Speaker 1: Welcome to This Country Life. I'm your host, Brent Reeves.
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 to teach you.
Speaker 1: Welcome to meat Eaters This Country Life Podcast with me
Speaker 1: Brent Reeves. Some of you may know me from my
Speaker 1: Shenanigans on the Bear Grease Render with my buddy Klay Nukelem,
Speaker 1: but most of you are probably saying, who is this
Speaker 1: cat and why should I be listening to him? Well,
Speaker 1: I'm going to tell you because I know stuff about
Speaker 1: living in the country, and on the podcast, I'm going
Speaker 1: to tell you the stories you need to hear and
Speaker 1: teach you the country skills that will help you beat
Speaker 1: the system. Folks that know me are saying, Brent, you've
Speaker 1: been a police officer for over thirty years. What do
Speaker 1: you mean beat the system? Maybe nonconformity is a better
Speaker 1: way to approach it. Miss Roberts, my eleventh grade English teacher,
Speaker 1: called me a walking example of a nonconformist. I'm not
Speaker 1: talking about dodging the draft, not having good manners, or
Speaker 1: cheating on your taxes. I'm talking about that good old
Speaker 1: country common sense that goes against all what I call
Speaker 1: corporate thinking. I like doing my own thing, and that's
Speaker 1: the best results for everyone. This show could be a
Speaker 1: weekly focus of one sad story after another relating to
Speaker 1: my job. After all, folks don't call nine one one
Speaker 1: to spread good news. It's a daily grind of seeing
Speaker 1: even the best people at their worst times, day after day.
Speaker 1: But we ain't gonna do that. We're going to focus
Speaker 1: on the good days and the lessons learned in everyday
Speaker 1: country life. And I'll throw a police story in there
Speaker 1: too when it's appropriate. After this introductory episode where I
Speaker 1: tell you who I am and a little about myself,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna start the rest of them by telling y'all
Speaker 1: what the topic of the week is, what you can
Speaker 1: expect to learn before it's over, and then hit you
Speaker 1: with a story to get you good and settled. And
Speaker 1: then we're going to jump in with both feet by
Speaker 1: the country skill. Everyone should know. Hunting, fishing, and just
Speaker 1: general country living is what we're going to be talking about.
Speaker 1: If it can be done in rural America, it's fair
Speaker 1: game on the list, and the lessons learned can usually
Speaker 1: be applied everywhere here we go. I grew up on
Speaker 1: a small farm in southeast Arkansas, and my whole world
Speaker 1: hinged on my next adventure in the outdoors. I love
Speaker 1: to hunt anything and everything. I ran a trapline before
Speaker 1: catching the bus during the winter. From age twelve until
Speaker 1: I graduated high school, we rode horses and hunting squirrels
Speaker 1: with dogs. They'd also bay hogs. As a matter of fact,
Speaker 1: we hunted just about everything with dogs other than turkeys.
Speaker 1: Mountain curves, walkers, pointers, and labradors were what we used
Speaker 1: most for hunting squirrels, coons, quails, ducks, deer, and codies. Also,
Speaker 1: there wasn't a bluegill, brim bass, or catfish safe that
Speaker 1: swam anywhere near the tippid waters of Cleveland County. My
Speaker 1: family's heritage and legacy in that part of Arkansas dates
Speaker 1: back to when it became a state, and hunting, fishing,
Speaker 1: and farming wasn't just a way of life. It was
Speaker 1: the only way of life. The Saline River, that most
Speaker 1: holy stretch of water that runs from north to south
Speaker 1: through the heart of Cleveland County, remains to this day
Speaker 1: the life blood of my family's past and the focus
Speaker 1: of our future. The boat ramp that we frequented most
Speaker 1: is named the Lloyd Wilton Buddy Reeves Seline River access
Speaker 1: by the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission in honor of
Speaker 1: my father, a never ending tribute to him and my
Speaker 1: family's love for that spot on Mother Earth. My ancestors
Speaker 1: depended on the fishing game that lived in and along
Speaker 1: this Washita River tributary, and I was fully convinced as
Speaker 1: a child that we owned it and had since the
Speaker 1: first trickle of water found its way through those woods.
