00:00:02 Speaker 1: And I said, Lord, save me. That's all I had time to do, and I hit Timber, I hit it. He's like Mom went all. 00:00:12 Speaker 2: In Part one of American Loggers, we met the cousins Cody and Kalin Vlines, who are multi generational loggers from the Ozarks. We heard about both of their fathers, Teddy and Eddie Villines, and how they've lived off the land logging, hide hunting coons, digging, gensing, raising cattle, selling firewood, even using horses and mules to skid logs until the nineteen nineties. This episode is about Teddy Vilines, Cody's father, a humble, lifelong logger and a legend in his own right. And once again, this whole interview will be leading us to a single story of danger and an existential moment of clarity. I really doubt that you're going to want to miss this one. And hey, please check out the new Bear Grease YouTube channel and Instagram where we're putting up fresh content all the time. Me and Bear John are very excited about this and thanks for all your support and kind words of encouragement, and thanks for helping us spread the word. 00:01:26 Speaker 3: My name is Klay Nukeoman. 00:01:28 Speaker 2: This is The Bear Grease Podcast, where we'll explore things forgotten but relevant, search for insight and unlikely places, and where we'll tell the story of Americans who live their lives close to the land. Brought to you by to Covi's Boots. I'm a cowboy boot man and I've been wearing to Covis for years. They're the most comfortable boot I've ever put on. Good boots for good times. I'd like to introduce you to Teddy Velines. He's gonna start us with a story about the generation of loggers before him, one about his father arivelines. 00:02:19 Speaker 1: Well, I need an introduction in this logging Bison. It's a family from generations by dad. The first stories that I ever heard logging was a little bitty Feller and my dad and mom, which they lived on Buffalo Steel Creek, and my dad was logging with ain't L. Henderson, Grannie Henderson's husband and mom will get up in the morning and cook breakfast and get Dad up, and while he was eating, she would go to the marn Onners his mules and feed him and he get done, he'd get on him and he'd ride plumb down to Grannie Henderson's to meet Frank. 00:03:01 Speaker 2: This story took place in the nineteen forties. Frank Henderson is the husband of Eva or Granny Henderson from episode two forty three titled Ozarkian Martyr. She was the last hold out on the Buffalo River before it became a national park. Grannie is the only woman in the Bear Grease Hall of Fame. Granny and Frank's house still stands today on public land in the Buffalo National River. 00:03:27 Speaker 3: Ted's father Ari worked with her husband. 00:03:31 Speaker 1: And so one morning she got him up and got him ready, and he took off and he got down to Grannie Henderson's. 00:03:40 Speaker 4: Frank was no light on. 00:03:43 Speaker 1: He's overslipped, and he went knocked on the door, beating on the door. And Frank got up, said, Ari, my dad's dame said, what in the world are you doing? He said, well, he said, time go logging. He said, it's just now midnight, he said, And Dad said, you know, they didn't have no alarm clocks or nothing. 00:04:08 Speaker 4: They just got up, you know, naturally. 00:04:11 Speaker 1: And so Dad said, he laid on the floor till he got daylight, and then Frank went on logging. 00:04:17 Speaker 2: Just stopped for a moment, and imagine a time when people didn't use alarm clocks, but just got up naturally. As Ted described, imagine Ari's wife Cynthia the lions after he left her waiting for the sun to rise, only to eventually realize the night was still young and the sun was still hours from rising. Ted continues on about his dad. 00:04:43 Speaker 1: Yeah, you can go on back to my dad a wagon and you've probably been down there to the where the water comes out past the Harper place. 00:04:53 Speaker 4: Yeah, down Buffalo. 00:04:55 Speaker 3: Yeah. 00:04:56 Speaker 1: Well Dad had very young mules and his wagon was loaded. But he come up from the dug bank coming around. But he'd come around and there was a big yellow jacket's nest and one mule got in it. Well, they jerked the wagon, the back wheel off. 00:05:16 Speaker 4: Blow the road. 00:05:17 Speaker 1: They couldn't pull it, and they were hung up in that nest and Dad said they were stinging his mules to death, big. 00:05:25 Speaker 4: Yellow jack huge. 00:05:27 Speaker 1: Well, they just hung up and Dad said the mules was breading, throwing fits. He said they was literally stinging them to death. He jumped off the wagon, grab him a big row and crawled under the wagon tongue the pin holes and beat the pen out of that tongue and let the mules. 