LOGGER LOVER
(learned at camp in the 1940s)
As I went out one morning, 'twas in a small cafe,
A forty-year-old waitress to me these words did say.
I see that you are a logger, and not just a common bum,
For nobody but a logger stirs his coffee with his thumb.
My lover was a logger, there's none like him today,
If you poured whiskey on it he'd eat a bale of hay.
He never shaved a whisker from off his horny hide.
He hammered in the bristles and bit them off inside.
My lover came to see me, 'twas on a winter's day.
He hugged me in a fond embrace that broke three vertebrae.
He kissed me when we parter, so hard that it broke my jaw.
I couldn't speak to tell him he forgot his mackinaw.
I watched him as he left me, trudging through the snow,
A-goin' gaily homeward at forty-eight below.
The weather tried to freeze him, it tried its level best.
At a hundred degrees below zero, he buttoned up his vest.
It froze clear down to China, it froze to the heavens above.
At a thousand degrees below zero, it froze my logger love.
They tried in vain to thaw him, and if you believe it, sir,
They made him into axe-blades to cut the Douglas fir.
And so I lost my lover, and to this cafe I've come,
And here I wait for someone who stirs coffee with his thumb.
(from miriam berg's folksong collection)