NDR- A Michigan tale!

RLLigman

Well-known member
What do you get for shelling-out 9 million dollars a year for a former NFL coach? If you are the Michigan AD, another loss to an unrated MSU football team! Go Green! Go White!

Paul Bunyan has taken-up residence in East Lansing for another year!
 
Lord have mercy! It's a painful day to be a Michigan fan. MSU outplayed UM and outreached UM. I have a congregation full of people of Ohio. Lots of good natured teasing today.

Down in the dumps, but still BLUE Larry
 
Both of my parents went to Michigan State, and all 6 offspring have been wearing Spartie gear for 50 years. My 16 year old daughter has made a few rumblings about East Lansing too. Go
Sparties! Your back!
 
When I first moved over here, I met a nurse at our local Regional Medical Center whose ex-husband was having an issue with beavers. We met and walked-in to the beaver ponds on his property via a very circuitous route. I was wearing a wrist compass and consequently had a general idea of where we were. While showing him how and where to set the five Conibear's I had in my trapping basket I saw a couple of very nice brook trout. We became friends over the next three years while I trapped and helped him clear the dead timber he had to cut. Mr. Debelak used to work in the lumber camps in his youth. I learned a lot of what the woods should look like from him, as well as joy of listening to him recount life in a lumber camp.

Oh, those ponds held geese and wood ducks in fall, too, a lot of geese. The dog and I used to hunt grouse on the way in from the Ladoga lumber camp and then switch over to waterfowl loads.

Jeff, most of the lumber that rebuilt Chicago, after the Great Fire, came from the U.P. The Kingston Plains area north of Seney actually had a direct rail link to Chicago during the lumbering era when it was denuded and the topsoil layer destroyed via a number of fires; manmade and nature caused. I was always under the impression that plagiarism was the highest form of flattery!

Pastor Eckart, I would contend U of M was outcoached, as underscored by Harbaugh's current record of 1-4 versus Dantonio. There were four bone-headed penalties committed by several "testosteronies" (my wife's moniker for future spouse abusers.) that I would like to apologize for. Dantonio comes across as a stand-up guy, yet his team's play is generally and consistently less disciplined than his coaching perspective.
 
Oh yeah, I knew there was a lot of lumbering in Michigan, but we claim Paul Bunyan as one of our own. LOL!

I was exiled in Michigan for a few years when I thought I was going to end up married to a Michigan girl I met in college, and the UP, especially the Porcupine Mountains, was the only part of the midwest that reminded me of home. Lansing and Ann Arbor not so much.
 
I think any of the northern forest regions have laid claim to Paul. I remember driving by the statue of him in Bemidji.

Tom
 
RL,
I agree that Harbaugh was outcoached. Even though I bleed Blue, I love both Dantonio and that basketball coach of yours who has won more than a few games.

Great scene at the end of the game when Dantonio talked about the wonderful bus ride home. He looked like a kid in college himself.

I wish you well on your season. I miss my annual trip through da UP to Ontario duck hunting and grouse hunting.

Larry
 
Jeff Reardon said:
Oh yeah, I knew there was a lot of lumbering in Michigan, but we claim Paul Bunyan as one of our own. LOL!

I was exiled in Michigan for a few years when I thought I was going to end up married to a Michigan girl I met in college, and the UP, especially the Porcupine Mountains, was the only part of the midwest that reminded me of home. Lansing and Ann Arbor not so much.

Sorry to burst your bubble Jeff, Paul Bunyan is native Minnesotan.

Mark
 
Mark W said:
Jeff Reardon said:
Oh yeah, I knew there was a lot of lumbering in Michigan, but we claim Paul Bunyan as one of our own. LOL!

I was exiled in Michigan for a few years when I thought I was going to end up married to a Michigan girl I met in college, and the UP, especially the Porcupine Mountains, was the only part of the midwest that reminded me of home. Lansing and Ann Arbor not so much.

Sorry to burst your bubble Jeff, Paul Bunyan is native Minnesotan.

Mark


No way. The man left the coast and started walking inland carrying an oar until nobody knew what it was. He may have ended up in Minnesota after passing through Michigan, but he had to start on salt water.
 
