Febold Feboldson and the Great Fog (Campfire Story)

Paul Bunyan had the north woods. Pecos Bill had Texas. But out on the Nebraska prairie, the greatest hero of them all was a big Swedish pioneer named FEBOLD Feboldson.

FEBOLD was so tall he had to kneel down to look at the moon. He could plow a field with a fork. And there was nothing on the prairie he couldn't fix. Except the weather. The weather out on the prairie was the orneriest weather in the world.

One year, it didn't rain. Not in spring. Not in summer. Not in fall. It was HOT. It was so HOT that the corn popped right on the stalk, and the cows thought it was snow and froze to death. It was so HOT that the chickens laid hard-boiled eggs. It was so HOT that the farmers had to feed their hens crushed ice, just to get them to lay eggs that weren't fried.

And it was dry, too. It was so dry that the FROGS in the ponds had never seen water, and they never learned to swim. The children had never seen rain. When their parents told them stories about water falling out of the sky, they laughed and called it a tall tale.

Everybody came to FEBOLD. 'FEBOLD, you've got to make it rain!'

'Ja, sure,' said FEBOLD. 'Rain, I can do.'

He knew there was a little bit of water left, far off in a big muddy lake in Kansas. So he built a ring of bonfires all around the lake and kept them burning day and night. The water got HOT, and hotter, and it rose up out of the lake as steam, and made a cloud. FEBOLD fanned it all the way across the prairie with his hat.

Just as the cloud got over Nebraska, it was ready to rain. But something went wrong. It had been HOT for so long that the raindrops got scared of the dry, dusty ground, and they wouldn't come down. Instead, the cloud just sank, lower and lower, and spread out all over the prairie.

And that's how they got the Great FOG.

It was a FOG so thick you couldn't see your own nose. Farmers got lost going out to the barn, and found their way home three days later. A man who whistled for his dog got somebody else's dog. And the FROGS? Now that it was wet, the FROGS finally learned to swim. They swam right up through the FOG, fifty feet above the ground, croaking all the way.

The FOG was so thick it didn't move. It just sat there for weeks. So once again, everybody came to FEBOLD. 'FEBOLD, you've got to get rid of this FOG!'

'Ja, sure,' said FEBOLD.

He went to his barn and got the biggest crosscut saw he had. He walked out into the FOG, set the saw against it, and started to cut. Back and forth, back and forth. And sure enough, a big square block of FOG came loose and fell on the ground with a soft, wet thump.

FEBOLD cut that FOG into blocks all day long. He stacked them up like hay bales. When he had a few thousand, he hauled them off to the side of the road and buried them, one by one, all along the way. By evening, the sky was blue and the sun was shining.

And that's the end of the story. Except for one thing. Every spring, when the ground warms up, those old buried blocks of FOG start to melt. And that, folks, is why the dirt roads of Nebraska turn to mud every spring.

And the FROGS? They never did come all the way down. On a foggy night out on the prairie, you can still hear them up there somewhere.

point to the crowd

Storyteller tips: the "It was so HOT that..." lines are made for the crowd, so add a few of your own, or let Scouts call out theirs. Slow down for the fog-cutting and mime the saw.

Febold Feboldson is the tall-tale hero of Nebraska's Swedish pioneers. His stories were collected and spread by Paul Beath in the 1930s and 1940s, though Nebraska storytellers were telling them long before.