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 that airways have to offer. All right, friends, grab a chair or drop that tailgate. I've got some stores to share. Alice Chalmers and The Call of Paloosa, one of the first installments of this weekly endeavor, had a story in it about a tractor, and this one is no different. But instead of happening in South Arkansas, this is his way up under in New York. Now, once we navigate that in a stategic tale that I know you're going to enjoy, I'm gonna I'm gonna catch you up on a recent event of the place that I attended just this last weekend. I'm gonna tell you all about it. So join me at the fire and let's get started. This week's opening tail comes from This Country Life listener Ryan Martai. The story takes place way up Yonder in Carthage, New York. I'd never heard of Carthage, but according to Google Maps, Fort Drumm is just up the road and a little over thirty miles as the crow flies northwest is Canada. You remember Canada, of course you do. That's where our brothers and sisters to the north lived with the second best Olympic hockey team. Anyway, Ryan's grandpa, Jim, was as country as cornbread, worked at a machine shop and farmed a truck patch on the side. And here's a glimpse into mister Jim's life in Ryan's words, using my voice. My paternal grandpa was a humble man. He worked hard for what he had and didn't own the thing that he had earned. He took pride in what he had, even if some of those possessions were considered antiques by the turn of the twenty first century. Besides his wife and grandkids, the two things he took the most pride in were his barn, which looked like could have fell over if you looked at it wrong, and the quirky little tractor they called it home now. The tractor was in Alice Chalmers g with a serial number two five zero nine, dating it to between nineteen forty eight in nineteen forty nine, one of the first years of production for this particular model. Its persian orange paint was sunburned and chipping, and the faint outline of the Alice Chalmers decal that had long since disappeared from the hood spoke to how much work this tractor had done over the years. The Almus Chalmers G was a small tracker specifically designed for vegetable gardens and truck farmers. Its unique rear engine and tubular frame design allowed farming implements such as cultivators and moors to be mounted beneath the tractor, enabling the operator to easily see the implement working on the ground. The bright persian orange paint only added to its quirky appearance. Design For small scale farming, these tractors came with a variety of implements, including sickle bar moors and cultivators, and single row seas. Over its seven years production, nearly twenty nine thousand units rolled off that assembly line. Alice Chalmers ended up under my grandpa's ownership sometime in the mid nineteen seventies when he bought it along with several implements, from someone in the next town over. After the cash had exchanged hands, he drove it the five miles back home, where it spent the rest of its working life cultivating the nearly two acre garden that produced vegetables that were sold at roadside for extra income during the harvest season and fly on snow in the wintertime. And while that tractor was a tool that my grandpa used, it was more of a novelty to me as a kid. Summertime found my family spending most weekends at my grandparents' house. With the warmer weather came tractor rides around the small property that it and my grandpa called home. Everyone knew or ride was inevitable, but my grandpa never came out offering one. Instead, he waited for my sister and me to tiptoe into the living room and ask the same question. Each and every week. In short order, we would all be fiul down the front steps and climbing into the old plywood wagon attached to the drawbar or the tractor. Because the tractor was rear engine, the exhaust blew directly back toward us passengers riding on the wagon. Still to this day, I don't think I have inhaled as much exhaust as I did during those rides. The real fun began when I started to learn how to drive it. The very first time I was allowed behind the wheel, I did everything I was instructed to do, except one thing correctly. I was told to push the clutch in, and I did as I was told. I was told to shift it into first gear, and I did it like it was second nature. Then I was told to let the clutch out slowly, and I dropped that clutch like a bad habit. Being rear engine that wasn't much weight on the front axle, the front tires jumped off the ground and the tractor began to buck, with me hanging on it for dear life. I said, slowly, let it out, slowly. My Grandpa hollered allow the clutch and the breakdown instantly, and within just a few more minutes of practice, I was moving through the gears with all four tires firmly planting where they belonged. At the end of the ride, after everyone had gone back into the house, my Grandpa and I pulled out the old age Warren tractor manual and I was given a crash course on the tractor's gear pattern. There on those yellowing pages, my Grandpa scribbled a crew diagram of the shift pattern with a little nub of a pencil that sat in the drawer of his workbench. To me, this was my initiation into the imaginary Alice Chalmers g Driver society that I had conjured up in my head that night. Over the years, as my grandpa aged and slowed down, so too did the tractor. He began doing less work that required the steady use of it, and we grew