Speaker 1: My first memories are there amongst my family and those
Speaker 1: river bottoms. There were two seasons in my mind, hunting
Speaker 1: and fishing. Neither one involved school. I didn't really mind school,
Speaker 1: I just didn't have time for it. There were traps
Speaker 1: to be set and run, fish to be caught, and
Speaker 1: creeks to be explored. Everything that I considered fun and
Speaker 1: sitting in a schoolhouse wasn't one of them, which reminds
Speaker 1: me of a story. Pretty well, how these weekly visits
Speaker 1: are going to go. I'm going to start talking about
Speaker 1: something that will remind me of something else, and I'm
Speaker 1: going to tell you about it and then get back
Speaker 1: to the main subject I started with. Now, I promise
Speaker 1: it ain't going to be confusing. The whole thing ain't
Speaker 1: gonna last but about twenty minutes, So just relax and
Speaker 1: hang on. The story I'm reminded of happened when I
Speaker 1: was in the sixth grade. The friends that I'd see
Speaker 1: and play with was the only reason I would get
Speaker 1: on the bus to go every day. That and my
Speaker 1: mama would give me a whooping if I didn't. But
Speaker 1: on this particular day, I had a plan. An unnamed
Speaker 1: friend of mine and I had noticed every day when
Speaker 1: we got to school, me getting off the bus and
Speaker 1: him getting out of his mama's car because he lived
Speaker 1: in town, that the pot latched train that traveled from
Speaker 1: one side of town to the other hauling wood chips
Speaker 1: from the sawmill to the steam powerhouse and bunks of
Speaker 1: lumber to the dry hills, passed by the school, and
Speaker 1: the tracks were only a short distance from the front door.
Speaker 1: Every morning was the same get off the bus stand
Speaker 1: in front of the school, aggravate girls. The bell would
Speaker 1: ring all the younguns and the duty teacher would go inside,
Speaker 1: and the potlatch train would roll by at a blistering
Speaker 1: pace a puppet could keep up with. From the front
Speaker 1: door to the railroad track was less than forty yards.
Speaker 1: In addition, the train would come back about fifteen minutes
Speaker 1: before the bell rang to go home every day. These
Speaker 1: facts had not gone unnoticed by myself or my associate.
Speaker 1: I don't know how many days we planned it, but
Speaker 1: it was several. Everything had to be perfect. The two
Speaker 1: main things that had to happen was the duty teacher
Speaker 1: needed to go in before we did, and the train
Speaker 1: had to be right on time. It was a Wednesday,
Speaker 1: the third morning before it all came together. Now, this
Speaker 1: wasn't our first foray into fight in the system, so
Speaker 1: the regular duty teacher was adamanty that US two go
Speaker 1: in before she did, amongst all that cackling heard of
Speaker 1: fifth and sixth graders. But on Wednesday we had a substitute,
Speaker 1: and apparently she didn't get the memo operations see you later.
Speaker 1: Chumps was a goat. It was perfect in every way.
Speaker 1: I saw the sub when I got off the bus.
Speaker 1: My buddy was already there, grinning like a baked possum.
Speaker 1: We knew that freedom was only one more step away.
Speaker 1: And as the bell rang, that old familiar sound of
Speaker 1: that squeaking, rumbling train echoed around the corner of the schoolhouse.
Speaker 1: It was go time. We lagged behind the teacher who'd
Speaker 1: gone in amongst a large group of kids, and slipped
Speaker 1: around the corner and waved at the engineer as he
Speaker 1: drove past. We hopped on the last box car and
Speaker 1: rode it to the depot that was conveniently in the
Speaker 1: dead center of town, a block off Main Street, right
Speaker 1: beside the YMCA Little League Field, in a short walk
Speaker 1: from my buddy's house. We went to his house, crawled
Speaker 1: in a window, and tried to watch TV, but back
Speaker 1: then there was only three channels, and every one of
Speaker 1: them had some kind of soap opera playing. So we
Speaker 1: went down to the town branch, and there wasn't enough
Speaker 1: water running in it to float a stick, no snakes
Speaker 1: to catch, no frog eggs to chunk at one another,
Speaker 1: so we decided we'd just go eat. Now. My partner
Speaker 1: had some money, and he sprung for our dinner, and
Speaker 1: that's what we called the new meal, and we edit
Speaker 1: at the Wayne's Cafe on the Square in downtown Warren, Arkansas.
Speaker 1: We shot a couple of games of pool and pinball
Speaker 1: in the back of the building while the old men
Speaker 1: that were regular smoked cigarettes and solved the world's problems.
