DANCE AT THE OIL FIELD CAMPS - Song Page
© words & music by Annie Wilson
from CD Peace on the Prairie
Album Notes: The 1920’s - 1930’s saw rapid development of oil fields across Kansas including a number of boom towns which arose on the Flint Hills prairies - then vanished. Young men came from failed farms to work 12-hour shifts, fed by young women in large eating halls. These camps were also famous for their wonderful dances featuring local musicians - including the always-beloved fiddler.
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LYRICS
In the dirty old thirties when the prairie was thirsty
And the farmers were leaving their soil
To boom towns they’d go for the jobs and dough
In the fields of the newly-struck oil
Summer nights in these camps they’d hold a big dance
For the workers who labored so hard
Everybody that could helped lay out the wood
For a dance floor out under the stars
Folks danced in the heat to the oil rig beat
In the shadows of kerosene lamps
For a break in their toil to pump out the oil
They danced at the oil field camps
Joe was a roughneck with arms built like wrenches
And hands he could never get clean
There was grease in each crease where he’d wrestle the pipe
And some blood where the fittings got mean
The laundry and cooking were done by young Sue
Who could feed every man in the hall
Some-were rude and some kind, but they mostly seemed blind
To this girl who was feeding them all
And they both were alone and both missing home
In that forest of derricks so high
Where the cable tools bore in the ground for black ore
That would blow out up into the sky
It was Saturday night in the evening’s last light
When Joe managed to first catch Sue’s eye
Then he took a big chance and he asked her to dance
To that music out under the sky
They whirled and they twirled as the fiddler played
And they started a lifetime romance
Neath a moon oh-so-big to the beat of the rig
In the dance at the oil field camps
And the fiddler bowed for the young and the old
To the rhythm of pounding pump jacks
Ever after that start they were never apart
Since the dance at the oil field camps