00:30and Babe the Blue Ox by Janet Gleiter and Kathleen Thompson illustrated by
00:35Yoshiyuki Miyake. Paul Bunyan was big. That's the first thing that anyone
00:46should know about him. He was very, very big. Nobody knows exactly how big he was
00:52but there are some stories.
00:57They say that when he was a baby, Paul was too big to stay in the house so his
01:03father had to cut down tall trees to make a boat. His mother made a blanket as
01:09big as a football field. Then they put the boat on a river and tucked in Paul
01:14and the waves rocked him to sleep. But in a lot of ways, Paul was like any other
01:23baby. When he woke up, he wanted to play. He laughed. He rolled around in his boat
01:29bed and when Paul rolled, the boat made a wave taller than a house. Then it made a
01:35wave taller than two houses. The waves smashed onto the shore. People on land
01:41had to climb onto the roofs of their houses. They went up into trees. Some of
01:46them climbed up the church steeple.
01:51After that, Paul's mother and father were more careful. As he grew up, they taught
01:57him many things. They had to tell him don't step on farms and don't lean on
02:02small mountains. They also taught him to use an axe and that was what Paul really
02:08loved. There were lots of trees to cut down in those days. America was covered
02:14with forests and people needed trees to make houses and farms and to help build
02:18railroads.
02:22Nobody could cut down trees like Paul Bunyan. He would swing his shiny axe and
02:27trees fell like toothpicks. He could cut down a whole forest before lunch and
02:32another one before dinner. Paul liked his life as a logger, but he needed a friend.
02:38He was lonely for someone his own size. Then came the winter of the blue snow.
02:48That winter, snow fell all over the land. The snow was as blue as a sky. No, it was
02:55bluer than that. It was as blue as blue ink. It came down in big blue flakes.
03:01Nobody had ever seen anything like it. One day, Paul was out walking in the blue
03:07snow. He was being very careful not to step on the snow-covered trees and then
03:12he saw a small blue mountain that he hadn't seen before. As he got closer, the
03:18mountain moved. Snow started to fall from the mountain and Paul saw two huge horns.
03:27The mountain turned out to be an ox as blue as the snow and almost as big as
03:32Paul. Paul named the ox Babe. Babe the Blue Ox stayed with Paul all of his life
03:38and was his best friend. Once, Paul measured from one of Babe's eyes to the
03:44other. They were exactly 27 axe handles and a plug of tobacco apart. Just one of
03:51Babe's iron shoes was so heavy that a man who tried to carry it would sink it
03:56to the ground all the way up to his belt. If Paul could cut down a forest in one
04:02morning, then Babe could carry it on his back.
04:07When Paul grew up, he had his own logging camp. He had a bookkeeper named Johnny
04:13Inkslinger and two cooks named Sourdough Sam and Hot Biscuit Slim and he hired
04:19hundreds of loggers. One was named Hals Halverson. He was almost as big as Paul.
04:25Sourdough Sam and Hot Biscuit Slim used a griddle as big as an ice skating rink.
04:30Every time they wanted to grease it, a dozen loggers strapped big chunks of
04:35bacon to their feet and skated on it until it was ready. Then the cooks would
04:40mix up a few hundred tons of pancake batter. When they poured it on the
04:45griddle, pancakes could be smelled from the Great Lakes to the Rocky Mountains.
04:49The cooks always made an extra train carload for Babe.
04:56One of Paul's biggest jobs was in North Dakota. Back then, there wasn't an inch of
05:03land in North Dakota that wasn't covered with trees and people wanted farms. So
05:08Paul said that he would clear the whole state. He made the biggest logging camp
05:12that the world has ever seen. Every building in the camp was as big as a
05:17town. The dining room was so big that the loggers would get hungry just waiting in
05:22line for their food. So Paul built lunch counters every mile or so. That way the
05:28loggers could have snacks while they were waiting for their meals.
05:35Paul and Babe carried water to the camp from the Great Lakes. Paul put a big tank
05:41on Babe's back and filled it. As Babe walked to North Dakota, his hoof prints
05:47made holes in the ground. The water splashing from the tank filled the holes.
05:51That's why there are so many lakes in Minnesota. Once, Babe tripped. All of the
05:58water spilled from the tank and started the Mississippi River.
06:04It didn't take long for Paul and Hal's and the other loggers to cut down all
06:09the trees in North Dakota. But then there was a problem. There were tree stumps
06:14every few feet across the entire state. Farms can't have tree stumps on the land.
06:20Hal's, Paul said to his friend, you and I have some work to do. The two of them
06:27walked all over the state of North Dakota. Every time they saw a tree stump
06:31they used their big fists to pound it into the ground. In a week they had
06:36pounded down every single stump.
06:41Paul wanted to find out just how good the land was for farming. So he planted a
06:47kernel of corn. Before he could turn around and walk away, the corn started
06:52growing. It grew so fast that pretty soon the top of the stalk couldn't be seen.
06:57Hal's, said Paul, you climb up that corn stalk and cut off the top so it won't
07:03poke a hole in the sky. Well, Hal's started climbing but the corn was
07:08growing faster than Hal's could climb. In just a minute, Hal's was out of sight too.
07:13Paul yelled at him to come down. It took an hour for Hal's voice to reach the
07:19ground. I'm trying but the corn's going up faster than I can come down and I'm
07:25getting hungry.
07:29So Paul loaded a big shotgun with biscuits and shot them to Hal so he
07:35wouldn't starve to death. And then Paul grabbed a bunch of rails from the
07:39logging railroad and tied them around the corn stalk as if he were tying a
07:43ribbon. The stalk kept on growing taller and wider but the rails cut into it. In a
07:49few minutes, the corn stalk cut itself in half where the rails were tied. The
07:54stalk was so tall that it took three days for all of it to fall. When it got
08:00close to the ground, Hal's jumped off. Well, said Paul, I guess the land is good
08:06enough for the farmers so I'm finished here.
08:11Paul said goodbye to all of his friends in the camp and started off to look for
08:16more trees to cut. He took Babe with him. Once, as they were walking, Paul was
08:22careless. He let his axe drag behind him and it dug out the ground to form the
08:27Grand Canyon. When Paul was in California, he chopped down redwood trees. They were
08:33really big in those days. In fact, it used to rain every time a cloud bumped into a
08:39redwood.
08:42Some people say that Paul and Babe ended up in Alaska. Maybe they did. If so, Paul
08:49probably still swings his big axe and Babe is walking right beside him.
09:01I hope you enjoyed that story. If you would like to see these books uploaded
09:06daily, go ahead and subscribe and don't forget to check out all the other
09:09stories that are already uploaded. Thank you so much for watching.
