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Some folks here might not know about the mule whisperer.
There once was this group of newagers 😉 who wanted to return to a simpler time, so they bought a farm and packed up their crystals and tarot cards and moved to the country. (That’s not easy to do on bicycles) They wanted to grow their own organic vegetables. They didn’t want to polute so they bought an old mule to plow with. They put him in his traces and hooked the singletree to the turning plow and said giddyup….. He just stood there swishing his tail at flies. (This bothered some of them… he might hurt a fly, you know) Well…. nothing they did would get him to move. They smudged him…… cast his horoscope…. shook crystals at him……. read from Sunbear’s book ….. nothing worked.
Finally, they got on line and found a mule whisperer that stayed not too far away. All the reviews said he was better than any horse whisperer…. always got results. So they called him and he said he would be right over. Directly, an old sappony man showed up wearing a turkey feather in his fedora. They were so impressed to be in the presence of such a powerful medicine man… they thought maybe he would bless their crystals after he straightened their mule companion out.
Well, the old sappony looked around and found a piece of 2 X 4 about 4 feet long. He walked over to that ole mule and wound up like a baseball player….. he hit a homerun up side that mule’s head. The mule’s eyes crossed and he shook his head and looked at that old man. The newagers were aghast…. Several of the men fainted. They were screaming at the old man. WHAT ARE YOU DOING???? You are supposed to be a mule whisperer.
The old sappony leaned on his 2 X 4 and said, “Well, first you got to get their attention…. then you whisper.”
the first time I heard a version of that story I thought about an event from my childhood. I was raised on my grandaddy’s tobacco farm. We had an old mule named Mollie. She worked good most of the time but when she got tired she would just quit where she was and wouldn’t budge. My uncle was trying to get her to go one late afternoon and he finally held her reins and hit her across the nose with the singletree. His wife hollared at him to not hit the mule again in front of the children… to take her around behind the barn if he needed to hit her again. My uncle said, “Hell, woman, if I could take her behind the barn then I wouldn’t need to hit her!”
My other uncle was bad about kicking the mule in the belly when he got frustrated. We had just bought a new Super A tractor and Maxie got frustrated and jumped down and kicked that tractor in the belly hard as he could. Broke his foot and was laid up all summer. I thought it was a whole lot funnier than he did 😉
Dreaming Hawk, now that you folks are on the subject of Mules I have got to share this one. I actualy saw a guy ski across a tobacco field ! We had a mule that was slower than the 7 year itch. His name was Joe and no matter if driving slides or cultivating you had to continually whop him on the rump with the reins. There was only one oddity to all this and that involved a running motor, tractor or truck, all had the same effect. Get old Joe next to one of them and you thought he was a streak of lightening ! This day we were putting in tobacco and I had just pulled up to end of the field with the John Deer tractor and two empty slides. This fellow came out the end of the rows and pulled the full slide beside another full one and unhooked. Well here he came! He had his left hand holding the single tree and the lines wrapped around his right hand just bouncing closer while everybody in the field is yelling and trying to stop him. You got it, that old mule took off across that tobacco field , not down the rows but across it like a streak of lightening with him yelling WHOH to the top of his lungs. Every time his feet hit the top of a tobacco bed his head would pop up above the tobacco plants with that mule parting plants in a wave just like Moses parted the Red Sea. That mule took that man clean across that field with that guy never missing not one row of tobacco bouncing up and down and up. He literally skied all the way across that field and the mule finally stopped when he hit the woods ! Even though this fellow was about to be drug to death that sight was so funny we all couldn’t stop laughing ! He didn’t have a scratch on him, never fell down or got drug but literally skied from the top of those tobacco row beds all the way into the woods still holding that single tree and with the lines wrapped around his hand. Ed
I actualy saw a guy ski across a tobacco field !
LOL, Ed! We live on a dead end road kind of in a holler. Have seen our Canadian neighbor skiing down the road when it snowed, but your story is way more funnier. Only in Carolina, eh?
“One has fear in front of a goat, in back of a mule, and on every side of a fool.”
“A mule will labor ten years willingly and patiently for you, for the privilege of kicking you once.”
Jack, well said. Our other mule (named for my mother Pattie) Pat was opposite of old Joe and never walked but ran in everything he did. You had to hold back on the lines all the time you were working.
About 4 farms worked together every year and our neighbor had two mules. One had to be muzzled for as the season went into late summer and early fall the grass got tall and green in the rows and he would eat constantly until he was so blocked he could hardly move.
The other mule and it was my joy to drive the tobacco slides, was known for one bad habit. If for any reason he got his leg outside the trace chain he started kicking. I don’t mean just kicking but REALLY KICKING !!!!!!!!!
He would kick until his foot got back inside the trace chain and immediately stop. All you could do was stand far away and pull him back and then forward until he set the foot back inside. I’ve seen him kick the front end of a tobacco slide into splinters. If in coming out of the field at the end of the row he got his foot out it was no telling how many plants he would kick all to pieces. I remember going to the harness house one morning to harness up the mules. My daddy had got a new set of plow lines in town the day before. I opened the door and there hung the most pitiful excuse for plow lines I had ever seen. They were totally worn out and tied together in knots and I went to get my daddy. The other men came as well and daddy said just go on and finish harnessing the mule and we’ll use these today. I suppose someone needed the other one’s worse than we did. The next week he was able to get another set but I will never forget my daddy’s response and also the “lack of it.” Ed
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