Bear Grease - Ep. 103: THIS COUNTRY LIFE - Freight Trains and Hurricanes

Episode Date: April 21, 2023

Welcome to episode one of This Country Life! Today, we meet your host Brent Reaves: a family man and life long outdoorsman whose familial roots in rural Arkansas can be traced back over 150 years. As a way of introduction, Brent shares two of his favorite stories, taking us from schoolyard hi-jinx to riding out a lightning storm in a washed-out muskrat burrow. You're not gonna want to miss this addition to the Bear Grease lineup.  Connect with Brent and MeatEater MeatEater on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and Youtube Shop Bear Grease MerchSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

First Lights fieldwear collection is made for the work that happens long before opening day and continues when the season ends. Products built for early mornings, full days and real use. Hard wearing where they need to be versatile where it matters. No shortcuts. Just gear designed for the work that earns the season. Built to perform, built to last. Check out. First Light's new fieldwear gear at firstlight.

Welcome to This Country Life. I'm your host Brent Reeves. From Coon Hunting to Trotlining and just general country living, I want you to stay a while as I share my stories and country skills that will help you beat the system. This Country Life is proudly presented as part of Meat Eaters Podcast Network, bringing you the best outdoor podcast the Airways have to offer. All right, friends, pull you up a chair or drop that tailgate. I think I've got a thing or two to teach you.

Welcome to Meat Eaters, This Country Life podcast with me, Brent Reeves. Some of you may know me from my shenanigans on the bear grease render with my buddy Clay Newcomb, but most of you are probably saying, who is this cat and why should I be listening to him? Well, I'm going to tell you. Because I know stuff about living in the country and on this podcast, I'm going to tell you the stories you need to hear and teach you the country skills that help you beat the system. Folks that know me are saying,

Brent, you've been a police officer for over 30 years. What do you mean beat the system? Maybe non-conformity is a better way to approach it. Miss Roberts, my 11th grade English teacher, called me a walking example of a non-conformist. I'm not talking about dodging the draft, not having good manners or cheating on your taxes. I'm talking about that good old country common sense

that goes against all what I call corporate thinking. I like doing my own thing that that's the best results for everyone. This show could be a weekly focus of one sad story after another relating to my job. After all, folks don't call 911 to spread good news. It's a daily grind of seeing even the best people at their worst times day after day. But we ain't going to do that. We're going to focus on the good days and the lessons learned in everyday country life,

and I'll throw a police story in there too when it's appropriate. After this introductory episode where I tell you who I am and a little about myself, I'm going to start the rest of them by telling y'all what topic of the week is, what you can expect to learn before it's over, and then hit you with a story to get you good and settled, and then we're going to jump in with both feet about a country skill everyone should know. Hunting, fishing, and just general country living is what we're going to be talking about. If it can be done in rural America, it's fair game, on the list,

and the lessons learned can usually be applied everywhere. Here we go. I grew up on a small farm in southeast Arkansas, and my whole world hinged on my next adventure in the outdoors. I love to hunt anything and everything. I ran a trapline before catching the bus during the winter from age 12 until I graduated high school. We rode horses and hunted squirrels with dogs that they'd also bay hogs.

As a matter of fact, we hunted just about everything. with dogs other than turkeys. Mountain curves, walkers, pointers, and Labradors were what we used most for hunting squirrels, coons, quails, ducks, deer, and coyotes. Also, there wasn't a bluegill brim, bass, or catfish safe that swam anywhere near the tepid waters of Cleveland County. My family's heritage and legacy in that part of Arkansas dates back to when it became a state, and hunting, fishing, and farming wasn't just a way of life. It was the only way of life. The Saline River, that most holy stretch of water that runs from north to south through the heart of Cleveland County, remains to this day the lifeblood of my family's past and the focus of our sporting future.

The boat ramp that we frequented most is named the Lloyd Wilton Buddy Reeves Saline River Access by the Arkansas Game of Fish Commission in honor of my father. a never-ending tribute to him and my family's love for that spot on Mother Earth. My ancestors depended on the fishing game that lived in and along this Washington River tributary, and I was fully convinced as a child that we owned it and had since the first trickle of water found its way through those woods. My first memories are there amongst my family and those river bottoms. There were two seasons in my mind, hunting and fishing. Neither one involved school. I didn't really mind school. I just didn't have time for it. There were traps to be set and run, fish to be caught, and creeks to be explored.

