Bear Grease - Ep. 355: This Country Life - Going Home

Episode Date: August 15, 2025

It's been said that you can't go home again. Brent's putting that theory to the test this week as he returns to a special place, the Saline River. It's a place in Southern Arkansas his family has generations of history, and he's sharing two very similar stories, from two different decades. Can you go home again? That's a question Brent's trying to answer on this episode of MeatEater's "This Country Life" podcast. Shop This Country Life Merch Connect with Brent and MeatEater MeatEater on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, and Youtube Clips Subscribe to the 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 Hutton to Trotlining 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 from the Storemore Studio on Meat Eat Eaters 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. Going home

Some folks say you can't go home again. I've never researched the implied meaning for that, but I assume it means it's impossible to return to a place from your past and have it be exactly as you remember it being. I went fishing with my brother Tim the other day, and I thought a lot about how that all played out. I'm going to share it with you today, but first, I'm going to tell you a story. In the summer of 2004, my dad, my brother,

brother Tim and my six-year-old son, Hunter, and I, launched a boat from the boat ramp in Cleveland County, Arkansas. It's located eight and a half miles from New Edinburgh, a bustling metropolis of 134 inhabitants according to the 2020 census. That's a five and a half percent growth from the 127 Arkansas tallied in a 2010 accounting. That boat ramp in 2004 was called the Mount Elba East Saline River Access, and had been since Cleveland County officially took over the upkeep

in 1974. Since the dawned of man, according to my father, it had been known simply as Mount Elby. We southerners taking liberties in pronunciation by removing the letter N from the word mount and elongating the A in Elba to a more resonant sound that flows off the tongue like this Saline River itself, effortlessly with a subconscious feeling of familiarity with others who would immediately recognize anything different. As a little boy, the age of my son who was following me around as I did my father in that same place, albeit 32 years later, I couldn't have imagined that place would be named after my father a decade later. And on September the 19th, 2014, the Arkansas Game of Fish Commission

and cooperation with Cleveland County officially named that boat ramp as the Lloyd Wilton Buddy Reeves Mount Elba Access to the Saline River. But that day, it was still just Mount Elby. And the four of us were going fishing. With all the fly rods, ultra lights, and tackle boxes loaded,

we finished off with a fish cooker and all the ingredients needed to host a fish fry. A fish fry that depended on us catching enough fish that day to feed ourselves. There wasn't a safer bed in Vegas than three generations of reeds boys being able to scrap out enough blueguils to put hunger in a headlock. As far as I knew, my daddy invented brim fishing. We motored past the big treetop on the east side of the river where a local man fished with dad and I one afternoon when I was around hunter's age. He'd been invited to go that morning, but he didn't make the muster, so we went without him. After fishing, we took our midday nap in Vittles break at Uncle Dobbs' cabin,

a cabin that still stands today and one that I talked about in depth two years ago in episode 135 entitled Swimming Holes. If you hadn't heard that one, I highly encourage you to do so. Anyway, as we were getting ready to go fishing that afternoon, old Mr. late for the morning fishing trip shows up. How he got there was a mystery. His conveyance wasn't a mystery. He drove his truck. How he got there without running out through the woods, that was the mystery. This old fellow was known to imbibed to excess on occasion, and it turned out the latest such occasion had been the reason for his.

tartiness. He more or less poured himself out of that truck and told my dad, let's go fishing. Now, I have thought about that day many times since then and can only conclude that my dad thought it's safer for him to be in the boat with us rather than in his truck out on the road. Fishing that afternoon went without incident and we caught a lot of fish in spite of all the racket that old man was making. But time and the summer, Arkansas sun, allowed sobriety to take over and that evening when we pulled back on the bank he was safe to drive home and he did we found out a few days later that the missus didn't allow him back in the house and he spent the night in his truck out in the driveway now it sounds like i went down a rabbit hole there

straying away from the original story but bear with me there's there's a method to my madness But that day with the old man flashed in its entirety and half the time it took me to tell you about it. It was a scene played out like a home movie in my head as we drifted by that spot on the river. Me looking at that spot and seeing us in Dad's old boat as we passed like I was riding through a theme park of my life. I looked back in a boat and could see my son's eyes looking at everything as we rode down the river. He soaked in every twist and turn, every overhanging tree pointing at birds and turtles, and he was making his own home movies as we rounded the bin and passed through the swimming hole. That place triggered a million memories like the old tree top,

