Along the Back Roads of Yesterday Read online

  “Oris,” she said. “I know you don’t want to part with Homer. Sometimes we have to do things we don’t want to.” She moved my hand away from my eyes and wiped away the tears.

  I wanted to tell her how sorry I was for not keeping Homer locked up, but knew the tears would start again.

  “Just because you have to get rid of Homer,” she said, “babies won’t die in their sleep, the sun won’t stop coming up, and old women and kids won’t die.”

  A sob escaped my lips.

  Mom softened the blow of having to sell Homer by saying, “You have been wanting a donkey for a long time now. Your father and I have decided you can take the money you get for Homer and buy a donkey.”

  She leaned over and kissed my forehead and said, “I love you, son. Sleep safe, little man.”

  She blew out the lamp and went back down stairs.

  Ol’ Sam, a Mule

  “Charles, if you had a lick of sense, you’d have sold that cussed mule years ago. Here it is, the middle of haying season. Now, you’re going to be laid up for a while,” Mom said. Her skirts snapped as she left the room.

  After sixty-some years, those were words my memory returned to me this morning.

  I was seven years old that muggy summer of 1940.

  Dad had a span of big black mules he called Sam and Joe. They were out of black Percheron mares, sired by a grandson of the famous Mammoth Jack, Kansas Chief. Those mares, Kit and Kate, weighed 2,000 pounds each and stood 17 hh—68 inches.

  Ol’ Sam did a bang-up job of making life miserable for everyone on the ranch. He was hard to catch. Every dog, man or kid that came close to him learned to avoid his heels, or run the risk of being kicked clear into the middle of the next county. When you entered his stall, you had to watch, be careful, or he’d crowd you against the wall.

  Every time Dad walked down the alley behind the stalls, ol’ Sam kicked at him. Dad would jump out of the way. (Grandad Fletcher said that’s how Sam taught Dad to dance.)

  Dad was the only one who liked Sam.

  My job was to muck out Sam and Joe’s stalls. Sam’s stall was the first one in a line of six. Sam never kicked at me like he did Dad. He’d just stick his left rear foot out and shake it at me. I didn’t trust him and he knew it.

  Late one sizzling July evening as Dad and I were cleaning stalls, ol’ Sam did his usual ‘kick-at-Dad’ thing.

  “I’ve had enough of that blasted mule kickin’ at me!” Dad said. “I’m gonna teach that ‘bugger’ a thing-or-two!” He kicked Sam. Sam kicked at Dad. Dad kicked Sam. Sam kicked and connected with Dad’s left kneecap. Dad was laid up for a month. All he did during the rest of haying season was boss the job. He walked with a lop-sided limp for the rest of his life.

  I could never figure how Sam knew when to stick that foot out and shake it at me.

  One evening during chore time, I took a break and sat on a bale of straw in the feed alley. I looked at Sam’s stall, and spied a knothole at the end of the manger. A big, soft, brown eye peered at me. I got up off the straw bale and started down the alley behind Sam. As usual, ol’ Sam played his game and shook his foot at me.

  The next day I nailed a tin can lid over the hole. Ol’ Sam never shook his foot at me again.

  Mule-Apples!

  The summer of 1941 I was seven years old, going on eight. In my mind, I was a man-full-grown, and could do anything. Heck! Like my dad, I could spit five feet and cuss the cat at the same time. I knew better than to let Mom catch me cussing. (She didn’t understand man things.)

  “Oris.You eat everything on your plate! Some little kid in Germany would like to have what you waste.” (So far as I was concerned, she could send my share of spinach and okra to Germany.)

  “Okay, Mom. Why don’t the other kids have to clean up their plates?” Ralph was five and Eddy three. They never had to clean their plates. (I figured Mom didn’t nag them because there was no food left to clean up—it was on their faces, clothes, the table and the floor.)

  “Never you mind about the other kids. Hurry up and finish eating. It’s Friday night. I need help with the eggs.” (G-r-r-r-r! I’d rather take a beating than help with the dumb eggs!)

