Editor’s Note: In September 1982, two University of Missouri professors—animal scientist Melvin Bradley and photojournalist Duane Dailey—interviewed Roy Pendergrass, Bakersfield, Ozark County. The interview was part of a statewide project now titled The Mule Industry of Missouri Remembered. Eventually 130 interviews were transcribed, published, and made available to the public by the Missouri Mule Skinners Society and the University of Missouri Press, 1991. The project collected reminiscences about the breeding, rearing, training, showing, selling and recreation with mules. A copy of this collection is housed at the Missouri State Archives, Jefferson City.

Melvin Bradley: When did you start in this mule business, Mr. Pendergrass?

Roy Pendergrass: Well, we was raised on the farm all of our life, you know, and our daddy, he worked horses and mules and he raised mules and horses too. And we just growed up with ‘em. I just had a likin’ for ‘em and I just always kept me some horses and mules around, you know. We use ‘em a little bit; mostly just a hobby. We don’t make money by havin’ ‘em, but we just enjoy havin’ ‘em around. We like horses and mules.

MB: Did your Dad work the farm with horses and mules?

RP: Uh-huh, yeah.

Mrs. Pendergrass: He never had a tractor.

RP: My dad, he could remember... Now I believe my Daddy worked a team of oxens when he was a kid. He died when he was 93, but I never did see any oxen work. Yeah, I’m 68 and we’ve ... He just worked the horses and males, then. We didn’t have no tractors and then later on, the tractors.., we got tractors, but I still like to keep my horses and mules, you know, and I ride and work ‘em. I enjoy that.

MB: Did he raise his mules or...?

RP: Well yeah. You know Missouri used to be rated, when I was a kid, number one for mules and maybe

hogs. And I know those old timers.. . my Dad and his neighbors . . . they had to sell those mules, raise em and sell ‘em. They’d take ‘em to the cotton country and work ‘em down there you know. They’d take ‘em down there to a big auction and sell ‘em. Yeah, for that day and time, they was pretty good money in raising a good mule colt.

MB: Did they depend on that income for their taxes or other part of their living?

RP: Well yeah. It helped. Yeah, you know times was pretty hard and they depended on those mule colts. I think back then a good mule colt’d bring ‘em about $50 when they weaned him; and later on, maybe when he got grown, he go up maybe $150. But they wanted ‘em in the cotton country down there, and that’s what made a good market for the men around there ‘cause they’d sell ‘em down there.

MB: How’d they sell ‘em, through a dealer there or?

RP: Yeah. There would be some jockey and he’d come through buyin’ mules and he. . . I never did see him, but I’ve heard ‘em say that they’d tie one of’em’s head to the other one’s tail. I believe two men would take a big string of those males down south and run em through the auction. They’d buy ‘em down there in that cotton, corn country for farmin’.

MB: Did he break some of these mules and then sell ‘em?

RP: Yeah, yeah. They’d break some and sell ‘em, ‘specially if he needed ‘em in the farm work. He’d break his own. But a good mule, times was hard and a good mule, he got worth too much fer ‘em to keep after he got ‘bout so big and so good, and broke out good.

MB: Did you use these pretty much in your farming, when you started?

RP: Yeah, when we first started out. I don’t know how many years we farmed ‘til we got a tractor but we farmed several years just with the horses and mules. And we had 2 or 3 old brood mares here, the old—I guess you’d call ‘em Belgians—see, they was just grade

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mares, but they were large. We’d breed ‘em to a good jack, you know, and we raise good mules. We’d break ‘em sometimes ourself and sometimes maybe we’d get ‘em sold ‘fore we broke ‘em; but we worked ‘em I don’t know how many years. We just almost raised a family with ‘em, all the kids, nearly, ‘fore we shed of. . . ‘fore we got us a tractor, you know.

MB: You’ve got quite a few kids, have you?

RP: We’ve got seven; we’ve got five girls and two boys. Yeah, we got a large family.

MB: Do they like to drive these mules?

RP: Yeah, yeah. The boys did, and one of the girls, this youngest girl here, that’s here now, she’s just like a boy. She really loves to ride and drive a team.

MB: You mentioned your wife did a little field work.

RP: Yeah, she used to go ‘bout every time I went, you know.

