Paul Bunyan, The Tall Timber Man
Narrator:
Tonight I’m going to tell you a story about Paul Bunyan. I’d like for you to watch and listen carefully. Do everything I do.
In the old logging days of the American northwest, men who cut timber sat around the campfire at night and told tall takes about a mythical lumberjack named Paul Bunyan.
The loggers said that Paul was so tall that he used a young pine tree to comb his hair (pantomime combing hair). He always did things in a big way (stretch out arms). His ax had a woven grass handle and when he swung it in a circle (pretend to hold ax in hands and swing it in a circle) he could cut down 1000 trees.
Babe, his big blue ox, had a head that was forty-two ax handles wide (arms outstretched). She could drink a river dry. She was so big that a bird flying from one horn in the fall didn’t reach the other horn until spring (make flying motions with hand).
Paul Bunyan has a helper called Johnny Inkslinger. He was a bookkeeper. Johnny used a fountain pen made from a hose attached to a barrel. It took thirty men just to keep the barrel filled with ink (pretend dumping bucket of ink into barrel).
The griddle on which the pancakes were cooked at Paul’s logging camp was so big that the cook hired boys with bacon strapped to their feet to skate across the griddle to grease it (make skating motions with feet). One day a visitor tot he camp said to the cook, “Why do you have those logs piled up outside the kitchen?” “Those aren’t logs” the cook replied. “They’re sausages!”
One story tells how Paul dug a channel for the Mississippi River (pantomime digging motions). The dirt he piled up on both sides of the channel became the Rocky and Allegheny Mountains.
Another story tells how Paul needed some water for Babe. He dug 5 holes (pantomime digging motions) and filled them with water. The water holes became the Great Lakes.
The men in Paul’s logging camp were ordinary sized men. They came up toes of Paul’s boots (look upward). The smokestacks in camp were so high they were rigged up on hinges so they could be lowered to let the clouds go by (pantomime lowering).
And that folks is the story of Paul Bunyan, the tall timber man.