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 experiences in life lessons. This Country Life is presented
Speaker 1: by Case Knives on Meat Eaters Podcast Network, bringing you
Speaker 1: the best outdoor podcast the airways had off. All right, friends,
Speaker 1: grab a chair or drop that tailgate. I've got some
Speaker 1: stories to share. Spotlights, pink tomatoes, and bold corrections. I
Speaker 1: come from what some refer to as the Land of
Speaker 1: tall Pines and pink tomatoes. It's a reference to the
Speaker 1: logging and farming industry that part of Arkansas was known for.
Speaker 1: It was a great place to grow up, and I'm
Speaker 1: going to tell you a little about the pink tomato
Speaker 1: portion of it. But first I'm going to tell you
Speaker 1: a story. It was a simple mission, catch them where
Speaker 1: they weren't allowed to be. We knew the adversary, we
Speaker 1: knew where they operated, we knew how they operated. Careful
Speaker 1: observation had revealed their numbers, along with how they infielded
Speaker 1: xfield from the area of operations into hours. They made
Speaker 1: no attempt at concealing the trails they used or even
Speaker 1: bothered to wipe out their tracks, and that's where we
Speaker 1: had the advantage. We knew how they would come and
Speaker 1: go and when they were most likely to do it.
Speaker 1: Their advantage was speed and their ability to operate in
Speaker 1: low light. They were masters of nighttime operations. Their night
Speaker 1: vision was generations above our own, and while the mission
Speaker 1: was simple, it was anything but easily accomplished. Also, they
Speaker 1: didn't have vehicles we did. That would prove to be
Speaker 1: our greatest asset in closing in on our adversary and
Speaker 1: our biggest liability by not knowing the terrain as well
Speaker 1: as we should have. The scattering reports we had about
Speaker 1: the lay of the lamb had been falsified, and it
Speaker 1: wound up costing us a third of our strength. It
Speaker 1: was around twenty three hundred dollars when we moved out.
Speaker 1: It was early fall of nineteen seventy nine. My brother
Speaker 1: Tim climbed into the driver's seat of his nineteen sixty
Speaker 1: nine Ford truck. Sammy West, our lifelong family friend who
Speaker 1: Tim had grown up with, and I climbed into the
Speaker 1: bed and stood up next to the cab facing forward.
Speaker 2: He was holding the spotlight.
Speaker 1: I was holding the rope. There were deer in the
Speaker 1: pea patch, and we were fixing the last old one.
Speaker 1: That was our mission. As in any good story, you
Speaker 1: have to lay a foundation of where the story takes place,
Speaker 1: and this one was on our farm where we grew up.
Speaker 1: Tim was married and lived just down the road. I
Speaker 1: was in junior high school. Our middle brother, Chuck was
Speaker 1: in college, still living at home, and he wasn't there
Speaker 1: that night, but he would play an important role in
Speaker 1: the outcome of events. The summer before, he'd grown a
Speaker 1: patch of watermelons and had sold him for extra money.
Speaker 1: They were good, and I helped him pick some and
Speaker 1: haul them to town to sell. He paid me in
Speaker 1: watermelon hearts. You know the good part. I'd work for
Speaker 1: that now. Well that in case pocket knives, But that's
Speaker 1: not important. What is important is that after the watermelons
Speaker 1: were done, he was supposed to take a tractor over
Speaker 1: there and disc up the hills and run a section
Speaker 1: hard over it to smooth out the dirt. He said
Speaker 1: he did it, and the field had grown up since
Speaker 1: he'd retired from the watermelon business the year before. It
Speaker 1: looked like every other acre over there that didn't have
Speaker 1: peas and tomatoes growing in it weeds that stood about
Speaker 1: waist high.
Speaker 2: That's all you saw. Well.
Speaker 1: That night we eased across the pond livey, headed toward
Speaker 1: the pea patch with our lights off. The moon was
Speaker 1: bright enough for Tim to see without him, and when
Speaker 1: we got close enough to the pea patch, Samy shined
Speaker 1: that spotlight, and we were looking at a field full
Speaker 1: of white tailed deer staring back at us, their mouths
Speaker 1: chewing on peas, and their bellies getting fuller with each bite.
Speaker 1: Tim mashed the foot feed and the race was on.
Speaker 1: Ten to fifteen deer took off in every direction out
Speaker 1: of that pea patch, and they made their way across
Speaker 1: that waste high weeds of the field that hadn't been planted.
Speaker 1: The one we were closest to was burning and churning
Speaker 1: towards the gap in the fence that separated the pea
Speaker 1: patch from.
