Bear Grease - Ep. 205: This Country Life - A Tale of a Few Books

Episode Date: April 12, 2024

This week Brent's sharing a story of reading a good article when he should've been reading the Good Book. He also talks about a few other books that've had a positive influence on his life. Just when you thought it was time to leave the library, he shares information about a couple of his favorite poets. All that and more on MeatEater's This Country Life podcast.  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've got a thing or two to teach you.

A tale of a few books. I've been influenced by different folks in my life, places I've been, things I've seen and experienced, but there's been a lot of books that I've read over the years that have done the same. We're going to talk about a few of them that I've enjoyed reading multiple times and a couple that might surprise you. But first, I'm going to tell you a story. The alcove at the back of the church sanctuary was where the cool kids sat on Sunday morning.

mostly high school kids and their friends and girlfriends took up the last few pews, and if there was room in the first couple of rows, that allowed us younger kids to sit. You had to stay on alert, however, because thumping ears was a big thing back then, and elementary school boys with short hair and ears poking out like wing nuts offered a tempting target for the upperclassmen. And I didn't understand why,

until I became one of them, and then it was clear. Some ears just begged for it, and what better place to do it than in the House of Our Lord, where the victim had to remain silent or face repercussions for interrupting the service, at school the following day for being a snitch, and the perpetrator could seek forgiveness for his transgressions. It was mighty convenient for all involved. On this Sunday there were several older kids absent. The main ear thumper was one of.

them. I was glad, too. I didn't know where he was. I hoped prison, but doubted I'd be that lucky. All I knew was, on this Sunday, I had a plan that I'd formulated in haste as we got out of the car for church and the thumper being gone was only going to help me with my mission. I was 12. Wearing a coat and tie and in the sleeve of my suit coat, the latest issue of field and stream was wrapped around my forearm, hidden from everyone. except me in Jesus. I was reading it when I left the house that morning, all the way to town from the farm, and just before we pulled into the parking lot, I decided to take it with me. While everyone else was listening to the sermon, I'd be reading Gene Hill talking about quail hunting.

We still had quail back then in southeast Arkansas, and quail were mentioned in the Bible. That's how I justified it in my head that reading an outdoor magazine in church wasn't a bad thing. Twice, the good Lord saved the Israelites by giving them a big mess of quail to eat. And the fishing articles? Well, those fishers of men that were the apostles, four of them started out as fishers of fish. A 12-year-old had justified reading filled the stream in church with a lukewarm knowledge of the Bible. One of my friends sat beside me and his eyes bugged out of his head when I slipped that glossy periodical from the sleeve like a magician. I smiled at him knowing that during the next 45 minutes, he'd be sitting still wishing he had his own magazine,

and I'd be quail hunting and fly fishing for the duration of the service. He poked me with his elbow and asked me to let him see the magazine. I whispered to him to kick rocks, but if he could read fast enough, he could read with me, but I wasn't going to read it to him or wait for him to catch up. When I got ready to turn the page, the page would be turned. I gave him one last smug look before I turned my attention back to my magazine. He looked a little sire, too bad. My magazine?

My rules. Now, this went on for a little while, me reading, him trying to read and me flipping the pages knowing he hadn't finished the paragraph. I thought it was funny. The holder of the sneaked-in magazine holds more than just a magazine. He holds all the power as well, and I wielded my power, selfishness. with no regard for my friend who desperately tried to keep up the pace. I'll admit some of the articles I didn't finish reading before turning the page just to aggravate him.

I'd catch him out of the corner of my eye, his eyes feverishly following along and writing mid-sentence. I turned the page just to see the frustration build and hear him excel a big puff of air. But absolute power corrupts absolutely. and after torturing him for 30 or more minutes, when I looked out of the corner of my eye, I saw my friend holding his Bible and watching the preacher, contently. I was trying to contain my laughter looking at him paying attention in church, like all the other kids we made fun of. Whatever, loser.

I looked back at my magazine that I kept low in my lap, just in time to see a shadow cast over the top of the page. And a pair of women's dress shoes appeared on the ornate carpet where my legs dangled above the floor. Those shoes looked like my mama's shoes. I was going to pay dearly for this. I looked over at my buddy, who would have seen her coming, but didn't say a word or warned me in any way.

He had the most innocent look on his face as my mama snatched that magazine away from me, laid it on the seat, and ushered me to the family pew about halfway between the alcove and the pulpit. As I scooted past my grandparents on my walk of shame to take my seat, seat, I looked back at my buddy who was smiling at me. My field and stream, open in his hands, barely visible above the back of the pew in front of him. He bowed his head to read my magazine. I took my seat, and I bowed mine to pray I'd live through this.

