’Twas ’64 or ’65

We drove the great Round River Drive;

’Twas ’65 or ’64—

Yes, it was durin’ of the war,

Or it was after or before.

Those were the days in Michigan,

The good old days, when any man

Could cut and skid and log and haul,

And there was pine enough for all.

Then all the logger had to do

Was find some timber that was new

Besides a stream—he knew it ran

To Huron or to Michigan,

That at the mouth a mill there was

To take the timber for the saws.

(In those old days the pioneer

He need not read his title clear

To mansions there or timber here.)

Paul Bunyan, (you have heard of Paul?

He was the king pin of ’em all,

The greatest logger in the land;

He had a punch in either hand

And licked more men and drove more miles

And got more drunk in more new styles

Than any other peavey prince

Before, or then, or ever since.)

Paul Bunyan bossed that famous crew:

A bunch of shoutin’ bruisers, too—

Black Dan MacDonald, Tom McCann,

Dutch Jake, Red Murphy, Dirty Dan,

And other Dans from black to red,

With Curley Charley, yellow-head,

And Patsy Ward, from off the Clam—

The kind of gang to break a jam,

To clean a bar or rassle rum,

Or give a twenty to a bum.

Paul Bunyan and his fightin’ crew,

In ’64 or ’5 or ’2,

They started out to find the pines

Without much thought of section lines.

So west by north they made their way

One hundred miles until one day

They found good timber, level land,

And roarin’ water close at hand.

They built a bunk and cookhouse there;

They didn’t know exactly where

It was and, more, they didn’t care.

Before the spring, I give my word,

Some mighty funny things occurred.

Now, near the camp there was a spring

That used to steam like everything.

One day a chap that brought supplies

Had on a load of mammoth size,

A load of peas. Just on the road

Beside the spring he ditched his load

And all those peas, the bloomin’ mess,

Fell in the spring—a ton I guess.

He come to camp expectin’ he

Would get from Bunyan the G.B.

But Joe the Cook, a French Canuck,

Said, “Paul, I teenk it is ze luck—

Them spring is hot; so, Paul, pardon,

And we will have ze grand bouillon!”

To prove the teamster not at fault,

He took some pepper, pork and salt,

A right proportion each of these,

And threw them in among the peas—

And got enough, and good soup, too,

To last the whole of winter through.

The rest of us were kind of glad

He split the peas, when soup we had—

Except the flunkeys; they were mad

Because each day they had to tramp

Three miles and tote the soup to camp.

Joe had a stove, some furnace, too,

The size for such a hungry crew.

Say what you will, it is the meat,

The pie and sinkers, choppers eat

That git results. It is the beans

And spuds that are the best machines

For fallin’ Norway, skiddin’ pine,

And keepin’ hemlock drives in line.

This stove of Joe’s it was a rig

For cookin’ grub that was so big

It took a solid cord of wood

To git a fire to goin' good.

The flunkeys cleaned three forties bare

Each week to keep a fire in there.

That stove’s dimensions south to north,

From east to westward, and so forth,

I don’t remember just exact,

And do not like to state a fact

Unless I know that fact is true,

For I would hate deceiving you.

Put in a mammoth batch of dough;

And then he thought (at least he tried)

To take it out the other side.

But when he went to walk around

The stove (it was so far) he found

That long before the bend he turned

The bread not only baked but burned.

We had two hands for flunkeys, Sam

And Tom. Joe used to strap a ham

Upon each foot of each of them

When we had pancakes each A.M.

They’d skate around the stove lids for

An hour or so, or maybe more,

And grease ’em for him. But one day

Old Pink-eye Martin (anyway

He couldn’t see so very good),

Old Pink-eye he misunderstood

Which was the bakin’-powder can

And in the dough eight fingers ran

Of powder, blastin’-powder black—

Those flunkeys never did come back.

They touched a cake, a flash, and poof!

Went Sam and Tommie through the roof.

We hunted for a month or so

But never found ’em—that, you know,

It was the year of the blue snow.

We put one hundred million feet

On skids that winter. Hard to beat,

You say it was? It was some crew.

We took it off one forty, too.

A hundred million feet we skid—

That forty was a pyramid;

It runs up skyward to a peak—

To see the top would take a week.

The top of it, it seems to me,

Was far as twenty men could see.

But down below, the stuff we slides,

For there was trees on all four sides.

And, by the way, a funny thing

Occurred along in early Spring.

One day we seen some deer tracks there,

As big as any of a bear.

Old Forty Jones (he’s straw-boss on

The side where those there deer had gone)

He doesn’t say a thing but he

Thinks out a scheme, and him and me

We set a key-log in a pile,

And watched that night for quite a while.

And when the deer come down to drink

We tripped the key-log in a wink.