  Mom’s flock of contented Rhode Island Red hens were good layers. They laid large brown eggs. Every Friday night after the barn chores were finished and the supper dishes washed and put away, Mom sorted, candled, and crated the eggs. Come Saturday morning, she harnessed and hitched Sally, her favorite mule, to the Studebaker cart and drove the five miles to Mrs. Cathcart’s. Mrs. Cathcart, our neighbor lady and a friend of Mom’s, had a flock of flighty White Leghorn hens that laid large white eggs. Mom and Mrs. Cathcart took turns taking the eggs to town. That way neither one ‘wasted’ a Saturday every week. The feed store bought eggs from local small farmers and sold them to a distributor which had an outlet for them. The man at the feed store paid cash for Mom’s eggs. He applied Mrs. Cathcart’s egg credit to her feed bill.

  Heck! I was almost eight years old and knew for sure-and-certain I could drive a mule to take eggs to Cathcarts’. All summer, I pestered Mom to ask Dad if he thought I was old enough to make the drive alone. I gave up on Mom’s asking and decided to ask him myself.

  As I finished the last of my apple pie, Dad lit the kerosene lamp and placed it in the middle of the kitchen table. I looked up at him. “Dad, ain’t I old enough ta take the eggs ta Cathcarts?”

  With his calloused right hand, he tossled my hair and said, “I think it’s about time ya took on some additional responsibility ’round here.”

  Ralph piped up and asked, “Mama. Can I go with Oris to take eggs tomorrow?”

  (I stopped breathing.) No way did I want that little pest going along! All he ever did was cry and get in the way and want a drink or have to go to the toilet.

  “No, Ralphie, you can’t go,” Mom said. “Next time I take the eggs you can go with me, and I’ll let you drive Sally.”

  Mom placed a wire basket of freshly washed eggs on the floor by the kitchen table and said, “Oris, I’m going to put the little kids to bed while you sort these eggs. Put the large ones in the brown crate and the medium-sized ones in the other crate. I want to keep the small ones to cook with.”

  “Dad, can I take the eggs tomorrow? That way Mom won’t have to mess up her day.” (Mom never had time enough to do what’s needed.) “I can drive Sally, and I’ll be careful and come right home.”

  With a smile in his dark blue eyes, Dad said, “Okay.”

  “Oris,” Mom snapped, “for once in your life pay attention to what you’re doing, and for heaven’s sake, don’t break any eggs.”

  It wasn’t my fault three eggs jumped out of my hands last week and splattered all over the kitchen floor. (Mom didn’t know it, but eggs are sneaky things. They look innocent, but they’re not.)

  Dad placed the egg-candler box on the table and lit the candle. The egg-candler consisted of a small wooden box with a hole in the top and a candle inside. When an egg was placed in front of the hole, the candle gave off enough light to see if there was a speck inside the egg. The eggs with specks, Mom saved for our use and the ones without specks were put in a large egg crate and Mom them sold to the feed store man.

  “Son,” Dad said. “Don’t take all night candlin’ them eggs ’cause that’s the only candle left, and it’s kinda short and won’t last long.”

  “Okay, okay, okay, I’ll hurry.”

  I finished candling the eggs and put the basket and egg candler away in the hall closet. I went upstairs to my room and got ready for bed.

  I was excited. Sleep wouldn’t come. I lay in the dark staring at the ceiling. I could see myself driving Sally to the cart, making good time because she burned up the road at a trot. I’d show Dad I was responsible. (He was always talking about me not being responsible for more than three minutes at a time.)

  At breakfast, Dad said, “Hurry up and eat so ya can help me hitch the cart.”

  I put on a baseball cap hanging by the kitchen door and f
ollowed him out.

  On the way to the barn, he said, “Sally’s a bit too skittish for a little boy to handle. You drive ol’ Jack. He’s steady and won’t give you any trouble.”

  I wanted to die right there on the spot! First off, I wasn’t a little boy. Besides, Jack was a sway-backed, flea-bitten gray mule (at least a hundred and nine years old). He was cow-hocked. His head looked like a misshapen nail keg with the longest floppy ears nature ever put on a mule. To make matters worse, he moved slower than a fat snail on a cool fall morning.

  “Dad, I’m not a little boy! When I go with Mom, she lets me drive Sally going to Cathcarts and coming home. I never have trouble with Sally.”

  “I know that,” Dad said. “I think it’s safer for you to drive ol’ Jack. A bomb could go off under Jack, and he’d just switch his tail. If somethin’ spooked Sally, she might take off and not stop ’til she got to Denver or San Francisco. If that happened, your mother wouldn’t let me smoke in the house for six months.”