00:05:47 Speaker 4: Loose, go free. 00:05:49 Speaker 1: Well, when he got to the house and pulled his clothes off, they counted fifty or fifty one places. Blood was running out of him, besides all the stings that he had got laying under there of beating that out, and one. 00:06:07 Speaker 4: Of they hadn't sunk. 00:06:08 Speaker 1: But that's the type of men that I growed up under. There's no quit, no backup, and you better not. I mean that was just instill and me and my brother read like little but our whole lives and we knowed how to push each other trigger, I guess, because if you would stub up, say I ain't gonna quit, I'm gonna do it when the others wanting to quit, try something well, doesn't make you mad, and it would either get done or bust. Dad worried about everything. He was the most particular man. Had to be done right, and it had to be done in a hurry when he said move. But that's where I got Maya and these boys, Cody and Kaylen growing up. You treat everybody fire, you treat their place just like at yours. 00:07:07 Speaker 4: Don't leave trash. And that's why. 00:07:10 Speaker 1: I was brought up in logging business. 00:07:14 Speaker 4: But that was and then six. 00:07:16 Speaker 1: Years old, I started following Dad in the logwoods, carrying the maising stick gas and on Me and Ed, Kaylin's dad two years older. By nine years old. First year EDB drives the mule. I'd carry the skid dogs and hook the logs because Dad and Litchy and eight nine years old driving on mule, Me and Ed skidding logs every summer time. Fourteen fifteen, you've done a man of split and stave boats cutting timber. We roll them up, skid poles up to two ton trucks get stuck, no skinder know nothing. 00:07:54 Speaker 4: You'd have to unload the logs. You'd hook mules to. 00:07:57 Speaker 1: The front of it to try to pull it down. Chains in your due whole getting tied to the tree or a big old poles stuck under you. It was rough life, but that was how that was how you made a living. 00:08:10 Speaker 4: Yes it was. 00:08:11 Speaker 1: I mean in the old days it was hard physical. But I was just telling I did everything but crosscut, saw and wagon. They hadn't quit that long when I was going to the woods with Dad. Because Dad talked about the first two men saw. 00:08:27 Speaker 4: Did he ever run too? 00:08:29 Speaker 5: Yeah? 00:08:30 Speaker 4: Two men in chainsaw and I did. 00:08:33 Speaker 1: We skidded logs with mules places of steep that you would skid them and dump them off of one bank to another too steep to skid over, and then go down reskid them up and then take them to the truck and stayboats. Back then you made it by hand. We could attract Kinston. My uncle Zev and my brother Hillard and Dad all had trucks. We made twenty one loads of stables off of forty acres. 00:09:02 Speaker 4: Many days we. 00:09:03 Speaker 1: Have busted two loads of stay boats and get out two three loads of logs. And that was with three grown men and me sixteen year old down a grown man because me and Dad busted both of them. Load them behind. One hundred and eighty is the lowest you ever put on a truck up to two fifteen to twenty all manual, and you pushed them from the ground up to the top of the truck. We get up and be at either casts or clarks full at daylight, unload them and be back to the woods and start the same old. Yeah, And that's how me and they had bought our first car. Summertime. We go to the woods and help them and we'd meet a crew in haul hay sometimes midnight one o'clock we get done and we got a cent and a half a bell. And that summer we made enough we went in and bought a car together. 00:10:00 Speaker 2: Ted and his brother Ed would have bought that first car around nineteen seventy three. I've heard Kaylin say that Newton County, Arkansas is thirty years behind the times, and I think that checks out when you hear Teddy talk. He's only sixty nine years old, but his life sounds like he was raised in the nineteen thirties, but his childhood was in the nineteen sixties. In his teenage years in the nineteen seventies, I was. 00:10:26 Speaker 1: Doing it to raise the family, my dad. I mean, that's what they did, farmed and wintertime. I mean, like I say, you you didn't have no equipment, You didn't get to work a lot in winter. You cut for wood. Me and Ed coon hunted and back then in falls, Jed sang you could. We bought many groceries through the winter on coon hides, and Jim saying, because we're getting logged now, we're poor. When men heard first got married, this cold going to be when he got to the log. 