Speaker 1: Welcome to This Country Life. I'm your host, Brent Rieves.
Speaker 1: From coon hunting to trot lining and just general country living.
Speaker 1: I want you to stay a while as I share
Speaker 1: my stories and the country skills that will help you
Speaker 1: beat the system. This Country Life is proudly presented as
Speaker 1: part of Meat Eaters Podcast Network, bringing you the best
Speaker 1: outdoor podcast the airways have to offer. All right, friends,
Speaker 1: pull you up a chair or drop that tailgate. I
Speaker 1: think I got a thing or two and teach you hogs,
Speaker 1: cows and elephants. Hogs, cows and elephants. Now, what in
Speaker 1: the world could all of that have in common with me?
Speaker 1: Outside of describing how I eat, what I eat and
Speaker 1: how big I'll be if I don't cut back on
Speaker 1: the other two. But that's not what we're talking about.
Speaker 1: We're talking about chores and the jobs I had as
Speaker 1: a kid. And trust me, all that's going to make
Speaker 1: sense by the end of this episode. It's a pretty
Speaker 1: eclectic list looking back at it now, and I'm gonna
Speaker 1: tell you all about it. But first I'm going to
Speaker 1: tell you a story. Now, obviously, I grew up in
Speaker 1: the country, and it's that foundation on which this entire
Speaker 1: struggle is based, and there were jobs I had that
Speaker 1: my friends that lived in town didn't. The jobs and
Speaker 1: chores weren't foreign to them. They were raised in the
Speaker 1: same culture I was, and many of their parents had
Speaker 1: grown up on a farm and dealt with the same
Speaker 1: responsibilities that I had. They just didn't have to do them.
Speaker 1: As a result, I got to learn to drive early.
Speaker 1: The first thing I ever drove was my dad's company truck.
Speaker 1: It was a standard shift forward pickup. It was sky blue,
Speaker 1: and I would eventually have one of my own a
Speaker 1: few years down the road. I talked to about it
Speaker 1: in episode one old nine of This Country Life Country Vehicles. Anyway,
Speaker 1: I knew how to drive, and it came in handy
Speaker 1: on the farm when you had to move something from
Speaker 1: one spot to another and my dad needed another hand
Speaker 1: to help. When tractor driving time came, I was already
Speaker 1: checked out on a much more complicated piece of machinery
Speaker 1: the tractor. That just became second nature. The only differences
Speaker 1: were what implements I was using now. Sometimes we would
Speaker 1: take off for the River of the Lake, both of
Speaker 1: which were accessible by County and Timber Company gravel roads.
Speaker 1: I only had to drive a short distance on Arkansas
Speaker 1: State Highway one eighty nine. But guess what it was
Speaker 1: gravel too. The whole world was gravel as far as
Speaker 1: I knew. The two main state highways that ran through
Speaker 1: where we lived were paved, but the log trucks had
Speaker 1: done such a number on them that there weren't much
Speaker 1: smoother than a gravel road. But my dad taught me
Speaker 1: how to pull the trader to back one up. By
Speaker 1: the time I was nine, I could do it as
Speaker 1: good as anybody. My only issue was seeing over the
Speaker 1: hood of the truck. I drove him around all night
Speaker 1: when we were running his hands chasing coats, and sometimes
Speaker 1: we needed to go to a location to quick, you know,
Speaker 1: to cut the dogs off or catching before they crossed
Speaker 1: the road, so I had to drive faster. Driving on
Speaker 1: a gravel can be tricky. Your brakes at speed are
Speaker 1: oftentimes not your best friend, especially on loose gravel. I
Speaker 1: take in the truck here and there around the farm
Speaker 1: and down the road to a neighbor's place to get
Speaker 1: something for Dad. And sometimes if the situation allowed that
Speaker 1: I was alone, I might cut a few diados in
Speaker 1: the road or in a field. If given the opportunity,
Speaker 1: slinging gravel and cutting the doughnut were rare opportunities to
Speaker 1: showcase my driving skills. And even though I was never
Speaker 1: in a place where my friends could see me demonstrate
Speaker 1: my prowess as a stunt driver, they had been briefed
Speaker 1: on it by me on numerous occasions. I don't think
Speaker 1: they believe me, because they said, we don't believe it.
