The Frozen Logger

As I sat down one evening within a small café,
A forty year old waitress, to me these words did say.
“I see that your a logger and not just a common bum.
Cause’ nobody but a logger stirs his coffee with his thumb.
My lover was a logger, there’s none like him today.
If you’d pour whisky on it, he would eat a bale of hay.
Well, he never shaved his whiskers from off of his horny hide,
He’s just drive them in with a hammer and bite them off inside.

“My lover came to see me upon a freezing day.
He held me in a fond embrace which broke three vertebrae.
Well, he kissed me when we parted, so hard he broke my jaw.
I could not speak to tell him he forgot his mackinaw.”

“I saw my logger leaving, saunt’ring through the snow.
Going bravely homeward at forty-eight below.
The weather it tried to freeze him; it tried its level best.
At a hundred degrees below zero he buttoned up his vest.”

“It froze clear through to China; it froze to the stars above.
At a thousand degrees below zero, it froze my logger love.
They tried in vain to thaw him and if you’ll believe me, sir,
They made him into ax blades to chop the Douglas fir.”

“And so I lost my lover, and to this café I come,
And here I wait till 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.”


The Frozen Logger: Words and Music by James Stevens
TRO 1951 renewed 1979 Folkways Music Publishers Inc. New York, NY International copyright secured.