Mrs. P: I’d drive mules.

RP: We’d take them ole... we’d take a good team apiece and a walkin’ turnin’ plow, you know, and she’d go ‘way around our lands; but sometimes she’d make me let her use the least plow you know. She’d make me use the least plow.

MB: What were they, Olivers?

RP: I believe that... No, we didn’t like the Olivers so well. I believe that we had a 810 Imperial, which is a ... it’s about like a 19 Oliver. And then we had a two-and-a-half South Bend and it would be about like a 13 Oliver. The 2 112 is the one she was always wantin’ you know.

MB: Did you ever break new ground with these mules?

RP: Oh I have. Now she just. . . she got out of that.

Mrs. P: ‘Member pullin’ that plow back under them roots.

RP: I have had that old plow kick me out of the irons you know, and you’d feel almost like you’re gonna break a rib, run around under a root.

MB: Did you do that barefoot or...?

RP: A whole lot. . . yeah, yeah.

Mrs. P: That was the way to plow.

RP: That was. . . yeah, we had some... Even after I got, oh, up in years awhile, I know down here we had a neighbor and that’d tickle his boys. I’d be down there plowin corn, you know, and I’d kick my shoes off and plow corn barefooted. And that would tickle those boys, see me plow barefooted.

MB: Somethin’ about that new-plowed sod makes your feet feel good.

RP: It does, doesn’t it? You feel that dirt crumblin’ through your toes, you know, and it does feel good, moist dirt. Yeah, that’s right. You know, I like to plow barefooted, if it wasn’t rocky, you know, and like that. Now I wouldn’t plow barefooted if it was real rocky, after I got up, you know, a man. But when we was kids,

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we plowed barefooted all the time. We’d laugh and talk about our feet got so tough we could knock sparks off the rocks.

DD: That’s pretty tough!

RP: Yeah, that’s pretty good, isn’t it? We’d laugh and joke about that, you know. Our old feet got so tough we could hit them rocks, you know, hard enough we could knock sparks out. Did you ever get that away when you was a kid?

MB: Oh, I’ve plowed barefooted. They did get tougher later in the summer.

RP: Yeah, they sure would. Well, you know, back when I was a kid, we usually just got about, I believe it was two pair of shoes a year, and through the summer we went barefooted, you know, and when the weather started gettin’ cool in the fall, why then we’d get a pair of shoes, you know, to wear through the winter. Yeah, times sure changed quite a little bit.

MB: How did you break mules? Some people have different methods. Did you hook two young ones together or with an old horse or mule?

RP: Well, most times, to be safe, we’d hook an old horse with it. We’d just tie it to an old horse, you know, and let the old horse kind a hold it for us, to keep it from runnin cause, I’ll tell ye, I don’t believe there’s a man alivin’ stout enough to just hold a wild tamin’ mule that’s never been worked. If they take a notion to run away with ye, I think they’ll run if they get skeered, so we usually had an old brood mare and we’d just tie ‘em to her and she’d hold ‘em while we harnessed ‘em. She’d hold ‘em while we hooked ‘em and then she’d push ‘em around the corners when you was learnin’ em to turn. Yeah, that was the easiest and the safest way.

MB: Did you hook ‘em to a wagon or...?

RP: Usually a turnin’ plow, first thing. Yeah, we tried to work ‘em to somethin’ didn’t have any. . . wouldn’t make any noise, you know.

MB: Would this be at 2 or 3 years of age?

RP: Well, usually, we’d start on ‘em at a two year old. Seemed like they were easier handlin’, you know, and they learned quicker. They wouldn’t be so stubborn if you’d start ‘em out about a two year old. I think it takes em about 5 years, isn’t it, before they get their complete growth, ‘specially a mare mule. Now a horse mule, he might even go to 6 years if he’s not pampered and fed real good when he’s young.

MB: Do you think they have more sense than a horse or less or. ..?