  Dad harnessed Jack. He laughed and said, “You hitch this fine-lookin’ mule to the cart then drive on up ta the house.”

  A bunch of Mom’s hens were busy scratching in the barnyard looking for some tasty morsel. (I aimed Jack for the hens with the intention of scattering them in a dozen directions.)

  Mom came around the corner of the wood shed as ol’ Jack was about to step on a hen and send the rest of them squawking and flapping their wings. “What are you doing?” She screeched.

  Jack stopped, holding his right front hoof in the air—the one he was about to set down on an unsuspecting red hen. He looked at Mom as if to say, “It ain’t my fault. I didn’t want to run into your prize-winning hens, but this silly little boy made me do it.” (In my mind, I could see Jack was trying to make me look bad.) I drove up to the back porch.

  Mom loaded a case of brown eggs and a basket full of ripe tomatoes into the cart, right at my feet. She looked me straight in the eyes and said, “Oris, you be careful, and try to do something right, just this once.” (I heard ol’ Jack laugh under his breath.)

  With no pride left, I clucked to Jack and started down the dusty road. That darn mule wouldn’t trot. He just shuffled along. Halfway to Cathcarts’ we came to a dry wash. Ol’ Jack stepped into the wash and stopped dead still. The basket of tomatoes slid across to the front of the cart. I leaned forward and grabbed the basket to keep it from tipping over. Right then and there, Jack raised his tail. Groaning like he was going to die, he started his process of elimination. He groaned and dumped a load of hot, smelly, green and juicy mule-apples right on my head! He wasn’t satisfied with dumping on my head. That dumb mule wiggled his rump, groaned again, and deposited the rest of his green, nasty, hot, smelly mule-apples on top of the tomatoes and eggs.

  After getting rid of my breakfast over the side of the cart, I dumped the eggs and tomatoes out on the ground and turned that cussed mule around and headed home. Jack was headed for the barn, so he got in a hurry for a change.

  Dad met me at the barn and asked, “Why are ya back so early?” He looked at me with one eyebrow raised higher than the other. “What in the world happened to you?” I didn’t answer. I jumped out of the cart and ran to the house leaving Dad to unhitch Jack.

  I opened the screen door on the porch and found Mom sweeping the floor. She got this ‘I- knew-something-would-go-wrong’ look on her face. “Now, what have you gone and done this time?” she asked. “And what are you doing back so soon?” She glared at me. “Get out of those smelly clothes and take a bath.”

  “Okay,” I said, and started through the kitchen door.

  “Don’t you dare go in the house! Take those filthy clothes off right here on the porch! I’ll get the tub and put water in it while you shed those nasty things.” I sat on a milk crate and removed my shoes and socks. The dried green manure-juice on my shirt and in my hair smelled worse than a dead skunk.

  I knew I was in big trouble. (Mom depended on the egg money every week to help buy groceries.) Taking the eggs to Cathcarts’ should’ve been an easy thing to do. Ol’ Jack was the problem, not me. All I had to do was drive to Cathcarts, and leave the eggs and tomatoes. Then turn around and head for home. But no! That dumb mule had to stop and drop his mule-apples on my head and the tomatoes and eggs. Mom called from the kitchen, “Pull that bench away from the wall and leave your jeans on.”

  “Okay,” I said.

  “Set the mop bucket at one end of the bench. You lie on your back with your head over the bucket so I can wash your filthy hair.”

  She pushed the screen door open with her right foot. In one red rubber-gloved hand, she had a milk bucket of warm water and in the other gloved hand a large pitcher of warm water. She set the bucket and pitcher down and went back in the kitchen to get soap and a towel.

  “I don’t know how this mess happened and I’m not sure I want to know. Your hair is full of dried, caked green manure. Hold still while I scrub your head and try to get the manure out of your hair.” (She rubbed and scrubbed. I knew she’d scrubbed all my hair out by the roots.)

  After two tubs of water, I still felt dirty and stinky. The rest of the day I spent hoeing weeds in the garden, and thinking all kinds of bad things about ol’ Jack. Mom hollered at me once and said, “Hurry and get those weeds hoed before it snows!”

