by Cory O'Brien
our predominant mythological tradition
is tied to a bunch of ancient dead dudes whose religion no one even worships anymore?
Now, I’m not denying Greek myths are super sweet
there is nothing better, if you want to watch a bunch of children boinking and killing each other.
But I feel like it is my duty as an American
to raise awareness
of some goddamn AMERICAN MYTHOLOGY UP IN HERE.
But there’s a problem:
America is not very old, my friends.
We have not had time to develop a really spectacular cast of magical jerks to talk about.
Oh snap, wait a second.
I totally take that back.
We’ve got a whole pantheon of crazy dudes to choose from
and they are called
THE FOUNDING FATHERS
but I could write a whole other book about those guys
and maybe someday I will
so for now, you’re gonna have to settle for a whirlwind tour
OF THE MYTHOLOGY WE’VE MADE SO FAR.
THE CREATION MYTH . . . OF AMERICA
Now, normally in these creation myths
we start out with a vast ocean
and then some guy comes along and puts land in it.
America is no exception.
This time, the ocean is called the Atlantic Ocean
and the guy is called Christopher Columbus.
The only difference is that Columbus doesn’t MAKE the land
he just finds it, on his way to go find something else
because apparently some gods put it there a long time ago and forgot to tell anyone about it.
There are also already people in this America place
but that’s not a big deal because people are pretty easy to get rid of.
See also: the biblical flood.
Anyway, for the time being Christopher Columbus names these people Indians
because that is the name of the people in the place he was supposed to be looking for
and he is still laboring under some misapprehensions.
Time passes
and a bunch of Christopher Columbus’s friends show up
a whole pantheon of legendary bastards called the conquistadors
and they populate the land with themselves
while depopulating the land of everybody else.
Then even MORE time passes and some other guys start showing up
from this place called the BRITISH EMPIRE
which sounds like it must be a pretty nice place.
Like, the sun never sets there so it’s basically an eternal beach party all the time
but with more fog.
But even so tons of dudes keep getting on boats and leaving
and sailing across a WHOLE OCEAN
to get to this hip new America place everyone is talking about
because Britain is nice and everything
but it is totally played out.
Amongst the British dudes who show up
are a bunch of people who are practicing this crazy souped-up version of Christianity.
In this scenario, they will be our CHOSEN PEOPLE.
They meet all the requirements:
(1) They are the dudes who ultimately get the promised land
and (2) They get the promised land by killing a WHOLE BUNCH OF PEOPLE.
Yeah, basically what happens is that they’re hanging out in America for a while
when suddenly, the king of England
(who is named George)
starts being a TOTAL DICK.
He’s like “I PUT ALL YOU PEOPLE IN THIS NEW LAND.
NOW YOU HAVE TO PAY TRIBUTE TO ME.”
But all the American dudes are like “No way!”
And then instead of killing them with a massive flood
like a REAL divine emperor would have
King George tries to kill them with an army of really flashily dressed guys.
But as we have already established guys are REALLY easy to kill
and they are even easier to kill when they are covered in bright red dress-coats
so the Americans just get a whole bunch of guns and shoot at England until it goes away
and then they shoot at the conquistadors until they go away too.
Then they shoot at the natives
and then when they run out of natives they shoot at each other.
Then they’ve still got a lot of bullets left over so they have to keep finding more people to shoot.
Also, I think someone writes a constitution?
Anyway, that’s where America comes from.
So the moral of the story
is that the primary ingredient for a successful nation
is guns.
JOHN HENRY WAS A STEEL-DRIVIN’ MAN
I SAID, JOHN HENRY WAS A STEEL-DRIVIN’ MAN.
Do you guys know what that means?
That means that he was a dude who worked on a railroad
and his job
was to KILL MOUNTAINS.
Now, the way he did this
was that some poor sonofabitch named Little Bill
would hold a steel drill in place against the rock
while John Henry BEAT ON IT AS HARD AS HE COULD
WITH A TWENTY-POUND HAMMER
and Bill had to keep turning the drill after every strike
and eventually the drill would get dull
so he had to swap it out
for another drill
that someone would hopefully hand to him at about that time
WITHOUT MISSING A BEAT
and then they would bring the old drill to a blacksmith
so the blacksmith could fix it
and then bring it back to Bill so he could switch it out AGAIN
and meanwhile John Henry’s hammer is just whistling right past Bill’s junk
or face, or ribs, or wherever he has to hold the drill
in order to make sure the rock is getting brutalized in the right direction.
Meanwhile, John Henry has it easy.
All HE has to do is heft a TWENTY-POUND HAMMER
over and over again
with perfect accuracy
all day
through solid rock
never stopping, never getting tired
under constant threat of rockslides and disfigurement.
