Bear Grease - Ep. 157: THIS COUNTRY LIFE - Hogs, Cows, and Elephants

Episode Date: October 27, 2023

In this episode, Brent talks about the eclectic chores and jobs he had as a kid growing up in rural southern Arkansas.  Buckle up! We're hearing stories of Brent's childhood on this week's episode of MeatEater's "This Country Life" podcast. Connect with Brent and MeatEater MeatEater on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and Youtube Shop Bear Grease Merch https://gootf.com/See 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've got a thing or two to teach you.

hogs, cows, and elephants. Hogs, cows, and elephants. Now, what in the world could all of that have in common with me outside of describing how I eat, what I eat, and how big I'll be if I don't cut back on the other two? But that's not what we're talking about. We're talking about chores and the jobs I had as a kid. And trust me, all that's going to make sense by the end of this episode. It's a pretty eclectic list looking back at it now, and I'm going to tell you all.

about it. But first, I'm going to tell you a story. Now, obviously, I grew up in the country, and it's that foundation on which this entire struggle is based, and there were jobs I had that my friends that lived in town didn't. The jobs and chores weren't foreign to them. They were raised in the same culture I was, and many of their parents had grown up on a farm and dealt with the same responsibilities that I had. They just didn't have to do them. As a result, I got to learn to drive early. The first thing I ever drove was my dad's company truck. It was a standard shift forward pickup.

It was sky blue and I would eventually have one of my own a few years down the road. I talked about it in episode 101 of this country life, country vehicles. Anyway, I knew how to drive and it came in handy on the farm when you had to move something from one spot to another and my dad needed another hand to help. When tractor driving time came, I was already checked out on a much more complicated piece of machinery. The tractor just became second nature. The only differences were what implements I was using. Sometimes we would take off for the river or the lake,

and both of which were accessible by county and timber company gravel roads. I only had to drive a short distance on Arkansas State Highway 189. But guess what? It was gravel too. The whole world was gravel. as far as I knew. The two main state highways that ran through where we lived were paved, but the log trucks had done such a number on them that there weren't much smoother than a gravel road.

But my dad taught me how to pull a trailer and how to back one up. By the time I was nine, I could do it as good as anybody. My only issue was seeing over the hood of the truck. I drove him around all night when we were running his hounds chasing coyotes, and sometimes we needed to go to a local. to quick, you know, to cut the dogs off or catch them before they crossed the road, so I had to drive faster. Driving on gravel can be tricky.

Your brakes at speed are oftentimes not your best friend, especially on loose gravel. I'd take in the truck here and there around the farm and down the road to a neighbor's place to get something for dad, and sometimes, if the situation allowed that I was alone, I might cut a few ditos in the road or in a field if you. given the opportunity. Sling and gravel and cutting a donut were rare opportunities to showcase my driving skills, and even though I was never in a place where my friends could see me demonstrate my prowess as a stunt driver, they had been briefed on it by me on numerous occasions.

I don't think they believe me because they said we don't believe you. So one day, as I stepped off the school bus and walked the short distance down the gravel drive to the house, I had the best idea ever. No one was at home, and there set the farm truck, keys in the ignition. You know how long it takes a 10-year-old to make a bad decision? Well, I could make six in the time it took me to ask that without even trying. I'd show those clowns on the school bus that I could drive a truck, and I would do that by passing the bus less than a half a mile from where I had just stepped off of it. I jumped in the seat, fired that rascal up, and away I went,

torching the gravel in the driveway as I did a half donut to get out to the wet clay gravel road and catch the bus. Now, there's four bad decisions right there, and you don't have to pause to count them. I'll count them for you. Number one, decided to pass the school bus. Number two, took the truck without permission. Number three, did a half donut in the driveway. Number four, did not account for the muddy clay gravel road I had just entered with reckless abandon. The road made a 90-degree turn at the corner of our yard, and as the bus made that curve,

