June 9, 2023 • 23 mins
This week, our buddy Brent is offering you one of his secrets to making life long friends -- saying hi to strangers. In a world of social media and text messages, there's still a lot of power left in a greeting. You never know who you're saying hi to, or who they might become to you later.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:05):
Welcome to This Country Life. I'm your host, Brent Rieves
from coon hunting to trot lining and just general country living.
I want you to stay a while as I share
my stories and the country skills that will help you
beat the system. This Country Life is proudly presented as
part of Meat Eaters Podcast Network, bringing you the best
(00:25):
outdoor podcast the airways have to offer. All right, friends,
pull you up a chair or drop that tailgate. I
think I got a thing or two. The teacher, the
power of hello. I've said it before and I'll say
it again. Sharing the burden of a problem with a
(00:47):
friend lightens your load, just like sharing a joy magnifies it.
Friends can come from the most unexpected places and the
best ones. Man, sometimes they seem like to be honest
to goodness divine intervention. This week, I want to talk
to you about some friends I've made just stumbling through
life out amongst nature, looking for something to catch and eat,
(01:10):
or just by being neighborly and just saying hello. It
can literally open doors. And the story I'm fixing to
tell you is a prime example. Sixty five years ago,
my aunt Norma Fay married a fellow by the name
of Tully McCoy. Uncle Tully was born in nineteen thirty
four and grew up in Pike County, Kentucky, which is
(01:33):
located on the Kentucky and West Virginia state line, separated
only by the Tug Fork of the Big Sandy River.
Does any of that sound familiar? Well? It or too.
That's where all the feuding took place between them and
the hat Fields. Uncle Tully's father, Jim McCoy, was nine
years old when that feud ended. He remembered it well,
(01:55):
but Uncle Tully said he never talked about it. I'm
happy to say that I talked to my uncle Tully
this morning. I was getting the details about one of
my favorite stories I've ever heard him tell, and it
all started with a hello. In late fifties, Uncle Tully
(02:18):
found himself married to my aunt Norma and living in
a little rock selling insurance door to door. Now, folks
didn't make any appointments back then. They just drive up,
knock on the door, and make their sales pitch. On
this day, he was outside of town visiting with folks
in the rural areas and drove up to a house
that had no car in the driveway, but he could
(02:40):
tell that the front door was open and only the
screen door was closed. Now, that wasn't uncommon back in
that time for a family to have only one vehicle.
Not seeing a car and that the house didn't necessarily
mean that there wasn't anybody at home. It probably meant
that the man of the house was gone to work
and his wife was there taking care of the home.
On the door and said hello and heard nothing. He
(03:03):
tried again, Hello. He heard a voice in the back
of the house say hello. Uncle Tody said hello. The
voice answered him, come in, So he opened the screen
door and stepped inside the living room. He said, my
name's Telling McCoy and the voice said hello, but no
one came out to meet him. He said he was
just standing in the living room looking around for the
(03:24):
person that kept talking to him. So he said, what's
your name, and the voice answered back, Jim Hardy. Jim Hardy,
Jim Hardy. My uncle said he didn't know what was
going on, but something just didn't seem right. He said,
I'm telling McCoy and I'm selling insurance. Would you be
interested in he said Immediately the voice cut him off, saying,
(03:45):
Jim Hardy four o'clock, Jim Hardy, four o'clock. My uncle
said he looked at his watch and thought, well, it
ain't nowhere near four o'clock. Then he heard a car
pulling up outside and watched from inside the house as
the family that obviously lived there got out of their
car and started walking up on the porch and inside
the house, just just looking at him. My uncle said
(04:07):
he didn't know what to do, but he knew he
was standing in some place he ought not to have,
and regardless of what Jim Hardy was saying, he wasn't
supposed to be there. As the man of the house
walked in, my uncle said he couldn't explain fast enough
how he came to be standing in that man's living room.
When that fellow started laughing and said, someone told you
(04:28):
to come in, didn't they. My uncle said, yes, sir
Jim Hardy, but he won't come out where I can
see him. The man was doubling over and laughing and
grabbed my uncle by the arm and walked him into
another room where a big parrot was in a cage, saying,
Jim Hardy, four o'clock, Jim Hardy, four o'clock, Jim Hardy
(04:49):
was a character on a Cowboy TV show called Tales
of Wells Fargo that ran from nineteen fifty seven to
nineteen sixty two, and you guessed it, it came on
at four o'clock. Now, the end of this story would
have been a whole lot better if I could have said,
and the man bought a whole bunch of insurance. But
(05:10):
he didn't. But if the parrot hadn't said hello, my
uncle would have never had the opportunity to make his pitch.
All that we could ask for are the opportunities, and
the parrot gave him one. The rest, well, that's all
up to us, and that's just how that happened, all right.
(05:36):
I was talking to my brother this morning and I
told him about what I was going to be talking
about this week, and told him, you know how we
used to know all our neighbors in just about every direction.