00:11:02 Speaker 2: Teddy's wife, Marie is sitting across the room from him, listening to this story. She and Teddy will have been married forty nine years in June. 00:11:11 Speaker 4: We would drive out. 00:11:12 Speaker 1: The little story out there, a soda pop across the quarter, a mountain dew. We dig up a quarter, go out turned by, which is a mile and a half out the road, get a soda pop and split it for sweetening. Time for rough But I always had a pack of hounds. We had visitors all through the company. We never thought about it. She just I mean, was that was life back then? Never one hungry, You paid your bills grow. But Logan was. Logan was a living. There's nothing that I like better than to walk through Virgin forest, big timber, ride through it. But Logan was a living. But I hate clearcutting, select cut. It's what my whole life. My dad worked on his reputation, honest, he never was out of timber. When me and ed want in business, people knowed him. But we did the same. And I've never been without on my word. We signed one contract in my lifetime of logging. It was a huge track that others was involved. We had to sign papers. The rest of it's men in shake word of mouth. 00:12:30 Speaker 2: The handshake business of the Vilion's logging company is still in effect today, but the shake is coming from Cody and Kaylin. This family's reputation has held for three generations. And if they say they're gonna do it, even if it hurts them, they do it. And man, when I hear that kind of character, I get excited. There are some flashy things in life that our culture wants to celebrate, but how about we celebrate genuine character. Do you remember what Eddie Valyines told Klin on the last episode. He said, if you're really being honest with people, you probably won't get rich, You'll just get by. Do you remember him talking about being content? That was powerful stuff. Don't be duped by the trends of the age in a world that lacks character's strong character will stand out and its potency is so ancient that there is no doubt that. 00:13:27 Speaker 3: It will always rise to the top. 00:13:36 Speaker 1: Back to Teddy but anyway, Yeah, the log and then in the night as we got our first skidter and well before that, he's talking about the winstruck. When we got our first winstruck, man ed, we thought that was the greatest thing that ever was because We didn't have for real much skided folk. I mean when mand was young, about fourteen fifteen sixteen. People just I mean, that's stand back. Men would load logs. 00:14:03 Speaker 4: We worked together. 00:14:04 Speaker 1: We'd rolled up, hunted everything together, the same size, a little bit of gas, but we could. 00:14:09 Speaker 3: Load them so fast. 00:14:12 Speaker 1: And of course them old big butts on big logs, you know we'll gain ground. Well, you could grab that in and spin it backwards, and other shove and keep that log straight. We could put them on in trucks. We got where we'd walk the skid poles and you had to stack them on trucks. You had bush poles on the trucks and stack them. We'd walk them skid poles and roll them up the mothers just and we get to the mill, we take the people just stand back. We didn't looad the load of logs just as. 00:14:38 Speaker 4: Fast as work together. Little, but that's all we know. And dads say, boys, he said, you know too little. He said you're going to kill yourself. But we watched him. 00:14:49 Speaker 1: You know, we just laugh and you thought you was in your prime. 00:14:54 Speaker 2: Teddy knows that I've come here to hear one story. One that Cody said I had to hear, and once again it's about danger in the logwoods. But before he gets to the big one, he tells me a few others. This one involves the bluff, which there are a lot of in Newton County. 00:15:12 Speaker 1: I can tell you fine little story when I was logging by myself one time, I was cutting around big high bluff and timber the tops of it. You know, they was kind of falling hanging off the edge of the bluff around too. The are well, I'll just go turn top them, you know, walking well, of course I wanted to run, knock, slash, I mean, and I fell one and I run out on a couple of little old limbs about big around. As you lag to top that tree, I happened to look down, and I am scared to death of heis that bluff had made a v and I was standing on two little limbs looking down at least fifty to seventy foot off of that bluff, and I froze panicked. It comes terrified, But that had I'd fill the top where it just bed, and son I liked, had never got back out on hard drown. 