Timber!: The Story of the Lumberjack World Championships

Real Life Paul Bunyans

Whether they were conscious of it or not, the kings of timber sports were real-life manifestations of Paul Bunyan. The Paul Bunyan legend is pervasive in American society when the average Joe thinks of logging. Baseball players of more than a century ago, pitcher Cy Young and hitter Ty Cobb, for example, are well known to acolytes of the sport. Football players of the 1920s like Red Grange and Bronko Nagurski are well known to their sport’s fans. Fans of 1950s and 1960s pro basketball can tell you all about the Boston Celtics dynasty with Bob Cousy and the duels between Bill Russell and Wilt Chamberlain. But try to name a single old-time lumberjack. There are no heroes celebrated through generational memories and storytelling. There are no well-known timber sports athletes that predate the start of the Lumberjack World Championships. There is only the fictional Paul Bunyan. Although his height, weight, and exploits vary depending on the tall tale told, it is Paul Bunyan whom everyone knows, not a genuine Babe Ruth of logging. Daniel Boone and Davy Crockett were flesh-and-blood human beings and became fabled representatives of the American frontier whether or not they truly did the things for which they are credited. If there was a person named Paul Bunyan working the forests in the nineteenth century, it has never been proven. “Paul Bunyan, whoever may have actually borne that name, had by the turn of the [twentieth] century become in story the prototype of the powerful logger.” That is how author 101 Real Life Paul Bunyans Real Life Paul Bunyans Daniel Hoffman describes things in his book Paul Bunyan: Last of the Frontier Demigods, published in 1952. Tracking down the origins and history of the Paul Bunyan story requires a decent sized budget or at least access to many frequent-flier miles. There is the Paul Bunyan of Maine. There is the Paul Bunyan of Wisconsin. And there is the Paul Bunyan of Oregon. Paul apparently popped up in California, too. Either he really got around or there were many Pauls, adopted by loggers in their stories. What began as a verbal tradition escalated into print. Even today, there are new Paul Bunyan stories being published, freshly illustrated with a modern-day artist’s image of the giant among loggers and his sidekick, the resourceful and monstrous-sized Babe the Blue Ox. Paul Bunyan was the focus of the best lumberjack stories in the logging camps because he was an unbeaten kingpin of the forest who stood up for the little guy. He represented good in the good and evil equation and in essence was the patron saint of loggers. When he wasn’t busy making the world safe for democracy, so to speak, Bunyan was either indulging in aweinspiring feats of strength or simply using his prodigious talents in a way that intimidated louses and raised the spirits of the weak. In short, at least by the 1920s, Paul Bunyan was sort of a superhero, minus a cape, in the guise of a protector and was multitalented enough to do just about anything. He was a romanticized image of the real-life logger. And real-life loggers carried a swagger in their step developed from their own self-confidence and prowess in the forest and the sense of romanticism that was attached to their profession. Baseball, basketball, and football players have become heroes through their highly publicized abilities in their sports. Loggers of the past did not perform in stadiums, arenas, or county fairs. Most of the witnesses to their feats of skill were other loggers. Theirs was a compact world, and nobody on the streets of New York would say of a flannel-shirted gent walking through Times Square, “There goes the greatest sawyer who ever lived.” Call it star power or hero making, Tony Wise knew that the best thing he had going for him at the Lumberjack World Championships when he started the event in 1960 was its collection of characters. There are no official odds on such a thing, but Wise had to know that it was a fifty-fifty proposition how the average lumberjack sports fan would react to his show. They might say, “These guys are all crazy and what they do is crazier.” Or they might say, “Wow, that looks hard to do, but it’s pretty impressive.” 102 [3.133.108.241] Project MUSE (2024-04-25 18:31 GMT...