Every Sunday dinner was a feast; but some of them, of course, were nobler and more enjoyable than others. His roast pork and plum pudding dinners always delighted the loggers when they were served on winter Sundays; they shouted over the baked trout and cherry pie Sunday dinners that he gave them in the spring; in the summer a vegetable and strawberry shortcake Sunday dinner made them happy every time; and in the fall the Sunday dinners of fried chicken and peach cobbler made them prance and roar with pleasure. And the Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners of roasted webfooted turkeys, cranberries and chocolate cake—the loggers were always speechless when they thought about them.
Every Sunday morning would see the loggers performing the ceremonies of cleanliness as soon as their after-breakfast pipes were smoked. First, the beds were made; and this was a more trying job than you would think, especially for the loggers who had poor eyesight. These unfortunates would throw their blankets into a pile, then shake them out one at a time, and attempt to replace them in the bunks. Here difficulties beset them, for Paul Bunyan’s blankets had small square checks; and it took a sharp eye to detect which was the long way of a blanket, and which was the wide way. Even the most sharp-eyed loggers would sometimes lose confidence in their vision when replacing these perplexing blankets; and they would remove them time and again before deciding that they were spread correctly. As for the cross-eyed and near-sighted men, it was sometimes pitiful to behold the most troubled of them stretching out blankets in their extended hands, turning them in slow revolutions, doubtfully placing them on the bunks, and then wearily lifting them again. These unfortunate men never quitted their Sunday bed-making until they were worn out; and all the following week they were sure that they had the long way of their blankets on the wide way of their bunks. They would swear to have them right next time; but every Sunday their attempts at bed-making would end in as unsatisfying a manner.
Everyone in the West knows that sheepherders of our time often worry themselves into insanity in their lonely camps, trying to discover the wide way and the long way of their quilts and blankets. Fortunately, Paul Bunyan’s loggers were all strong-minded men, and their blankets did no more than bedevil them.
After bed-making the loggers heated cans of water over small fires built out in the timber, and they washed their clothes. Shaving, boot-greasing, sole-calking, hair-cutting, beard-trimming, button-sewing, and rip-mending followed; and he was an expert in these Sunday morning chores who had time to stretch out on his smooth blankets for a smoke before the dinner gong rang at twelve.
At the ringing of this gong the inexpressible pleasures of Paul Bunyan’s Sundays began. First, the loggers enjoyed the ecstasy of eating; and it was an ecstasy they were fitted to enjoy gloriously. After dinner the loggers would lie on their bunks and dream drowsily all afternoon of a loggers’ paradise; and the paradise they dreamed about was none other than Paul Bunyan’s camp; but a camp whose life began each day with a Sunday dinner, and whose days were all like the warm drowsy hours of these Sunday afternoons.
But most of the loggers would be awake and hungry again at suppertime, ready to enjoy the Sunday supper of cold meat, potato salad, doughnuts, jelly rolls and coffee. Then in the twilight, and for a long time after the bunkhouse lamps were lit, they would smoke, and talk contentedly of the delight they got from Paul Bunyan’s cookhouse; and they would prophesy about the Sunday dinners of the future. There were no bunkhouse pastimes on Sunday nights. After some hours of low-voiced contented talk, the loggers would change their underclothes and get into their newly made beds, rested and inspired for Monday’s labor.
The great cookhouse which so ennobled and cheered Paul Bunyan’s loggers on their Sundays was the grandest and best planned affair of its kind ever heard of. The dining hall was so commodious and had so much room between the tables that four-horse teams hauled wagonloads of salt, pepper and sugar down the aisles when the shakers and bowls were to be filled. Conveyor belts carried clean dishes to the tables and returned the dirty ones to the wash room. The long-legged flunkies wore roller skates at mealtime, and the fastest among them could sometimes traverse the dining hall in forty-seven minutes.
But it was the kitchen, the powerhouse of this vast establishment, which had the most interest. This domain, ruled by the temperamental culinary genius, Hot Biscuit Slim, was as large as ten Ford plants and as noisy as the Battle of Gettysburg. The utensils that hung on its walls, from the steam-drive potato mashers and sleeve-valve, air-cooled egg beaters to the big armorplate potato kettles, the bigger force-feed batter mixers and the grandiose stew kettles, in which carcasses of cattle floated about like chips in a mill pond when beef dinners were being prepared—these polished utensils glittered even when the ranges were smoking their worst at hot cake time.
Paul Bunyan had devised the monorail system for this kitchen, and overhead cranes rattled about at all hours, carrying loads of dishes from the Dishwashing Department to the Serving Department, loads of vegetables and meats from the Supply Department to the Preparations Department, and loads of dressed food from the Preparations Department to the Finishing Department. The dishes were washed on a carriage like the log carriages of modern sawmills. The head dishwashers jerked levers that threw heaps of dirty dishes from the conveyor belts to the carriage, then the carriage was shot forward until the dishes struck a sharp-edged stream of soapy water that had dropped one hundred feet. The clean dishes were bucked off on live rolls, and the head dishwasher shot the carriage back for another load. Some of the clean dishes were run through dry kilns, and others were piled for air-drying by Swede dish-pilers, who wore leather aprons and mittens and could pile sixty thousand dishes per pair in twelve hours.
A list of the marvels of Paul Bunyan’s kitchen would fill a book as large as a dictionary. Elevators whirred between the kitchen and the vegetable bins, and a wide subway held four tracks that led to the fruit and vinegar cellars. A concrete chute carried the coffee grounds, eggshells and other waste to the kitchen yard, and from morning till night it roared like a millrace. Billy Puget, boss over the scraper gang, often had to work his mules and men fourteen hours a day in order to keep the kitchen yard cleaned of coffee grounds and eggshells.