Everything that I considered fun and sitting in a schoolhouse wasn't one of them. Which reminds me of a story, and that's pretty well how these weekly visits are going to go. I'm going to start talking about something that will remind me of something else, and I'm going to tell you about it, and then get back to the main subject I started with. Now, I promise it ain't going to be confusing. The whole thing ain't going to last but about 20 minutes, so just relax and hang on. The story I'm reminded of happened when I was in the sixth grade. The friends that I'd see and play with was the only reason I would get on the bus to go every day.

That and my mama would give me a whoopin if I didn't. But on this particular day, I had a plan. An unnamed friend of mine and I had noticed every day when we got to school, me getting off the bus and him getting out of his mom's car because he lived in town, that the potlatch train that traveled from one side of town to the other hauling woodchips from the sawmill to the steam powerhouse and bunks of lumber to the dry kills, passed by the school and the tracks were only a short distance from the front door. Every morning was the same.

Get off the bus, stand in front of the school, aggravate girls, the bell would ring, all the youngans and the duty teacher would go inside, and the potlatch train would roll by at a blister and pace a puppy could keep up with. From the front door to the railroad track was less than 40 yards. In addition, the train would come back about 15 minutes before the bell rang to go home every day. These facts had not gone unnoticed by myself or my associate. I don't know how many days we planned it, but it was several. everything had to be perfect.

The two main things that had to happen was the duty teacher needed to go in before we did and the train had to be right on time. It was a Wednesday the third morning before it all came together. Now this wasn't our first foray into fighting the system so the regular duty teacher was adamant that us two go in before she did

amongst all that cackling heard of fifth and sixth graders. But on Wednesday, we had a lot of school. substitute and apparently she didn't get the memo. Operation C-you-Later chumps was a go! It was perfect in every way. I saw the sub when I got off the bus. My buddy was already there grinning like a baked possum. We knew that freedom was only one more step away and as the bell rang that old familiar

sound of that squeaking, rumbling train echoed around the corner of the schoolhouse. It was go time. We lagged behind the teacher who'd gone in amongst a large group of kids and slipped around the corner and waved at the engineer as he drove past. We hopped on the last box car and rode it to the depot that was conveniently in the dead center of town, a block off Main Street, right beside the YMCA Little League field and a short walk from my buddy's house. We went to his house, crawled in a window, and tried to watch TV. But back then, there was only three channels, and every one of them had some kind of substance. soap opera playing. So we went down to the town branch, and there wasn't enough water running in it to float a stick. No snakes to catch, no frog eggs to chunk at one another, so we decided we'd just go

eat. Now my partner had some money, and he sprung for our dinner, and that's what we call the new meal, and we edit at the Wayne's Cafe on the square in downtown Warren, Arkansas. We shot a couple games of pool and pinball in the back of the building while the old men that were regular smoked cigarettes and solved the world's problems. They were oblivious to our presence. Coincidentally, next door was the bank where my mama was busy working and assuming I was in the school. We decided to leave as we walked out the front door. I poked all the money I had left in the cigarette machine and skipped out the door 50 cents poor and a pack of Lucky Strikes Richer. We walked in broad daylight down the sidewalk in front of God and everybody in a town where

everyone knew everyone, and not one soul said a word to us or told our parents they'd seen us in town when we were supposed to be in school. We made it back to the depot, climbed up in an open-top box car, and waited for the train to told us back across town to the schoolhouse. We were sitting on tons of pine chips about the size of a half dollar, smoking lucky strikes like they wasn't going to make them anymore, when the train jerked and convinced us take us back across town. We rode along looking at the sites over the top of that box car like we were riding on the city of New Orleans instead of the Warren and Saline River Railroad. When we got back across town, we climbed down the ladder on the opposite side of the school, bailed off the train at the

exact spot we got on it that morning, waited while the train rolled on by and hid in the bushes till the bell rang. When it did, we walked across the tracks to the school and blended into the stampede of children that poured out of that building like it was on fire. He got in the car rider line and I walked up on the bus like my name was on the title. It was absolutely the most foolproof plan I'd ever devise even up till now. My pals on the school bus immediately recognized my achievement after not seeing me all day and gave me the proper respect that afforded by not saying a word about it. We could have been caught at any turn, but for reasons unknown to either of us, we weren't. We never got caught. No one would know about it if I hadn't just fessed up to it. Two young lads,

not quite 12 years old, had conspired to beat the system, and we did. They both would grow up and be involved in law enforcement, me on the badge toad in the end, and him on the other. I think about it sometimes, and I wonder how it come to him growing up and violating the law and me making a living out of enforcing it. I don't have an answer. All I know for sure is if it had to be one of us going rogue, I'm glad it was him. On Blood Trails, the stories don't end when the hunt is over. They just get darker. I've seen something in the road.

