Ep. 299: This Country Life - The Helpers

never on our own. All of us, at one time or another, need a little help, sometimes a lot of help, but help just the same. And I'm gonna talk to you today about the ones that give it. But first I'm gonna tell you a story. It may have been January or February, regardless of the particular month, it was cold, raining and nasty outside when I was awoken from a nice, warm slummer to the telephone in the middle of the night. Now, such is the life of a deputy on call in

a rural county for an under manned sheriff's department. You were really never off, even when you were off work. But sometime after midnight, you know, when the good calls come in. I answered the phone, trying to be coherent enough to decipher what the dispatcher was telling me from the other end of the line. Brent, are you awake? Yes,

I usually when I answer the phone. That was my normal smart elect response to being woke up in the middle of the night, knowing I was fixing half to go somewhere I didn't want to go, which was anywhere that wasn't under the warm covers where I was currently busy. She said, I'm waking another deputy. There's a burglar in progress at the old Simpson Place. Burglary in progress. That got my attention, But I immediately knew that the old

Simpson Place was vacant. The Uttererly couple that lived there forever were both deceased, and there wasn't an alarm system there that I knew of. Actually, there weren't alarm systems at all at any of the rural businesses that dotted the county, much less of residence, especially one that no one lived at during that time. Someone called it in. Yes, they drove by there just now and saw a flashlight of someone walking in front of the big picture window

that faces the road. I have them on the other line call the Simpson Sun and make sure no one is supposed to be there. Tell them we're on their way and to stay by the phone. I'm getting dressed, And with that, I hung up the phone and jumped in the uniform coveralls that was staged in the living room, along with my gun, belt, radio and boots, just for

such as an occasion as this. Now, in less than five minutes, I was pulling up to the Sheriff's office, where I would jump into the car with another deputy, and the two of us would paint the road red to the address of the complaint, knowing full well that no one would be there when we got there. That's

the way it always was. They were never there. Our response time was fast, considering what all had to transpire before we actually got to the address of the call, but still never fast enough to catch anyone on the scene. Someone had to see something to report, get to a phone, like a real phone that was connected to a house and call it in. There weren't no cell phones. Describe what was happening to the dispatcher, who then had to

figure out where they were talking about. And if Noah had informed the dispatcher who was on a call, they had to call the sheriff see who he wanted to send. Then they had to call and wake up with the deputy and explain everything all over again. It took a while, and by the time all that happened, even if it was legitimate burglary and not a false alarm or someone out hunting or checking on livestock, the bad guy would always be gone. Rolling up on an actual burglary in

progress is the super Bowl of patrol calls. What better way to catch a burglar than red handed surprise, JOCKO, better drop me my silverware and reach for the sky if you don't want to leave here with more holes in your person than you showed up with. Now, I imagine saying something like that, And there may have been a few more colorful metaphors thrown into spice it up,

but you get the idea. But in all the burglary in progress calls I got dispatched too in the middle of the night, most of them turned out to either be a false alarm or the perpetrators were long gone when we got there. It was the nature of the beast. This one would more than likely be the same, but we had to respond to it like we knew they

were there and we were going to catch them. The rain was getting harder, and the temperature was just north of freezing according to the bank thermometer, that we just blew by going faster than we probably should have. In those conditions, there was no need for the sirre in the blue lights. There wasn't anyone else out except for us and the burglar, who if what was reported was true, was another fifteen minutes away at a country home that sat two hundred yards off of gravel road that no

one had been to in weeks. The rain had slacked up enough that when we got close to the driveway, the deputy that was driving turned off the headlights and we stuck our heads out the windows and watched the house and both ditches as he turned in, and we creeped up the long drive in the dark, stopping a short distance from the house. The interior was dark as a tomb except for the globe, a single light bulb

that I could see through picture window. Towards the back of the house, the rain picked it back up along with the wind. It was cold and miserable outside, but it was masking our approach to the house. We slipped in through a cracked door that led from the car port into a utility room. There were muddy footprints stacked on top of one another on the car port steps and in tior some weren't dry, that led back and forth to the rest of the house. My spidery sin

started tingling. Someone may be there now, but someone had been very recently. The floor creaked with every step we made through the kitchen towards the rear of the house, where the light was shining. Guns drawn, I prayed the wind and the rain wouldn't let whoever was in there. If they were in there hear us coming, and I peeked around the corner of the door that led from the kitchen into the living room, and that's when I saw there was no floor. The floor joists were exposed,

and all the floor and had been removed. Every room that I could see from where I stood had no floor. The single light bulble was from a lamp with no shade that was laying across two spans of floor joists. We cleared the rest of the house, there was no one in there. Burglary in progress had once again turned into a burglary after the fat call, But where'd the barefooted guy go, the one that made all the tracks that were still fresh on the steps of the utility room.