I was standing on the foot feed for all it would do. I had a rooster tail of sloppy orange clay and rocks flying up behind me, and when I hit the curve, I realized I was going too fast when I turned the road. the wheel and the truck kept moving forward toward the fence. Hmm. I took my foot off the gas and I smashed the brakes. That didn't work either. The only thing left was to mash the gas again and, to my surprise,

the tail end of that truck slung around and I turned into that curve and straight away like I knew what I was doing. Sitting on the front edge of the truck seat, staring at the back end of that school bus 150 yards in front of it. me. I knew right then I was going to be a legend. Tomorrow at school all the boys that witnessed it were going to be telling everyone how I passed a school bus like Richard Petty. The bus would be turning in less than 100 yards so if I was going to pass them and fulfill my destiny as an elementary school icon, I had to make up some ground pretty quickly. I pushed the pedal to the floor and almost immediately the tail end of that truck started to slide around.

I fixed this issue just a few seconds ago by turning into the slide and applying more gas, so I did it again. You can violate the laws of man and get away with them, without a scratch. But you will never violate the laws of physics without consequences and repercussions. That one-lane gravel road that I lived on had one dry spot on it under an overhanging oak tree that stood beside a small creek and a one-lane, bridge that was right in front of. And while I was fish-tailing down the road, I had already calculated the rate of back and forth, and if I didn't change anything, I would zip right across that bridge when my truck straightened out, right behind the bus, and I'd blow the yellow off of it when I went by.

I still firmly believe I would have made it, had it not been for that one dry spot. I don't know how fast I was going. It seemed like 90. It was probably more like 35. I'd been busy the last little bit and didn't have time to really notice my speed until that back tire grabbed the dry spot right at the edge of the wooden bridge and shot me off the side of it and entered that shallow creek on the passenger side of the truck. I watched as the bus turned on the next road where I had planned to overtake them and it disappeared from view.

I wonder why they didn't stop. I wasn't standing five yards behind one. I went off that bridge, and then I realized how filthy and muddy the bus windows were from driving down the road. They couldn't have seen me if I hadn't wrecked. I could have passed them on winged peccasus, and they wouldn't have noticed me.

I looked across the pasture, and I saw them one more time, as I crawled out of the driver's side door window, watching the front tire spinning like a top. top. Then they were gone, and I was all alone with our truck on its side in the ditch. Well, this is not good, but the story, it better be. My mind raced as to what the official version would be as I ran back toward the house. I heard a hog squeal. We had hogs in a pen across the road from where we lived, and they were notorious for getting out. That's it. The hogs got out and I had to go catch them.

So I fired up the truck and I took off after them and I ran off the bridge. I called my mom at the bank where she worked in town and told her what happened. My version of it anyway. Oh, my goodness, my baby. Are you okay? Yes, ma'am. I went ahead and put the hogs up before I called you. That was a rookie mistake.

I should have went and turned them all out because my brother Tim would later comment in front of my mama, you was chasing the hogs down the road? Yep. The hogs went down the road. Yes. The hogs went down this road right here where we're standing. Yes, Tim. Well, where's their tracks?

My mama slowly turned her head to look at me, and one of her eyebrows raised up so high, it disappeared into her Auburn hair. I knew then that she was going to kill me. and it was all because my brother was playing Sherlock Holmes instead of minding his own business. We called the wrecker and he got the truck out. A broken, right mirror, and the dent in the door was the only things wrong with the truck. They made them different back then. I got a whooping and grounded, but I still had to do my chores, which took me outside,

and I could easily hide a fishing pole in the barn and slipped down to the pond and fish when I wanted to. and I had a great story to tell my boys on the bus the next day. I told them how I'd nearly caught the bus, but instead he drove the truck off the bridge like Steve McQueen. It was cool, and they should have seen it. They didn't believe me. And that's just how about it happened. 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. was a sleeping bed, then 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 backwoods. 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. On the farm there was always work to be done, and some kind of mowing was a big part of it. We had three acres of yard to mow and a riding mower that worked some of the time. If it was down, it was push mowing time, and that wasn't fun. Besides my duties at home that paid me in room and bored, I also got other jobs growing up. I worked at the local cell barn pushing cows, hogs, and goats, whatever came through the sale.

