Old Red the Mule After we returned from Mt. Pleasant, TX where we picked up Mother and the three younger children we moved into the house with Grandma, Grandpa, and my cousin Joyce in a small house with three rooms. A front room, kitchen, and one beedroom. My grandparents and Joyce slept in the bedroom and the seven in our family slept in the front room using two double beds end to end along one wall and two "trundle beds" which slid under the double beds during the daytime. A brief explaination about my cousin Joyce. She is 10 months younger than me and was the youngest daughter of my father's older sister. When Joyce was 5 months old her mother died from a ruptured appendix leaving Uncle Hiram with six children to take care of. My grandparents took Joyce to keep until her father could take care of her. By the time she was old enough to go to live with her father they were so attached to one another that Uncle Hiram decided to leave her with them. Although there were times that relationships were somewhat strained, we got along quite well with eleven people from two households living in a three room house. As I look back on it now, I marvel at how well Mother and Grandma got along when faced with all that was involved in keeping an orderly household under those conditions. We lived in the house with my grandparents through the winter of 1938-1939. Donal and I had missed the first half of the school year, so Dad kept us out of school for the rest of that school year and had us help him cut wood and fence posts. He also bought a red mule to work the 40 acres he had rented just north of the house where our grandparents lived. We learned early that Old Red had a penchant for being a "runaway" mule. By this I mean that when he was startled he would take off running and could not be controlled until he decided he wanted to quit running. One of the first instances of him pulling a "runaway" was when he was hooked to the sled with two empty barrels on it to go about 1/4 mile to the nearest well to get water. Donal was driving Old Red and I was riding on the back of the sled. We had gone a short distance down the road when a car came by. Old Red took off running across the borrow ditch up next to the barbed wire fence. I was holding onto the side of the sled and as the sled was pulled alongside a fence post my right hand was torn rather badly as it was caught between the side of the sled and the fence post. Not long after that experience; Mother and my four siblings were all sick with the measles (I came down with measles after they were all over them). While they were sick Dad did some work on the 1929 Dodge and when he had finished the work; he couldn't get the car to start. So he hooked Old Red to the front of the car and told me to get on Old Red and drive him to pull the car. After thd experience with the sled and fence post; you can only imagine the fear I had when Dad told me to do that !! When I protested; Dad simply told me that he wouldn't let Old Red "runaway." So, very reluctantly, I got up on Old Red and we started pulling the car. When the engine started ... Old Red star ... Well, he tried to take off. But Dad simply applied the brakes on the car and all Old Red could do was TRY to go somewhere !! Another experience I had with Old Red was during the late spring when I was driving him to pull a tilling implement in the field to get rid of some of the weeds in the furrows. So, if you have seen pictures of someone walking behind a horsedrawn plow with the reins knotted together and placed so that one rein is over one shoulder and the other under the arm on the other side of his body. Then you would have a picture of me, almost 9 years old, walking behind a plow driving Old Red. As I was approaching the road on the north side of the field, a friend of the family who owned a motorcycle came driving up and shut off the engine and waited for me to get to the road. After chatting for a few minutes he told me that I had better get Old Red turned around and up to the other end of the row before he started his motorcycle. So, that is what I started to do. But Old Red had other plans. As soon as he started to turn ... He started to run. Realizing that I couldn't stop him I "ducked out" of the reins; i.e. I ducked my head and raised the arm with the rein under it and allowed Old Red to go. And he went !! The plow went about 20 yards before it came loose and Old Red went to the other end of the row and stopped under a scrub oak tree and watched the motorcycle fade into the distance. Old Red died the next year and I wasn't too sad to see him go. Thurmon