We had passed any vehicles on our way there, they had to be close. No one was walking. I looked behind the house and grown up in the trees and bushes was an old barn, a hallway that went down the center of the structure, as dark as a cave. There are probably law enforcement folks listening to this right now, thinking, well, you need to call some backup before you head out of that barn, and they'd be right, that's exactly what

you do. However, there was no backup. Had it not been for the foresight and this of the dispatcher, one of us would have been there alone. It's just the way it used to be and how we were used to working as the same wind that was made famous by Texas Ranger Captain Bill McDonald back in the early nineteen hundreds. One riot, one ranger. But thankfully there were two of us, and we hit the hall of that barn. We turned on our flashlights and cleared all the stalls

in both rooms. There was nothing there. The only place left to search was the hayloft back near the entrance was the ladder that went up the hole in the loft floor. It was nearly a carving copy of every old barn laft ladder that I'd ever seen or climbed. The old barn on our farm was almost the exact same, except the ladder was at the opposite end of the hallway. As you approached the barn, there was mud on the rungs, and when I put my hands on it to climb up,

some of it squished up between my fingers. I turned off and put away my flashlight, and I sent it up the ladder with one hand while I held my pistol in my right hand. I dug down as I climbed, stand below the opening of the floor, even though I could have easily stood up on the middle rung and sing clearly into the barn loft. Placing both heels of my boots on the same rung, I stood up with my pistol in one hand and the light and the

other head and shoulders above the opening. In one fluid movement, I leaned forward with my chest against the floor of the loft, pointed my pistol, and turned on the flashlight at the same time. Less than a foot from my face was the business end of a shotgun that was pointed directly between my eyes. The rest all happened in slow motion. I could no longer hear the rain, I didn't feel the cold. The whole world was like my lasses. But I was thinking and reacting two moves ahead of

everything else that was going on around me. Instantly, I shifted to one side, laid my flashlight on the floor, still shining in the same direction, placed my finger on the trigger of my duty weapon, aimed at the man's head, and I pulled that shot gun down and handed it to the deputy below me. Now, in the time it took me to tell you that I could have done what I did ten times, that's how fast it happened. That's not something you practice. That's a blessing you received

when it ain't your time to go. I could plainly see the top of the man's head, his shoulders, and his arms laying alongside where the shotgun had been. It had fallen asleep, sound asleep. Had he been waiting to ambush us and just went to sleep. I don't know. I never will know. The man was off his meds and had been in and out of mental facilities the

majority this adult life. This would get him sent back to one eventually, after he'd been a judicated for burglarizing the old Simpson place and removing all the floor, he taken it and stacked it up on the other side of the barn. Now, one curious thing that made me scratch my head and thankful that I still had one after staring down the barrel of that shotgun was the coon hide that he had wrapped around the stock tail

and all. He said in his statement that he shot that coon when he was tearing up the floor, and apparently the coon had taken up residents under the house before he got there. Anyway, he shot the coon, cooked and ate him, and adored his hide on his shotgun as a trophy, which would have made getting clobbered with that shotgun just a little bit worse for me anyway, if there could have been such a thing. But what wound up happening was he got help. He didn't know

he needed any, but he did. I counted as a blessing to have been the one he nearly scared to death with that shotgun. I'm proud of the way it turned out. I'm thankful that the good Lord, let me see the situation clearly enough that I didn't react in a way that I would have been justified in doing so. It made me value my life and my opportunities to help others that much more. That guy needed help. I needed to see that he got it, and he did. And that's just how that happened. Being a helper. That

term I learned from mister Rogers. Yes, that mister Rogers, the one who sang about being a good neighbor and showed generations how easy it was to be one. But his quote about being a helper was explaining to the little folks and adults like me who were watching with them that any time he saw something scary on the news as a child, that his mother told him to look for the helpers, but there was always someone going

to help those in trouble. He said. It was reassuring and it made him feel better knowing that there was always someone who was willing to help, And just like always, mister Rogers was right. I spent my whole career trying to help folks, and so did a lot of other people right along with me. But that's not the people I'm talking about now. I'm talking about the helpers who, regardless of the situation someone is in, step up and

be a helper. I saw it firsthand. Over the course of the last few weeks, two events were well publicized as tragedies. A local Arkansas duck hunter was severely injured in a boating accident there where I and a group of my friends and colleagues had been filming for a future First Life production. Then a horrific plane crash in Washington, d C. That counted among its many victims a group of hunters that had hunted with friends of mine Kansas Place. A lot of us at meat eater At hunted this year.

