Ep. 223: This Country Life - Happy Father's Day!

Being a father is the best job I've ever had. I started out as a cheer and tennis dad, none of a football dad, and now I'm in my dance dad era pretty simple. I drive, I clap, and I pay for things. Also, I tell my kids in my grand kids stories, some of which are true, and it reminds me of listening to my dad tells stories when I was their age. This is a special episode for me, and I've got a pretty cool surprise for y'all as we get further into the show. First, I'm going to

tell you a story. This story comes from This Country Life listener Ethan Powell down in the Great State Louisiana and Ethan's words in my voice. Here it is Ethan, writes Uncle Brian. If you're still taking hunting stories from the public, I have won, along with photographic evidence to back up my claim. No it's it's not Bigfoot. But may I dare say this tale is equally as terrifying

as running into a sasquatch. Twenty fourteen, my best friend, my best friend since grade school, Clay Ray, the man with two first names, and I decided to venture north for our first out of state turkey hunt. At the time, we were both in our early twenties and finally making a decent enough wage to try our hand hunting in the other airs besides our stopping grounds in northwest Louisiana.

I haven't always been intrigued with the mountains. I suggested to my compadre that we hunt the Washing Tall Mountains in western Arkansas. I just happened to have a very distant relatives in that area, and one of those relatives was us a shoe box filled to the brim with turkey beers. Armed with that knowledge, we made our plans and we set out a great adventure. Now pulling up

in the yard of Joe Cogran, of Kirby, Arkansas. I soon found myself swapping turkey tails and soak it up, the hot tips being present to my friend and me on how to go about killing one of these elusive mountain birds. Now, after and evening a fellowship, we decided to hit the hay. Laying there all night, I anticipated the sound of rolling gobbles across the mountain side. The next morning, my dream became a reality as I found myself encased in a symphony of rolling thunderous gobbles picking

out a bird. We struck out in his direction, hoping to close the deal. Well, fast forward to four hours later, Clay and I found ourselves way back in the mountains, no closer to getting to the bird than we had been when we started that morning. After stopping on top of the mountain ridge to take in the view, I thought to myself, God, Lee, we have to be the only souls for miles around. We haven't seen or heard a person or a truck for hours. Soon enough, though,

I found out I was wrong. I was bad wrong. I came up with the idea that maybe we should just make our way back to the truck if we couldn't have a turkey. Then a Turkey sandwich would have to do. Claire greed, and we turned back down the trail, when suddenly a flash to my left caught my attention, and instinctively my right hand found the pistol grip of my age seventy. As my brain was grappling with the fight or flight reflex, I could see the white object

coming into view from the thick brush. It be a bear, or maybe it was a haul, or possibly a panther. I'm afraid it was far worse. It was a man, and not just any man. It was a butt naked man running straight toward me. As I realized what was happening, the man looked up in pure terror. From his cardio session, he found himself staring at two armed men with nothing to defend himself with but a small towel that he

wore around his shoulders. His eyes were big as saucers as he hurriedly snatched that towel off his shoulder and wrapped it around his waist. Now being a mere twenty five yards apart, I found myself trying to understand the situation. After a few seconds, the shock war off, I found myself mumbling the question, what are you doing? And the naked man nervously answered, I'm a newtist. I like to jog naked. Looking at him riding my eyes, I said, well, sure,

seems like a good morning for it. Maybe a little on the cool side, though, And with that the man decided to breeze past us and move his way up. The trip is when I fumbled from my phone and I got a quick picture of the nudest and my buddy grinted like apostle. The trip ended out a bird, and we had a great time and learned a valuable lesson and running in the nude always carry it out well.

Ethan Powell in northwest Louisiana. I'd say we all learned something there, the most valuable being if you're if you're lost and in the middle of nowhere, just stripped down to your birthday soon and start running. Someone bound to see you. And according to Ethan Powell, that's just how that happened. Now here's a little extra. Ethan sent the picture and I'm I'm gonna post it on my social media. It's just like he said. A naked man wearing a towel.

Father's Day, a day set aside to honor our fathers and celebrated by Dad getting up and grilling all day to feed everyone else living in the house or has lived there in the past. The letter will come back and bring others with him. Deed, now his reward for toiling over the flame is historically new socks, drawers, and maybe an afternoon nap. Father's Day came as an afterthought

behind Mother's Day. Typical Mother's Day usually follows the same ritual of Dad getting up and grilling for everyone, including the freeloaders who left and came back with more folks to feed. The only difference no new socks or drawers, But that's okay. We like it that away. We like to feed the masses and visit and talk of the fathers who passed away, and welcome the new ones into our club. Stories are what keep us bound together, just as much as our love and respect for all of them.

The stories, the stories, and memories. I always say that our memories are our own little movies that play in our head whenever we want them to. Now we can see and color the events and the people involved like we can almost hear them. I do that a lot. A lot of this podcast is about my memories. Of days spent with my father, who passed away at seventy four on September seventh, twenty eleven, almost thirteen years ago.

