[Verse 1]
Up at three-thirty, the morning still dark,
Seventeen miles to our Fort Polk start,
By five-o-one the shingles would fly,
Before the sun started burning high.

[Verse 2]

I was just a boy, weighing one-fifteen,
Stripping off shingles, my body lean,
Two-story Army barracks lined in a row,
Where soldiers slept before they’d go.

[Chorus]

Fort Polk summers, the sweat and the steel,
Blistered hands, the work was real,
Hammers crying out in the heat of the day,
Supporting Ole Glory in a blue-collar way.

[Verse 3]

Bundled shingles weighing eighty pounds,
One hand on the ladder, twenty feet off the ground,
Step off steady and don’t lean back,
Lay them across that felt-lined track.

[Verse 4]

Melvin and Butch – hammers singing a song,
Six squares an hour, all day long,
Legends of the craft, that father and son,
Nipping at our heels and making it fun.

[Chorus]

Fort Polk summers, the sweat and the steel,
Blistered hands, the work was real,
Hammers crying out in the heat of the day,
Supporting Ole Glory in a blue-collar way.

[Instrumental]

[Verse 5]

Lunch was a sandwich and a nap in the shade,
Underneath barracks where the cool earth laid,
In thirty minutes, it was back to hell,
Stripping shingles and bumping nails.

[Verse 6]

On good days we’d scale a mess hall roof,
Sergeants invited us to eat with the troops.
Ice cream was served – our sweet dessert.
While Army privates stood at alert.

[Chorus]

Fort Polk summers, the sweat and the steel,
Blistered hands, the work was real,
Hammers crying out in the heat of the day,
Supporting Ole Glory in a blue-collar way

[Verse 7]

Hard working days that made me a man,
Sweat-stained summers with a roofing clan,
Fort Polk’s heat, the bonds and the pain,
I’d do it all over, keeping everything the same.

[Chorus]

Fort Polk summers, the sweat and the steel,
Blistered hands, the work was real,
Hammers crying out in the heat of the day,
Supporting Ole Glory in a blue-collar way.

[outro]
[instrumental]