Way back in Fires Creek lived a mountain man. He was raised on moon pies and RC Colas. Didn't hurt him a bit. Garnet Johnson was healthy as a contemporary weight lifter. But Garnet worked out raising gigantic vegetable gardens.
Early each spring he plowed his fields with a mule. Garnet had no desire to own a tractor. He joked that he had a four-feet drive. "While everybody else is pumping air in their tractor tires, I'm plowing with my little mule. I reckon I'm way ahead by having a mule."
He named the mule Kit because everything's there. If you can't put the mule to a sled and work her, or snake wood, or whatever there's to do with her, why we'd have to name her something else. She'll work to anything.
Garnet admitted that Kit was more of a pet than a work animal. "She's the best mule I ever saw about kicking or anything else. She's not a bit of trouble. Never has offered to kick nobody."
It appears Kit was sort of a celebrity. Charles Kuralt featured Garnet and his mule on the national CBS show, "Sunday Morning." Garnet thought it was just a rink-dink station and didn't fix up. He just wore an old straw hat and demonstrated Kit plowing the field. Over night the mountain man and Kit, the mule, became famous.
But it shore didn't go to their heads. They just kept on being themselves plain as old shoes.
by: Brenda Kay Ledford
This story appeared in: Mountain Places,
an anthology by Old Mountain Press
www.OldMountainPress.com
