Speaker 1: Welcome to This Country Life. I'm your host, Brent Reeves
Speaker 1: from coon hunting to trotlining and just in general country living.
Speaker 1: I want you to stay a while as I share
Speaker 1: my experiences in life lessons. This Country Life is presented
Speaker 1: by Case Knives from the Store More Studio on Meat
Speaker 1: Eaters Podcast Network, bringing you the best outdoor podcast the
Speaker 1: airways have to offer. All right, friends, grab a chair
Speaker 1: or drop that tailgate. I've got some stories to share.
Speaker 1: Lessons from where the red Fern grows. Well, this was
Speaker 1: going to be a little different this week. I'm talking
Speaker 1: about a book. A book that I've read I can't
Speaker 1: tell you how many times, but I was reminded of
Speaker 1: it the other day and I haven't been able to
Speaker 1: quit thinking about it since. Join me at the fire.
Speaker 1: I'm going to tell you all about it chapter two,
Speaker 1: paragraph too. I was ten years old when I first
Speaker 1: became infected with this terrible disease. I'm sure no boy
Speaker 1: in the world had it worse than I did. It's
Speaker 1: not easy for a young boy to want a dog
Speaker 1: and not be able to have one. It starts gnawing
Speaker 1: at his heart and gets all mixed up in his dreams.
Speaker 1: It gets worse and worse until finally it becomes unbearable.
Speaker 1: Sound familiar? Well, that passage is from my all time
Speaker 1: favorite book of Where the Red Fern Grows. And I
Speaker 1: was a grown man with grandkids when I found out
Speaker 1: it was classified as a children's book. A children's book?
Speaker 1: Are you kidding me? I read that book in elementary school,
Speaker 1: and I don't think it was part of the curriculum.
Speaker 1: It was a book I got out of the library
Speaker 1: after seeing the movie on TV for the first time
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy seven. I was the same age when I
Speaker 1: saw it as the character Billy Coleman in the movie.
Speaker 1: Now why am I talking about this book today? I
Speaker 1: tell you why. A week or so ago, I was
Speaker 1: sitting on the couch one Sunday morning when my oldest
Speaker 1: daughter Amy sent me a text, Dad, do you think
Speaker 1: Trip is old enough for us to read Where the
Speaker 1: Red Fern Grows? To him? Well, Trip is my grandson
Speaker 1: and he's seven. In case y'all are wondering, I have
Speaker 1: to admit, I asked her if he was five or six,
Speaker 1: and she laughed and said, Dad, he's seven. No surprise there.
Speaker 1: I still think of her as being five of her
Speaker 1: own self anyway. Knowing what I know now, I said no,
Speaker 1: it was written for kids nine and older. I went
Speaker 1: on to say that I want him to have a
Speaker 1: better understanding of what coon hunting is before you read
Speaker 1: it to it. Now, I surmise that some of that
Speaker 1: is probably me wanting to take him with me when
Speaker 1: I go hunting, and my lamenting for the opportunity to
Speaker 1: read it to him myself, rather than give them my
Speaker 1: blessings to read it to him in my stead. Reading
Speaker 1: that book to my youngest has been more or lesser tradition,
Speaker 1: one that stopped with Bailey three years ago when she
Speaker 1: was ten and lost interest after a few chapters. No
Speaker 1: worries though the subject matter isn't for everyone, and while
Speaker 1: I could sit and read it now with the great
Speaker 1: anticipation of turning the next page, when I know almost
Speaker 1: word for word what's on there, it just didn't appeal
Speaker 1: to her. So I gave it up silently, and when
Speaker 1: she didn't ask why we weren't reading it, I knew
Speaker 1: I'd made the right decision, as painful as it was
Speaker 1: for me. During mine and Amy's conversation about my favorite
Speaker 1: quote unquote children's book, I told her it was the
Speaker 1: second greatest book ever written, And just like the actual
Speaker 1: greatest book ever written, there's not a quote or a
Speaker 1: lesson from any passage that applies any more to children
Speaker 1: than it does for adults. My son in law, Colin said,
Speaker 1: the first time his mother read it to him, he
Speaker 1: was nine or ten, and when he commenced a squalling,
Speaker 1: he didn't stop until he went smooth the sleep sitting
Speaker 1: in her lap. He also less has already also added
Speaker 1: that his grandmother had passed away not too long before
Speaker 1: he read it, so that may have played a role
Speaker 1: in how he perceived it and how upset he got.