Speaker 2: The Tamato field.
Speaker 1: Most of the other deer just jumped the fence, but
Speaker 1: this one, this one understood the assignment and was beee
Speaker 1: lining it toward the gap, breaking through the weeds like
Speaker 1: a crab boat and the barre and sea going through ice.
Speaker 1: Tim closed the gap when he saw Sammy's light zero
Speaker 1: in on that.
Speaker 2: Fine special Anom dol dough. Now I moved around to
Speaker 2: Sammy's right.
Speaker 1: Now I leaned against the cab to steady myself as
Speaker 1: we plowed through the weeds, and I ready my rope
Speaker 1: as we got closer. The deer was now within the
Speaker 1: easy roping distance off the right front bumper. We were
Speaker 1: doing every bit of twenty five miles an hour, and
Speaker 1: it was going to be two turns above my head
Speaker 1: and on the third one I was going to have
Speaker 1: that deer rope faster.
Speaker 2: Than Roy Cooper could have done it.
Speaker 1: Here we go, rope ready, one turn, two turns, and
Speaker 1: all of a sudden, the truck started bucking up and
Speaker 1: down bott the lend. The spotlight went out. It got
Speaker 1: dark quick. Tim hadn't bothered to turn the headlights on
Speaker 1: a truck. It wouldn't have done any good anyway. The
Speaker 1: weeds were taller than the light. I grabbed onto the
Speaker 1: cab and I looked over at Sammy, but Sammy was gone,
Speaker 1: so was the light. I started beating on the cab
Speaker 1: of the truck and yelling for Tim to stop.
Speaker 2: Stop, stop, a process.
Speaker 1: He'd already initiated upon being bounced around in the cab
Speaker 1: this truck like a bean in a coffee can. The
Speaker 1: truck came to an abrupt stop, and Tim jumped out
Speaker 1: and looking back at us, well where us had been
Speaker 1: that had been reduced to looking at me, and I hollered,
Speaker 1: Sammy's gone. Tim said, where'd he go? I said, I
Speaker 1: don't know, but he took the light with him. Tim yelled, Sammy, Sammy.
Speaker 1: We heard a faint voice from the middle of the
Speaker 1: field behind us say I'm over here. I jumped down
Speaker 1: this truck and we made our way through the weeds,
Speaker 1: only to meet Sammy walking towards us, still holding onto
Speaker 1: the spotlight with the wires that had been ripped from
Speaker 1: the battery posts. Tim said, what happened? Sammy said, Brent
Speaker 1: pushed me out of the truck. I said, no, I didn't.
Speaker 1: I was fixing the rope that deer when the truck
Speaker 1: started bouncing and the light went out. I looked around
Speaker 1: and you was gone. That's when we knew. That's when
Speaker 1: we figured it out. That's when Tim, Sammy and I
Speaker 1: started a trio, of course, and disparaged monologues about our
Speaker 1: brother Chuck for not disking and leveling that watermelon patch.
Speaker 1: Like he said he did. Truth be told, he probably
Speaker 1: he probably saved us all from getting our butts kicked
Speaker 1: by a roped whitetailed dough. I don't know what we'd
Speaker 1: have done had I actually roped it, but Sammy was
Speaker 1: uninjured and I never got another chance to rope. Chuck
Speaker 1: never leveled that watermelon patch either, And that's just how
Speaker 1: that happened.
Speaker 2: Gardens.
Speaker 1: Nothing spread hate and discontent quicker than your parents saying
Speaker 1: it'll be good to have you out of school to
Speaker 1: help with the garden this summer garden. Ain't got time
Speaker 1: for no garden. Well about all those tomatoes growing in
Speaker 1: that big field across the pond. That ain't enough gardening
Speaker 1: for y'all. With the love of humanity. There's frogs to gigging,
Speaker 1: fish to catch, swimming holes that jump in, and camp
Speaker 1: outs with my friends. I ain't got no time for
Speaker 1: no garden. On top of the kabellion acres the tomatoes
Speaker 1: we already had growing, and i'd be struggling in half
Speaker 1: the summer anyway. Actually, the most we ever had was
Speaker 1: about five acres, but it seemed like a kabellion. Turns
Speaker 1: out I did have the time after all. But I
Speaker 1: didn't like it. My friends that lived in town didn't
Speaker 1: have to suffer through all this nonsense. They were all
Speaker 1: racked up in the air conditioning, watching Bob Barker and
Speaker 1: waiting on the YMCA pool open up so they could
Speaker 1: all meet up and swim in that chlorinated clear water
Speaker 1: urinal me. I was stuck in the middle of our farm,
Speaker 1: praying for rain to a cloudless sky and sticking tomato
Speaker 1: sticks in the ground and wishing I was dead. Don't
Speaker 1: get me wrong, I love tomatoes, and the tomatoes that
Speaker 1: were developed specifically for the soil where I'm from and
Speaker 1: grown in my hometown are second to none. Some of
Speaker 1: you may have just rolled your eyeballs out of the
Speaker 1: back of your head and jerked a creak in your
Speaker 1: neck looking at the radio when I made that claim,
Speaker 1: Like last summer, when I received all kinds of watermelon feedback.
