Plague of Strength

Missed parts one and two? Go here and here.

The late 19th Century was filled with enough tales of larger-than-life characters that one could hardly enter a bar or read a newspaper without hearing a zany song about one, or reading the highly fictionalized account of some badass’s life story. They ran the gamut from fictional cowboys like Pecos Bill to real life badasses like Wild Bill and Calamity Jane or fictional characters based on real life, shit thunder and piss lightning, ten-penny nail chewin’ hardcases like steel drivin’ rail worker John Henry or brobdingnagian lumberjack Paul Bunyan. Frankly, there were so many bugfuck insane things were going on in the US during the 19th Century that it was almost difficult to exaggerate a person’s feats enough to make them unbelievable, but the story tellers of the late 19th and early 20th gave it hell in the effort.

The two most famous characters about whom stories were told were those of John Henry and Paul Bunyan. Both men reflected America’s newfound obsession with physical strength, much in the same way our obsession with superhero films reflects the incredible upsurge in weight training in the general populace. And interestingly, both instances of this obsession occurred at a time when society was starkly divided between the ultrafit and the physical wrecks- in the mid-19th century, it was said that “an American exquisite must not measure more than 24″ around the chest” (Chapman). Even tiny celebrity broads with personal chefs and ribs removed in the modern era rarely have waist measurements that small, yet American men were expected to have a chest measurement of that size a mere one hundred fifty years ago.

On the other hand, the Steel-Driving Man John Henry was no bird-chested bitch boy. Reputed to be 6′ and 200 pounds, he towered over the average American of the time. For those of you unfamiliar with the legend, John Henry was the strongest, fastest, and most powerful motherfucker working the ever-expanding railway lines of the 19th Century. So fast, in fact, that his bosses pitted his hard-nosed, liquor-fueled brawn against a newfangled steam-powered rock drilling machine in a race, and John Henry absolutely crushed the metal monstrosity in a herculean effort, only to drop dead of exhaustion immediately thereafter.

As with most legends, this story was based on fact, and the person on whom the story is partly based is now believed actually have been named John William Henry, a man from New Jersey serving a ten year sentence in a Virginia prison for stealing groceries. Henry was leased to the C&O Railroad as a steel man in a revenue-raising scheme by the prison warden and seems to have died outside of the prison walls in 1874, at the exact same time steam powered rock drills were being tested against humans. As such, it seems highly likely that Henry was at least part of the inspiration for the legend, though due to the diminutive stature recorded for the man, was likely a pastiche of a couple of crew workers on that rail (Grimes).

To give you some idea of the unreal physicality required for Henry’s job, it would kill everyone reading this, Crossfitters included.

“Steel drivers, also known as a hammer man, would spend their workdays driving holes into rock by hitting thick steel drills or spikes. The hammer man always had a partner, known as a shaker or turner, who would crouch close to the hole and rotate the drill after each blow.” 

[Henry, the steel driver,] used a 14-pound hammer to drill… 10 to 20 feet in a 12-hour day – the best of any man on the rails. 

One day, a salesman came to camp, boasting that his steam-powered machine could outdrill any man. A race was set: man against machine. John Henry won, the legend says, driving 14 feet to the drill’s nine. He died shortly after, some say from exhaustion, some say from a stroke” (Hempel).

Though Henry (who is going to be played by the Rock in one upcoming John Henry film, and Terry Crews in another) was black, men around America adjusted the story in their heads to suit their situation and used it as motivation.

“White Southern millworkers, listening to country recordings of the ballads that never mentioned Henry’s race, assumed he was a white man whose plight resembled their own. Any worker facing the new world of mechanized labor understood the John Henry story. For coal miners he was a miner; for railroad workers he was a trackman; for Communist organizers he was ‘the hero of the greatest proletarian epic ever created’” (Grimes).

Also driving the impetus to possess a set of badass arms and a strong back was the story of Paul Bunyan, a legendary lumberjack. Bunyan was reputed to be big enough to dwarf the Great Khali, so big at birth that five storks delivered him. A goddamn giant who could basically conquer any natural obstacle, with legendary strength to match his massive size. In reality, the men on which Bunyan was based were six foot tall Canadian badasses who deserved every bit of the legend attributed to them.