Whole nation in an outdoor community rallied around each other in prayer and raising money to support not only our fellow sportion but their families as well. Through both of those events, we are giving people, and when called upon in times of darkness, the helpers bring light to the

shadows of sadness and despair. We have no ability to erase the pain or bring back those that have been lost, but we each have a way of helping through given whether it's prayer, labor, or donations, it shows we care and we'll share as much of the burden as we can to allow those who can to recover or those who can't to grieve. And then there's the other helpers, the ones who step forward unprovoked by dire circumstances, the helpers who, through the goodness of doing what's right, is

their only motivation. I met him almost five years ago. He was a local fireman who had to supplement his income by working his days off mowing yards. That told me something about him right from the start. He served his community in a noble and dangerous career, and his compensation required augmentation for him to live comfortably, and yet he still served. I would later find out he served his nation too, although he never talks about it. I invited him to give me an estimate on mowing, and

after meeting me, we talked about coon hunting. After he saw whaling. I had been in the podcast Renner for a while, and after watching my tree and walker run around, he blurted it out, is that whaling? I smiled and said yes. He said, I've seen that dog on Facebook. Who are you? Just when I thought I'd gotten famous, the fireman and old whaler put my feet squarely back

on terra FIRMA first time he mowed our yard. I hid behind the fence and sprayed water on him like he was raining when he was making laps in the front yard jungle. The look on his face when he stood up and saw me laughing over the fence with that water hose my hand is one I'll never forget. And over the last five years we've hunted a lot together,

Hunter Gullick and me. He moved on from the fire department and now serves our community as alignment whose main task is keeping the lights on his mind, and everyone else is home around us. So far, so good. Now I'm switching gears here, so hang with me. You're gonna be glad you did. But over the past few months, my wife has been getting Bailey's haircut by a lady in town who cuts a lot of our friends and kids' hair.

She and her husband both worked hard to support with their family, a family made up of eight children, two of which mom and dad share their DNA, six of them just share mom and Dad's love. Mom and Dad are helpers, the best kind of helpers, and of all the members of this octetive kids, one has shown a keen interest in coon hunting six year old Atticus, Alexis and Bailey would return from visits to the salon where Atticus' mom works with tales of how he loves everything about

coon hunting and coon dogs. Atticus and his dad listened to your podcast and watch your videos. Alexis told me, that's cool. Please tell them. I said, thank you, and these reports from Attiges mom were a regular highlight whenever Alexis was there. They have a Pomeranian that Atticus calls his coon dog, so the next time she went, I sent him a sign to case hat and a wooden knife kit that Atticus and his dad could put together.

Shortly afterwards, I saw a video of him on social media wearing that hat, holding that wooden knife kit, and watching Steven Ellen and Claybow skinning a coon on TV. Because Mama told Alexis how, Atticus was at school working with his teacher on writing his letters when out of the blue, he asked her if she had a dog, and when his teacher said yes, she did, Atticus replied, I can teach that dog how to trea a coon now, Much to his teacher's delight, she said that's good to know.

But first he had to continue working on his jas. Atticus could have been me, and at one time I was Atticus. The only difference is I've never asked of Pomeranian to tree a coon for me, although I've hunted with some dogs that couldn't have been any worse than one. But what does all this have to do with being a helper? Once again, I'm glad you asked Hunter? Remember him well? He and I were grabbing some supper last

week before going coon hunting. Alexis and Bailey met us at our favorite burger joint, and we laughed and talked about everything under the sun, including the young dog of hunters that he and I would be taken that night with whaling. But out of know where, Hunter made the statement that he had won too many coon houns and needed to find a home for John. John's a tree and walker and a litter made to a good friend

of Mine's dog that is second to none. Life Honey with John on many occasions, and he'll run and tree a coon. Nothing fancy, never going to be a world champion. But if you had to survive on coons to eat, John wouldn't let you starve. Hunter said, I'd really like to see him go to a kid. He'd be perfect for a kid. He's gentle, he minds what, and he would fit a kid that wanted to get started into hunting or needed a dog, you know, anybody that might

want it. No, I don't guess. And with that I focused back on my cheeseburger and whatever the conversation was that Hunter had continued after announcing he wanted to rehome John. Finally I processed it all and I said, wait a minute, Alexis, text Atticus's mama and see if they'd let him have John. Now. Two days after we had supper, Hunter, Atticus, and John

all became friends. Posted a picture on my social media about getting Atticus a tracking collar and a handheld, and the outpouring of folks who wanted to help was immediate and a little overwhelming. Both of those items are quite expensive, especially to a family who's income is already prioritized. Pictures I've seen of Atticus and John since testament of helpers being helpers, People who saw an opportunity and to full

advantage to help sponsor something wholesome and good. What could be better than a little boy named Atticus's Coonham, John, thank you so much for listening all of us here at the Beargrease Channel. Be a helper with good intent. Little can go a long way to be seeing more of Atticus and John right here. But until next week, this is Brent Reeves signing off. Y'all, be careful, don't forget. March the first is the Black Bear Bonanza at the

Benton County Fairgrounds, Arkansas. BHA has all the info you can just google Black Bear Bonanza twenty twenty five. Come see us