Bear Grease - Ep. 117: THIS COUNTRY LIFE - The Power of 'Hello'

Episode Date: June 9, 2023

This week, our buddy Brent is offering you one of his secrets to making life long friends -- saying hi to strangers. In a world of social media and text messages, there's still a lot of power left in a greeting. You never know who you're saying hi to, or who they might become to you later.  Connect with Brent and MeatEater MeatEater on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and Youtube Shop Bear Grease MerchSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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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 got a thing or two to teach you.

The power of hello. I've said it before and I'll say it again, sharing the burden of a problem with a friend lightens your load, just like sharing a joy magnifies it. Friends can come from the most unexpected places, and the best ones, man, sometimes they seem like to be honest, a goodness, divine intervention.

This week I want to talk to you about some friends I've made just stumbling through life out amongst nature, looking for something to catch and eat, or just by being neighborly and just saying hello. It can literally open doors. And the story I'm fixing to tell you is a prime example. 65 years ago, my Aunt Norma Faye married a fellow by the name of Tully McCoy. Uncle Tully was born in 1934 and grew up in Pike County, Kentucky,

which is located on the Kentucky and West Virginia State Line. separated only by the tug fork of the Big Sandy River. Does any of that sound familiar? Well, it ought to. That's where all the feuding took place between them and the Hatfields. Uncle Tully's father, Jim McCoy, was nine years old when that feud ended. He remembered it well, but Uncle Tully said he never talked about it. I'm happy to say that I talked to my Uncle Tully this morning.

I was getting the details about one of my favorite stories I've ever heard. heard him tell. And it all started with a hello. In the late 50s, Uncle Tully found himself married to my Aunt Norma and living in Little Rock selling insurance door to door. Now folks didn't make any appointments back then. They'd just drive up, knock on the door, and make their sales pitch. On this day, he was outside of town, visiting with folks in the rural areas, and drove up to a house that had no car in the driveway. But he could tell that the front door was open and on the screen door was closed. Now, that wasn't uncommon back in that time for a family to have only one vehicle.

Not seeing a car at the house didn't necessarily mean that there wasn't anybody at home. It probably meant that the man of the house was gone to work, and his wife was there taking care of the home. He knocked on the door and said, hello, and heard nothing. He tried again. Hello? He heard a voice in the back of the house say, hello. Uncle Tully said, hello.

The voice answered him, come in. So he opened the screen door and stepped inside the living room. He said, my name's Tully McCoy, and the voice said, Hello, but no one came out to meet him. He said he was just standing in the living room looking around for the person that kept talking to him. So he said, what's your name? And the voice answered back, Jim Hardy, Jim Hardy, Jim Hardy.

My uncle said he didn't know what was going on, but something just didn't seem right. He said, I'm Tully McCoy, and I'm selling insurance. Would you be interested in? He said immediately the voice cut him off saying, Jim Hardy, four o'clock. Jim Hardy, four o'clock. My uncle said he looked at his watch and thought, well, it ain't nowhere near four o'clock.

Then he heard a car pulling up outside and watched from inside the house as the family that obviously lived there got out of their car and started walking up on the porch and inside the house, just looking at him. My uncle said he didn't know what to do, but he knew he was standing someplace,

he ought not to have, and regardless of what Jim Hardy was saying, he wasn't supposed to be there. As the man of the house walked in, my uncle said he couldn't explain fast enough how he came to be standing in that man's living room when that fellow started laughing and said, someone told you to come in, didn't they? My uncle said, yes, sir, Jim Hardy, but he won't come out where I can see him. The man was doubling over and laughing and grabbed my uncle by the arm and walked him into another room where a big parrot was in a cage saying, Jim Hardy, four o'clock, Jim Hardy, four o'clock. Jim Hardy was a character on a cowboy TV show called Tales of Wells Fargo

that ran from 1957 to 1962, and you guessed it, it came on at four o'clock. Now, the end of this story would have been a whole lot better if I could have said, and the man bought a whole bunch of insurance. But he didn't. But if the parrot hadn't said hello, my uncle would have never had the opportunity to make his pitch. All that we can ask for are the opportunities, and the parrot gave him one. The rest, well, that's all up to us. And that's just how that happened.

All right, I was talking to my brother this morning, and I told him about what I was going to be talking about this week, and told him, you know how we used to know all our neighbors and just about. every direction. Now that really didn't encompass a whole lot of folks because if you drew a mile circle from the house on the farm that we grew up on, you wouldn't have had enough folks to field a football team. But we knew them all. You draw that circle a half a mile from where I live now, and you'd have close to as many folks that were in the town where I went to school. We've lived in this house and this neighborhood for 12 years, and in that time I've known four different families, three of which represent folks that bought and sold the same house.