Speaker 1: When I talked about watermelons, you didn't mention this town,
Speaker 1: or that town, or this type of watermelon, And they
Speaker 1: were right.
Speaker 2: I didn't.
Speaker 1: I was merely talking about the places I knew of
Speaker 1: that proclaimed themselves to be the watermelon capitals of the world.
Speaker 1: There can be several that hold that title, you got
Speaker 1: the biggest watermelons in the world, you got the place
Speaker 1: with the most produced watermelons in the world, et cetera,
Speaker 1: et cetera. But when it comes to tomatoes, there's only
Speaker 1: one tomato and only one place, and that's the variety
Speaker 1: grown in Bradley County, Arkansas, and aptly named the Bradley Tomato.
Speaker 1: This deliciously mildly acidic fruit or vegetable depending on which
Speaker 1: camp you're in, stands alone at the pinnacle of the
Speaker 1: Tomato Hall of Fame due to taste alone, period, there
Speaker 1: are none better, save your emails, calls, letters, and bomb threads.
Speaker 1: I will not budge from this position of how far
Speaker 1: hit and shoulders above all other varieties of tomatoes there are.
Speaker 1: And believe it or not, there are more than ten
Speaker 1: thousand different varieties available today to grow. Ten thousand plus.
Speaker 1: That's more than twice the amount of people who live
Speaker 1: in Warren, Arkansas, the county seat the place where some
Speaker 1: of the most dedicated and frustrated educators of all time
Speaker 1: attempted to learn me stuff, and home to the Pink
Speaker 1: Tomato Festival, a hometown event that's been going on annually.
Speaker 2: For the last sixty eight years.
Speaker 1: It's always held on the second Friday of June and
Speaker 1: the last all weekend with events and entertainment for the
Speaker 1: whole family, music, art and crafts, games, lots of great
Speaker 1: food in one event that don't have anymore and and
Speaker 1: haven't had for quite some time. But it was quite
Speaker 1: popular back when I was the mere slip of a
Speaker 1: lad I am today, and that was the tobacco spitting contest.
Speaker 1: You heard me right, If that ain't good, if that
Speaker 1: ain't good enough for you, It was open to all ages.
Speaker 1: I remember seeing my pals in the sixth grade competing,
Speaker 1: but I was terrified someone would tell my mama, so
Speaker 1: I abstained from competition, never fully realizing my potential is
Speaker 1: a tobacco spitting athlete. They had a big sheet of
Speaker 1: plastic about three feet wide and rolled out on the
Speaker 1: courthouse lawn that was printed like a big tape measure.
Speaker 1: Contestants would get a big cheer of tobacco or dipper snuff,
Speaker 1: and once they built up a sufficient reservoir tobacco juice,
Speaker 1: they'd let her fly and whomever spat the farthest one.
Speaker 1: I don't remember what the trophy was, but I do
Speaker 1: remember them giving out free samples to anybody that wanted them.
Speaker 1: Good Lord, those were different times, and times changed, and
Speaker 1: this time they changed for the better. You won't see
Speaker 1: that contest there anymore, but you will see a lot
Speaker 1: of good stuff there, and you should check it out
Speaker 1: if you have the opportunity. But back to the Bradley
Speaker 1: tomato for just a second. In nineteen sixty one, at
Speaker 1: the University of Arkansas, doctor Joe mcfaerir and, at the
Speaker 1: age of forty four, developed the Bradley tomato plant to
Speaker 1: grow specifically in the soil and the humid climate found
Speaker 1: in Bradley County in June. All my life I heard
Speaker 1: folks talk about how cool it was that that specific
Speaker 1: tomato plant that produced the epitome of the tea in
Speaker 1: BLT was developed and named after Bradley County. And now
Speaker 1: for fifty eight years, I've heard nothing different. Bradley tomato
Speaker 1: developed by the University of Arkansas for Bradley County in
Speaker 1: the story. Then I did a little research for some
Speaker 1: background on doctor mcfarren, who passed away thirteen years ago
Speaker 1: in twenty eleven. He had an identical twin brother named Jack.