“Historians believe Bunyan was based in large part on an actual lumberjack: Fabian Fournier, a French-Canadian timberman who moved south and got a job as foreman of a logging crew in Michigan after the Civil War. Six feet tall (at a time when the average man barely cleared five feet) with giant hands, Fournier went by the nickname “Saginaw Joe.” He was rumored to have two complete sets of teeth, which he used to bite off hunks of wooden rails, and in his spare time enjoyed drinking and brawling. One November night in 1875, Fournier was murdered in the notoriously rowdy lumber town of Bay City, Michigan. His death, and the sensational trial of his alleged killer (who was acquitted), fueled tales of Saginaw Joe’s rough-and-tumble life—and his lumbering prowess—in logging camps in Michigan, Minnesota, Wisconsin and beyond.

Over time, Fournier’s legend merged with that of another French-Canadian lumberman, Bon Jean. Jean had played a prominent role in the Papineau Rebellion of 1837, when loggers and other working men in St. Eustache, Canada, revolted against the British regime of the newly crowned Queen Victoria. The French pronunciation of Jean’s full name is believed to have evolved into the surname Bunyan” (Pruitt).

Whether they were swinging a 14 pound sledge or a 5 pound double-bit logging ax, both of these archetypes had to have insanely strong hands, forearms, arms, shoulders, and back, and their legs likely weren’t just there for show. They built their physiques with 10-12 hour work days and a fuckload of food- their jobs were impossible without a massive amount of fuel. As we saw in the last part of this series, these motherfuckers were essentially drunk all day, and received liquor rations as part of their pay. The railroaders received boiled beef and potatoes for rations, which served as the antecedent to America’s obsession with beef and tubers going forward.

Lumberjacks, on the other hand, ate at least 8000 calories a day, consisting of “beans (usually served at every meal), meat, rice, potatoes, bread, biscuits, cakes, cookies, and pies” (Bertelson). Drawing from an account of what loggers at the turn of the 20th century ate, it looks like the average lumberjack ate the following daily (Ibid):

• .75-1lb beef
• 12oz cookies
• 2.25lbs potatoes
• 1/3 pie (apple, mince, cherry, raisin, lemon, or prune)
• 3.36oz condensed milk
• 2.5oz tomatoes
• 3.84oz canned apples
• 8oz bread
• 2 doughnuts
• 1/10 yeast cake
• 6.4oz sausage
• 4oz liver
• 1.5oz molasses

While that account leaves out the allegedly ubiquitous beans, that provided 8934 calories, 426g fat, 893g carbs, and 381g of protein, and explains why accounts of Paul Bunyan made him sound like Conan wrapped in flannel. Lumberjacks also boasted two meals entirely unique to their lifestyle, and although those calories are likely unneeded by anyone who consumes them, those meals are the Lumberjack Breakfast and the weirdest fucking food pairing in history for supper- chili and cinnamon rolls. Even Elvis would have looked up from his Fool’s Gold Loaf (a loaf of Italian bread filled with a pound each of bacon, peanut butter, and grape jelly) and said, “why the fuck would anyone put those two together?”

As to the breakfast, it is standard American fare these days- a bunch of fried eggs, ham, sausage, bacon, and pancakes. Also referred to as a “Yukon-Style” breakfast, it is a hearty fucking meal designed to fuel burly, drunken, brawling badasses in the freezing cold for a few hours. The supper, on the other hand, was a standard meat and beans chili served over cinnamon rolls. That’s right- not alongside the cinnamon rolls, but on top of them. Should you wish to give that a shot and risk reenacting the vomit scene from The Exorcist, feel free to do so- just throw the term “stewroids” into the search bar and you’ll have a few chili recipes at your disposal.

Should you wish to actually keep the meal down, another recipe that hearkens from the lumberjacks of yore is Sawmill Gravy, so named because a cook once substituted cornmeal for flour and the result tasted so shitty the loggers claimed it was like eating sawdust… so use flour, not cornmeal.