We killed two hundred in the herd-

For Forty’s scheme was sure a bird.

Enough of venison we got

To last all Winter, with one shot.

Paul Bunyan had the biggest steer

That ever was, in camp that year.

Nine horses he’d out-pull and skid—

He weighed five thousand pounds, he did.

The barn boss (handy man besides)

Made him a harness from the hides

Of all the deer (it took ’em all)

And Pink-eye Martin used to haul

His stove wood in. Remember yet

How buckskin stretches when it’s wet?

One day when he was haulin’ wood,

(A dead log that was dry and good)

One cloudy day, it started in

To rainin’ like the very sin.

Well, Pink-eye pounded on the ox

And beat it over roads and rocks

To camp. He landed there all right

And turned around—no log in sight!

But down the road, around the bend,

Those tugs were stretchin’ without end.

Well, Pink-eye he goes in to eat.

The sun comes out with lots of heat.

It dries the buckskin that was damp

And hauls the log right into camp!

That was a pretty lucky crew

And yet we had some hard luck, too.

You’ve heard of Phalen, double-jawed?

He had two sets of teeth that sawed

Through almost anything. One night

He sure did use his molars right.

While walkin’ in his sleep he hit

The filer’s rack and, after it,

Then with the stone-trough he collides—

Which makes him sore, and mad besides.

Before he wakes, so mad he is,

He works those double teeth of his,

And long before he gits his wits

He chews that grindstone into bits.

But still we didn’t miss it so;

For to the top we used to go

And from the forty’s highest crown

We’d start the stones a-rollin’ down.

We’d lay an ax on every one

And follow it upon the run;

And, when we reached the lowest ledge,

Each ax it had a razor edge.

So passed the Winter day by day,

Not always work, not always play.

We fought a little, worked a lot,

And played whatever chance we got.

Jim Liverpool, for instance, bet

Across the river he could get

By jumpin’, and he won it, too.

He got the laugh on half the crew:

For twice in air he stops and humps

And makes the river in three jumps.

We didn’t have no booze around,

For every fellow that we found

And sent to town for applejack

Would drink it all up comin’ back.

One day the bull cook parin’ spuds

He hears a sizzlin’ in the suds

And finds the peelin’s, strange to say,

Are all fermentin’ where they lay.

Now Sour-face Murphy in the door

Was standin’. And the face he wore

Convinced the first assistant cook

That Murphy soured ’em with his look.

And when he had the parin’s drained

A quart of Irish booze remained.

The bull cook tells the tale to Paul

And Paul takes Murphy off the haul

And gives him, very willingly,

A job as camp distillery.

At last, a hundred million in,

’Twas time for drivin’ to begin.

We broke our rollways in a rush

And started through the rain and slush

To drive the hundred million down

Until we reached some sawmill town.

We didn’t know the river’s name,

Nor where to someone’s mill it came,

But figured that, without a doubt,

To some good town ’twould fetch us out

If we observed the usual plan

And drove the way the current ran.

Well, after we had driven for

At least two weeks, and maybe more,

We come upon a pyramid

That looked just like our forty did.

Some two weeks more and then we passed

A camp that looked just like the last.

Two weeks again another, too,

That looked like our camp, come in view.

Then Bunyan called us all ashore

And held a council—like of war.

He said, with all this lumbering,

Our logs would never fetch a thing.

The next day after, Sliver Jim

He has the wits scared out of him;

For while he’s breakin’ of a jam

He comes upon remains of Sam,

The flunkey who made the great ascent

And through the cookhouse ceilin’ went

When Pink-eye grabbed the fatal tin

And put the blastin’ powder in.

And then we realized at last

That ev’ry camp that we had passed

Was ours. Yes, it was then we found

The river we was on was round.

And, though we’d driven many a mile,

We drove a circle all the while!

And that’s the truth, as I’m alive,

About the great Round River Drive.

What’s that? Did ever anyone

Come on that camp of ’61,

Or ’63, or ’65,

The year we drove Round River Drive?

Yes, Harry Gustin, Pete and me

Tee Hanson and some two or three

Of good and truthful lumbermen

Came on that famous camp again.

In west of Graylin’ 50 miles,

Where all the face of Nature smiles,

We found the place in ’84—

But it had changed some since the war.

The fire had run some Summer through

And spoiled the logs and timber, too.

The sun had dried the river clean

But still its bed was plainly seen.

And so we knew it was the place

For of the past we found a trace-

A peavey loggers know so well,

A peavey with a circle L,

Which, as you know, was Bunyan’s mark.

The hour was late, ’twas gittin’ dark;

We had to move. But there’s no doubt

It was the camp I’ve told about.

We eastward went, a corner found,

And took another look around.

Round River so we learned that day,

On Section 37 lay.