"Staggerbear & Guzzlenot"

"Staggerbear & Guzzlenot"

Author James Stevens, onetime hobo teamster, of Tacoma, Wash., is famed as the chronicler of superhuman Paul Bunyan, the mythical hero of North American lumber camps. Author Stevens is an authority on other mythical creatures of North America including lava bears, sand gougers, lightning birds, waumpus cats, treehoppers and minktums (TIME, Aug. 2, 1926, BOOKS). Last week, announcement was made of another Stevens extravaganza, an allegorical U. S. fable entitled "Staggerbear and Guzzlenot" which Plain Talk, the monthly magazine publishing it, condensed for publicity purposes as follows:

"The Staggerbears inhabited the Happy Hills country where they roamed the shady dells covered with the shining mahogany grass where the fizzbells bloomed or rambled in the glades where there was a musical tinkle dripping from the keg trees. The streams gurgled with ice water, the brandy bees buzzed over the wild eggnog vines and the rumroots grew juicy in the earth beneath the sherry berry thickets.

"Then, while the happy bears frolicked among the blossoming foamcups, the Guzzlenots descended upon them. The Guzzlenots were dour fowls with shark teeth and clanked a mean blue beak. Their feet were wide and webbed, their necks rubbery and curving. They could not abide the Staggerbears with their crescent smile and ruddy, joyful blossoming noses, their boozy roars and capers.

"There was battle, and the happy Staggerbears are no more, for the Guzzlenots uprooted the foamcups and fizzbells, cut down the eggnog vines and poisoned the happy little brandy bees.

"Such a sad story."