Bear Grease - Ep. 285: This Country Life - Superstitions

Episode Date: January 3, 2025

It’s the New Year and if you didn’t have black eyed peas and turnip greens on January 1st, you blew a golden opportunity to set yourself up for success. That’s what some people claim anyway. Brent’s skipping those common superstitions all together and digging into his childhood for some you may not be as familiar with. From keeping relationships strong, to getting rid of spirits, to determining the only proper time to talk about your dreams, Brent’s covering it all on this week’s “This Country Life” podcast.  Subscribe to the MeatEater Podcast Network on YouTube Connect with Brent and MeatEater MeatEater on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, and Youtube Clips MeatEater Podcast Network on YouTube Shop This Country Life Merch 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 trot lining and just general country living, I want you to stay a while as I share my experiences and life lessons. This country life is presented by Case Knives on Meat Eat Eater's Podcast Network, bringing you the best outdoor podcasts that Airways have to offer. All right, friends, grab a chair or drop that tailgate. I've got some stories to share. Superstitions.

Crossing your fingers, looking for four-leaf clovers, and avoiding the number 13 are some common superstitions that nearly everyone knows about. I'm going to tell you about some of the ones I grew up around and maybe still practice to some degree. I'm going to tell you all about it, but first, I'm going to tell you a story. Somewhere around 1988, we were just driving down the road on the way to the woods one day. Mr. Leon was keeping the fire stoked on a sale of menthol cigarette and looking at a copy of an ownership map that we were using to locate some Georgia Pacific property lines we were going to move some loggers onto in a few weeks. I was a young man working for GP managing timber.

This was before I was old enough to be a police officer in Arkansas, and Mr. Leon Garlington was the crew boss. He was a veteran of World War II, having seen some brutal fight, in the South Pacific. I respected him, and he tolerated me. He hated everybody, and most everything made him mad. It all stemmed from the war, I'm sure, but someone said he was contrary before he ever left Arkansas

for the other side of the earth. Regardless, I looked up to him, and I put a lot of stock into what he said. I've told the story before about how Mr. Leon and I would drive out to work one way and come back to town in a different one. For those that haven't heard, I'll hit the high points for you. No idea how long we'd been working together, managing timber for GP. Me driving and him doing all the navigating, when after a million trips to and from the woods,

he adamantly refused to allow me, the guy that was driving, to take the quickest way home one afternoon because that was the way we had driven out that morning. Mr. Leon, I'm hot, I'm tired. We can cut this trip back to the office and a half if we'll just go down the highway like we came out this morning. No, we ain't going back that way. Why not? That's when he took a drag off that cigarette.

It slowly blew it out the open window of that air-conditionless truck and said, son, have you ever been ambushed? No, sir. Well, I have. We ain't going back the same way we came out. We never did, ever in all the years I worked with him. But this was another day and Mr. Leon was feeling pretty good that morning. He hadn't wished anybody to be shot with a wooden bullet so far that day.

That was one of his favorite aspersions to cast upon someone he didn't approve of. He ought to be shot with a wooden bullet was exactly how he'd phrase it. and it was normally addressed toward our co-workers whose work ethics he called into question on a regular basis. Even though he hadn't spoken to me yet, I was digging the vibe I was getting from him, and I took a chance on getting a wooden bullet wished in my direction. But anyway, I said, Mr. Leon, I got a dang hood owl sitting on a limb by my window every night. I guess it's a hood owl.

It's making some kind of spooky racket, but every time I go out to see it, with a light, it ain't there. It sounds like, ooh, who. Not to my surprise, he didn't ignore me. He had done that in the past,

a lot. How many nights has it been out there? I said, I don't know, maybe two or three, and it wakes me up in the middle of the night. Hmm.

What's it sound like again? I did it again. That ain't no hood out, son. That's a haint. Do what now? That's a haint. You got something spooking you. How many times have you gone up to an owl at night and had not fly off?

That's a hain't. And there ain't but one way to cure it. You've got to turn your shoes upside down under the edge of the bed when you lay down at night. I kept waiting for him to start laughing. But all he did was keep the fire burning on the end of that cigarette and never took his eyes off the map. He didn't do a lot of joking, and I'm ready to. admit Coon Hunter or not, I ain't a big fan of the dark. Not that I think there's spooks knocking about in it, but something was and someone I had

looked up to and put a lot of stock in what he said had just given me a cure for what was really starting to worry me. We didn't talk about it none the rest of the day, and I went to bed that night to silence. No racket at all. My work boots sitting by the door where I took them off every day when I came home. Sometime in the middle of the night, I woke up to that noise again. I didn't get out of bed. I knew I wasn't going to see anything if I went out there.

Never had before. I just laid there, waiting on that haint to get me, wishing I still thought it was just a hood owl, and then I'd put my shoes under the bed just like Mr. Leon had told me to do. Now, about the middle of the morning and it worked the next day, he asked me, Put them shoes under your bed last night? No, sir. Did the spook come back? Yes, sir.

