Normally after I share one of my stories with a moral to it I try to explain the reasoning behind the story. Before I share this one from my family’s past I want to pass on something more. I realize this hasn’t been an easy year for a lot of my friends and family members. Some have lost their health. Some have lost someone they loved or a family member due to death. Others are going through personal trials they would prefer to keep to themselves. For those of you who are, I want you to know my heart is with you.

But I, also, want you to know there is hope for a better day ahead. It may not seem so, but there is. Hope of better times ahead is going to require a little bit of faith on our part. Though some of our trails seem unbearable while we are going through them there are better days ahead. The human heart is resilient and has the ability to forgive, love and heal even after it has been hurt or tested. Trials can make it stronger just as hard work can make our bodies stronger.

I hope you will put the difficult moments of this past year behind you and cherish the good memories you enjoyed. As for 2018 – It’s a blank slate. A page with no words or memories yet written on it. A fresh start. I hope you will fill it with hope and faith of better things to come. After all the things we usually worry about seldom come to pass.

Here’s hoping this coming year is a good one for you.

And now my story:

My father was a quiet man. He was a good man. I was just coming of age when he passed away a day after my twenty-fourth birthday.

Though he didn’t’ talk a lot, if a life well lived could speak, his would have spoken volumes. It was only after his death I learned through stories told to me by my uncle what a good man he really was. I realized the quiet man I had grown up with was a man of great faith. Faith is a powerful thing. It’s invisible, yet has the ability to change lives. I hadn’t really been aware of how much faith he had until his brother shared the story about an imaginary mule.

Uncle Reuben told me about a family that lived our farm back in the early forties. Normally Life on the farm was uneventful. Then one morning the solitude of a quiet, peaceful day was shattered by something horrible. Around ten o’clock a man broke through the door of that family’s home and assaulted the wife while she was alone. Her attacker thought her husband was away working in the fields, when in reality he had just walked down the hill to get a bucket of water from a nearby spring.

George heard her cries for help and rushed back up the path to their home. He burst through the door and fought with all his might against the man attacking his wife, Annie. A few moments later the altercation was over, and the assailant lay dead on the floor.

After he attended to this wife he walked to a nearby house and called the sheriff. When the law arrived they asked a few questions, apprized the situation and arrested George. It was murder they said. George had killed the man – plain and simple. His family protested, “He was protecting Annie.” But their cries fell on deaf ears. George was handcuffed and taken away to jail.

The court appointed George an attorney because he couldn’t afford one. There was a speedy trial; the jury pronounced him guilty of murder and he was sentenced to life in Mississippi’s Parchman Penitentiary. In those days justice was swift and harsh for poor people.

His family was stunned. George, husband and father, was sent to prison for the rest of his life because he had defended his wife and a man had died.

Desperate, they did the only thing they knew to do. They wrote a letter to my father who was in Europe fighting with Patton’s Third Army. When my father read the letter he immediately realized a great injustice had been done. But by the time the letter had reached him the trail had been over for weeks and there was nothing he could do from half a world away.

He wrote back, telling them there was nothing he could do at that time, but when the war was over he would see what could be done.

Well - the war did end, and my father made it back to the farm in the fall of 1945. Shortly after arriving home he began his own investigation. Then he tracked down every single person who had served on George’s jury and presented the facts he had discovered. He asked each one had they known those facts, would it have made a difference in the outcome of the verdict. They all said, “Yes.” Had they known what my father had presented them George would have been acquitted.

My father then asked if they would sign a petition requesting George be pardoned, and each man gladly signed their name. Even the judge over the case signed the petition.

Everyone wanted George exonerated.

The next step was to be the most difficult. My father made an appointment to see Mississippi’s governor and present the petition before him. A date was set and after weeks of waiting the most important day of George’s life arrived. My father climbed into his old truck and headed west toward the capital in Jackson.

When he arrived he informed the governor’s secretary who he was and why he was there. She was polite enough. She acknowledged him and told him to take a seat out in the hall.

He sat on that bench out in the hall for a long time. Shadows crawled across the walls and time ticked slowly by. The day was passing, but still he waited patiently.

Finally, the secretary stepped into the hall and said, “Mr. Algood, I’m afraid the governor has been called away on urgent business. He won’t be able to see you today.” She saw the disappointment in his eyes. Then she added, “Sir, there is someone else here that may be able to help you. Follow me.”

She led him down the hall to another office where a man sat behind a large desk. The man motioned for my father to have a seat and asked what brought him to the capital that day.

He presented his case about the injustice George had incurred due to a young court appointed attorney. He handed him the petition requesting George be pardoned. The man looked it over and noted it was signed by each member of the jury and the presiding judge.

He smiled and nodded thoughtfully. Then he pushed his chair a little further back, propped his feet up on the desk and asked, “You’re a farmer, aren’t you, Mr. Algood?” My father nodded and replied, “I am.”

“Well, Mr. Algood, the governor is a farmer, too. Fact is he owns a lot of farm land all over the state.” My father listened, not knowing where the conversation was going. “Yes, sir, the governor loves farming and farmers. He especially loves mules. See, Mr. Algood, he has to have a lot of good mules to farm all that land.”

He leaned a little further back in his chair. “There’s one mule in particular the governor is very fond of, but sadly that mule has gone lame. – Stepped on a rock or something. I don’t know. But the mule is of no use to him. It’s sad, really. Now, the governor would like to sell that mule to someone who’d give it a good home, but it seems no one wants to buy a lame mule.”

He starred at my father and asked, “You wouldn’t happen to know anyone that would want to buy that mule, would you?”

My father understood. “I might. What would he have to have for that mule?”

“Twelve hundred dollars and that animal is yours.”

Twelve hundred dollars was a tremendous amount of money back in the forties. I’m sure my father was probably stunned by the figure that man so easily tossed out.

After a moment my father asked, “Would the governor take a check for that mule?”

The fellow dropped his feet to the floor, sat up and said, “A check will be fine, sir.”

My father wrote the check and slid it across the desk.

He looked it over carefully and said, “Well, I guess this concludes our business here today, Mr. Algood. You can go on home now. I expect you’ll be getting a response to you petition sometime in the near future.”

My father left Mississippi’s capital that day and drove his old truck back to the farm in Winston County. A day or so later he received a call from the governor’s office informing him George had been pardoned. Once more he climbed into his truck and headed west. That time he drove to the delta where the state penitentiary was located. He picked up George and took him home to his family.

When I think of this story my uncle told me, I can visualize in my mind’s eye George riding that mule to freedom. I’m at peace knowing my father was a good man. He had a whole lot of faith. His faith in God was unwavering and unquestionable. But for him to have faith in an imaginary mule – well, that’s a special kind of faith.

Many years after my father passed away I saw an obituary in my hometown newspaper. It was the obituary of George. He had lived to the ripe old age of ninety-six and was survived by several children, grandchildren and great grandchildren. I smiled when I saw one of his sons had been named after my father. It was a reminder that had George not ridden that imaginary mule away from prison seventy years earlier, that child may never have been born.

I mentioned earlier that things unseen can be quite powerful. So it is with faith – faith and imaginary mules.

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Rick Algood
December 31, 2017