Bear Grease - Ep. 159: THIS COUNTRY LIFE - Three Stories That Just Didn’t Fit

Episode Date: November 3, 2023

This week Brent’s holding court with three random stories he’s been wanting to share for quite some time. The only problem was they just didn’t fit any of his narratives. So, what does a storyteller do when confronted with adversity, they just tell a story. In this case it’s three stories. “Three Stories That Just Didn’t Fit” in 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.

Three stories that just didn't fit. This whole podcast is based on stories and experiences from my life, and they usually follow a theme or a common topic, but there's a few I've collected over the years that seem to just be in a category all their own. I've struggled on how to include them for quite a while, and it would be a stretch to build any relevant lesson or episode with any of these individually, so I thought, what better way to include them than to just let the stories speak for themselves. I think they're pretty good.

So that's what we're doing. Three stories this week, whose only common denominator is yours true. Gather around, kids. I'm going to tell you some stories. Hunter, Possums, and Church. Let's get to it. I hate rats. Hate is such a strong word.

and yet in the context of rats, it doesn't seem to really capture my overly strong aversion to rodents or anything that resembles them. Living in the country on a farm, you're going to see rats and mice. And that's something else that I never really understood. Why are there separate names for rats and mice? Isn't a mouse just a little rat? In this category of creepy things, size doesn't matter, in my opinion. A mouse is just a rat in training.

kind of like a minor league rat waiting to get his shot in the big leagues of creepiness. Now, my brothers and I used to wage war against rats on our farm. We had two chicken houses where my family raised 70,000 chickens for egg production. We owned our own egg processing business and my grandfather sold eggs wholesale to different stores in Arkansas. Tons of chicken feed is what attracts them, and the rats. caught the devil from us. We'd chase them in an old chicken house that now housed farm equipment. There was irrigation pipes in there and piles of tomato sticks that were kept in there

waiting for spring when we'd start planting and staking tomatoes in the fields. Now the rats would almost always make a run for the irrigation pipes that were stacked along the wall. That worked to our benefit. One of us would bang on the end of the pipe that the rat just entered and the other two would stand on the other end of the pipe. And that rat would poke his sinister little head out of the opposite end of the pipe, and one of the Reeves boys would strike him soundly about his cranium with a rat stick.

This was a great sport, and one that required some pretty good hand in eye coordination. It's not the easiest thing to do. Apparently, the rats took great exception to being rat sticked and would sometimes, after a near-miss, turn around in the pipe, and with tremendous speed and dexterity shoot out the other end at a blistering pace and escape. It was during one of these occasions that I think my loathing of rats developed. I was the little brother, and I rarely got to participate on the rat sticking the end of the pipe. I was always stuck in the position of banging on the pipe waiting for my brothers to give them a good smashing on the other end.

More than once, I remember one or both of my older brothers missing the rat with their sticks only to have the rat jump on me as it retreated from the pipe to safety. Gives me the shivers just now thinking about it. Possums are marsupials. I know this. Rats are rodents. I know this as well. I also know that possums closely resemble rodents.

In Brent's guide to wildlife, possums are known as really, big rats. I don't like them. My son Hunter, who was almost three when this all happened, and we were watching television one night and heard something on the back porch. Our lab had a habit of knocking over the garbage can where I kept her dog food, and she would absolutely gorge herself, eating until the food was gone or she exploded. I'm not sure what the holding capacity of a Labrador is, but I must say that a 65-pound dog with 10 pounds of dog food sitting in her belly is neither attractive nor safe for kids walking barefoot in the yard for several days. When I heard something on the back porch, I knew that Lab had gotten into the feet again.

I was rushing to catch her so I could scold her and maybe circumvent the Labrador landmines that would be accumulating in strategic places around the yard. Now, Hunter was right on my heels. He knew the plight of the Labrador landmines all too well, and was anxious for me to correct this bad behavior. I snatched the back door open and turn on the porch light and at the same time expecting to catch my retriever face first in the dog food. But much to my astonishment, a possum jumped from the can onto my leg, ran down across my foot, and made tracks for the backyard.

The contents of the profanity that fell from my lips at that moment would have made a sailor blush. To say the possum scared me, would be like saying Einstein was pretty good at math. I slammed the door ship and retrieved a pistol from the gun cabinet. Catching my nemesis at the edge of the yard, I sent him to really big rat heaven. Now, back in the house and still somewhat shaken from the whole experience, I made the statement, I hate possums. A quote I was to find out later that was not lost on select members of the household.

The following Sunday, we sat in church. In our small town, the local radio station would broadcast a church service from the local churches, alternating each week from church to church. This was our Sunday to be on the radio. And at the beginning of each Sunday service, the children were always asked to come down front, and brother Bill Leslie would sit with him on the floor in front of the pulpit and deliver a short message. During the message, it was not uncommon for the kids to just spontaneously tell things and to him and to the rest of the congregation about recent events that had occurred in their lives.