Speaker 1: But from that paragraph I read to you when this
Speaker 1: struggle started, it described a boy's longing for something that
Speaker 1: seemed unattainable. A pair of redbone puppies cost twenty five
Speaker 1: dollars each. Now Billy learned that from finding an outdoor
Speaker 1: magazine some fishermen had left behind. In the depression era
Speaker 1: of Oklahoma Ozarks, where this story is set, the average
Speaker 1: income was less than three hundred dollars a year. Fifty
Speaker 1: dollars was two months salary, and it took two years
Speaker 1: of him saving to get enough money that magazine sent
Speaker 1: him on his journey of working toward the goal of
Speaker 1: getting his coonhounds. Wilson Rawls's fictional story started me on mine.
Speaker 1: I learned that lesson myself not long after seeing the movie. Irregardless,
Speaker 1: if Billy Coleman could sell fur to get his hounds
Speaker 1: save up his money, so could Brent. What it took
Speaker 1: him two years to do, I accomplished in one winter. However,
Speaker 1: I didn't just run out and set some traps and
Speaker 1: wait for the money to come rolling in. And I
Speaker 1: had to buy some traps first, traps of my own,
Speaker 1: not from my older brother Tim's cash. Being newlywed, he
Speaker 1: was trapping to supplement his own income and didn't have
Speaker 1: the luxury of living at home with Mama cooking his
Speaker 1: meals like I did. Nope, I was gonna earn money trapping.
Speaker 1: I was gonna have to invest my own funds. A
Speaker 1: dozen one and a half single spring victory traps would
Speaker 1: cost around twenty dollars in nineteen seventy seven. It takes
Speaker 1: a lot of farm chores to make twenty dollars. When
Speaker 1: most of my wages were covered in the form of groceries,
Speaker 1: my papoff slide was the outlier in this equation, even
Speaker 1: though he wasn't a hunter himself or cared much for dogs. However,
Speaker 1: he was an excellent grandfather, and as I've stated here before,
Speaker 1: he was the sole benefactor of my as he called it,
Speaker 1: walking around money. I worked on the farm for him,
Speaker 1: and I got a dozen traps with Tim's toot lich.
Speaker 1: I started laying still totally on my own. I did
Speaker 1: my own skinning. The only thing he helped me with
Speaker 1: was taking me to the fur bire money in hand,
Speaker 1: I waited for some puppies to come up for sale.
Speaker 1: Now Billy Coleman was writing letters back and forth with
Speaker 1: some folks in Kentucky that were selling redbone puppies. I
Speaker 1: was waiting on mister Lloyd Corker down at the Corker's
Speaker 1: feed Story in Warren, Arkansas, to tell my dad when
Speaker 1: he had a new litter tree in Walkers. I never
Speaker 1: knew why Wilson Rawls, the author of that story, had
Speaker 1: Billy longing for a redbone hounds, when the dog from
Speaker 1: his childhood that helped inspire the whole story was a
Speaker 1: bluetick named Rowdy, a real dog that he would hunt
Speaker 1: the river bottoms with at night and read and tell
Speaker 1: stories to during the day. But the first lesson gleaned
Speaker 1: by me from mister Raws's fictional story was that, like Billy,
Speaker 1: I had to labor to put myself in position to
Speaker 1: be able to afford a dog. I did that, and
Speaker 1: one day my dad told me to get my money
Speaker 1: and get in the truck. We were going to the
Speaker 1: feed store, a trip to town and a small loan
Speaker 1: from Dad to make up the difference. And I walked
Speaker 1: out of that feed store grinning like a mule eating sawbriers,
Speaker 1: told them a seventy five dollar Restroe Tree and walker
Speaker 1: puppy in my arms like it was a baby. What
Speaker 1: I had watched in the span of a ninety seven
Speaker 1: minute movie was going to take a lot longer in
Speaker 1: real life, And I had no idea how hard it
Speaker 1: was going to be. The book and the movie describing
Speaker 1: and demonstrate the rigors of training a pair of hunting dogs,
Speaker 1: getting a tree dog started as a bigger test than
Speaker 1: it seems. If you've never trained a hound, having too
Speaker 1: to train does more than double the work. I'd say
Speaker 1: it triples it at least as individual. As you're dealing
Speaker 1: with two dogs, you put them together as juveniles, and
Speaker 1: they create a whole other persona that you won't find
Speaker 1: when they're separate. It takes a patient and talented trainer
Speaker 1: to handle two it once, and most times they're looking
Speaker 1: for the one that's quickst to show the promise. Once
Speaker 1: that's determined, the slower one to develop. Now he going
Speaker 1: to find another home, at least that's the way it
Speaker 1: usually goes these days. Then doing that, you have to
Speaker 1: spend time with that dog, and through a video montage
Speaker 1: of growth trials and tribulations you can see that carried
Speaker 1: out in the movie and read about it in the book.
