November 15, 2024 • 20 mins
"Everyone loves camping!" "Most people like camping!" Ok, some people go camping and Brent’s experiences in that endeavor put him somewhere in the midst of one of those statements. Pitch the tent, light the fire, and get ready for camping stories on this episode of MeatEater’s “This Country Life” podcast.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:05):
Welcome to this country Life. I'm your host, Brent Reeves.
From coon hunting to trot lining and just general country living.
I want you to stay a while as I share
my experiences and life lessons. This country Life is presented
by Case Knives on Meat Eaters Podcast Network, bringing you
the best outdoor podcast the airwaves have off. All right, friends,
(00:28):
grab a chair or drop that tailgate. I've got some
stories to share. Tense, crawfish and sleep avenue Camping is
something a lot of us like to do. There are
those who camp solely for the experience of spending time
out nature and those who do it in conjunction with
(00:51):
some other activity. Regardless of your reason for being there,
sleeping outside comes with ups and downs, and I'm gonna
talk all about them. But first, I'm going to tell
you a story. My older brother, Tim has told this
(01:11):
story for years. That's a good one, and I'm going
to share it with you now. But Tim and some
of his friends went camping in high school. This would
have been in the early nineteen seventies. He said there
were three or four of them on this particular outing
one summer, and they'd all decided to bowl some crawfish
to go along with the balognaan bread they brought for supper.
(01:34):
They built a fire that night, and they sanged up
some crawfish from the creek and had a pot of water.
They dropped some whole taters into ball hanging over the fire.
They carried on as boys do, playing wrestling and doing
everything except focusing on the cooking pot. They would soon
regret that omission of responsibility. After some time, someone decided
(01:59):
that taters had to be done by now, so they
dropped all the crawfish in and went back to rough housing.
For those of you who may not know, crawfish like
shrip don't take long to cook. They're pretty well done
after about five minutes, and then you turn the fire
off and just let them soak up the seasoning timse.
They didn't have any crawfish season and had only decided
(02:22):
to cook some after finding them in the creek where
they were fishing and frog gigging up and down that night.
They also weren't keeping up with the water in the
pot with the taters because they'd run all their flashlight
batteries down by then and didn't see they'd bowled the
majority of the water out of the pot. Add another
(02:42):
cloud to the perfect storm of the fire dying down
to the point that the crawfish that didn't die in
the pot when they were dropped in were standing on
the corpses of their fallen comrades that had managed to
get semi cooked. At the point someone suggested they commenced
to eating, Tim said he and the others all jammed
(03:03):
their hands down in there to grab a crawfish before
they were gone, and peeled at them so fast they
didn't really take time to look at them. It wouldn't
have mattered because they didn't have a light with enough
juice in it to look at him anyway, He said,
the first one he d it was a little chewy, but
he had it swallowed and was working on his second
one and thinking to himself, man, they didn't rinse them
(03:26):
very well because the first one was not on a chewy,
but he was a little gritty. He was having a
time peeling the second one when someone hollered, hey, these
crawfish ain't done well. Somebody grabbed the pot off the
hook and held it down near the fire so they
could see in there, and Tim said the dead ones
weren't cooked, and the live ones were mad at the
(03:48):
world and spoiling for a fight. They cut the live
ones loose. They figured they'd earned that by then, and
they kept the dead ones for bait, and they fished
the taters out of the pot to eat. Now, apparently,
when they dropped all those crawfish in, they're probably a
dozen or so, they landed on their feet like cats,
and we're doing the hot foot to stay alive, using
(04:11):
those taters like islands of sanctuary in a sea of
ball and water. And according to my brother Tim, that's
just how that happened. Camping means a lot of things
(04:32):
to a lot of different folks, but a simplistic definition
is the activity of spending a vacation living in a camp,
tent or a camper. Now. I've done a whole lot
of it throughout my life, and I enjoyed very much.
Coffee tastes better, the food you eat tastes better. The
whole experience to me is refreshing and a reboot from
(04:54):
my brain. Last January, Clay and I spent the night
on an island on the Mine Mississippi River while filming
a deer and duck hunting film for the Bear Grease
road Show. There were two other guys on that trip, cinematographers,
Drew stick Line and Dave Gardner. They were there, and
they were sleeping in a big boat that Sea Arc
Boats had provided for us to use. That Rascal had
(05:18):
a canopy that fully enclosed the cabin into a heedable retreat,
complete with lights and couches that doubled his beds very comfortable.
