My
first mule team, Amos and Andy, were polished by
pulling my chuckwagon dozens of miles following cows
to the mountain.
Labor intensive jobs are as good for mules as
they are for millennials.
Amos and Andy eventually expired, so in 2011
I purchased a replacement mule team.
This new pair of mature mollies was billed as
having been a feed team, so what could possibly go
wrong?
I renamed them Martha and Abigail and ground drove
them before hitching the team to my hay wagon.
I tugged the
mules away from the hitchrail and suffered the worst
wagon runaway of my life…so far.
(This wreck is recorded in
Ramblings of
a Conservative Cow Doctor, Vol. III.)
Fast-forward six uneventful years.
A couple weeks ago, in preparation for
Christmas caroling, the trophy wife and I hitched
Martha and Abigail and drove them to the back
pasture.
With the wagon carrying a heavy payload of
wet snow and the pasture mostly mud, the mules
struggled climbing through the sagebrush to the
upper hitchrail.
It was a great Sunday to be a mule skinner.
On Black Friday, I hitched the team for
another practice run, but after crossing the Cove
Ditch, Martha and Abigail exploded into an all-out
runaway.
They charged back to the Cove Ditch, before
sucking hard to right at the last instant.
Building speed, we flew over a brush pile
before ricocheting off a 12-inch cottonwood log and
finally stopping.
It was the worst wagon runaway of my life…so
far.
I continued through the pasture, eventually
circling my lathered team to the upper hitchrail.
The empty wagon banged across some ruts
spooking my team into the second runaway of the day.
They zoomed towards the hitchrail, but spun hard
left just as the hitchrail’s crosspiece ripped the
footrest and bench seat from the right side of the
wagon.
I sit on the left, so had a great view of a nasty
accident.
I jerked hard on the left line, forcing the
team straight up a steep hill to let gravity stop
the shenanigans.
This brings me to my point.
Turning left is appropriate only when
stopping a runaway team.
Hanging a left on the political spectrum is
exactly what progressives promote as ideal, but
embracing socialism will be the biggest wreck of our
lives…so far. Once
freedom is surrendered, America will find herself
trapped a death spiral where each day gets worse
than the one before.
Rather than an anomaly, Venezuela’s
socialist mess was entirely predictable.
Socialism always empowers the ruling class at
the expense of the unwashed.
Steer right to freedom.
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