.  We were in the midst of World War I, there were problems with unemployment (horror of horrors! unemployment was at .023% - that's point-zero-two-three, but that translated to over 2 million out of work), and Americans had workplace safety issues and child labor scandals, and life expectancy was about 50 (compared to about 80 today).  There were immigration and poverty issues, less than 10% of students graduated from high school, black people were barred by labor unions from joining and therefore kept at terribly low wages, women still didn't have the right to vote - didn't get that right until 1919.  (Black men got the right to vote in 1867)  See?  Aren't you already more depressed than when you were reading Paul's tall tales??  Newspapermen all across the country realized this guy could have their print flying off of news stands everywhere.


Paul Bunyan was the embodiment of American frontier vitality.  He is still a "symbol of might, the willingness to work hard, and the resolve to overcome all obstacles."  Granpa, too, just had to have his picture taken with this giant of a man and his faithful companion, Babe.

We made it home after dark - but we made it home safe and sound.