Now that really didn't encompass a whole lot of folks,
Because if you drew a mile circle from the house
on the farm that we growed up on, you wouldn't
have had enough folks to fill the football team. But
(05:57):
we knew them all. You draw that circle half a
mile from where I live now, and you'd have close
to as many folks that were in the town where
I went to school. We've lived in this house in
this neighborhood for twelve years, and in that time I've
known four different families, three of which represent folks that
bought and sold the same house. I know there's been
(06:17):
folks who've lived and died within my immediate area that
I ain't never met, and I'm ashamed to admit that
how many good folks have I missed making friends with
by not making an effort. There's a man that walks
daily in our neighborhood, getting his exercise and told in
a sack to pick up trash. I've seen him in
the folks yards, snatching up to every President, wal Mart,
(06:38):
and daughter of General. Bags that travel around the landscape
like red neck tumbleweeds. I happened to be outside one
day and he came walking by and I spoke to him.
After years of just giving him a friendly smile or
a nod as he walked by, he stopped and we
visited for an hour about everything you could imagine. And
when he left, he was tolting some fro and bear
(07:00):
steaks and a jar bear grease. A week or so later,
he dropped off some homemade bread and some Greek to
zeki sauce he learned how to make when he was
stationed in Greece in the Air Force. Good Night, nurse,
it was good. All of that was made possible by
just saying hello. Those two syllables with the correct voice
inflection are just like a master key that could unlock
(07:22):
a whole new world of possibilities. In this world that's
dominated by social media, flooded with some of the most
anti social behavior, I think it's time we redirected some
effort into socializing face to face instead of keyboard to keyboard.
There are a few detractors to in person conversations. One
I can think of is the type of person you
(07:44):
ask what time it is and they proceed to give
you the history on how the watch was made. Then
you've got the type that has to get right up
on you when they're telling you a story and their
breath is kicking your old factories. Like Bruce Lee with
his legs set on autopilot. Those folks, they're good for
a text, y'all. Don't get me wrong now, I'm not
kicking social media down the road because I use it
(08:05):
in my job. I've also met people through social media
that have become like family, and if it hadn't been
for it, our pass might not have ever crossed. Who knows.
I can say for certain that those relationships one hundred
percent did happen because of social media. We just need
to balance it more. And really my idea of a
(08:26):
correct balance would be heavy on the social and less
on the media. I'd rather talk to someone a text them.
A text thread is like a baseball game. It's got
no time limit and could theoretically go on forever. A
phone call that's just one audios my friend from being over.
And I keep going back to the old school social
(08:47):
media men holding court and cafes and feed stores over
cups of coffee. The same thing was the fashion when
I'd had to go with my grandma to the beauty
parlor and sit and listen to them jawing about all
the old men that were at the cafe. In the
feed stores, they were talking about all the old ladies
at the beauty parlor. The family and friend gatherings are irreplaceable.
(09:11):
Folks were more respectful to one another back in the
day when saying something ugly in arms reach if somebody
can make your nose bleed, and they may not have
respected you, but at least they were a little more careful. Now,
I'm as bad as anybody. These days, you see more
than one person sitting together, and nine times out of
ten they're all staring at their phone. My wife and
(09:31):
I sit in the living room watching TV and our phones,
sending funny things back and forth and never say in
the world, how in the world did we get here?
And where are we going? It's a double edged sword,
but it's more than probable that I wouldn't be here
now talking to you if it were for social media.
I saw a post on the Hunting for Them about
(09:53):
a guy I had never heard of auctioning off hunts
in Arkansas to promote an organization that I now ever
heard of, and hunting an animal in Arkansas I had
never seen in the wild. That was my old buddy
Clay and his Arkansas Black Bear Association. I contacted him,
thinking it would be a good promotion for his cause
and good experience for me, being a new outdoor videographer
(10:16):
and who wouldn't want to see a bear in the woods.
After talking on the phone, a couple of times. It
only took him a year to take de bait. Our
first hunt together was in the sweltering heat wave in
southeast Oklahoma. We became friends, and now he's like my
little sister. I'm just kidding, he's like my big sister.
Stop it, Brent. Really, he and his whole family are
(10:38):
my family. Not only me, but my family too. Now
I know that ain't some kind of anomaly. That's how
folks become friends. They meet, enjoy each other's coming, and
decide to keep spending time together. It's just the medium
of how those encounters initiate. It's different these days. I've
got numerous friends that I've met through hunting and fishing,
which I think is the base for any relation ship.
(11:00):
You have to share a common interest, and once that's established,
then you learn how that person sees the comedy denominator
that brought you together. If you're willing to see their
version of your interest, you might learn that their perspective
is better than yours. You just never know because of
that initial contact of an offer to help and seeking
(11:21):
help in return. From back in twenty twelve, Let's fast
forward an incredible journey filled with focused hard work, determination
and adventure. To April of twenty twenty three, Clayton Newclem
and I were sitting in Bozman, Montowna, in the Meat
Eater studio fixing to record a podcast with Steve Vanella
(11:42):
and all the other hosts of all the Meat Eater podcasts.
