You’re Just A One-Lapper

Of the mule, novelist William Faulkner once said, “He labors six days without reward for one creature, whom he hates, bound with chains to another, whom he despises, and spends the seventh day kicking or being kicked by his fellows.” 

 My lifelong best friend and mentor Jaybird could attest to the great writer’s observations. The old black man spent many days bound with chains to mules that despised him. Back then, when mules fell ill, the treatment was “drenching,” a highly effective cure for mule maladies, quite often because it killed them. 

The medicine administered in drenching was sweet spirits of niter — a fiery concoction consisting of potassium nitrate and anhydrous alcohol.