Sawmill Gravy

• 1lb 85% lean ground beef
• 2 ½ TBSP flour
• 1 cup 2% milk plus 2 T.
• ½ t. freshly ground black pepper
• 2 TBSP minced garlic

Directions: Fry beef in cast-iron skillet (for fuck’s sake, don’t use aluminum- that shit gives you Alzheimer’s) until well browned. Remove meat, leave drippings. Brown garlic in drippings, then stir flour into drippings until all lumps disappear. Add milk slowly, stirring constantly until smooth and thickened. Stir in beef and black pepper. Serve over rice.

Obviously the macros change once you add rice, but what you’ve got there is 1076 calories of gravy goodness with 57g fat (49%), 35g carbs (13%), and 99g of protein (38%) to fuel whatever badassery you might happen to get up to that day. Obviously, you could lean it out with leaner meat and skim milk if you wanted. If you switch to 92% lean beef and Fairlife skim milk, you end up with a recipe yielding  127g protein (52%), 27g carbs (11%), and 41g fat (37%), which gets remarkably isocaloric if you eat it over two cups of rice (38% PRO / 35% CHO / 27% FAT).

And beyond the dudes were were mired and myth and legend, there were badasses travelling the country displaying feats of physical prowess with every traveling circus- wrestlers. These wrestlers would travel with the circus, often performing a strength act and then challenging people in the crowd to matches for money. Though they would occasionally come across a ringer who would give them an impressive match or hand them a surprising loss, their circus matches were just a sidebar- challenge matches are where these bad motherfuckers made their real mark.

There were guys like Colonel J. H. McLaughlin, who killed three men in the ring and broke a guy’s leg for talking shit after losing to a 15 year old McLaughlin in McLaughlin’s first match. McLaughlin won between $3200 and $6500 (2019 dollars) a match with regularity, and pulled in the 2019 equivalent of $370k in a single match between winnings and betting on himself. After killing one guy and paralyzing another in a single year, McLaughlin quit wrestling catch style and restricted himself to collar-and-elbow, though he’d killed a man in that style as well a decade prior. At 6’1″ 215-265, McLaughlin wasn’t exactly the Rock, but he was strong enough to break bones and skulls essentially at will.

H.M. Dufur was the son of a man who was considered one of the greatest wrestlers of all time… until he lost a match to his 13 year old son. The younger Dufur was harder than your dick on Viagra and methyltest, wrestling at only 155lbs but beating just about every motherfucker on the planet in spit of the fact most of his opponents were around 250.  Growing up a logger made Dufur strong, lean, and inexhaustible, and the training he received from his dad made him virtually invincible.  Dufur raked in the cash as a wrestler, trashing 127 opponents for money without a loss until losing to Colonel J.H. McLaughlin, who had recently come out of retirement.

Not much is known about the eating habits and training methods of these bad motherfuckers, but the tale of the tape paints an interesting picture of these top heavy soul-crushing back-breakers. Both Dufur and McLaughlin, at the age of 40 when they met, were 6′. Dufur weighed in at 193 and boasted a 44″ chest, 34″ waist, 24″ thigh, 16″ calf and upper arm, and 15″ forearm. McLaughlin was a bit pudgy and weighed 210 with a 48″ chest, 40″ waist, 26″ thigh, 18″ calves and upper arms, and 16.5″ forearms. I don’t know about any of you, but I have not ever had forearms within an inch of my upper arm measurement- these dudes had the grip strength and ferocity of chimps, and they were likely about as dangerous.

As the style of the “barnstormers” (the dudes who wrestled all comers at circuses) merged with European styles, a hybrid style called catch wrestling emerged, and by the 1880s, this brutal style overtook the combination of collar-and-elbow and rough-and-tumble that had predominated American wrestling previously. The wrestling style of Lancashire, England, which was long renown for being the home of the most surly and psychotic mining maniacs east of the Appalachians, was combined with the techniques adopted from fighting the rough-and-tumble crowd, along with the “knocking and kicking” style of the American freed slaves; the ridiculous Devonshire style that mostly consisted of kicking each other in the shins known as purring; Scottish backhold; Greco-Roman (French flat hand wrestling); Japanese jujitsu; and German kampfringen became American catch wrestling.  Because it combined both striking and grappling elements of basically every style being used internationally, catch wrestling was essentially the hyper brutal forebear of mixed martial arts. Two of the men who were early adopters of this style were both accomplished strongmen who seriously valued the utility of superhuman strength also happened to be two of the baddest motherfuckers this planet has ever seen- William Muldoon and Clarence Whistler.