It was a pretty surreal moment, and I looked at
my friends sitting across the table from me, and I said,
this is a long way from that old bear bait
in Oklahoma. Ain't at Claybowm, but it sure was. Last
(12:04):
thing I want to tell you truly demonstrates the power
of a chance meeting. And it happened six years ago.
I made the decision, after fifty one trips around the Sun,
that I was a fly fisherman. It was as conscious
a decision as I've ever made. Growing up on a
farm in South Arkansas and catching a trout on a
fly rod with a hand tied fly seemed foreign and
(12:27):
far away. I was intrigued, and that fire smoldered for years.
Outdoor magazines and books were my obsession, and from big
game hunting in North America and Africa to fly fishing
out West, I dreamt of one day doing these things
that I only read about now at fifty one, and
not knowing a soul that flyfished. I was going to
(12:50):
make that a reality. I just didn't know how now.
I fished with a fly rod in my whole life.
The basic concept of how to use one was taught
to me at an early It was my father's weapon
of choice for catching brim where we lived, and he
could roll cast a hook cricket into the narest of
spots between cypress knees and limbs and pull out a
(13:11):
bluegill after bluegill. He was a dang Jedi with a
fly rod, and I tried to be just like him.
Bluegill were one thing, but catching a trout with a
fly rod, man, that was a whole of the creature.
My occupation kept me in the southern half of Arkansas
until I excepted the position in Little Rock and made
(13:32):
my home. A few miles away and nearly halfway across
the state from where I grew up, less than an
hour north was the Little Red River. It's a tail
water stream out of Grier's Ferry Lake where the Fish
and Wildlife Service have managed a trout hatchery beginning coincidentally
in nineteen sixty six, the same year I saw the
(13:53):
light of day. Here they raise and released rainbow and
book trout into public waters to be enjoyed by everyone,
and a resource with boundless opportunities of which I had
never taken advantage of. That was fixing the change. One day,
like a bolt of lightning from a cloudless sky, I
announced to Alexis that, unbeknownst to her, she'd married a
(14:14):
fly fisherman, and that he'd been trapped inside my body
this whole time. I don't remember her looking surprised, or
even looking up from what she was doing, but I
do remember her calmly asking if you got enough room
for him with all those other idiots in there. I
just let that go. I was mission focused and operating
at full speed. I knew not one soul the flyfish
(14:38):
for trout, So I did what we all do when
we want to know something and don't have anyone to ask.
I got on the internet how to fish for trout
with a fly rod? Got me sixteen million, eight hundred
thousand answers in less than half a second. I don't
know that I didn't watch them all. I spent hours
(14:58):
and hours watching him. I ordered books. I bent the
ears of men who worked at a local fly shop
Little Rock, trying to absorb everything I could to do
it by myself, all before I ever left my house
to go fishing. A week into my new found purpose
in life, I bought a new fly rod, a few flies,
and some wagers. I had a fly rod at home,
but that one I'd bought many years ago, and the
(15:20):
last person I'd used it with was the man that
had taught me to fish in the first place, and
now he was gone and had been for quite a
few years. It had hung there in the garage, beside
the last one he owned, and it was a reminder
of a million memories with him. Man, it was hard.
It was just hard to fish with That one. Made
me miss my dad to the point that I didn't
(15:41):
even brim fish for quite a while after he died.
The next day I planned to drive the Little Rock
with a new one, tie on a fly that the
fly shop man had sold me, and bring this all
full circle. New rod, new hobby, old dream. How hard
could it be? There was one vehicle in the parking
(16:03):
lot when I got there. No crowds meant less pressure
on the fish and less likely i'd be pulling someone's
ear off while I beat the air into submission with
my new fly rod. There was one guy standing beside
a small point fishing in a narrow part of the
river below the dam. I wasn't sure of the proper
etiquette when approaching a fisherman stand in midstream, so I
(16:23):
quickly calculated the amount of fly line he had stretched
out before him and tried to add a little cushions
to that distance behind him, and I walked past him downstream.
After all, I didn't want him tearing one of my
ears off either. He never turned around, and I waded
out into the Little Red River for the first time,
sixty or more yards below him, and washed him catch
a fish. WHOA fly fishing is easy, It's gonna be fun.
(16:50):
My first cast landed somewhere in the vicinity where I
was aiming, but most importantly, that fly was in the
river and I was fishing the current pool. My line
down streamed every so slowly, switching it back and forth
as the different floes pulled and pushed my fly through
that cold water. A fish rose up river to feed
on a bug, and I saw that guy catch another fish.