RP: Well, I’d rather work ‘em. I’m not a good driver and a horse, you can excite him and maybe he’d balk with me where a mule’ll just keep apullin’ and another thing I liked about ‘em... If a mule run away with you, he wouldn’t hurt hisself, you know. A horse gets so excited that they just run into anything. They’re liable to hurt theirself bad, and really, I’d rather have a mule. And I’ll tell you another thing I like about these mules, they could outwalk horses. Seemed like they’re longer gaited, and they could take that heat. Them old hot days, why you didn’t have to pull ‘em out in the shade and breathe ‘em like you did your horses, you know. And they.. . it took less to feed ‘em too. I say there’s advantages in the mules.

MB: Do you find ‘em stubborn? You read all these things bad about ‘em. Do you believe that?

RP: No. Actually, I don’t think.., they’ve pretty bad exaggerated things. I really, I don’t think that. . . I never found ‘em very stubborn. I believe, though, if you let one get, oh, up in the years, you know, why he could be stubborn all right about the breakin’ out then.

MB: Do you think that they’re gentler now from these big Belgian mares or not?

RP: I believe so. I believe they are. I believe they’re easier; it’s kind a bred in ‘em, I guess, to be more gentle and easier, to be inclined to work good, you know, without gettin’ so excited. Yeah, I do. I think they’ve improved on the. . . Now in our part of the country anymore, we don’t have those good jacks like the _____ men used to have here. It’s hard to find a real big old mammoth jack anymore. Those old timers, boy, they kept some good jacks. I think you get up around Springfield, now, and they’s some guys up there that’s got some good jacks, you know. But down here in our part, we don’t have any big jacks. We got some good jacks, but they get these little mules, you know.

MB: Do you remember jacks brayin’ when you woke up of a morning? Could you hear ‘em?

RP: Yeah. That’s kind a their nature, wasn’t it? Yeah, early of a morning, why you could hear the old jack bray. Well, you take those old mules, ‘long about

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feedin’ time, sometime, why they’d stick their head over the fence or out the window of the barn and bray.

DD: Tell about your experiences working mules in the woods. What have you done along that line?

RP: Well, anymore, a lot of the boys, they have those skidders and saw ]em. But I never did use anything but horses or mules and I could just.. . I got over there one day and was gonna drag some with a tractor, and I couldn’t get the tractor around through the trees. So I went back to my mules. I could wind them around anywhere. Yeah, I could get along a lot faster with a good team of mules. You got in little logs where you just single ‘em out, you know, and work ‘em one at a time. Then you got in big logs, just doublin’ ‘em up, you know. Yeah, I’d a lot rather have a mule in the woods as a tractor.

DD: What’d you do? Did you do that quite a bit? Did you sell logs?

RP: No, just on the place here mostly. I used to, in the fall of the year, we got our crops all laid by and maybe our work all done for the winter; and I’d just hire out and work through part of the winter, drag logs for some of the boys is a haulin’. I really wasn’t considered a logger, actually, because... Now we cut some here on our own place and we’d always drag them, of course, and we’d hire somebody to cut ‘em and haul ‘em and I’d drag’em just ‘cause I love to drag’em. But we didn’t do that the year ‘round. We just do that when we’re caught up with our work.

MB: Do you remember, did you furnish your own team when you drug for the other people?

RP: Yeah. I always drove my own team. I just once or twice.. . and just for a few days, I had a logger come one day. His boy, I don’t know, couldn’t help him for 2 or 3 days and he wanted me to drive his mules. Outside of that, I don’t ‘member ever drivin’ anybody else’s mules.

MB: Do you remember what they paid you a day? For you and your team.

RP: Uh, I’ll tell you, we drug by the thousand; and we got, I believe, $2.50 a thousand. They’d drag maybe 3 or 4 thousand. I guess you’d say it run around $8-$10 a day, me and my team. I believe now it’s about $12 or $12.50 a thousand they pay now, you know, to drag ‘em. It’s quite a change in what it used to be.

DD: Now when would that of been you were gettin $2.50? How long ago?

RP: Well, anywhere from the fifties, early fifties, or to, I guess, about ‘60 ‘cause I had a little spell through there that I was coach out here at the high school for about 3 or 4 years. That was from about ‘45 to ‘48 or 9 somewhere along in there. And I didn’t have time to do anything like that then. After that, off and on, why I’d drag a few logs then.

MB: Are there quite a few people usin’ horses and mules to drag logs in this country?

