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. The teacher working
Speaker 1: with my dad. I spent a lot of time with
Speaker 1: my dad throughout the year, hunting and fishing. It goes
Speaker 1: without saying that there are tons of memories from those
Speaker 1: outings and adventures and plenty of tales to tell. But
Speaker 1: I also went to work with him a lot on
Speaker 1: his job. We're going to talk about that today, but
Speaker 1: first I'm going to tell you a story. Every summer,
Speaker 1: when I was out of school, I spent as much
Speaker 1: time with my dad as possible. We were always fishing,
Speaker 1: hunting his hounds on the nights. It wasn't just blistering hot.
Speaker 1: My dad was a cold hunter. And I've talked about
Speaker 1: how you do that, at least how he and his
Speaker 1: friends did it down here, But for those that may
Speaker 1: be new to the podcast, here's a recap. Seldom did
Speaker 1: we ever see the cold. Rarely did the cold suffer
Speaker 1: any damage. We just listened to the dogs run until
Speaker 1: he got away, or got close to the highway private
Speaker 1: land that we couldn't hunt on, or we got ready
Speaker 1: to go home. Then we just caught the dogs and
Speaker 1: went home. But this story ended about one of those
Speaker 1: times we stayed out all night listening to and trying
Speaker 1: to keep up with a pack of walker hounds. It's
Speaker 1: not about catching a mess of fishing, cooking them up
Speaker 1: on the bank of the Slain River, our river, or
Speaker 1: shooting a sack of the squirrels, only to give most
Speaker 1: of them away because my dad wouldn't have had one
Speaker 1: of them had he been starving slapped to death. He
Speaker 1: would keep a few and fix them for me. But
Speaker 1: even then he didn't like doing that. He hated skinning them.
Speaker 1: He really didn't like touching them. They looked too much
Speaker 1: like a rat to him. And if one fell in
Speaker 1: the water, one shot out of a tree and got
Speaker 1: his tail wet, he wouldn't touch it. But he loved
Speaker 1: hunting them. Weird, I know, but he liked to give
Speaker 1: him away the folks that did eat them. There was
Speaker 1: an old man that lived down the road that favored
Speaker 1: squirrels as much as I did. My Dad would trade
Speaker 1: them to him for once a good family term. I know,
Speaker 1: snake bite medicine. One mess of squirrels equaled one pint
Speaker 1: jar of snake bite medicine. Even enough about squirrels right now.
Speaker 1: In the summer, I would go to work with my dad.
Speaker 1: My dad retired as a serviceman for Tyson Foods. The
Speaker 1: serviceman was someone who went around to area fall they
Speaker 1: were under contract to raise chickens for the company. It
Speaker 1: was my dad's job to check on each individual grower.
Speaker 1: When I was a baby, he first worked for England
Speaker 1: Farms and Mister Jack England and Rise in Arkansas. Over
Speaker 1: time he would work for Valmac Industries, Tasty Bird, and
Speaker 1: then the Northwest Arkansas based Tyson Foods. He basically did
Speaker 1: the same job for all of them, and according to
Speaker 1: the Pharmsy Service, he was good at it. Unfortunately, the
Speaker 1: same couldn't be said for all his farmers. Some of
Speaker 1: them Dad would brag about to me. He was proud
Speaker 1: of how they farmed and raised the chickens. After all,
Speaker 1: the better their chickens did, the more money they made.
Speaker 1: The more money they made, the bigger Dad's bonus was.
Speaker 1: Now Dad equated to dogs, horses, hooks and bullets for me.
Speaker 1: So it was in my best interest that when I
Speaker 1: was helping him, that I was really helping him. Now.
Speaker 1: Dad had a weekly schedule that he made out himself,
Speaker 1: regulated around the age of the chickens at each farm.