It was pretty entertaining. Hunter was no exception to this, and people anxiously awaited each Sunday for him to recite some folly that he had witnessed his father participated in. Brother Bill told me that Hunter probably did more to raise the attendance in church than he did. But on this Sunday, Hunter was sitting in Brother Bill's lap. He was so handsome, sitting there in his little suit looking like a little angel. The height of his head put his mouth in direct line with Brother Bill's lapel mic. This would prove to be my undoing.

Everything was going smoothly. Brother Bill had delivered his children's sermon, and all the children were attentive and quiet. Hunter looked like he might even be nearly falling asleep when all of a sudden, He sat straight up in Brother Bill's lap and said, Me and my daddy hate possums. The whole sanctuary roared with laughter. Brother Bill was fighting to regain his composure and laughing hysterically at the same time. It's a moment that I'll never forget.

I couldn't if I wanted to, for every little blue-haired old lady would remind me of it each Sunday for years to come. by the way we had a record attendance the following Sunday and that's just how that happened last spring Clay Newcomb and I collaborated with Jason Phelps at Phelps game calls and building each of our own favorite turkey diaphragms called prime cuts now I'm going to tell you I love mine because it's easy to use I'm not going to go I'm not going to win a turkey calling contest it's just not going to happen

but when I run this call I get the sounds that gobblers are looking for I have a great turkey hunting track record. If you go listen to real turkeys out in the woods, they're not going to win calling contests, right? That's who I listen to. I can make those sounds on my cut. I also hunt with Phelps's cut, and I hunt with Clay's cut because they're all three great cuts.

Check out prime cuts at Phelpsgamecalls.com. I think you'll be glad you did, and you'll find out that the Steve Rinella cut is an easy-to-use cut for beginning calls. who just want to start making good turkey noises and getting action. All right, this next story is entitled The Day My Friend Shot Jesus. Now, I've been blessed with friends, not the people you know and see at work or the ones you've known all your life, but I'm talking about real friends.

My grandpa used to say that a man can live a long life and have many acquaintances, but if he can go to his grave saying he had just one friend, he can say he was blessed. One of my good friends fancied being a policeman. He discovered this ambition after tolling at the local sawmill for several years and was hired by the city police department where I was working as a dispatcher at night and on the weekends while I occasionally attended college. We had been friends a long time. He was actually closer and age to my two older brothers.

brothers, but our families had known each other since before I was born, and he and I had developed a close friendship after I had graduated high school. Now, he is everything someone would want a friend. He's loyal, honest, has a wonderful sense of humor, and is my idea of what a father and a husband should be. I respect him, and his relationship with his family and his wife is a model for anyone to follow. Now, one day I stopped by his house to visit before he went back to work on the evening

and shift at the police department. I walked up to the front door, and I found it open, and I could see him sitting in a chair in his living room. He was in full uniform staring at his pistol that he held in his hand, and he was alone in the house. I knew his children were the babysitter, and his wife was at work. But he had a strange look on his face, and I immediately sensed something was wrong.

Hey, bud, I said, and I opened up the glass door trying not to start him, He said, come on in. He never looked up from that weapon. I'd never seen him like this. I was very concerned. I didn't know what to do or what to say. You okay? I'm going to hell, he said.

He never looked up. I couldn't believe what I just heard. My mind was racing what to do next. You're what? I asked it as calmly as I could, and he just said in the same low monotone, voice again, I'm going to hell. I thought he lost his mind.

I wish I had asked a question from outside the door before I came inside, because if he had gone around the bin, at least I would have had somewhere to run on the outside of the house. Inside, with what I thought now to be a crazy man, I felt that I was pretty well in line to go somewhere with the hospital being my first choice and the funeral home being the last. but he sat there in a chair and he not moving, not blinking, and just staring at his pistol. I called his name. I said, put that gun up and tell me what you're talking about. All of a sudden it was like he was awake.

He placed his revolver and his holster and looked up and he looked at me right in the eyes and he said, I shot Jesus. Well, I just looked at him and I said, Jesus Christ, I wanted to make exactly sure who we were talking about. He said, yes. And he said it not like a small child. This had gone from bad to worse. I could see the evening news with his and my picture on it. Anchorman would say, Brent got killed today by his buddy, a raven lunatic who also busted a cap in Jesus just before ending it all. Now, my situational awareness, is at an all-time high right now. I was tuned into every sound, every breath, every movement that he made. I heard an old clock slowly ticking from the mantel as if announcing the

countdown to my own demise. The silence was definite and the tension so thick, everything seemed to be in slow motion. I could feel my heart racing and my mind leaped from one sin to another as I lived over and over all the bad things I had done and not made amends for. I was going to die in my friend's living room. He was going to kill me, and I've only lived 18 years. I wanted my mama. I mustered up all my strength, and I said, well, did you kill him? He said, no, I didn't kill him. Do you think I'm crazy? I say, yes, I do think you're crazy. Now, tell me what's going on. I don't understand any of this. He said, follow me, and he got up, and he started walking toward the back of the house.

