Pre-Earth Science

----- The Old Lineman


I just hung up my Hooks
Midst D-rings and musty books
And I'll never ride that rangepole any more
But I've splintered my rear end
The last time, and I'll send my lusty climbing blue jeans to the pore'.
(now I could have lied, with prattle
About roaming 'mongst the cattle
But my sweat was always brown
From stringing wire about the town,
Ever' since some fiend put glue on my saddle.)

The thing that stung me most,
Making me see the Holy Ghost
Was when I was out astraddle of the wire;
And this twenty-four volt charge
Which hit my crotch so large
Just left my underwear a blackened funeral pyre.

But I figured that my toast
Was likely a pre-planned roast,
And a pre-planned way to initiate me right;
So I resolved to hobble on, Showing disdain with a yawn
And to keep my reddened rear-end out of sight.

The Cable-Splicer was my boss,
A gent not called ol' Hoss
But in Phone lingo was a proper chief named Speed.
Now he quickly took my face,
And replaced it with a space
And forever after I was Fireball, yes indeed!

There was a new recruit named Wiles,

Who got lost among the files-
But before he did so, he fixed me proper good.
He double-dated me with Moose
A girl many years on the loose,
And before long I had EX-Virginian styles.

But in thankfulness, I'll say this-
It wasn't long before he couldn't hiss,
Or think amiss, or any of those other rhyming words;
But I forged ahead, not tense,
Just as if I had good sense
And I'm still functioning nicely- like the birds.

Well, ol' Chili Wiles and I
We helped put messages in the sky,
From the Crossarms and Transpositions
That we placed.
But we quite never knew our spot
In the Big Picture, or the Pot
And eventually both our pictures were erased.

But before we got away,
There were still more things to say-
And I have to bring up Duckworth to the fore.
He was my mentor, so to speak,
And he certainly did have cheek,
He impressed me-an l8 year older- to the core.
Although bespectacled, called four eyes,
He could quickly bring to size
Anyone who used that phrase out on the floor.

And he had the young girls waiting,
While the masculine teeth were grating
As he hustled one or more of them around.
I could never cop his style,
But I certainly kept his file
Stowed deep, deep in my psyche, Near the Ground.

Duckworth, Chili, Fireball, Speed
These are all the names I need
To resurrect This Long-Suppressed Melee;
And I pass it on to you
And other members of my crew
Who will likely soon review the family
tree. HLO