RP: No. There’s sure not. Most of ‘em went to those tractors and those log skidders. They’ve got a log skidder that I . . . I never did see it operate, but they really get down in bad places and they can just drag. I guess they can drag him almost a load one time out.

DD: With these big rubber-tired, double-jointed kind of things?

RP: I think so. I’m really not familiar with them. We never used ‘em here because they claim that they were so bad to ride over young growth, you know, and they’d damage your next crop, so we.. . And then too, I just like to work the mules. If I’d have made a lot more money, I’d just stay and work my mules. I just kind a like that, you know.

DD: What is it about a mule that makes a guy like ‘em?

RP: I don’t know. A lot of people, you know, they don’t like ‘em. I think its. . . I don’t know; I guess we’re just a little queer, us guys that do like ‘em. Sometimes you have to go a ways to run into another guy that’s like you.

MB: What do you do now with mules? You’ve got this good team here. Do you think they pay their way or you just...?

RP: Well, it’s doubtful. You know we love to work ‘em in the garden and then we’ll go out and drag a load of logs and sometimes, where it’s not too far to haul, we’ll haul a few bales of hay with ‘em. Of course, if it’s very far, we’ll take the truck or something like that. But if it’s a close haul, why we can haul it just as fast with a team of mules and a good wagon, if we’re close to the barn. And it’s cooler to work around the wagon than it is around over a hot truck. I’d say, outside of the garden and a little log draggin’ and awww, just for fun, doin’ a little mowin’ with ‘em, sometimes. Well, we get out

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once in awhile and, just for fun, and haul a load of wood in with him with the wagon. We use ‘em once in awhile. We could do it quicker with the pickup but still we just want a see the mule work, and we just take the mule. But actually, as far as payin’ their way, I doubt if they do. We take pretty good care of’em, and I doubt if they ... Anyhow, I’d say they wouldn’t make anything above their feed bill; but we never keep a record, we never keep a record of nothin’.

DD: Maybe you don’t want a know.

HP: Yeah. We just don’t want a know, so we don’t. If we don’t keep no record, we don’t know if we’re makin’ money or losin’ money. We can just tell at the end of the year whether we gained or lost, and we didn’t even know what we’d lost it on, if we did lose.

DD: Have you always lived just right around here? Were you raised around here?

HP: Yeah. We was . . . Let’s see. We’ve lived here about . . . We’ve lived right here about 40 years I guess. She knows just exactly. But we was raised, I guess about 8 miles south of here on the edge of Arkansas. I was borned in Fulton County. Salem’s the county seat of Fulton County. Just jokingly, I’d tell ‘em I’d never been any further north than West Plains and any further south than Viola, Arkansas. Just jokin’ you know. But we don’t have a very wide range on distance or other states. We’ve had a few vacations, but we just spent our life right around here in this area right here.

MB: Would you say it’s been a pretty pleasant experience?

HP: Yeah, I think so. You know, you sometimes get to reminiscin’ over the past and all that, you know, and I say well, we’ve had a lotta fun; we’ve anjoyed. . . We was healthy and the kids was all healthy and we could do a lot of work and they could too and they didn’t seem ... any of us... I guess I was the lazy one of the bunch, you know, but we enjoyed our.. . we’ve enjoyed our life. We sure have. We haven’t never had any major problems of any kind. We had one baby died and that’s all of our immediate family besides our Daddies and Mothers. Lost a couple of brothers, but we haven’t had anything, you know, just really disappointing to us to speak of, besides that.

MB: These mules play a pretty big part in your pleasure?

HP: Yeah, they do. Yeah, I tell ‘em, I kind a like to get

up of a mornin’ and come down here and they’ll be here and I’ll feed ‘em a little bit, you know. Yeah, I kind ~ enjoy havin’ ‘em around. I tell you, I like a good ridin horse, too. We don’t show or anything like that, but w use a ridin’ horse a lot, just ridin’ around the farm here seem’ about the stock. ‘Course any more, we gotta have ... we gotta have it real gentle, same way with the mules, too. At our age we can’t fool with anything that’s very ornery ‘cause we could get hurt with ‘em.

MB: What breed to you ride?

HP: We ride those fox trotters. That Zane Grey breeding, but we don’t have any registered stuff, but we breed to registered stuff.

