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The Rowan Tree Roan-Rowan Family Stories Page 7

The writings of Leon Virgil Rowan, 1901-1983

(Graciously contributed by Jan & Winston Rowan)

My Father and the Mule ©

by Leon V. Rowan

The wheel of time was slowly turning and so was my life. At the age of seven years, I possessed a healthy body and mind. Today it seems incredible that I remember so many of the usual and unusual events that happened in those pioneer days--events that made people act in a manner similar to yet different from today. My parents were descendants of Irish Dutch ancestors whose families were torn apart by the civil war. This brought my father and mother together in the latter part of the nineteenth century to begin their family life and to build a livelihood in the best manner they knew how.

My father possessed a yen for riding and buggy horses. Also mules for farm work. But he did not breed his own stock. At one time he purchased two mule colts from a neighboring farmer. One was of a docile nature. Easily trained by my father, to which he entrusted my safety for riding and used to perform many of the chores on his farm. The other mule colt was of a different nature and by contrast just the opposite in many respects. He was droll, smaller and lighter weight, with a barrel body covered with jet-black silky hair. He had a slightly elevated neck covered with a thick mane, a head adorned by two fuzzy straight ears, and a grayish mouth and nose. At the other end of his body was an ever-swishing tail that seemed to move even when he was asleep. It was doing either sideways or up and down to help him keep the flies away from his body, whether it be while he was grazing in the

pasture or dozing in his stable. His actions were unpredictable and without precedent. He was constantly

performing antics of a ticklish nature, besides having to cope with my father's pranks. My dad never relinquished an opportunity to create a funny act.

One day the mule and I were caressing and kissing each other in the barnyard, we did that lot. With a large corncob in his hand, my dad quietly stalked upon me and he timed the mule's swish of the tail as it went up. Then immediately placed the cob at the butt end of his tail, crosswise, so that when his tail came down, so did the colt, on his tail and rear end. That clamped the cob tighter and tighter as he sat there in the image of a kangaroo, bellowing and crying, like a laughing hyena, with tears rolling down his awe- stricken face.

I had to scamper to get away from his pawing hoofs, and snapping jaws besides being scared stiff. I looked around as he was falling over bellowing a dying oath and flailing the ground with his legs and hoofs. I began hollering for my dad to come at once. Then I turned around and saw him hanging over the fence, shaking like a statue of Jell-O. When I first reached him, I thought he was crying, just as I was, because his mule was dying. But no, not the mule, but him, with laughter, that quickly ended, because at this moment the colt had lost the cob and was coming to his feet and life again with his ears down on his neck. And his teeth showing like a roaring lion, he made for his prey. We cleared the fence just in time to save our hides from a vicious mouth and pawing hoofs. He then backed away a few feet and reared up on his hind legs as though he meant to leap the fence after us. Instead, he shook his head, and let out a wailing cry. As he jumped the fence in another direction. What he may have meant in mulish language was ''darn you" as he kicked up his heels and sped away looking for greener pastures and a new master. He found one, but for only a day and a night, for my father soon found him at a neighbor's barn, and gently led him home, where we all, made friends again. Perhaps my father was enjoying a brief interlude from previous days, collecting his wits to cope with an unpredictable boy and a ticklish mule that held no love for my dad's hidden pranks.

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