Daufuskie residents have the perfect transportation solution -- mules

If Beaufort County government can outlaw automobiles in his hometown, which is a barrier island accessible only by boat, surely it can demand that everybody go back to mules and ox carts. Right?

"As many of you might be aware, there is a huge controversy brewing here as to the appropriate future of land transportation on the island," Pinckney writes in an e-mail to county elected and planning department leaders.

He's talking about part of the comprehensive plan proposed for Daufuskie. It includes rules that would phase out combustion-powered vehicles by 2012.

"But I am happy to tell you Mr. Wick Scurry has it figured out," Pinckney writes. "Mule transport. That's right, a mule tour."

Scurry has businesses that get people to and from Daufuskie and try to entertain them while there, which isn't easy. Part of it involves tours, which Pinckney helps lead. Scurry plans to add tours in wagons pulled by mules.

"No more gasoline pollution, no more false, feel-good about running (cars or golf carts) on electricity from a coal-burning plant," Pinckney writes.

"And the mule apples on the road can be recycled into our new sustainable agriculture project."

Cars aren't that common on Daufuskie, and neither are paved roads. Years ago, word came from Daufuskie that there'd been a head-on collision. We almost stopped the presses. The island only had two cars.

Oxen, mules and marsh tacky horses are the real transportation traditions on our sea islands. Today's planners so enamored with "neo-traditional" plans ought to appreciate that.

Why, marsh tackies were the first designated drivers. When a man got soused at an island juke joint, his friends loaded him on his horse, slapped its fanny, and that was it.

Sometimes, if you can imagine, a drunken man might not want to go home. But Pinckney recalls a Daufuskie ox named Whitey who would head home no matter how loud his master protested once Whitey heard him fall off his seat and into the ox cart.

Maybe the people of Daufuskie want to officially junk the car. But maybe the horse isn't out of the barn.

"If they can vote that we have to use a golf cart," Pinckney said, "they can vote that we have to use mules."