The sale was every Saturday, and there was a crew of us that was expected to be there by 7 a.m. to start checking in cattle. Ranchers would roll in with those gooseneck trailers and we'd unload them, tag them with numbers and places that distinguish them from just lone cows or cows and calves that would be sold as pairs. We also got bulls, and occasionally they'd get pretty rank and try to smash you into oblivion. There were seven or eight of us, all kids. Most of the weren't old enough to drive when we started working there. We made $5 an hour, and three or four of us would spend the night there after unloading and loading livestock from seven in the morning to way past suppertime. We'd stay the night to load the semi-trucks with cattle that were headed out of state.

After everyone was gone, someone would bring us something to eat, and we'd entertain ourselves playing, wrestling, which usually ended up being a boxing match, and anything else we could think of to occupy our time waiting on the 18-wheeler's to get there. And it never failed. We were tired and had been working 12 hours or so, and we'd all get to the office and sit down and wait,

and eventually we'd all fall asleep. Then after midnight, some truck driver would slip in and wake the guy that was closest to the door up with a cattle prod. If you've never been with a woman, woken up with electricity, coursing through your britches, let me tell you, your situational awareness goes immediately from zero to ten. We had some wild cows that would try to hurt you and some big bulls that came through that they wouldn't release to come off the scales down to where we were pinning them until everyone was watching and had an escape route planned. It was an orchestration

of calamity, and other than getting kicked to run up a fence, cattle weren't really a problem. them. It was the hogs. Folks would trap or catch you wild hogs with dogs and bring them to the sail. And buddy, let me tell you, they were wild. Folks would think that the bigger the wild hog is, the more dangerous he is, but that's not necessarily the way it works. They all have the ability to hurt you, but the big ones, I never had a problem with. They'd bow up and come at you, and I could dodge them pretty easily

or jump up on a fence until we could get them where we wanted them to go, sometimes by using ourselves as bait like a bullfighter to get them going in the right direction. But it was the small hogs, the 40 to 60 pounds that were so quick that they'd have you cut before you knew what happened. I watched a childhood friend of mine get cut by one at the sale bar on one Saturday. There was one fellow in particular that always bought the wild hogs for his packing store, and he'd enlist one of us for a little extra cash to help him cut their tusk off before he left with him. Now, it wasn't for the weak of heart, and Mr. Bobby would have been the last guy I would have went to for a toothache because his methods were straight out of medieval times.

Catch the hog with a loop on his top jaw, pull him up next to the fence, that was our job. And then Mr. Bobby would take a pair of channel-locked pliers and break the tusks off with one smooth move. The hogs did not like this, not even a little bit. Now, we all knew that one wrong move and they could hurt you and they could hurt you bad. So there was lots of squealing and squalling and grunting when the tusk pulling time came at the end of the sale. And that was just from us because someone had to go help Mr. Bobby. And on this day, it was my buddy Jeff. I went with him and Mr. Bobby to locate his hogs in the small pens and

and help if I could if they needed it. Really, I was wanting the extra tip for Mr. Bobby because he was known to give those to all the boys that helped him. Anyway, I crawled up on the fence, opened the gate for Jeff, and Mr. Bobby and they walked in. Now, that wild hog wasn't much bigger than a chote. He was about as medium size as a black Labrador, and he'd backed himself into a corner of that pen

and had been there ever since we'd pinned him following the, sail. He looked like he was hypnotized. His hams were pushed up against that hog wire so tight that his behind looked like bubble wrap. And there he stood, motionless, all afternoon. So when tooth-pulling time came around, we figured this joker was going to be easy. Come to find out, that hog had been saving his strength and planning his escape the whole time. His plan was simple. At the first opportunity, he was going to cut everyone between him and freedom with those two-inch tusk of his that you could barely even see sticking out of his lower jaw. I had just gotten the gate closed when I saw that hog launch himself out of that corner that he'd been in all day. He ran by Jeff and headbutted the gate trying to get out.

Now, I laughed. Mr. Bobby climbed the fence and laughed, and Jeff hopped up on the fence too. but Jeff wasn't laughing. He was looking down at his thigh that was exposed through a 10-inch cut in his leave eyes that looked like someone had cut it open with a razor. Mr. Bobby said, son, did he get you? Jeff said, I don't think so.