00:16:22 Speaker 2: This next story, on the surface, you might think it highlights how tough teddy is and it will do that. But to me, it really highlights how serious these guys are about getting the job done. 00:16:35 Speaker 1: Oh yeah, my wife's over there. Like I said, there's so many accidents. Let me tell this about my arms. Lord Bob self had no I had a guy help me. 00:16:46 Speaker 5: We got a load. 00:16:47 Speaker 1: A couple other guys was on the same track, and I go haul our logs. Well, I run the chainsaw. It's twenty four each bar long bar and used to it and I way off in the canyon there. I run down and both of them was up on the hill working. 00:17:04 Speaker 5: Well. 00:17:05 Speaker 1: The chainsaw was sitting earth and I had to got me some standards before go to loading. I jumped off, grabbed that chainsaw and cranked it. And there's a limb just right. I standing in the road, just right for standards. Well, I reach over to cut that off. Well, hit the twenty each bar instead of twenty four. Well, when I towed it up there, the end of that bar tip hit that limb and kicked back. 00:17:32 Speaker 4: The handlebar was broke on the chains off. The chain brake was broke, hit. 00:17:38 Speaker 1: Kicked back, rapped on my head and I dodged it and it went through cut my shoulder and the chain was still running inside my shoulder, cutting me hold it here, trying to up here with my head. The chain brake wouldn't stop the chain, and I finally got my finger and got it shut off, and I had to slide it out of my arm, and that muscle just fell off down well, I held it up there. They got down there and he took and cleaned my shirt out of my cousin best could cut my shirt and tied that mustle up. I got on the loader, loaded me a load of logs, come flumb. It took me at least an hour bore to get to the bill wasn't hurting, wasn't bleeding bad. I got to the meal un dumped a load of logs and I said, sow this up for me, and they got some butterfly stitches whatever. 00:18:44 Speaker 4: And taped that up. 00:18:46 Speaker 1: I got back in the truck, went back out there and hauled me another load of logs. And the old boy that was helping me, I means big cattle man and stuff. And I left my big truck sitting there and I drive my work truck there so he could drive anyway. Just worked out and I pulled up her depart my big truck. It's nearly dark, and I hollered at him and I said. 00:19:10 Speaker 4: Come here and sow this up. I said, you got some stitches? Do you show kews up? 00:19:16 Speaker 1: Well he looked at that and he gave me the awfless cussing that I've ever had, and he said, you get to the doctor. Well, I come home, and she took me. 00:19:26 Speaker 4: To the Never did hurt bad. The worst thing was them cleaning that up. But I got a big scar. That muscle just fell off. 00:19:36 Speaker 3: How many stitches did they do you remember? 00:19:38 Speaker 5: Oh? 00:19:38 Speaker 4: No, it's plumb across my scars. 00:19:41 Speaker 5: Six seves. 00:19:42 Speaker 4: Love, it's with the bar. I mean he was running. 00:19:46 Speaker 3: That is a wild story. 00:19:48 Speaker 2: And Caln once told me about his dad, Eddie, working for over a week with a broken ankle, the bone almost pushing through the skin, but refusing to go to the doctor. He used Klan's ankle brace from basketball and sensed it tight and hobbled around in the logwoods until his family made him go to the doctor. There's a fine line between glorifying foolishness and toughness, and I'd say these guys have weaved back and forth over that threshold most of their life. But they just knew they had to get the work done so that their families could eat. And I don't know this, but I doubt Teddy and Eddie had very good health insurance, and you might have felt that burden before I know that I have. Here's a story from Cody about his dad back when he had a temper. 00:20:37 Speaker 5: We were Kingston, wasn't it. 00:20:38 Speaker 6: Yeah, probably to this day the worst place I've ever been as far as logging goes. 00:20:44 Speaker 5: We were butting in a new road. 00:20:46 Speaker 6: There's a little o' holly there, and it was rough, and there's some bigger ox and there was a giant sycamore tree. The only way to get it road in there was right through the middle of that sycamore tree. We could catch tree, that one, no big deal, but we couldn't get that stomp out a little five aweight caterpillar. 00:21:01 Speaker 5: S kitter, which is not a very books kitder. So we got the bright idea. 00:21:06 Speaker 6: I don't know how we got the cable up there, but we got the cable way up in this sycamore tree, way up in it, and I was gonna go out the road pull while he worked on the stump on this thing with a dozer and where we're gonna bang it all out at once, because that o' five wasn't none. 00:21:23 Speaker 5: We're close to bank enough to push this tree. 00:21:25 Speaker 6: So I get out there and I'm mucked onto a's pushing on the stump and we got it to moving. 