Columbia, Tennessee “Muletown Station” Mule Day 2016 cover

Columbia, Tennessee bills itself as the "Mule Capital of the World" and has held an official "Mule Day" each April since 1840. Today, celebrations have grown into a week-long fair, featuring parades, concerts, mule shows, flea markets, athletic competitions, and more.

The organizers arranged for a pictorial postmark, and I sent for it. My cachet uses a digitized photograph of two lovely ladies — Ethyl Maxwell and Evelyn Morgan (Abernathy) — posing at the 1939 Mule Day. (For the record, the mules also had names: Betty Grable and Mary Pickford.)

I also was not especially fond of their official logo, so I created my own and positioned it in the lower-left: the face of a happy mule, ears erect, surrounded by a circle and the words "MULE DAY 2016" in a horseshoe-style font.

The stamps are "Greetings from Tennessee" from the Greetings from America issue (Scott 3602) and a booklet single of the 1978 Roses issue (Scott 1737).

Instructions for ordering the Muletown Station postmark (through August 18, 2016): http://collectpostmarks.com/postmarks/muletown-station-columbia-tn-2016-03-01/

Mule Day official home page: http://muleday.org