Now, near the camp there was a spring
That used to steam like everything.
One day a chap that brought supplies
Had on a load of mammoth size,
A load of peas. Just on the road
Beside the spring he ditched his load
And all those peas, the bloomin’ mess,
Fell in the spring—a ton I guess.
He come to camp expectin’ he
Would get from Bunyan the G.B.
But Joe the Cook, a French Canuck,
Said, “Paul, I teenk it is ze luck—
Them spring is hot; so, Paul, pardon,
And we will have ze grand bouillon!”
To prove the teamster not at fault,
He took some pepper, pork and salt,
A right proportion each of these,
And threw them in among the peas—
And got enough, and good soup, too,
To last the whole of winter through.
The rest of us were kind of glad
He split the peas, when soup we had—
Except the flunkeys; they were mad
Because each day they had to tramp
Three miles and tote the soup to camp.
Joe had a stove, some furnace, too,
The size for such a hungry crew.
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Say what you will, it is the meat,
The pie and sinkers, choppers eat
That git results. It is the beans
And spuds that are the best machines
For fallin’ Norway, skiddin’ pine,
And keepin’ hemlock drives in line.
This stove of Joe’s it was a rig
For cookin’ grub that was so big
It took a solid cord of wood
To git a fire to goin' good.
The flunkeys cleaned three forties bare
Each week to keep a fire in there.
That stove’s dimensions south to north,
From east to westward, and so forth,
I don’t remember just exact,
And do not like to state a fact
Unless I know that fact is true,
For I would hate deceiving you.
Put in a mammoth batch of dough;
And then he thought (at least he tried)
To take it out the other side.
But when he went to walk around
The stove (it was so far) he found
That long before the bend he turned
The bread not only baked but burned.
We had two hands for flunkeys, Sam
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