Over four thousand and six hundred days that he's been gone, there hasn't been one of those days that I hadn't thought about him, not one. I had him for forty five years, five months, twenty three days. That's sixteen thousand, six hundred and sixty two sunrises and sunsets. That seems like a lot, but it really isn't. Time is always relative to the subject matter. Now, that'd be a long time to be in jail, but the blink of an

eye when losing your hero. I kicked myself repeatedly when I think about the opportunity I missed by not setting my father down and just letting him talk to my camera and tell the stories of his life.

times than I care to remember. I was reminded of such an occasion not too long ago by my oldest daughter Amy. Dad. I'm cutting Dereck Reyntol's hair today, and he was telling me about riding with you one time when you were a patrol lieutenant at the sheriff's office in the Eldorado. Now, for the rest of the planet, that's Eldreda, Arkansas, or if you saw it on the map, you'd probably refer to it as El Dorado, but you'd

be wrong. It's El Dorado. She continued her story about me letting Derek ride with me that night, and Derek was and he is a close family friend, and at the time he was a senior in high school or somewhere thereabouts. Anyway, she asked me if I remembered what happened, and I didn't remember any details. I did remember him coming up over, but just about all the details of

my law enforcement career are really a blur. I tried to forget most of it as it happened, and I only recall certain events when someone brings up something specific or something triggers it. But she said, he was riding with you, and you answered a call to somebody's house and they were in a dispute with their neighbor about something.

And the woman went into a long tirade of how she'd been wronged by her neighbor and was raising cane on her front porch, while you just stood there and listened, quietly, paying attention to every detail as she droned on and on about the issue that, while insignificant in the grand

scheme of things, it was obviously very important to her. Then, when she finished her speech of how it all went down, starting right after creation and ending only moments before you y'all arrived, you calmly said, okay, I have one question, ma'am. Is your hair purple? Her hair was purple, and it kind of caught her off guard, and she smiled. I remember it now. I smiled too, and Derek laughed, and she could see I wasn't making fun of her, and

I wasn't of just trying to lighten her mood. And then I went about helping her find a resolution to her issue, the domestic one, not her choice of hair. Color. But that was a direct lesson from my dad in bringing fun into a fun free zone. It works. Laughter can be good medicine. It's not always the best medicine. I don't care what readers died, just says broke Leg.

I'm going to the er, not the comedy club, but the things I lament for the sound of my father's voice, the stories as he told them over and over and me laughing anticipating the punchline that I knew was coming. Those are the things I wish I could I could hear outside the confines of my imagination. And thanks to my cousin Valerie fry Stone, I can. Valerie wrote a book titled Preserving Family Recipes, How to save and celebrate

your food traditions. During her research in two thousand and seven, she traveled from out of state back home to Southeast Arkansas and interviewed several members of our family, including my dad. They talked about recipes mostly, but my dad, being my dad, when he had the floor, he seized the opportunity to

cover several topics about rural life and his childhood. The best part is Vallee recorded all the audio and she sent me the recordings on a CD not long after my father passed away in twenty eleven, and I stuck that package and unlabeled CD in a drawer and I forgot about it. Recently, I was looking for some archived Hurricane Katrina pictures to post on social media in support of episode two fifteen Messing with Critters, and I found the disc, thinking that it was one of the disc

full of photos. I had to go buy a disc reader to see what was on there. Computers don't come standard with them anymore, apparently, but I hooked it up, I installed the software, I pushed play in instead of photos. I heard my dad talking to me for the first time in nearly thirteen years, So what better way to share his stories than to let him tell them. There's a couple of 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 team 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 a little context here and there, but from now on the fame the squirrel dog training, cayu, chasing, brim catching buckskin, horse loving, hog gutting pistolero. The storyteller of all storytellers. Here he is my dad, Buddy Reeves, me and him.

We back up that lake, across the lake. I didn't want to go back up that uncle an. Uncle Bob went to get h So we were gonna play that way on and I told, and Wayne had just bought him one and he good back hats. And I told Wayne, I said, off my hat up, and then you shoot it if you throw years of him and he SHO did it? He said, okay, so I throw the man up. He shot it.

for his family. Now his dad, my grandfather, had been killed during World War Two in an industrial accident in a shipyard out in California. My father lived with several family members growing up, and mostly he stayed with my great grandfather, whom everyone called Grandpa. He talks about going to my great uncle Henry's home place that was down in the Saline River bottoms where our hall claim was.

Years later with my uncle Jimmy Ray, now my dad's younger brother, who's listened to this from ground zero right now at our family's home place in Cleveland County, Arkansas. And I'll bet you anything, he's wearing overalls and a white T shirt. Hey, uncle jim Ray. Anyway, here's the sweet voice of my cousin Valerie asking my dad about farming and a glimpse into how my family lived.

watermelons and eat both of them right there. They were so cold coming out of that spring water that they'd hurt your teeth when you bit into them. We leave the rinds laying on the edge of the river for the coons now on after dark when they started making their rounds. But then we'd waddle down to the boat with our bellies poking out tight as fiddle strings from eating all that cold watermelon. Man, I can taste it now.

This last story is a favorite of mine, And any time I get to feeling sad about only having my dad for forty five years, I think about him only having his a little over six. Here's my daddy talking about his daddy. Do you remember him?

have extra, but they always seem to have enough. And enough is in abundance when there are those with less. My dad never met a stranger. He loved life, and he loved having fun. He made folks laugh, and that is funeral. A man walked up to me and said, son, you don't know me, and you probably don't know half of the four hundred people that are at this service. But I promise you two things. Number one is that as long as folks hunt with dogs, your daddy will

never die. They'll talk about him until judgment day. And number two, you see all these people here. I looked around and I said, yes, sir. He smiled and said, every one of them thinks to they were his best friend, because that's how he treated all of them. He took hold of my shoulders and he looked me dead in the eyes and he said, you be that way. Happy Father's Day to all the dads out there, and cherish your time with them. We only get them for so long.

I appreciate all of you so much for listening, and hope you've enjoyed hearing my dad tell his stories as much as I have. I've got a few more that we may share in the future if it fits what we're doing. That's all from now and until next week. This is Brent Reeves signing off, y'all be careful.