Speaker 1: So one day, as I stepped off the school bus
Speaker 1: and walked a short distance down the gravel drive to
Speaker 1: the house, I had the best idea ever. No one
Speaker 1: was at home, and there set the farm truck keys
Speaker 1: in the ignition. You know how long it takes a
Speaker 1: ten year old to make a bad decision, Well I
Speaker 1: could make six and the time it took me to
Speaker 1: ask that without even trying. I'd show those clowns on
Speaker 1: the school bus that I could drive a truck. And
Speaker 1: I would do that by passing the bus less than
Speaker 1: a half a mile from where I had just stepped
Speaker 1: off of it. I jumped in the seat, fired that
Speaker 1: rascal up and away I went, torching the gravel in
Speaker 1: the driveway as I did a half doughnut to get
Speaker 1: out to the wet clay gravel road and catch the Now,
Speaker 1: there's four bad decisions right there, and you don't have
Speaker 1: to pause to count them. I'll count them for you.
Speaker 1: Number one decided to pass the school bus. Number two
Speaker 1: took the truck without permission. Number three did a half
Speaker 1: donut in the driveway. Number four did not account for
Speaker 1: the muddy clay gravel road I had just entered with
Speaker 1: reckless abandon. The road made a ninety degree turn at
Speaker 1: the corner of our yard, and as the bus made
Speaker 1: that curve, I was standing on the foot feed for
Speaker 1: all it would do. I had a rooster tail of
Speaker 1: sloppy orange clay and rocks flying up behind me, and
Speaker 1: when I hit the curve, I realized I was going
Speaker 1: too fast. When I turned the wheel and the truck
Speaker 1: kept moving forward toward the fence, I took my foot
Speaker 1: off the gas and I'm smashed the brakes. That didn't
Speaker 1: work either. The only thing left was to mash the
Speaker 1: gas again, and to my surprise, the tail end of
Speaker 1: that truck slung around and I turned into that curve
Speaker 1: and straight away like I knew what I was doing,
Speaker 1: Sitting on the front edge of the truck seat, staring
Speaker 1: at the back end of that school bus one hundred
Speaker 1: and fifty yards in front of me. I knew right
Speaker 1: then I was going to be a legend tomorrow at school.
Speaker 1: All the boys and witness that were going to be
Speaker 1: telling everyone how I passed the school bus like Richard Petty.
Speaker 1: The bus would be turning in less than one hundred yards.
Speaker 1: So if I was going to pass them and fulfill
Speaker 1: my destiny as an elementary school like on, I had
Speaker 1: to make up some ground pretty quickly. I pushed the
Speaker 1: pedal to the floor, and almost immediately the tail end
Speaker 1: of that truck started to slide around. I fixed this
Speaker 1: issue just a few seconds ago by turning into the
Speaker 1: slide and applying more gas. So I did it again.
Speaker 1: Now you can violate the laws of man and get
Speaker 1: away with it without a scratch, but you will never
Speaker 1: buy all ate the laws of physics without consequences and repercussions.
Speaker 1: That one lane gravel road that I lived on had
Speaker 1: one dry spot on it under an overhanging oak tree
Speaker 1: that stood beside a small creek, and a one lane
Speaker 1: bridge that was right in front of now. While I
Speaker 1: was fish tailing down the road, I had already calculated
Speaker 1: the rate of back and forth and if I didn't
Speaker 1: change anything, I would zip right across that bridge. When
Speaker 1: my truck straightened out, ride behind the bus, and I'd
Speaker 1: blow the yellow off of it when I went by.