And that's just how that happened. Literature was my favorite subject in high school, along with girls, agri, forestry, girls again and football. In high school, if you took Agri, you had the option to join the FFA, the future farmers of America. To join, you had to go through a week of school-sponsored hazing

at the direction of the upperclassmen. It wasn't demeaning or dangerous, just to write a passage. During that week, the pledges were known as green hands, and for a week you had to wear a cardboard-painted green hand pinned to your shirt. A spiny pine cone adorned a haystress necklace that you wore around your neck, your shirts were worn inside out, and along with

the pockets of your blue jeans or your overalls, a myriad of silly requirements and meaningless tasks that Greenhands endured the week to be counted when Friday came as a full-fledged member. Now, everyone who wanted to participate did so, and no one complained. I loved it. We went on field trips and FFA-sponsored contests at in-state colleges, summer camp, and got to get out of school and out of town off the farm to see things and go places that at the time were a big deal, like the state fair rodeo and similar activities. But English class, especially literature and composition, man, that was my favorite. I lived agri class.

My life was the same as a FFA-sponsored field trip every day. The only added bonus to actually being in FFA was getting to witness it somewhere else. In fact, some of those FFA field trips when I was in school was at our farm. Like the time I raised catfish through a study sponsored by the Extension Service. I promise this episode is about literature, but let me tell you about this project first. The University of Arkansas System Cooperative Extension Service is a statewide network associated with the University of Arkansas Division of Agriculture. Their mission is to provide research-based information through non-formal education to help all Arkansas improve their economic well-being and their quality of life, whether it's ag or 4-H family,

consumer science, or community development, whatever. They're with the government, and they're here to help, but when they say it, they actually mean it. Now, Ms. Jean Frisbee was the Extension Agent Staff Chairman for Bradley, County in Warren, Arkansas, and she had held that position since God was a child and retired in 1995. Her specialty was Home Economics, and she'd greet me every morning on radio station KWRF when I stayed at my grandparents' house in town. I'd be sitting at the table eating breakfast, and here'd come Miss Jean with, good morning, Mr. and Mrs. Homemaker. It's time for your second cup of coffee.

Then she had expound on whatever her topic was for the day on her program. But the Extension Service was doing a fish farming study around commercial catfish farming. They supplied the material to build a floating cage similar in looks to a shark cage with styrofoam floats supporting a two-before-framed mesh enclosure that the fingernails-swem around in. Now, the county agent, Mr. Paul Cooper helped me build it. and I fed them according to a strict schedule. I made notations on a daily log,

and after a period of time, several months, if I remember correctly, another extension agent involved with the project came to the farm. My forester class came out for that trip, and we took samples from the enclosure, weighed and measured them, and that was it. Then all the fish were mine. I turned a lot of them loose in the pond, but kept some in a cage,

in any time for several months afterwards that we wanted to mess a catfish, I'd just go down and dip up another for supper, kind of like what Tim and I do now in the Arkansas River, except that project was a lot easier. Anyway, as many places and trips I took physically during school, in FFA or any other class that afforded me the opportunity to step on a bus and go somewhere, none compared to English class. In there, I traveled to any place I wanted to go and some I was told to go and I never left the school house.

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 seen. 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.

In the 11th grade in Miss Pat Hayworth's English class, we read the Red Badge of Courage, and I was immediately transported back in time to the darkness that was the war between the states, which fed and inspired a lifelong fascination of history in the battles that were fought near where I grew up. I've always been a reader. My maternal grandfather was accurately described as a voracious reader. He read everything. My brothers both read a ton and I was no different.

Still am. The impact of some of the books that I've read has had a profound effect on my life. They garnered and fed a passion for exploration and, adventure and help shape me into the man I am today. Robert Ruearks, the old man and the boy, is a prime example. It's about a boy in his grandpa's relationship hunting and fishing. The old man is the boy's teacher. And just like the boy in Rewark's book, I played that part in real life

with my dad playing the part of the old man as he teaches the boy how to hunt and fish and just general life lessons. He teaches him conservation, responsibility, and stewardship of the resource, all things I was taught at an early age. That book is profoundly good on several levels. It first ran as monthly articles in Field and Stream magazine and was compiled as a book afterwards in the late 1950s. I first read that book in high school.

The best part about reading a book so young is that when reading it now, I get to see that story from the old man's point of view. When I first read it, I only had one frame of reference and that was from the boy. Here's a couple quotes that have stuck with me over the years. Anytime a boy is ready to learn about guns is the time he's ready, no matter how young he is, and you can't start too young to learn to be careful. I've told stories on here about hunting by myself when I was in elementary school, you know, 10 or 11 years old. Like the time on a cloudy evening when I lost my horse after I dismounted

and ran on foot from tree to tree behind our squirrel dog, Prissy, as she followed a timber and squirrel that was doing its dead level best to avoid riding out in my saddlebags. Once I finally got him shot out of the tree, I realized that I didn't know which direction I'd been running and what way to walk out to get back to my horse before dark. I told Prissy to go find my horse and in short order she did just that, running slap out of sight in the opposite direction I thought I'd come from after circling tree after tree looking up trying to find that running squirrel. She barked about 100 yards away and when I got to her, she was standing on a stump beside my horse.

A large majority of the people who have lived a life far removed from my own that I've told that story to when I get to the end. end, they don't even remark that Prissy the squirrel dog could understand English. They want to talk about how a 10-year-old boy gets a 22 rifle and goes hunting by himself, which to me is the most insignificant part of that whole story. My age didn't have anything to do with it. I was taught from the beginning about gun safety. It was like learning to walk or tell time, I assure you, had I not been responsible enough to do it, my father wouldn't have allowed it.

Here's another quote from that book. A gentleman starts down at his boots and works up to his hat. A gentleman is first of all polite. A sportsman is a gentleman first, but a sportsman basically is a man who kills what he needs, whether it's fish, bird, or an animal, or what he wants for a special reason, but he never kills anything just to kill it. And he tries to preserve the very same thing that he kills a little from time to time. The books call this conservation. It's the same reason why we don't shoot that tame covea quail down to less than ten birds. Rewark references a gentleman in another

passage like this. A gentleman never talks down to nobody, or even to anybody that says anybody instead of nobody. A gentleman ain't greedy. A gentleman don't holler at anybody else's dogs. A gentleman pays his score as he goes. He don't take what he can't put back, and if he borrows, he borrows from banks. He never troubles his friends with his troubles.

Now, I get what he was saying in the last part about not troubling his friends with his troubles, but far be it from me to correct one of the greatest writers I admire, most, but I take the last line somewhat loosely. I want my friends to come to me first with an issue. If they're a true friend, I'm going to go to them. But Rewark talks about money, and here's something about money that I learned from my dad when I was young.

Kind of in the same theme of the old man and the boy, but I worked for a fellow once that made promises he didn't keep. He stole money that was meant for me through a handshake deal, not a contract, so I had no legal recourse, and we parted company. I stued on it for a long time, quite some time. Times were pretty lean then, and that money would have helped my young family. All I could see was that clown stealing food for my kids, not stealing money for me. Months later, I was at my dad's barn, putting up that mower after mowing one afternoon, and while I was making round after round cutting grass, I had had enough, and I'd had enough, and I

decided that when I finished the yard, I was going to drive to that man's house and get my money or give him some boxing lessons until I felt he'd received the amount equal to what he owed me. I was walking out to my truck when my dad drove up and he asked me where I was going. Told him I was going to so-and-so's house to get my money. He said, oh, he decided to make it right. I said, no, sir, I decided to make it right. He don't know I'm coming. My dad said, boy, you sit down.

We're going to talk a minute. And he asked me how much the man owed me, and I told him. He looked at me and said, that's the best money you ever spent. I looked at him like a calf looks at a new gate. I didn't get what he was saying. He said, I have no doubt that you can go to his house and give him the whoopin he deserves, but you're going to get in trouble. You're probably going to lose your job.

You ain't going to get any of the money he owes you. and he'll wind up getting some more out of you. And if all it cost is what he stole from you to find out what kind of person he is and how not to do business from now on, my son, that was money well invested. He was right. It was. I've spoken more than once on how Wilson Rawls's book, where the red fern grows, snatched me up out of the desk by the gallouses of my overalls in elementary school.

The fire of that atomic wedges parked is still burned. earning today just as bright as it did then. I'm recording this, and old Wayland, my tree in Walker Coonhound is laying in his favorite spot beside my desk. Now, that passion was ignited by the community in which I lived in the love I already possessed for hunting dogs. That book helped me focus a portion of it toward coon hunting, and here I am 46 years later, just as enamored with that practice, that book, its message, as I would.

was when I first read it. Here's a few of my favorite quotes from Wilson Raw's wonderful book. It's strange indeed how memories can lie dormant in a man's mind for so many years, yet those memories can be awakened and brought forth fresh and new, just by something you've seen or something you've heard, or the sight of an old familiar face. Now, I have to tell y'all, that is almost 100% how this person is. podcast comes to life each week.

As I'm stumbling on my way around on this planet, something will remind me of something else, maybe from yesterday, last week, or more than likely from years gone by that triggers a memory. My notebook and my pencil are always ready, and I learn the hard way that when one of those occurrence happens, I have to log it immediately. I'll pull over on the side of the road or get up out of bed

or just stop whatever I'm doing and write it. it down. Trusting myself to remember to make a note about it later has bit me in the behind more than once. Here's another quote from that book that's one sentence long, but it speaks volumes about its subject. Here it is. I've learned that a hunting dog smells like a dog, and a sleeping dog smells almost human. Now, I read that, and to me, it's looking at the same thing with two sets of eyes, seeing the totality of what you're looking at. I think a lot of that ability comes from stacking birthdays on top of one another. There's nothing more peaceful than a sleeping dog, and I'm looking at one right now.

That book is about a boy, but it's told from a narrator's perspective of looking back as an adult. And Mr. Raw's statement was more about how his heart saw his dogs when they were hunting than at rest. It described the bond he had with his dogs. Heck, it describes the bond I have with mine right now. I get emotional thinking about it. What better way to spend your time than with something that loves you unconditionally? You won't find that represented any more clearly than a four-legged family member that doubles as a good hunt dog.

Now, I can't say that I learned all that from reading where the red firm grows, but I can tell you, that book helped me understand and put it. a voice to what I was feeling. My favorite of all is this one. People have been trying to understand dogs ever since the beginning of time. One never knows what they'll do. You can read every day

where a dog saved the life of a drowning child or laid down his life for his master. Some people call this loyalty. I don't. I may be wrong, but I call it love. The deepest kind of love. It's a shame that people all over the world can't have the kind of love in their hearts, he said. There would be no wars, slaughter or murder, no greed or selfishness.

It would be the kind of world that God wants us to have. A wonderful world. Man, ain't that good? I sure think so. I hope you do too. I hope you think it's good enough to read those books yourself. And I didn't even get the surface. scratched on the books that I've read or the poetry that I've enjoyed so much. Yep, I said poetry.

Miss Mary Culp, my 12th grade English teacher, introduced me to a collection of poems by Robert Frost, a man whose work I enjoy to this day. There are others too, but none I've enjoyed more than another Robert. But this one's nickname was the Bard of the Yukon, and his given name is Robert W. Service. He was 84 when he died in 1958. He wrote volumes, but a poem that he wrote titled The Men That Don't Fit In stands out to me the boast. I had read and reread that poem for years, and on my second trip to Saskatchewan for Bear Hunt magazine

as a cameraman for my old buddy Claibault, I filmed him make a non-lethal shot on a bear, and it would be the only shot we got all week. that bear lived but i wasn't sure clay would it was a big investment for his magazine to come home empty-handed and we sat in silence on the bank of that lake a two-hour boat ride away from camping over two thousand miles from home clay was feeling defeated disappointed in himself and i'm sure wondering if what we were doing was what we were supposed to be doing now that poem came to mind as I looked for something to cheer my friend up.

I quoted the first stanza to him and I'll do it for you now. I looked at him and I said, there's a race of men that don't fit in, a race that can't stay still. So they break the hearts of Kithin' kin and they roam the world at will. They range the field and they rove the flood and they climbed a mountain's crest. Theirs is the curse of the gypsy blood and they don't know how to rest. I followed that up with

We were there because that was where we were supposed to be And we were doing the things that we were meant to do Whatever comes of it comes of it Nothing more Nothing less He gave me that old thanks pal fist bump But it was still a long ride home But looking around now

Six years later I'd say it worked out pretty good The turkeys in Mississippi for me were quite challenging to say the least. After finally hearing a couple and messing with one most of the morning of my hunt, me, Keith, and Jordan heard one of them get sent to glory less than 150 yards from where we sat. That shut our turkey down and put me in the highway headed home. Next stop, Missouri, and hopefully better love. I thank y'all so much for listening and good luck.

the turkey woods and the catfish water. I'm about to jump on them both for all four feet. Until next week, this is Brent Reeves. Signing off. Y'all be careful. Last spring, Clay Newcomb and I collaborated with Jason Phelps at Phelps game calls in 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 callers who just want to start making good turkey noises and getting action.