I know there's been folks who've lived and died within my immediate area that I ain't never met, and I'm ashamed to admit that. How many good folks have I missed making friends with by not making an effort? There's a man that walks daily in our neighborhood getting his exercise and toting a sack to pick up trash. I've seen him in the folks' yards snatching up the ever-present Walmart and dollar general bags that travel around the landscape like redneck tumbleweeds. I happened to be outside one day, and he came walking by, and I spoke to him, after years of just giving him a friendly smile or a nod as he walked by.

He stopped, and we visited for an hour about everything you could imagine. And when he left, he was toting some frozen bear steaks in a jar of bear grease. A week or so later, he dropped off some homemade bread and some Greek to Ziki sauce he learned how to make when he was stationed in Greece in the Air Force. Good night nurse, it was good. All of that was made possible by just saying hello. Those two syllables with the correct voice inflection are just like a master key that could unlock a whole new world of possibilities.

In this world, it's dominated by social media flooded with some of the most anti-social behavior, I think it's time we redirected some effort into socializing face-to-face instead of keyboard to keyboard. There are a few detractors to in-person conversations. One I can think of is the type of person you ask what time it is, and they proceed to give you the history on how the watch was made. Then you got the type that has to get right up on you when they're telling you a story, and their breath is kicking your old factories like Bruce Lee with his legs set on autopilot. Those folks, they're good for a text.

Y'all don't get me wrong. I'm not kicking social media down the road because I use it in my job. I've also met people through social media that have become like family, and if it hadn't been for it, our past might not have ever crossed. Who knows? I can't say for certain that those relationships 100% did happen because of social media. We just need to balance it more. And really, my idea of a correct balance would be heavy on the social and less on the media. I'd rather talk to someone and text them.

A text thread is like a baseball game. It's got no time limit and could theoretically go on forever. A phone call. That's just one. Adios, my friend, from being over. And I keep going back to the old school social media of men holding court in cafes and feed stores over cups of coffee. The same thing was the fashion when I'd had to go with my grandma to the beauty parlor

and sit and listen to them jawing about all the old men that were at the cafe and the feed stores. They were talking about all the old ladies at the beauty parlor. family and friend gatherings are irreplaceable. Folks were more respectful to one another back in the day when saying something ugly in arms reach of somebody can make you nose bleed, and they may not have respected you,

but at least they were a little more careful. I'm as bad as anybody these days. You see more than one person sitting together and nine times out of ten, they're all staring at your phone. My wife and I sit in the living room watching TV and our phones sending funny things, things back and forth and never say in the world. How in the world did we get here? And where are we

going? It's a double-edged sword, but it's more than probable that I wouldn't be here now talking to you if it were for social media. I saw a post on a hunting form about a guy I had never heard of, auction off hunts in Arkansas to promote an organization that I'd never heard of, and hunting an animal in Arkansas I had never seen in the wild. That was my old buddy Clay. and his Arkansas Black Bear Association. I contacted him, thinking it would be a good promotion for his calls, and good experience for me being a new outdoor videographer and who wouldn't want to see a bear in the woods.

After talking on the phone a couple of times, it only took him a year to take the bait. Our first hunt together was in the swelter and heat wave in southeast Oklahoma. We became friends, and now he's like my little sister. I'm just kidding. He's like my big sister. Stop it, Brent. Really, he and his whole family are my family.

Not only me, but my family too. Now, I know that ain't some kind of anomaly. That's how folks become friends. They meet, enjoy each other's company, and decide to keep spending the time together. It's just the medium of how those encounters initiate that's different these days. I've got numerous friends that I've met through hunting and fishing,

which I think is the base for any relationship. You have to share a common interest, and once that's established, then you learn how that person, person sees the common denominator that brought you together. If you're willing to see their version of your interest, you might learn that their perspective is better than yours. You just never know.

Because of that initial contact of an offer to help and seeking help in return from back in 2012, let's fast forward an incredible journey filled with focused, hard work, determination, and adventure to April of 2023. Clay Newcomb and I were sitting in Bozeman, Montana in the Meat Eater Studio, fixing to record a podcast with Steve Ronella and all the other hosts of all the Meat Eater podcast. It was a pretty surreal moment, and I looked at my friend sitting across the table from me, and I said, this is a long way from that old bear bait in Oklahoma, ain't it, Claybone? It sure was. On blood trails, the stories don't end when the hunt is over. They just get darker.

