00:00:05 Speaker 1: Welcome to this country Life. I'm your host, Brent Reeves from coon hunting to trotlining 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 the airways have to offer. All right, friends, grab a chair or drop that tailgate. I've got some stores to share inside the Secret Hideout. All right, I'm getting my commercial over with First. Unless you live in a cave, you know that the big Black Friday sale is going on. Go to meat eater dot com for the details. And for all you folks hollering about the commercials, I'll refund you what you paid to listen to the content. Oh yeah, you didn't pay nothing. Now, then, today I'm going to tell you all about my man cave, my new studio, the new office, the secret hideout, whatever you want to call it. But I'm not just talking about the structure. I'm talking about just a few of the contents and how I got them and what they mean to I think you'll enjoy it. But first I'm going to tell you a story. The thought of having your own place is as part of our genetic code as anything. We're more or less hardwired to be on the hunt for something we can call our own. It started after Adam and Eve got their viction notice from the best piece of real estate this side of Heaven. Folks have been looking for their own places ever since. It's fun to look for your own spot. There's there's always some mystery and intrigue as you wander around looking at property. In some cases there's an element of danger, especially if you find yourself on the wrong side of town or your middle name is the as in Alexander the Great or Attil of the Hunt, two examples of acquiring property that someone else thought was already spoken for, and therein lies the danger. The only dangerous thing I ever did involving my own spot was trying to build something on a spot I already possessed. Well family did anyway, Like the time me in a couple other near do wells, decided to dig our own cave in the middle of a cow PASTI there was a small rise in that southern Savannah that was surrounded by a handful of sweet gum trees on the backside of that rise was a hollowed out spot about the size of a fifty five gallon barrel. It resembled a shallow cave opening if you tilted your head just right, closed one eye and squad with the other. Prime real estate is defined by its location, and this was a gift from heaven because the address was secret hide out rural route one box. Mama can't see us from the house. It was like some angelic forester had purposely planted those sweet gums in the direct line of sight between the house and where the excavation would take place. The three of us planned the whole operation in about five minutes. A big pond fishing trip had turned into a combat patrol when the fish refused to bite. While recounting for the enemy, we happened upon the little grove of gum trees to cool in the shade and discovered the hidden possibilities within the small depression that lay behind it. Oblivious to enemy troops or Spice satellites. It was the perfect spot. All right, we're getting our bicycles. We left down by the pond and riding to the barn by the chicken house. It was a half a mile away there, We're gonna each slip into tool shed and steal three shovels to dig our cave with. We were behind enemy lines now, and if captured, we could be shot for being spies, or worst yet, told to do some chores we left unfinished at our homes before we all decided to meet up and go fishing. We were kicking up dust like a runaway stage coach. When we slid to a stop by the egg house. We laid down our bikes crept into the tool shed, snatching up two shovels in a sharp shooter spade. Looking like the juvenile tool thieves we were. We balanced our digging implements with one hand and pedal like the devil themselves was chasing us as hard as we could go all the way back to what was going to be the world's greatest height out ever constructed. I could see us right now as plane, as if we'd all met up this morning. Todd was wearing jeans, tennis shoes, and a white T shirt that had red on the hem of his sleeves and around his neck. Bob was wearing his World War II patterned cameo shirt, jeans, and tennis shoes. Now, I'll give you one guess, but if it ain't overalls, no shirt and boots, you'd be wrong for what I was wearing. The diggings started with each of us side by side, with a dirt flying behind us like wood being run through a chipper. Now this wasn't going to take long at all. We figured by noon, one of us could slip up to my house, have my Mama fix us all up some fried blogna, and by the time which everyone got back with the rations, we'd be eating them and the comfort of the foyer of our underground fortress. It was the best laid plans of mice and men and little boys was stolen shovels. The summer heat wasn't a factor in the demise of our underground layer. It was just one of a million flashes of youthful, vaultedhusiasm that faded as fast as it burned. When the top soule turned to clay and the digging slowed down to a crawl, the fish would eventually start biting again, and a third of our crew that had left for the fried blown he had yet to return with even a bite. We made tracks for the ponderosa and found him sitting at the table smiling with a mouthful of grub and a double handful of a fried mule lip sandwich. If you don't know what that is, you need some happiness in your life. It's pettigeen baloonna cut thick as a muse, lip in fry and cast iron skillet. I like mine with a light bread and Duke's mayonnaise. But it's rumored there are humans out there that prefer mustard. Whatever. Anyway, that wound up being the end of that project. There were plenty more, one in particular that involves stacking tomato sticks like Lincoln logs in the loft of a barn and defending it with bb guns sweet potatoes, but that's a story for another day. Now. You remember those shovels, Well, we didn't. Several years later, I was bush hogging around that group