Speaker 1: He worked from home, and unless he needed supplies from
Speaker 1: the office in Rising where the hatchery was located, or
Speaker 1: had to deliver feed samples to the meal and pine bluff,
Speaker 1: he would work like a man possessed, traveling to area farms,
Speaker 1: inspecting the houses and talking to the farmers, and just
Speaker 1: in general being the representative for the company to the
Speaker 1: farmer and the farmers representative to the company of trying
Speaker 1: to maintain a good working relationship between both. He may
Speaker 1: have been an employee of the company, but he always
Speaker 1: worked on the farmer's behalf. They were folks just like us,
Speaker 1: country people working hard and trying to make a living,
Speaker 1: raised chickens, cattle, and crops. My grandfather on my mother's
Speaker 1: side was an independent egg farmer that raised, processed, and
Speaker 1: sold his own eggstra stores. I say that to say
Speaker 1: the poultry industry was big in our area and very
Speaker 1: important economically to a lot of families. It still is,
Speaker 1: but just like other things, some oaks are better at
Speaker 1: it than others. My dad had an inspection book that
Speaker 1: resembled a policeman's ticket book. It was itemized with boxes
Speaker 1: to check on cleanliness of the house. I know you're thinking,
Speaker 1: how could a chicken house be cleaned with chickens in it,
Speaker 1: But trust me, it can be and it can sure
Speaker 1: be dirty. He monitored the overall condition of the house,
Speaker 1: water in the feed systems, and the apparent health of
Speaker 1: the flock. Had a space where Dad could write in
Speaker 1: suggestions to correct deficiencies and a copy of that report
Speaker 1: which stayed with my dad and get turned in with
Speaker 1: his activity reports for the month. It was my job
Speaker 1: to fill those reports out according to Dad's observations. They
Speaker 1: never dinged anyone though on those reports. If he could
Speaker 1: keep from it, he'd talked to the farmer and tell
Speaker 1: them what they needed to do differently to keep from
Speaker 1: shining a bad light on them. Some of the chicken
Speaker 1: houses were old, but well taken care of and for
Speaker 1: a chicken house clean. Some were newer and not. Some
Speaker 1: of the conditions were due to just not knowing or
Speaker 1: having a grasp on the new techniques and equipment that
Speaker 1: helped maintain a more proficient chicken house, and others one
Speaker 1: in particular, was due to just plain laziness. I went
Speaker 1: to that farm several times one summer. Now you could
Speaker 1: kind of see what was coming when you turned off
Speaker 1: the county road and headed down the drive past the
Speaker 1: old junkie house that the farmer lived in and pulled
Speaker 1: up in front of his new junkie chicken house. Dad
Speaker 1: didn't give him on paper any of the times, but
Speaker 1: he talked to him one on one with me acting
Speaker 1: like I wasn't listening. Weekly. On the second to last
Speaker 1: trip I made to that farm that summer, I could
Speaker 1: tell my dad had had his fill of the sub
Speaker 1: par conditions of that house and the poor health of
Speaker 1: the chickens. He told him over and over that if
Speaker 1: he didn't start showing some signs of improvement, that the
Speaker 1: company wouldn't renew his contract to raise chickens. Now, I
Speaker 1: didn't know it at the time, but had that happened,
Speaker 1: he'd have had no way of making the mortgage on
Speaker 1: that new chicken house. He was letting fall in decline,
Speaker 1: and he would have lost the land that sat on
Speaker 1: and he put up for clatteral when he built it. Now,
Speaker 1: I grabbed the inspection book and pen and started to
Speaker 1: bail out of the truck to get to work checking
Speaker 1: the boxes when Dad told me to check on our
Speaker 1: second to last trip there, and Dad said, you stay
Speaker 1: in the truck I need to talk to mister Bob alone.
Speaker 1: Now here's a disclaimer. His name was his name wasn't Bob.