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 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 being honest. Somebody somewhere knows something. I'm Jordan Sillers. Season two of Blood Trails premieres April 16th. Follow now on Apple, iHeart, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. The last thing I want to tell you truly demonstrates the power of a chance meeting, and it happened six years ago. I made the decision after 51 trips around the sun that I was a fly fisherman.

It was as conscious a decision as I've ever made. Growing up on a farm in South Arkansas and catching a trout on a fly rod with a hand-tied fly fly seemed foreign and far away. I was intrigued and that fire smolded for years. Outdoor magazines and books were my obsession. And from big game hunting in North America and Africa to fly fishing out west, I dreamt of one day doing these things that only read about. Now at 51, and not knowing a soul that fly fished, I was going to make that a reality. I just didn't know how.

Now, I fished with a fly rod my whole life. The basic concept of how to use one was taught to me at an early age. It was my father's weapon of choice for catching brim where we lived. And he could roll cast a hook cricket into the nearest of spots between cypress knees and limbs and pull out a bluegill after bluegill. He was a dang Jedi with a fly rod, and I tried to be just like him. Bluegill were one thing. But catching a trout with a fly rod, man, that was a whole other creature.

My occupation kept me in the southern half of Arkansas until I accepted the position and Little Rock and made my home a few miles away and nearly halfway across the state from where I grew up. Less than an hour north was the Little Red River. It's a tailwater stream out of Greer's Ferry Lake, where the Fish and Wildlife Service have managed a trout hatchery beginning coincidentally in 1966. The same year I saw the light of day. Here they raise and release rainbow and book trout into public waters to be enjoyed by everyone. an amazing resource with boundless opportunities of which I had never taken advantage of. That was fixing to change. One day, like a bolt of lightning from a cloudless sky, I announced to Alexis that, unbeknownst to her,

she'd married a fly fisherman and that he'd been trapped inside my body this whole time. I don't remember her looking surprise or even looking up from what she was doing. But I do remember her calmly asking, if you got enough room for him with all those other idiots in there, I'd just let that go. I was mission-focused and operating at full speed. I knew not one soul that fly fish for trout, so I did what we all do when we want to know something and don't have anyone to ask. I got on the internet.

How to fish for trout with a fly rod got me 16,800,000 answers in less than half a second. I don't know that I didn't know that I didn't. watch them all. I spent hours and hours watching them. I ordered books. I bent the ears of men who worked at a local fly shop in Little Rock trying to absorb everything I could to do it by myself all before I ever left my house to go fishing. A week into my new found purpose and life, I bought a new fly rod, a few flies, and some waiters. I had a fly rod at home, but that one I'd bought many years ago, and the last person I'd used it with was the man that had taught me to fish in the first place, and now he was gone, and had been for quite a few years.

It had hung there in the garage beside the last one he owned, and it was a reminder of a million memories with him. Man, it was just hard to fish with that one. It made me miss my dad to the point that I didn't even brim fish for quite a while after he died. The next day I planned to drive to Little Rock with the new one, tie on a fly that the fly shop man had sold me, and bring this all full circle.

New rod, new hobby. Old dream, how hard could it be? There was one vehicle in the parking lot when I got there. No crowds meant less pressure on the fish, and less likely I'd be pulling someone's ear off while I beat the area into submission with my new fly rod. There was one guy standing beside a small point fishing in a narrow part of the river below the dam.

I wasn't sure of the proper etiquette when approaching a fisherman standing midstream, so I quickly calculated the amount of flyline he had stretched out before him and tried to add a little cushion to that distance behind him, and I walked past him downstream. After all, I didn't want him tearing one of my ears off either. He never turned around, and I waited out into the Little Red River

for the first time, 60 or more yards below him, and watched him catch a fish. Whoa. Fly fishing is easy. This is going to be fun. My first cast landed somewhere in the vicinity of where I was aiming, but most importantly, that fly was in the river, and I was fishing. The current pooled my line downstreamed ever so slowly, switching it back and forth as the different flows pulled and pushed my fly through that cold water.

