Bear Grease - Ep. 468: This Country Life - Landmarks Remembered

Episode Date: June 19, 2026

Settle in for a guided trip to iconic landmarks from Brent’s life. Bridges, trees, and even old homesteads serve as places of importance. Recognition of them sometimes comes after they’re gone but their importance remains the same. As a bonus, Brent’s sharing a couple recordings of his father that are his and fan favorites.  National Champion Loblolly Pin: https://youtu.be/gEihlGtoYFQ?is=VYT2y_6vltaVyGJL Thank you to our sponsors, Case Knives and Stor-Mor. 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 MerchSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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It supports the work that earns the season. Check out FirstLight's new fieldware collection at firstlight.com. 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 from the store more studio on meat 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 landmarks remembered i never know where I'm going with these things and this one is no different. I got almost done talking about landmarks and I threw myself a curveball. From there, I go in a different direction.

But I think it all ties together in the end, you'll just have to be the judge of it. It seems as time goes by that landmarks change or can even disappear from the landscape. But if they're remembered, are they really gone? You'll just have to decide. Let's join me at the fire. and see for yourself. When you left Warren, Arkansas, going north on Highway 15, it was a five-and-a-half-mile trip to where that route crossed the Saline River.

The last half-mile or more, before reaching the bridge, was through a tunnel of trees. Every species of oak with scattered pine trees on each side of the road had limbs that met in the middle, stretching for the opening above the surface of the pavement, created by the narrow two-lane right-away with no accompanying shoulder. The roadbed, just being wide enough to accommodate two lanes of traffic with nothing left to spare in either direction. If you had car trouble while you were on the dump, as that long, narrow built-up portion of the highway was known,

your vehicle not running was the least of your worries. Log trucks used that route traveling south to bring logs into both potlapes, lumber mills and worn from the north. Potlatch had significant land holdings in Bradley and neighbor in Cleveland County. Highway 15 was the most direct avenue to feed those meals from that direction. For well over half a century, those trees along that dump fought each other from both sides of the road, each claiming the available sunlight is their own. During that passage of time, they formed a natural shaded archway of bottomland

beauty just large enough for the big trucks to funnel their way through. Fall was a sight to see with an explosion of every range and shade of yellow and red from oak, hickory, maple, sweet and black gum, along with all the other trees that lined the way back and forth across the river. Their leaves abandoned in the green chlorophyll for the natural pigments of color before falling to the ground. I can remember passing through that tunnel and seeing the multicolored leaves raining down through diagonal rays of soft sunlight in the cool breeze of the approaching winter. Once you got to the bridge, you were treated to a site of 1930's structural engineering.

It took a year to build and was completed in 1930. A year into the Great Depression saw no decline in need for lumber. As cotton-dependent areas suffered, the lumber mills and worn employed over a thousand workers, and neither bank in town failed. That bridge helped keep the local economy going, and that bridge had a name. The North Steel Bridge. For 62 years, the North Steel Bridge stood as a reminder of a bygone era in simpler times. The narrow passageway across the river had witnessed,

the boon of the area's timber industry until 1992 when it was replaced with a wider and safer bridge. Now that testament to steel engineering was gone, and with it went the treeline tunnel that led to it when the road was widened. They also built a public boat ramp on the north side of the river, and they named it in honor of Mr. Claude Ganaway, a longtime deputy sheriff and eventual game warden in Bradley County. Before that, there was a dirt ramp on each side that folks used to use. No designated spot, just an area more or less that was in common use. But the bridge, the North Steel Bridge,

was a spot everyone knew. It was the getting out spot for us when we made that five and a half mile float from the Calford ramp to the North Steel Bridge. We'd accomplished this by leaving a vehicle there before we started or have someone waiting to pick us up at a designating time with a window of time allotted before anyone needed to get worried. Fishing and stopping to eat, swim, and explore would take the better part of the lazy summer day. I can remember being in town in the hot summer with nothing to do and then someone suggested we go swimming and a multitude of us would take off the swimming hole below the North Steel Bridge. It was an iconic landmark referenced by many for a myriad of activities.

It could mark the end of a flow trip or be the hub of an afternoon to teenagers while in the way of summer day in the company of friends. Another iconic landmark from my past is estimated to have begun in 1768. Just a few miles from where we lived in the middle of the Saline Rural, River bottoms stood a lob-lolly pine tree that was the biggest of its kind in the nation. It measured 148 feet tall. It had a circumference of 15 feet and a diameter of 60 inches. It was estimated to have been living for 235 years when a thunderstorm finally brought it down in 2003.

A cross-section of that tree after it fell, revealed, revealed that in 1776, it measured one inch in diameter. In 1836, when the Arkansas became a state, which coincidentally was the time the Reeves family slipped into Arkansas from the east, the big pine, as it would come to be known, was anything but big at 16 inches in diameter. By the time Japan and Germany started playing nice again with everyone, it was 43.5 inches from one side to the other. Then, in 2003, when the final wind blew,

the wind that for centuries had tried and failed to unseat the largest loblolly pine in the United States, that magnificent specimen of pina's tata came crashing to the ground. I remember the first time I saw it, I was sitting behind my dad on the back of his saddle that was girded up tight on his horse buck. The saddlebag supporting my legs on each side comfortably, and most of the time I didn't even hang on to dad's waist unless we were waiting through a thicket or jumping a creek. That horse was a big buckskin that measured 16 hands at the withers. It was broad-chested and could seemingly pull a break and plow through a fire truck. We were squirrel hunting on my first visit to the big pine, and Peanut had treated a squirrel not far from there.

I've talked about peanut before on here. He was my hairy little brother and my dad's favorite son. Just kidding. I think. Anyway, I found the squirrel through the scope on dad's rimming to nylon 66 and I added him to the growing number of others that we'd sequestered in the saddlebags. Dad never got off the horse. Normal procedure was I'd slide off the bag holding on the buck's tail like a rope and dropped to the ground. Dad would pull the rifle from the scabbard, help me find the target, and I'd start slinging lead in its general direction.

Once the deed was done, I'd add the squirrel to the growing tally, reach for Dad's hand, and he'd swing me up behind the driver's seat. When he did that, this time, I landed and stood on the saddlebags like skis, my hands on his shoulders, looking over the top of his stetson with a grand view of the world. He said, just stay there, son, I'm going to show you something. With the slightest adjustments to the reins, Dad steered Buck on his intended course, and once Peanuts saw our general direction, he took off to find another squirrel. I don't remember what we talked about. I'm sure I asked him a million times what we were going to see. I do remember dodging and ducking limbs and vines as Buck navigated his way from my father's directions.

It was a literal lesson of not seeing the forest for the trees or not seeing the tree for the forest however you want to word it. But when we abruptly stopped in an opening 40 yards from that massive pine tree, I knew we were at our destination. I couldn't see anything. I looked all around that tree on the ground for anything that stood out of place. It would catch my attention. That never said a word. He just let me keep looking. He looked up over his right shoulders.

I stood above him on the back of that saddle. Finally, I looked down at him matching his gaze and he said, son, look up. I did, and it was then that I saw the biggest lob-lolly pine tree known to grow. The tree went on forever, and there were two more nearby that may not have been record holders, but they were giants in their own right. We were looking at a living organism that had witnessed a time before our nation was a nation. When the sounds that drifted through the needles were made organically and not mechanically, when the only thing flying above it was birds, clouds, and the heavens.

It would be many years after that winter day in 1974 before I fully understood and comprehended what that tree represented, even though I would see it every time we hunted close to that place where it stood or took someone in to see it for the first time themselves. Every time we did, it was like seeing it for the first time all over again. We'd heard the big storm that blew through a few days ago had gotten it, and we had to go see for ourselves. We talked about it all the way down there with him telling me that he couldn't remember the first time that he saw it, but he could remember like.

like it was that morning the first time that I did. He said we lacked two from killing the limit of squirrels that day, and I ran through a box of 22 shells like someone else was buying them for me, which was the case. Back then, they only cost 50 cents for a box of 50, and a dollar would get you 100 shots of Winchester's Super X ammo for a two-man limit of 16 squirrels. He drove the freshly rudded trail that hinted to us that the rumor was true.

Why else with so many risks getting stuck driving in to see the big pine if it was still standing? The last bend of the trail confirmed what we'd hoped against. The big pine was laying on its side. The monarch of the Saline River bottoms that stood head and shoulders for the majority of its 235 years above the canopy and fallen due to an April thunderstorm. That same April, my father turned 66. We would only have eight more Aprils together before he passed away in September of 2011.

My son was five at the time, and I wanted him to go with us, but for some reason, known only to little boys, he didn't want to go, and I didn't make it. Sometimes I wish I had. But we vowed to go back and take him with us to have a picture of all three of us, generations of Reeves' boy standing in front of that tree, but for some reason or another, we never get it. The trunk was cut into cookie sections and parceled out to different locations. One place chose to have theirs displayed outside for all the world to see, and it lasted about as long as you'd imagine a dead tree to last outside in the elements before fall into pieces,

remnants of which are still there. One was presented to the forester school. at the University of Arkansas and Monticella. And I have no idea where they all went, but you can see a short video on the one that the rising Arkansas High School chapter of the Future Farmers of America have on YouTube. Miss Reeve is going to have a link to that short video

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Oh, yeah, where was it? About 200 yards west of the big pine. Nothing else was needed. The other person knew exactly where it was. even after it was gone, it remains a colloquial namesake for location and directions, much like the North Steel Bridge does. Now, both of those names are generational identifiers by the folks who use or recognize them. You might as well have Boomer, Generation X, or even to an extent,

millennials stamped across your forehead if you do. But that's all right. It also identifies a time. that you come from when things operated at a slower pace, and there were fewer distractions fighting for your attention. A time or place was traditionally revered as much as the people on it. Now, in 1848, there was no Cleveland County, Arkansas. Arkansas had only been a state for 12 years.

In the area my family called home was described as sparsely populated wilderness in the early pioneer stages of settlement. State archives register my family settlement at my ancestral home as the same year Arkansas became a state in 1836, a story that once my research is complete, I'll tell another day. But in 1848, there were three burials

that took place establishing the Reef Cemetery. Today, that cemetery is a land. of its own being the final resting place for much of my family and their descendants who still live there as well as others in the small community that surrounded. Less than half a mile north of that cemetery, my Uncle Jim E. Ray lives. A short walk further is the home of my Aunt Martha Ann. I own inherited land between them. Land like theirs that for the last 190 years has been in direct stewardship of my family.

family. That area being chosen by my pioneering ancestors as being as far as they needed to go. The trip from North Carolina, Alabama, and Georgia, crossing the Mississippi River with all their belongings being what they could load in a wagon and build once they got there. The home that we all referred to as Grandpa's House, my great-grandfather specifically, is the oldest home and structure I remembered being there. That house burned when I was a child. And years later, my Uncle Jimmy Ray would rebuild and retire there where he remains to this day. It was a landmark from my family and even though I only experienced life there after my grandfather had passed away in a few short years before it burned, it was important for me to know the history and stories

that surrounded it. I shared some of those. in my father's voice back in June of 2024 on episode 223, entitled Father's Day. Now, while writing this portion of today's episode, I had initially thought and planned, I'd talk about that old home place and share some pictures of that old house on my social media, as well as the fireside version of this podcast episode that plays on YouTube. But in doing so, I remembered that Father's Day episode. and I remember Father's Day is two days from now from the release of this one. So I listened again to my dad telling those stories from that show,

and then I thought about what could be more fitting than sharing them again. So that's what I'm going to do. In a theme show where landmarks are the focus, what better representation could there be than from the man who taught me about the ones that I just shared with y'all? This first story you'll hear is about a squirrel hunt with my dad's favorite cousin, Wayne Fry. Here's my father, Lloyd Wilton, Buddy Reeves, from an excerpt from my favorite episode of

this country life. The recordings are from a project that my cousin Valerie Stone was working on several years ago for a cookbook of old family recipes. She put a microphone in front of my dad and he took it from there, seizing the opportunity to tell a few tales and this one involving her dad, Wayne Fry. I hope you enjoy it. Here it is with my lead-in from that episode. There's a couple stories involving my dad and someone's hat getting shot while squirrel hunting in the river bottoms.

Now, both stories had the hats being shot on purpose, and neither of the folks who got their hat shot were wearing them at the time. Now, one of them happened to be after my dad was, an adult and the one you're about to hear now, him tell was when he was a teenager. The other teen in the story is Wayne Fry. Now, Wayne was Valerie's father and one of my dad's favorite cousins.

They were squirrel hunting with shotguns. I'll give you a little context here and there, but from now on, the famed to squirrel dog training, coyote chasing, brim catching, buckskin, horse-loving, hog-hunting, pistilero, the storyteller of all storytellers. Here he is. My dad, Buddy Reeves.

Me and him and Uncle Ed and Uncle Bob had been down there in the bottom squirrel line and been old behind the lake. And we had a good squirrel dog, on Bob. But that joke would get after a deer and he'd run him for about 15 minutes. Enough to get wee off somewhere.

and I guess he would till he died, but we'd done and got down to the lake, and we crossed the lake on the drift, more logs and stuff out there, and we done got to cross, and old Bob had run a deer off, but he had stopped and treated a squirrel. We'd back up that lake across the lake. I didn't want to go back up there. Uncle Ed and Uncle Bob went to get him, so we were going to stay there, weight on. And I told, and Wayne had, I just bought him on them these good duckback hats. And I told Wayne, I said, I throw my hat up and let you shoot at it until he would throw ears up and let me shoot at it. He said, okay. So I throw a man up. And he shouted, he never touched that thing. But when he throws this up, I wish now, I hadn't, he, I missed him. I had missed

but I didn't. I mean, I tore up. You know, all the pieces. And Uncle and Uncle Bob heard them shots. You know, they got back down there and I, Uncle Bob said, what are y'all shooting that?

He said, and what happened to your hat? I bet I have heard him tell that story a million times, and I've told it twice that many, and it makes me laugh every time I think about it. The connection is it happened around or near these landmarks that I value so much. Here's my cousin Val with the lead into the final story for today. A fitting finale for the episode celebrating landmarks. My father and grandfather are walking home from my grandpa's house, my great-grandfather.

Two Reeves men, only one of which I was privileged. to know, and the other my dad only knew for a short while. Walking home from the landmark, ground zero of my family's 190-year Arkansas pioneering existence. Do you remember him? Yeah, this is all the things I remember. My memory could be a friend pole. People at how old power overall. We start back down the hill going to the house.

I'd be standing up. one foot in each one of his back pockets and hold it on to his gowsers he'd be sang you can hear him all over the country boy he'd sing and right there where uh you get out on the road a flying squirrel sailed out of something he just fell way over there and went up a little dead fine tree snag wind in that hole and dad said you want to squirrel i said you want to squirrel i said yes He set me down out there. I don't put that old snagg over and cut that little blind squirrel. Now, how did he call him?

I didn't want him. Did you take him home? Take the squirrel home? No. Landmark. A prominent, easy, recognizable, natural, or man-made feature. That's what the dictionary calls it. I've talked about several today, and most of them can only be seen in pictures.

holding my hand or just the ones that I hold in my heart. Either way, there is real as anything I could reach out and touch because of how they keep me connected to my heritage. Look around for yours, I promise they're there just waiting to be noticed. Happy Father's Day. Until next week, this is Brent Reeves signing off. Y'all be careful. If you do off-season work, you know what beats up gear, scouting, land work,

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