I guess Clay and I were eighty yards away on
a point of land down inside the bank that shielded
us from the cold wind but did nothing to protect
us from the cold ground. After a supper, we each
(05:40):
crawled into our separate tents, and I realized, after getting inside,
cocooning myself in my sleeping bag and laying down, that
I'd made an egregious error not only in figuring the
slope of where I'd set up my solo tent, but
also the orientation of it. My feet were uphill, then
(06:01):
climb with such that the material of my sleeping bag
was sliding off the air mattress, and there would be
no way I'd be able to get any sleep cause
of it. I laid their way in my options I
could get back up and reset everything by tearing my
tent down and turning at one hundred and eighty degrees.
Or I could just flip around and put my feet
(06:21):
where my head was. Now that makes sense, I'm sure
while I was reciting it's the majority of you were saying,
just turn around, dummy. Well, if it were on that easy,
that solo tent was sloped, narrowed in height, and wit
making one end specifically designed for your feet. To break
(06:43):
it down, I'd have to get dressed, unload everything from inside,
and redrough the whole operation from start to finish. By
this time, we'd all been up for over twenty hours.
I was ready to go to sleep. We'd be up
and going again the next morning in daylight, try and
beat the rain that was moving in. Was still another
one hundred and twenty five miles to go. Every minute
(07:07):
I was awake, it was a minute I wasn't going
to get to sleep. I'll just flip around. My face
only be a few inches from the tent where normally
my toes would be pointed. But so what I was tired.
I think I could have hung myself on a nail
by the shirt collar and rested. That option sounded better
than what actually happened. Did I mention that I have
(07:30):
sleep at me? I probably should have, because that also
played a major role in that night's slumber party. I'd
prepared fire Night under the Stars by purchasing off the
interwebs a big rechargeable power supply that was guaranteed to
run a seapap machine for nine hours. I'm not sure
what nine hours in China is where that big battery
(07:52):
was made, but it converted to about three hours inside
the levees of the Mississippi River. Also, because of how
cold got that night, the condensation that built up in
the air holes had me hollering for a lifeguard half
a dozen times before the battery finally died two and
a half hours before the alarm went off. Nothing like
(08:13):
trying to sleep with a bubbling plastic tube hooked up
to your face and finally drifting off to sleep, only
to inhale a nose full of water. I might as
well have been sleeping in the live well on that boat,
but instead I was flying out of my tent, sliding
off that air mattress like a Laddin was singing a
whole new world to me as I fought gravity to
(08:35):
stay inside. Could this night get any worse Yep, it could,
and it did. The inside of the tent at the
footbed where I'd been trying to sleep had frosted over
on the inside and was beginning to melt and drip
on my face as I lay there trying to remember
I was having fun while placing over like a groundhog
(08:58):
sawmill in his tent next door. I crawled outside to
a heavy frost. I brought the air mattress and my
sleeping bag, and I laid down on a little less
grade and dozed on and off for what seemed like
eternity until the alarm went off. Oh yeah, camping is fun.
(09:29):
I heard a comedian say one time, if being outside
is so good, why are all the bugs always trying
to get in your house? Well, he got a point.
But if I'd pitched my tent correctly the first time
and properly vetted the power supply for my seapap machine
prior to that trip, I'm confident it would have been
(09:49):
a different experience. I still like to do it. I
just have to deal with the seapap issue. I'm working
on a solution and praying that goes well. Anyway, as
they say, means different things to different people to me.
When I hear we're gonna be roughing it, I'm thinking
on the ground, miles deep in the wilderness with nothing
(10:12):
other than what you could toe it in there with you.
To my wife, roughing it is anything below a suite
at the Hampton End, now she puts it, I'm not
about that little house on the prairie. Life duly noted.
We can't talk about camping without talking about some traditional
camping meals. There's a lot in summer just better than others.
(10:36):
I can't think of anything that ain't better than raw
crawfish like tim his pals or eating but outside of
freshly fried fish, one of my favorites is the old
hobo campfire meal. Now. I heard someone say not too
long ago that it wasn't politically correct to use the
term hobo anymore. I swear I never know what I
(10:57):
can and can't say, But I also don't know whatbody
else to call it. If there's any persons out there
who favor free loading travel by riding the rails over
the security of longtime employment in an address, send me
a message and tell me what I'm supposed to call it,
Because houseless person food doesn't sound too appetized. Anyway, y'all
(11:20):
know what I'm talking about. My son Hunter and I
have made it a hundred times over the years when
we'd be off somewhere hunting and not necessarily camping, but
not wanting to go back into town to eat dinner.