Speaker 1: But I shut the door and I rolled the window
Speaker 1: down as Dad walked around in front of the truck
Speaker 1: toward the chicken house door, reaching for the handle, about
Speaker 1: the same time mister Bob opened it up and stepped
Speaker 1: out of it. I heard it all, Bob, this place
Speaker 1: looks like a junkyard. The outside, while it doesn't look good,
Speaker 1: ain't as bad as the inside. And I've done all
Speaker 1: I can do for you. You're a good man, but
Speaker 1: you have got to do something, and you got to
Speaker 1: do it before next week when I come back. I've
Speaker 1: run out of excuses for you, Bob, and you've got
Speaker 1: me in a bind. They know I'm covering for you,
Speaker 1: and your last two batches of chickens have been terrible.
Speaker 1: Mister Bob looked at the ground the whole time my
Speaker 1: dad was talking to him. I didn't want to be there.
Speaker 1: I was just a kid, but I could see the
Speaker 1: embarrassment on his face, and I felt bad for him.
Speaker 1: It was always so nice to me, if you'd give
Speaker 1: me a quarter, nearly every time he saw me. I
Speaker 1: remember that when he brought his hand out of his pocket.
Speaker 1: I never saw more than one, and Dad and I
Speaker 1: talked about that years later, and he said, son, he'd
Speaker 1: probably gave you the only one he had. Well that day,
Speaker 1: mister Bob looked at my dad for the first time
Speaker 1: since we got there, and he told him this batch
Speaker 1: of chickens will be different. Buddy, you got my word. Now.
Speaker 1: Next week we went back and things started getting better.
Speaker 1: The chickens were being tended to, and some of the
Speaker 1: junk around the outside was gone. What wasn't gone had
Speaker 1: been neatly stacked and organized. Even the grass had been mowed.
Speaker 1: A month or so later, that batch of chickens went out.
Speaker 1: Dad said he was still the worst chicken grower he had,
Speaker 1: but it was the best batch that mister Bob had
Speaker 1: ever grown. I went back with Dad for the last
Speaker 1: time that summer to see mister Bob's farm. He was
Speaker 1: busy cleaning the old shavens and the chicken litter out
Speaker 1: of his house with his tractor and getting ready for
Speaker 1: a new batch of chickens that would arrive in a
Speaker 1: few days. He seemed happier, I know my dad was.
Speaker 1: I climbed up on that tractor and sat in the
Speaker 1: seat that mister Bob had just crawled out of, and
Speaker 1: while he and Dad talked, I was listening. He said.
Speaker 1: My Dad said, Bob, you've done good. That's the best
Speaker 1: batch of chickens you ever raised. Mister Bob told him,
Speaker 1: I thank you for your help, buddy, You've been good
Speaker 1: to me. Now my dad every more. The jokester looked
Speaker 1: a man dead and eye and said, it's a good
Speaker 1: thing you had this turnaround. I only had two excuses
Speaker 1: left for you before they fired me, Bob. Mister Bob said,
Speaker 1: what was it. Dad said, I was going to tell
Speaker 1: them you were either planting them too deep or too
Speaker 1: close together. And that was the first time I ever
Speaker 1: saw mister Bob laugh. And that's just how that happened
Speaker 1: Monday Tuesday in about half a Wednesday would start early
Speaker 1: in the summer. Breakfast was usually at someone's farm we'd
Speaker 1: show up to conveniently around breakfast time. It was always
Speaker 1: good too, not a dud in the bunch. Whatever farm
Speaker 1: we found ourselves at around mill time was always a winner.
Speaker 1: Lots of farmers and their wives would cook forest and
Speaker 1: Dad had already vetted the good ones and arranged our
Speaker 1: schedule to arrive at certain times of the day. Between
Speaker 1: meals were good too. After all, I was a growing
Speaker 1: boy and I never met a quarter milk and a
Speaker 1: bag of powdered doughnuts. I didn't like. I needed the energy.
