One Last Ride

Dr. Hunt is bringing his mules to Fancy Farm one last time. If you’ve lived in Fancy Farm for any length of time you are familiar with Dr. Hunt and his Fancy Farm Mules, from Carleton, Michigan. You’ve seen them more years than not in the Fancy Farm 4th of July Parade. That’s when they came mostly, because they were parading kind of mules.

Dr. Hunt was born and raised in Fancy Farm. He and his 5 brothers have laid claim to Fancy Farm their entire lives. Some came and went. Others went but still called Fancy Farm home. They all have/had distinct personalities. I tend to think that came from their mother who was an unofficial historian of Fancy Farm and the St. Denis communities. She was an avid letter writer and could communicate to all who had moved off from here.

There are endless stories told about Dr. Hunt. We all have heard them through the years. One of my favorite is when he told Jimmy’s uncle, Joe Pete, that he needed to go to the doctor. Joe Pete didn’t listen and ended up dying of blood poisoning when he was a teenager. Dr. Hunt wasn’t a doctor then, he just knew that Joe Pete didn’t look good.

Or there’s the time Dr. Hunt had the Fancy Farm Mules in the Orange Bowl Parade. It was on television. Can you imagine watching the parade on TV and then seeing those mules and that huge wagon? Every time they were in the parade in Fancy Farm it was a big deal. The parish priest or the Grand Marshal of the parade would ride alongside Dr. Hunt in that huge wagon. You about needed a ladder to get to the rungs to climb up into the wagon. Dr. Hunt always had a crew who walked alongside the mules to make sure they didn’t get out of line.

Parade day is always a big deal in Fancy Farm. It all started one year when the 4th of July fell on a Sunday. Fr. Walter Hancock told the congregation at Mass to go home, clean up your wagons and your trucks and your tractors, and come back here because there was going to be a parade. And people did. They built floats along the patriotic theme. They ran to town to get some candy to throw to the little kids along the parade route. One of the first things I did when I moved to western Kentucky was to help Jimmy Elder line up the floats for the start of the parade. And the big deal was to keep everyone out of Dr. Hunt’s way. He needed to go first and he needed a clear path from the bingo stand to the front of the parade route. Once those mules got going there better not be anything in their way. I think I fell in love with Jimmy that day.

Jimmy’s favorite story to tell about Dr. Hunt’s was when he went out parade day to visit with him. The parade is held every year on the Sunday closes to the 4th of July (it has to be in July). Sometimes it falls on St. Denis Picnic weekend and sometimes it doesn’t. We knew Dr. Hunt would come to town if the parade was the same weekend as St. Denis. This was one of those weekends. It was hot! The flies were unmerciful. They were all over those mules. Dr. Hunt was explaining to Jimmy that he couldn’t find anything to keep those flies at bay. Jimmy had something. He was a dairy farmer, after all, and there was a fly spray that was safe for livestock, that would drop all flies in their tracts. It was a fogger but worked if it hit a fly mid-flight. He went home, got a can, and gave it to Dr. Hunt. I never heard anymore about it. Until the next time Dr. Hunt came in. He called jimmy as soon as he hit town and asked for a can. From that point on, Jimmy made sure to get Dr. Hunt a can of fly spray, when he got to town, before he asked.

It seems strange that so many people who knew our parents and grandparents are old and feeble, and dying. It seems strange that we are now those wise, old people. I’ve heard it said that we actually die twice in this life. We die on our death day but then we die again the last time someone mentions our name. I guess that’s why I like stories so much. By telling stories we say their names. There are some who just refuse to die. I like to think that Dr. Hunt will be one of those people.