00:00:04 Speaker 1: Welcome to this country Life. I'm your host, Brent Reeves from coon hunting to trotlining and just general cuntry 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 stories to share. Landmarks remembered. I never know where I'm going with these things, and this one is no different. I got almost done talking about landmarks and I threw myself a curveball. From there, I go in a different direction, but I think it all ties together in the end. You'll just have to be the judge of it. It seems as time goes by that landmarks change or can even disappear from the landscape. But if they're remembered, are they really gone? You'll just have to decide. Let's join me at the fire and see for yourself. When you left Warren, Arkansas, going north on Highway fifteen, it was a five and a half mile trip to where that route crossed the Saline River. The last half mile or more before reaching the bridge was through a tunnel of trees. Every species of oak, with scattered pine trees on each side of the road, had limbs that met in the middle, stretching for the opening above the surface of the pavement created by the narrow two lane right away with no accompanying shoulder, the roadbed just being wide enough to accommodate two lanes of traffic with nothing left to spare in either direct. If you had car trouble while you were on the dump, as that long, narrow, built up portion of the highway was known, your vehicle dot running was the least of your worries. Log trucks used that route, traveling south to bring logs into both Potlatch lumber mills and worn from the north. Potlatch had significant landholders in Bradley and neighboring Cleveland County. Highway fifteen was the most direct avenue to feed those meals from that direction. For well over half a century, those trees along that dump fought each other from both sides of the road, each claiming the available sunlight as their own. During that passage of time, they formed a natural, shaded archway of bottomland beauty, just large enough for the big trucks to funnel their way through. Fall was a sight to see, with an explosion of every range and shade of yellow and red from oak, maple, sweet and black gum, along with all the other trees that lined the way back and forth across the river. There are leaves abandoned in the green chloro fill for the natural pigments of color before falling to the ground. I can remember passing through that tunnel and seeing the multicolored leaves raining down through diagonal rays of soft sunlight in the cool breeze of the approaching winter. Once you got to the bridge, you were treated to a sight of nineteen thirty's structural engineering. It took a year to build and was completed in nineteen thirty, a year into the Great Depression, saw no declining need for lumber. Its cotton dependent areas suffered. The lumber mills and worn employed over a one thousand workers, and neither bank in town failed. That bridge helped keep the local economy going, and that bridge had a name, the North Steel Bridge. For sixty two years. The North Steel Bridge stood as a reminder of a bygone era in simpler times. The narrow passageway across the river had witnessed the boon of the area's timber industry until nineteen ninety two when it was replaced with a wider and safer bridge. Now that testament to steal engineering was gone, and with it went the treelined tunnel that led to it. When the road was widened, they also built a public boat ramp on the north side of the river, and they named it in honor of mister Claude Ganaway, a long time deputy sheriff and eventual game warden in Bradley County. Before that, there was a dirt ramp on each side that folks used to use, no designated spot, just in an area more or less that was in common use. But the bridge, the North Steel Bridge, it was a spot. Everyone knew. It was the getting out spot for us when we made that five and a half mile float from the Califoard Ramp to the North Still Bridge. We'd accomplish this by leaving a vehicle there before we started, or have someone waiting to pick us up at a designating time with a window, a time allotted before anyone needed to get worried fishing and stopping to eat swim and explore would take the better part of a lazy summer day. I can remember being in town in the hot summer with nothing to do, and then someone suggested we go swimming, and a multitude of us would take off the swimming hole below the North Still Bridge. It was an iconic landmark, referenced by many for a myriad of activities. It could mark the end of a float trip or be the hub of an afternoon the teenagers whiling away a summer day and the company of friends. Another iconic from my past is estimated to have begun in seventeen sixty eight. Just a few miles from where we lived, in the middle of the Saline River bottoms, stood a lobb lolly pine tree that was the biggest of its kind in the nation. It measured one