There’s a vast difference, well half-vast anyway, between being lazy ‘n being just plain old downright trifling....any lazy person’ll look at a job that just has t’be done ‘n figger out a way to do it with the least effort possible while a trifling person’ll just ignore the job altogether...Justin Other Smith.


The Mail Route

Cousin Ballard had a plan. ‘Course cousin Ballard almost always had some kind of plan. That’s just the way he was. He could’t help hisself, it’s the way he was made.....at least, that’s what he said. His mind was always busy thinkin’ and plannin’ about ever’thing. What it was, he was born to be in guvverment but there wasn’t any guvverment to speak of out on Beauty Ridge. Well, except for the mailman who managed to make it around the ridge when the weather co-operated. Except the weather in the hills is an awful lot like the people in the hills and they have a tendency to be uncooperative in the best of times and just plain mulish otherwise.
Now it was 1947 and Kentucky was blacktopping roads all over the state but they hadn’t got out in the back-country yet. Folks that lived out in the hollows and the ridges pretty much lived the same way that their parents and grandparents had lived before them. That meant no blacktop roads. Heck! They were lucky to get a little gravel dropped on them and that right before election. There were no phones, no services of any kind.
But after the war, the Postal Service had got their hands on a lot of jeeps and were using them for rural mail delivery. All the old mailmen had retired and put their mules out to pasture. The only problem was them old ridge roads got difficult in the winter months. the rain and harsh weather turned those dirt roads into impassable clay mires and there wasn’t a vehicle built that could navigate them.
Except for God’s creation: the mule.
And Uncle John Sam always had a couple good mules.
And that was cousin Ballards plan. He would borrow a mule from Uncle John Sam and contract with the U.S. Post Office to deliver the mail out on Beauty Ridge.
Now when the weather was cold and there was a good hard crust on the ground, the regular mailman made his rounds in the official United States Post Office Vehicle which back there at the time was a U.S.Army war surplus jeep that had been painted white and trimmed in red and blue. And it did pretty good. When the weather was right for it.
But when there came a thaw and a little bit of rain, it was time for cousin Ballard to earn his money. The mailman would bring all the mail to Uncle John Sam’s home where cousin Ballard would be waiting with the mule. If there was an extra big load, he’d borrow both of Uncle John Sam’s mules.
It took three days for cousin Ballard to make the trip around the ridge and though he gen erally stayed with the same people, sometimes he would stay wherever darkness found him.
The month of March in eastern Kentucky is a changeable kind of month. It can be warm and sunny, almost balmy one day and the n ext day see a blustering rain or snow or worse, a mixture called sleet. People used to say, “if you don’t like the weather here, just wait fifteen minutes.”
It had been that kind of month and Beauty Ridge was impassable for any kind of wheeled vehicle. Cousin Ballard had been making the round trip just about every week and had taken to grousing and complaining about the job, saying that he’d “never signed on to be a reg’lar mailman anyhow.” I expect that if Uncle John Sam’s mules could’a talked, they’d have said the same thing.
Anyway, the mailman was sitting on the porch with Uncle John Sam when cousin Ballard showed up. They were both in a pretty genial mood having made several trips to the well, so to speak, and their levity didn’t help to elevate cousin Ballard’s mood. He saddled the mule and loaded the mail bags, climbed aboard and headed up the hill.
And that was the last that anyone saw of him and the mule for the next three days. On the fourth day, Uncle John Sam began to get a little fidgety and began to fret about having trusted his mule to a layabout like Ballard anyhow. And on the fifth day Uncle John Sam went looking for his mule.
The mail bags had been a little extra heavy and about halfway up the hill the mule decided that he didn’t want to work that hard and he sat down in the path and refused to go any further. Cousin Ballard reasoned with him ‘til he lost his voice and his arm got tired, so in the spirit of democratic cooperation, decided to walk alongside the mule. Which got the two of them to the top of the hill. After a little rest, cousin Ballard climbed back into the saddle and they proceeded along the ridge.
Now because of the late start they’d had and the little disagreement between labor and management, they were more than a little behind schedule and cousin Ballard got it in his mind that he’d seek shelter with a friend of his who lived up a little hollow on the other side of the road. The road looked solid enough and cousin Ballard just naturally headed the mule toward the other side. I guess that he didn’t give enough consideration to the extra weight they were carrying and with ever’ sucking step the mule took, why he sunk a little deeper and when he sunk to his belly, he stopped.
And it didn’t matter what tone cousin Ballard took, and no matter how he remonstrated, all his pleas and threats and promises fell on deaf ears. The mule just wouldn’t absolutely no way move.
And finally cousin Ballard gave up. He got off the mules back, loaded the mail sacks onto his own back and proceeded across the road. For about six feet when he sunk so deep that he found himself stuck the same as the mule.
People that live out along Beauty Ridge are a hardy bunch but they generally stick pretty close to home in the wintertime. Especially when the only road is a quagmire. And nobody came. Nobody passed by. And cousin Ballard and the mule waited. All night. And all the next day and night. And cousin Ballard talked to the mule and to God and to himself. God knows what kind of promises he made but God ain’t talking about it any more than cousin Ballard and the mule.
Uncle John Sam was a quiet man rarely given to outbursts. I remember once when an old Nash car he was driving wouldn’t stop when he yelled for it to whoa. He lost his temper then and said some harsh words while he bashed in the radiator and taught the car a lesson. But that’s another story. On this day, Uncle John Sam didn’t say a word. He sat down beside the road, his body shaking like he had the palsy and laughed ‘til he cried.
Cousin Ballard said it was a mortifying experience and he didn’t think he’d ever want to deliver the mail again and doubted that he could get the mule to do it anymore anyhow.