Speaker 1: They were oblivious to our presence. Coincidentally, next door was
Speaker 1: the bank where my mama was busy working, and assuming
Speaker 1: I was in the school, we decided to leave. As
Speaker 1: we walked out the front door, I poked all the
Speaker 1: money I had left in the cigarette machine and skipped
Speaker 1: out the door fifty cents poor and a pack of
Speaker 1: Lucky Strikes richer. We walked in broad daylight down the
Speaker 1: side walk, in front of God and everybody in a
Speaker 1: town where everyone knew everyone, and not one soul said
Speaker 1: a word to us or told our parents they'd seen
Speaker 1: us in town when we were supposed to be in school.
Speaker 1: We made it back to the depot, climbed up in
Speaker 1: an open top box car, and waited for the train
Speaker 1: that told us back across town to the schoolhouse. We
Speaker 1: were sitting on tons of pine chips about the size
Speaker 1: of a half dollar, smoking lucky strikes like they wasn't
Speaker 1: going to make them anymore. When the train jerked and
Speaker 1: commenced us take us back across town. We rode along,
Speaker 1: looking at the sites over the top of that box
Speaker 1: car like we were riding on the City of New
Speaker 1: Orleans instead of the warning Saline River Railroad. When we
Speaker 1: got back across town, we climbed down the ladder on
Speaker 1: the opposite side of the school, bailed off the train
Speaker 1: at the exact spot we got on it that morning,
Speaker 1: waited while the train rolled on by it and hidding
Speaker 1: the bushes till the bell rang. When it did, we
Speaker 1: walked across the tracks to the school and blended into
Speaker 1: that stem. He the children that poured out of that
Speaker 1: building like it was on fire. He got in the
Speaker 1: car rider line, and I walked up on the bus
Speaker 1: like my name was on the title. It was absolutely
Speaker 1: the most fool proof plan I'd ever devise, even up
Speaker 1: till now. My pals on the school bus immediately recognized
Speaker 1: my achievement after not seeing me all day, and gave
Speaker 1: me the proper respect that afford it by not saying
Speaker 1: a word about it. We could have been caught at
Speaker 1: any turn, but for reasons unknown to either of us.
Speaker 1: We weren't. We never got caught. No one would know
Speaker 1: about it if I hadn't just fessed up to it.
Speaker 1: Two young lads not quite twelve years old had conspired
Speaker 1: to beat the system, and we did. They both would
Speaker 1: grow up and be involved in law enforcement, me on
Speaker 1: the badge tote in the end and him on the other.
Speaker 1: I think about it sometimes, and I wonder how it
Speaker 1: come to him growing up and violating the law and
Speaker 1: me making a living out of enforcment. I don't have
Speaker 1: an answer. All I know for sure is if it
Speaker 1: had to be one of us going rogue, I'm glad
Speaker 1: it was him, all right. I've been a police officer
Speaker 1: in the state of Arkansas since nineteen ninety one. I've
Speaker 1: worked everything from patrol, swat undercovered narcotics, burglaries, homicides, you
Speaker 1: name it, I've done it. I've served with some fine folks,
Speaker 1: some real heroes, and I think I've seen just about
Speaker 1: every kind of person there is, the good ones, the
Speaker 1: bad ones, and all those in between. I've been in
Speaker 1: a few tight spots when I didn't know if I
Speaker 1: was going to make it back home, which reminds me
Speaker 1: of a perilous story that has absolutely nothing to do
Speaker 1: with law enforcement. But peril is peril. There ain't no
Speaker 1: difference to the dead man it being dead at the
Speaker 1: hands of some outlaw or a dangerous thunderstorm in the
Speaker 1: middle of the Arkansas River. I spent cal t less
Speaker 1: hours with my older brother Tim chasing animals, none so
Speaker 1: much as waterfowl. To catch these beautiful creatures, one must
Speaker 1: implore the use of many different types of equipment that
Speaker 1: usually includes waiters, firearms, boats, ATVs. And to be successful,
Speaker 1: you must be in the places ducks like to gold
Speaker 1: like rivers, lakes, reservoirs, et cetera. All of these items
Speaker 1: and the places you use them have one thing in common.
Speaker 1: They are all capable of killing you if you use
Speaker 1: them the wrong way or if you don't respect them.
Speaker 1: I've come close to migrating to that great duck blind
Speaker 1: in the sky on more than one occasion. This is
Speaker 1: one particular one that comes to mind. It was opening
Speaker 1: day in the late eighties. Tim and I were sitting
Speaker 1: under the Pendleton Bridge, which crosses the mighty Arkansas River,
Speaker 1: well before daylight, trying to wait on a thunderstorm to
Speaker 1: go by our boat was ready to launch our gear,
Speaker 1: placed it in its appropriate spot, decoys sacked up and
Speaker 1: loaded in the boat, and each of us anxious to
Speaker 1: get to the morning's hunt and get the duck season started.