hundred and forty eight feet tall. It had a circumference of fifteen feet in a diameter of sixty inches. It was estimated to have been living for two hundred and thirty five years when a thunderstorm finally brought it down in two thousand and three. Across section of that tree after it fell revealed that in seventeen seventy six it measured one inch in diameter. In eighteen thirty six, when the Arkansas became a state, which coincidentally was the time that Reeves family slipped into Arkansas from the east, the Big Pine, as it would come to be known, was anything but big, at sixteen inches in diameter. By the time Japan and Germany started playing nice again with everyone, it was forty three and a half inches from one side to the other. Then, in two thousand and three, when the final wind blew, the wind that for centuries had tried and failed to unseat the largest lobbed lollypine in the United States, that magnificent specimen of Pinus Tata came crashing through the ground. I remember the first time I saw it. I was sitting behind my dad on the back of his saddle that was girded up tight on his horse buck, The saddle bags supporting my legs on each side comfortably, and most of the time I didn't even hang on to Dad's waist unless we were wading through a thicket or jumping a creek. That horse was a big buckskin that measured sixteen hands at the withers. It was broad chested and could seemingly pull a braking plow through a fire truck. We were squirrel hunting on my first visit to the Big Pine, and Peanut had treated squirrel not far from there. I've talked about Peanut before on here. He was my hairy little brother and my dad's favorite son. Just kidding, I think anyway. I found the squirrel through the scope on Dad's Remington Nylon sixty six, and I added him to the growing number of others that we'd sequestered in the saddle bags. Dad never got off the horse. Normal procedure was I'd slide off the back, holding on the buck's tail like a rope, and dropped to the ground. Dad would pull the rifle from the scabbard, help me find the target, and I'd start slinging lead in its general direction. Once the deed was done, I'd add the squirrel to the growing tally. Reached for Dad's hand and he swing me up behind the driver's seat. When he did that, this time, I landed and stood on the saddle bags like skis, my hands on his shoulder, looking over the top of his stetson with a grand view of the world. He said, just stay there, son, I'm gonna show you something with the slightest adjustments to the rains. Dad steered bucking his intended course, and once Peanuts saw our general direction, he took off to find another squirrel. I don't remember what we talked about. I'm sure I asked him a million times what we were going to see. I do remember dodging and ducking limbs and vines as Buck navigated his way from my father's directions. It was a literal lesson of not seeing the forest for the trees, or not seeing the tree for the forest, however you want to word it. But when we abruptly stopped it and opening forty yards from that massive pine tree, I knew we were at our destination, but I couldn't see anything. I looked all around that tree on the ground for anything that stood out of place. It would catch my attention. Dad never said a word. He just let me keep looking. He looked up over his right shoulders. I stood above him on the back of that saddle. Finally I looked down at him, matching his gaze, and he said, son, look up. I did, and it was then that I saw the biggest loblolly pine tree known to grow. The tree went on forever, and there were two more nearby that may not have been record holders, but they were giants in their own right. We were looking at a living organism that had witnessed a time before our nation was a nation when the sounds that drifted through the needles were made organically and not mechanically, when the only thing flying above it was birds, clouds in the heavens. It would be many years after that winter day in nineteen seventy four before I fully understood and comprehended what that tree represented, even though I would see it every time we hunted close to that place where it stood, or took someone in to see it for the first time themselves. Every time we did it was like seeing it for the first time all over again. And we'd heard the big storm that blew through a few days ago had gotten it, and we had to go see for ourselves. We talked about it all the way down there, with him telling me that he couldn't remember the first time that he saw it, but he could remember like it was that morning the first time that I did. He said. We liked two from killing a limbit of squirrels that day, and I ran through a box of twenty two shelves, like someone else was buying them for me, which was the case back then. They only cost fifty cents for a box of fifty, and a dollar would get you one hundred shots of a Winchester Super Examo for