Book Review: Legends of Paul Bunyan 
By Matthew C Beaudin, Guide to Colorado

We all still want to believe. Us adults. We want folklore and myth. We need constructions like Paul Bunyan —they lend reason and greatness to the everyday that, otherwise, can seem mundane and slip right by us.

A classic book, originally debuted in 1947, “Legends of Paul Bunyan,” has made it to my nightstand. The book, compiled by Harold W. Felton, weaves myriad tales of Paul into one volume. Best Made recently started selling a handsome reprint, complete with illustrations.

Robert Frost pens a misty tale of Paul’s wife. We get a glimpse of a sawmill that transcends the space and time continuum. We’re never too old for stories. Never too old to believe. According to Constance Mayfield Rourke’s “Paul’s Big Griddle,” Paul cut lumber out in North Dakota at the rate of a million feet an hour. He did this because he needed to clear the entire state, as the King of Sweden wanted it so. No idea why the King ordered that, but that’s not important. What is important? Paul had no way to feed his men, of which he had many. Their hotcake griddle, which was so large the cooks had to use telephone poles with gunny-sacks on the end to grease it, wasn’t nearly big enough.

Our man Paul made ready the mule team, which, of course, ate seven bushels of wheat apiece per day. Paul ultimately brought back a skillet so massive that when it got away from him and careened into the earth it made a crater below. The cooks greased the skilled with bacon on their feet. It took four minutes for a whistle to make it across the pan.

Next time you make a pancake, think about that; you think about man-size cooks bacon-skating across a griddle the size of a county. You know the foam you see in the rivers, the froth that collects on the banks of creeks. Paul created all the foam in the rivers — in the world — when he demolished another man in a log-spinning contest on the open water.  He stood atop that long and spun it so furiously that it just foamed and foamed. Turned all of the water into a latte. Of course he did. We need folk heroes like Paul Bunyan. Our stories, no matter how dusty, and our tales, no matter how tall, stitch all of us together. And that’s something we should want to share.

Now, about those pickles in your fridge. Babe just moved a billion feet of logs. And he’s hungry. And if your river stops running? Well, when that ox, 16 feet between the eyes, draws a drink, the river empties three miles downstream. 

Purchase Legends of Paul Bunyan

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    American Folklore, pick
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