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. The teacher. Where
Speaker 1: to eat when you're on the road. Who's hungry? Hungry? Brent?
Speaker 1: What do you mean who's hungry? What's hungry? You got
Speaker 1: to do with it? If it's time to eat, let's eat.
Speaker 1: So it's time and you're in the area you ain't
Speaker 1: familiar with. So what you're gonna do? How you gonna
Speaker 1: find a spot that's got the vitals you like without
Speaker 1: eating the same old thing at the Clowns place or
Speaker 1: at that other burger joint where the dude wears the
Speaker 1: crown in the bredges like Shakespeare. Well, I'm gonna tell you.
Speaker 1: We're gonna cover all of that and more. But first
Speaker 1: I'm gonna tell you a story. There was an old
Speaker 1: country store near New Edinburgh, Arkansas, located in the fork
Speaker 1: where one graveled county road wide and became two. One
Speaker 1: went toward our house and the other toward Crane Lake,
Speaker 1: where it wasn't uncommon in the spring and summer to
Speaker 1: find a boat full of reves boys drowning crickets one
Speaker 1: blue gill brim at a time. Now, that story had
Speaker 1: been there for as long as I can remember, and
Speaker 1: mister Almas Marks owned and operated it and had sense
Speaker 1: what seemed like before the Allies put the Germans in
Speaker 1: checked the first time. But when mister Almos retired, some
Speaker 1: folks took it over that were nice and friendly enough
Speaker 1: and provided a service to the rest of us living
Speaker 1: in the in the country by not having to drive
Speaker 1: all the way to town for a few necessities. The
Speaker 1: only issue was while they kept the store clean, their
Speaker 1: personal hygiene habits were somewhat suspect. That's not true, they
Speaker 1: weren't suspect at all. They were non existent. So we
Speaker 1: didn't buy sandwiches that they made there, but we would
Speaker 1: get lunch, meat, bread, and other packaged groceries. My Dad
Speaker 1: and I were headed home one evening from the lake
Speaker 1: and as we got inside of the store, Dad said,
Speaker 1: how about we fry up some bologna for supper. Now,
Speaker 1: let's talk about fry blogonna for just a minute. It's
Speaker 1: one of those things that if you know, you know
Speaker 1: our bologne had a first name, and it wasn't Oscar
Speaker 1: like that old Oscar Mayer jingle. Suggested it was pe
Speaker 1: tit and stood for pettijen blogne that was and continues
Speaker 1: to be made right here in the great state of Arkansas.
Speaker 1: And when I say there's no comparison between how good
Speaker 1: petty gen loney is frieda or otherwise, when compared to
Speaker 1: every other factsemble of lunch meat called himself bloonna, you
Speaker 1: better pay attention because I have just rendered unto you
Speaker 1: indisputable facts from the Book of Brent for the people
Speaker 1: of Brent. It is that good. But I digress, and
Speaker 1: back to the story. We called them just before they
Speaker 1: closed and went straight to the meat counter. The lady said, hey, buddy,
Speaker 1: you and Brent catch any fish today? My dad said, yes, ma'am,
Speaker 1: but we're too hungry to clean them and cook them tonight.
Speaker 1: So we're just going to clean these fish and just
Speaker 1: fry up some balogna for supper with a smile that
Speaker 1: had teeth but resembled a fence around the haunted house.
Speaker 1: She smiled and said, how much do y'all want? And
Speaker 1: I was still young, and I was at eye level
Speaker 1: on the customer side of the glass. She fired up
Speaker 1: the meat slicer, and I watched her as she reached
Speaker 1: into that lighted meat counter for that uncut five pounds
Speaker 1: stick of pettig in balognea, with the filthiest hand and
Speaker 1: fingernails I'd ever seen on a human bend. It looked
Speaker 1: like she was wearing a pair of dirty brown new gloves.
Speaker 1: My dad saw it too. I slowly looked up at
Speaker 1: him and seeing a disgusted look of horror on his face,
Speaker 1: and waited for his next move. It was then I
Speaker 1: got a lesson in my mind. We had two options.
