Most farm-raised men have a story or two they could tell about the mule they plowed during their boyhood years.

My family owned two mules that would’ve never made the first cut in a show where points were awarded for good looks. However, they proved more than capable of handling any task they were asked to do.

Jack was a slow-gaited, black Missouri mule that weighed about 1,000 pounds. His strength and stamina were out of the roof. His teammate Tobe, a brown mule bred and raised in Tennessee, was about 200 pounds lighter. He made up for the difference in size with his agility and a fast gait.

Obviously, they were not a matched pair, and this caused a problem sometimes when they were working together under a heavy burden. When pulling a loaded wagon, for instance, Tobe would react first with a burst of strength to keep the wagon moving while Jack lagged behind. This created a seesaw motion that could only be corrected with a loud yell and a slap of the lines on his back.

When they were purchased in the winter of 1945, the worst was yet to come. The process of breaking them turned out to be one the biggest challenges my dad faced in his lifetime.

My dad purchased a brand new wagon complete with a spring action front seat to transport implements and supplies to our farm three miles away. The first time Jack and Tobe were hitched to it, they ran away. Disregarding their own safety, they jumped the road and pulled the wagon over an open, abandoned storm pit. All that was left in one piece were three wheels, the tongue and the spring action seat.

To punish the mules for their misbehavior, my dad hitched them to a sub-soil plow and worked them all day in an unplowed open field as fast as they could walk. When he turned them out to pasture at night, they took off running and jumping like two half-grown pups. He limped to the house bone tired and gave the mules the next day off while he recuperated.

Subsequently, they ran away with a hay rake, twisting it around a big oak tree, busted out of a barn wall and had to be rescued from barn pop after running away with another wagon.

All was not lost in the breaking-in process, however. Those mules became almost as docile as lambs and pulled their weight and then some as an indispensable source of labor on the Knight farm for more than 15 years.

Clif Knight is a staff writer for the Hartselle Enquirer.