We all come from somewhere. I come from Michigan where the golden cornfields and the gray factories merge, and these just south of the evergreen forests. As with me, I expect you are part of your land, its colors, its textures, its myths and legends. Among my country’s myths and legends, Paul Bunyan, lumberjack, giant, good-hearted soul, a man who caused the golden cornfields, the new forests, and the factories, none of which would be if not for the ax and the will of Paul Bunyan. Michigan Paul Bunyan
“Sure, right,” you say, thinking me a naïf, and yet I saw the man; well, I saw his statue whose likeness was taken from the man himself, as I was told. This was 1959 or thereabouts, when I was a few years old, just a few years older than Paul’s statue. Should mention, statued next to Paul, Babe, his blue ox. Blue because Babe was born on the coldest day ever known, a day when words turned to blue icicles, a day when geese flew backwards. That day, Paul found Babe frigid, almost frozen in snow, so Paul took Babe home to camp and fire and there warmed him and thawed him and heard the words of Babe’s mother now unfrozed and hearable, and Paul had pity and took Babe as his own.
There they are, Babe and Paul just as I met them some 65 years ago. Well, almost like they were 65 years ago. Now, Babe and Paul are fenced, either to keep we little people out or to keep the big people in. Perhaps the fence works both ways, for truly, these days we little people seek protection from free thoughts, great men, and towering imaginations. Yes, I suppose the barbed link fence is intended to keep Paul in. Cannot have a great man wandering about, especially if he is white and free. Even so, I would hope that Paul and Babe be let out once a year. Not so much for them, but because we need stories, tales bigger than us, truer than us, universe size so that we might come to know big true things. We’ve had too much of little, safe, fenced in stories.
Recently when paused in Saint Ignace, second oldest city in European Michigan (1671), I visited with Mark Eby, owner of Castle Rock, keeper of Paul Bunyan. Mark admitted that his uncle made Paul and Babe of chicken wire and concrete, materials stronger, longer-lived than mere flesh. And there they are looking newborn, eternal as proper statues should look. True, Mark’s uncle did not have this sculptor’s practiced hands, yet I would not doubt that his statue’s sincerity will outlive the refined statues I have made. God grants favor where he will. Michigan Paul Bunyan
Rather, it is for we the living to pay our debts to those who by sweat, virtue, and imagination built this land, her buildings, fields, roads, towns and institutions. We all are favored by those who came before, and we all favor those who come after, even though best intentions sometimes go bad. “Who owes what to whom for good or ill,” you might ask. Not for me to answer; I am merely a man along the way. God sorts it all out, later.
It is for we the living to honor the good, forgive the unintentional. For my part, by an avowal when 17, I honor my fathers of flesh, myth, history and legend by preserving their memory in words, colors, stones and metals. In fealty I am restoring Paul Bunyan in silhouette, cameo, and statuette on the occasion of our Semiquincentennial, the 250th anniversary of our nation’s God-guided birth (2026). You can watch the Michigan Paul Bunyan statuettes and cameos come to life at michaeljcurtis.com. Michigan Paul Bunyan
Here at The Studio Books, my gratitude to Paul is expressed in Bunyan’s Chores, an account of Paul Bunyan’s labors, labors much like those of his elder brother, Herakles, but labors of ax rather than of club, labors that are not Greek and fanciful but are American and practical. Because Bunyan’s Chores is soon to be released in a Studio Press edited version, I posted here these recollections of Paul, my youth, fathers and faithfulness.
We all come from somewhere. Paul Bunyan comes from what Christian men planted in America’s fertile soil.
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Other mentions of Paul Bunyan are found in the links, below.
Ax in Hand, Michael Curtis Poetry – The Studio Books
American Myths and Legends – The Studio Books
America 250: American Heroes, Myths & Legends
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MICHIGAN PAUL BUNYAN
Michigan Paul Bunyan