So this is this guy’s job.
Now John Henry works for a pack of rat bastards called the C&O Railroad Company.
I know they are rat bastards because one day John Henry’s railroad team
rolls up on this big, big mountain
and the railroad crew is all like “Oh wow, bummer.
Guess we better start going around this mountain, huh?”
And aforementioned rat bastards from C&O
are like “NOPE.
GOIN’ STRAIGHT THROUGH THE MOUNTAIN.
IT IS ONLY LIKE A MILE AND A HALF THICK.
YOU GUYS LIKE HAVING JOBS, RIGHT?
SO DO IT.”
So they do it
most of these guys are freed slaves
so they don’t exactly have their pick of the crop as far as employment opportunities go.
This goes double for John Henry
who is not only a freed slave
but also an UNSTOPPABLE BADASS WHO NEVER QUITS.
So every day all the steel drivers go to work
and they fling themselves mercilessly at this mountain
and like twenty people die
but John Henry just keeps abusing that stone
making a solid ten-foot tunnel every day, at LEAST.
So, you know, great for him
but all his friends are still dead
and the dicks at C&O are getting impatient
so when this traveling salesman shows up with a steam-powered drill machine
they are like “SIGN US UP.
P.S.: Everyone who
works for us is fired now.
ESPECIALLY JOHN HENRY.”
Now John Henry is the kind of man who takes absolutely no guff from anybody.
It is unreal how little guff this man takes.
Like, if there were a great big pile of guff by the side of the road
and John Henry walked by
that pile would remain completely undisturbed
because he would take none of it.
So when he sees this guff coming his way he just sidesteps the lot of it
and then he turns around like “Hey, traveling salesman
I bet I can drill harder, better, faster, AND stronger than your candyassed machine.”
And the traveling salesman is like “YOU’RE ON.”
So the next day John Henry lines up next to this machine
along with his trusty shaker Little Bill
and TWO twenty-pound hammers
and they get. to. work.
So John and the drill are staying pretty much neck and neck
even though the drill doesn’t have a neck.
Maybe the drill is even doing a little better
but then it gets STUCK in a hole in the rock
and John Henry just goes grunting and flailing and sweating
FOURTEEN FEET INTO THE HEART OF THAT MOUNTAIN.
BAM CLINK CACHANG POW BOOM PEW PEW PEW.
I DON’T KNOW WHAT SOUND A HAMMER MAKES.
So, final score:
Newfangled steam drill: nine feet.
One man armed with nothing but sweat and hammers: fourteen feet.
Oh wait.
Did I forget to mention
that since John Henry is using two hammers, he drilled TWO HOLES
while the steam drill only made ONE??
So really, the score was nine to TWENTY-EIGHT.
Yeah.
But there’s some bad news too.
See, as soon as he finds out his score
John Henry puts down his hammers and dies
because he just hammered that rock so hard
he gave himself a stroke.
It doesn’t say in the ballad
but I like to think that his last words were something like
“. . . Damn right.”
Anyway, then he’s dead
so I think they end up using the steam drill anyway
although they have to cancel work for like a week
because everyone is convinced that John Henry’s ghost lives in the tunnel
also later on it turns out that the tunnel is notoriously unstable
because it is a bad idea to use contests to construct structurally delicate railway tunnels.
But none of that matters
because the real hero of this story
is Little Bill
who held two drills
right next to all the tenderest parts of his body
against a solid stone wall
while an absurdly muscular dude repeatedly charged toward him
flailing two twenty-pound hammers.
And he kept holding those drills
and turning them
and shaking out the stone debris
and switching out the drills when they got dull
FOR THIRTY-FIVE MINUTES
AND TWENTY-EIGHT FEET
and he didn’t have a stroke
or even poop himself a little.
So let’s hear it for Little Bill
the real American hero.
PAUL BUNYAN WAS A LOG-DRIVIN’ MAN
We all know that lumberjacks are badasses.
But have you ever stopped to wonder how we know that?
I’LL TELL YOU HOW.
PAUL BUNYAN IS HOW.
Because that dude
was big.
HOW BIG WAS HE?
He was SO BIG
that it took three storks to deliver him to his parents.
He was SO BIG
that when he was old enough to laugh and clap his hands
he DESTROYED HIS HOUSE.
He was SO BIG
that one time he dragged his ax behind him when he was walking
and made the Grand Canyon.
This guy was BIG.
But all of that is baby stuff, compared with the time he tamed the Whistling River.
So the Whistling River
is a river that has somehow come into possession of some rudimentary intelligence
and a WHOLE LOT OF GUFF which it hands out to all comers
because as you may have noticed
guff is America’s chief natural resource.
