Bear Grease - Ep. 225: This Country Life - What’s So Good About Living in the Country?

Episode Date: June 21, 2024

The title of this episode was a question posed to Brent by his youngest daughter, Bailee. It was a fair question and one that took him a while to answer. His response may surprise you. You’ll also hear about his mind-reading abilities that peaked in Army basic training. Bet you didn’t see that coming on MeatEater’s This Country Life podcast. Connect with Brent and MeatEater MeatEater on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and Youtube Shop This Country Life Merch Shop Bear Grease MerchSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

First Light's 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 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 fieldwear gear at firstlight.com.

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.

What's so good about living in the country? Now, living in the country can mean different things to different people. To my city mouse wife, if you're 30 minutes away from a target store, you're in the country. To me, it's quite the opposite. And that's entirely too close to town. But is it really? I'm going to talk about what's so good about living in the country, and it might surprise you. But first, I'm going to tell you a story.

The only thing this story has in reference to living in the country is that the friend of mine it involves when we were children rode the same school bus I did. We both lived in the country. Here's the story. I reported to Fort Sill, Oklahoma for Army Basic Training on the 17th day of September, 1987. On the 18th day of September, I was seriously doubting my ability to make cognitive decisions for myself. All my thoughts leading up to that moment were sound, reasonable conclusions to the path I wanted to take in life. At least that's what I thought. Fortunately, for the next nine weeks, I wouldn't have to do anything for myself at all.

There was a drill sergeant at every turn waiting to tell me what to do. And I don't really know what all the hollering was about because I went everywhere they told me, when they told me, and how they told me. yet apparently I was always late. Hurry up, private, was a phrase I heard continuously by the people who were in complete control of my schedule. I was thinking, why are y'all hollering at me to come over where you are? Did you not just holler at me to go over yonder where I am? Now, my dad had warned me telling me from his own experiences that they were about to make me sit through some of the dumbest stuff on the planet, but to pay attention anyway and not do what he did when he went through it back in the 1960s.

He told me about sitting in a classroom for a class about how to conduct themselves in the chow hall. He said the instructor was talking about how to eat with a fork. Dad told me he didn't know about the rest of them folks in there since he just met them all, but he's been eating with a fork all his life. This looked like a good time to take a nap. but it wasn't. He said them folks don't cotton to nap, son. Pay attention when you told to.

So I did just what he told me. And on top of the regular training schedule that started way before breakfast and soldiers in training were assigned other duties, including picking up trash and toting stuff from one place to another and the all-familiar KP. Kitchen Patrol, Kitchen Police, whatever you want to call it, It was something every budding soldier had to do. It was hauling out trash or wiping off tables, mopping the floor,

keeping the big bags of sweet milk stocked in the milk dispenser. And that turns out was a pretty sweet gig. All you had to do was standing at parade rest by the dispenser and reload it with a big bag of milk when someone said, Private, there ain't no milk coming out. Well, easy enough, and it was better than mopping the kitchen or hauling out mounds of garbage bags of trash in the Oklahoma sun and heat. There were two milk dispensers positioned straight across from one another.

That way, twice as many soldiers could get their milk and get to a table and commence to eat when a drill sergeant said it was time to get it done, which was always rudely loud and urging folks to hurry up because they were already late. Now, that had become a redundant thing by this point, but it would follow us through the remainder of our training. Since there were two milk dispensers, there were two private standing at parade rest facing each other. For those that are wondering, parade rest is one step below standing at attention. Your arms are behind you and positioned in the small of your back, one hand resting over the other.

Your feet are 12 inches apart. Your head is motionless and facing forward. And I was looking at this fellow over there, and he was looking at me. me. Now, other than moving to change the big milk bags, that's how the morning went. We just stood there staring at each other for hours, while the whole battery of soldiers processed through eating breakfast. I don't know how long we've been standing there staring at one another, and it seemed like an eternity, but all of a sudden, I realized I knew that fellow. I confirmed it by his name tag. He'd been a childhood friend that I'd played with from kindergarten to

the second grade when we lived in Risen, Arkansas. We moved to the family farm outside of Warren some 25 miles away when school let out the summer of the second grade, and I hadn't seen him since. Not once since the age of eight had I seen my old pal Jeff. And yet 13 years later, here we stood, 10 feet apart in an army mess hall on the wind-swept plagues of Oklahoma. Now, opportunities such as these exist only in the dreams of people who wake up like I do in my own little playground, or having fun is Noomero Uno. I was more than a little excited because lately, having fun had become a real challenge.

The folks that owned the Chow Hall and the ones that had me on milk duty had seemed to that. But finally, breakfast had been served and we went about the chore of mopping and getting the mess hall squared away for noon chow. Now, Jeff didn't have a clue who I was, but I knew he'd remember me or I felt like he would when I eventually told him who I was. We'd been podding us back in the day. And now, we were the only two folks in the chow hall, mopping. Everyone else was in the kitchen and hauling out trash. We were side by side, and even though we weren't supposed to talk, we were close enough that we could whisper back and forth.