At this point, I thought about running out the front door and calling the chief of police, but I followed the confessed killer of the son of God to his bedroom where he pointed to a picture his wife had hanging on the wall beside their bed. In the picture stood Jesus, walking on a cloud, with a 357 magnum hole right through the center of his chest, the smell of gunpowder still hanging ominously in the air. I was practicing my quick draw I thought my gun wasn't loaded and bang I shot Jesus

and now I'm going to hell I fell on the floor laughing I was relieved that he hadn't gone crazy and that he would more than likely not take my life that day dude you ain't going to hell but it's going to be some when your wife sees that picture

he didn't last long as a policeman It just ain't for everybody. He went back to the work at the sawmill a few months later. I ask him about this from time to time when I see him, but I always make sure he's unarmed when I do. Fall River, Kansas. I was reminded of this last story when a picture popped up on my Facebook memories the other day. It remains one of my favorite moments from my travels around this great nation of ours.

It also reminded me that you, you can find things, good things, if you look just a little harder than the effort it takes to scroll on your phone. There's good everywhere, and it's not hard to find. Six years ago, last week, I was filming a hunt near Fall River, Kansas. Fall River is in the middle of nowhere. There's nothing there. It was like a western movie set. Businesses faced each other down 70 yards of main street and at the end of the street there was nothing nothing on either side past it that was it there was nothing else or so i thought but this was fall river kansas it was way after dark when we pulled into town to find some type of festival with the street

blocked off by crowd of people lawn chairs and picnic tables they were laughing talking and children and were running and playing. A bam was playing from the sidewalk. A few children, and one older couple was dancing to Luke and Bock, Texas, as my friend and I asked a kid walking beside the street where we could find something to eat. He pointed and said the fire station has barbecue. Well, we just pulled off the road and made our way along the sidewalk, smiling and nodding in return to the greetings that we received from everyone who turned to watch us

as we walked toward the fire trucks. The man we spoke to, he said, man, I'm sorry. We're not serving anymore. We're out of food. I thanked him and started to walk away when he yelled for Dan. Now, Dan approached us and the man explained that we were hungry. We introduced ourselves, explained that we were from Arkansas, had been hunting, and that we were about to die starvation.

Well, Dan said to follow him, and we did. Man, that turned out to be the best thing that we did all day. He opened up a huge cooking trailer and was yelling over the music for people to do this and get that and to warm up food that had already been packed away and put away to feed his friends from Arkansas. We said, no, man, we don't want you to go any trouble, but Dan wasn't going to hear anything of it. And neither were the folks that were working at a feverish pace preparing our food, all the while laughing and talking and asking us about where we were from and about our families back on. home. Dan told us that we had stumbled upon the 51st annual Free Fall River Barbecue. An event held the third week in September and sponsored by the local merchants and farmers and ranchers and one or two corporations. It was free for anyone and everyone from the communities

for miles around were invited. Fall River boasted a population of around 160 folks, according to Dan. There were easily twice that number there, including the two deer hunters from Arkansas, whose lives Dan had saved by stoking the fire back up on his grill. He said four merchants remained where there once was over 20. He said, and they can't really make a living. He said, what they give because they appreciate what a little business they get,

and they want to give back to Fall River. Well, I looked around at the people who were there, and there were mostly old folks and very young. The obvious missing demographic were the folks in their early 20s to late 40s, the ones that had to stay on the farm or to leave to make a living. It appeared that a lot of them had left, and it kind of made me a little sad. I knew that I was looking at more than a festival, though. This was a gathering of families, whether by blood, friendship, lifestyle, community,

or the common bond and love of days gone by that are now more of an exception rather than the rule. It was one big family, and they had invited me and my friend to join them as members. Dan and the good people of Fall River fed my appetite with some of the best food I have ever eaten, and my soul with a hope that maybe things aren't as bad as they're made out to be. If I could find something as incredible as this by accident,

what could I find if I really tried? We thank Dan and his wife and all the people that stopped their celebration to go back to work to feed us. We were tired, we were running on very little sleep, and we still had several miles ago before we could rest. We were anxious to get back to camp. Dan said, oh, you can't leave yet. Why not? He said, you'll miss the fireworks. Well, I'll tell you, I wouldn't have missed them for all.

the deer in Kansas. Well, there it is, an episode of Misfit stories that I just couldn't figure out how to tell any other way than to just dump them all out in the middle of the floor and let you all wait around in them and see what you thought. I hope you enjoyed them. I sure enjoyed telling them. They're the stories that I've told folks for years because I like to hear them too. I thank you so much for listening. Let us know what you think. Be kind to one another. 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 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.