Speaker 1: One just say we changed our mind and grabbed some
Speaker 1: crackers and potted meat and hit the door. Or two,
Speaker 1: try to build a sandwich from the best ballogney on
Speaker 1: the planet that had been sliced in packaged by hands,
Speaker 1: resembling a literal peatrie bucket of weapons grade nasty. There
Speaker 1: was no amount of heat in that skillet that was
Speaker 1: going to erase that image out of my head. However,
Speaker 1: in one of the slickeest moves I've ever been blessed
Speaker 1: to witness, my dad stammered a little at first, but
Speaker 1: gained his composure and said, wait a minute, I'll just
Speaker 1: take the whole stick and I'll come around and get
Speaker 1: it out of there. And just like that, he had
Speaker 1: chosen option three, which was take her completely out of
Speaker 1: the equation. We had fried bologna for supper that night
Speaker 1: instead of potted meating crackers or a staff infection. As
Speaker 1: a matter of fact, we had fried.
Speaker 2: Bling it for quite a while, and that's just how
Speaker 2: that happened, all right to Mego, it's time to eat,
Speaker 2: and we're rolling through a place we've never been or
Speaker 2: in the area we're just not.
Speaker 1: Familiar with, and it's time for some grub. You can
Speaker 1: always grab that stuff that'll slowly kill you from the
Speaker 1: side of the road. And I'm not talking about road kill.
Speaker 1: Speaking of roadkill, my brother Tim and I were headed
Speaker 1: back to our camp, cruising along on top of the
Speaker 1: Arkansas River levee with some duck hutting clients from New
Speaker 1: Jersey after a successful hunt many years ago. All of
Speaker 1: a sudden, a dough deer ran out in front of
Speaker 1: us and wound up under my old bronco and our
Speaker 1: boat and trailer, which doesn't farewell for the long every
Speaker 1: day of a do deer. Tim called the game board
Speaker 1: and he said we could have it, so we loaded
Speaker 1: her up in the boat took off for the duck
Speaker 1: Camp road kill. It's just like sweet milk, it does
Speaker 1: a body good. But being fresh out of roadkill. Clayton
Speaker 1: nukle When I found ourselves in this very situation only
Speaker 1: a short time ago, coming home from a turkey hunt Missouri,
Speaker 1: we ain't had aboute to eat all day and it
Speaker 1: had done got over into the afternoon, so we started
Speaker 1: looking for some groceries. Soon as we hit the city
Speaker 1: limits of Lebanon, Missouri, population fifteen thousand and thirteen, in
Speaker 1: the hometown of Harold Bell Wright Arthur of the novel
Speaker 1: Shepherd of the Hills. I'm driving and Clays starts digging
Speaker 1: around on Google looking for a good spot. Well, Google
Speaker 1: won only take you so far, and you never really
Speaker 1: know about those online reviews about the food. There's no
Speaker 1: telling who wrote it. And there's folks out here running
Speaker 1: around that'll eat anything, and if that wasn't true, Lewis
Speaker 1: Grizzard would have never warned us years ago about how
Speaker 1: you never ever eat at a place that says they
Speaker 1: have food just like your mama's. I promise you they
Speaker 1: do not. It's all a matter of taste or lack
Speaker 1: of And I've been in different parts of this great
Speaker 1: nation of ours and adds some great food, but there
Speaker 1: is some drastic differences in what folks call good food.
Speaker 1: Some of it is a struggle to call food. And
Speaker 1: I'm sure there's plenty of people who think I'm crazy
Speaker 1: for loving squirrels like I do. My wife is one
Speaker 1: of them, but what she know, Her judgment is obviously
Speaker 1: suspect from the company she keeps. And my dad, who
Speaker 1: killed more squirrels than any person I know on this
Speaker 1: orbiting rock we call Earth, wouldn't that one if he
Speaker 1: was starving to death. That's the true story. But that's
Speaker 1: fine more from me, and they ain't got to share,
Speaker 1: so we actually Elevanon in Minu clay Bows Hunger Pangs.