Speaker 1: I still firmly believe I would have made it had
Speaker 1: it not been for that one dry spot. I don't
Speaker 1: know how fast I was going. Seemed like ninety It
Speaker 1: was probably more like thirty five. I had been busy
Speaker 1: the last little bit and didn't have time to really
Speaker 1: notice my speed until that back tire grabbed the dry
Speaker 1: spot right at the edge of the wooden bridge and
Speaker 1: shot me off the side of it and entered that
Speaker 1: shallow creek on the passenger side of the truck. I
Speaker 1: watched as the bust. I watched as the bus turned
Speaker 1: on the next road where I had planned to overtake them,
Speaker 1: and it disappeared from view. I wonder why they didn't stop.
Speaker 1: I wasn't saying five yards behind the one I went
Speaker 1: off that bridge, And then I realized how filthy and
Speaker 1: muddy the bus windows were from driving down the road.
Speaker 1: They couldn't have seen me. If I hadn't wrecked, I
Speaker 1: could have passed them on winged Pegasus and they wouldn't
Speaker 1: have noticed. Me. I looked across the pasture and I
Speaker 1: saw them one more time as I crawled out of
Speaker 1: the driver's side door window, watching the front tire spinning
Speaker 1: like a top. Then they were gone, and I was
Speaker 1: all along with our truck on its side in the ditch. Well,
Speaker 1: this is not good, but the story it'd better be.
Speaker 1: My mind raced as to what the official version would be.
Speaker 1: As I ran back toward the house, I heard a
Speaker 1: hogs squell. We had hogs and a pen across the
Speaker 1: road from where we lived, and they were notorious forgetting.
Speaker 1: Now that's it. The hogs got out and I had
Speaker 1: to go catch them. So I fired up the truck
Speaker 1: and I took off after him, and I ran off
Speaker 1: the bridge. I called my mama at the bank where
Speaker 1: she worked in town and told her what happened. My
Speaker 1: version of it anyway, Oh my goodness, my baby, are
Speaker 1: you okay? Yes, ma'am. I went ahead and put the
Speaker 1: hogs up before I called you. That was a rooking mistake.
Speaker 1: I should have went and turned them all out, because
Speaker 1: my brother Tim would later comment in front of my mama,
Speaker 1: you was chasing the hogs down the road. Yep, the
Speaker 1: hogs went down the road. Yes, the hogs went down
Speaker 1: this road right here where we're standing. Yes, Tim, well
Speaker 1: where's their tracks. My mama slowly turned her head to
Speaker 1: look at me, and one of her eyebrows raised up
Speaker 1: so high it disappeared into her auburn hair. I knew
Speaker 1: then that she was going to kill me. And it
Speaker 1: was all because my brother was playing Sherlock Holmes instead
Speaker 1: of minding his own business. We called the record and
Speaker 1: he got the truck out. A broken right mirror and
Speaker 1: a dent and the door was the only things wrong
Speaker 1: with the truck. They made them different back then. I
Speaker 1: got a whooping and grounded, but I still had to
Speaker 1: do my chores, which took me outside, and I could
Speaker 1: easily hide a fishing pole in the barn and slip
Speaker 1: down to the pond and fish when I wanted to.
Speaker 1: And I had a great story to tell my boys
Speaker 1: on the bus the next day. I told them. I
Speaker 1: told them how I nearly caught the bus but instead
Speaker 1: had drove the truck off the bridge like Steve McQueen.
Speaker 1: It was cool and they should have seen them. They
Speaker 1: didn't believe it, And that's just how that happened. On
Speaker 1: the farm. There was always work to be done, and
Speaker 1: some kind of mowing was a big part of it,
Speaker 1: and we had three acres of yard to mow and
Speaker 1: a riding more that worked some of the time. If
Speaker 1: it was down, it was push mowing time, and that
Speaker 1: wasn't fun. Besides my duties at home that paid me
Speaker 1: in room and board, I also got other jobs. Growing up.
