| He used to wear patched overalls and eat the plain-
est fare, His horses and his cattle were mostly bones and hair; He had a little mortgaged farm but could not make it pay Because his land would not produce sufficient corn and hay. At last, when hope herself had fled, he gave a drill- er's lease And soon was wading through a stream of black and fragrant grease. He traded off his crowbaits and his skinny sow and pigs And filled his lots and hog pens with a dozen drill- ing rigs. He sold his shackly road cart and bought a motor car, He wandered over Europe and he stopped in Zanzibar; He traveled all about the earth by air and sea and land, From Greenland's icy mountain to India's coral strand. The while his nifty little yacht across the ocean steams, His hours are filled with peacefulness and in his nightly dreams He floats to some enchanted isle, where comes no thought of toil, Within an atmosphere of gas, upon a sea of oil. |
Verdigris Valley Verse
Albert Stroud
(Coffeyville, Kansas: The Journal Press. 1917)
Page 32
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