That's the new meal at our house. It's good and
it's easy. Hamburger, meat of some kind, carrots, taters, onions,
some cabbage, if you like, butter, salt, pepper, and aluminifolk.
(11:46):
You wrap it all up, chuck it in the coals
next to fire. In about thirty minutes, you're in business.
The first time I ate it was when I was
in the Boy Scouts. It was in the spring of
nineteen seventy nine. We were headed to Camden, Arkansas for
the Sodo Area Council Jamboree. Scouts from all over Arkansas
were assembled and the area where we were camping was
(12:07):
in a portion of Washita County that had been used
for making bullets to keep Germany in Japan on their
side of the planet back in the forties. Acres and
acres of concrete bunkers were strategically placed all through the woods.
The bunkers were shaped like long iglooes that were underground
(12:27):
except for the openings where you entered, and along with
a regular door, the eggluo had two large barn doors
that would open the line trucks and machinery inside when
it was in use. And now they were just all
sealed and sitting empty and preparedness for a time when
they would be needed again, which would be not long
after my troop finished chowing down on a wheelbarrow full
(12:50):
of houseless person food. We had to close the ceremonies
for the evening, and we're all tucked into our two
man tents when thunder rumbled in the disks. We all
looked outside. The stars were shining back in a tent,
and soon enough, once the boy's buffoonery stopped, we were
all asleep. I woke up sometime in the night to
(13:12):
someone yelling Troop fifty four up and down them fall in.
What in the world's going on? It's still dark outside
except for all the lightning flashes? And why was all
this water running through our tent. I can't find my light,
where's my boots, where's my breeches? Why are all these
adults hollering at us to hurry up. I didn't understand
(13:35):
everything I knew about what was going on, but I
was panicked, and it seemed like it took me forever
to unzip that tent. I poked my head outside to
see what the calamity was about, and there, in the
pouring rain stood mister Jim dem Our, scout Master, lit
up in the glow of a coal and laner. He
was standing there with his hands on his hips like
(13:56):
a hero in a movie. Lightning flashed through the sky behind,
and he had on a red Windbreaker scout Master uniform
shirt neatly tucked into his shorts, hiking boots and woolsocks
rolled down over the top. He was a recruiting poster
for the Boy Scouts of America. And I wasn't afraid anymore.
(14:16):
I was the troop leader. And he said, Brent, gather
the boys, do a headcount and get them in the
back of that truck. A tornado is coming and we
need to move out. He stood by calmly while I
did what he told me, and we all climbed in
the back of that truck, me next to last and
him after me. The remainder of the night, we spent
(14:37):
one of those bunkers, soaking wet, but sheltered from the storm,
and man, did we have a story to tell. That
was my first real lesson in leadership, making sure the
people of which I was responsible were all accounted for
before leaving for safety. They were my priority, and I
(14:58):
never forgot that lesson. I look back now as an
adult and I see how smart mister Dean was to
allow me the opportunity to lead, even as a child,
while he stood by to take over in an instant
should I not be able to follow through with the task.
It was a defining moment for a thirteen year old
boy in a time I'll never forget. I tried to
(15:19):
carry that lesson throughout my career as a leader of men.
I'll leave you with this one from the first time
I ever slept in a tent. I have no idea
where the tent came from or what happened to it afterwards,
but Dad had it set up in the woods just
down from Grandpa's old home place where my uncle Jimmy
(15:41):
Ray was living. I couldn't have been more than five
or six, and the tent was made from red canvas.
It smelled like pneumonia and moth balls and had so
many holes in it that had it been on the
deck of a ship, you could have accurately navigated by
the stars without ever leaving your sleeping bag. Dad set
it up in a little pine thick for us kids
to play in, and his darkness approached. I begged him
(16:03):
to let a sleep in it, just me and him.
I remember the angst on his face as he tried
to talk me out of it, by steering the conversation
to make it sound like it was my idea. Son.
You don't really want to sleep in that tent, do you.
We'll have to sleep on the ground. We might get cold, Dad.
We can bring some quilts and cover up. It'll be fun.