of sweet gums and was almost in a trance from the monotonous drone of the tractor when the most god awfully racket of banging and clanging comments from behind me underneath the bush hog. Oh yeah, the shevels, And that's just how that happened. I stepped up on the porch and walked inside a building that had been built in Kentucky and driven down the highway and parked behind my house. Now it got there. Was the story I told y'all last week, A true blessing from start to almost finished. The peace to resistance will be when mister Alsis Alsis Andersny arrives this spring along with his tanned hide. That moosehead will be the centerpiece of the wall you first see when you cross the threshold. It will be the start of many conversations with folks who have like minded interests, like a lot of us. They gonna say, tell me about that moose, and I'll shoot that moose a million times over the coming months and years should I be fortunate enough to continue waking up on the right side of the grass. But the story of the moose will be a side note. The best part of me telling that moose to it. We'll be talking about who I was with, how Craig McCarthy, my guide and good friend, went down and cut meat off that moose every night for us to cook for supper. Now I'll tell them about Dave Gardner, who started out as a cameraman in a bear camp five years ago. It's now like a brother to me to see his little boy bowing his wife Ada through starlink while we sat at the supper table, and the northern lights danced around outside every night, and we looked at him except when it rained sideways. And then folks will look elsewhere and see the bear skulls that you did you kill those in Arkansas? All but one? Can I pick it up? Nope, But let me show you something. Then I'll show them at the top of the skull of that first bear I killed, and tell the story. See that cracking there, whether there it was three minutes or less of legal shooting light. When that bear just appeared out of nowhere, I picked up my bow and with a set of eyes that now would be lucky to see the pins, settled the glow of the top one in the middle of the middle, and moved it a little forward and squeezed the trigger on that bear and ran to the edge of the mountain and fell down a bluff, his head striking a big flat rock in the middle of the creek eighty feet below. And that's where we found him, as dead as the big rock he landed on. The crazy part is that boulder in the creek he landed on was fifty yards from the cabin. I'd spent the night in back to my truck up to the edge of the creek, and me, James Lawrence, and Claybow loaded him in the truck. What's that? What's what? Those sticks? Those aren't sticks, they're switches. Let me tell you about those switches. When my daughter Amy was four years old, she said, Daddy, Santa Claus is going to bring you switches for Christmas. She wrapped those up and gave them to me and thought it was the funniest thing ever. That was thirty Christmases ago, and they have never not been with me. I see them wrapped in that little tight bundle, bound with the bread ties that she used, and I can see a little blonde headed girl with the most mischievous grin watching me open that present with a tag that said to Daddy from Santa. Is that an old flashlight? Yes it is. That's a Craftsman flashlight, and one that's exactly like the one my dad had back in the seventies. I can't count how many times I marveled at how bright that thing was. It was with him every time we cut the hounds loose after coyotes. The fondest memories were when it was cold and I was bundled up and sitting on the dog crate in the back of the truck, trying to pick out which dog was witch. As they chased that cood down through the saline river bottoms. They're barks and balls echoing through the cold night air. Sometimes we'd be righting the perfect spot to see them cross the road close to where we sat, the beam of that light going on for what seemed like forever into the blackness of the night, until interrupted by the dogs. As they crossed the gravel, each tried to gain the lead, and the leaders trying to keep it. We could see the steam coming off of them as they seemingly barely touched the crown of the road before disappearing into the woods on the opposite side. It was like they were a dozen train engines pulling a long line of invisible cars on rails, bound for the unknown. Sometimes I would wake up in the cab of the truck, Dad having laid me down in the front seat and covered me up with his coat stay warm while he caught the dogs one by one and loaded them in the dog crate. Some of that I'll tell whoever asked about that old light, and some of it I'll probably just keep to myself. There's a gallery of photos in several frames hung up from mine and Tim's duck guiding days. And in those photos I can see Arthur, Mitch, David, Michael, Mike, Bill, Larry Richard, and Dennis, just to name a few. I can see Anne, my first lab from thirty seven years ago, several years before we started guiding. I named her little Ann after the red bone and Wilson Rawls is where the red fern grows. And it's funny how things in my life circle back to that book and it's seemingly everlasting effect on me. But it's a photo Tim took of me driving that boat up the Arkansas River and towing his smaller boat behind us. We were using it to haul decoys and if need be an easier conveyance into a shallower spot that the ducks sometimes like to go. I trained that dog myself, and she was the first retriever to steal my heart and the first one to break it. A few years later, thoroughly convinced that if there is such a thing as the spirit of an animal that Anne's would come back to me again in the form of another black lab named Anna. Decade or more later, Anna as a celebrated companion, and I've talked about numerous times on this platform, and I only have to glance above my desk to see a framed picture of her as well. Each of those