Speaker 1: One of my jobs was to climb the feed bends
Speaker 1: on the outside of the chicken house and look down
Speaker 1: inside through the top hatch and count the section of
Speaker 1: metal rings above the current feed level, so Dad would
Speaker 1: know how much feed the order for him. The sun
Speaker 1: would beat down on that galvanized medal, and the only
Speaker 1: cool thing about that job was climbing the ladder, even
Speaker 1: the ladder was hot enough to scald a hog. My
Speaker 1: dad hated climbing those bends, and in his later years
Speaker 1: of work and he kept a box of rocks in
Speaker 1: the cab of his truck. He pulled up the side
Speaker 1: a feed bend, and instead of climbing it, he chunked.
Speaker 1: He chunked rocks at it, listening for the tone it
Speaker 1: made when he hit at the medal, and repeat it
Speaker 1: until he found the spot where the feed stopped. Then
Speaker 1: he'd order the appropriate amount of feed. I bet he
Speaker 1: didn't climb one feed bend ladder the last five years
Speaker 1: he worked before he retired. There was a lady in there,
Speaker 1: Star City, Arkansas, that worked on a man's farm, and
Speaker 1: I would love to know her history and how she
Speaker 1: wound up here. But miss Hudson was from Ireland and
Speaker 1: she had the most beautiful accent way of talking. It
Speaker 1: was hard for me to understand her at times, but
Speaker 1: I love to hear her talking laugh, and my dad
Speaker 1: was good at making folks laugh. She dressed like she
Speaker 1: was straight out of Central Casting for what you'd imagine
Speaker 1: an Irish grandmother would look like. She smiled a lot,
Speaker 1: and when she looked at me, she had the kindest
Speaker 1: eyes I believe I've ever seen. I noticed it even
Speaker 1: as a little boy, and I think of her often
Speaker 1: now as a grown man, but I never really knew her.
Speaker 1: She was just one of a number of folks that
Speaker 1: I'd see every summer making the rounds to all the farms.
Speaker 1: They weren't all as nice as Miss Hudson. The incident.
Speaker 1: This incident happened after a feed truck driver got stuck
Speaker 1: in on gravel road that the farmer had built between
Speaker 1: two chicken houses. Now, the road was there for the
Speaker 1: feed trucks to use, but had been freshly graveled, and
Speaker 1: unfortunately big rain had come the day before the feed
Speaker 1: truck got there. I keep in mind that these feed
Speaker 1: trucks aren't they're not pickups. They could be as big
Speaker 1: as a concrete truck or an eighteen wheeler, depending on
Speaker 1: how much fee they were delivering. Now, this truck driver
Speaker 1: drove right up in the middle of the freshly gravel road.
Speaker 1: After the rain had absolutely buried that truck to the axis.
Speaker 1: The farmer came off the chain, screaming and cussing that
Speaker 1: poor truck driver something terrible who was doing everything he
Speaker 1: could to apologize for his mistake. He told him to
Speaker 1: never come back to his farm, and it upset the
Speaker 1: driver so bad that he walked away, leaving the truck
Speaker 1: there and quit. And sometime later the office got in
Speaker 1: touch with my dad and he went down to talk
Speaker 1: with a farmer and try to resolve the issue. By
Speaker 1: the time he got there, a wrecker had removed the
Speaker 1: feed truck and the farmer was there with a shovel
Speaker 1: by himself, repairing the damaged road. My dad didn't say
Speaker 1: a word to him. He just grabbed a shovel out
Speaker 1: of the back of his truck and started in helping
Speaker 1: him shovel gravel back in the deep ruts. A few
Speaker 1: minutes went by before anyone said anything, and finally Dad said,
Speaker 1: you know, you made that driver quit. The old man
Speaker 1: kept shoveling and said, well, I didn't mean for him
Speaker 1: to do that. You tell that fellow. I'm sorry, and
Speaker 1: he can come back here anytime or better yet, I
Speaker 1: tell him myself. A few minutes went by and he
Speaker 1: continued saying, I don't mean to be this way, buddy.