  About time to start evening chores, Ralphie brought me a quart jar full of ice cold water. “Mom telled me you didn’t deserve it, but for me to brung you a drink anyway.”

  While doing my chores, I thought about ol’ Jack and wished I’d never seen him.

  “Hurry up, son, and finish feedin’ the calves so we can go in ta supper,” Dad said. “You know your mother don’t like ta keep supper waitin’.”

  On the way to the house, Dad asked, “Ya want ta tell me what happened taday?”

  “No, sir.” I said.

  For supper, Mom fixed fried chicken, mashed potatoes, fluffy buttermilk biscuits, corn on the cob and green beans fresh from her garden. I wasn’t hungry.

  All through supper, Ralphie and Eddy chattered like two magpies in a cottonwood tree. Ralphie piped up and said, “Oris, you sure did make a mess ah things, huh?”

  “That’s enough out of you, Ralphie,” Mom said.

  I helped Mom with the supper dishes. Then, I went upstairs to bed.

  I lit the kerosene lamp at the head of my bed and tried to read a Captain Marvel comic book. Mom came up to tuck me in for the night. She brushed hair out of my eyes and kissed me on the forehead and said, “Sleep safe.” She blew out the lamp and went back down the stairs.

  A grate in the floor let heat from the kitchen into my room in the winter time. I listened at the grate to Mom and Dad talking.

  They talked in low tones, but I could still hear them. Dad said, “I rode back along the road ta see if I could find what happened ta that boy and the eggs.” He laughed and said, “I found eggs, tomatoes, and mule-apples in a pile. Looks like that kid threw them out after ol’ Jack dumped on his head.”

  “It’s not funny, Charles. We needed the egg money to buy groceries this week. We only have a dollar and eighty-six cents to our name.”

  “I know,” Dad said. “We’ll be okay. I won’t buy cigarettes this week, and we can let the insurance premium go another week.”

  “Charles,” Mom asked. “Is that boy going to spend the rest of his life as a disaster-looking-for-a-place-to-happen?”

  I didn’t wait for Dad to answer. I went back to bed and fell asleep, a tired and embarrassed little boy, not the ‘man-full-grown’ who had started the day.

  A Perfect Understanding

  “What the heck is Bert up to now?” Dad said.

  Every first Saturday of the month Mom and Dad loaded us three kids into the truck, and we headed for town. Mom shopped for groceries. Dad stopped by the feed store to catch up on the latest happenings in the community.

  That bright Saturday morning in May, 1944, Dad took me with him to the feed store (providing me with an escape
from pushing Mom’s grocery basket up and down the aisles of the Safeway store).

  A half dozen ranchers and farmers, standing in the warm spring sunshine shooting the breeze, looked up the street to see what Dad was talking about. Coming down the street, hunched over on the seat of a spring wagon, sat old Bert Montague driving Toots, his ancient Mammoth Jennet. (Toots must have been at least 239 years old.) Her left ear stood straight up from her head. It appeared to be as long as I stood tall. (I was nine going on ten.) With each step, the right ear, hanging down alongside her head, swung back and forth like the pendulum of a grandfather’s clock. Her head, big as a nail keg, with eyes sunk deep into a boney skull, was attached to a long skinny neck. A narrow nose sagged below her knobby knees. She was tall, sway-backed, and the color of a mouse.

  Tied to the back of the wagon, a golden palomino mare mule, her ears laid flat along her neck, fought the lead rope. She pulled back and tried to brace her feet. Toots staggered but moved on.

  Carl Pitkin hollered. “Bert, do ya know ya got a real live mule tied to the back of yer wagon?” Bert chose to ignore him. We watched Toots, Bert, and the agitated mule pass on down the street, around the corner, and out of sight. The rest of the rubberneckers went into the feed store office.

  Dad tilted his hat to the front of his head and scratched behind his right ear. He looked down the empty street. “By cracky,” he said. “That’s the Dunfee mule.”

  Dad moved inside and took his place in the circle in front of the counter. On Saturday, the usual topics of conversation revolved around cattle, horses, mules, hogs, the price of feed, etc, but not that day. The discussion centered on the war effort and a serious mood settled over the usually joking group of weather-beaten, hard-working men. Bert and his new mule were put from their minds.

  I grew uneasy. The talk of war frightened me. I slipped out the door, stood in front of the office, and thought about Bert and his new mule.