(17:12):
Man I was excited. The fish were biting, and this
other guy and I were the only two folks around
my day advanced like this cast watched the line float by,
waiting for a bite. See that guy catch a fish,
Change flies, See that guy catch a fish. Cast again
with no results, And this went on for an hour.
(17:34):
After a while, he said, hey, won't you come up
here with me. There's room up here, and they're stacked
in here. Pretty good. He caught another fish while he
was telling me that. Well, going back to my raising
of not wanting to be a bother, I said, man,
I'm good. Thanks. Though, Now not only did this dude
catch fish like an otter, he was also a gentleman.
I hated him immediately. I made cast after cast without
(17:57):
a bite, all the while that guy seemed to catch
one every other cast or so. I changed flies. He
caught a fish while I manufactured not in my line,
false casting like I was in a sword fight with
invisible man. That joker caught a fish. I dropped my
sunglasses in the river. I watched them sink like a
fallen leaf, just out of reaching into the frigid depths
(18:18):
of the water. He caught a fish. Oh yeah, fly fishing. Oh,
it's easy catching fish while fly fishing. That was something
of a different sword, at least for me. I needed
my dad to tell me how to do this, and
even if I could have talked to him, he never
fly fished either. Mercifully. The warning blew with the dam,
(18:39):
and that means they're fixing it, turn some water loose,
and we had to get off the river and to
higher ground quick and in a hurry. The river can
go from waist deep and hardly any current at all
to ten feet and running faster than grass goes through
a goose in short order. But I just went on
my first fly fishing trip. And while I had my
hat and had it to me by the trout gods
(19:01):
and that guy fishing upstream giving me lessons, I was
still inspired to do it. I thought about it a
lot that first few hours. I stood in that cold water,
watching drift after drifting the same with no fish, not
even a bite, but with no thoughts of disappointment, anger,
or really even discouragement. I wanted to learn how to
(19:22):
do what I'd watched that guy above me do all afternoon,
and when I looked up, he was standing on the
bank near the trail leading back to the parking lot,
waiting on me as a guy closer, I could see
this guy was a fly fisherman, not that I needed
to get any closer to see that, because I spent
the better part of the day watching him demonstrate that
while trying not to let him catch me looking. But
(19:44):
he knew, though, he knew, like every home run here
that ever live knows that when you're in the zone
and smashing fastballs to the parking lot, everybody's watching. It
wasn't the crack of a bat that kept me looking
up ever that day. It was the of his flylne
being pulled up out of the water tight as a
fiddle string, over and over with a trout on the
(20:06):
other end. I tell you that cat was purpose driven
to catch every trout within his loop, and I'd argue
that if he didn't. A joker came offully close. When
I got up to him, he stuck out his hand
and he said, howdie, my name's Terry. I shook his
hand and fought the urge to salute him, and raised
his arm like he just won the fly fishing championship
(20:28):
of the civilized world. So I did what I always
do I said something stupid. Hi, Terry, my name's Brent,
and you're a lot prettier than I thought you were.
Terry and I talked for thirty minutes, just like we
were old friends. I didn't have to tell him that
I didn't know what I was doing, but to make
sure he knew, I said, Terry, I don't know what
(20:50):
I'm doing. I just know I want to do it.
And then he asked me, can you come back tomorrow?
That was twenty and seventeen. He taught me more than
I could have ever learned on my own. How to
read the water, how to match the hatch, how to
tie flies, window fish, where to fish, patience, persistence, and
above all bed a good steward and a protector of
(21:13):
the resource, the same lessons I'd have been taught before
when I was a little boy, by a man that
i'd watched catch fish after fish, just like I'd watched
Terry do. The first day we met, a couple of
years ago, my wife and I were on our way
back from Texas, and after a long period of silence
(21:36):
and just riding, I began to tell her how random
I thought it was that Terry and I had met
that day. Now, I could have gone anywhere. I had
never been fly fishing before, and there were closer places
to my house, and miles and miles of trout water
in Arkansas on different rivers. But I went there to
that spot where he was, and it was just the
(21:59):
two of us. After a minute or two, she looked
at me and said, you don't see it. Do you
see what the connection with you and Terry? It's your dad.
It's got nothing to do with fly fishing, Bran, and
all to do with him helping you. He wasn't teaching
you how to fish. He was teaching you how to
miss your dad and be happy by doing something that
(22:20):
all three of you love to do, catch fish with
a fly rod. And there it was, staring me right
in the face. I believe in my heart that my
journey to that spot on the Little Red River started
the day my father left this earth. And I got
there exactly what I was supposed to, and it all
started with Terry Garner's hello. Oh yeah, he ain't from Arkansas.
(22:46):
He just happened to be there fishing that day. She's
a smart gal, that galimane. There's power and sometimes opportunity
in saying hello. Whether it's from a random fly fisherman
or even a fair heart. I really enjoyed this week's visit.
