{
 "id": "edgar-lee-masters/butch-weldy",
 "title": "“Butch” Weldy",
 "ordinal": null,
 "subtitle": null,
 "poet": "Edgar Lee Masters",
 "poet_slug": "edgar-lee-masters",
 "language": "en",
 "book": "Spoon River Anthology",
 "book_slug": "spoon-river-anthology",
 "book_kind": "volume",
 "sequence": 25,
 "container": null,
 "epigraph": null,
 "first_published": {
  "year": 1916,
  "venue": "Spoon River Anthology (1916)",
  "note": "First located printing is this volume; an earlier periodical printing has not been established.",
  "uncertain": false,
  "sources": [
   "https://archive.org/details/spoonriveranthol021mast"
  ]
 },
 "source": {
  "kind": "standard-ebooks",
  "repo": "standardebooks/edgar-lee-masters_spoon-river-anthology",
  "file": "spoon-river-anthology.xhtml",
  "upstream": [
   "https://web.archive.org/web/20080723131115/http://spoonriveranthology.net/spoon/river/originalOrder/",
   "https://archive.org/details/spoonriveranthol021mast"
  ],
  "rights": "public domain (SE dedication; underlying text pre-1931)"
 },
 "verification": {
  "level": "structural-only",
  "last_checked": "2026-08-20"
 },
 "stats": {
  "n_lines": 21,
  "n_stanzas": 1,
  "n_parts": 0,
  "longest_line_chars": 45,
  "max_indent": 0
 },
 "site_ready": true,
 "parts": [],
 "stanzas": [
  [
   {
    "text": "After I got religion and steadied down",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "They gave me a job in the canning works,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And every morning I had to fill",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The tank in the yard with gasoline,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "That fed the blow-fires in the sheds",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To heat the soldering irons.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And I mounted a rickety ladder to do it,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Carrying buckets full of the stuff.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "One morning, as I stood there pouring,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The air grew still and seemed to heave,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And I shot up as the tank exploded,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And down I came with both legs broken,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And my eyes burned crisp as a couple of eggs.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "For someone left a blow-fire going,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And something sucked the flame in the tank.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The Circuit Judge said whoever did it",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Was a fellow-servant of mine, and so",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Old Rhodes’ son didn’t have to pay me.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And I sat on the witness stand as blind",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "As Jack the Fiddler, saying over and over,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "“I didn’t know him at all.”",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ]
 ]
}