This is my year and I am going to make the most of it

The girl in the header is about the same age as the youngest granddaughter in my play, HAPPY HELLO, SAD GOODBYE. Only she and her sister ride mules. I was friends with a girl back in elementary school who used to ride her step dad's mules to Boulder. It didn't bother her, just as long as she had a way to get there. She rode a mule a lot of times. You have to understand that most of the ranchers and cowhands would not be caught dead riding a mule. They used them for pack animals and that was it! It's hard for a cowboy to cut a dashing figure on a mule. Morias, her step-dad owned a pretty small ranch property close to the mountain and had never been able to cut a dashing figure, so he didn't care.
I was intrigued by that so turned the grandfather in my play to a man with a small ranch on a mountain. He worked mules instead of horses. Every once in a while there is a loud hee haw in the play as some of his more comic mules make themselves heard. Linda used to have a mule or more likely a donkey in her neighborhood that used to hee haw. Donkeys are used for beasts of burden and some for riding in poorer countries like Mexico.
The Kings had a white mule named Abe they used for years as a pack animal on the range. My uncles used mules for the pack animals when they had the mail contract. After old Abe died they turned a big white horse named Buttons into a pack animal. He was so tame all the kids could ride him, but somehow or another the cowboys had convinced him to become a bucking horse in the rodeo. Every year he would be taken to the rodeo and he would buck satisfactorily and then he would go back to carrying all the kids around. I thought he must have had a pretty good brain. I was also impressed with his ability to separate his two roles, kid horse, and rodeo bucking horse so well!
So saying Doc finally started calling again this morning after a couple of days of complete silence, but I did not answer. All I have to say to him is I can't have an alcoholic boyfriend in my year! He and his drinkees will have to go.
I decided tomorrow morning I would walk over to the Silvercrest and play some pool with the guys. None of them will be drinking. So I am thinking up stuff to entertain myself while not keeping company with any alcoholics.