Speaker 1: I saw the movie first and then I read the book.
Speaker 1: You'd think that by doing it in that order, the
Speaker 1: real that played in my head as I read along
Speaker 1: would show the people from the movie is each character.
Speaker 1: But for me, that's not how it worked, not for
Speaker 1: this one, And I really don't know why that is.
Speaker 1: Maybe it's because ident find more closely with the task
Speaker 1: at hand and the end goal of the struggle Billy
Speaker 1: was going through more so than than the people within
Speaker 1: the story. I knew what it was like to experience
Speaker 1: the want of a hunting dog as a child because
Speaker 1: I was I was, I was one longing for the
Speaker 1: for the same thing Wilson rawl so accurately described in
Speaker 1: the book. While I was reading it, I guess to
Speaker 1: me there was no Billy in that story. There was
Speaker 1: there was on living me. Even to this day, I
Speaker 1: find myself thinking back to those days when that book
Speaker 1: is mentioned or something triggers aroundom memory. I've got a
Speaker 1: young hound named Jesse that I'm sure some of you
Speaker 1: are wondering about. Well, she's finally getting the attention she deserves,
Speaker 1: and I'll give an update on her a little later
Speaker 1: this summer. But that story that that story details the
Speaker 1: struggle involved in training a dog and is a premium
Speaker 1: metaphor for any hard fault, goal or task. Patience when
Speaker 1: dealing with a young dog is paramount. To give them
Speaker 1: the benefit of the doubt. There will be times when
Speaker 1: I think this clown just ain't getting it. But maybe
Speaker 1: it ain't them. Maybe I'm not communicating it well enough
Speaker 1: for them to understand. My father, Buddy Reeves, was a
Speaker 1: dog man. He had a well deserved reputation for some
Speaker 1: of the best tree dogs around and had the best
Speaker 1: a mountain cur named Peanut. I've told you about it before,
Speaker 1: but I was sitting beside him on the front porch
Speaker 1: one afternoon while the last mountain curR he owned, Buck
Speaker 1: was stretched out sonning in the front yard taking a nap.
Speaker 1: The old Buck was a jam up tree dog and
Speaker 1: had mannerism similar to Peanut, even though they were not
Speaker 1: of the same lineage. We had a company that had
Speaker 1: stopped to visit after seeing us on the porch. We
Speaker 1: were wiling away the afternoon in the cool of the
Speaker 1: approaching fall, enjoying each other's company in this sudden change
Speaker 1: in temperature. The conversation was naturally about dogs, and the
Speaker 1: man asked Dad how he always wound up with puppies
Speaker 1: that made good squirrel dogs. His immediate answer was, I
Speaker 1: can just about tell you which puppy and the litter
Speaker 1: is gonna make before they get their eyes open. That
Speaker 1: man laughed at him and said, well tell me so,
Speaker 1: I'll know. Now, I'll tell you. I was wondering my
Speaker 1: own self because this was going to be as big
Speaker 1: of a newsflash to me as it was the man
Speaker 1: who stopped by. Now, my Dad never broke his gaze
Speaker 1: from Buck, who was laying like a in a coma
Speaker 1: like state of relaxation. His breathing so measured, I had
Speaker 1: to watch his belly close to make sure he was
Speaker 1: still doing it. And then Dad said, with the most
Speaker 1: obvious answer that was so simple profound, all in the
Speaker 1: same sentence. It's answer to the question all prospective hunting
Speaker 1: dog owners want to knows contained in a five word statement,
Speaker 1: fact the one that gets hunted. My father was a
Speaker 1: Tier one master of quick wit and sarcasm, but he
Speaker 1: wasn't being either when he said that the pupp that
Speaker 1: gets the chance to bond, learns how to communicate and
Speaker 1: develops trust with his human, when all things are equal,
Speaker 1: will have a distinct advantage over those with limited opportunities.
Speaker 1: I've always thought, and have told countless people, that if
Speaker 1: I have a dog of any kind, that I want
Speaker 1: to perform a task for me, and the dog just
Speaker 1: can't seem to understand what I want him to do.
Speaker 1: Maybe it ain't the dog. Maybe I'm not telling him
Speaker 1: what I want him to do in a way he
Speaker 1: can understand. For the last fifteen thousand years, it has
Speaker 1: been in and canines to do what we wanted to do,
Speaker 1: and they want to please us. We just have to
Speaker 1: be able to properly tell them where the red fern
Speaker 1: grows and my Dad's front porch are great examples of
Speaker 1: recognizing the limitations may have to do more with us
Speaker 1: than the dog. Priceless lessons we can apply not only
Speaker 1: to dogs, but to everyone we come in contact with.
Speaker 1: Billy made a deal with his hounds that if they
Speaker 1: treat a coon, that he do the rest, no matter what.
Speaker 1: And in the book they treat one in a huge
Speaker 1: sycamore tree, and Billy, true to his word, gnawed on
Speaker 1: that tree with his chop axe for two days, ultimately
Speaker 1: to exhaustion, before a sudden gust of wind finished the
Speaker 1: job for him. Loyalty was the lesson, and blistered hands
Speaker 1: and aching back, hunger and despair were the price paid
Speaker 1: to learn it. It was also very odd, is that loyalty.
Speaker 1: It was a two way street. His hounds were recognized
Speaker 1: that he was holding up his end of the bargain.
Speaker 1: They stayed with him while he worked on the seemingly
Speaker 1: impossible task of getting that coon out of that tree.
Speaker 1: A reward for Billy from them and the culmination of effort. Now,
Speaker 1: on a personal note, I'd have patted old well and
Speaker 1: on the head, telling him good boy, and we'd have
Speaker 1: taken off from there to go for tree another one.
Speaker 1: But that's just me. It'd be hard to tell the
Speaker 1: story without pointing out, at least to me, that the
Speaker 1: lessons within this book, in this movie are all rooted
Speaker 1: in love. It seemingly falls from the pages all over
Speaker 1: the floor if you hold the book spine up. Love
Speaker 1: is what that whole thing is about, and drives every
Speaker 1: facet of the story from the first page to the last.
Speaker 1: From the time Billy picks those puppies up from the station,
Speaker 1: He'd already loved them, just the idea of having them
Speaker 1: was overwhelming. I'm going to read to you now another passage.
Speaker 1: This one is from chapter five. It is the day
Speaker 1: Billy picks up his puppies from the train station, and
Speaker 1: the moment in my mind that represents the closest thing
Speaker 1: to the overwhelming feeling of unbounded love to having children
Speaker 1: that a child can experience. On arriving at the depot,
Speaker 1: my nerve failed me. I was afraid to go in.
Speaker 1: I didn't know what I was scared of that I
Speaker 1: was scared. Before going around to the front, I picked
Speaker 1: in a window. The station master was in his office
Speaker 1: looking at some papers. He was wearing a fun little
Speaker 1: cap that had no top in it. He looked friendly enough,
Speaker 1: but I still couldn't muster up enough courage to go in.
Speaker 1: I cought my ear to see if I could hear
Speaker 1: puppies crying, but I couldn't hear nothing. Bird was chirping.
Speaker 1: It was a yellow canary in a cage. The station
Speaker 1: master walked over and gave it some water, and I thought,
Speaker 1: anyone that is kind of birds surely wouldn't be meaning
Speaker 1: to a boy. With my courage built up, I walked
Speaker 1: around to the front. He eased myself past the office.
Speaker 1: He glanced at me and turned back to his papers.
Speaker 1: I walked clear around the depot and again walked slowly
Speaker 1: past the office. Glancing from the corner of my eye
Speaker 1: saw the station master looking at me and smiling. He
Speaker 1: opened the door and came out on the platform. I
Speaker 1: stopped and leaned against the building, yawning and stretching his arms.
Speaker 1: He said, it sure is hot today, doesn't look like
Speaker 1: it's ever going to rain. I looked up at the
Speaker 1: sky and said, yes, sir, it is hot, and we
Speaker 1: sure could do with the good rain. We need one
Speaker 1: bad up where I come from? He asked me where
Speaker 1: I lived. I told him up the river Aways, you know.
Speaker 1: He said, I have some puppies in there for a
Speaker 1: boy that lives up on the river. His name is
Speaker 1: Billy Coleman. I know his dad, but never have seen
Speaker 1: the boy. I feared he'd be in after him today.
Speaker 1: On hearing this remark, my heart jumped up in my throat.
Speaker 1: I thought surely was going to hop right out on
Speaker 1: the depot platform. I looked up and I tried to
Speaker 1: tell him who I was, but something went wrong. When
Speaker 1: the words finally came out, they only sounded like like
Speaker 1: a squeaky old pulley on our well. When Mama drew
Speaker 1: up a bucket of water, I could see a twinkle
Speaker 1: in the station master's eyes. He came over and laid
Speaker 1: his hand on my shoulder. In a friendly voice, he said,
Speaker 1: so you're Billy Coleman. Aw's your dad. I told him
Speaker 1: Papa was fine and handed him to slip my grandpa
Speaker 1: had given me. Well, they sure are fine looking pupps.
Speaker 1: He said, you'll have to go around to the freight door.
Speaker 1: I'm sure my feet never touched the ground as I
Speaker 1: flew around the building. He unlocked the door and I
Speaker 1: stepped in looking for my dogs, and I couldn't see
Speaker 1: anything but boxes, barrels, and old trunks and some rolls
Speaker 1: of barbed wire. The kindly stationmaster walked over to one
Speaker 1: of the boxes. Do you want boxing all? He asked.
Speaker 1: I told him I didn't want the box. All I
Speaker 1: wanted was the dogs. How are you going to carry him,
Speaker 1: he asked, I think they're a little too young to follow.
Speaker 1: I held out my gunnysack. He looked at me, and
Speaker 1: he looked at the sack and chucked in. He said, well,
Speaker 1: I guess dogs can be carried that way as anything else,
Speaker 1: but we'll have to cut a hole in there from
Speaker 1: the stick to the head through so they so they
Speaker 1: won't smother. Getting a claw hammer, he started tearing off
Speaker 1: the top of the box. His nails gave way and
Speaker 1: board splintered. I heard several puppy whimpers. I didn't walk over.
Speaker 1: I just stood and waited. After what seemed like hours,
Speaker 1: the box was open. He reached in, lifted the pups out,
Speaker 1: and set them down on the floor. Well, there they are,
Speaker 1: he said, What do you think of I didn't answer.
Speaker 1: I couldn't. All I could do was stare at it.
Speaker 1: They seemed to be blinded by the light and kept
Speaker 1: blinking their eyes. One sat down on his little rear
Speaker 1: and started crying. The other one was waddling around and whimpering.
Speaker 1: I wanted so much to step over and pick them up.
Speaker 1: Several times I tried to move my feet, but they
Speaker 1: seemed to be nailed to the floor. I knew the
Speaker 1: pups were mine, all mine, yet I couldn't move. My
Speaker 1: heart started acting like a drunk grasshopper. I tried to
Speaker 1: swallow and couldn't. My atom's apple wouldn't work. One pupp
Speaker 1: started my way. I held my breath on he came
Speaker 1: until I felt a scratchy little foot on mine. The
Speaker 1: other pup followed, a warm puppy to him, caressed my
Speaker 1: sore foot. I heard the station master say, well, they
Speaker 1: already know you. I knelt down and gathered them in
Speaker 1: my arms. I buried my face between their wiggling bodies
Speaker 1: and cried. The station master, sensing something more than just
Speaker 1: two dogs and a boy, waited in silence. There is
Speaker 1: so much more to talk about that I believe I
Speaker 1: could do a whole series on this book alone. But
Speaker 1: there are some listening right now that while they may
Speaker 1: have heard about the book, they ain't never read it.
Speaker 1: There's also some young people that listen, and I'm so
Speaker 1: grateful and thankful to have their ears for a few
Speaker 1: moments each week. I haven't done this in a while.
Speaker 1: I'm giving you all an assignment homework if you will
Speaker 1: read this book or listen to the audiobook instead of
Speaker 1: watching either version of the movie. Let Billy and every
Speaker 1: character fit the ones you imagine in your mind. As
Speaker 1: you read, you'll find that what each of those characters
Speaker 1: represents in emotion, good or bad, is way more important
Speaker 1: than what they look like. Let me and Miss Reeven
Speaker 1: know what you think about it and what, if anything,
Speaker 1: speaks to you the most. Man, I sure hope you
Speaker 1: enjoyed this one. I know I did. It's like visiting
Speaker 1: with a childhood friend. It's a simple story with such
Speaker 1: a wonderful, wonderful message. Till next week, it's me and
Speaker 1: Old whitealing sing. Y'all be careful.