Just remembered

In the post below, I link to Daisy's reportage of our visits to several area school libraries today. I do not envy the position most of these librarians are in. For the most part they are not only overworked and underfunded but they also seem to suffer from a lack of understanding on the part of their superiors as to the amount of work it takes to manage their libraries. Most of them have no support staff at all. And, as Daisy observed, they tend to get easily pulled into peripheral responsibilities. Some of the librarians we met today impressed us as energetic capable loners doomed to fight a losing battle. Others seemed to us blissfully apathetic semi-retired teachers just playing out the string. In any event, I do NOT want any of these people's jobs ever.
Some of them, it seems, wouldn't mind having mine. One lady we talked to, hinted vaguely that she needs to "get over by the public library more often." She seemed to mean this in the sense that she would like to visit.. but also talk about a job at some point. What was interesting, though, was the reason she gave for not dropping by as often as she would like.
"When I get done with work, my car just kind of goes home.. kinda like that mule."
She paused for a moment before remembering that Daisy and I weren't familiar with the mule and then explained, "My husband worked down in the French Quarter with the buggies. And one day, one of the drivers... Sometimes they kinda drink a little. Well one of 'em got so drunk and he fell off the buggy and that mule... that mule just went back to the stable. He knew the way and all."
On the way out of the building, Daisy told me she suspects this story is apocryphal. I disagreed on the grounds that, in New Orleans, we live in the land of the apocryphal. The more ridiculous the story sounds, the more likely it is to be true. But also I just want it to be true. God knows I feel for the poor mule who has spent day after hot tropical day dragging obnoxious tourists through the French Quarter so this drunk buggy driver can lie to them and tie up traffic. To think that this mule got his chance to say to the besotted bastard lying on the ground behind him, "Screw you guys I'm going home," this pleases me a great deal.