I instantly thought it was a sleeping bag and there was a full of blood. Oh my God, he doesn't have a hit. Blood Trails is a true crime podcast born in the outdoors, where the terrain is unforgiving, the evidence is scarce, and the truth gets buried under blood. And lush and silence. Indications were he should be right there, but he wasn't. This season, we're going deeper. From cold case files to whispered suspicions, from remote mountains to frozen backwards.

Each story begins in the wilderness and ends in darkness. Because out here, there are no witnesses, no cameras, just fragments and the people left behind trying to piece them back together. He's not an honest person. He's incapable of being honest. Somebody somewhere knows something. I'm Jordan Sillers. Season 2 of Blood Trails premieres April 16th. Follow now on Apple, IHeart, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts.

All right. I've been a police officer in the state of Arkansas since 1991. I've worked everything from patrol, SWAT, undercover narcotics, burglaries, homicides, you name it. I've done it. I've served with some fine folks, some real heroes. and I think I've seen just about every kind of person there is, the good ones, the bad ones, and all those in between. I've been in a few tight spots when I didn't know if I was going to make it back home,

which reminds me of a perilous story that has absolutely nothing to do with law enforcement, but peril is peril. There ain't no difference to the dead man at being dead at the hands of some outlaw or a dangerous thunderstorm in the middle of the Arkansas River. I spent countless hours with my older brother, Tim, chasing animals, none so much as waterfowl. To catch these beautiful creatures, one must implore the use of many different types of equipment that usually includes waiters, firearms, boats, ATVs, and to be successful, you must be in the places ducks like to go, like

rivers, lakes, reservoirs, etc. All of these items, and the places you use them have one thing in common. They are all capable of killing you if you use them the wrong way. or if you don't respect them. I've come close to migrating to that great duck blind in the sky on more than one occasion. This is one particular one that comes to mine. It was open and day in the late 80s. Tim and I were sitting under the Pendleton Bridge, which crosses the mighty Arkansas River well before daylight trying to wait on a thunderstorm to go by.

Our boat was ready to launch. Our gear placed in its appropriate spot decoy sacked up and loaded in the boat, and each of us anxious to get to the morning's hunt and get the duck season started. My black lab, Ann, was also anticipating. And she's just walking back and forth under that bridge looking at me like saying, you know, come on, let's go.

The Arkansas River has claimed many lives, and Tim and I have been on it before when storms blew in, and it's not safe to be navigating the river when Mother Nature is letting off a little steam. We impatiently waited in about 45 minutes before sun-up, The rain stopped, the clouds broke apart, and we launched the boat for the 15-minute ride upriver to our spot.

We made our way to the place that we picked out, relieved that the weather had improved and looked forward to a good hunt. Now, when we got there, we quickly set up the decoys, finished preparing for the hunt just as the sun started to brighten the horizon. I can recall a few ducks flying that morning. I think we only killed like a green winged till or two before they absolutely just stopped flying. line. The storm that morning had moved in from the southwest, dropped an enormous amount of rain, blew the rest of the leaves off the trees, and left nearly as fast as it had approached. Unbeknownst to us, the storm we like to refer to now as Hurricane Muscat was just warming up and getting ready to put on a big show. The second storm came with twice the ferocity of the first.

It rolled right over the top of us. We quickly load the boat with our gear, the dog and headed for the boat ramp. As we tried to make our way down river, the wind was blowing right in our face and against the current building, two and three foot waves that washed over the front of the boat, soaking everything that was dry and filling our boat like a watered trawl. I knew we'd never make it to the boat ramp, so I turned the boat toward a small sandbar and headed there as fast as I could. I ran the boat up on the sand, and Tim and Ann and I sprinted to a small depression that held about three inches of water. Muskrats had tunneled into one end of the pothole and the river had broken through when the water level was higher and allowed it to drain exposing the pothole like it was

a shallow soup bowl. We hunkered down near the down current end of the pothole and putting our backs to the bank attempted to lie as flat as we could. The wind was blowing so hard that it was raining sideways and the lightning that came with it was purple, frequent, and buddy it was way too close. Lightning was striking the sandbar and we could feel the concussions of thunder and that was the only thing that drowned out the noise of the wind and the rain. I was scared. Tim looked up the bank of the pothole and saw a muskrat den that had partially washed out below the rim and offered a little more protection from the storm. The washout was about three feet wide and the top of the bank hung over the opening like a little cave.