Speaker 1: I worked at the local sail barn, pushing cows, hogs,
Speaker 1: and goats whatever came through the cell. The sail was
Speaker 1: every Saturday, and there was a crew of us that
Speaker 1: was expected to be there by seven am to start
Speaker 1: checking in. Cattle. Ranchers would roll in with those goose
Speaker 1: necked trailers and we'd unload them, tagging with numbers and
Speaker 1: places that distinguished them from just loan cow. Those are
Speaker 1: cows and calves that would be sold as pairs. We
Speaker 1: also got bulls, and occasionally they'd get pretty rank and
Speaker 1: try to smash you into oblivion. There were seven or
Speaker 1: eight of us, all kids. Most weren't old enough to
Speaker 1: drive when we started working there. We made five dollars
Speaker 1: an hour, and three or four of us would spend
Speaker 1: the night there after unloading and loading livestock. From seven
Speaker 1: in the morning to way past supper time, which day
Speaker 1: the night to load the semi trucks with cattle that
Speaker 1: were headed out of state. After everyone was gone, someone
Speaker 1: would bring something to eat and we'd entertain ourselves playing wrestling,
Speaker 1: which usually ended up being a boxing match, and anything
Speaker 1: else we could think up to occupy our time waiting
Speaker 1: on the eighteen wheelers to get there, and it never failed.
Speaker 1: We were tired and had been working twelve hours or so,
Speaker 1: and we'd all get to the office, sit down and wait,
Speaker 1: and eventually we'd all fall asleep. Then after midnight, some
Speaker 1: truck driver would slip in and wake the guy that
Speaker 1: was closest to the door up with a cattle prode.
Speaker 1: If you've never been woken up with electricity coursing through
Speaker 1: your breeches, let me tell you your situational awareness goes
Speaker 1: immediately from zero to ten. We had some wild cows
Speaker 1: that would try to hurt you, and some big bulls
Speaker 1: that came through that they wouldn't release to come off
Speaker 1: the scales down to where we were pinning them until
Speaker 1: everyone was watching and had an escape route planned. It
Speaker 1: was an orchestration of calamity and other than getting kicked
Speaker 1: or run up a fence. Cattle weren't really a problem.
Speaker 1: It was the hogs. Folks would trap or catch you
Speaker 1: wild hogs with dogs and bring them to the sale,
Speaker 1: and Buddy, let me tell you, they were wild. Folks
Speaker 1: would think that the bigger the wild hog is, the
Speaker 1: more dangerous he is, But that ain't That's not necessarily
Speaker 1: the way it works. They all have the ability to
Speaker 1: hurt you. But the big ones I never had a
Speaker 1: problem with. They'd bow up and come at you, and
Speaker 1: I could dodge them pretty easily, or jump up on
Speaker 1: a fence until we could get them where we wanted
Speaker 1: them to go, sometimes by using ourselves as bait like
Speaker 1: a bullfighter to get them going in the right direction.
Speaker 1: But it was the small hogs, the forty egg of
Speaker 1: sixty pounders that were so quick that they'd have you
Speaker 1: cut before you knew what happened. I watched a childhood
Speaker 1: friend of mine get cut by want at the sail
Speaker 1: bar one Saturday. There was one fella in particular that
Speaker 1: always bought the wild hogs for his packing store, and
Speaker 1: he didn't list one of us for a little extra
Speaker 1: cash to help him cut their tusk off before he
Speaker 1: left with them. Now it wasn't for the week of heart,
Speaker 1: and mister Bobby would have been the last guy I
Speaker 1: would have went to for a two day because his
Speaker 1: methods were straight out of medieval times. Catch the hog
Speaker 1: with a loop on his top jaw, pull him up
Speaker 1: next to the fence. That was our job, and then
Speaker 1: mister Bobby would take a pair of channel locked plyers
Speaker 1: and break the huss off with one smooth move. The
Speaker 1: hogs did not like this, not even not even a
Speaker 1: little bit. Now we all knew that one wrong move
Speaker 1: and they could hurt you, and they could hurt you bad.