up making tractor rides seem lame and the thing of the past. Looking back now, there are a few things I wouldn't give to be on that wagon again, getting carted around the yard behind the tractor with my grandpa at the controls. My grandpa passed away in October of twenty fourteen, and at the graveside service, my dad and I joked that we should have politely declined the use of the hearst and used the tractor in a wagon to carry my grandpa's casket to the cemetery. My grandma decided that the tractor would eventually go to me. As the years passed, it was used less and less until it ended up setting for several years beneath an old canvas tarp. That is where it remained until this past spring, when it made the trip across New York State to me on a trailer behind my dad's truck. It just so happens that a group of men from my church get together every other week and work on projects in one of the guy's garages. When they heard that I had a project on the way, it was immediately decided that the tractor would become what we would start working on. Within a couple of weeks, it was rolled into the shop and the tired old tractor that had been setting for the better part of a decade was being brought back to life. After a couple of hours, the four spark plugs had been replaced and a new battery was installed to provide ignition pire for the engine, and it was time to look in the gas tank. And one sniff of that tank proved that the fuel had long since gone bad and turned to varnish. Inspection showed it was full of bisket substance reminiscent of the maple flavored corn syrup found in a bottle of Angemima on the local grocery storeeshelf. Once the tank was drained, and fresh oil added, it was time to turn it over. With the pull of the ignition rod, a hooked piece of metal protruding through the rear fender behind the driver's right hip, and a couple of shots of ether that the engine was awakened from its slumber. Smoke belching from the exhaust filled the garage and left a fog like haze hanging through the room. Remnants of sunflower seeds and other organic matter shot from the exhaust pipe and littered the floor. I took that tractor for which first drive since it had been parked, and in typical fashion, the front tires went skyward. As I let out the clutch, all I could think of was my grandfather, chuckling while shouting the same phrase I had first heard nearly twenty years earlier, I said, let it out slowly. I never made it far on that first ride because the clutch hung up, leaving me unable to shift without grinding the gears. We have since fixed that by evicting a family of mins that had made the transmission bell housing their home. Every time I work on this tractor, I can't help but think about a part of my Grandpa is still there in the corner of that garage, watching with his little chuckle in it look of contentment on his face, knowing that this tractor is being brought back to life. Maybe someday I will heed his advice and let the clutch out slowly. And according to Ryan Marti, the Empire States owned Alice Chalmers test pilot. That's just how that happened. Well, Ryan, I appreciate you sending a story in man. There's something that's good about having something tangible that you can reach out and touch, that you know it's got their fingerprints of the past. Thank you, buddy. Now, just like that old tractor, there are traditions everywhere, but I challenge you to find one with more of an impact on a community that spills out all over the world, like what takes place every fall and winter in Stuttgart, Arkansas. The economic impact of duck season is estimated to be between one and five million dollars a day locally and regionally throughout the season, with as much as three hundred million dollars coming into the state, with a large portion of it funneled through Stuttgart. Stuttgart is one of two county seats sharing those responsibilities with d Whitt that actually sits near the center of the aptly named Arkansas County, some twenty six miles to the southeast down Highway one sixty five, twenty one miles south from de Witt. Down the same highway, lands you at Arkansas Post, a fur trade and locale founded in the summer of sixteen eighty six by a handful of stinky Frenchmen eager to swap goodies for beaver pells. Ninety seven years later, in April of seventeen eighty three, a Revolutionary War battle was fought at Arkansas Post. It is one of two battles fought west of the Mississippi River, the other happening in Saint Louis, and the one here was the last one on this side of the Big money that occurred five months prior before England hollered Cafro and started leaving us alone. Now get back on your horse and head back north. Halfway between Arkansas Post and de With is the community of Jillette. That nugget of Arkansas goodness is the home of the world famous Jillette Coon Supper. I talked about that event back on episode two seventeen when I described how to cook a coon. I'm sure I'll talk about it again someday. But all of that American history is and has been taking place in Arkansas, specifically Arkansas County for the last three hundred and forty years. That's ninety more than the Celebration of America that's taking place later this summer. And all of it, the perilous trip across the Ocean that the exploring Spaniards and jured, the hardships of the French trappers, and every note worthy event from then until last Fridays all led to me being in Stuttgart last week at the Riching Tone Duck Call shop as an invited judge for