Speaker 1: He was a decorated veteran of World War Two and
Speaker 1: also served in Korea. His mama's name was Alis and
Speaker 1: his father's name was Bradley. What a coincidence. Maybe his
Speaker 1: dad changed it to Bradley after he had a bite
Speaker 1: of one and experienced just how good they are.
Speaker 2: But that line of thinking is.
Speaker 1: Really because I'd be known as fried squirrel gritz reeves. Anyway,
Speaker 1: the tomatoes are good, and towards the end of May
Speaker 1: every year, my social media is festooned with folks from
Speaker 1: my hometown talking about who's got Bradley's and the out
Speaker 1: of town folks are wanting to know when someone is
Speaker 1: headed north with a load. Now, you can get a
Speaker 1: blt in just about any place that serves hot food,
Speaker 1: bacon lets, tomato, and bread. It's as simple as that,
Speaker 1: and there are as many ways to fix one as
Speaker 1: you can think of. You can put cheese or onion
Speaker 1: and potato chips, this kind of bread, that kind of bread.
Speaker 1: There's no limit to what you can do. But until
Speaker 1: you've had one in the combination, any combination with a
Speaker 1: Bradley tomato, you'll never really know the festival of flavor
Speaker 1: your taste buds will experience. It's like fried chicken. I
Speaker 1: love fried chicken, and I don't care if it comes
Speaker 1: from KFC, churches, Pope Eyes, cracker barrel, your house, or
Speaker 1: the hospital.
Speaker 2: I love it.
Speaker 1: It's all good, but nothing will ever come close to
Speaker 1: your grandma's fried chicken. The Bradley tomato is your grandma's
Speaker 1: fried chicken compared to everything else calling itself a tomato. Now,
Speaker 1: there were a few perks to grow in tomatoes. When
Speaker 1: the tomato market opened the area of farmers would haul
Speaker 1: the tomatoes to town for auction.
Speaker 2: At the fairgrounds.
Speaker 1: Produced buyers from out of state had seasonal offices there,
Speaker 1: and the farmers would line up early to get inside
Speaker 1: when the gate opened. Then pickup trucks, cattle trailers, and
Speaker 1: bob trucks would back up to a long covered concrete
Speaker 1: slab about the length of commercial chicken house. Each truck
Speaker 1: was backed into an individual parking spot. With them a
Speaker 1: big wooden table where each grower would set out a
Speaker 1: sample of his tomatoes for the buyers to bid on.
Speaker 1: As they falled, an auctioneer around from table to table.
Speaker 1: The only air moving in that blistering asphalt melting heat
Speaker 1: was the big industrial fans mounted in the rafters that
Speaker 1: blew the hot air from one end of the tomatoes
Speaker 1: shed to the other, but at least it was moving.
Speaker 1: Not being one of the first to feel the many
Speaker 1: slots meant you had to wait in a shadeless line
Speaker 1: until one of the slots opened up. It made for
Speaker 1: a long, hot day, but it beat the tomato fields
Speaker 1: by long shot. Also, a lot of my friends would
Speaker 1: be there. Some of them had farms and grew tomatoes too,
Speaker 1: and some worked up at the packing shed. A lot
Speaker 1: of the girls whose family didn't raise tomatoes that I
Speaker 1: went to school with would get summer jobs packing tomatoes
Speaker 1: up there. That place was full of pretty gals, and
Speaker 1: me and my cohorts frequently patrolling that location while we
Speaker 1: waited our turn to sell tomatoes. That was just a coincidence.
Speaker 1: But folks worked hard raising tomatoes. There wasn't any easy
Speaker 1: thing about it. From driving steaks tied up to plants
Speaker 1: so they wouldn't fall over, to running the irrigation pipe,
Speaker 1: spraying for bugs, actually picking them. It was hot, back
Speaker 1: bending works work that would have you in bed early
Speaker 1: at night and asleep before your head hit the pillow,
Speaker 1: just to get up the next morning before daylight and
Speaker 1: do it all over again. There's not many of my
Speaker 1: friends that don't have war stories about the tomato fields
Speaker 1: of our youth. But you could always get a job
Speaker 1: in the summer, and at least it wasn't houling hay ooh,
Speaker 1: hauling hay. I maybe having a flashback just thinking about it.