00:21:31 Speaker 5: We got to moving enough. I thought I was doing some good. Well. The road we had to build around there. 00:21:36 Speaker 6: To that point wasn't very wide, and I'm sitting in the middle of this new road and before I realize it, I'm getting off toward the side of this thing and it's pretty pretty good bank THRT. But I'm trying to get this tree out, and before I know it, I'm in a bond. This kidder's fixing the turnover, so I stopped with tensions was kind of getting high anyway. We was almost get this tree out, you know, uh, and he's wanting me to pull. 00:22:02 Speaker 1: I's high tempered back then he's wanting. 00:22:04 Speaker 5: Me to pull. 00:22:04 Speaker 6: He's pushing and he's screaming at me to pull. Well, Frankydal was working with us at this time. I told you about Frank, and Frank was on the ground and Frank's telling me to pull, pull, pull, and then Frank stops telling me to pull because he says, I'm gonna turn over. And Dad comes off of oz and here he comes, and I said, before you even get on there, thatsucker's gonna turn over. He went right by me on the skinner he went, and you know what happened next? Me and Frankidell are standing there, I mean when, and Frank's mushka got out of the way. 00:22:38 Speaker 5: And I'll never forget this as long as I live. 00:22:40 Speaker 6: This is just one of those people that know Frankodale can see this picture. Frankidell's smoking one of them over USA goes, he let one up, and I'm standing there side him, and we're standing there in the road and Dad turns the skinny over and he went from okay, he's like this. He went over on his side, up on its top and over on the other side. He turned it over. I mean it when when it didn't go you know, I turned I turned the tractor over one time and it was like slow motion, you know, it just I just laid it over on its side. 00:23:15 Speaker 5: When this skinner turned. 00:23:16 Speaker 4: Over, it ended on its top. 00:23:18 Speaker 6: It was one hundred miles an hour. No, it went completely. 00:23:22 Speaker 4: Over yes, and landed on its top on the other side. 00:23:25 Speaker 6: Yeah, because you came out like a grass squirreld. But anyway, this skinner goes boom boom boom. I mean it flopped and I'll never forget as long as all the Frankie ells down there. He never got excited. He never even took a fast step. He smoking those cigarette that scared landed and he went, I'll be dank. And about the time frank said that Dad's head comes up out of that scary it don't have no doors on it. No, I mean this is a pretty old school rig. It was a little grapple, but didn't have a doors on it. I mean, I'm scared to death that he's got a leg hanging out of door whatever. His head pops out the other side and he comes out the cable broke the cables hanging in the second Moore tree. In a matter of less than five minutes, we got the dose, are hooked on the skinner. We turned it back up on his wheels and we go back to. 00:24:19 Speaker 1: Lock it back down on steep hel I mean, it was just like we did it every day. But I was hanging on no doors and I was clutching everything because I was fraidy. That told me out it's tight. And when I come to a stop, I was standing on my head. It's the way I wound up. My feet stuck straight up and I was on my head when a skinner quit roller. 00:24:44 Speaker 2: That's a wild story. And I liked it when Cody said that Teddy came out of the skitterer like a gray squirrel. This has finally led us to the story that I came here to hear about. 00:24:59 Speaker 1: The story You want to it too, that stuck along. Probably this one has got more purpose. It means more to me because it showed me who I was and he was the one that's in control of this. 00:25:16 Speaker 6: There was a stretch there where it was just me and him, just the two of us, a pretty long stretch, and but we were running two trucks, two big trucks. We're on a pretty good sized track, I mean a big piece of lamb. And it took a I mean you had to dive around and you got to this bluff and there's only one gap in this bluff. On top of that bluff was one hundred and twenty acres forty forty forty. We were at the back, so we're three quarters of a mile in there. I had a hydrolcoleague on my skitter that was giving me fits. I couldn't find it. One day I noticed that it was a little more web back there, so I got downe skinning logs, and Dad's loading trucks and I thought, I'm gonna find it, high yall league while he's loading these trucks. 