And then I saw blood pouring out of the bottom of Jeff's breeches. He moved that open cut of his jeans over a little and we could see the long gash in Jeff's thigh. that hawk had cut him with me watching it and neither me or Jeff thought he was hurt. They're quick. I don't remember how many stitches Jeff got, but it was a hassle of them. A week or so later, Mr. Bobby rolled into the cell barn with an ice chest full of sausage, pork chops, and bacon. And he gave it all to Jeff.

Now, I've established beyond measure that I grew up in rural Santa rural South Arkansas. So how in the world could I ever have a job associated with elephants? It was my mama. She no longer worked at the bank and was now working for the Chamber of Commerce and Warren. Anything and everything that happened from the annual Pink Tomato Festival, which is in June of every year and has been since Jesus was in junior high, to the county fair was run in some form through her office. Committee meetings, organizational meetings, whatever, she was in the know.

So when the circus came to town, they gave my mama a handful of tickets, two of which she gave to me. I was a junior in high school, and I tricked a gal from those gilded halls of education into going with me to the circus. This circus wasn't Barnum and Bailey, not by a long shot.

But they had clowns, jugglers, acrobats, lions, and elephants. But that's about where the similarities ended. They were there for about three days. They'd bought some hay from local farmers to put on the floor of the lion cages and to feed the elephants. And then they left town. They saddled up and hit the road for the next little country town

that wanted to see a circus, or a reasonable facsimile of one. And at the fairgrounds where all this had taken place, it was like they had never been there. Not a trace of them was found. No trash, no empty popcorn bags littered the ground, not even any popcorn. They were gone, except for the elephants.

Now, don't misunderstand me. They didn't leave the elephants. But they did leave what the elephants left. There had been three days of good Arkansas hay fed to those pack of germs, and they had taken full advantage of it, apparently. Where they had those rascals tied out, there was a mound of

elephant. Let me see. Droppings? Nope. That don't sound right. Elephant scat? Nope. Boulders. Yep, that's it. Elephant boulders. It's actually called dung. But there's a bug called a dung beetle

that rolls around droppings of some such, but I can promise you. That bug ain't rolling one of these around, not even in a wagon. They were there for three days, and elephants on average, on average, dropped 220 pounds a day of pooped groceries. That's 660 pounds in that little circus that couldn't afford a real big top, the one that the ringmaster suit looked like it had been his big brothers and his mama had made him wear it. That backyard afterthought of a circus had four elephants. That's a ton and a quarter of everything the chicken laid but the egg that had to be hauled off when the fairgrounds director walked into my mama's office,

asking who he could pay to clean it up. Well, guess who got the nod? He let me borrow a trailer, a scoop, and I went to work, shoveling and shoveling the remnants of what had been a beautiful, and serene Arkansas hay meta that had literally been turned into a bunch of well, you know.

As I shoveled my way through the mounds of boulders, I began to marvel at the size and consistency. And I had another thought. I should show these to my brother Tim. He'll think this is cool. Better yet, I should surprise him with one.

So was I shoveled and shoveled like graded as I went and I separated the good ones from those that lacked uniformity, and eventually, I found the perfect specimen of a specimen. So I did what any normal little brother would do. I took it to my grandma's house. They lived in town, and I said, Mama Sly, this is elephant poop. I need a box to put it in, and I want you to wrap it up like a present. I'm going to take it to Tim's work and leave it for him.

She stared at me unmoved and said, I think I got a cake box that'll fit in. What kind of wrapping paper should be used? Oh, man, I missed my mama's line. She wrapped that soccer ball size example of elephant processed Arkansas hay into something to behold. And I dropped it off at Tim's work before he got there, so he'd be alone when he opened it. He said he immediately knew what it was and,

obviously who it was from when he cut the wrapping paper away and pulled off the lid. Well, that's what he gets. That's what he gets for asking about those hog tracks the day I was going to pass the school bus. Mind your own business, Timmy, and lead the stunt driving to us professionals. All right, that's a mark for me. Thank you for listening. Be good to one another and help folks when you came.

This is Brent Reeves, signing off. y'all be careful first lights fieldware 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 in 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 fieldware gear at first light.com.