photos, taking decades apart, takes me to one place, a place where a wet dog is welcome company, and love and loyalty are displayed with every breath. There's a cabinet with challenge coins given to me by my brothers and sisters that serve our nation and communities, one from the Congressional Medal of Honor recipient, but none more important than the other. All of them represents service above self, but most importantly, they represent someone who thought enough of me to want to share them. I may not remember all their names, but I remember all their faces and the pride they had when they handed them to me. I have pictures drawn and colored by kids that I met. Some were handed to me, but most came in the mail. Wonderful surprise to open and see the efforts of a child who, above all else, wanted to give me something that they made themselves, not an email or text message, a handwritten note with a picture attached. Some have bears in them, some have turkeys and coons in them, but all of them have me in them, and most of them Old Whaling's in there too. I've got a flag from the nation of Ethiopia that was given to me by a man who did mission work there and happened to be traveling through Arkansas one time. He reached out to me on a whim and we met for coffee. I used one of his stories about an encounter he had with a hyena in that country on episode two thirty eight, if you're interested in checking it out. A few months later, he sent me that flag and a handwritten letter. He also sent me a feather from the fan of the only turkey he's ever killed. Now, what in the world would I do with a lone turkey feather? I can stand flat footed, blindfold in and grab a handful from the dozen or sold turkey fans I have stored from more turkey kills than I can count. What would I do with that single feather? Cherish it as much or more than my own. That's why I can't tell you how many case knives are in here because I don't know. I'm waiting on the mail man to bring me one right now that I bought just the other day. So how every many there are in here, add one more by tomorrow's mail ones I noticed right offer sitting in a lighted display case, and in that case is one I received on the day my grandson was born. There's the first one the case company gave me when they heard my podcast about them. There's one in there that I gave my dad. It was the first one I ever bought. Another one was given to me for Father's Day by my son. And sitting on top of that display case is a decorative railroad spike with two magnets that support a knife that wasn't made by my extended family out in Bradford, PA. It's a k bar three bladed pocket knife made in America and was manufactured, as best I can tell, no later than the nineteen seventies. It belonged to my great uncle Bob Fry. He was married to my great aunt Arley May. And if the Reeves family ever had an angel walking amongst us with the name Reeves on the back of her jersey, it was hert. There's a buck on the wall that I killed in Mississippi when the Mule Skinner and I were on our Great Mississippi River Adventure a couple years ago, A decent deer that I was fortunate enough to make a good shot on in a windstorm that had me and cinematographer Drew stack Line flapping in the breeze like wind socks in Oklahoma. But that grand adventure miraculous shot is no longer the story of that skull mounted buck. He's missing his nose because I'd run out of room to hang stuff in that bedroom I was using for a studio before getting this one, and I had it propped up in the corner, and that's where it was when I walked in one afternoon and Whaling the Wonder Hound had taken it upon himself to use it as a pacifier. I think it adds character, if not fuel for nightmares. On the walls are duck and turkey prints that I have seemingly had forever, most of them depicting hunting in Arkansas from some of the most well known artists. Philip Crowe, Arthur Anderson, and missus Eddie Jones are world famous wildlife artists who stand amongst the most talented professionals in that arena, and yet all of them are overshadowed by a relatively unknown young artists in a medium some would suggest unworthy of inclusion in that category. I received the eighteen by eight unsigned original work as a gift from the artist herself back in two thousand and thirteen. It was a Father's Day gift from Bailey. She was a couple months shy of two years old and was so proud to hand me her finger painting when I picked her up from the babysitter. I hung it that day beside my chair in the living room when she was four. She was sitting in my lap. We were watching TV. When I saw her looking at the painting. She was so focused on her work that she was oblivious to everything else going on around her, TV, the dog, even me. Finally, I said, you know, you painted that for me. She just nodded her head and never altering her gaze. You never told me what that is that you painted, and immediately she said, that's the forest. For almost three years, I glanced at that painting, seeing only the tiny patterns of fingers that blended colors together in a more or less chaotic way. There seemed to be no rhyme or reason for what she'd done until I asked her about it. When she blurted out the forest, it was like the blur of colors and mismatched strokes morphed into an obvious illustration of timber leaves, wildflowers. It had been there all along. I couldn't see it because I just didn't know how to look at it. It was a stark reminder from a four year old that there's more than one way to see something, and if we put our biases aside for just a moment, sometimes the picture is very clear. There's too many things in here to cover, but each of them stand for people and places that are special to me. I don't take those relationships for granted, and value who and what the items represent. Thank you so much for listening. Until next week. This is Brent Reeves. Sign it off. Y'all be careful, no