You can find me on the old Instagram at Brent
Underscore Reeves. Remember Reeves is correctly spelled R E A
(23:11):
v ees. This is Brent Reeves. Sign it off, y'all
be careful.
Welcome to This Country Life. I'm your host, Brent Rieves
from coon hunting to trot lining and just general country living.
I want you to stay a while as I share
my stories and the country skills that will help you
beat the system. This Country Life is proudly presented as
part of Meat Eaters Podcast Network, bringing you the best
(00:25):
outdoor podcast the airways have to offer. All right, friends,
pull you up a chair or drop that tailgate. I
think I got a thing or two. The teacher, the
power of hello. I've said it before and I'll say
it again. Sharing the burden of a problem with a
(00:47):
friend lightens your load, just like sharing a joy magnifies it.
Friends can come from the most unexpected places and the
best ones. Man, sometimes they seem like to be honest
to goodness divine intervention. This week, I want to talk
to you about some friends I've made just stumbling through
life out amongst nature, looking for something to catch and eat,
(01:10):
or just by being neighborly and just saying hello. It
can literally open doors. And the story I'm fixing to
tell you is a prime example. Sixty five years ago,
my aunt Norma Fay married a fellow by the name
of Tully McCoy. Uncle Tully was born in nineteen thirty
four and grew up in Pike County, Kentucky, which is
(01:33):
located on the Kentucky and West Virginia state line, separated
only by the Tug Fork of the Big Sandy River.
Does any of that sound familiar? Well? It or too.
That's where all the feuding took place between them and
the hat Fields. Uncle Tully's father, Jim McCoy, was nine
years old when that feud ended. He remembered it well,
(01:55):
but Uncle Tully said he never talked about it. I'm
happy to say that I talked to my uncle Tully
this morning. I was getting the details about one of
my favorite stories I've ever heard him tell, and it
all started with a hello. In late fifties, Uncle Tully
(02:18):
found himself married to my aunt Norma and living in
a little rock selling insurance door to door. Now, folks
didn't make any appointments back then. They just drive up,
knock on the door, and make their sales pitch. On
this day, he was outside of town visiting with folks
in the rural areas and drove up to a house
that had no car in the driveway, but he could
(02:40):
tell that the front door was open and only the
screen door was closed. Now, that wasn't uncommon back in
that time for a family to have only one vehicle.
Not seeing a car and that the house didn't necessarily
mean that there wasn't anybody at home. It probably meant
that the man of the house was gone to work
and his wife was there taking care of the home.
On the door and said hello and heard nothing. He
(03:03):
tried again, Hello. He heard a voice in the back
of the house say hello. Uncle Tody said hello. The
voice answered him, come in, So he opened the screen
door and stepped inside the living room. He said, my
name's Telling McCoy and the voice said hello, but no
one came out to meet him. He said he was
just standing in the living room looking around for the
(03:24):
person that kept talking to him. So he said, what's
your name, and the voice answered back, Jim Hardy. Jim Hardy,
Jim Hardy. My uncle said he didn't know what was
going on, but something just didn't seem right. He said,
I'm telling McCoy and I'm selling insurance. Would you be
interested in he said Immediately the voice cut him off, saying,
(03:45):
Jim Hardy four o'clock, Jim Hardy, four o'clock. My uncle
said he looked at his watch and thought, well, it
ain't nowhere near four o'clock. Then he heard a car
pulling up outside and watched from inside the house as
the family that obviously lived there got out of their
car and started walking up on the porch and inside
the house, just just looking at him. My uncle said
(04:07):
he didn't know what to do, but he knew he
was standing in some place he ought not to have,
and regardless of what Jim Hardy was saying, he wasn't
supposed to be there. As the man of the house
walked in, my uncle said he couldn't explain fast enough
how he came to be standing in that man's living room.
When that fellow started laughing and said, someone told you
(04:28):
to come in, didn't they. My uncle said, yes, sir
Jim Hardy, but he won't come out where I can
see him. The man was doubling over and laughing and
grabbed my uncle by the arm and walked him into
another room where a big parrot was in a cage, saying,
Jim Hardy, four o'clock, Jim Hardy, four o'clock, Jim Hardy
(04:49):
was a character on a Cowboy TV show called Tales
of Wells Fargo that ran from nineteen fifty seven to
nineteen sixty two, and you guessed it, it came on
at four o'clock. Now, the end of this story would
have been a whole lot better if I could have said,
and the man bought a whole bunch of insurance. But
(05:10):
he didn't. But if the parrot hadn't said hello, my
uncle would have never had the opportunity to make his pitch.
All that we could ask for are the opportunities, and
the parrot gave him one. The rest, well, that's all
up to us, and that's just how that happened, all right.
(05:36):
I was talking to my brother this morning and I
told him about what I was going to be talking
about this week, and told him, you know how we
used to know all our neighbors in just about every direction.
