Charleston Had It All # 52
Breaking Mules Ozarks Style
By Mildred Reeves Burnett
Dad bought mules the men worked from local mule dealer, Hershel “Jock” Word.
Word’s farm, which was one great pasture, lay right across the fence from ours to the south, and was always full of grazing mules. The Cates family lived on our side of the fence in a large bungalow on what was an old established farmstead, now part of Hillhouse Park. It was Ervin, Earl, and Jearld Cates’ job to break the mules so they would work as a team.
According to Ervin Cates, when a mule was accustomed to working the right side of the team, it was confusing for it to be moved to the left. They’d walk sideways and every which way. After a few days of working with the mule, the team would finally work together. Sometimes a mule was so cantankerous that it was returned to Word for another.
“There was a lead mule and an off mule. The lead mule was always on the left side of the team,” Ed Marshall, Jr. told me.
“If we wanted to break a mule to ride, we’d work it all day long; then it would be tired, and we’d lead it to plowed ground. There we’d fill a grass sack with about two gallons of dirt, and Earl and Jerald slung it across the mule’s back while I (Ervin) held the mule. If the mule didn’t try to go up and circle the moon, we knew it would be ok to work until we could ride it.
“Jearld and Earl did the riding and I held the reins,” Ervin said. “You had to be careful of a mule, because they would really kick.”
“I was dragged around in a circle through plowed ground by mules, many times. If it jerked the sack off its back, try to get loose and attempt to run backward, holding the reins I would fall down and hang my toes in the plowed ground. The mule wouldn’t run far, since the iron bits pulled on its teeth.
“Sometimes the mule got loose and ran to the barn, dragging the bridle reins, hungry to eat. Other times they’d run for me or by me when I was stretched out on the ground, and I had to roll over, turn it loose, and let it go. Then we’d work with it another day. Every mule was different and various methods were used breaking them.
“There were men in the county who made their living by breaking mules and horses to work or ride. Your dad knew he was getting them broke for nothing, because we were having the fun of doing it.
“We broke and rode many mules there on the farm. Jearld and Earl would laugh at me when I was dragged through the plowed grimy dirt, and I laughed at them when they were thrown. They were small boys, but they could really ride, and would rather ride than eat. We also rode a lot of calves on the farm.
“We Cates boys were fresh out of the Ozarks where it was all rocks, and didn’t mind getting thrown off the mules here in plowed ground.” 1
RUN-AWAY MULES
One fall autumn day, when I (Mildred) was about six or seven years old, and alone in the front yard, I looked up to see a team of mules, hitched to a cotton wagon, running wildly up the road, crossing State Street, rumbling toward me. Frightened, I ran for the front porch and up the steps as fast as I could, and stood watching the run-away-mules come thundering ever closer, with Jearld Cates bouncing around on the bench, struggling to hold onto the reins.
Closing in on the farm lane to the barn lot, the mules sped around the corner of the cotton field, flinging the wagon tail with Jearld Cates still wrestling the reins, skidding across the corner of the yard, slinging a cloud of dust into the air.
Jearld hung on the reins as they whizzed by the porch like race horses “cummin’ down the home stretch.” Seeing the barnyard gate glaring before him, Jearld sprung off the wagon just before the mules leaped over the gate, clearing it much as trained jumpers, dragging the creaking wagon behind, collapsing the gate. Once inside the fence the homing mules settled down.
HAULING COTTON
TO COTTON GIN
“Through cotton season, I (Ervin) hauled many wagon loads—a bale or more per wagon—of cotton to McCracken’s Cotton Gin where I picked up ‘cotton checks’ for the cotton pickers after the cotton was unloaded.
“There were times I had to wait an hour and a half or more to get cotton ginned off, since there’d be so many wagons of cotton there. When the cotton was sucked from the wagon, I drove the wagon to the scales where they weighed the empty wagon. I then walked into the gin office, and they’d have the check all written for the pickers. They knew from the cotton weight how much money was to go to them.
“Next, I drove the team of mules to the wagon yard where there was a hitch rack. I tied the mule bridles to it, walked to the bank, and cashed the check to pay the cotton pickers.
“There’d be lots of wagons there and sometimes there wouldn’t be room for my wagon — presently Dollar Store parking area. They’d come out of Texas Bend hub deep in mud. Between first ditch and second ditch was the muddiest place. There were poles about ten feet or more long laid down there to drive across.
The folks had corn and hay in the wagon for the mules to eat. If they stayed in town a while, the wagon tongue was let down to the ground, the mules unhitched, and tied loosely to the back of the wagon, and they just nibbled from there.
“If I couldn’t park the wagon at the hitch rack, I would drive to Center Street south of the bank, and park the wagon there and tie the mules to the wire fence, which ran up and down that little dirt street.
“There were wagons all over the place back then. The cotton gins would give you a reflector to put on back of wagon for driving at night.
“I was at McCracken’s gin when it burned, and there when the elevator burned.” 2
1 Ervin Cates. Telephone Interview. Dec. 26, 2006.
2 Ibid.
To Be Continued |