I started the conversation. Hey, man, where are you from? He said a small town in Arkansas, you ain't never heard of it. I said, well, don't tell me, I'm pretty good at guessing stuff. Well, not really guessing. I have a gift. They say I can read minds a little bit. He didn't say anything.

He just grunted. I said, you're from Arkansas. He said, yeah, I already told you that. I said, yeah, but you didn't tell me. Hold on. I'm thinking, I'm thinking. Well, is your school mascot, some kind of cat? He said, a wildcat.

Lots of schools have them. He wasn't impressed. And he was really concentrating on mopping that floor like the mess sergeant had threatened us with a fate worse than death if we didn't do it to his specifications. I said, well, let me see. Your town has less than 10,000 people in it. He said, I already told you it was a small town. I said, well, you didn't tell me, hold on. I'm getting a signal.

You didn't tell me it was rise in Arkansas. He looked over at me and his mouth wide open. He said, yeah, man, that's right. I said, hush, I'm getting another signal. We kept mopping. Your first name starts with a, with a J. It's James. No, Jeffrey.

Your name is Jeffrey, but you go by Jeff. He stopped mopping and was looking at me with his eyes, biggest saucers. I decided to go all in. I said, your kindergarten teacher's name was Ms. Miller. and your second grade teacher's name was Miss Davis. I thought he was fixing to faint. And then he looked at my name tag and he said, Brent?

I started laughing and he started laughing. He dropped his mop and we hugged and he said, man, you're the first friendly person I've seen since I got here. And we started talking and catching up and laughing like a couple of clowns, which is one of the nicer things the mess sergeant called us when he saw our reunion taking place. Then he made us do push-ups

until he got tired of watching. Unfortunately, the only time they aren't in a hurry for you to finish the task is when you're doing push-ups. And that's just how that 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 it was a sleeping bag and there was a full of blood. Oh my God, he doesn't have a hip. 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. Living in the country, what's so good about it? Well, that question was posed to me by Bailey. my 11-year-old daughter. In February this year, it wasn't a facetious question. Her mother, Alexis and I were riding down the road, and I was lost and thought about podcast ideas and asking them for suggestions.

Bailey immediately said, you're talking about living in the country, right? I do. Well, what's so great about living in the country? I was slightly insulted, and I said, well, lots of things, honey. She said, no, Daddy, that's what you tell the people. Tell them what's good about living in the country. in the country. And she proceeded to spit out an outline so fast I had to ask Alexis to take notes

for me on my phone. I'm an idiot. Lexus just rolled her eyes and looked out the window. She's seen me bested by intellectually superior persons for so many years now that it's no longer funny, more like it's kind of sad, especially when they're like 10. Anyway, I like the idea, but I knew that it needed to marinate until the time was right, even with Bailey reminding me of it two or three times a month. Daddy, when you're going to do my show? Well, okay, kid, here we go. People ask me, tell me about where you grew up.

And when I think of that, I immediately picture our farm where we lived in the view from our back porch. Sometimes I see myself in the third person standing there wearing a red cap with a Valmac logo on it. Thaimack was the company my dad worked for. Also, I'd had on a pair of faded overalls and a t-shirt, and that wardrobe combination has served me well over the years. At the time, I wasn't trying to make a statement. It was just what we all wore. I'm not trying to make a statement now, but my city mouse wife, who lives on the edge of fashionable clothing and would be beautiful in anything, used to say my overalls were making a statement. A statement that I'd just given up trying.

She didn't get the culture, and she didn't see the significance. I didn't see it either. I was just living my best life and wasn't concerned about much of anything. Then she started paying attention. She calls it the Reeves uniform now. Last September, it was hot. We were packing to travel and stay overnight in northwest Arkansas where I was going to be a judge at the World Championship Squirrel Cookoff.

Now, that's country, and I'll be back up there doing that job again this year on September the 7th. Y'all come see me, wear your overalls. Anyway, it was hot, and I knew I'd be standing around outside, checking out all the vendors and talking to the teams that were cooking and everything that was going on. And while I was packing, Alexis said, are you not wearing overalls? I said, well, it's going to be pretty warm. I thought about wearing shorts.

She said, you're going to get beat up if you do that. And she was probably right. I was greeted by a lot of folks wearing overalls. Most of them didn't live in the country. It was an identifier that like-minded folks were using to find their fellow compatriots and a sea of strangers. They were expecting me to be in them, and I'm glad I was. Now, good or bad, it's an impression given off by the wear.

I remember sporting a pair of overalls and waiting outside Bailey's classroom when she was in the second grade to eat lunch with her at school. The class across the hall started marching out, following their teacher like anx headed to a picnic. One little boy asked me as he walked by, are you a farmer? He identified my outfit as such and just asked the obvious question. I said, no, I'm a boxer and I punched him. Just kidding. I told him, I'm the boogeyman. and it sleeps under your bed.

I did not say that either. But I get the relationship of clothing with the mindset of a person even more now than before, and it's demonstrated to me every time I see someone wearing a bearer's hat or someone sees me wearing mine. We're immediately drawn to each other. We share a bond and have a common understanding of at least one thing. We both have an appreciation for stories, whether it's Clay's documentary style or whatever this is I'm doing.