Now that really didn't encompass a whole lot of folks,
Because if you drew a mile circle from the house
on the farm that we growed up on, you wouldn't
have had enough folks to fill the football team. But
(05:57):
we knew them all. You draw that circle half a
mile from where I live now, and you'd have close
to as many folks that were in the town where
I went to school. We've lived in this house in
this neighborhood for twelve years, and in that time I've
known four different families, three of which represent folks that
bought and sold the same house. I know there's been
(06:17):
folks who've lived and died within my immediate area that
I ain't never met, and I'm ashamed to admit that
how many good folks have I missed making friends with
by not making an effort. There's a man that walks
daily in our neighborhood, getting his exercise and told in
a sack to pick up trash. I've seen him in
the folks yards, snatching up to every President, wal Mart,
(06:38):
and daughter of General. Bags that travel around the landscape
like red neck tumbleweeds. I happened to be outside one
day and he came walking by and I spoke to him.
After years of just giving him a friendly smile or
a nod as he walked by, he stopped and we
visited for an hour about everything you could imagine. And
when he left, he was tolting some fro and bear
(07:00):
steaks and a jar bear grease. A week or so later,
he dropped off some homemade bread and some Greek to
zeki sauce he learned how to make when he was
stationed in Greece in the Air Force. Good Night, nurse,
it was good. All of that was made possible by
just saying hello. Those two syllables with the correct voice
inflection are just like a master key that could unlock
(07:22):
a whole new world of possibilities. In this world that's
dominated by social media, flooded with some of the most
anti social behavior, I think it's time we redirected some
effort into socializing face to face instead of keyboard to keyboard.
There are a few detractors to in person conversations. One
I can think of is the type of person you
(07:44):
ask what time it is and they proceed to give
you the history on how the watch was made. Then
you've got the type that has to get right up
on you when they're telling you a story and their
breath is kicking your old factories. Like Bruce Lee with
his legs set on autopilot. Those folks, they're good for
a text, y'all. Don't get me wrong now, I'm not
kicking social media down the road because I use it
(08:05):
in my job. I've also met people through social media
that have become like family, and if it hadn't been
for it, our pass might not have ever crossed. Who knows.
I can say for certain that those relationships one hundred
percent did happen because of social media. We just need
to balance it more. And really my idea of a
(08:26):
correct balance would be heavy on the social and less
on the media. I'd rather talk to someone a text them.
A text thread is like a baseball game. It's got
no time limit and could theoretically go on forever. A
phone call that's just one audios my friend from being over.
And I keep going back to the old school social
(08:47):
media men holding court and cafes and feed stores over
cups of coffee. The same thing was the fashion when
I'd had to go with my grandma to the beauty
parlor and sit and listen to them jawing about all
the old men that were at the cafe. In the
feed stores, they were talking about all the old ladies
at the beauty parlor. The family and friend gatherings are irreplaceable.
(09:11):
Folks were more respectful to one another back in the
day when saying something ugly in arms reach if somebody
can make your nose bleed, and they may not have
respected you, but at least they were a little more careful. Now,
I'm as bad as anybody. These days, you see more
than one person sitting together, and nine times out of
ten they're all staring at their phone. My wife and
(09:31):
I sit in the living room watching TV and our phones,
sending funny things back and forth and never say in
the world, how in the world did we get here?
And where are we going? It's a double edged sword,
but it's more than probable that I wouldn't be here
now talking to you if it were for social media.
I saw a post on the Hunting for Them about
(09:53):
a guy I had never heard of auctioning off hunts
in Arkansas to promote an organization that I now ever
heard of, and hunting an animal in Arkansas I had
never seen in the wild. That was my old buddy
Clay and his Arkansas Black Bear Association. I contacted him,
thinking it would be a good promotion for his cause
and good experience for me, being a new outdoor videographer
(10:16):
and who wouldn't want to see a bear in the woods.
After talking on the phone, a couple of times. It
only took him a year to take de bait. Our
first hunt together was in the sweltering heat wave in
southeast Oklahoma. We became friends, and now he's like my
little sister. I'm just kidding, he's like my big sister.
Stop it, Brent. Really, he and his whole family are
(10:38):
my family. Not only me, but my family too. Now
I know that ain't some kind of anomaly. That's how
folks become friends. They meet, enjoy each other's coming, and
decide to keep spending time together. It's just the medium
of how those encounters initiate. It's different these days. I've
got numerous friends that I've met through hunting and fishing,
which I think is the base for any relation ship.
(11:00):
You have to share a common interest, and once that's established,
then you learn how that person sees the comedy denominator
that brought you together. If you're willing to see their
version of your interest, you might learn that their perspective
is better than yours. You just never know because of
that initial contact of an offer to help and seeking
(11:21):
help in return. From back in twenty twelve, Let's fast
forward an incredible journey filled with focused hard work, determination
and adventure. To April of twenty twenty three, Clayton Newclem
and I were sitting in Bozman, Montowna, in the Meat
Eater studio fixing to record a podcast with Steve Vanella
(11:42):
and all the other hosts of all the Meat Eater podcasts.