a two man limit of sixteen squirrels of the freshly ruddy trail. That hinted to us that the rumor was true. Why else was so many risks getting stuck driving in to see the Big Pine if it was still standing. The last bend of the trail confirmed what we'd hoped against. The Big Pine was laying on its side, the monarch of the Selin River bottoms that stood heading shoulders for the majority of its two hundred and thirty five years above the canopy, and falling due to an April thunderstorm. That same April, my father turned sixty six. We would only have eight more aprils together before he passed away in September of twenty eleven. My son was five at the time, and I wanted him to go with us, but for some reason known only to little boys, he didn't want to go, and I didn't make it. Sometimes I wish I had, but we vowed to go back and take him with us to have a picture of all three up its three generations of Reeves boys standing in front of that tree. But for some reason or another, we never did it. The trunk was cut into cookie sections and parceled out to different locations. One place chose to have theirs displayed outside for all the world to see, and it lasted about as long as you'd imagine a dead tree to last outside in the elements before falling to pieces, remnants of which are still there. One was presented to the Forester School at the University of Arkansas and Monticella and I have no idea where they all went, but you can see a short video on the one that the Rise in Arkansas High School chapter of the Future Farmers of America have on YouTube. Miss Reeve was going to have a link to that short video in the show The Scripts. It was an iconic landmark in my family. It was in our vernacular as a reference point, much like a address or an highway intersection would be. Boy, we made a big ol' hog this morning. Oh yeah, where was he? About two hundred yards west of the Big Pine. Now nothing else was needed. The other person knew exactly where it was. Even after it was gone, it remains a colloquial namesake for location and directions, much like the North Steel Bridge does now. Both of those names are generational identifiers by the folks who use or recognize them. You might as well have Boomer or Generation X, or even to an extent, Millennials stamped across your forehead if you do, But that's all right. It also identifies the time that you come from, when things operated at a slower pace and there were fewer distractions fighting for your attention, a time where placed was traditionally revered much the people on it. In eighteen forty eight, there was no Cleveland County, Arkansas. Arkansas had only been a state for twelve years, and the area of my family called home was described as sparsely populated wilderness in the early pioneer stages of settlement. State Archives register my family settlement at my ancestral home is the same year Arkansas became a state, in eighteen thirty six. A story that wants my research is complete, I'll tell another day. But in eighteen forty eight there were three burials that took place, establishing the Reefs Cemetery today that cemetery is a landmark of its own, being the final resting place for much of my family and their descendants who still live there, as well as others in the small community that surround it. Less than half a mile north of that cemetery, my uncle Jimmy Ray lives a short walk further is the home of my aunt Martha Anne. I ow't inherited land between them, land like theirs that for the last one hundred and ninety years has been in direct stewardship of my family, that area being chosen by my pioneering ancestors as being as far as they needed to go the trip from North Carolina, Alabama, and Georgia, crossing the Mississippi River, with all of their belongings being what they could load in a wagon and build once they got there. The home that we all referred to as Grandpa's House, my great grandfather specifically, is the oldest home and structure I remembered being there. That house burned when I was a child, and years later my uncle Jimmy Ray would rebuild and retire there where he remains to this day. It was a landmark from my family, and even though I only experienced life there after my grandfather had passed away in a few short years before it burned, it was important for me to know the history and stories that surrounded it. I shared some of those in my father's voice back in June of twenty twenty four on episode two twenty three entitled Father's Day. Now. While writing this portion of today's episode, I had initially thought and planned I talk about that old home place and share some pictures of that old house on my social media as well as the fireside version of this podcast episode that plays on YouTube. But in doing so, I remembered that Father's Day episode, and I remember Father's Day is two days from now from the release of this one. So I listened again to my dad telling