Lots of times I'll even get pictures of people who have been spotted wearing bear grease hats and they send them to me. Just the other day, I started getting pictures of a guy on a TV show called Raced or Survive New Zealand, and he's sporting a bear grease hat. I hope he does well and doesn't embarrass the rest of us. So good luck, Bear Grease hat, man. Also, I don't want you to thank you the only guy from that part of the world who's got a bear grease bonnet strapped to his noggin.

Wade Pankhurst is an Instagram friend of mine and is bopping around down under hypnotizing water buffalo and charmed crocs in one of his own. And there are others. But now back to Bailey's suggestion, what's so good about living in the country? The easiest answer is everything. But that's my answer.

It's my answer because that's where I grew up and where I lived the majority of my life. I lived in the city once for, a little over a year and it seemed like an eternity. And I know I'm supposed to be expounding on what's so good about living in the country, but y'all just hear me out as I go down rabbit hole number 651. Here's an example. A week or so ago, I got a message from a guy in California.

Tyler Trull, who wrote and said he was 39 years old, born and raised in Central California, and had never hunted a day in his life and enjoyed this country. country life. Now, another guy sent me a message not long after I started this endeavor from the other side of the country, Ryan Monaghan, who lives in the middle of New York City and telling me that he's just crazy about hunting and fishing. And even another fellow whose name I can't recall sent me a message once talking about how much he identified with this country life. He was also a New Yorker, but this man had said he had never spent a minute hunting or fishing and hadn't done much of anything beyond the city limits of New York.

It was fascinating to me that he could be a fan of all the outdoor content, having never experienced it firsthand. It wasn't like my childhood obsession with hunting elk with a bow, even though I'd never seen an elk or owned a bow in my life at that point. I had hunted, and I knew the general dynamics of what to expect. It was actually beyond anything I would have dreamed of. but the basic concept was there. But this fellow had nothing to equate it to, or so I thought.

We texted back and forth for a while and him telling me how much he enjoyed the content and me thanking him, and eventually I asked him what it was he enjoyed. This was still early in my show, and I was still really trying to figure out what this show was about, what the heart of this show really is. I wanted it to appeal to anyone who could take the time to listen, not just the people who grew up like me, even though it was important to be genuine and identifiable to those folks, too, regardless of their zip code.

I also didn't want it to be another How to Hunt and Fish Show. We got way better folks that me employed here, me leader, that can teach circles around me as far as outdoor lessons go. So what was it that had this fellow tuning in every week to listen? to me. I wanted to know not for vain reasons, but so I could figure out exactly what it was I was doing right. Now, Mr. New York City man answered my question in one sentence.

He cracked the case and solved the mystery that I couldn't and I'm the guy that was churning it out every week. He said, identify with your show because when your dad was taking you hunting and fishing, mine was taking me to Yankee Stadium. him. And there it was. The answer and direction that I'd been looking for, the relationships we all share with the things and the people we care about, is the common thread regardless of the pursuit or the location. Living in the country doesn't have an address. It doesn't start and stop at the city limits.

To me, aside from the physical aspect of living further than you can chunk a rock and hit your nearest neighbor, living in the country is how you live. It's how you viewed the world and how you treat the folks in it. All things being equal for me, I prefer to be amongst the trees without the pollution of noise. I enjoy the woods at night and only my coonhound is company. And then when I'm there, with just him, I find myself wishing someone was there with me to enjoy the hunt.

Someone to share the experience, someone who values the same, things as me. A common like of something, wholesome and good. Something that can be shared with a hound in one other person in a seemingly endless expanse of quiet wilderness. Had I grown up differently, maybe it would be sharing an afternoon with one of my favorite people, plus 46,500 others in Yankee Stadium.

In reality, to answer to Bailey's question, what's so good about living in the country? it isn't being born and growing up living in the country like I did it's living in this country like the majority of us do in this country in spite of all the arguments and differences of opinions on which group is right and which group is wrong two folks from totally different circumstances and upbringing can find common ground and enjoy each other's thoughts and observations. And that's about as country as he gets.

I want you to do me a favor. I know there's all kinds of folks that listen to this country life who are from all walks of life and all different ages and taste and music. But humor me. And listen to Tom T. Hall's 1974 number one hit, Country Is. He says everything in two minutes and nine seconds that I tried to say here.

Listen to the message. It's good. It really is. Thank you so much for listening and allowing me to share my thoughts with you every week. Y'all keep those stories coming to my TCL story at the meat eater.com. And dad gum, how about those This Country Live t-shirts? My man Hunter Spencer did an incredible job designing those and I couldn't be more proud of how they turned out. They tell me they're selling fast and they're already putting in an order for more. So y'all hang in there and working on hats too. I can't thank y'all enough for supporting this country life

through the merchandise reviews and sharing our show with other folks that you think might enjoy. Until next week, this is Brent Reeves, signing 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 full of blood. Oh, my God. God, he doesn't have a head. 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.