It was a pretty surreal moment, and I looked at
my friends sitting across the table from me, and I said,
this is a long way from that old bear bait
in Oklahoma. Ain't at Claybowm, but it sure was. Last
(12:04):
thing I want to tell you truly demonstrates the power
of a chance meeting. And it happened six years ago.
I made the decision, after fifty one trips around the Sun,
that I was a fly fisherman. It was as conscious
a decision as I've ever made. Growing up on a
farm in South Arkansas and catching a trout on a
fly rod with a hand tied fly seemed foreign and
(12:27):
far away. I was intrigued, and that fire smoldered for years.
Outdoor magazines and books were my obsession, and from big
game hunting in North America and Africa to fly fishing
out West, I dreamt of one day doing these things
that I only read about now at fifty one, and
not knowing a soul that flyfished. I was going to
(12:50):
make that a reality. I just didn't know how now.
I fished with a fly rod in my whole life.
The basic concept of how to use one was taught
to me at an early It was my father's weapon
of choice for catching brim where we lived, and he
could roll cast a hook cricket into the narest of
spots between cypress knees and limbs and pull out a
(13:11):
bluegill after bluegill. He was a dang Jedi with a
fly rod, and I tried to be just like him.
Bluegill were one thing, but catching a trout with a
fly rod, man, that was a whole of the creature.
My occupation kept me in the southern half of Arkansas
until I excepted the position in Little Rock and made
(13:32):
my home. A few miles away and nearly halfway across
the state from where I grew up, less than an
hour north was the Little Red River. It's a tail
water stream out of Grier's Ferry Lake where the Fish
and Wildlife Service have managed a trout hatchery beginning coincidentally
in nineteen sixty six, the same year I saw the
(13:53):
light of day. Here they raise and released rainbow and
book trout into public waters to be enjoyed by everyone,
and a resource with boundless opportunities of which I had
never taken advantage of. That was fixing the change. One day,
like a bolt of lightning from a cloudless sky, I
announced to Alexis that, unbeknownst to her, she'd married a
(14:14):
fly fisherman, and that he'd been trapped inside my body
this whole time. I don't remember her looking surprised, or
even looking up from what she was doing, but I
do remember her calmly asking if you got enough room
for him with all those other idiots in there. I
just let that go. I was mission focused and operating
at full speed. I knew not one soul the flyfish
(14:38):
for trout, So I did what we all do when
we want to know something and don't have anyone to ask.
I got on the internet how to fish for trout
with a fly rod? Got me sixteen million, eight hundred
thousand answers in less than half a second. I don't
know that I didn't watch them all. I spent hours
(14:58):
and hours watching him. I ordered books. I bent the
ears of men who worked at a local fly shop
Little Rock, trying to absorb everything I could to do
it by myself, all before I ever left my house
to go fishing. A week into my new found purpose
in life, I bought a new fly rod, a few flies,
and some wagers. I had a fly rod at home,
but that one I'd bought many years ago, and the
(15:20):
last person I'd used it with was the man that
had taught me to fish in the first place, and
now he was gone and had been for quite a
few years. It had hung there in the garage, beside
the last one he owned, and it was a reminder
of a million memories with him. Man, it was hard.
It was just hard to fish with That one. Made
me miss my dad to the point that I didn't
(15:41):
even brim fish for quite a while after he died.
The next day I planned to drive the Little Rock
with a new one, tie on a fly that the
fly shop man had sold me, and bring this all
full circle. New rod, new hobby, old dream. How hard
could it be? There was one vehicle in the parking
(16:03):
lot when I got there. No crowds meant less pressure
on the fish and less likely i'd be pulling someone's
ear off while I beat the air into submission with
my new fly rod. There was one guy standing beside
a small point fishing in a narrow part of the
river below the dam. I wasn't sure of the proper
etiquette when approaching a fisherman stand in midstream, so I
(16:23):
quickly calculated the amount of fly line he had stretched
out before him and tried to add a little cushions
to that distance behind him, and I walked past him downstream.
After all, I didn't want him tearing one of my
ears off either. He never turned around, and I waded
out into the Little Red River for the first time,
sixty or more yards below him, and washed him catch
a fish. WHOA fly fishing is easy, It's gonna be fun.
(16:50):
My first cast landed somewhere in the vicinity where I
was aiming, but most importantly, that fly was in the
river and I was fishing the current pool. My line
down streamed every so slowly, switching it back and forth
as the different floes pulled and pushed my fly through
that cold water. A fish rose up river to feed
on a bug, and I saw that guy catch another fish.
(17:12):
Man I was excited. The fish were biting, and this
other guy and I were the only two folks around
my day advanced like this cast watched the line float by,
waiting for a bite. See that guy catch a fish,
Change flies, See that guy catch a fish. Cast again
with no results, And this went on for an hour.