the Duck Blind Breakfast cook Off. When I think about it that way, my responsibilities as judge take on a whole other level of historical significance. Of course, I may be the only person looking at it that way, but who cares anyway. Preston Allen and Blake Fisher, both employees at Richingtone Duck Calls, run the cooking competition portion of the event. This is the fifth year for that competition and the second time I've been asked to judge. Last year I had a scheduling conflict so I was happy to get this year's booked early when Preston inviting me again. The cooking competition is just part of the Call of Palooza that has been an annual event since the grand reopening of the call Shop in twenty nineteen. Twenty sixteen. The call shop had been damaged by devastating fire, and they built back bigger, it was better, and to celebrate their litteral rise from the ashes, the Call of Palooza was born. Now, as I made my way along the Iro Drive from Casa dey Reeves to Stuttgart, I thought about all the interactions I'd had over the years of the old R and T Call Shop. That place wasn't big enough for a cat to swish his tail around and not get it in the gravy. It was adjacent to the old Max Sport Goods location at the corner of the North Grand in Highway seventy nine. There, Tim and I would buy shells and clothing and gear, and we'd go at least twice a week. As new clients came in to hunt with us. We'd see and talked to Butch rich and Back, the man who started Riching tone Duck calls in nineteen seventy six. He'd be there visiting with folks who are around the corner and his shot making and tuning calls. One instance that comes to mind anytime I hear mister Butcher's name in passing, or R and T for that matter, is a day that Tim and I took a grandfather and grandson from Wisconsin. They were hunting with us to Max. The grandson was our guest and hunting with us through the Hunt of a Lifetime Foundation, an organization dedicated to pairing children up to the age of twenty one who have terminal illnesses with outfitters and guides to hunting. Fish. R and T had moved from its original spot, and it was located in the structure that would eventually catch fire in twenty sixteen. But as we walked around inside looking at all the calls, mister Butcher walked in. He was small in stature but big in personality, and he struck up a conversation with the young man and his grandfather. Now in short order, that conversation turned to duck calling. He reached inside a display case and pulled out one hundred dollars duck call and began given our guests calling lessons. Then he gave that teenager the call and disappeared into the back, down a hallway and out of sight. I'm sure he'd done that many times before and an untold number of times afterwards, until he passed away in twenty fifteen, just twelve days before his sixty ninth birthday. But that's how I remember mister Butch every time. It's impossible for me to think of Stutguard and not think about duck hunting too, and for many it's the same way with duck hunting and Riching Tone calls. John Stevens purchased the business for mister Butcher in nineteen ninety nine and has grown it into what it is today. Recovered from that fire was hard, but ten years later you wouldn't know what ever happened. It was my first time in the new place. My trips to Stuttgard had been somewhat limited since Tim and I retired from the guiding business. I go through there now and drive right on by. I hadn't bought a new duck call, and over twenty five years I have a small collection of them, but most of them that I have were ones that I used at sometime in my life, so I admittedly wasn't stopping to see what all had changed or had been updated. But I pulled in and I parked, and before I could get out of my truck that familiar sounds of Stuttgart were seeping into the cab. Someone was away from the gathering crowd, off by themselves and absolutely wailing on a duck call, obviously prepping for the first round of the calling contests that were slated for later in the day. Hearing someone blowing a duck calling Stutguards like living close to the airport. After a while, you don't notice the racket. It just becomes ambient background noise or disappears completely from your receiver until someone points it out or you hear some something really good or really bad. What I was hearing was par for the course a calling competition hopeful whose intended focus was demonstrating his ability to produce and control sounds that stress peak performance and the mastery of the instrument. The duck hall not actually calling a duck. They're practicing a multi stage routine that, to the untrained ear, would make you think an actual duck could or would ever make those same sounds. At least not in that picture tone, but in this contest, the contest are calling judges hidden from the view to impress them and how they control what comes out of that call. But I wasn't there to judge duck callers. I was there to judge duck blind groceries. A familiar frame to some of you listening would be my response when I got there and someone asked, are you hungry? And I responded with, what's hungry? Got to do with it? That was my fuck. That was a favorite of my father's. When meal time came around, if the food's ready, we're gonna eat regardless. Now, the mission was that four two person teams had thirty minutes to cook up what we would call a duck blind breakfast, eggs, bread, and meat like normal breakfast food, but with a bag of surprise ingredients that the