those running in no particular sequence, just flashes of cinematic joy from the last 40-something years of living, being there in the water and on that sand with the people in the boat with me, some far away living their own lives now and others that I would never see again, at least not in this life. We went on through and we started fishing at the head of the stretch, a moderately straight portion of the river that for about a mile was wider than most with sloping banks and deep holes that every species of fish that swam in the river

could find something they liked. We caught brim and bass and catfish and cropping, depending on which species we were targeting right there. And by the middle of the morning we had more than enough fish to cook. Hunter proud to have participated in stocking the ice chest and looking forward to what was coming next. Dad motored us on down the river to Bug Island, a gradual shallowing at the end of the stretch where for years and generations we would stop,

rest in the shade of sycamore, willa, and cypress trees, clean our fish in the shallow current and lay in the cool water as it washed away the sweat and sand from our bodies. Countless times I'd done this with my dad, and each time we did, I heard a favorite story or a new one I hadn't heard before, each one triggered by the movies that played inside his head as we talked of old times and old people. All the stories in one way or another connected to that place, the river, and everything that went with it. After we ate, having stuffed ourselves with brim, fried taters, and onions, we gathered at the river to cool.

The water was barely deep enough to flow over our chest as we lay facing skyward in the shade. Toes pointed downstream. Water was swift enough to fill the tiniest of pebbles as they rolled along the bottom and around us. Three adults lined still while the youngest crawled around digging up rocks and must and asking question after question for any of us had time to completely answer the previous dozen. Then the three of us, on the quiet suggestion of my father, rolled over on our bellies and we started slowly crawling upstream, side by side as hunter sat in one spot, shallow water barely deep enough to cover the belt loops on his cut-off Levi's.

It's back to us digging in the gravel, oblivious, to our retreat. Eventually, he realized we'd slipped away, and when he turned his head, we'd made it about 10 yards, still army crawling away from where he sat. He hollered, hey! And as we'd all turned to laugh at how we'd tricked him, he said, pow! He grabbed his chest if he'd been snibed by an unseen enemy. Without hesitation, he started slowly crawling towards us, his six-year-old frame, brown as a biscuit, dripping with the water as he crawled while.

feigning a mortal wound. Weekly, he said, I'm not going to make it. Save yourselves. Go on without me. I don't know. I don't know if I've ever seen my dad laugh any harder than he did at that moment, ever. Laughing was and is a constant in my family.

We've been accused of being too loud, irreverent, boisterous, juvenile, and a laundry list of other adjectives that infer attitudes and activities of a less than serious way of looking at life. And those opinions, they ain't without merit. We just like to have fun. That's just how that happened. 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 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 Phelps game calls.com. I think you'll be glad you did, and you'll find out that the Steve Ronella cut is an easy-to-use cut for beginning callers who just want to start making good turkey noises and getting action. Going home. Are we going fishing or what? That was the question posed to me by my brother Tim. This whole summer we'd been plagued by high water. and my schedule that had given us zero opportunities to go fishing.

We're commercial fishermen, for goodness sake. We're supposed to be fishing. But the Arkansas River has been high for quite a while, and since we're actually commercial fishermen in name and license only, we haven't been brave in the high water set our nets. Real commercial fishermen, the ones who depend on fishing to earn a living, now they've been fishing. Tim and I, not so much.

not any actually. When he asked me that question, kind of rudely, I might add, I started telling him about my schedule again and how we'd only be able to let the net soak for a short period before we had to go pull them. He said, no, dummy, brim fishing. Oh, Friday. I can go Friday.

So at 5.30 a.m. when the alarm went off, I'd already had my stuff loaded in the truck and was pouring my first cup of coffee. Iron 45 minutes later, I met Tim at his house and we rode together on the 12-mile journey from his home through the country. We talked about what was currently going on with our lives, passing the time, cracking jokes, generally solving all the world's problems. But with every twist and turn down that gravel road, I was semi-consciously noting the timeline of my lifetime on a road that I used to live on. Right there across that field is where I caught my first gray fox.

Right there on the side of the road is where that big Flint Arrowhead came from. As we drove on, other places spoke to me. Just past the curve in the road where the creek crosses where I saw that big gobbler cross in front of me. The memories of instances from my past playing out with each passing moment. I can't help but ask myself why those seemingly insignificant moments, are so key to my core memories, why would I remember a turkey crossing the road at a very specific place 40 years ago? I didn't kill that turkey. He wasn't on land I had permission to be on,

so I didn't even hunt him. Yet I can see him vividly as he crossed the road in front of me. According to a little research I did on why we remember insignificant things, most of the professionals agree that memory isn't usually prioritized. by importance. Things that you remember are most often based on some sort of emotional attachment. I've got boxes full of turkey beards. And if I was held at gunpoint

and told to tell an individual hunting story for the number of beards represented, I might get a third of them, maybe. So I guess I answered my own question more or less. I probably remembered that turkey because I couldn't hunt him. He was one of the many that got away, and as soon as I say that,

I can now see him and many others getting gone in the rolodex of Turkey sadness that haunts me still. And as we got closer to the river, I saw a bunch of other places in people's houses that triggered conversations about times past and present. And finally, we made it to the river. Our river.

A place as familiar and welcoming as your grandparents' home. A place that 10 years could pass in between visits, but you could easily find your way around in in the dark. Pull the truck in here and swing to this side because the boat ramp runs out at an angle away from where you park. Get the boat straps undone and make sure the plug is in. None of this was out loud. It didn't have to be. It was second nature to both of us and just part of it.

of the routine that we'd done forever, having both been taught by the man whose name adorned the sign that kept watch over that round. We headed off downstream, Tim in the front of the boat pointing at underwater obstacles that lay in wait for those unacquainted with how the channel laid. We zigged and zagged down the narrow river talking about this spot and that spot, while each of us remembered other things and occurrences that we didn't bring up. Nothing bad, just moments shared with others and ourselves that were better musings than subjects of conversations.

Like the spot where that big tree top was located just below the boat ramp that I talked about hunter seeing when he was a kid in the opening story. That happened 20 years ago. And that day reminded me of fishing there with my dad and the fellow who wasn't safe to drive 20 years before that. It's not just one particular incident that I recall and we live when I go back there. It's a catalog of emotions for people in a time when my world didn't extend far beyond what we could see. The river felt the same.

A hot boat seat burned my hands just like always, and dropping a bluegill brim into the ice chest was as satisfying as it had ever been. When we had enough for a mess, we eased on down to Bug Island. We pulled the boat up on the bank and we sat down in the river to cool off and clean our catch. 24 blue gill and red belly brim later and we walked up in the shade to take in the breeze that was blowing just enough down the river to make it comfortable and relaxing. We shared a cantaloupe I'd brought from home, cutting it open with the same case knives that we'd clean the fish with. Not to worry, though. We washed them off in the river before we'd. We sat there in the shade on that small piece of earth where generations of our family had stood before us, camping, cooking, fellowshiping.

It was as comfortable as a favorite pair of old boots. It was a natural extension of ourselves and our homes, regardless of our different zip codes. On the drive back home, I thought about how it felt to be there and about that old saying of you can't go home. In a way, I guess that's true. The big oak timber has all been cut in the bottoms, and pine plantations and thickets have replaced the hardwood flats of my father's youth and mine. But even after all the change to that beautiful scenery, feelings remain the same.

I could focus and brood over what's not there anymore, or except that with time change is inevitable. while change is the last thing you want in something that's perfect. It can't change the way it makes me feel to be there. When I'm there, it feels like home. So yes, Thomas Wolf, I beg to differ, sir, you can go home again. And I did it last Friday. Y'all keep sending those stories in.

I want to hear about farming and grandma's house and hunting and fishing and just sitting on the porch. I appreciate y'all so much for listening to me, Lake, and Clay here on the Bear Grease channel. We really, really appreciate it. Thank you so much. Until next week, 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 fieldwear gear at firstlight.com.