(17:34):
After a while, he said, hey, won't you come up
here with me. There's room up here, and they're stacked
in here. Pretty good. He caught another fish while he
was telling me that. Well, going back to my raising
of not wanting to be a bother, I said, man,
I'm good. Thanks. Though, Now not only did this dude
catch fish like an otter, he was also a gentleman.
I hated him immediately. I made cast after cast without
(17:57):
a bite, all the while that guy seemed to catch
one every other cast or so. I changed flies. He
caught a fish while I manufactured not in my line,
false casting like I was in a sword fight with
invisible man. That joker caught a fish. I dropped my
sunglasses in the river. I watched them sink like a
fallen leaf, just out of reaching into the frigid depths
(18:18):
of the water. He caught a fish. Oh yeah, fly fishing. Oh,
it's easy catching fish while fly fishing. That was something
of a different sword, at least for me. I needed
my dad to tell me how to do this, and
even if I could have talked to him, he never
fly fished either. Mercifully. The warning blew with the dam,
(18:39):
and that means they're fixing it, turn some water loose,
and we had to get off the river and to
higher ground quick and in a hurry. The river can
go from waist deep and hardly any current at all
to ten feet and running faster than grass goes through
a goose in short order. But I just went on
my first fly fishing trip. And while I had my
hat and had it to me by the trout gods
(19:01):
and that guy fishing upstream giving me lessons, I was
still inspired to do it. I thought about it a
lot that first few hours. I stood in that cold water,
watching drift after drifting the same with no fish, not
even a bite, but with no thoughts of disappointment, anger,
or really even discouragement. I wanted to learn how to
(19:22):
do what I'd watched that guy above me do all afternoon,
and when I looked up, he was standing on the
bank near the trail leading back to the parking lot,
waiting on me as a guy closer, I could see
this guy was a fly fisherman, not that I needed
to get any closer to see that, because I spent
the better part of the day watching him demonstrate that
while trying not to let him catch me looking. But
(19:44):
he knew, though, he knew, like every home run here
that ever live knows that when you're in the zone
and smashing fastballs to the parking lot, everybody's watching. It
wasn't the crack of a bat that kept me looking
up ever that day. It was the of his flylne
being pulled up out of the water tight as a
fiddle string, over and over with a trout on the
(20:06):
other end. I tell you that cat was purpose driven
to catch every trout within his loop, and I'd argue
that if he didn't. A joker came offully close. When
I got up to him, he stuck out his hand
and he said, howdie, my name's Terry. I shook his
hand and fought the urge to salute him, and raised
his arm like he just won the fly fishing championship
(20:28):
of the civilized world. So I did what I always
do I said something stupid. Hi, Terry, my name's Brent,
and you're a lot prettier than I thought you were.
Terry and I talked for thirty minutes, just like we
were old friends. I didn't have to tell him that
I didn't know what I was doing, but to make
sure he knew, I said, Terry, I don't know what
(20:50):
I'm doing. I just know I want to do it.
And then he asked me, can you come back tomorrow?
That was twenty and seventeen. He taught me more than
I could have ever learned on my own. How to
read the water, how to match the hatch, how to
tie flies, window fish, where to fish, patience, persistence, and
above all bed a good steward and a protector of
(21:13):
the resource, the same lessons I'd have been taught before
when I was a little boy, by a man that
i'd watched catch fish after fish, just like I'd watched
Terry do. The first day we met, a couple of
years ago, my wife and I were on our way
back from Texas, and after a long period of silence
(21:36):
and just riding, I began to tell her how random
I thought it was that Terry and I had met
that day. Now, I could have gone anywhere. I had
never been fly fishing before, and there were closer places
to my house, and miles and miles of trout water
in Arkansas on different rivers. But I went there to
that spot where he was, and it was just the
(21:59):
two of us. After a minute or two, she looked
at me and said, you don't see it. Do you
see what the connection with you and Terry? It's your dad.
It's got nothing to do with fly fishing, Bran, and
all to do with him helping you. He wasn't teaching
you how to fish. He was teaching you how to
miss your dad and be happy by doing something that
(22:20):
all three of you love to do, catch fish with
a fly rod. And there it was, staring me right
in the face. I believe in my heart that my
journey to that spot on the Little Red River started
the day my father left this earth. And I got
there exactly what I was supposed to, and it all
started with Terry Garner's hello. Oh yeah, he ain't from Arkansas.
(22:46):
He just happened to be there fishing that day. She's
a smart gal, that galimane. There's power and sometimes opportunity
in saying hello. Whether it's from a random fly fisherman
or even a fair heart. I really enjoyed this week's visit.
You can find me on the old Instagram at Brent
Underscore Reeves. Remember Reeves is correctly spelled R E A
(23:11):
v ees. This is Brent Reeves. Sign it off, y'all
be careful.
Host
Clay Newcomb
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