chefs would find out about when the thirty minute timers started. They were also cooking on small blackstone grittles like you'd find in a duck blinder in the woods, Eggs, bacon, sausage, bread, and for the first round of day one, our outdoor chefs would have to incorporate the following into the meal. Potato, chips, pop tar, pretzels, cheese, apple, oat meal, cream pie, hard candy, and buy any sausages. Now, most folks probably call them Vienna sausages, but I've addressed that debate here before. Tomato, Tomato, who cares. The point is that through two rounds on Friday, with the qualifying rounds each having surprise ingredients through each of them, the two best teams would compete for the championship the next day, which was Saturday. Now, I would be remiss if I didn't mention my two esteemed and fellow judges first up as mister Jim's Stenson of stints and duck calls. Mister Jim is a call maker who learned from the one and only legendary and my friend, the late Alvin Taylor. Mister Alvin May Taylor made duck calls in Clarendon, Arkansas, and mister Jim learned how to make calls from him, much in the same manner that John Stevens learned from mister Butcher, who would turn and learned from mister Chick Majors. It is a legacy gift from one generation to the next that's not given lightly. It's earned through patience, trust and respect. Mister Jim is retired, now living in Hot Springs, entertaining grandkids by the bush of basket load, but relocating every duck season to his place in Clarington to hunt and sell calls. Our trio was completed by Anne Marie de Ramus, and Marie has been a friend of mine for several years now. She has the distinction of being the first woman to be appointed to serve a full term as a commissioner for the Arkansas Game and Fish. She's now at the end of her seven year appointment, and over her tenure, I have watched her work hard for the betterment of wildlife and habitat in this state. I'm proud of her work, and even more so to be your friend. So it was a pleasant surprise to see that we would be spending the better part of two days together, laughing, eating duck blind food, and passing judgment on what we were eating. On Saturday, the final match between Friday's qualifiers. There were two differences. The cooking time was extended to an hour and my baby girl, Bailey Suzanne came along to try the victuals and help me judge. The last place I'd have expected her to want to go early. On the first Saturday after school let out for the summer, was under a tent in the Arkansas humidity with her pappy while the din of duck calls and bacon permeated the air with a racket and the sumptuous aroma of sizzling pork. But there she was, hair and a ponytail, walking across the parking lot with me, like she'd done this every day of her life. Another good friend of mine and duck calling and hunting legend, Jim Bouronquest, walked up to her, stuck out his hand and said, Hey, miss Bailey, I'm Jim. Now. I could see her grinning and thrilled and yet still a little surprised when people know who she is before meeting her because of this podcast. She embraces it. She isn't shy. She's confident in social situations and represents her generation and our name with manners and grace. And she'll be fourteen before the summer over, and in the blink of an eye, in and out of college. But today she was with her daddy and took a spot on my left side, the same side that she'd crawl on to when she was just a toddler sitting in my lap as we rocked away the day before there was school or dancer, any place she'd rather be than where she was to most of that we're in attendants, and probably her as well. It was just Brenting his daughter sitting at the judges table, laughing, trying food prepared by strangers with off the wall ingredients, each buying for the title of best duck blind cooking team. But to me it was one more of a thousand mornings sitting in a rocking chair, squeezing every available second of time from a clock that seems to tick faster with every passing year. She tried everybody I did, even the cornbread that had a hent of sardine oil in the mix, after the much maligned canned fish was among the listed eye items of the final mandatory ingredients. We laughed and we ate, We enjoyed the company of our old friends and making new ones. And all the credit goes to a random invitation to attend an event whose roots are woven into the tapestry of her family's legacy as well. How can you not like a gathering that promotes paying tribute to those that came before us, celebrating the present while educating those that will carry the torch into the future. So thank you riching Ton duck Halls for putting together an awesome event and adding another opportunity for generations of folks and family to get that's good stuff. All Right, I need some help and I want everybody that can just take a little time and take a survey. From June the first to the fourteenth, we're going to run this survey and you can participate it and we want to hear from you. Go to the meat eater dot com forward slash grease and fill it out. Now, it'll take you five minutes to do it at the most if you're slow, but you've got a chance to win a five hundred dollars gift card to the Meat Eater store. Respond by June the fourteenth to make sure your voice is heard. Rieve was going to put the link in the show description and we're all going to share it on our social media. Help us out if you can't. Now that's a wrap for me for this week and until next week, y'all be careful