There are a lot of Southern expressions out there that might need a little explaining to the folks that didn't grow up hearing them (and maybe some of the folks that did, too.)
"Enough money to burn a wet mule" certainly falls into that category, which is likely why it won a recent poll in our Potluck newsletter as the Southern phrase members wanted to know more about the most, beating out other more common -- and also more easily understood -- sayings like "too big for [their] britches" and "madder than a wet hen".
So where did this Southern phrase come from and how much money, exactly, is enough to burn a wet mule? (Hint: it's a lot.) We got the scoop on all that and more
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So, for starters, Let's tackle what "enough money to burn a wet mule" means. In a nutshell, it means a-whole-lot of money. Like, enough money that if you stacked it all up, and then set it on fire, it would burn through -- you guessed it -- a wet mule.
Now we know that this is an absurd, and a little bit crude, visual, but so are a lot of other Southern phrases. If you've every heard someone say they're "happy as a dead pig in the sunshine," you get what we mean.
The phrase is attributed to former Louisiana Governor Huey Long, who said it in 1929 after Standard Oil tried to get him impeached for enacting a 5-cent tax on barrels of refined oil by offering legislators as much as $25,000 for their supporting votes to oust him, according to HueyLong.com.
He responded to the impeachment attempt, which failed in the senate, by saying the oil company wanted him out of office so bad they were willing to spend "enough money to burn a wet mule," and just like that, the Southern phrase was born.
Now, if you've wondering how much money, exactly, is enough money to burn a wet mule, reason stands it's about $25,000 in 1929, which amounts to around $448,000 today, according to Dollar Times. To be honest, we've never given that much thought to how much money you'd actually need to burn a wet mule, but yeah, a little over $450,000 does seem like it'd do the trick.
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