00:26:02 Speaker 5: So I get in there and I find it. 00:26:05 Speaker 6: So he gets the trucks loaded and I'm on were fighting with this high y'all coach. Well, I'm under the skidder and have been for forty five minutes. And he said, we made out here. It's going to rain. And I said, let me get this fixed. I've almost got it. I finally got a foul, so I'm still under there, gone with it gone. He said, we gotta get out here. It's going to rain. I said, I almost got it. Finally he said we got to go. So we jumped in the truck. I was in the front. And when I say truck, not talking about a trailer truck, ten wheeler with a pup truiler both. 00:26:38 Speaker 5: Of us and we head out there. 00:26:40 Speaker 2: It's important to note that both log trucks are fully loaded with over eighty thousand pounds of timber. 00:26:47 Speaker 6: And I think we're going to make it, cause it's flat. It's flat all the way across the top. You get to that bluff, go down the gap in the bluff, and it's a pretty good grade down through the field and you'll kind of level out again. 00:26:59 Speaker 5: Yeah. 00:26:59 Speaker 6: I'm thinking the whole time, we're gonna get off here before it starts raining, Like one hundred yards. 00:27:04 Speaker 5: Before I get to that gap in the bluff. 00:27:07 Speaker 6: It starts raining, and I'm talking about doctor old boy old robbing them long drops. I mean, it starts poured, and I break off the gap in the buff and my jake break's on. I don't realize it, but my jake break has been on this whole time. Well, that's not good if it's slipped. I took off fighting. Oh, I reached up there and killed the jake. I probably slid ten foot, Max, I just barely slid. 00:27:37 Speaker 5: And when I killed the jake break, I was fine. I w wasn't. 00:27:41 Speaker 6: He'sing off the hill. I don't think another thing about it. I'm halfway down the hill. I ain't had no more trouble, and I reached down in the floorboard to get up drink. 00:27:51 Speaker 5: I had a bottle of water sitting in the. 00:27:53 Speaker 6: Floorboard, And when I reached down to get that bottle of water, I looked out the passenger side of that truck. 00:28:00 Speaker 5: He's passing me light rate of speed. It looked what it looked. 00:28:05 Speaker 6: It looked like we were on the interstate and he's just blowing my doors off. But he's on their our hands out of nowhere, he's out in the grass. But the first thing, and I'll never forget this as long as I as long as I live, when I seen him, it was like he's going forty miles an hour. 00:28:25 Speaker 5: There's not a tire on that truck turning. They're all locked up. He's sliding. You can take it from there, and then I'll tell the rest of it. 00:28:33 Speaker 1: Back up a little show you the hard headed stubborns. Yes, he was fooling that line. And I've seen that cloud and I had a bad feeling. I just which I was like, my dad is nervous, fancy, but I just had a feeling. 00:28:48 Speaker 4: And I never told him it was super dry. Yes, it was super dry. 00:28:52 Speaker 1: Was a cloud, and I was getting mad at him, which you can't tell him nothing. 00:28:56 Speaker 4: Just like he did. 00:28:58 Speaker 1: He had to fix that line when I did, And like he said, and it's a it's. 00:29:03 Speaker 5: A good grade. 00:29:04 Speaker 4: It's it's a tenth. 00:29:06 Speaker 1: Of a mile from the top of that to the bottom of the field. 00:29:10 Speaker 4: And it came. It wasn't belonger. He was a white out. 00:29:14 Speaker 1: It was absolutely white out. And when I broke over it, and he hadn't slid just a little bit. And the truck I was driving, the tars were hard, I mean, didn't have tread. But when I touched where he had slid, that truck left shot like you'd shot out of a cannon. He didn't just when it slid, and I drove thousands of loads of logs out of the woods. I won't say I'm a good truck driver, but I've done it since sixteen years old, all kinds of conditions. And I thought then myself, I mean, I tried everything, but it left. And I know Jake brek ain't I flipped the Jake break nothing. 00:29:58 Speaker 5: He pulled. 00:29:58 Speaker 6: He pulled out on the grass. Keep them hitting me. No, I didn't. I didn't pull nothing. I had no control the road. It just took off the road kind of curved left when you fell off the hill. 00:30:09 Speaker 4: The tracks, I. 00:30:11 Speaker 5: Mean the road we made you just missed me then. 00:30:13 Speaker 4: And I pulled the level of trailer. 00:30:16 Speaker 5: Nothing. 