Speaker 1: Tomatoes were sold by the lug. That's a box to
Speaker 1: all you folks not raised in tomato country, and the
Speaker 1: lug averages about thirty pounds A fella could get a
Speaker 1: pretty good workout handling tomatoes because just like hey, you
Speaker 1: had to handle it more than once. Had to pick them,
Speaker 1: load them up, box them up, and load them at
Speaker 1: the farm, unload them at the tomato shed. After the
Speaker 1: soul buyers bit against each other and the highest bitter
Speaker 1: bought the whole load of what was represented on the table.
Speaker 1: It was hot, it was stressful, and some families were
Speaker 1: depending on what the tomato crop brought as they substantial
Speaker 1: portion of their yearly income. I remember once when the
Speaker 1: market was down or on occasion, it was rumored that
Speaker 1: the buyers had conspired together to keep the prices load
Speaker 1: to increase their profit. Now I don't know if that
Speaker 1: happened or not, but the farmer wasn't being paid enough
Speaker 1: to cover the cost of the expense of planting, growing, harvesting,
Speaker 1: and what the buyer offered was an absolute insult to
Speaker 1: the folks that had labored day after day to bring
Speaker 1: the best produce to market. After all, the grocery store
Speaker 1: prices hadn't fallen in relation to what the farmer was
Speaker 1: being paid, nor had the cost of producing them. And
Speaker 1: I saw it explode one day as we waited our
Speaker 1: turn to sell, and seeing the ones before us getting
Speaker 1: pennies on the dollar for their invested labor. In one
Speaker 1: of the purported buyer conspiracy times. My mama was worrying stress,
Speaker 1: knowing the bad news that was coming when I was sold.
Speaker 1: But this one farmer, he made a statement. He pulled
Speaker 1: his truck co working the shed and dump the whole
Speaker 1: load in the middle of the fairgrounds. Regardless of how
Speaker 1: you feel about it, right or wrong or indifferent, he'd
Speaker 1: made a stand. He'd rather throw them away than be
Speaker 1: insulted with what they were offering. Several others followed, not
Speaker 1: but nothing, there's too but refusing to sell them to
Speaker 1: those buyers at that price, and they seld them themselves
Speaker 1: as best as they could. That's a prime example of
Speaker 1: our inherent freedom to protest and take a stand against
Speaker 1: something that you feeled is wrong. And I doubt it
Speaker 1: solved anything other than letting off some steam. But don't
Speaker 1: be afraid to make a Bowld correction. That was instruction
Speaker 1: given to me in ait at Fortsaille, Oklahoma, in nineteen
Speaker 1: eighty seven by an instructor in reference to adjusting artillery
Speaker 1: fire onto the target. Don't be afraid to make a
Speaker 1: Bowld correction. I've never forgotten that, and I've used it
Speaker 1: as advice for my life. I've had more than one
Speaker 1: bold correction in my life to make, and I'm thankful
Speaker 1: I did, and I'm ever.
Speaker 2: Vigilant for the next one.
Speaker 1: If you take one thing away from this episode today,
Speaker 1: where I went down more rabbit holes than one of
Speaker 1: George Pennington's champion beagles, let it be that one. Make
Speaker 1: a bold correction when necessary, stand up for yourself, fix
Speaker 1: yourself when you need to fix it, don't be scared
Speaker 1: to do it. I'm so glad you allowed me the
Speaker 1: time to run around between years this week, and I
Speaker 1: hope I didn't step on anything important.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 1: I get several messages from folks about supporting the show
Speaker 1: and what we're doing, and the best way to do
Speaker 1: that is by checking out the sponsors. You hear us
Speaker 1: reading ads for it really does make a difference and
Speaker 1: has a direct impact thanks to y'all it reached out
Speaker 1: about it. Also, y'all scooed on over and subscribe to
Speaker 1: the new Media to Podcast Network channel on YouTube. From
Speaker 1: the meat Eater channel, you'll be able to hear all
Speaker 1: your favorite podcasts and see all the ones that are
Speaker 1: being filmed. We just started filming the Bear Grease Render episodes,
Speaker 1: which is pretty cool. Now this country life isn't slated
Speaker 1: for filming and who wants to watch me stare at
Speaker 1: a microphone while struggling to read the stuff I wrote
Speaker 1: doing take after take. But we've got some other stuff
Speaker 1: we're working on that will be included that I hope
Speaker 1: you'll enjoy, and on that channel is where you'll see
Speaker 1: it eventually. One more thing, This heat is rough on
Speaker 1: folks and pets. Try to make some time to check
Speaker 1: on them, any and all of them that might be
Speaker 1: affected by these high temperatures. Take them a drink of
Speaker 1: water and some tomatoes. Bradley's if you have the means
Speaker 1: until next week. This is Brent Reid signing off.
Speaker 2: Y'all be careful.