A Mule for All Seasons

LAMAR, COLORADO -- Oris Reed of Lamar is a fourth generation mule man.
And he is a first generation professional writer.
The two talents have teamed up to produce several books about mules and his younger days in Colorado and Oregon.
Writing as Oris George, his latest book is Along the Back Roads of Yesterday.
It relates several humorous and serious incidents when he was a young boy. One of the funniest: a contrary mule stopped suddenly and young Oris was treated to hot steamy “mule apples”, a gift from the mule.
Oris was often in trouble, and one reason was his good friend, Henry, whom Oris describes as the Eddie Haskell of his day.
‘He would buy the bullets and get you to shoot them…” Oris recalled during a breakfast meeting at Java Jackie’s in Las Animas. “He never met a girl he did not fall in love with.”
Henry is a factor in several of the tales Oris weaves in his latest book.
Two earlier books, out of print, tell similar nostalgic tales from the past.
Oris enjoys writing nostalgia because “it takes the edge off hard times. Those were tough times.”
Tough times, indeed. There are some sad moments in the book when a fiasco by Oris leaves the family really tight on money. Sometimes the available cash was measured in coins. And it was troubled times for Oris, as he often seemed knee deep in trouble. Oris took the heat for wrecking the family truck….that Henry had been driving, of course.
His first years were spent on the family farm in Fremont County, Colorado.
“When I was five I had a mule I rode all over the country by myself.“
Then the family moved to Oregon, where the family farmed 1,600 acres with mule power. Oris now says every man should have two mules. But back then he drove up to 12 head at a time, working and showing.
He won many ribbons and admits to being “a show off in those days.”
Now, he seems more modest, but enjoy showing off his writing gift, which was discovered his senior year in high school.
Encouraged to enter a writing contest, he won district and state honors.
He wrote some articles for a newspaper, then got more serious when he was in the Army.
“I got to France….I wrote a column for a French newspaper about rural life in the U. S. It was translated. In time I got good enough to write in French.”
Back home, he continued to write articles and published a book. He also farmed, but got sick and quit farming and went to New Mexico.
There, he took a journalism class from famed mystery writer Tony Hillerman. They clashed
“He was teaching interpretative reporting, which I did not believe in and do not now.
“We fought until I left the class.”
A few years later he ran into Hillerman at a book signing.
“Do you know me?” the author asked.
“I told him I was writing a novel and he asked to read it. Can you imagine the writers who would give an arm to have him read their writing?
Hillerman gave a thumbs up..
“He told me not to go to school but to get with it.”
And Oris has. He has three more books in the works right now.
Though he has no mules now at his place near Lamar, Oris is still respected as a mule man and is a director of the North American Saddle Mule Association.