Hard Drive Memory #59

Out on the Bush City Shoestring
Pulling wells with Earl French,
Drenched in crude oil,
Please don’t smoke around me,
My friend Chuck
Painting everything Tin Woodsman silver,
Wide-eyed at the salt water gusher
When the Oklahoma Oil Men came,
Dennis telling us,
“Number 59 is out on the Ware,
Jackhead sticking up in the air,
Watch out for those rattlers, boys,”
So me and Earl drive in a dense fog,
Earl at the wheel of the ’67 flatbed Ford,
Just then hearing a roar behind us
Of his boy’s ’55 Chevy,
Screaming by and disappearing
Into the dream of rural oilfield Kansas,
Earl turns to me and says,
“Kid just went by,” then went back to driving,
Past Gus Weiss’ watermelon patch,
Down through Spotsville,
Across the low water bridge at Keyhole,
Finally getting to the well with the bad valve,
An eight hundred foot long soda straw that
Slurped up the sticky crude,
While we ate our lunch
Playing thirteen point pitch,
Beneath a comic strip thumbtacked to the wall,
A picture of a catapult with little cartoon Roman soldiers
Holding their sides and laughing at the banner
On the end of the catapult arm that said,
“Twang!”
“Give seven,” my partner Chuck says in a fake drawl,
“Moon,” I said, “Layin’ em down here, boys.”