Explore "Butch Weldy" by Edgar Lee Masters on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
After I got religion and steadied down / They gave me a job in the canning works, / And every morning I had to fill / The tank in the yard with gasoline, / That fed the blow-fires in the sheds / To heat the soldering irons.
And I mounted a rickety ladder to do it, / Carrying buckets full of the stuff.
One morning, as I stood there pouring, / The air grew still and seemed to heave, / And I shot up as the tank exploded, / And down I came with both legs broken, / And my eyes burned crisp as a couple of eggs.
For someone left a blow-fire going, / And something sucked the flame in the tank.
The Circuit Judge said whoever did it / Was a fellow-servant of mine, and so / Old Rhodes' son didn't have to pay me.
And I sat on the witness stand as blind / As Jack the Fiddler, saying over and over, / "I didn't know him at all. "