DD: Tell me about the dog business. Jack was tryin’ to get a rise out of you.

HP: Yeah, well, that’s another one of my hobbies, those coon dogs. We’ve got four now, and we . . . I’ve done that for — Ahh, Lord! — I believe I told somebody the other day, 40-some odd years I’d coon hunted. I’ve got a . . . Yeah, if you had time to look, I gotta lot of trophies up at the house I’ve won with the dogs. I’ve gotta have those coon hunts and they have a judge and grade the best dogs that wins.., does the best in the hunt, you know. So I’ve won a lotta trophies with ‘em my dogs.

DD: You still hunt?

HP: I still hunt, but I can’t hunt very much. We was up for a checkup day before yesterday, and he (the doctor) knows I love to hunt. We go to Springfield for a checkup, you know, and he don’t much want me to. But he told me, he said, "Now put one of those glycerin pills under your tongue when you start and every thirty minutes, you take another one of those pills. Whether you want to or not, you just take those pills. It might be the best thing in the long run for you to do." I don’t go very far and I’m gonna get me a... I’ve had me two mules that we’d ride huntin’, little mules, you know. And I’m on the deal for another un now ‘cause I can’t stand that walkin’. What little huntin’ I do anymore is just around the place here. We used to go down on the lake when we could walk about all night and hunt. But anymore, why I just do a little huntin’ around the place here.

MB: How do you like this coon-huntin’ mule to hunt with?

HP: Well it’s pretty good. If you get you a real good

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gentle mule, it’s pretty nice because you can take and, say, hunt 2-3 hours on it and you come in and you’re not tired. You know, your legs aren’t tired from all that walkin’ and it’s pretty good.

MB: Do you find many fences they can’t jump or any problems?

RP: Yeah, that’s a. . . You know, we never really have had a good jumpin’ mule. We’ve. . . The other boys’d make ‘em jump good, but I never have had one that really jumped good. I just jokingly tell the boys that I don’t need it to jump because the fences are all down anyhow and we can just ride him over wherever we come to it. He don’t need to jump.

MB: Did you ever hear of Roger Conklin at Columbia?

RP: I don’t guess. Seems like I should.

MB: Real big miniature mule breeder, jumpin’. He’s the show jumpin’ champion and he sells these coon huntin’ mules.

RP: Yeah?

NIB: And what he’s got now...

RP: Well, they’re pretty popular through here. They’s a lotta the boys got ‘em anymore. It’s a pretty popular thing and some of the boys, they got them mules really jump high. And they just park that pickup anywhere they wanta stop it, you know, and they come in, that mule, first thing he wants to do is jump in that pickup so he can go home. Yeah, they’ve got ‘em trained real good.

MB: Did you ever get kicked by a mule?

RP: Well, no, not to speak of. Maybe have had just a glancin’ lick or so, but I never was hurt by a mule kickin’. I’ve had ‘em kick when I was glad they missed me, you know, but I never was hurt by a mule kickin’. I know they.. . there have been people killed by ‘em cause they can sure enough kick you hard, but I’ve just been a little fortunate and I’ve been a little careful about them hind feet, too, ‘til I had confidence to know that the mule didn’t have a kick in him.

MB: Would you have some advice to new people that are gonna work around mules, to keep from gettin’ kicked?

RP: Well, no, not exactly. If you’re just aworkin’ the

one, lotta times, I’ve done my hitchin’ him behind the other horse. You know, reach out, so if he did kick me, he’d just hit my arm or my hand or somethin’. He couldn’t hurt me. That’s about the only... Now we had a mule here that was real mean. We finally sold her, but we’d take a wire with a hook on the end of it and we’d reach that wire out there and get that.., but we stayed away from that thing ‘cause she would sure enough let you have it and it’d probably been all over with if she’d have hit you, too, ‘cause she meant business. But we didn’t keep her long. But we’d use that wire even to harnessin’ her. We’d . . . to get the flank straps we’d take that hook and get that flank strap and we’d stay in front of her all the time. Most times, we’d get under an old gentle one... .under the old gentle one’s belly, you know, and fasten ‘em that away. Aw, you can’t be too safe foolin’ around some thin’ that’s wild and young. You better play it safe, ‘cause they could hurt you pretty bad.