Amusingly, these two met for the first time in an insane seven-hour that ended in a draw in 1881.  Whistler, the reigning catch-as-catch-can wrestler, and Muldoon, the World Champion in Greco-Roman wrestling, each accused the other of cheating to gain the advantage in the match, but decided to form an unlikely partnership to tour the country together.  The tour ended predictably badly- Whistler was a drunken psychotic who was almost never sober, and to exacerbate the rest of his myriad failings carried a gun and a knife with which he’d threaten Muldoon if he didn’t “wrestle lightly.”  Muldoon, for his part, was nearly psychotic about his training and was the stronger of the two and always in top condition, but was piss scared of the Indian-trained Whistler, who for his part was so strong he was able to carry a 1300lb iron bar on his back for 30 feet (he worked in a foundry and was well-known for his absurdly impressive feats of drunken strength in the sweltering heat of the foundry floor.

After completely falling out in a dispute over a girl like they were starring in a cheesy 90s rom-com starring Freddy Prinze Jr, the two separated and wrestled on their own.  Whistler suffered an injury wrestling a ringer and took a layoff, then again challenged the hyper-fit Muldoon. After a few months of ignoring him, Muldoon finally accepted and broke Whistler’s collarbone with a slam after four hours, at which point the doctor called the fight in spite of Whistler’s vociferous entreaties they continue, presumably until one of them fucking died.  As soon as he was recovered, the two fought again to a draw.  They then separated again, with Whistler fucking off to tour Australia and defeat their national champion, Australian champion of boxing, wrestling, fencing, and weightlifting William Miller. 

After a month of insane celebrations involving hyper-inebriated shenanigans and during which Whistler frequently bit the tops off of champagne bottles and ate at least one champagne glass, Whistler very predictably dropped dead at the ripe old age of 29. Muldoon, who had become a the first celebrity sports trainer, eulogized him as the toughest man he had ever met on the mat, and retired after defeating everyone from William Miller to all-around super athlete, strongman, and baddest motherfucker ever Donald Dinnie to the best collar-and-elbow men on the planet, in addition to the baddest men catch wrestling could throw at him.

Beyond the occasional mouthful of half-masticated glass, Whistler’s diet is unknown, but his training seemed to mostly consist of traditional Indian pehlwani training (he grew up in India) and the brutally hard work one found in a 19th Century foundry. Muldoon, on the other hand, had a more systematic approach. When training an out of shape, drunken boxing champion in the form of John L. Sullivan, focused heavily on diet and a training that is not unlike modern fight training. He first got Sullivan down to a shredded 190, then bulked him to a ripped and ready 210 lbs to prepare for the last ever fight under London Prize Rules (which resembled pankration far more than modern boxing).

To get him shredded and keep him out of the bar, Muldoon chased Sullivan through a seven day a week routine of wood chopping, weightlifting, clubbell work, jumping rope, sparring, and even plowing fields.  By the time of the fight, people remarked that Sullivan looked to have been “chiseled out of stone,” and Muldoon became even more famous for getting a somewhat over-the-hill, insanely alcoholic Sullivan into the best fighting shape of his life, and proving definitively that his methods for training for wrestling applied well to all combat sports (Bare Knuckle, Nash, Waters).

Though we’re not sure about exactly what Muldoon espoused, diet-wise, we do know what his contemporary, champion catch-as-catch can wrestler and legendary trainer Martin “Farmer” Burn ate. At 5’10” and 165 pounds, Burns was no musclebound behemoth, though he sported a gigantic 20″ neck at that weight- he refused to train with a dumbbell heavier than 50lbs and was a staunch advocate against overeating.

“The question of what to eat is not so important as what NOT to eat.  To overeat and clog the system with too much food or with food that is harmful, is weakening and prevents development of strength and health.  In fact overeating invites disease, for the overloaded stomach and intestines are sluggish, give off poisonous matter to surrounding tissues, and often results in sever complications, cause fatty degeneration, and open up a rich field for disorder and disease.”

“I therefore advise the students to eat plenty of good plain food, yet not too much…. Among the things to avoid are: All liquors, very little tea or coffee or better not any, tobacco, highly seasoned foods, and all kinds of fat meat and sweets.

