How to lose an election (a cautionary tale).

Thirty years ago, a sports writer in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram wrote this in his personal column. I never laughed so hard in my life. I clipped the story and still have it. Yellowed and fragile, I took it today and scanned it into a new text file. Here it is:

Jim Trinkle's Skyline

Once more, as before, a horn calls

This summer, in a reprise of previous sessions, the country's most eminent football professors gathered in Dallas for their annual golf and lime rickey seminar. One of them retold a story that has become legend in the South. The yarn has surfaced here before, but deserves periodic re-search and revival.

A FARM WOMAN (the story begins) called a doctor about Horace, her ailing mule. "I wish you'd come take a look at him," she said, anxiously. The veterinarian, a cranky old coot, replied, "I'm having my supper right now, Minerva. Just dose him with mineral oil and I'll drop by to see him tomorrow."

She asked the doctor how the medicine should be administered to the sick animal. When he said, "Pour it through a funnel," the woman nearly dropped the phone. She told the doctor she was afraid Horace, a private sort of mule, might bite her.

HE SAID, "No, no, Minerva, the medicine has got to go in the other end." Okay. She went to the barn, still nervous about the vet's instructions. Horace was powerfully distressed, bloated, heaving, uncommonly restive. When the funnel couldn't be located, she used her Uncle Thurgood's fox-hunting horn, a shiny gold-plated instrument with tassels dangling from it.

Horace never flinched when she affixed the bugle. Eyes still on the mule's teeth, she groped for the mineral oil. In her haste, however, she picked up a bottle of turpentine.

WHEN THE mule felt the turpentine's caustic bite, he bellered in pain and kicked down one side of the barn. Then he struck out down the road at a thundering gallop. Every time Horace's hooves hit the ground, the horn sounded a sharp blast.

All the dogs in Jackson County knew that sound. It meant Uncle Thurgood was going fox hunting. The hounds took off after Horace in full cry.

People who saw the chase still say they will carry the memory of that scene to their final reward. Horace was running clean out of control, the hunting horn urging him to greater strides. .  joyous notes sounding . .. gold tassels flying .... hounds barking. Great glory!

OLD MAN DAWSON was rocking on his front porch. He had not drawn a sober breath in 17 years. When he saw what he thought he saw, he threw his jug away, vowing to join the Epworth League.

It was full dark by the time Horace and the dogs reached the Intracoastal Canal. The bridge tender, who appeared to be a shoo-in to win the sheriff's race in Jackson County the next day, heard the horn blowing. Boat coming!

HE JUMPED up and threw the lever to raise the bridge. Horace ran up the span and into the canal, and drowned. The dogs went off the deep end, too, but swam to shore. The hunting horn was never found.

Stories travel fast in Georgia's backwoods. By the next morning - which was election day -everyone knew what had happened at the river.

THE KEEPER of the bridge, sad to report, got only seven votes for sheriff. Six kinfolks and his own. The county's political experts studied the election results and reached a conclusion.

Voters had figured that any man who couldn't tell the difference between the sound of a boat coming up the canal and a mule with a bugle in his behind wasn't fitten for public office.

In Jackson County, such things are important.