those stories from that show, and then I thought about what could be more fit and sharing them again. So that's what I'm going to do. In the theme show where landmarks are the focus. What better representation could there be than from the man who taught me about the ones that I just shared with y'all. This first story you'll hear is about a squirrel hunt with my dad's favorite cousin, Wayne Fry. Here's my father, Lloyd Wilton Buddy Reeves from an excerpt from my favorite episode of This Country Life. The recordings are from a project that my cousin Valerie Stone was working on several years ago for a cookbook of old family recipes. She put a microphone in front of my dad and he took it from there, seizing the opportunity to tell a few tales, and this one involving her dad, Wayne Fry. I hope you enjoy it. Here it is with my lead in. From that episode. There's a couple stories involving my dad and someone's hat getting shot while squirrel hunting in the river bottoms. Now, both stories had the hats being shot on purpose, and neither of the folks who got their hat shot were wearing them at the time. Now, one of them happened to be after my dad was an adult, and the one you're about to hear now him tell was when he was a teenager. The other team in the story is Wayne Fry. Now, Wayne was Valerie's father and one of my dad's favorite cousins. They were squirrel hunting with shotguns. I'll give a little context here and there, but from now on, the fame the squirrel dog training Cayu, chasing Brim catching buckskin, horse loving, hog hunting Pistolero, the storyteller of all storytellers. Here he is my dad, Buddy Reeves, and him. 00:20:00 Speaker 2: And Uncle Live and Uncle Bob had been down there and bottom squirrel out, and we've been over behind the lake and we had a good sport. All go, Bob, but that you would get after deer and you running for about fifteen minutes enough to get wee off somewhere, and I guess he would to he died, But uh, we done got down to the lake, and we've crossed the lake on the drift more walls and stuff out there, and we done. 00:20:32 Speaker 1: Got across him. 00:20:34 Speaker 2: Oh Bob had run a deer off, but he had stopped and treated a squirrel. We back up that lake, across the lake. I didn't want to go back up Uncle Living and Uncle Bob went to get so we were gonna stay that wait on And I told and Wayne had had just about him one and he could back hats h to a way. I said, I throw my head up, then you shoot it. If you throw years up and you shoot it, he said, okay, So I throw the man up. 00:21:11 Speaker 1: He shot it. 00:21:11 Speaker 2: He never touched her fat when he threw this up. I wish now I hadn't he missed it, But I didn't. 00:21:20 Speaker 1: I mean, I told the old piece. 00:21:24 Speaker 2: And I'm going with Bob. I heard them shot. Oh he got back down there, Bob should what y'all shooting? That? 00:21:34 Speaker 1: He said? And what have in your hat? I bet I have heard him tell that story a million times, and I've told her twice that many and it makes me laugh every time I think about it. The connection is it happened around or near these these landmarks that I value so much. Here's my cousin with the lead into the final story for today, a fitting finale for the episode celebrating landmarks. My father and grandfather are walking home from my grandpa's house. My great grandfather two reeves men only one of which I was privileged to know, and the other my dad only knew for a short while walking home from the landmark ground zero of my family's one hundred and ninety year Arkansas pioneering existence. Do you remember him? 00:22:38 Speaker 2: It is? 00:22:39 Speaker 1: Oh? 00:22:44 Speaker 2: He were overall we saw back down. He'll going to the house. I'll be standing up, having one foot leach one of his back pockets and holding on to his gallases. He'd be saying, you can hear it all god boyd and sing and I that where you get out on the road, A flying squirrel, say, a lot of something to fall away over way one up? 00:23:12 Speaker 1: A little dead. 00:23:13 Speaker 2: Yeah, pine tree snag went in that hole And Dad said you want to squirrel? I said, yeah, he set me down out there. H little push a little snag or want to up that little flying squirrel? Now I have to call him a home. 00:23:35 Speaker 1: Did you did you take him home? Take the squirrel home? Mhm? Landmark prominent, easy, recognizable, natural or man made feature. That's that's what the dictionary calls it. I've talked about several today, and most of them can only be seen in pictures I can hold in my hand, or the just the ones that I hold in my heart. Either way, they're as real as anything I could reach out in touch because of how they keep me connected to my heritage. Look around for yours. I promise you they're there, just waiting to be noticed. Happy Father's Day. Till next week. This is Brent Reeves signing off. Y'all be careful