Switchboard Operator - Song Page
©
from the album Out on the Tallgrass Prairie
Album Note:
True story of 1929 heroine from Elmdale who worked all night warning the community and train full of passengers about oncoming flood – saving many lives.
Above image: from Bell Telephone magazine article about Myrtle Dull - the heroine in this song. She received an award for her bravery. [From Chase County Historical Society exhibit.]
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LYRICS
The frightened calls were coming in; the rain kept pouring down.
The Cottonwood is flooding, and it’s headed for the town –
headed for the town.
The year was Nineteen-Twenty-Nine; Elmdale was the place.
The switchboard operator worked to keep-up with the pace –
keep up with the pace.
She heard frantic calls to loved ones saying run to higher ground.
Get-out while you can right now; you mustn’t stay and drown.
The operator’s hands were busy routing through the calls.
She plugged the cables in & out across the switchboard wall –
cross her switchboard wall.
She tried to calm the callers and make their right connections.
She listened to their stories of the rising flood’s direction –
rising flood’s direction.
She started making calls herself to folks who lived downstream,
Giving them the warning: time to gather up and leave!
Then down she looked in horror - saw the water creeping in,
But she had to keep on working with the danger folks were in –
danger folks were in.
They told her Leave! They begged her - said she could stay no longer,
With the water getting deeper and the current getting stronger –
current getting stronger.
Then she got a call that nearby: a work train had derailed,
And she knew a train with passengers was comin’ down that way –
comin’ down that way.
She quickly made the needed calls to save that coming train
Before the people perished in the dark and pouring rain.
She kept her post all through the night though she could barely stand.
She had to work that switchboard and trust her tired hands –
trust her tired hands.
When the flood was finally over, the neighborhood all knew:
Their switchboard operator was a hero through & through -
A hero through and through!