He just shook his head, disappointedly, and fired up another menthol. He didn't mention anything about it the rest of the day. That night after supper and before cutting out the light, the last thing I did was turn my boots and every pair of shoes I owned upside down under the edge of the bed. I never heard that noise again, not once. I have no idea to this very day what it was, and I have never heard that sound again in any recordings of any species of owl that inhabits North America. I've looked, trying to replicate what I heard and identify what actually was.

I don't know. But the next day at work, I walked into the coffee room. Mr. Leon was sitting in his usual chair reading the newspaper. paper, stained white cup of coffee steaming beside the ashtray that was keeping that menthol ready for him. He looked up at me when I walked in and I hopped up on the edge of the counter where I normally sat, waiting on him just to give the sign it was time for us to head to the truck and go to work. Until that time, he ignored everything and every one. He just sat there and read the paper, oblivious to the rest of the world.

He picked up his cigarette and glanced up from the, the paper looking at me over his top of his glasses and he said, I'd you sleep last night. Now, it was such an unusual happening that everyone else stopped talking and turned to see if he'd actually initiated a conversation with someone. I smiled big at him, happy that he was even talking to me. He never talked to anybody up there and only talked to me once we left. But I looked at him, I said, I slept like a baby, Mr. Leon. He winked at me and he went back to his paper. 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 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 2 of Blood Trails premieres April 16th.

Follow now on Apple, Iheart, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. Superstitions. The world is full of them. Some of them are very well known. As the Pennsylvania paper mogul Michael Scott once said, I'm not superstitious. I am a little stitious. The same goes for yours. truly. Now, my wife and kids might have a different opinion about that as they take great joy and poking fun at me about my beliefs and habits. And I can't point to any reason or reference for it other than I was raised that way. Or better yet, exposed to it as a child. No one ever sat me down and said,

Brent, do this or don't do that, or you will die. Well, except for my maternal grandmother, Bula Sly. The same one that drugged me to the beauty parlor when misfortune befell me and I got caught in her possession while in town. Mom Sly told me, as I mentioned on here before, that if I drank milk and ate fish, I would die. Simple and quick to the point. It made a lasting impression on me. I remember it like it was this morning.

We sat down to eat a big mess of fish. She just fried up and she asked Brent, what do you want to drink? I want some sweet milk. I don't remember how old I was, but I was still in elementary school when she responded, and I quote, You can't have milking fish, it'll kill you. Ma'am, it'll kill you. Can't do that. I'll fix you some tea.

That wasn't going to end well. Before I go any further, let me say that my grandmother could sit on her behind, blindfolded, with her right arm tied behind her back, and out-cooked Julia, Charles, and Justin Wilson, and out-clean, Mr. Clean, and the tidy-bowl man, all at the same time. But everyone has a weakness. To Superman, it was kryptonite. To Achilles, it was his heel.

And to my mama's life, it was her sweet tea. I call it sweet tea only because that's what it's supposed to be. She didn't put sugar in it. She didn't like it. It wouldn't drink it, so I'm not sure she even knew what it was supposed to taste like. She was born in 1912 and raised on a farm seven and a half miles north of Warren, Arkansas, picking cotton, milking cows, and feeding chickens. You'd think with that resume she'd have been the queen of sweet tea.

But you'd be wrong. My mama like sweet tea, my dad like sweet tea, my grandfather, finest sly, her husband, like sweet tea, but bless his heart. He didn't get to drink it. Not good, sweet tea at least. Not when Mama Sly made it. She had a gray stoneware pitcher that had two blue stripes on it that she put the tea in when she made it.

It'd be sitting on the table when I sat down and saw it there. I knew I was in for some tough swallering ahead of me if I drank it. So I always opted for milk. Except on Friday nights when we always ate fish like any self-respecting southerner does. If we didn't fix it at home, we loaded it up and went out to eat it. But on the occasion to which I'm referring, I was sitting in my appointed chair on the east side of the table. The chair I always sat in when I stayed there. My grandfather was at the head on the south end, and directly across from me was my sainted mama sly.

Poured me up a glass of tea that was so stout you could have floated a steel wedge in it. It was so dark you could stand the ankle deep in it and not see your feet. I watched my papal dump enough lemon juice and sugar in it to make it somewhat palatable. I don't think he really liked it. I think he drank it because he loved my mama's line. I loved her too. So when I took a drink of it, I said, this tea don't taste like mammas. Pappal cut his eyes at me, and I don't know if he was thinking that this fifth-born grandson

had been sent here as his own personal Moses to deliver him from the bondage, the mama sly's tea, or if he thought that statement I'd just spontaneously uttered after choking down the most bitter solution this side of purified green persimmons had been more dangerous than mixing milk and fish. We never found out because my mama sly said rather sternly, while I'll fix you some water. Pepa all kept eating, and I didn't die. I looked it up, and the myth of milk and fish goes back a long way,

