I was six or seven years old when I first saw a mule. It was in the summer of 1948 or 1949, in the alley behind our house on Second Street Northwest in Linton, Indiana. Actually, there were two mules. To my little kid's eyes, they were like horses, though somehow different. Their ears struck me, big rabbity ones that pointed toward the sky like corn leaves. Their eyes were special, too, big and glistening brown, with long lashes. They turned their heads and looked around, following me in such a curious, interested way that I knew at once they were smart. They were gray, tall, and rangy, altogether imposing. I made sure not to get too close to them out of respect or good sense. To describe them as big isn’t useful, since to me, at that age, everything was big.
In any case, it was the work the mules were doing and the striking appearance of the man they were with that made my eyes widen.
They were pulling an old-fashioned four-wheeled farm wagon, a grey unpainted wooden box on tall wooden-spoked wheels, and it was heading up the cinder-strewn alley behind our house. On the bench at the front sat a man like a proud, benevolent captain. He smiled at me as he shouted “Whoa” to the mules. At that age, my standards of cleanliness weren’t well developed, but even so, I couldn’t help noticing that he was a dirty and greasy guy wearing clothes that would qualify for the rag bag. He sported a bushy, unkempt beard that curled about his grimy, beaming face like a swirling cloud. Nobody wore beards in those days (except when a town had its Centennial), so his whiskers set the man apart.
With his crooked chewing tobacco-stained teeth, he seemed remarkably cheery.
“How dee do boy?” he said, positively beaming.
“Fine,” I replied. “How do you do, Mister?”
“Is yer mother to home?”
I admitted she was. His face lighted up in a smile as if I had given him a fine present.
“Thank ye, son!” he burbled, hopping down off his seat and making his way unhurriedly toward the back door. After a brief chat with Mother, during which he held his stained cloth cap deferentially in his hand while Mom stood defensively, half behind the partly opened screen door. She seemed ready to slam and lock it instantly against this hobo-like fellow if danger threatened. He soon came shambling back, whistling, and obviously pleased. He sprang back on his seat and called to the mules, which backed the wagon twenty feet or so, stopping it at the rear wall of our family coal house and privy.
I should explain that the folks who lived on our street didn’t yet have indoor plumbing in those days. Calls of nature required you to make a trip to the outhouse, sometimes carrying a granite-ware chamber pot filled the night before. Our family “restroom” was a single-holer with a door whose knob was black porcelain. I remember it because, on many a frosty January day, that porcelain knob gave my fingers an icy bite.
The thing about privies was that they eventually filled up with, uh, uh, let’s call it “residue.” At some point, there was no option but to clean out the accumulated ... I guess I’ll have to call it by its four-letter Anglo-Saxon word ... poop.
The alley behind our house was dotted up and down with outhouses, eight of them (none of them built of the proverbial brick, incidentally), one behind each house facing Second Street. Walking down the alley on a windless summer day meant holding your nose (or at least your breath) when you passed a privy needing sanitary services. Usually, at least one of them did.
Cleaning out privies wasn’t a job for the faint-hearted and certainly not one that ordinary folks cared to do. What do you do with the stuff, anyway? And so when I watched the cheerful, grimy fellow hop down again from his perch on the wagon and raise the hinged wooden cover at the base of our outhouse, it finally dawned on me what he was about. Of course! He was a professional privy cleaner, and his vehicle was a notorious honey wagon. It wasn’t exactly a dignified occupation, but the demand for it was steady. And the pay was good. Mom gave him five dollars for undertaking the odorful task. At a distance, I watched grimacing as he dug out the residue with a long-handled shovel, tossing shovel-load after shovel-load of the disgusting stuff over the wooden wall of the wagon bed, on which it landed with a liquid plop. All the while, the guy whistled and hummed with a pipe clenched between his teeth. He stopped from time to time to relight the pipe with a big kitchen match. Though I was a mere wee tyke and spent part of the time circling the mules to see them from different angles, I distinctly remember wondering how a man doing such a disgusting job could be so happy. For me, I guess, at six or seven, the world was still filled with wonders.
When his poop-shoveling was done, he pitched several shovels of quicklime into the pit and scattered more of it on the ground on the apron of the pit to soak up stuff that had spilled from his shovel. Then, still whistling, he closed up the hinged gate of the privy and hopped back on his seat on the wagon. He paused for a moment to take a nip from a bottle in a brown paper bag he kept on the seat. After a pleased sigh and a laugh, he took the reins in his hand and flicked them over the backs of the mules while making a clucking sound with his tongue, whereupon the mules and wagon went crunching on up the alley.
Moments later, back at my play – I was tossing a rubber ball against the side of the garage—I was startled by a loud braying coming from up the way. Running out to the alley, I saw the cause of it. The honey wagon had stopped behind old Miss Pigg’s house, and one of the mules had gotten annoyed at something; maybe it was a barking dog. There it stood, ears laid back on its neck, nose pointed at the sky, its lips peeled back to reveal long rows of teeth, emitting a series of resounding Whinee-Ahh-Ahh-Ahh! Whinee-Ahh-Ahh-Ahh! I didn’t know whether it was a call of anger or a declaration of mule pride, but I was delighted and impressed by its loudness. The neighbors were impressed, too; several of them came out their back doors to see what was the matter.
A mule is the offspring of a horse mare and a donkey jack (or stallion). With such parents, it isn’t any wonder that the mule starts off life with a bad reputation. Mules come in all shapes and sizes, from miniature fellows 36 inches at the withers to draft monsters nearly 6 feet high. The size depends upon what the breeder chooses for parents. Mules come in nearly all the colors that horses do, from drab gray to brown and tan; some even have spotted patterns like pinto horses. One thing mules have in common is that they are all sterile. Maybe that’s why they bray so miserably.
People love animals, often irrationally, and the mule is no exception. In addition to being interesting, mules proved useful in remarkable ways, which was why they became such a part of American life.
The first American to discover their usefulness was a soldier and a Virginia planter who had distinguished himself in other occupations. His name was George Washington. Like other gentlemen farmers of his day, George was always on the lookout for ways to improve his farming output. Someone told him about a fine new type of draft animal that had appeared in Spain, the offspring of a jack stallion and a horse mare. Thanks to George’s reputation and connections, he wrangled the gift of a big jack from King Charles III of Spain. That was in 1785. After uniting his jack with a promising mare, he soon was the god-father of the first mule foal born in the new United States. By the time he died, George was the proud owner of 58 mules working his fields and drawing his wagons. Soon, other farmers imitated George and bred mules on their own plantations. Mules quickly became the most popular draft animals in the growing nation and weren’t supplanted in that role till the invention of the gasoline-powered farm tractor in the early 20th Century.
Why were mules so useful? Because they are tougher and smarter than horses. You can ride a horse to death, but never a mule. When a mule senses he is working too hard and getting overheated, he slows down or even stops. No amount of shouting, cajoling, or even beating can force him to go on doing what he knows is bad for him. He knows better than you do, and he knows it. Out of this sense of self-preservation grows his reputation for stubbornness. Actually, it’s not stubbornness but good sense. Horses will carelessly founder themselves and get bloats and bellyaches; in other words, they eat themselves sick. Mules won’t. They eat what they need, then quit. That’s why we say that someone eats like a horse, never that he eats like a mule. In our overweight age, we need more of the latter and less of the former. Unlike horses, mules rarely have hoof problems. Maybe that’s because they have small, boxy feet and are surefooted and careful where they step. In most other ways, they are simply hardier and tougher. Veterinary costs for horses are far greater than those for mules. Mules work longer and live longer, too.
Mules are far more sensible than horses. If a horse gets tangled up in a barbed wire fence, he is liable to panic and tear wildly away, injuring himself in the process. A mule in the same situation remains cool and calm and tries to figure out how to extricate himself. If he can’t solve the problem, he will wait until human help arrives. Mules are awfully smart. Clarence Calvert, who worked with his mules, Ike and George, as a kid eighty years ago, said that you had to take pains to keep the mules from getting into the next pasture. After watching you open and close a gate, his mules Ike and George quickly figured out how to do it themselves. They would wait until you left and then quickly find their way into the next field. They probably figured that the grass was greener over there.
All of these positive mule traits result from something scientists call hybrid vigor. The offspring of distantly related but interbreedable animals or plants have vigor that neither of the parents possesses. The vigor of mules made them beloved by Americans who needed animal power. And so they became the favorite working beasts on countless thousands of farms and highways of early America, right up till the tractor and the automobile age started more than a century ago.
Year after year, mules pulled plows and mowing machines across a million American fields. And they drew countless dray wagons along the primitive highways of our growing nation. Until the Civil War, the majority of Americans lived on farms, and all those folks knew mules, if not first-hand, on their own farms, then from their neighbors or from the roads that passed by their houses. Mules provided the power needed to pull enormous loads, such as canal boats. Perhaps most famous were the twenty mule teams that pulled loads of borax across the desert to the rail head. It’s interesting that Republican Ronald Regan, host of the popular 1950s TV show “Death Valley Days,” had his name associated with a mule team that did work worthy of elephants. Despite the fortune that Regan made on the backs of mules, he opted politically for the elephant instead.
The mule worked not only above ground but underground, too. Coal mines in Pennsylvania and in the Midwest owed everything to the power of the mule. The mine mules were kept in underground stables, which saved the miners from having to coax them into and out of the mine elevator every day, a tricky operation at best. The little mules dragged ponderously loaded coal cars from the coal face to the pit bottom, a notoriously dangerous operation—for the mule drivers, that is, who often lost their lives when they were run over or squashed between the passageway timbering and the tunnel wall.
And so the mule worked its way into our American consciousness and language. It’s not by chance that the mascot of the military academy at West Point is the Army mule. One of the most famous fighter units of World War I was the Kicking Mule Squadron, which distinguished itself over the skies of France. The squadron name carried a message: “We’ll hit you hard, and we’re smart! Watch out!” Quentin Roosevelt, son of former President Theodore Roosevelt, a Kicking Mule pilot, lost his life when he was shot down behind enemy lines on July 14, 1918. Frances the Talking Mule was a popular movie star in the 1950’s. Frances was Donald O'Connor's companion, confidant, and foil in a series of comedy movies like Frances Goes to West Point. Frances invariably proved smarter than his human partner. Of course, the symbol of the modern Democrat Party is the mule, and a lot of folks think it is a positive one.
Mule traits naturally came to be identified with human ones, that is, with our friends and neighbors. Someone who steadfastly refuses to change his mind is as stubborn as a mule, a phrase calling to mind the recalcitrant mule who simply sits down on its hindquarters and refuses to budge. A person who refuses to do something despite much urging balks like a mule. A loutish person who shouts in public brays like a mule. A man or woman who works steadily, dependably, and hard works like a mule. A person who transports illegal drugs is referred to in the trade (and by the police) as a mule. Someone who is taken advantage of by others is ridden like a mule. A person with a big toothy grin looks like a mule eating briars – the smart creature peels back his lips to keep from getting pricked. Anything that packs a powerful wallop and hits us unexpectedly kicks like a mule. Moonshine distilled in illegal stills and consumed without the mellowing aging process that also gave it color was referred to as “white mule,” a once common alternative to “white lightning.”
I’m tired of this essay now, and so I refuse to write anything more. I hope you don’t think I’m being mulish.
I always learn stuff from your essays! Thanks.