Saturday, February 24, 2018

A Saturday Evening Folktale




Cause nobody but a logger
Stirs his coffee with his thumb...




The Frozen Logger

A tall tale of the tall tree toppers
from the Northwest logging country





I sat down one evening
Within a small cafe
A forty year old waitress
To me these words did say:
"I see you are a logger
And not just a common bum,
'Cause nobody but a logger
Stirs his coffee with his thumb."

My lover was a logger,
There's none like him today;
If you'd pour whiskey on it
He could eat a bale of hay.

He never shaved his whiskers
From off his horny hide;
He's just drive them in with a hammer
And bite them off inside.

My lover came to see me
Upon one freezing day;
He held me in a fond embrace
Which broke three vertebrae.

He kissed me when we parted,
So hard that he broke my jaw;
I could not speak to tell him
He'd forgot his mackinaw.

I saw my lover leaving,
Sauntering through the snow,
Going gaily homeward
At forty-eight below.

The weather it tried to freeze him,
It tried its level best;
At a hundred degrees below zero
He buttoned up his vest.

It froze clean through to China,
It froze to the stars above;
At a thousand degrees below zero
It froze my logger love.

And so I lost my lover,
And to this cafe I come,
And here I wait till someone
Stirs his coffee with his thumb.




Dashing through the snow at forty-eight below?
A Klondiker hauling logs with a dog sled team to Dawson
in the Yukon Territory
(c.1898)





"The Frozen Logger"
The Weavers
(1959)



"The Frozen Logger"
Words and Music by James Stevens
Copyright 1951 Folkways Music Publishers. Inc.
New York, N.Y.










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