WHY I WAS LATE
I had plans for the summer, but they certainly did not include driving a
mule train. But let me explain.
After the meetings at the end of May and the beginning of June, my wife and
I started home in our nearly new car. All went well until shortly after
we crossed the border into Texas at Texarkana. Then everything went wrong.
It was hot. It was really hot! Our air conditioner was pumping away, and
we were still warm inside the car. But outside the car! We were driving
along at the posted 70 mph speed limit when we started hitting patches of
melted asphalt. These were dangerous! We slowed down, first to 50, and
then 40, and finally to 20 as the patches became continuous stretches of
soft, gooey tar.
We forged ahead, slowly making our way past Marshall and Henderson, but as
we came into Jacksonville, our first tire blew. It was unexpected, since
our tires only had about 30,000 miles on them, but I got out and changed
the tire. Minutes later, a second one blew! Before I could stop, the others
went as well, gunned down in a hail of nails. It had gotten so hot that
the nails in the nearby buildings had swollen up, popped out of their holes,
and gone flying through the air. Our poor tires got in the way.
It was lucky that this was the middle of the day and nobody was home -
every one of the houses we passed had collapsed from lack of nails.
Fortunately, in addition neither Barbara nor I was hurt. Although the
nails put stars in the glass of our windows and dented our pretty car,
they didn't get through the metal or glass. (They probably would not
have gone through our tires if those had not been on the point of melting
anyway.)
Well, I had to get back to TAMU, and so we had to keep moving. There was no
point in buying new tires. Fortunately, a nearby farmer had a team of mules
he was willing to sell to us. He taught me the rudiments of caring for the
animals, harnessing them, and driving them. We broke the windshield out of
the car (it was ruined anyway), and I sat on the roof of the car with my
feet on the dashboard, working the reins. We pushed on.
It took 6 mules a month to get us from Jacksonville to Bryan, with the car
rolling on its rims in the melted asphalt, but we made it finally. I could
fill a book with the adventures we had, camping along the way, visiting
with homeless people as they walked with us for a little, and frying bacon
and eggs on sun-heated roadside rocks. We were lucky that builder had
convinced us to build our house out of brick and concrete. Now I see he
really knew what he was doing. And you get used to riding a mule to work.
The only trouble is that hay has reached $80 per ton.