Bob Sanders: Old mule rode off into the sunset

In this newspaper a few days ago, there was a picture at the top of the front page of some type of wagon being pulled by a team of mules.
One of those mules was colored just like old Hat used to be, kind of bay, but with a white nose. Old Hat was close to being the perfect mule, smarter than some people I know, obeyed “Gee,” “Haw” and “whoa,” and would pull her heart out.

Daddy had traded our one horse, old Dan, for a team of fairly small mules, old Hat and old Tom. I don’t know how old she was, but she wasn’t a colt.

When I was seven, Daddy let me do my first plowing — busting out the middles with a Georgia stock at laying-by time ... with old Hat. Things went fine, except at a sharp curve in the rows. She wasn’t swinging out as she should have, and I got to crying and calling her names. Daddy, plowing a few rows away, came over and jerked her around a little and swatted her and told her to cut it out. And from then on, she negotiated the curves perfectly.

I did my first real, full-time plowing the day I was eight. Old Hat pulling the John Deere planter, planting corn. And from then on, we spent many days in the fields together. Old Tom was her first
team mate.

Good plow mule, but nervous. If you were putting out fertilizer with a knocker-type distributor, for instance. You’d start off.

Then, the faster he walked, the louder the distributor sounded, and the louder it sounded the faster he’d walk, ‘til he’d be trotting; and you’d say “whoa” and he’d stop so suddenly you’d fall over the distributor. Then start all over. Nope.

Old George was mean lazy, lazy just to make you mad. Sneaky. Nope.

Old Bill was short-winded, but OK for light work, and he was colorful: white stockings and a white inverted V over his tail.

Old Hat worked patiently with all of them, always on the right side in a team situation, always in the first stall.

I don’t know how mule years compare with human years, but she must have been getting on up there by the time I unhitched her for the last time to go off and get me one of those college educations I’d heard about.

After I left home, brother Jack plowed with her a little bit, but pretty soon, Daddy traded her and Bill to somebody for a larger pair of mules ... and even bought a tractor!

I’d fool around with it a little when I’d go home, but I never did become familiar with it. I was a mule man.

I don’t know what happened to her. I rode her many a mile to and from the fields, but I never did learn how to really ride with a saddle.

We got a saddle for her. This would be easy, I thought. I got her to trotting her little stiff-legged trot, and she made a sudden right turn and I kept on going the straight route. I think she was trying to tell me something.

Bob Sanders is a longtime radio personality with WAUD in Auburn and writes a weekly column for the Opelika-Auburn News.