Pastor Eckart, I guarantee Michigan will always have the support of EVERY MSU graduate one day a year; when they face-off against OSU!

I knew Louis Debelak well enough to call him a friend. We trapped and hunted his beaver ponds for three years prior his passing from cancer. He never gave me permission to fish brook trout and I never asked. From his renditions of life in a lumber camp, I came to understand that the work was hard with long hours spent outside in nearly all weather conditions. During winter they lived on venison, beaver, horse meat, when they died, and beans. He always turned down beaver meat, largely because their camp cook never parboiled them prior tossing them in the stew pot. One change of clothes, and the same bed linens for months. He treasured fresh brook trout and whitefish. He and his wife never divorced, but lived separate from each other; one in town and one in the woods.

He never specifically mentioned Paul Bunyan stories, but he did often talk about the wildly exaggerated stories told around the wood stove at night, particularly during our long winters. Given the bleak living conditions and physically hard monotonous work, it isn't surprising that a larger than life character would spring-up in logging camps as they expanded sequentially westward with Western Man's settlement of what is now the United States of America. I suspect, Jeff, you are right about the origination of the Bunyan Tales...likely carried westward as the forests were diminished by the cross-cut saw and axe.

Here, the highest compliment you can give to a native is to refer to them by the term: Good Man in the Woods.

https://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=good+man+in+the+woods&view=detail&mid=160B5DB4F3F6D51E04D5160B5DB4F3F6D51E04D5&FORM=VIRE
 
Rl--great link.

There are only a few short links on Youtube, but you might enjoy "Dead River Roughcut", a film about some Maine hermits.

http://mainehistorical.stores.yahoo.net/derirocut.html

This link is a pretty good preview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bJVslHk0LbE

I don't know how accurate Paul Voelker/Robert Traver's descriptions of "Danny and the boys" in the UP were, but I've met enough old Yankees in the Maine woods to know the characters in Dead River Roughcut are at the extreme end of a well defined woods culture.
 
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Jeff Reardon said:
Mark W said:
Jeff Reardon said:
Oh yeah, I knew there was a lot of lumbering in Michigan, but we claim Paul Bunyan as one of our own. LOL!

I was exiled in Michigan for a few years when I thought I was going to end up married to a Michigan girl I met in college, and the UP, especially the Porcupine Mountains, was the only part of the midwest that reminded me of home. Lansing and Ann Arbor not so much.

Sorry to burst your bubble Jeff, Paul Bunyan is native Minnesotan.

Mark


No way. The man left the coast and started walking inland carrying an oar until nobody knew what it was. He may have ended up in Minnesota after passing through Michigan, but he had to start on salt water.

We have two Cities that claim birthright and each have huge statues of Paul and Babe. Bet our statues are bigger thn yours.

Mark
 
We'e currently having a debate about whether or not to add Babe. But ours is pretty tall.

Not the largest at 31 feet, but much larger than the poor Minnesota cousins.

Per Wikipedia: "Smaller (although still larger than life) statues can also be found in the Minnesota towns of Akeley, Bemidji, and Brainerd as well as Manistique, Michigan; Ossineke, Michigan; Muncie, Indiana; and Lakewood, Wisconsin."

You guys do have a log chute ride in the Mall of America, though.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statues_of_Paul_Bunyan
 
Jeff Reardon said:
We'e currently having a debate about whether or not to add Babe. But ours is pretty tall.

Not the largest at 31 feet, but much larger than the poor Minnesota cousins.

Per Wikipedia: "Smaller (although still larger than life) statues can also be found in the Minnesota towns of Akeley, Bemidji, and Brainerd as well as Manistique, Michigan; Ossineke, Michigan; Muncie, Indiana; and Lakewood, Wisconsin."

You guys do have a log chute ride in the Mall of America, though.

https://en.wikipedia.org/...atues_of_Paul_Bunyan[/quote]

OK, maybe yours is bigger (still doubtful as all you east coaster brag and exaggerate) but it does appear we have more. We must love our native son more that you guys.....

I do remember seeing Babe up north many many years ago when we went and walked across what was then considered the Mississippi headwaters. That was a cool trip I recall.

Mark
 
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