Speaker 1: He mentioned something about a Messican place he was reading about,
Speaker 1: and I like Messican food. My wife Alexis, who is
Speaker 1: from Texas, could eat it for breakfast, but I could
Speaker 1: kind of burned out on it after a while, so
Speaker 1: I told them to look for something a little more
Speaker 1: north of the border. About that time, he said, there's
Speaker 1: a barbecue and a fish place right up the road
Speaker 1: according to Google. Ah fish. I know it's going to
Speaker 1: be catfish, and I could eat fish every day. And
Speaker 1: if they've got barbecue, my kind of barbecue. Then it
Speaker 1: went on in instead of move prior to its arrival
Speaker 1: to the restaurant. As we got closer, I could see
Speaker 1: the sign and the vehicles in the parking lot about
Speaker 1: as many cars as the trucks, and a couple of
Speaker 1: big rigs that were parked there too. Now there's our
Speaker 1: clues about the food right here, right out in the
Speaker 1: bald open truckers can sniff out of place to eat,
Speaker 1: but you can't always go by where you see their trucks.
Speaker 1: Sometimes they have to eat where they can get the
Speaker 1: trucks parked off the road. So it could be a
Speaker 1: place of convenient parking more so than the quality of
Speaker 1: the food. Also, you got to figure in the time
Speaker 1: of day. If it's in the early afternoon, between dinner
Speaker 1: and supper, you know, the noon and the evening meal
Speaker 1: and the parking is at a premium and resembles a
Speaker 1: slow day at the used car lot, you're probably in
Speaker 1: for some good victuals. On the other hand, if it's
Speaker 1: getting close to the time when people normally eat and
Speaker 1: parking lot is empty, well that's a sign that they're
Speaker 1: either closed or they should be. Now. Most kids would
Speaker 1: eat chicken out of a mailbox. Don't matter where you
Speaker 1: are or what you're doing. It could be the finest
Speaker 1: Italian Chinese or famous steakhouse restaurant, or any food specific
Speaker 1: oriented place and they'll holler, I want some chicken strips,
Speaker 1: and I have to admit I like them too. But
Speaker 1: you need to be careful about the food you order
Speaker 1: from places not necessarily themed in that direction. Trout almondine,
Speaker 1: which I love from a nice place in Little Rock
Speaker 1: that alexis and not go to on occasion, is not
Speaker 1: something I'd order if I sew it on the menu
Speaker 1: or at a at a cafe or a diner where
Speaker 1: you can see in the kitchen and the waitress caused you, honey.
Speaker 1: They might be fine, but a safer bet is the
Speaker 1: chicken fried steak. That's my default at any place I'm
Speaker 1: unfamiliar with and don't receive any vibes from the menu
Speaker 1: or plates of those eating around me. It's hard to
Speaker 1: screw up a chicken fried steak, Nate can be done,
Speaker 1: but come on, it ain't that hard to fix a
Speaker 1: decent one. I was scrolling through Instagram the other day
Speaker 1: and saw old chef Kevin Gillespie sharing his grandma's family
Speaker 1: recipe for a chicken fried steak that had me hankering
Speaker 1: for one, the one that he was cooking before the
Speaker 1: video ended. I'll tell you one thing for sure, the
Speaker 1: one he was cooking would have been a safe bet
Speaker 1: anywhere and any time, which brings me back to picking
Speaker 1: out a place to eat and ordering food from a
Speaker 1: place you really don't feel as soon as to be
Speaker 1: serving it. Would I eat spaghetti from Basking Robbins? What
Speaker 1: about fried rabbit from an Army mess Hog? Yes? Would
Speaker 1: I regret it? Definitely. In September of nineteen eighty seven,
Speaker 1: I found myself in the company of several hundred other
Speaker 1: freshly peeled headed America loving volunteer Army recruits at Fort Sell, Oklahoma.