Speaker 1: So there was lots of squealing and squalling and grunting
Speaker 1: when the tusk full and time came at the end
Speaker 1: of the cell. And that was just from us because
Speaker 1: someone had to go help mister Bobby, and on this
Speaker 1: day it was my buddy Jeff. I went with him
Speaker 1: and mister Bobby to locate his hogs in the small
Speaker 1: pens and help if I could if they needed it. Really,
Speaker 1: I was wanting the extra tip from mister Bobby because
Speaker 1: he was known to give those to all the boys
Speaker 1: that helped him. Anyway, I crawled up on the fence
Speaker 1: opened the gate for Jeff and mister Bobby, and they
Speaker 1: walked in. Now that wild hog wasn't much bigger than
Speaker 1: the show. He was about as medium size as a
Speaker 1: black labrador. And he backed himself into a corner of
Speaker 1: that pen that had been there ever since we'd pinned
Speaker 1: him following the cell. He looked like he was hypnotized.
Speaker 1: His hams were pushed up against that hogwire so tight
Speaker 1: that is behind looked like bubble wrap. And there he
Speaker 1: stood motionless all afternoon. So when tooth pulling time came around,
Speaker 1: we figured this joker was going to be easy. Come
Speaker 1: to find out that hog had been saving his strength
Speaker 1: and planting his escape the whole time. His plan was simple.
Speaker 1: At the first opportunity, he was going to cut everyone
Speaker 1: between him and freedom with those two inch tusks of
Speaker 1: his that you could barely even see sticking out of
Speaker 1: his lower jaw. I had just gotten the gate closed
Speaker 1: when I saw that hog launch himself out of that
Speaker 1: corner that he'd been in all day. He ran by
Speaker 1: Jeff and had bud at the gate trying to get out. Now,
Speaker 1: I laughed, Mister Bobby climbed the fence and laughed, and
Speaker 1: Jeff hopped up on the fence too, But Jeff wasn't laughing.
Speaker 1: He was looking down at his thigh that was exposed
Speaker 1: through a ten inch cut in his Levi eyes. It
Speaker 1: looked like someone had cut it open with a razor.
Speaker 1: Mister Bobby says, son, did he get you, Jeff? So?
Speaker 1: I don't think so. And then I saw blood pouring
Speaker 1: out of the bottom of Jeff's breeches. He moved that
Speaker 1: open cut of his jeans over a little and we
Speaker 1: could see the long gash in Jeff's thigh that hog
Speaker 1: had cut him with me watching it, and neither me
Speaker 1: or Jeff thought he was hurt very quick. I don't
Speaker 1: remember how many stitches Jeff got, but it was a
Speaker 1: passle of them. A week or so later, mister Bobby
Speaker 1: rolled into the sail barn with an ice chest full
Speaker 1: of sausage, pork chops, and bacon, and he gave it
Speaker 1: all to Jeff. I've established beyond measures that I grew
Speaker 1: up in rural South Arkansas, so how in the world
Speaker 1: could I ever have a job associated with elephants. It
Speaker 1: was my mama. She no longer worked at the bank
Speaker 1: and was now working for the Chamber of Commerce in
Speaker 1: Warren Anything and everything that happened from the annual Pink
Speaker 1: Tomato Festival, which is in June of every year and
Speaker 1: has been since Jesus was in junior high to the
Speaker 1: county fair was run in some form through her office,
Speaker 1: committee meetings, organizational meetings, whatever she was in the note.
Speaker 1: So when the circus came to town, they gave my
Speaker 1: mama a handful of tickets, two of which she gave
Speaker 1: to me. I was a junior in high school, and
Speaker 1: I tricked the gal from those gilded halls of education
Speaker 1: into going with me to the circus. Now this circus
Speaker 1: wasn't Barnum and Bailey, not by a long shot. But
Speaker 1: they had clowns, jugglers, acrobats, lines, and elephants. But that's
Speaker 1: about where the similarities ended. They were there for about
Speaker 1: three days. They'd bought some hay from local farmers to
Speaker 1: put on the floor of the lion cages and to
Speaker 1: feed the elephants, and then they left town. They sattled
Speaker 1: up and hit the road for the next little country
Speaker 1: town that wanted to see a circus, or a reasonable
Speaker 1: facsimile one. And at the fair grounds where all this
Speaker 1: had taken place, it was like they had never been there,
Speaker 1: not a trace of them was found. No trash, no
Speaker 1: empty popcorn bags littered the ground, not even any popcorn.