See, this river likes to rear up at random times throughout the day
and let out a piercing whistle that annoys the crap out of everyone for MILES AROUND.
This river is also a total dick.
It breaks up log rafts
it drowns loggers
it does everything a river is not supposed to do and laughs about it
or whistles about it, I guess.
But then the river makes a crucial mistake
because one day Paul Bunyan is sitting by the river, eating some flapjacks
when the river rears up
and chucks FOUR HUNDRED AND NINETEEN GALLONS OF MUDDY WATER
INTO HIS BEARD.
Now I’m sure I don’t have to tell you
that a lumberjack’s beard is NOT TO BE TRIFLED WITH
but Paul Bunyan gives the river a pass.
He just goes back to his pancakes and figures the river will behave itself.
But that river rears up
and chucks FIVE THOUSAND AND NINETEEN MORE GALLONS
AND SOME TURTLES AND SOME FISH AND SOME MUSKRAT
DIRECTLY INTO PAUL BUNYAN’S ALREADY SOAKING WET BEARD
plus his flapjacks are pretty wet.
This is the kind of thing any self-respecting lumberjack cannot ignore.
So what does Paul Bunyan do?
Does he get up and move someplace where the river can’t soak him?
NO.
Instead, he decides to TAME the river.
But how?
Well, Paul Bunyan settles down to do some serious thinking
and the way lumberjacks think
is they sit down and they eat popcorn
for DAYS.
Paul Bunyan eats so much popcorn
that after a week, the ground is covered with eighteen inches of popcorn scraps
for THREE MILES AROUND
and animals that wander into the area immediately think it is winter
and freeze to death before they have a chance to actually think about what they are doing.
Anyway, finally Paul Bunyan leaps up like “AHA!
I bet if I took all the bends out of the river it would straighten up and fly right.
So I’ll just tie it to Babe, my massive blue ox and she’ll tow it straight.
Oh wait, it’s made of water.
How am I going to attach my ox to it?
HMM.”
So Paul Bunyan and his ox go to the North Pole
and he makes a box trap baited with icicles
and then goes and plays fetch with Babe for a while using GLACIERS
but he has to stop because he floods Florida.
Then he goes back to check on his trap
and finds that he has caught SIX BLIZZARDS.
Man, I wish I had a box big enough to catch six blizzards.
I’d open up a blizzard stand
and no one would buy any
BECAUSE BLIZZARDS ARE A THING THAT NOBODY WANTS.
But Paul Bunyan doesn’t see it that way.
He grabs two of those blizzards and he takes them back to his logging camp
and has his friend Ole—
who is not a lumberjacking matador but rather a big Swede—
make two huge logging chains to attach to the blizzards.
Then he goes to the river and jams the blizzards into it
which freezes it FOR
SEVENTEEN MILES
then he hooks the river up to Babe
and it is GO TIME.
But that river is TOOOO ornery
it won’t budge
even though Babe pulls those chains into solid iron bars
and digs ruts into the solid rock she is running on.
But that’s when Paul Bunyan just cuts straight through the bullshit
by grabbing the chains and pulling them so hard
that he and Babe drag the river free of its banks and through the prairie.
When finally they stop running and turn around
they see that the river has become TOTALLY STRAIGHT
but it is also somehow much shorter
because all the elbow joints that made the bends are now scattered across the prairie.
So Paul Bunyan packs up all the extra bends
and uses them later, when he needs to float logs in the middle of the desert
even though that’s not how that works and there aren’t even any logs in the desert
because you get to ignore physics as long as you are really, really big.
Anyway, then the river refuses to whistle
because it has basically just undergone the river equivalent of traumatic castration
and strangely enough, this makes everyone really pissed off at Paul Bunyan
because it turns out that everyone was using the river as an alarm clock
and they need to wake up early
because trees are easier to cut down when you catch them snoozing.
But luckily this dude comes along named Squeaky Swanson
who has a speaking voice that is never above a whisper
but a shriek that can physically LIFT THE BLANKETS off of everyone in camp.
So every day, Squeaky Swanson wakes up at the crack of dawn
and shrieks everyone awake
thus solving every problem forever.
So once again
the real hero of the story is not Paul Bunyan
who actually ruined the whistling river
and broke physics
and littered a lot of popcorn scraps all over
and flooded Florida
but rather an unassuming man
with some kind of weird voice problem.
So God bless America
home of the little guy
as long as the little guy can yell really loud.
PECOS BILL WAS A CATTLE-DRIVIN’ MAN
All right, my friends.
It is time for you to hear about a man whose ass is SO BAD
other asses cower at the mere mention of it.
The owner of this ass is named PECOS BILL.
But Pecos Bill was not always named that.