Speaker 1: If you've never been there, you should go. It's quite
Speaker 1: an anomaly. The wind blows in every direction at once
Speaker 1: all the time, and everywhere you need to march or
Speaker 1: run to next is always uphill, and all the folks
Speaker 1: you see are mad and hollering at you for you
Speaker 1: to hurry up now. That post was built back in
Speaker 1: eighteen sixty nine and has been occupied by the United
Speaker 1: States Army ever since. It was a stepping off point
Speaker 1: for a lot of western expansion back in the day
Speaker 1: when the government's idea of getting into the realty business
Speaker 1: was showing up at someone's door with a cannon and
Speaker 1: asking them if they'd ever thought about selling out and
Speaker 1: moving away. It's also the barrel place of G's your Automo,
Speaker 1: and we used to run past his grave every morning
Speaker 1: during pt. It was the only section of ground where
Speaker 1: we were silent when we passed out of respect. We
Speaker 1: were training to be warriors, and our drill sergeants demanded
Speaker 1: we honor a real one. Unfortunately, that same level of
Speaker 1: respect was not shown to whoever was in charge of
Speaker 1: buying meat for the mess sergeant to cook for his troops.
Speaker 1: More on that in a minute. It was Friday evening
Speaker 1: we were standing in formation outside the mess hall. About
Speaker 1: a month in the basic training Army breakfast at that
Speaker 1: time was as good as you could get in any cafe.
Speaker 1: Eggs to order, grits, pancakes, sausage, bacon, toast, biscuits, gravy. Sos.
Speaker 1: Don't know what sos is, Ask your grandpa when your grandma.
Speaker 1: Are you listening? He'll tell you. But I enjoyed breakfast.
Speaker 1: It's still my favorite meal of the day, and we'll
Speaker 1: have it for supper sometimes now, but back at forth
Speaker 1: sil Once you got to the next two meals of
Speaker 1: the day, it was a craps you as to what
Speaker 1: the menu held, especially for a country boy from Arkansas.
Speaker 1: Lots of hamburgers, spaghetti, baked pork chops and ham, things
Speaker 1: like that that were edible, but they just tasted bland
Speaker 1: to me. Now I also realized that they were feeding
Speaker 1: the multitude of troops and only keeping us healthy enough
Speaker 1: to brutalize on a daily basis. That was the real
Speaker 1: reason they were letting us eat anyway. They didn't fix
Speaker 1: food like I'd grown up eating, Like that corn bread
Speaker 1: I was eating every day that was so sweet, I
Speaker 1: thought it was cake. I remember a buddy of mine
Speaker 1: from Boston said, boy, you country boys really like that
Speaker 1: corn bread. Huh, you eat it like dessert every day,
Speaker 1: and I'm sure that they ain't really like it how
Speaker 1: he talks, But that's why I remember it. But anyway,
Speaker 1: I answered, man, I ain't had no corn bread since
Speaker 1: I left home. I've been seeing it posted on the
Speaker 1: menu just about every day. But by the time we
Speaker 1: get here, all they got left is this cake. As
Speaker 1: disappointed as I was in the Army's version of cornbread,
Speaker 1: I don't know why I was so excited to see
Speaker 1: fried rabbit posted on the mess hall menu one evening.
Speaker 1: Did I see that right? Fried rabbit? Oh lord, y'all,
Speaker 1: please don't wake me up. Let me finish this beautiful
Speaker 1: dream I'm having about eating a mess of fried cottontails.
Speaker 1: It was October and rabbit season back home, and I
Speaker 1: love fried cottontail rabbit. And though I was only away
Speaker 1: in a neighboring state, I might as well be on
Speaker 1: the moon. When it comes time to eat and supper.
Speaker 1: Every day, nothing was the same, and yet there it was,
Speaker 1: right there on the menu, fried rabbit. I was about
Speaker 1: to be rudely awakened from that dream by the time
Speaker 1: it took to move the forty or so troops in
Speaker 1: front of me out of the way so I could
Speaker 1: get some groceries. I was about to have a fit.
Speaker 1: I could smell the familiar aroma of fried food about
Speaker 1: a minute before I got the first glimpse of what
Speaker 1: the army called fried rabbit. There was a huge pile
Speaker 1: of them there behind the glass, and they all looked
Speaker 1: like hind legs, hind legs off a shellling pony. I
Speaker 1: never seen such a sight, and I couldn't imagine how
Speaker 1: big the rabbit was. They'd cut them legs off of
Speaker 1: My immediate thought is I wish they'd left foot on
Speaker 1: there so I know exactly what creditor that running gear
Speaker 1: had come from. That I was about to eat, But
Speaker 1: they said it was rabbit, and I was excited to
Speaker 1: eat it. The mess all PFC looked up at me
Speaker 1: and said one or two. No, wait a minute, they
Speaker 1: gonna let me have two of them. I'm in I answered,
Speaker 1: too private, and he dropped two of them magnet rabbit
Speaker 1: hams on my tray, blowing mash taters and English peas
Speaker 1: off into the floor and on me like that rabbit's
Speaker 1: last act of defiance before getting it. It was giving
Speaker 1: the boys on KP something to mop up after we'd left.
Speaker 1: Then rabbit legs took up so much space on my
Speaker 1: tray that I had to toe my corn bread cake
Speaker 1: in the cargo pocket and my bead he use. There's
Speaker 1: rules for everything in basic training. Everything. Your drill sergeant
Speaker 1: is there to encourage you to follow them. He's there
Speaker 1: to tell you when to eat, how long you can eat,
Speaker 1: when to stop eating, and when to get up and
Speaker 1: get out of the messhow so you can run uphill
Speaker 1: some more. He's also there to make sure you clean
Speaker 1: your plate of all the food the army prepared for
Speaker 1: you every bite. They'll feed you a lot, but you
Speaker 1: better eat it or there would be repercussions. That had
Speaker 1: slipped my mind when the opportunity of getting two rabbit
Speaker 1: legs came about two's better than one, right, Well, that's
Speaker 1: what I thought. Now. When our drill sergeant finally said
Speaker 1: we had five minutes to eat, I grabbed that first,
Speaker 1: humongous rabbit leg, did a bicep curl to get it
Speaker 1: up to my mouth, and took a bite. The amount
Speaker 1: of grease that ran out of the corners of my
Speaker 1: mouth was enough to have had a small fish fry.
Speaker 1: It was terrible. It was tough as woodpecker lips, chewed
Speaker 1: like a tennis ball, and I had two of them
Speaker 1: to eat. That was thirty six years ago, and I
Speaker 1: ain't had a bite of fried rabbit sins, not even
Speaker 1: a nibble. Michael Roseman has some good rabbit dogs, and
Speaker 1: I love hunting them, so I think I'll try them
Speaker 1: again this winter, and I'll let y' all know how
Speaker 1: that goes. Growing up in the South, and I can
Speaker 1: only guess it's the same way in most points of
Speaker 1: the Compass. But here folks look for an occasion to
Speaker 1: gather and eat. Someone died, someone had a baby, somebody
Speaker 1: got married, somebody had an anniversary, somebody got parrolled. Whatever,
Speaker 1: it's all cook, eat fellowship, and enjoy everyone's company. That's
Speaker 1: why the food been so good. As important you're out
Speaker 1: there on a long trip, it'll help those long ones
Speaker 1: seem a little shorter. It'll add joy to the good
Speaker 1: times and comfort to the hard ones. But let the
Speaker 1: food be bad, and woe is me, it'll only compound
Speaker 1: the pain. I give you a prime example of bad
Speaker 1: food making a bad situation worse. Many moons ago and
Speaker 1: before I had the sense equal to what God gave
Speaker 1: a goose and before I corrected myself and she had
Speaker 1: a salt upon my liver and senses. I stumbled home
Speaker 1: in the early morning darkness on a Sunday morning, after
Speaker 1: making a long night of bad decisions. I'd made so
Speaker 1: many bad decisions that night that one would think I
Speaker 1: didn't have any left to make between Mama's front door
Speaker 1: and my bedroom. But I did. I had one more
Speaker 1: left in me, and boy, it was a good one.
