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For
a short time, Sam and I rode a little white filly to Eureka School. We rode double,
and I took the back seat because Sam figured I was too young to drive. This didn’t
last very long because the young horse was easily spooked, with the least little
thing setting her off. The other kids walking to school soon realized this. They
took great sport in picking up rocks from the gravel road and tossing them at
our steed’s rear end. Once she bolted, and we managed to stop her just short of
running through a barbed wire fence. When we rode home that day and told our father
what happened, that was the end of our equestrian transportation to school. Back
to the old heel and toe express.
One day, before we lost our riding privileges,
we were blissfully clopping along when we noticed two of our mules following us.
For some reason I could never figure out, mules will do this. Like playful little
puppies, they want to go where the fun is, I guess. We were too far away from
home to turn around and lead them back because we would be late for school. We
decided to just plod ahead and hope for the best. All day the other students would
look out the window and laugh at the two mules roaming around the school campus
as if they belonged there. When we saddled up our filly at the end of the school
day and headed down the road, the mules fell in single file behind, politely following
us all the way back home again.
As soon as I got in the house, I had
to tell my mother about the remarkable day we had with the mules going to school
and all. She listened to my tale with great interest and replied that she reckoned
the mules probably learned more at school that day than Sam and I did. |
© George Lester
August 17, 2004 | | |