Speaker 1: But in nineteen forty one, I was working for John
Speaker 1: Deere and I was making forty dollars a week. Now,
Speaker 1: I know that don't sound like a whole lot of money,
Speaker 1: but in nineteen forty one, that was a heck of
Speaker 1: a wage son. Then Japan attacked Pearl Harbor. I got
Speaker 1: drafted into the service, and I told it a ninety
Speaker 1: pound pack from the Belgian border to the Baltic Sea
Speaker 1: for six hundred dollars a year, and I'm still mad
Speaker 1: about it. The list of colorful characters that I met
Speaker 1: and grew to know was as varied as any group
Speaker 1: of people couldn't be. They were good folks for the
Speaker 1: most part, some better than others, the same of which
Speaker 1: could be said for the people my dad worked with,
Speaker 1: and I got to know lots of them over the years,
Speaker 1: and they more or less saw me grow up. Too
Speaker 1: many to mention, but it was. It was like one
Speaker 1: big family, and everyone knew my dad, and most of
Speaker 1: them called me little buddy. My dad was the strongest
Speaker 1: person I knew, but he had one weakness. He suffered
Speaker 1: from undiagnosed musophobia, a condition where a person shows extreme fear, panic,
Speaker 1: and anxiety of rats and mice. A possum just ran
Speaker 1: over my grave thinking about it now, most folks would
Speaker 1: call out a shutter when something gives you the willies
Speaker 1: and your body has a sudden tremor. My grandmother, Mama's
Speaker 1: Lie said that happens when the possum runs over your grave.
Speaker 1: I told her once when I was a kid that
Speaker 1: I didn't have a grave, and that saying didn't make
Speaker 1: any sense. She told me to be quiet anyway. It
Speaker 1: was widely known that my dad had this fear. One
Speaker 1: person thought it would be funny to play a trick
Speaker 1: on him at the feed meal in Pine Bluff. Now,
Speaker 1: this guy was not on my dad's Christmas card list
Speaker 1: to begin with, and this trick would see that he
Speaker 1: never made it on there. Now, rats are attracted to feed.
Speaker 1: A feed meal that produces tons of feed is going
Speaker 1: to have an issue with him. There's just no way
Speaker 1: around it. The Pine Blood feed meal was no different.
Speaker 1: I remember Dad let me climb up an access ladder
Speaker 1: to the top of the building once and I looked
Speaker 1: down at the ground behind the mill and saw several
Speaker 1: big ones running around him, and I mean big ones.
Speaker 1: There wasn't another possum. But Dad walked into the office
Speaker 1: there one day to deliver some feed samples, and the
Speaker 1: fella in question here saw him coming and had saved
Speaker 1: a particularly large specimen they'd killed earlier that day in
Speaker 1: the meal. The man hid behind the door of that
Speaker 1: with that big rat in his hand, and when my
Speaker 1: dad walked in, he just laid it up on my
Speaker 1: dad's shoulder. Dad ran back outside through the door while
Speaker 1: the man laughed and laughed, saying, what's your hurry, buddy.
Speaker 1: My father looked at him and looked at him and
Speaker 1: told him, you're gonna regret that he dropped the feed
Speaker 1: samples in the parking lot where he stood and turned
Speaker 1: around in the yuh. The months went by and my
Speaker 1: dad never brought that up, never mentioned it to him,
Speaker 1: never said anything to anyone. It was one of those
Speaker 1: things that everyone knew about, but no one said anything about. Now.
Speaker 1: One thing my dad wasn't scared of was snakes. Snakes
Speaker 1: of any persuasion, it didn't matter. I've seen him catch
Speaker 1: all kinds, from grass snakes to cotton mouse and rattlers.
Speaker 1: As luck would have it, one day, my father was
Speaker 1: driving to Pine Blood to deliver some feed samples when
Speaker 1: of particularly large rat snakes crossing the road in front
Speaker 1: of it. Now they routine to grow to six feet
Speaker 1: in lengthd here, and this one was fully grown. How
Speaker 1: opportunity he had him caught and stuck in a bucket
Speaker 1: with his feed samples. In short order and continued his journey.