00:30:17 Speaker 1: I tried to gas and by then I was done. I thought, I can I can handle this, I can control it. 00:30:24 Speaker 4: I thought about. 00:30:25 Speaker 1: Gas and tried that you couldn't shift gears. I tried, and it was going and I half over the hill, and I know there was one old tree out there in that field. There's a cemetery out there, big old tree out there. And I thought, my only hope is to turn this thing over in the field because at the end of that there was nothing but huge timber at the end of the field, big sycamore. I knowed what kind of temper and I know when I hit that, I was a dead man. I mean, I realized, and that was war Eagle. And when you went through the timber, you went off bluff and war Eagle. 00:31:08 Speaker 4: All that hit my. 00:31:09 Speaker 1: Mind when I was at least forty mile an hour, and I thought, the only way I'm going to live if I hit that tree out there, that's one tree his right's hard. You couldn't And I cut the wheels as hard as I could cut him, and nothing happened. And this little road coming around to the cemetery and that, and then it was Timber. I just cut the wheels back straight and I said, Lord save me. That's all I had time to do. And I hit Timber. And the first one I hit was a big tall for simon, not a field for salmon. It was twelve fourteen inches. At the stop I hit it, it's like a bomb went off. I shird it off and he went by my window, the top end first and the button and I went. It shirred the mirrors off right in the doors, shirt, my stacks off of the truck. It towed when I hit it told me out of the sea, and it told me right back in the seat. I grabbed a stirring wheel and I thought that Timber and I drugged. There was Timber running me and I went through that and hid the clearing, and I thought, next. 00:32:24 Speaker 4: To his war eagle, I'm going off in it. 00:32:26 Speaker 1: I can't remember it's the bluff here, or hopefully it's And I drug enough Timber. I come to a dead stop in that little opening, and Cody was at my door barely by the time I got and he couldn't get in, and he got in on the passenger side and we sat there and water was absolutely running under that truck, so deep, and and he he said, I don't want my truck. He's still they're not He said, I jerked the brake on it. I wouldn't plumb off the hill. And he come running. 00:32:58 Speaker 6: He when over and see him going by me because I knew what was going on. As I was going out the door, I jerked the bricks and I'm running. I mean, it's raining like crazy, and I'm running down across I feel and why I'm running. I'm screaming, Lord helping, Lord helping. And it was like, I mean, it's poor, poor and rain. But it was like it was dead silent, like there's no noise at all until he hit the woods. When that truck hit the woods, it was like they sounded. 00:33:33 Speaker 5: Like a freight train. 00:33:34 Speaker 6: I mean, it was like a tornado just instantly, just the office rack that you've ever heard, and all like it sees the back, you know, all those he's going through the timber. I don't know what I'm gonna find when I get there. And I went running up to the driverside and he's in there and I say I can't get in. So I run around and go between the truck and the training and I bail up in the passenger side. 00:33:57 Speaker 4: Not a scratch on me. 00:33:59 Speaker 5: He just sat there look at me like, not what's not a bruise? 00:34:02 Speaker 4: Not a scratch. 00:34:04 Speaker 1: But I split all that huge timber that if I did, of course it told the truck and I had I drugged trees under the trailer, big old root wads, and it bent the house and axle housing on the truck. I mean the whole big axle housing with the pumpkin. 00:34:24 Speaker 4: It bent one of them plumb back. 00:34:26 Speaker 1: And the Lord spoke to me, I've got to the point, which I was always self confident, I mean do and I thought I could do. 00:34:38 Speaker 4: You got to leave the Lord out. 00:34:39 Speaker 5: Of the picture. 00:34:42 Speaker 4: He spoke to me. 00:34:44 Speaker 1: He said, Bud, you ain't in control of your life. You think you can got control. You don't have control he does. All I had time to do was say, Lord, save me. 00:34:57 Speaker 2: The question could be asked, what's the vow you in a man knowing who's in control of his life? Why is that life changing? And I think it goes back to essential truth. If you think you're in control, but you're actually not. You're living in a disconnected state from reality. Acknowledgment of truth beyond just the intellectual aligns us and shifts the very place from which we see our life. The acknowledgment of God's control in a human's life has the power to change everything. And Teddy wouldn't know it, but this would set him up for what was going to come later in his life. 00:35:41 Speaker 3: Back to the story. 