A long, long time ago, Paul and Babe were vacationing near Pequot Lakes after sending their last load of logs down the Mississippi. Paul thought he'd try his luck at catching Notorious Nate - O' One-Eyed Jakes' cousin, a forty foot northern so mean that he was expelled from every school of fish in the five-state area. Nate had only one weakness - his love for Sunfish Sally - the sassiest, sexiest, fantail sunfish you ever did see!
I would like to share a story of Paul Bunyan that was told to me many years back. Of course I may have forgotten some details, but hope that the importance of the story is not lost.
Don’t you just love maple syrup? Heck, everybody loves maple syrup! Paul does. Babe does. The whole loggin’ crew goes mad for maple syrup! But do you know how it’s made? Well I’m here to tell ya.
Early one spring morning, two of Paul Bunyan's kitchen boys were sitting on the dock waiting for Sourdough Sam to finish mixing his famous flapjack batter. They were dangling their feet over the dock into the water. That way, the slabs of bacon strapped to their feet would keep cool until it was time to grease the griddle (and that's how the expression "cooling their heels" came about).
As all who read this know, parades are a very popular event throughout America. We have parades for the 4th of July, Thanksgiving, Christmas, Halloween and St. Patrick's Day; for college bowl games and homecomings and hundreds of other events. There is a parade for nearly every occasion, event or celebration held in both small and large towns and cities all across this great nation. The parade has become an American Tradition. And here's how the parade got its start.
Necessity is the Mother of all Invention. And Paul Bunyan found it to be true in this case.
Right here, before there was a dam, me and the lumberjacks would float logs down the Pine River from Norway Lake, just a little ways upstream. There was a lot of good timber up there, some say the biggest stand of white pine in the whole Northwest! But, every time we floated those logs down this very river, we had to put up with the GIANT Ducks.
So here's what we did.
You see, Buzzsaw Boo McGoo had come down with the rheumatiz last December and couldn’t work in the woods that season. After spending all their savings on rheumatiz medicine, Boo and his wife Sue still had seven young’uns to feed, and they were in a real pinch.
There’s a lot of good can be said about having a few chickens around. Most folks know that. A few eggs each day and they pretty much earn their keep, well the hens do anyway. You’ll see ‘em prancing around, poking at the dirt and keeping the bothersome crawling things in check. Little chicks, yellow puffballs that they are, do a darn good job of keeping young ‘uns occupied, playing with ‘em and petting ‘em and such. Yep, generally chickens do more good for you than not.
