Bear Grease - Ep. 396: This Country Life - The Things that Make Me Happy

Episode Date: December 5, 2025

On this week's episode, Brent's sharing a fishing story from a listener where no records were broken, nothing amazing happened, and no one got hurt or even came close. A simple story that brought joy to the ones fishing and the ones who hear it. Then, he's giving us the details on the things that make him happy. It's a short list that represents a lot of the people and pleasures of his life. It just might make you happy as well. 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 Hunting 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. The things that make me happy.

From the moment I wake up in the morning and realize that I'm still amongst the living, I'm as happy as I'm going to be all day. Don't interpret it that as it all being downhill from there. I don't mean that at all. I love living and being just about anywhere I am. I live by the advice my father gave me when I was a little boy that I've shared on here numerous times, and that is there's no place that you can't have fun. If you're in a place that ain't fun, you make it fun.

Today I'm going to highlight the things that make me happy. It's a simple and short list that probably ain't going to shock anyone. Regardless, I'm going to tell you all about it. But first, I'm going to tell you this story. Today's offering, Chris crosses this great nation of ours from Arkansas to California back to Arkansas, back to California, and eventually to North Carolina. That's where Native California and Zach Brady lives with his wife Holly and their children, Jack, Haddy, and Clay.

Zach works for the city of Charlotte and helps keep the water running every time someone turns on a faucet. He's on the admin side of things there, but in this story, Zach and his family were vacationing with their grandpa who'd moved to California from Black Rock, Arkansas when he was 16. Now, William Ashburn, Grandpa in this story, is taking the family back to Black Rock to see the old homestead and visit with family and friends. So, in Zach's words and my voice, here we go. My grandfather has always been a hard man. He's a kind of man who doesn't say much but is fiercely loyal.

He's also the kind of man that you probably don't want to work for. I like to describe him to his friends as a 5-foot-4 version of John Wayne. He owned his own trucking business in the California oil fields for 36 years, and there was only one way to complete any task, Williams way. If you ran into an issue with a truck and called over the radio for help, he would respond, telling you exactly how it should be done. If you dared to argue to question him, he would hop in his old red ford and drive across the county to chew you out and fire you, and then finish the job himself.

The grace in it was that he would never do this over the radio. He would save you the embarrassment of the other drivers. listening to you verbally getting bent over his need. Now that's the kind of man he was. That work ethic and drives come from his raising in northeast Arkansas on the Black River. He is the oldest of seven kids and dropped out of school in the eighth grade to take care of his family.

He would work odd jobs, hunt, and fish to provide for his parents and his siblings. His first job was to go fishing and then to sell that day's catch out of his cooler for higher than the market price. Every morning and evening he would be running trot lines for catfish and nets for buffalo. He has always enjoyed hunting, but fishing was his passion. He was always in a better mood with a rod and reel in his hand, and the only thing that magnified that mood even more was taking one of his grandkids with him. Even when he was older and in feeble health, he had rigged up his Johnboat to be able to plug in his portable oxygen machine.

He also installed two anchors, attached two inches to the bow and the stern, so that he could sit in one spot and catch catfish so he didn't have to struggle to move. He's the one who taught my brothers, cousins, and I how to catch perch. One of my favorite pictures is of my brother and I, five. seven years old, respectively clad in overalls with a couple of strangers of perch standing with grandpa. We were back in Arkansas on a family vacation and he wanted to take us fishing. Driving down a country road, we crossed a creek and he pulled over. This should be the spot, he said, reaching back in his memory to a time when he was around our age. We got out and we stood on

the side of the road as he rigged up our poles. mine was red and my brother's yellow. We couldn't help but argue over who would catch the first, the largest, and the most fish. My younger brother Brett won out handily. He has always been the better fisherman. That morning we stood over this creek and fished until we ran out of worms. The perch were biting so quickly that grandpa never even put a line in the water. He was too busy taking off fish and rebating our lives. line. When we ran out of bait, we continued to drop empty hooks into the water and caught a few more fish to add to our stringer. It was one of those days that you dream of, but I could never see

actually happening. It is a day I will never forget. We finished fishing and loaded up the old fort, and we drove back to the house. That afternoon, he showed us how to clean a fish, using a teaspoon from the kitchen drawer to descale the perch much to my grandmother's delight. Then we cut up our day's catch for the frying pan. I don't know what happened to that spoon, but I hope it was clean before it was put on the table. Those were the kinds of things that never seemed to cross Grandpa's mind. That night we ate our field with our family, and we dreamt of the next trip with Grandpa. And according to Zach Brady,

Button Willa, California native who's keeping the water running on the right-hand coast of the US of A, that's just how that happened. Zach sent this simple story about a day of fishing with his brother and his grandpa, along with an accompanying photograph that captured an image of that day for many years ago. It is only a glimpse, a snapshot of a memory from a story that has traveled from coast to coast. and now, literally, around the world. This simple message of spending time with family will bring joy and happiness to more people than me,

Zach, his brother Brett, or their late grandfather, Mr. William Mashburn, will ever know. And knowing that, should make us all happy. Thanks, Zach. 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 two of Blood Trails premieres April 16th. Follow now on Apple, Iheart, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts.

A conversation about a year ago, maybe longer, I don't know, between my brother Tim and I, boiled down to the things that make us happy. We talk plenty about the things that make us mad, a category that gets bigger with each passing day, and since we talk every day, if not multiple times during the day, our grievances get plenty of air. and that caused me to pause and reflect on the things that upset me or cause me aggravation, realizing that they're all things that I have zero control over. It was the reason I stopped watching the news.

Why would I subject myself voluntarily to a stream of articles and stories that focus only on the worst things that happen every day? Someone said, and it wasn't Mark Twain, by the way, that if you don't read the paper, you're uninformed, and if you do, you're misinformed. You take out paper and drop in any form of information sharing source, and I will argue that that's all so correct. But I don't want to argue, so don't send me anything to the contrary. I spent 32 years arguing with folks, mostly about whether or not they were going to jail.

I don't recall a single time I lost one of those arguments. I remember it being touch and go a few times on exactly how I was going to prove my point. Anyway, what I focus on now are the things that make me happy, and ever since I did, my life got a whole lot easier. That's a throwback to a frustrating time of my life when I was surrounded by inept and unqualified persons. Their appointments and positions had nothing to do with ability in a world where ability should have been the first qualification.

I got through that by treading water, so to speak, and eventually deciding to do my dead level best while I was there and not use my contempt as a vessel for self-pity or poor performance. Once I framed my mind around the realization that the only person who really controlled how I felt about anything was me, the rest got a whole lot better. Alexis and I also also. so have a hard and fast rule that we've lived by for many years now.

We don't talk about work after 6 p.m. Up to that time, anything goes, just let her rip. But when the big hand is on the 12 and the little one is on the 6th, that's all she wrote about work until tomorrow. What that did was allow us to shift our focus from negativity to things we enjoy talking about. Now, over the last million and a half years or so that we've been married, that's what we do. We address the issue head on, deal with it as best we can, control what we can, and leave the rest up to the good Lord to sort out for us.

It's not easy, and I'm not saying we're walking around in Utopia over here because there's sometimes I wonder what planet she is from. I seriously doubt she ever questions anything I say or do, but who knows? What I'm saying is that it only takes a little effort to make a big difference. By prioritizing the things in my life that are important, the things that make me happy seem to fall into place. First and foremost is my faith. I have leaned more and more into what that means to me as I've gotten older. That's something that I worked out on my own with Alexis' help through conversation and just watching her live life. She's a shining example of how to treat people, regardless of her home planet.

I say all of that to start my list of things that makes me happy. My faith is the cornerstone. I'm not a preacher, and I'm not one that will stand anywhere and say I've got it all figured out, but I'll say this. Once I've prioritized my relationship with my maker, the rest took care of itself. From there, it's my family. Family to me is a whole bunch of folks that share. my DNA and a whole bunch of folks that don't. I live in the same zip code of very few humans who have asked under oaths if they were related

to me that they would have to answer yes, but I'm surrounded by more of them than you could fit in a school bus that I would take a bullet for. Their kids are my kids. Their celebrations are my celebrations. Their troubles are my troubles and those feelings are reciprocated. So taking that into account, if my family is happy, I'm happy. With that comes a heritage and the legacy of my raising,

my identity of who I am and how I got to this place in my life. The list of influences as long and distinguished as how I got to where I am today, and I got here with as many bad decisions over the course of my journey as good ones. But there was always someone who had my best interest at heart when I had reached the seemingly end of my life. rope or he'd painted myself into a corner. I would call my dad and say, I've made a mess,

and I don't know what to do. And to his credit, he'd never told me what to do. He'd say, you'd do it any way you want to, but if it was me, I'd do this. Regardless, if I followed his advice or not, he never held that against me or brought that issue up again, no matter how it turned out it was mine to own, not his to do for me. I've taken that same approach with my children, and for us it has worked well, I think. I don't tell the grown ones what to do, and they come to me when they need advice or just for someone to listen. That has been the hardest part of me being a parent, being a policeman. My job was to help people, and sometimes I had to try to solve their problems and give them away out of a bad situation.

That helps resolve an immediate issue, but normally only delays further action. I can't tell you how many times I'd eventually wind up back at that same address, dealing with the same issue until someone wound up spending the night in the stony lonesome rubbing a knot on their head. Now, as a parent, I have to make myself not fix the things for them. life is hard anything worth having should be something you have to work for my appreciation for something that i've worked for is head and shoulders above anything i've ever been given and if i got it at the end of the struggle well that's even better when i see my children work and struggle for something that they

won't even if they come up a little short a sense of pride i have in them can't be measured The pride they have in themselves and the value they place on what they've accomplished is equally important. Even when the goal is missed, the knowledge that they did everything possible to succeed allows them to stand knowing they were bested not by lack of effort. The traditions of those that came before me that I hold dear are as important to me as anything and sitting together at meal time, sharing the events and things that gone in our lives, passing the torch to the next generation of the stories and important things that were handed to me.

Next is a good dog. I've been privileged to have held in close company a handful of dogs that deserve more than a story or a passive reference as having been just good dogs. I think of Peanut, Luke, Zach, Ann, and Anna, and they have a few. have all been more than just a good dog. They serve as a catalyst that triggers a million memories of moments and people. A lot of them, like a lot of those dogs, have passed on. Old Wayland's doing great and laying at my feet as we speak. The good ones serve as a gentle reminder that devotion should be a two-way street. Last night, Wayland and I took our new

tree and walker puppy Jesse out for their first time. together. Jesse's been out three times in total and has about as much of a clue about tree and a coon as I would have driving a submarine. I've taken her out with her litter mate that Michael has, and that was like us handing them a book to read. They don't know what they're supposed to do. So when I took her out with Whalen, the dog she sees every day, she was way more relaxed and took off into the night in her own direction. At one point, she was almost 600 yards away from me in the opposite direction of whaling. These are all good things that I'll go into detail when I talk about her progression later on.

The point of that story is that having a good dog is like anything else worth having. It takes a commitment for me to put her in the best scenario to develop in the best way she can. That's where the bond is built. That's where the communication between us is formed because I can promise you, She's watching and reacting to me as much or more than I am to her. Whalen and I built that bond night after night when I brought him home on the eve of a chaotic mess that was the COVID shutdown. Since then, we've become more than just a couple of cone hunters. He's family, and regardless of the day I have good or bad, he is the constant companion that doesn't care if I killed the moose.

missed a wolf, burnt the biscuits, or won the lottery. He don't even care if I smell bad. A dog, a good one, can add so much flavor and joy to your life that it's no wonder to aliens orbiting the earth, observing how we interact with them, think the dogs must be in charge. Those four-legged moochers ain't bringing me food or giving me a bath even when I do smell bad. My happiness comes from seeing a dog that I've had a modicum of input in developing into a solid hunting partner. There's nothing more frustrating or rewarding, and the key to the whole thing is patience. How about a well-seasoned skillet?

I guard one in our kitchen like that thing is gold, because to me it is. We have a standalone chef with another. cast iron items stacked on it to run a restaurant. There's two pieces above all else in that collection that I'm thinking about having buried with me. One is a Dutch oven that my dad has cooked so many fish in that Pythagoras himself would be scratching his head and drawing in the dirt trying to decipher how many fish he took to their last swimming party in that pot of hot peanut I have done a number on them myself, and until I bought a big double basket cage and friar from the folks down in Homer, Louisiana, Dad's was the only one I used.

I still use it some, but if I'm feeding more than just me, the bigger one is just a lot easier, but the connection I have to dads, well, that goes without saying. The second piece is an old skillet that was given to me by my mother-in-law. It is so slick, a fly couldn't land on. without busting this behind, I keep it in top shape and wipe it out every time I use it. There's something very satisfying about pouring in a mixture of cornmeal, buttermil, and eggs, and the other goodies that go into a sizzling skillet of preheated bacon grease. The best part is after about 20 minutes, when you take that skillet out of the oven and turn it upside down,

and a hard, dark, bottom-crusted cone of cornbread lands on a hard, a plate. The bottom of the cornbread is crunchy and perfectly intact. The skillet shiny and reflecting light like a mirror. And I know in my heart that my grandmother is smiling with pride. That skillet sets on the stove waiting to be called into action. I'm at the age where I have a favorite burner. That skillet stands there vigilantly silent hovering over the gas burner, anticipating the flames that will transform whatever I drop in there into something good. Properly seasoned cast iron is the original non-stick skillet. That's a simple list of items, not the whole list, but neither included anything that runs off electricity or requires Wi-Fi.

It only took me about 50 years to weed through the things that don't really matter to see clearly the things that things that do. I hope your journey is faster, though with equally the same results. Be thankful, be kind, and be the light for someone else. Thank you so much for listening to me, Clay and Lake. And until next week, this is Brent Reeve.

Sign it on. 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 help 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 Ronella cut is an easy-to-use cut for beginning callers who just want to start making good turkey noises and getting action.