and at its origins it's believed to have caused skin problems. Somewhere along the way when it reached that little farm, seven and a half miles north of war in Arkansas, possible skin problems had turned into imminent death. Another superstition that I can attribute to my mama's lie was whenever we were walking side by side and a pole, a parking meter, or a fence post, or any type of object came between us,

she'd say, bread and butter. Now, I never thought much about it. For all I knew, she was going over a grocery list, and I'm easily distracted. But the origins of the saying go back a long time ago, like most old sayings like that. It's supposed to ward off any future happenings that would separate the relationship. Something come between you. The idea is that when butter is spread on bread, that you can't take it off. I say it now, and I have said it ever since, I noticed her saying it when I was just a

kid. It was one of a myriad of sayings, phrases, and observations that Alexis found herself having to learn when we got together. She struggled with me saying dinner and meaning what she would call lunch to the point that I heard her in the kitchen in her apartment one day saying over and over, breakfast, dinner, supper, breakfast dinner, supper, breakfast dinner, supper. I said, what are you doing? To which she said, I'm trying to learn a new language. It came as no surprise when we were walking to a restaurant one evening and not long after that and a parking meter came in between us and she said, peanut butter and jelly.

I said, what? She said peanut butter and jelly? No, biscuits and gravy. Biscuits and gravy, that's it. I said, no dear, it's bread and butter. I appreciate you trying. No. One that really got her one day when we were still dating

was when I was driving us somewhere, and a cat ran across the road in front of us. This was back when she still stayed awake long enough to have her conversation instead of like now when she builds herself a blanket cocoon to hibernate in until we reach our destination that could be as far away as another state or as close as a grocery store. Anyway, the cat crossed the road and in mid-conversation I made an X with my right index finger in the top left-hand corner of the windshield. turned my head and made a spitting noise over my left shoulder and continued on with whatever I was saying as if nothing had happened.

When she didn't respond, I looked over at her and she was staring at me. Her eyes were big. Her mouth was partially open and her little bump of a nose snarled upwards and utter disgust. I asked her, what's wrong? She said, are you spitting in the car? Because if you are, and don't stop immediately, this is a deal breaker. No, I didn't really spit. I just made that racket.

A cat crossed the road in front of us. Now, I assumed she didn't see it as if that was going to make what I had just done easier for her to understand. I've always taken it for granted that everyone grew up like me and what I did was just a social norm. Other folks, my wife included, refer to them as social abnormalities. I saw my dad do it a million times, and when I asked him why, he said it was to ward off bad luck, and it wasn't just limited to black cats. It was any and every cat that ever crossed the road in front of us. It was learned behavior from him to me, and I have no idea where he got it from.

My son Hunter does it as well as my oldest daughter Amy, but the baby girl cub doesn't. Not yet anyway. Something I was told I wasn't supposed to do as well was talk about a dream I'd have before eating breakfast. I can't remember where I heard that one from, but it was always just been a part of my knowledge or lack of, however you want to look at it. The rule was you didn't talk about a dream before breakfast unless you wanted it to come true. Most of my dreams over 10 years had me duking it out with someone,

and during the fight, my arms would only move in slow motion. I could feel myself swinging as hard and fast as I could, only to look like I was swimming in molasses. The first time I sprung that one on Alexis was at her parents' house. We'd all gathered for breakfast, and she started, Let me tell you about this dream I had last night. Whoa! Was it a good dream? No, it was scary.

You can't talk about it until you eat something. Do what? You can't talk about it until you eat something or to come true. She just stared at me from across the table. Everyone else, her parents, sister, and her grandmother's eyes are kind of darting back and forth to each other as I told her to at least take a bite of something before she talked about. I could see her reevaluating her life choices up to that moment as she looked at me contemplating how the rest of her life would play out being married to me. She slowly and deliberately took a bite from that fork as she had hovering in the air above her plate. there I took a bite

now we don't have to worry about the flying monkeys from the Wizard of Oz stealing a riding lawnmower and running over our mailbox we all laughed and laughed and it was funny she's funny but our mailbox has remained undamaged and that happened before Bailey was born so who's laughing now

superstitions are a funny thing for me they're more out of a habit than a belief and I don't think milk and fish will kill you I also don't think knocking on wood will ward off any evil spirits or spitting over your shoulder. We keep a cat from bringing you harm. Just like walking under a ladder ain't going to hurt a thing. But why take a chance?

A silly tradition that connects me to the past and the people that I think about when I do them or talk about them to others. Explaining them to Alexis would be the starting point to many conversations that would begin with me telling her about Mama's lies saying bread and butter and end up with us having spent time together laughing and talking and learning about each other's families. And we still do that. And if you're talking, laughing, and learning with folks you love, man, that's about as lucky as you can get. Thank y'all so much for listening to us here on the old Bear Grease channel.

I hope everyone had a safe and happy New Year's celebration, and I look forward to talking to y'all again next week. Until then, 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 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 2 of Blood Trails premieres April 16th. Follow now on Apple, Iheart, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts.