Paul Bunyan and his ilk

Because that novel isn't going to delay itself
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JohnDurvin
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Paul Bunyan and his ilk

Post by JohnDurvin » July 19th, 2012, 7:11 pm

Reading up on American folklore, I discovered that sometime in the late 19th and early 20th Centuries, a lot of industries gained a sort of superhuman patron--an ideal superhuman that applied amazing powers to being the greatest ever at their chosen task. Paul Bunyan, mascot of the logging industry, is the most famous, but there's also Pecos Bill for cowboys, Alfred Bulltop Stormalong for sailors, Mike Fink for keelboaters, Joe Magarac for steel, John Henry for railroaders, Febold Feboldsen for farmers, Davy Crockett and Daniel Boone for pioneers and woodsmen, and the lesser-known Mose the Fireboy for criminals (yes, really), with hands as big as hams, and his favorite weapon in a riot was a telephone pole. (And yes, it's widely known that some of these were made up by reporters and writers rather than by the actual workers; Joe Magarac may have been made up by some workers making fun of the reporter.) Later sources have created such luminaries as the Bastard Operator From Hell for system administrators and Captain Planet for environmentalists.

Question one: has anybody heard of any others?

Question two: anybody care to make one up for another industry? It seems like there ought to be one for fast-food workers, small-business owners, or eBay profiteers.
Everybody loves using things as other things, right? Check out my blog at the Cromulent Bricoleur and see one hipster's approach to recycling, upcycling, and alterna-cycling (which is a word I just made up).

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