Stale bread or toast is better than fresh bread.  Eat plenty of fresh vegetables, and a reasonable quantity of lean meats, fish or chicken.  Fresh ripe fruits are fine food and should be used liberally. Eggs are especially recommended, boiled or poached, and nothing is better than one or two raw eggs every day” (Burns 21).

In the final installment of this series, I’ll cover the meat-and-potatoes diet, the evils of the modern processed foods, my prescription for a resurrection of the eating habits that built the American Empire that is currently crumbling under the weight of so many fat, stupid, and utterly useless, Walmart-dwelling, uneducated Bible-thumpers. After that, I’ve got an interview with a badass top-ranked female boxer and another with the above-pictured timbersports athlete Arden Cogar Jr, after which my frequency will drop as I work on rewrites of DTO and PFW, as well as the upcoming Necronomicon of Demonic Strength. Though less frequently published, there will be a build-out of Part 2 of this series called “Rise of the Machines” about the lifting machines of the 19th Century, as well as a BME about the WWE’s Chyna, and a Part 2 to the Zuver’s article coming in the near future- they’re just going to be published every week and a half or so.

In short, I am on fucking fire with the writing lately.

And if you have’t jumped on the 365 Days of Brutality train yet, my badass new book is available in print and ebook!

Sources:

Answer Fella.  Big breakfasts, dinner dates, fish and the dishes.  Esquire Magazine.  16 May 2018.  Web.  7 Sep 2019.  https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/q-and-a/a4558/lumberjack-breakfast-0608/

Bare Knuckle Boxing.  Bobby Gunn training old Time Techniques that William Muldoon taught John L. Sullivan.  Youtube. 11 Nov 2016. Web. 13 Oct 2017. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dZE2QDGG8m8

Bertelson, Cynthia D.  Eating like a lumberjack.  Cynthia D. Bertelsen’s Gherkins & Tomatoes.  7 Oct 2014.  Web.  9 Sep 2019.  https://gherkinstomatoes.com/2014/10/07/eating-like-a-lumberjack/

Biographical Sketches of Col. James H. McLaughlin of Detroit, Mich.,
and Henry M. Dufur of Marlboro, Mass., Reprinted from original dated 30 Apr 1884.  Journal of Manly Arts.  Mar 2003.  Web.  10 Sep 2019.  http://jmanly.ejmas.com/articles/2003/jmanlyart_duformclaughlin_0303.htm

Burns, Farmer.  Lessons in Wrestling and Physical Culture. Date unknown.

Casto, Rae.  Typical American family diet in 1908.  Livestrong.  https://www.livestrong.com/article/461209-the-typical-american-family-diet-in-1908/

Chapman, David L.  Sandow the Magnificent.  Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2006.  

Corvin, Tim.  Pioneers of Professional Wrestling.  Bloomington: Archway Publishing, 2014.

Grimes, William.  Taking swings at a myth, with John Henry the man.  New York Times.  18 Oct 2006.  Web.  31 Aug 2019.  https://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/18/books/18grim.html

Hempel, Carolyn.  The man – facts, fiction and themes.  John Henry The Steel Driving Man.  Dec 1998.  Web.  9 Sep 2019.  https://www.ibiblio.org/john_henry/analysis.html

John Henry (folklore).  Wikipedia.  Web.  9 Sep 2019.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Henry_(folklore)

Nash, John.  The forgotten golden age of MMA- Part 1: The Golden Age of Wrestling and the lost art of American catch-as-catch-can.  Cageside Seats. Dec 2012. Web. 11 Oct 2017. https://www.cagesideseats.com/2012/12/1/3669774/the-forgotten-golden-age-of-mma-part-i-the-golden-age-of-wrestling

Paul Bunyan.  Wikipedia.  Web.  9 Sep 2019.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Bunyan

Waters, Mike.  End of a boxing era: The tale of Jake Kilrain vs. John L. Sullivan, the final bare-knuckle heavyweight title fight.  Syracuse.com. 9 Jun 2012. Web. 24 Oct 2017.  http://blog.syracuse.com/sports/2012/06/end_of_a_boxing_era_the_tale_o.html

Liked it? Take a second to support Jamie Chaos on Patreon!