Speaker 1: Walking in the office, he saw the man that had
Speaker 1: laid the rat on his shoulders sitting at his desk
Speaker 1: on the phone. My dad poked his head in the doorway,
Speaker 1: and the man for him to come in and pointed
Speaker 1: to a chair for my dad to sit in. Dad said,
Speaker 1: he walked in his office and dumped that bucket of
Speaker 1: port sized zip lock bags and one huge angry rat
Speaker 1: snake in the man's lap and says, I can't stay.
Speaker 1: I'm in a hurry, and walked out the door. Now
Speaker 1: I look back, I look back on those times often.
Speaker 1: They're good memories, some just as good as when we
Speaker 1: were hunting and fishing, the common denominator being that we
Speaker 1: were together just having fun. Now I make a concerted
Speaker 1: effort to do the same with my children and my grandchildren,
Speaker 1: and I really anyone I happen to be sharing a
Speaker 1: space with the little folks. They're the ones that matter
Speaker 1: most to me, and the ones that you and I
Speaker 1: can make the biggest impressions on just by sharing our
Speaker 1: time and our interest. When a kid is about to
Speaker 1: drive you crazy, asking a million questions and going ninety
Speaker 1: miles an hour, put your in their spot. Think about
Speaker 1: how you wanted someone to talk to you when you
Speaker 1: were that age, or if you can't remember back that far,
Speaker 1: how do you want him to talk to you now?
Speaker 1: They're going to ask someone, And if we're gonna stand
Speaker 1: even the slightest chance of making the difference in this
Speaker 1: entangled mess of life we find ourselves in today, we
Speaker 1: need to be the ones to answer you and me
Speaker 1: except to us. Mister Bob, I don't know what became
Speaker 1: him after that summer. He sold that farm and got
Speaker 1: out of chicken business. Dad told me later on in
Speaker 1: life when I asked him about that story. I told
Speaker 1: y'all at the beginning, I hope he moved to the
Speaker 1: mountains or the beach and did whatever his passion was.
Speaker 1: It certainly wasn't raising chickens to farming, but he proved
Speaker 1: that he could do it, and my dad didn't do
Speaker 1: it for him. As a parent, I'm tempted to make
Speaker 1: things easier for my daughter Bailey by doing things for her.
Speaker 1: That's not the way to make her better. I need
Speaker 1: to be more like Dad than mister Bob and show
Speaker 1: her the tools that she needs to use to be
Speaker 1: successful and help guide her along her path, but I
Speaker 1: can't told her. She has to take the steps herself,
Speaker 1: watch where she's going, and whenever she needs some help,
Speaker 1: she just needs to know that all she has to
Speaker 1: do is turn around and they're outfits. Hey, did you
Speaker 1: know that my friend Ryan Kyle Callahan has fired up
Speaker 1: the Meat Eater auction House Oddities. There's some pretty sweet
Speaker 1: items up forbid. The money rais is going to the
Speaker 1: Land Action Initiative and support of the Corner Crossing Legal
Speaker 1: Defense Fund. That decision will have implications on public access everywhere,
Speaker 1: and I think it's a good cause. That's why I
Speaker 1: and my friends at the Cash Buy You Coon Camp,
Speaker 1: sun Spotlights, and case Knives have teamed up to offer
Speaker 1: to the highest bidder a two night coon hunt date
Speaker 1: to be determined with lodging at the legendary Dick with
Speaker 1: more cash value can a case bone stag trapper, pocket knife,
Speaker 1: and a copperhead hunting light just like the one I
Speaker 1: wear made by my friend Michael Roseman and sun Spot
Speaker 1: hunting lights. We're gonna feed you all day and take
Speaker 1: you hunting all night. It's gonna be a good time,
Speaker 1: I promise. Meet Your Live tour is about to kick
Speaker 1: off out West, so you can check out and get
Speaker 1: the particulars on both the auction and the live tour
Speaker 1: at meeteater dot com. I thank y'all for listening and
Speaker 1: until next week. This is Brent Reeve signing off. Y'all
Speaker 1: be careful