The Frozen Logger

THE FROZEN LOGGER
by James Stevens
Sung by Andy Blyth
Recorded on "Songs of the Pacific Northwest"

As I sat down one evening,
In a timber town cafe,
A six foot seven waitress,
These words to me did say

“I see you are a logger,
And not a common bum,
For no one but a logger
Stirs his coffee with his thumb.

My lover was a logger —
There’s none like him today,
If you’d sprinkle whiskey on it,
He’d eat a bale of hay.

“He never shaved his whiskers
From off his horny hide,
But he’d pound ‘em in with a hammer,
Then bite ‘em off inside.

My lover came to see me
One freezing winter day,
He held me in a fond embrace
That broke three vertebrae.

He kissed me when we parted
So hard it broke my jaw,
And I could not speak to tell him,
He’d forgot his Mackinaw.

I watched my logger lover
Going through the snow,
A-sauntering gaily homeward
At forty-eight below.

The weather tried to freeze him,
It tried its level best,
At one-hundred degrees below zero,
He buttoned up his vest.

It froze clear down to China,
It froze to the stars above,
At one-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 ax blades,
To chop the Douglas fir.

That’s how I lost my lover,
And to this cafe I come,
And here I wait ‘til someone
Stirs his coffee with his thumb.

And then I tell my story,
Of my love they could not thaw,
Who kissed me when we parted,
So hard he broke my jaw.