00:35:43 Speaker 1: But you could look and the grass was, oh six ads, she's tall. You could look up through that field and the grass was you could track it. It was straight as you took errol and shot it. And I want about eighth of a mile before I stopped. And we estimated forty to fit, not to exaggerate, but easy, forty to fifty million hour that I was sliding eighty some thousand pounds off of steep hill slip grass. I found out that he is the one man's not in control. There's somebody mightier than him that's giving breath of life and keeps him every day. It's been a good life, lots of close calls. God's been good to us, these boys. 00:36:34 Speaker 4: It's in the blood. 00:36:35 Speaker 1: From the first story I heard my dad and in the woods, and but they're doing it right, I can say they honest. You can go to the woods, name trash and treat like it would if it's our on. 00:36:48 Speaker 6: When people when you talk about a lot of a lot of people, the first thing I think about is old boys and so he got hurt bad in the logwoods there eno even got killed. That's not what I think about. I mean, there's been way more good days than we sit here and tell all these stories. I mean, you tell the you tell the cool stuff of what people want to hear about, turning scares over and wrecking trucks and all that stuff. There's way more days. There's way more good days, you know what I mean. There's been way way more good days where you went to work, everything went smooth, you sat down at lunch time. You know, I can remember being kids when Dad and Eddie was working together. 00:37:32 Speaker 5: You know, we sat down at lunch. 00:37:33 Speaker 6: And there's way more of those days that good days. Yeah, you know, those are actually the memories I have that I think about when I think about logging. 00:37:44 Speaker 1: It was fun times, fun, you worked hard, yeah, but I mean you sit down and talk, yeah. 00:37:51 Speaker 4: Enjoyed. 00:37:55 Speaker 2: As we closed our conversation, Teddy reflected on his father and how he missed him. I thought it was interesting that he brought this up. 00:38:04 Speaker 3: Now. 00:38:06 Speaker 1: Most thing I missavand I do to this day, which men Dad got. 00:38:09 Speaker 5: I was the. 00:38:10 Speaker 1: Youngest, the baby, and when he was older, I was with him, helping him, you know, up to them. But go in the old house of her and he could look straight ahead and he'd cut his eyes on around and they'd come in the door and he's in a good mood. He'd get his eyes at you, a little grin, and I can I can see that to this day. I never once in my life ever hear my mom or dad tell me they love me. Didn't have to I never never heard him. But he didn't have to be told, Caddle. It was just a lifestyle. 00:38:54 Speaker 5: Then. 00:38:56 Speaker 4: It's been a good lie blessed life. A lots of hard word to the last few years. 00:39:02 Speaker 1: I spent more time outside than I was ever in a house because me and Ed was in the woods coon hunting at night. That's why it hurts bad now to be cooped up. 00:39:16 Speaker 3: Cooped up, he said. 00:39:18 Speaker 2: In early December twenty twenty five, Teddy was diagnosed with a fairly advanced melanoma cancer. It's times like these that stabilization only comes from knowing and trusting who's in control. And if you have ever wondered about Eddie Villines, Teddy's brother, Caylin's dad, who spoke of being content and wondered why he wasn't on this episode, it's because four years ago he was diagnosed with the rare and debilitating form of dementia. Eddie is just seventy years old and he's still hanging on like two pieces of stove would split from the same log. Eddie is just as good and strong man as his little brother. 00:40:09 Speaker 1: I know that, and I thank the Lord every day. God has been I think better than me than anybody in the world. I can tell that I should have been dead. He's brought me through it till now on this and man, he's been good to me, so this too. 00:40:28 Speaker 2: Please pray for Teddy and Eddie the lines, and it's my prayer that you and I can have the same faith, joy, hope and contentment in the midst of life's challenges, which inevitably will come. I can't thank you enough for listening to bear grease. Please share this podcast with a friend and leave a review of our podcasts. 00:41:01 Speaker 3: Wherever you listen on behalf of. 00:41:03 Speaker 2: Brin's This Country Life podcast and Lakes Backwoods University. Keep the Wild Places Wild because that's where the Bears live.