Dr. R.D. Williams

At midday, Dee hollered at Jess, “I’m tired of you farting in my face all morning. I wish you could pull a plow walking backwards! They say, you don’t want to be at the south end of a mule that is going north. You’re as bad as any damn mule I have even been around. I wonder if Uncle Willard loaned you to me so that he could laugh at me every evening when I come in to the barn smelling like I’ve been rolling around in mule hockey all day.” Dee pulled the reins of the plow mule, Jess, to a stop. It was a good place to rest and have lunch next to the edge of the field. There was plenty of shade and a creek close by where Dee could take Jess to drink. After he did that, he tied Jess to a tree far enough away so that he didn’t have to endure Jess’s gosh awful smell. He could hear Jess’s noisy chomping of the sweet grass at the edge of the field. Dee found a good tree up the creek away from the mule. He bent over and tasted the water. It was cool and sweet. Dee got his water jug, reached down, and filled the jug full. He took several swigs of the water, lowered the jug back to the creek, and tied it to a limb on the bank. Dee knew the jug was safe. He untied the flour sack which held his noon meal. He sat down under the green canopy of the large cottonwood tree. Dee opened the flower sack and began to eat the food his ma had fixed for him. Then Dee realized Ma had put even more food in the sack than usual. As he reached in the sack, he found a piece of paper. It said “A man has to have plenty of food when working in the fields all day.” Dee reached into the sack again, and there was another piece of paper. It said, “Every man needs a good pipe when he rests at mid-day”. Dee jumped up, hopping round and round and yelling, “Ma says I’m a man!” He reached back in the sack and pulled out a new pipe like his Pa’s and a small sack of tobacco. Dee started dancing all around again. It was a short dance, ‘cause he realized he still had another half day of hard work ahead of him. He calmed down and took a big swig of water. He sighed a long contented sigh and said “I needed that!” He began to think of the wonderful life he had at Dolby Springs. His Ma and Pa made sure their children had a good education and all the family went to church every Sunday. What a great way to grow up he thought. Grabbing Jess from the side of the field, he started plowing where he had left off. The sun out in the field had been so hot that soon Dee had sweated his shirt through. He took it off and wrung all the sweat out. Then he took his shirt to the creek, washed it in the cool water and put it back on. He just realized that he was now plowing close to the trees and the creek. The cool breeze sure felt good on his bare back that he just laid his shirt over the plow handle. As he was plowing, he began to think about his life up until now. This crop was so precious to him, because its success depended on whether he could go to medical school or not. So far his parents, teacher, and minister had done all they could to get him accepted and now the rest was on his shoulders. But at this moment it was on the back of the wonderful mule, “Jess”! But I have gotten way ahead of my story. Perhaps we need to start back at the beginning…