A fish rose up river to feed on a bug and I saw that guy catch another fish. Man, I was excited. The fish were biting and this other guy and I were the only two folks around. My day advanced like this. Cast? Watch the lion float by waiting for a bite. See that guy catch a fish? Change flies.

see that guy catch a fish cast again with no results and this went on for an hour after a while he said hey won't you come up here with me there's room up here and they're stacked in here pretty good he caught another fish while he was telling me that

well going back to my reason of not wanting to be a bother I said man I'm good thanks though and not only did this dude catch fish like an otter he was also a gentleman I hated him immediately I made cast after cast without a bite. All the while that guy seemed to catch one every other cast or so. I changed flies.

He caught a fish. While I manufactured a knot in my line, false casting like I was in a sword fight with the invisible man, that joker caught a fish. I dropped my sunglasses in the river. I washed them sink like a fallen leaf just out of reach and into the frigid depths of the water. He caught a fish. Oh yeah, fly fishing. Oh, it's easy.

Catching fish while fly fishing? That was something of a different sword, at least for me. I needed my dad to tell me how to do this, and even if I could have talked to him, he never fly fished either. Mercifully, the warning blew with the dam, and that means they're fixing to turn some water loose, and we had to get off the river and to higher ground quick and in a hurry. The river can go from waist deep in hardly any current at all

to ten feet and running faster than grass goes, through a goose in short order. But I just went on my first fly fishing trip, and while I had my high and in handed to me by the trout gods and that guy fishing upstream giving me lessons, I was still inspired to do it. I thought about it a lot that first few hours I stood in that cold water, watching drift after drift in the same with no fish, not even a bite.

But with no thoughts of disappointment, anger, or really even discouragement. I wanted to learn how to do what I'd watch that, that guy above me do all afternoon, and when I looked up, he was standing on the bank near the trail leading back to the parking lot, waiting on me. As I got closer, I could see this guy was a fly fisherman, not that I needed to get any closer to see that, because I'd spent the better part of the day watching him demonstrate that while trying not to let him catch me looking. But he knew, though, he knew like every home run hitter that ever lived knows that when you're in the zone and smashing fastballs to the parking lot, everybody's watching. It wasn't the crack of a bat that kept me looking up river that day. It was the zip of his fly line being pulled up out of the water

tight as a fiddle string over and over with a trout on the other end. I tell you, that cat was purpose-driven to catch every trout within his loop, and I'd argue that if he didn't, a joker came awfully close. When I got up to him, he stuck out his hand, and he said, howdy. My name's Terry. I shook his hand and fought the urge to salute him and raise his arm like he just won the fly-fishing championship of the civilized world, so I did what I always do. I said something stupid. Hi, Terry, my name's Brent, and you're a lot prettier than I thought you were.

Terry and I talked for 30 minutes, just like we were old friends. I didn't have to tell him that I didn't know what I was doing, but to make sure he knew, I said, Terry, I don't know what I'm doing. I just know I want to do it. And then he asked me, can you come back tomorrow? That was 2017. He taught me more than I could have ever learned on my own, how to read the water, how to match the hatch, how to tie flies, when to fish, where to fish,

patience, persistence, and above all, be a good steward and a protector of the resource. The same lessons I'd been taught before when I was a little boy by a man that I'd watch catch fish after fish, just like I'd watch Terry do the first day we met. A couple of years ago, my wife and I were on our way back from Texas, and after a long period of silence and just riding, I began to tell her how random I thought it was that Terry and I had met that day. Now, I could have gone anywhere.

I had never been fly fishing before, and there were closer places to my house and miles and miles of trout water in Arkansas on different rivers, but I went there to that spot where he was, and it was just the two of us. After a minute or two, she looked at me and said, you don't see it, do you? See what? The connection with you and Terry, it's your dad. It's got nothing to do with fly fishing, Brent, and all to do with him helping you. He wasn't teaching you how to fish. He was teaching you how to miss your dad and be happy by doing something that all three of you love to do. Catch fish with a fly rod, and there it was. Stair me right in the face.

I believe in my heart that my journey to that spot on the Little Red River started the day my father left this earth. And I got there exactly what I was supposed to, and it all started with Terry Garner's pillow. Oh yeah, he ain't from Arkansas. He just happened to be there fishing that day. She's a smart gal, that gal of mine. there's power and sometimes opportunity in saying hello, whether it's from a random fly fisherman or even a parrot. I really enjoyed this week's visit.

You can find me on the old Instagram at Brent underscore Reeves. Remember, Reeves is correctly spelled R-E-A-V-E-S. This is Brent Reeves, sign it off. 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 bag.

And there was a pool 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 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 being honest. Somebody somewhere knows something. I'm Jordan Sillers. Season two of Blood Trails premieres April 16th. Follow now on Apple, Iheart, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts.