00:00:04 Speaker 1: Welcome to this country Life. I'm your host, Brent Reeves from coon hunting to trot lighting and just in general country living. I want you to stay a while as I share my experiences in 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 podcast that airways have to offer. All right, friends, grab a chair or drop that tailgate. I've got some stories to share. A coke or a comb The stories my dad told me still resonate within my memories, and from a very early age, I can recall with great clarity the actual settings that where we were for the vast majority of them. Some may have been about a specific place or an activity that we were engaged in, and some just seemed to come out of thin air. I know now that there was a reason he was telling me those out of the blue stories, and I'm going to talk about a couple of them today. So join me at the fire and let's get started. The conversations we had were similar throughout the lifetime that we shared together my dad and he spoke direct to me about most everything and everybody. A lot of our conversation centered around family and places in the legacy of our family. In that environment, he told me stories of relatable times from when he was my age, and the things that he did and the events that happened that he remembered. Some were humorous, some weren't. But he had a way of telling a story that kept me on the edge of my seat, even about the most trivial topics. It could be about anything, but the way he told it had me not only hearing what he was saying, but seeing it play out in my mind. I could feel the gravel beneath my feet as he told about running barefoot up the road that ran in front of the house, the same unpaved road that I was digging my toes in at the time, as I ran across the rocks from one place to another, seemingly unfazed by what I had just done. Shoes were an option for me as a young and but at times a luxury for him when he was my age, and it was his stories and anecdotal descriptions that made me want to experience the same things I wanted to live the way he was raised, when times were slower and distractions fewer, and farther between. One day we were outside by the tater house. It was a It was a leftover structure from when my father was a child that was originally a smokehouse built by my great grandfather. It had a door, boarded walls with tar paper siding on the outside, and exposed rafters to hang the meat from on the inside. Back in the day, my great grandfather would build a fire in a wash tub with smoldering green wood and set it inside on the concrete floor. Smoke would then cure the meat after the prescribed smoke time. I don't remember ever being used as a smokehouse, but we had potatoes by the garden full laying in there on the cool concrete, and onions hanging by the bunches tied off with hay baling string from the rafters where the hams used to be. But laid on the outside of that potator house was a couple of metal rings about an inch or so wide and ten inches in diameter. Told the story before in passing, but I like to hear it my self well off, so I'm going to tell it again in more detail. I don't know if Dad was talking to me or just remembering out loud, but he said, boy, I have pushed one of them things many a mile around here. And I looked at the two rusted metal rings that years of time and rain and dirt had secured their places, leaning against the wall and planted the bottom third and inch deep in the soil. I pulled one of the rings from the soul and looked at it. The rust instantly turned my hands and fingers of orange as I tried to figure out the sport of pushing this thing around that could remotely resemble fun. Go get me an empty Prince Albertan. There's one in the house by the carport door. As fast as my feet would go, I ran into the house. I grabbed that empty cigarette at the back of can and returned to where I had left my dad only a few seconds before, only to see him standing there with a one inch by one inch stick that we used to stake tomatoes with. He also had a hammer and a fence staple. Here, son, take this hammer and flatten out that Prince albert can well. I did just what he told me. Now put it long ways, even at the bottom end of that stick, and nail it right in the middle of that can. Well I failed miserably getting the staples started, while successfully testing the compression strength to most of my fingers on my left hand. That exercise and futility finally grew to the point where Dad sat here, let me help you. He then got it nailed to the stick, and it bent the outside portion of the can on each side of the stick at a forty five degree angle to form wings. Now I was still at a loss for how all this was tied together. And then he stood the ring upright on the ground and took off at a trot, rolling the ring and steering it by changing the angle of the wings on the can. It was as simple of an invention as the wheel itself, but made as dynamic of an impact on my humanity as the wheel did on the planets. The rust was removed one rotation at a time, to the point that the roughness was sandy smooth, and the metal polish to that of a blue brown in Aphi. The Prince Abercaan's red colored tin was thin and worn silver on the side that touched and directed the course of the ring, while the back held onto the only clue of its initial intended purpose. I have no idea how far I followed that metal ring around the yard to drive away up and down that gravel road. But when I described it to my kids, I repeated my father's claim of many a mile, with profound confident in its accuracy. These are the things I remember, anecdotal remembrances of his that I couldn't help but take note of, even at an early age, Stories that amazed me then for seemingly adventurous spirit of my father as a child, but revealed a deeper meaning as we both grew older. I've hinted or spoken vaguely of my non conformity to being told what to do during my time in elementary school and with me. It all started in the sixth grade and carried on through my not so distant past. But if my aversion to authority was a seven on a scale of one to ten, my father's hovered somewhere around. In eighty three, he told me that when he went in the service, the one thing that grated his nerves more than the haircut, the training, the moving from Arkansas to Georgia was everyone he saw out ranked him and could boss him around. I've heard him tell a story of being in basic training that my friend Mark Shatley witnessed him tell, and Mark quotes it as one of his favorites he ever heard my dad relate. But Dad said I was in basic training and they had us all in a big classroom not long after we got there, kind of giving us the lay of the land and how things would be going through training. Now I'd been up since early that morning. I was tired. A sergeant of whoever he was got to talking about the mess hall and how we were going to be eating. Now I've been eating all my life. I didn't need any help with how to eat, so I decided to take me in nap until he started talking about something I didn't really know how to do. Time thing I know. I hear him screaming at me, saying I best wake up, and he called me Jocko. Now the first time I heard him tell that story. I guess my dad had been out of the service for thirty years or more, but the amount of aggravation that caused him was easily still the same. He had a problem with authority and things that he deemed unnecessary. Being told how to use a fork by someone who referred to him as Jocko, well, that fit both of those categories. Here's another example. When my grandfather died as a result of an industrial accident during World War Two, my dad and his mother and his siblings lived at one time up north. My dad was nine or ten, as the story goes, that he told me, but with good reason, he decided that the current living situation he found himself in would be better if his ZIP code was different than that of everyone else us with whom he was currently residing. Dad said, me and this other boy that lived close by, we just left. We taking off walking and didn't look back. And the first night out we slept in some bushes close to some folks houses that we didn't know. It was cool, but not cold, and we managed all right. I asked him where they were going and if they had a plan, and he said, no, we just just leaving. We planned on getting some work somewheres else and making us some money. And I don't know what that other boy was going to do. And I didn't care. I was going home to Arkansas and live with Grandpa. I done at all. I wanted a Michigan well. The one way ticket from where he was to the Little Rock in the late forties would cost around twenty dollars, which works out to close to two hundred and fifty to day, no small task for anybody working for a living at the time, even more so child. He said, they spent the next day walking and dodging cars that might be out looking for them, and every time we heard a car coming, we duck in the bushes or laid down in the ditch until they went by. They'd spent two days walking, and it made it quite away from where they'd started. He said, we ain't had anything to eat since we left. All we've been doing was walking and hiding, and I was give out hunger. I know we could have got someone to feed us, but we were scared they'd turned us in, so we never asked nobody for nothing. I was in high school the first time I heard my dad tell that story, and as incredible as it was at the time, I can't imagine something like that happening today with my kids. It's humorous to her degree, but it's absolutely terrifying. He continued with the story. This way, it was getting close to dark and getting colder than the night before, and we was getting close to the next town, kind of right on the edge of it, and these folks had a couple of apple trees next to their house that was absolutely loaded. I was about stars of death, and we waited for it to get plumb dark, and then we went to work on them apples. I ain't never hit an apple, since that was as good as a bushel of them. At that night, he said, man, our bellies was pooched out from all them apples. But I done got cold. And there was a tarpoleon lad on the swing on their front porch, and we took it off that swing and got under it and went to sleep. The next morning, we woke up early when them folks went stirred in that house, and we lit out before they caught us. We just knew we'd go to jail for eating all them apples if they caught us. Put the tar back where we found it, and it was covered in frost. We took off walking and made it down the road a peace and went into town. I figured it on getting me a job pretty quick so I could get some money to live on while I saved up for that ticket home. That boy had brought a dime from home for mergencies and had kept up with it all this time. And we was just sitting on a curb in that town in front of a drug store, just sitting there looking around. And he said, let's get us a coke in a drug store for this dime. I told him, now, let's let's buy a comb. You could buy a coke or a comb and a drug store back then for the same money. Now. I remember laughing when my dad said, and no, let's buy a comb. And I asked him why he thought it necessary to buy a comb. And I'll never forget what he said, and how serious he was about the focus of his mission. How sad it makes me now as I realized how desperate he must have been to get back home to Arkansas. He said, I could see my reflection in the window of that drug store. My hair looked wild. It was all over the place, and I just knew, wouldn't nobody hire me with my hair looking like that? He wanted something to drink it. I was just trying to get home, I said, Dad, what y'all do? He said, Well, that idiot bought a coke. It was his dime, and I helped him drink it, and it tasted good too. I don't think I've ever drunk another one that tasted any better, but we could only drink a coke one time, and I just knew we'd messed up, he said. I slipped my hair down best as I could, and we left there and went walking through town, just looking around. In a car come by us that had an old man in it, and he looked at us when he went by, and I told that that boy, that fella right there is gonna get us. Sure enough, he turned around, pulled up beside us, and asked us why we wasn't in school. I told him I didn't go to school. I was just out looking for a job. And I don't remember what that other boy told him, but it didn't matter. He was the truant officer in that town, and he snatched us both up and took us down to the police station. I wouldn't tell him my name for a long time, but they finally weedsled it out of them, and by threatening to send me to reform school, which they did anyway, I not ever told him nothing. They called my mother, but she didn't have no way of coming to get me, and I spent about a week or more in that place. I asked him what it was like, and he said it's like jail that wouldn't let me out of that room. I was an except to go to a classroom with a bunch of rough boys for school or to eat. I didn't think I was ever going to get out of there. But they eventually come and got me, and it wasn't long before we moved back. And it's a good thing we did too. They was watching me pretty close, but the next chance I got, I was fixing the paint the road read to Arkansas again. Turned out just didn't have to. I think about that story he told me out of the blue, and I wonder what triggered that memory, what caused him to tell that story, and how often did he think about it. I studied on how he must have felt been so far away from where he wanted to be, how he missed his Grandpa and wanted to be there with him, on that portion of the planet he called home his entire life. Maybe that was a reason that he rejected authority at a very impressionable age. It had stood between him and getting home, both in the house where he lived and by the state in which that house was located. I believe he saw it as a physical barrier keeping him in a place that he didn't want to be. I believe that our little spot in southeast Arkansas was the only place that my dad felt comfortable. He could fit in anywhere, he could talk to anyone about anything, and had a way of making everyone around him feel at ease, But the only way he truly felt that way was at home. It was where he felt most safe. We went to several places together where we'd stay and be away from home. He loved being at those places and seeing things he'd never seen before, or visiting with friends, but he was usually ready to go home not long after we got there. I used to get so aggravated about him talking about going home shortly after we got to where we were. As I grow older, I feel more kin to that way of thinking, which I believe is only a natural progression in the maturation of my life. My brother Tim was much the same, even more so. Actually, he'll go just about anywhere, but he prefers dark. To catch him at the house. The apples don't fall far from the tree. There are a million questions now that I wished I would have asked him when I had the opportunity. And believe me when I say this, I asked him a lot, But if I have one regret, it is that I had a chance to set him in front of a camera and just let him talk, and I never took advantage of it. He loved to be in the center of attention, entertaining everyone within earshot, and would have loved the opportunity that I just never gave him. So I'm just gonna have to tell you about them here. When they come to mind, I'll share them with y'all in the hopes that you find them at the very least entertaining and at most a little inspired. Take advantage of your own opportunities to preserve your family's story. Be intentional with what time you have and ask them questions you might not otherwise think about asking. Make a list, and if you have the ability recorded, get your phone out, get a camera, whatever you have on hand, a pencil and a piece of paper. Take it from me. You won't regret having that. To look back on, one thing we can all agree on, time is a thief. Thank y'all so much for listening to bear grease backwards University and yours truly here on this country life until next week. This is Brent Reeves signing off, y'all be careful.