Now on a normal day, a small child wouldn't have had enough room to sit in there and play. On this day, me and Tim didn't have any problem getting in there and still had room to include the dog. The storm got so bad that I started worrying about the river washing the boat away. Had that happened, we would have literally been up the creek without a paddle or a boat from which to paddle it. I told Tim that I was going to check on the boat which was like less than 100 yards from where, our shelter and across the sandbar, but you couldn't see it because of how hard it was raining. I took off of the boat and Anne took off with me. The wind blew her sideways and then it blew her off her feet as she tried to stay at my hill.

So I went back to the muskrat den and told her to stay with Tim. I found the boat and it was completely swamped and going nowhere. The weight of the water had welded it to the sandbar. I ran fast as I could back to Tim and Ann and staying as low as I could while. lightning was hitting all around me and promising to live my life in a better fashion if I could just live to see another day. Crawling back into that foot and a half space made me realize that fear and love of life are ample motivators when it comes to accomplishing a goal. The water level in that pothole was about three inches of when we first crawled in when we got out of it, it arisened over two feet. This storm only lasted about 40 minutes, but as fast as it started, just like the other one, it ended.

The rain stopped, the wind died down, and the clouds began to clear. We emptied our boat, made it back to the ramp and headed to Star City, Arkansas. That was the closest place we knew of that had a washeteria. You might call it a laundromat, but whatever you call it, it was our only hope to get our clothes dried so we could hunt that afternoon. I told Tim we'd disrobe and the laundromat, put our waiters on, and wait for our clothes to dry. 30 minutes later we slid to a stop in front of the washiterian. The windows were fogged over from the cold outside and the warm inside.

We were freezing and when we walked in the heat from those jars felt so good on my skin that I came out of those waiters and commenced to peeling off layer after layer of wet clothes and Tim was busy doing the same. We were two rows of washing machines away from the front door we'd just walked in. We got down to our union suits about the same time. know the red ones with the flaps in the back. These were the only garment standing between us and nudity. But since no one else was there and no one could see through the windows, we both just hunkered down behind a row of wash machines that was going to completely hide us and everything

you're not supposed to scratch in public and started unbuttoning our thermals. It was at this time that one of the three ladies who were all sitting in a row and unnoticed beside the door we just walked in said, boys, are y'all going to charge us anything for this? If I'd have had anywhere to go, that would have been my cue to get gone. Tim looked at me bug-eyed and squeaked out, no man, and they started laughing. They turned their heads, held up some newspapers, and continued to laugh while we slipped back into our waiters and crammed all our clothes in the biggest dryer in there, we had absolutely not seen them in our rush to get in there to get warm and dry. Now normally you go home after a start like that, but we didn't. It was opening day and we beat

the system. First of all, by living, then getting dry and only changing our location, not our plans to go hunting. Of course, if we'd had some extra clothes with us, I wouldn't he be telling this story now. That's a couple examples of who I am. You'll be learning more about me and my life experiences as we go along. First and foremost, I'm a husband, a father, and a grandfather, and those are the best jobs I've ever been blessed to have. I'm also an outdoor videographer, writer that's been fortunate enough to travel to some amazing places to capture on film some incredible hunts. Helping people and having fun, that's what I like to do, and that's what I'm going to continue to do. That's what this whole podcast is about,

and if we can't do both every week, I bet we can do. one or the other. My dad told me when I was a little boy that there's no place you'll ever be that you can't have fun and if the place you are ain't fun, then you make it fun. I ain't ever forgot that and that's how I try to live my life. So if you like hearing stories and want to learn a country skill or two that could impress your friends, maybe raise your credit score and help you beat the system, I expect to see you here next week. Bring a friend an extra set of clothes you might need them. This is Brent Reeves, signing all.

Y'all be careful. On Blood Trails, the stories don't end when the hunt is over. They just get darker. I've seen something in the road. I instantly thought it was a sleeping bed. And there was a full of blood. Oh, my God, he doesn't have a hit. Blood Trails is a true crime podcast born in the outdoors.

Where the terrain is unforgiving, the evidence is scarce, and the truth gets buried underbrush. under brush and silence. Indications were he should be right there, but he wasn't. This season, we're going deeper, from cold case files to whispered suspicions, from remote mountains to frozen backwards. Each story begins in the wilderness and ends in darkness. Because out here, there are no witnesses, no cameras, just fragments and the people left behind trying to piece them back together.

He's not an honest person. He's incapable of the being. on us. Somebody somewhere knows something. I'm Jordan Sillers. Season 2 of Blood Trails premieres April 16th. Follow now on Apple, Iheart, YouTube, or wherever you get your

podcasts.