Speaker 1: My black lab Anne was also anticipating, and she just
Speaker 1: walking back and forth under that bridge looking at me
Speaker 1: like saying, you know, come on, let's go. Darkansas River
Speaker 1: has claimed many lives, and Tim and I have been
Speaker 1: on it before when storms blew in and it's not
Speaker 1: safe to be navigating the river when mother nature's letting
Speaker 1: off a little steam. We impatiently waited in about forty
Speaker 1: five minutes before sun up, the rain stopped, the clouds
Speaker 1: broke apart, and we launched the boat for the fifteen
Speaker 1: minute ride upriver to our spot. We made our way
Speaker 1: to the place that we picked out, relieved that the
Speaker 1: weather had improved, and looked forward to a good hunt now.
Speaker 1: When we got there, we quickly set up the decoys,
Speaker 1: finished preparing for the hunt just as the sun started
Speaker 1: to brighten the horizon. I can recall a few ducks
Speaker 1: flying that morning. I think I think we only killed
Speaker 1: like a green wing till or two before they absolutely
Speaker 1: just stopped flying. The storm that morning had moved in
Speaker 1: from the southwest, dropped an enormous amount of rain, blew
Speaker 1: the rest of the leaves off the trees, and left
Speaker 1: nearly as fast as it had approached. Unbeknownst to us,
Speaker 1: the storm we like to refer to now as Hurricane
Speaker 1: Muskrat was just warming up and getting ready to put
Speaker 1: on a big show. The second storm came with twice
Speaker 1: the ferocity of the first one. It rolled right over
Speaker 1: the type of us. We quickly loaded the boat with
Speaker 1: our gear, grabbed the dog, and headed for the boat ramp.
Speaker 1: As we tried to make our way down river, the
Speaker 1: wind was blown right in our face and against the current,
Speaker 1: building two and three foot waves that washed over front
Speaker 1: of the boat, soaking everything that was dry and filling
Speaker 1: our boat like a water trough. I knew we'd never
Speaker 1: make it to the boat ramp, so I turned the
Speaker 1: boat toward a small sandbar and headed there ast as
Speaker 1: I could. I ran the boat up on the sand
Speaker 1: and Tim and Ann and I sprinted to a small
Speaker 1: depression that held about three inches of water. Muskrats had
Speaker 1: tunneled into one end of the pothole, and the river
Speaker 1: had broken through. When the water level was higher and
Speaker 1: allowed it to drain, exposing the pothole like it was
Speaker 1: like a shallow soup bowl. We hunkered down near the
Speaker 1: down current end of the pothole, and putting our backs
Speaker 1: to the bank, attempted to light as flat as we could.
Speaker 1: The wind was blown so hard that it was raining sideways,
Speaker 1: and the lightning that came with it was purple frequent
Speaker 1: and Buddy, it was way too close. Lightning was striking
Speaker 1: the sandbar, and we could feel the concussions of thunder,
Speaker 1: and that was the only thing that drowned out the
Speaker 1: noise of the wind in the rain. I was scared.
Speaker 1: Tim looked up the bank of the pothole and saw
Speaker 1: a muskrat then that had partially washed out below the
Speaker 1: rim and offered a little more protection from the storm.
Speaker 1: The washout was about three feet wide, and the top
Speaker 1: of the bank hung over the opening like a little cave. Now,
Speaker 1: on a normal day, a small child wouldn't have had
Speaker 1: enough room to sit in there and play. On this day, me,
Speaker 1: Tim didn't have any problem getting in there and still
Speaker 1: had room to include the dog. The storm got so
Speaker 1: bad that I started worrying about the river washing the
Speaker 1: boat away. Had that happened, we would have literally been
Speaker 1: up the creek without a paddle or a boat from
Speaker 1: which to paddle it. I told Tim that I was
Speaker 1: going to check on the boat, which was like less
Speaker 1: than one hundred yards from our shelter across the sandbar,
Speaker 1: but you couldn't see it because of how hard it
Speaker 1: was raining. I took off of the boat and Anne
Speaker 1: took off with me. The wind blew her sideways, and
Speaker 1: then it blew her off her feet as she tried
Speaker 1: to stay at my heel. So I went back to
Speaker 1: the muskrat then and told her to stay with Tim.
