Sourdough Sam and Paul Bunyan's Pancake Griddle (Campfire Story)

Feeding a logging crew is hard work. Feeding PAUL BUNYAN's logging crew was the hardest cooking job in the whole north woods. Paul had so many loggers that it took a man on horseback all day to ride from one end of the breakfast table to the other, and the fellow at the far end got his coffee by mail.

The boss of the cook shack was SOURDOUGH SAM. Sam could cook anything, but what the crew loved best were his PANCAKES. Every morning before sunrise, Sam stood at the cook shack door and hollered, and the whole camp came running.

The trouble was, the camp kept growing, and Sam's griddle didn't. He'd pour the batter, SIZZLE, flip the PANCAKES, and pass them down the line, and by the time the last man got his plate it was suppertime. The loggers were getting grumpy. One even said he'd rather eat a boiled boot. So SOURDOUGH SAM marched right up to PAUL BUNYAN and said, 'Paul, I need a bigger griddle. A whole lot bigger.'

Paul sent for Big Ole, the camp blacksmith. Ole was so strong he could shoe a horse while the horse was running. He fired up his forge and hammered for three days and three nights, until he'd made a griddle so big that a man standing on one edge couldn't see the man standing on the other edge, even on a clear day.

Now, how do you move a griddle like that? Only one creature in the north woods could do it. Paul hitched it to BABE the Blue Ox, and BABE dragged it all the way to camp, plowing such a deep furrow behind him that it filled with rain and became a creek. When they finally set the griddle down, the ground shook so hard it knocked the squirrels out of the trees.

Sam built a fire under it with a whole wagonload of wood, and the griddle started to heat up. The WIND caught the smoke and carried it for miles. Then Sam had a problem nobody had ever had before. How do you grease a griddle that big?

Sam thought about it. He scratched his head. Then he grinned. He called in the fifty fastest kitchen helpers in camp, and he tied a slab of bacon to the bottom of each of their boots. 'Boys,' he said, 'start skating!'

And they did! Round and round they went across that hot griddle, swooping and gliding like skaters on a frozen pond, greasing every inch with their bacon boots. Whenever one of them slowed down, his boots went SIZZLE, and he sped right back up again.

Then Sam poured the batter, SIZZLE, from a tank so big it took a crane to tip it. He flipped the PANCAKES with a snow shovel. Babe hauled them to the table by the sledload, and for the first time all winter, every man in camp got hot PANCAKES at the same time. They were so light and fluffy that the loggers had to hold them down with their forks so the WIND wouldn't blow them away.

PAUL BUNYAN ate a stack as tall as a pine tree. BABE ate the stack beside it. And the crew cheered so loud for SOURDOUGH SAM that they scared the geese into flying south three weeks early.

From then on, they say, Sam got so good at flipping that he could flip a pancake clear over the bunkhouse. Once he flipped one so high that it didn't come down until the next Tuesday. Babe caught it on the way down and ate it in one bite.

So the next time you're at a camp breakfast and you hear the SIZZLE of batter on a griddle, stop and listen. Somewhere, a long way off, you might still hear an old camp cook calling the crew to breakfast. That's SOURDOUGH SAM.

Storyteller tips: teach the six sounds first. Let the PANCAKES group get a little louder every time, and save the biggest SIZZLE for the bacon skaters.

Great for a breakfast campfire, or the night before a troop pancake breakfast.