It was probably a summer day, either that or a Saturday, or both, since my dad, a teacher at the Gaar's Mill high school was working around the place--a 60-acre sandy hill-farm where the wiry Bermudy grass and the dern pine saplin's jostled each other for growing space in the corners and rows of the fields where dad worked at raising enough corn, cotton, and a few peas, sweet potatoes and stalks of sugar cane to keep food on the table supplementing the school salary, often paid in "scrip". It would have been 1934 or '35, as I still was an only child and innocent of the stark Depression times my parents and the country were experiencing.

At age three or four, I lived in a fantasy playland which included rides on dad's "slide," an open wooden box about three-by-six feet set on wooden runners which the farm mule pulled through a wooded trail to the New Ground field laden with the plow, tools, seed, and fertilizers, etc., for planting or cultivating. Pete, the mule, was a big chestnut brown animal, gentle and un-demanding. Without commotion, he pulled the slide, the plows and cultivating tools, and occasionally teamed up to pull a wagon which went to Gaar's Store, the gin, or grist mill, a mile or so from our home on what is now Guy Gaar Road.

The fact is, dad only owned one mule, and a wagon was a two-mule conveyance. Our through-the-woods neighbor, Willie Adams, also had a single mule, and one of them, either Dad or Willie--I'm not sure which--owned a wagon. And so, if there was hauling to do, Willie and dad each furnished a mule, and the wagon rolled. Nothing was very far away--no more than a mile to the furthest stop at the gin and grist mill, to take a bale of picked cotton for ginning, bring feed, seed, or other supplies from the all-purpose country store, or take shelled corn to the mill for converting to meal for the household.

That was about it. If there was a trip to "town," which would have been Winnfield, you'd go out to the gravel road on Saturday and flag down the school bus, and make a day trip out of it. It was considered part of the "deal" that the bus driver contractor made his services available in the community on off-days, and he probably got very little more than a few contributions to cover fuel costs from his passengers, since no one was flush with cash. Occasionally, there would be a shared ride to Dodson in a car, not ours, of which there were less than a handful within the known countryside, including the one which passed daily to bring the U.S. Mail from Dodson.

Otherwise, you were always right around home. Lighting was by coal oil lamp; heating, in season, was the wood-burning fireplace; water from a hand-dug well right off the back porch; milk straight from the cow's udder, hand-gripped into your own bucket, cooled in a covered syrup-bucket lowered by a right stout cord into the well; butter and buttermilk by virtue of the hand-chugged churn dasher, because without refrigeration or access to an icebox, the milk soured and turned to "clabber" usually within a day of being "harvested" from the cow. Forget telephones, electricity, air conditioning, washing machines, computers, television, radios . . . oh, there was a radio, a battery powered rig at a neighbor's house, where everyone went once in a very great while to sit on the big front porch at night to dip and chew and smoke and listen to the prize fights when Max Baer or Joe Louis were on the ticket.

And so, on this summer day . . . Troy, my dad, and Willie had collaborated on a trip to someplace with the wagon and two mules. They had gotten back home, and were resting the mules in the shade, still harnessed to the wagon, while they unloaded. I was tooling around at some childish occupation, when suddenly both men jumped and made for the mule team, seemingly in alarm. I noticed that Pete, our mule, was staggering in the harness, and both men were shouting and hurrying to release him from the gear holding him to the wagon. As they got Pete loosed, the mule fell and laid over on his side, lay still, then gave a groan. My mother, who had been inside the house, came running out, already crying, . She knelt beside old Pete, weeping, "Oh, Pete! Don't die! Don't die!"

But it was over. Without a mule, Troy did very little farming after that, and within a few months decided to move the family to New Orleans, where he enrolled at Baptist Bible Institute, now New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary, to train for a new career in the Baptist ministry.

I have never been sure whether taking to preaching was as a result of a divine Call, or if it was just all Troy could think of to do after Pete died. In any case, I never thought the Lord did us any favor by killing that mule.

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