Speaker 1: I found the boat and it was completely swamped and
Speaker 1: going nowhere. The weight of the water had welded it
Speaker 1: to the sandbar. Ran fast as I could back to
Speaker 1: Tim and Anne and staying as low as I could
Speaker 1: while lightning was hitting all around me, and promising to
Speaker 1: live my life in a better fashion if I could
Speaker 1: just live to see another day. Crawling back into that
Speaker 1: foot and half space made me realize that fear and
Speaker 1: love of life are ample motivators when it comes to
Speaker 1: accomplishing of gold. The water level in that pothole was
Speaker 1: about three inches when we first crawled in. When we
Speaker 1: got out of it. It it risen over two feet.
Speaker 1: This storm only lasted about forty minutes, but as fast
Speaker 1: as it started, dislike the other one, it ended. The
Speaker 1: rain stopped, the wind died down, and the clouds began
Speaker 1: to clear. We emptied our boat, made it back to
Speaker 1: the ramp and headed to Star City, Arkansas. That was
Speaker 1: the closest place we knew of that had a washing area.
Speaker 1: You might call it a launder mat, but whatever you
Speaker 1: call it, it was our only hope to get our
Speaker 1: clothes dried so we could hunt that afternoon. I told Tim,
Speaker 1: we just robe in the launder mat, put our waiters on,
Speaker 1: and wait for clothes to drive. Thirty minutes later, we
Speaker 1: slid to a stop in front of the washingteria. The
Speaker 1: windows were fogged over from the cold outside and the
Speaker 1: warm inside. We were freezing, and when we walked in,
Speaker 1: the heat from those dryers felt so good on my
Speaker 1: skin that I came out of those waiters and commenced
Speaker 1: to peeling off layer after layer of wet clothes, and
Speaker 1: Tim was busy doing the same. We were two rows
Speaker 1: of washing machines away from the front door. We just
Speaker 1: walked in. We got down to our union suits about
Speaker 1: the same time, you know, the red ones with the
Speaker 1: flaps in the back. These were the only garments standing
Speaker 1: between us and nudity. But since no one else was
Speaker 1: there and no one could see through the windows, we
Speaker 1: both just hunkered down behind the row washing machines that
Speaker 1: was going to completely hide us and everything you're not
Speaker 1: supposed to scratch in public, and started unbuttoning our thumrels.
Speaker 1: It was at this time that one of the three laddies,
Speaker 1: who were all sitting in a row and unnoticed beside
Speaker 1: the door we just walked in, said boys, are you
Speaker 1: all going to charge us anything for this? If I'd
Speaker 1: have had anywhere to go, that would have been my
Speaker 1: cue to get gone. Tim looked at me, bug eyed
Speaker 1: and squeaked out, no, ma'am, and they started laughing. They
Speaker 1: turned their heads, held up some newspapers and continued to
Speaker 1: laugh while we slipped back into our waiters and crammed
Speaker 1: all our clothes and the biggest dryer in there. We
Speaker 1: had absolutely not seen them, and I rushed to get
Speaker 1: in there to get warm and dry. And normally you
Speaker 1: go home after a start like that, but we didn't.
Speaker 1: It was opening day and we beat the system first
Speaker 1: of all, by living then getting dry and only changing
Speaker 1: our location, not our plans to go hunting. Of course,
Speaker 1: if we'd had some extra clothes with us, I wouldn't
Speaker 1: even be telling this story. Now, that's a couple examples
Speaker 1: of who I am. You'll be learning more about me
Speaker 1: and my life experiences as we go along. First and foremost,
Speaker 1: I'm a husband, a father, and a grandfather, and those
Speaker 1: are the best jobs I've ever been blessed to have.
Speaker 1: I'm also an outdoor videographer writer that's been fortunate enough
Speaker 1: to travel to some amazing places to capture on him
Speaker 1: some incredible hunts. Helping people and having fun. That's what
Speaker 1: I like to do, and that's what I'm going to
Speaker 1: continue to do. That's what this whole podcast is about.
Speaker 1: And if we can't do both every week, I bet
Speaker 1: we can do one or the other. My dad told
Speaker 1: me when I was a little boy that there's no
Speaker 1: place you'll ever be that you can't have fun, and
Speaker 1: if the place you are ain't fun, then you make
Speaker 1: it fun. I ain't ever forgot that, and that's how
Speaker 1: I try to live my life. So if you like
Speaker 1: hearing stories and want to learn a country skill, or
Speaker 1: two that can impress your friends, maybe raise your credit
Speaker 1: score and help you beat the system. I expect to
Speaker 1: see you here next week. Bring a friend and an
Speaker 1: extra set of clothes. You might need them. This is
Speaker 1: Brent Reeves signing off. Y'all be careful.