Speaker 1: A fellow that has restricted his diet to adult beverages
Speaker 1: for several hours will eventually get hungry. And since I
Speaker 1: was walking through the kitchen at the time, I realized
Speaker 1: I hadn't eat anything all day. What better place to
Speaker 1: stop and fix myself a snack. There were no leftovers
Speaker 1: in the ice box, so I looked up in the
Speaker 1: freezer and I found a bag of frozen breaded chicken strips.
Speaker 1: They looked fantastic on the picture on the bag. Why
Speaker 1: not throw a handful of these rascals in the microwave
Speaker 1: and have myself a snack before hitting the hate. Remember
Speaker 1: what I said about kids eating chicken out of the mailbox, Well,
Speaker 1: folks that pour a thief in their mouth all night
Speaker 1: to steal the brains, will eat warmed up raw chicken
Speaker 1: strips from the microwave and get salmonella poisoning. I'll spare
Speaker 1: you any more details about what happened a few hours later.
Speaker 1: That continued for a couple of days. But if you're
Speaker 1: curious as to whether I lived through that literal biblical
Speaker 1: flood of sickness, I can't tell you because I'm still
Speaker 1: not sure. I told my dad about that years later,
Speaker 1: and he told me that that wasn't uncommon for young
Speaker 1: men to lose their sense of good judgment in a
Speaker 1: iur of weakness, that it had happened to him as well.
Speaker 1: He said he remembered drinking moonshine all night in his youth,
Speaker 1: and he'd eating one peanut. Next day he woke up,
Speaker 1: he felt about. He swore he'd never eat peanuts again.
Speaker 1: So let's bring this home. Where are we going to eat?
Speaker 1: When we're out on the road. You can easily find
Speaker 1: all the franchise places that were all familiar with, But
Speaker 1: I like to look for the places where the folks
Speaker 1: that are cooking are dependent on feeding enough people to
Speaker 1: pay their light bills and make the car payments. These
Speaker 1: folks are taking pride in what they're preparing and hoping
Speaker 1: you'll like it as well. They want you to like
Speaker 1: it well enough to come back. Places like Cheryl's Diner
Speaker 1: cab at Arkansas, where you can eat a platter of
Speaker 1: groceries called a gobbly goop. It's every breakfast item you
Speaker 1: can think of, except pancakes piled on two cathead biscuits
Speaker 1: and covered in gravy. I can hear my left ventricl
Speaker 1: slim and shut just thinking about it. Boy, it's good.
Speaker 1: How about Big Zach's Place in the Logan's Port, Louisiana
Speaker 1: for fish steaks and crawfish, or some vitals from Stanley's
Speaker 1: famous pitt Barbecue in Tyler, Texas. I've even got it
Speaker 1: on good authority that Spanky's Diner in Newfoundland, PA makes
Speaker 1: the world's greatest cream chip beef over toast breakfast. Any
Speaker 1: Pennsylvanian or any other human being would be fortunate enough
Speaker 1: to poke fork in. There's goodness and supporting our neighbors.
Speaker 1: And I'm not saying the folks that are slinging fries
Speaker 1: and burgers out of the drive through or running the
Speaker 1: franchises ain't our neighbors, because our neighbors are working there.
Speaker 1: I'm saying, let's not forget about the places off the
Speaker 1: beaten path. I like to look for them first. Make
Speaker 1: sure that late night chickens cooked thoroughly. And if you
Speaker 1: ever find yourself in Lebanon, Missouri and have a hanker
Speaker 1: for some catfish, Down's Catfish House and Barbecue about a
Speaker 1: half mile off of Interstate forty four is a safe bed.
Speaker 1: You can tell them me and old Clay Bow. Since
Speaker 1: it this is Brent Reeves signing off, y'all be careful.
Speaker 2: H