Tuesday Voice: The mule ride

By Ed Rogers

It was a cool September day. The warm days of summer were but a memory.
    The cotton had been picked, the corn and peanuts harvested. School had started and I was only going to the farm on the weekends.
    Each Sunday someone would come out to the farm and take me back to town. I hated to say good-bye to Herbert and Willie. Herbert was twelve years old, I was eleven, and Willie was ten. The farm was our kingdom. This was where I had fun and had some of the happiest days of my life. In town there was just school. I had a few friends, but none as close as Herbert and Willie. The Gillum family lived in a little house on my great grandparent’s farm. The land was leased to a Mr. Sprayberry, and had been for a number of years. Herbert and his family worked for him.
    This one Sunday we came up with a plan for me to stay one more day. Mr. Jack, who was Herbert’s father, had run out of tobacco. The store was about eight miles from the farm. Now Mr. Jack had hoped someone would come by in a car and take him to that store. Not everyone owned a car back in the ’50s.
    I told Herbert we should get the old mule and ride it to the store. I said we could get some candy along with Mr. Jack’s tobacco. Then when my aunt Tamp and Uncle Byron came to get me we would be gone and they would have to come back Monday.
    Herbert was all for it, and Mr. Jack was happy to be getting his tobacco. Then Willie wanted to go, but we told him there wasn’t enough room on the mule for the three of us.
    He went crying to Mr. Jack and so we had to take him or we couldn’t go.
    Down the gravel road went the three of us, bareback on that old mule. It was a nice sunny day and we weren’t in any hurry.
    About halfway to the store, there lived a colored family with four children. The house was set back off the road a good ways so I don’t know what those boys were doing down at the end of their drive, but there they were. It’s like seeing rain coming at you from far off; there is just not much you can do to stop it.
    The first one hollers, “Look at that...three asses riding an ass.”
    The second one says, “They look like a cookie with a white filling.” (Herbert was in front, then me, and in back was Willie.)
    We had just passed their drive and Herbert gave them the finger and said something bad about their mother. They started after us but Herbert trotted the mule out of range. A trotting mule, bareback, is not fun.
    Then we all three heard the call of nature. Getting off the mule was not that hard, but getting three of us back up there was not going to be easy. Mr. Jack had helped at the house. We knew we could get help at the store, but what were we to do here with no one to help?
    Herbert said, “If we get off we won’t be able to get the three of us back up here.”
    Then Willie started crying and saying, “I have to pee bad!”
    Herbert told him, “Turn around, and pee off the back of the mule.”
    With a lot of coaxing, Willie turned around, and took care of business. Then it was my turn.
    Without turning around again, Willie slid toward the front of the mule as I slid over him. Then I turned around and did my business off the back of the mule—and let me tell you, it isn’t as easy as you might think. At ten and eleven, there isn’t much hose to run out and the rear of the mule was wet with pee. Herbert just raised one leg and did it off the side. It was just too much trouble to get turned back around so we rode into the store with two of us facing backwards.

Having bought our candy and Mr. Jack’s tobacco, we led the mule over to a bench, and got back on for the long ride home. Willie kelp saying his butt was getting wet, but I wasn’t going to trade places with him, no matter how much he cried. It had seemed like a good idea, riding that old mule to the store, but faced with that long ride home, it didn’t look all that smart.
    As we started up the hill, we had forgotten about our encounter with the kids who lived at the top, but they hadn’t. They knew we would have to come back that way, and they were lying in wait.
    Topping the hill, we heard hollering and saw three boys and a little girl charge out of the brush at us. They were throwing rocks and waving sticks like crazy people.
    We weren’t hit, but one or two rocks hit the mule and you wouldn’t believe how fast that old mule could run. I was screaming at Herbert to stop the mule, but by then he had let go of the reins and was holding on to the neck of the mule for dear life. That mule was running so fast the only thing we could do was hold on to each other. Willie had his arms wrapped around me and my arms around Herbert and all three of us screaming at the top of our lungs.
    It must have been the hand of providence keeping us on that mule. I can think of nothing else that would have stopped us from falling off. The mule ran for about two miles before coming to a stop. We were yelling, crying, and praying. We must have promised everything we could think of if only that damn mule would stop. Nobody gave a thought as to how we would get back up. All we could think about was getting the hell off that mule.
    If you have never been on a runaway mule, then you don’t know what a beating your body suffers. It was as if someone had beaten us with a big stick. Willie cried all the way home. It was five miles to the house and we walked every painstaking step of the way home. The mule walked along behind us as though nothing had happened. A jack is a male mule and a jenny is a female. This was a jenny and gentler than the jack back in the barn. But jenny or jack, it was the last time I ever sat on the back of a mule.

I look back on some of things I have done in my life and wonder why the good Lord didn’t strike me down for being so dumb.
    We would have been all right if Willie had stopped crying, but with the way the day had gone why should it get any better. Willie told the whole story, and even added a little to make it seem like Herbert and I were to blame for what happened.
    Mr. Jack didn’t want to hear our side at all. The rest of the day was spent cleaning out the cow stalls. The next day and a few after that it was very hard to walk or sit.
    Have you ever had a cow-pie fight? Well, we will save that story for another time. I will tell you: when in a cow-pie fight, make sure you pick up only the real dry ones.

[Uncle Byron was described in another reminiscence on October 15.]
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Copyright © 2013 by Ed Rogers

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