and daring of a champion. In the nar¬
row confines of her environment, she
realized her potential in the only way
possible — by running. In the language
of the age. she was a "Sport."
Too frequently the opinion was
voiced by neighbors that Dad. who
was lean and lanky, was just not strong
enough to hold that mule. There was a
standing invitation for anyone to try.
Finally. Uncle John, the acknow¬
ledged strong man of the area, ac¬
cepted the challenge. The stage was set
in an open field after crops were har¬
vested. It took only a slap of the line
and a sharp. "Get-up." to start the
run. Ole Beck, wearing her special
double jointed wire bits, took Uncle
John, the wagon, and the other mule,
for one of her usual runs. No one ever
said anything about Dad not being able
to hold Ole Beck again.
The W alking Game
During the last two weeks of July
and August we often made the ten mile
trip to Charlotte w ith a wagon load of
watermelons. I was about six years old
when I began to make the trip with
Dad. We had the fastest stepping team
in the country. Kach time that we went
around a bend in the road and spotted a
team up ahead. Ole Beck would begin
to step a bit faster. The team up front
had to be passed, at a walking gait, and
it was passed. The rule of the game did
not permit a team to break into a trot.
Ole Beck enjoyed this game.
During watermelon time in the
summer of
1У18.
World War I was in
progress, and mules were being bought
by the Army to pull artillery. I was
getting older and was handling all types
of mule-drawn farm machinery. Al¬
though Ole Beck had never run with
me. Dad became more and more con¬
cerned about the possibility and of me
being injured during one of her runs.
One day after selling a load of
watermelons, we drove up North
Tryon Street to Wad worth's Livery
Stable where mules were being bought
for the Army. Ole Beck was unhitched,
someone in the background cracked a
w hip, and she jumped like a five-year-
old. instead of the twenty-year-old that
she was. Within seconds she was sold.
About a week later someone rode
out from Camp Green which was lo¬
cated a few miles west of Charlotte, to
deliver a message to Dad. Ole Beck
had been taken to Camp Green the
next day and hitched as one of a team
to a piece of artillery. Immediately she
ran directly into a tree and was killed.
Ole Beck never ran into anything by
accident.
It has taken 5.000 years to fully de¬
velop writing (although you'd never
know that from trying to decipher a
doctor's prescription). It began when
early tribes used pictographs. small
symbols and stick people, carved in or
drawn on stone or daubed on animal
skins, to keep seasonal records of
hunts and migrations and fracases.
Placed in sequence, the symbols could
be "read" by anyone, but if the "wri¬
ter" tended to ramble, he required an
impractical number of stones or skins,
so the symbols became smaller and
more abstract in an attempt to convey
more meaning. In the ancient Hittite
pictograph system, for example, two
man symbols placed side by side meant
"to agree." The Sumerian star symbol
stood for "deity." Egyptian hiero¬
glyphics were even more abstract and
had a certain formal beauty because
they also served as decoration for tem¬
ple walls.
Symbols gradually evolved to stand
for speech sounds, and standard al¬
phabets developed. Plain words
served well enough to record business
deals and keep inventories, but forcer-
tain manuscripts — the edicts of kings
or the laws of a country — writers,
such as the scribes who hand-copied
the Bible, fell that the words should be
set down in a style befitting their im-
Suton Dougol of New Bern it one of the few caper! Colligrophert in tKc notion She hot received ot much ot
S7S0 for
о
tingle certificote. Since moving to North Caroline from Wothingfon, D.C., the't hod difficulty
finding work, however. (Phil Bowie photot)
1 6
THE STATE. MARCH 1977