MB: I guess runnin’ away is a little different story, isn’t it? They run away once in awhile, did they?

RP: Yeah, you know, usually a noise or somethin’. My wife, she was aworkin’ a team of young mules down there and I was workin’ a big old team of mares. She liked this little plow and these mules were little you know. Well, the two boys, they were playin’ there in that branch and directly they come arunnin’ out of that branch, up over the bank, makin’ some kind of noise. I don’t know, may have been tryin’ to mock a car or somethin’, but, boy, it scared those mules and she used good judgement ‘cause she knew she couldn’t hold ‘em.

RP: (begins in the middle of a sentence).., loose, and I worked the mules and she come to the house.

MB: Duane, I’m out of questions.

DD: Anything on taking care of mules, on remedies or anything like that, that you’ve learned over time?

RP: Yeah, you learn to pick a few things along, you know, how to . . . ‘Bout the main problems, I guess, anymore, is just the worm thing you know and the flies. That’s about the only problems we have any more. We don’t.. . Old timers used to work ‘em a lot and skin their shoulders and hurt ‘em in different ways. Sometimes they’d get hung in the wire and get cut up right bad, like that. Well, there’d be a whole lot to learnin’ really how to care for one. You ‘bout have to be raised with ‘em, I guess; but still, most people, I don’t think, have any problems anymore. They’re just not usin em. We have some guys that go.. . I haven’t ever

[13]

joined ‘em yet. I keep wantin’ to, but in hot weather I hate to get out. Hot weather and ridin’ the wagon, you know, for several miles . . . These boys’ve got these wagon trains they call it, you know, and there’ll be, oh, 6 or 8 of’em get out with their wagons and their horses and mules and they have a real good time. They camp out, you know, and they take some pretty good trips with them.

MB: You ought a do that. You’d have a ball.

RP: I’d like it, you know. I know I would. I told ‘em though, when night come, I’m just used to sleepin’ in one bed. I’ll bet I wouldn’t go to sleep. I told the boys they’re real fine guys and I know I’d really enjoy it cause we..

MB: There’s a lot of one-day trail rides. Springfield has a bunch of these.

RP: Yeah. Oh, I enjoy horses and mules. You know, over here at this little place they call Gainesville, they have what they call "hootin’ ‘n’ hollerin". Now I believe it’ll be the seventeenth and eighteenth of this month, somebody told me. You’d have to check, if you was interested, to be certain; but they have those parades and those boys with those wagons and teams, they join the parade and... Yeah, we went over there the last 2 years just to watch. I knew ‘bout all the boys from this part of the country that’s in the parades. Now there’s some comes from other places in there. It’s a pretty nice parade. It’s interesting to you. They had horses —ridin’ horses of different breeds, you know, and they have little mules hitched and little horses and then they have those big ‘uns, some big horses and some big mules. They have some nice ones! I had a invitation to go. They called me here the other day, but I don’t have any way of haulin’ my mules or my wagon and it’s about, I don’t know, probably 30-some odd miles from here, so I didn’t figure it’d be worthwhile ...

MB: Lot of ‘em put a wagon on the pickup and pull a trailer with the mule.

RP: Uh-huh, uh-huh. Those boys around here, they’re fixed to haul theirs, you know, and I have seen some of ‘em put their mules or horses in their pickup, I believe just a pickup. That was just little ones, though, I guess. They would tie the wagon to the back of the pickup, you know, and of course they wouldn’t drive probably over 25-30 mile an hour that away. Yeah, they have those pullin’ contests. Now it’s all with little stuff, you know. You don’t.. . ‘round here, they just don’t have enough of those big animals, you know, but they get together and they really have some good competition with those little horses and mules, you know. If I get a chance, why I like to go and watch ‘em you know.

DD: You got a picture up there of you and your grandson. What’s his name?

RP: Roy Hardin. His other graddad’s name was Hardin and they named him after both of us, you know.

MB: Yeah. There’s a Charles Hardin married my wife’s cousin from down in here.

DD: Now what was your wife’s name?

RP: Hasseltine. Yeah, she was raised down here in Vidett, Arkansas, ‘bout 15 miles south of here. She was just like myself, raised on a farm too.

(End of interview).

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