Speaker 1: They were gone except for the elephants. Now, don't misunderstand me.
Speaker 1: They didn't leave the elephants, but they did leave what
Speaker 1: the elephants left. There had been three days of good
Speaker 1: Arkansas hay fed to those pacaderms, and they had taken
Speaker 1: full advantage of it. Apparently, where they had those rascals
Speaker 1: tied out, there was a mound of elephant let me
Speaker 1: see droppings. Nope, that don't sound right. Elephant scat, Nope, boulders, Yep,
Speaker 1: that's it, elephant boulders. It's actually called dung. But there's
Speaker 1: a bug called a dung beetle that rolls around droppings
Speaker 1: of some such. But I can promise you that bug
Speaker 1: ain't rolling one of these around, not even in a wagon.
Speaker 1: They were there for three days, and elephants on average,
Speaker 1: on average dropped two hundred and twenty pounds a day
Speaker 1: of pooped groceries. That's six hundred and sixty pounds in
Speaker 1: that little circus that couldn't afford a real big top.
Speaker 1: The one that the ring master suit looked like it
Speaker 1: had been his big brothers and his mama had made
Speaker 1: him wear it. That backyard after thought of a circus,
Speaker 1: had four elephants. That's a ton and a quarter of
Speaker 1: everything the chicken laid, but the egg that had to
Speaker 1: be hauled off. When the fairgrounds director walked into my
Speaker 1: mama's office asking who he could pay to clean it up,
Speaker 1: well guess who got the nod. He let me borrow
Speaker 1: a trailer a scoop, and I went to work shoveling
Speaker 1: and shoveling the remnants of what had been a beautiful
Speaker 1: and serene Arkansas hay meta that had literally been turned
Speaker 1: into a bunch of well you know. As I shoveled
Speaker 1: my way through the mounds of bowlers, I began to
Speaker 1: marvel at the size and consistency, and I had another thought.
Speaker 1: I should show these to my brother Tim. He'll think
Speaker 1: this is cool. Better yet, I should surprise him with one.
Speaker 1: So as I shoveled and shoveled, I grated as I went,
Speaker 1: and I separated the good ones from those that lacked uniformity,
Speaker 1: and eventually I found the perfect specimen of a specimen.
Speaker 1: So I did what any normal little brother would do.
Speaker 1: I took it to my grandma's house they lived in town,
Speaker 1: and I said, Mama, sly, this is elephant poop. I
Speaker 1: need a box to put it in, and I want
Speaker 1: you to wrap it up like a present. I'm gonna
Speaker 1: take it to tams work and leave it for him.
Speaker 1: She stared at me, unmoved and said, I think I
Speaker 1: got a cake box that'll fit in. What kind of
Speaker 1: wrapping paper should be used? Oh? Man, I missed my
Speaker 1: mama's sly. She wrapped that soccer ball size example of
Speaker 1: elephant processed Arkansas hay into something to behold, and I
Speaker 1: dropped it off at Tims work before he got there
Speaker 1: so he'd be alone when he opened it. He said,
Speaker 1: he immediately knew what it was and obviously who it
Speaker 1: was from when he cut the wrapping paper away and
Speaker 1: pulled off the lid. Well, that's what he gets. That's
Speaker 1: what he gets for asking about those hall tracks today.
Speaker 1: I was going to pass the school bus. Mind your
Speaker 1: own business, Timmy, and lead the stunt driving to us professionals.
Speaker 1: All right, that's a mark for me. Thank you for listening.
Speaker 1: Be good to one another and help folks when you can.
Speaker 1: This is Brent Reeves. Sign it off, y'all, be careful,