CALVARY — Raymond Dalton’s involvement with Mule Day was both hot and sweet this year.

The Lions Club member has been helping make the 12,000 bottles of cane syrup sold each year at Mule Day for two years running. The cooking process started about a week before the event but continued Saturday as more syrup was made and more bottles were filled. Dalton, 74, learned how to grind, heat and evaporate the syrup’s ingredients from his dad, a sugar cane farmer who also grew corn, peanuts, sweet potatoes and tobacco. Dalton himself became a farmer and is now semi-retired, though he still plants corn on 60 of his 240 acres each year and raises cattle. He chose that sweaty job at Mule Day, he said, because more hands were needed in that area and because he already knew what to do.

“The Lions Club motto is ‘we serve,'” he said. “If I’m going to make a mark in this world, I better do it now.”

The sky was sunny and the breeze was cool Saturday, perfect weather for the 31st annual Mule Day. Organizer Charlie McNaughton said this years’ Mule Day was bigger and more well-attended than Mule Day 2002 and that the Lions Club will likely be left with about $85,000 to benefit charities and local organizations. One indicator of this, he said, is the large mountains of trash that bulged from the tops of metal cans and overflowed on the ground below.

“You can measure the success of Mule Day by the height of the garbage cans,” laughed McNaughton. “Let’s face it, they bought a lot of food. We’re moving up in garbage.”

Never fear. The garbage will be cleared, said McNaughton, and cans will be recycled. The napkins, cups and plates that littered the ground came from food vendors who lined more than one long row at the yearly event. Corn. Handmade ice cream. Sausage. Boiled peanuts. Hot dogs. Turkey legs. Sweet potato fries. Freehand funnel cakes made by Gena Crews, a woman from Lake Park who travels to festivals in south Georgia, north Florida and eastern Alabama each year.

Crews has been frying up funnel cakes at Mule Day for about 14 years, she said, and has been perfecting her method of making funnel cakes without using a ring to keep them round for just as long. She likes the work, she said, because she likes traveling and meeting new people. And the two-day work weeks and five-day weekends are more than icing on the cake.

“I just really love what I do,” she said.

The country store was new at Mule Day this year. Housed in the back corner of the museum, the store offered homemade jam, postcards, T-shirts, hats and mugs. The designs on the postcards and mugs will change each year, said Sue Rodemoyer, the Lions Club member who moved to Calvary three years ago and designed the items sold there. The $5 mugs were popular, said Rodemoyer, who limited the availability of them to 144.

“They’ll be collector’s items,” she said.

The annual Mule Day parade and music and dance groups such as the Silver Buckle Line Dancers entertained visitors Saturday as did mules and their riders during competitions held in a fenced arena. Hardy Mitchell, 3, was dressed as a clown and won third place in the mule beauty contest with his 10-year-old mule named Jerline, also dressed as a clown. Mitchell traveled from Dellwood, Fla., with his grandmother for the event and led the tame creature all on his own, he said. He offered this description of the beloved creature: “We got a big tall jackass!”

Mules make better pets than horses, said Annie Davis, Mitchell’s grandma, a woman who owns four mules. They don’t kick. They don’t bite. They don’t get hyper or upset like horses tend to do, she said. Mules weren’t the only friendly creatures at Mule Day this year, however. The Grady County 4-H Club had a petting zoo set up. For $1, children could enter and get their little hands on a couple of pigs, some rabbits, a goat, a calf and some baby sheep and a puppy that rested in the mud nuzzled next to a porker. The animals belong to 4-H Club members, said Deron Rehberg, a Lions Club member who is also the 4-H agent in Grady County. The money raised there goes toward the club’s livestock program. The zoo is a chance for little ones to get a close look at farm animals, he said.

“As rural as south Georgia is, lots of people don’t see farm animals,” he said. They can “see what wool feels like. Not just something through a cage.”

Christie Tomlinson was there with her husband and four children, many of whom couldn’t get enough of the baby bunnies. The family recently moved to Tallahassee, Fla., and visited Mule Day grounds for a day of family fun, said Tomlinson, 34. The group arrived shortly before they hit the petting zoo, she said. Before that?

Strawberry ice cream for six.



To contact reporter Julie A. Blakley, call (229) 226-2400, ext. 225.