And we can take your flashlight. Ah, the flashlight. My
(16:28):
dad had a flashlight that he used when he ran
his hounds a night, and to mess with it was
a capital of fence. I scared to look at it,
much less pick it up from its designated spot on
a little table at the end of the couch, just
inside the front door. A place for everything, and everything
in its place. That was my dad's motto. Death to
(16:48):
anyone who didn't respect it was another one, but that
light was an orange Craftsman explorer too, and a portion
of the housing around the lens glowed fluorescent green when
you turned it off, so you could find it in
the dark. It was a present we'd given him, and
it came from the Seers and Roebuck catalog were just
about everything we had came from. Back then. All the
(17:12):
dad's cow hunting buddies used him, and it was a
mark of professionalism to me. My dad was the best
hunter in the world, and if someone in his circle
had something that he had, then that must mean they
were pretty good too, And if we were camping, that
meant I might get to use it. We ate supper
in the house and we went to the tent right
after dark. I got to shine that flashlight around looking
(17:35):
at Peanut, the squirrel dog in the back door of
the single white house trailer that two adults and seven
kids shared until the house was completed. Thinking back on
how chaotic that time was in such a small space,
I'm surprised he didn't have all the kids living out
in the woods like in Oklahoma. But he built a
(17:55):
little fire and we set around it and we washed it,
and I'm sure I asked him me questions and I'm
positive he had a million answers. He still wasn't committed
to stay in all night, even though we had plenty
of quilts to sleep on and cover up with. It
was cool and the fire felt good, and when it
had died down, we laid down in the tent, staring
(18:16):
through the holes in the canvas and looking at the stars.
Occasionally he'd say something to the fact, now, if you're
scared to stay out here, we can go inside and
sleep in the bed. Like me, What did I have
to he's cared about The bravest man in the world
was sleeping in the tent with men. The world's greatest
squirrel dog was sleeping just outside. I don't remember going
(18:38):
to sleep, but I remember him waking me up early
the next morning to go eat breakfast. I thought about
it the gi and times as I've gotten older, how
well this hair was combed and his face was clean shaven,
and how rested he looked. Either he liked camping a
whole lot more than he let on, or I spent
the night in the backyard with Peanut and that's lived
(19:00):
in the house. I never asked him, but I think
I know the answer. Thank y'all so much for listening
to this country life the Rendering bear Grease here on
the Bear Grease Channel. I hope everyone's having a good
(19:20):
and safe hunting season. If you have the opportunity, take
a young and or an adult who might not have
the same opportunities as the rest of us. You'll get
more out of it than you will put into it.
I promise you remember our friends affected by the hurricanes,
and our servicemen and women here at home and abroad.
Until next week. This is Brent Reid signing off. Y'all
(19:42):
be careful
Welcome to this country Life. I'm your host, Brent Reeves.
From coon hunting to trot lining and just general country living.
I want you to stay a while as I share
my experiences and life lessons. This country Life is presented
by Case Knives on Meat Eaters Podcast Network, bringing you
the best outdoor podcast the airwaves have off. All right, friends,
(00:28):
grab a chair or drop that tailgate. I've got some
stories to share. Tense, crawfish and sleep avenue Camping is
something a lot of us like to do. There are
those who camp solely for the experience of spending time
out nature and those who do it in conjunction with
(00:51):
some other activity. Regardless of your reason for being there,
sleeping outside comes with ups and downs, and I'm gonna
talk all about them. But first, I'm going to tell
you a story. My older brother, Tim has told this
(01:11):
story for years. That's a good one, and I'm going
to share it with you now. But Tim and some
of his friends went camping in high school. This would
have been in the early nineteen seventies. He said there
were three or four of them on this particular outing
one summer, and they'd all decided to bowl some crawfish
to go along with the balognaan bread they brought for supper.
(01:34):
They built a fire that night, and they sanged up
some crawfish from the creek and had a pot of water.
They dropped some whole taters into ball hanging over the fire.
They carried on as boys do, playing wrestling and doing
everything except focusing on the cooking pot. They would soon
regret that omission of responsibility. After some time, someone decided
(01:59):
that taters had to be done by now, so they
dropped all the crawfish in and went back to rough housing.
For those of you who may not know, crawfish like
shrip don't take long to cook. They're pretty well done
after about five minutes, and then you turn the fire
off and just let them soak up the seasoning timse.
They didn't have any crawfish season and had only decided
(02:22):
to cook some after finding them in the creek where
they were fishing and frog gigging up and down that night.
They also weren't keeping up with the water in the
pot with the taters because they'd run all their flashlight
batteries down by then and didn't see they'd bowled the
majority of the water out of the pot. Add another
(02:42):
cloud to the perfect storm of the fire dying down
to the point that the crawfish that didn't die in
the pot when they were dropped in were standing on
the corpses of their fallen comrades that had managed to
get semi cooked. At the point someone suggested they commenced
to eating, Tim said he and the others all jammed
(03:03):
their hands down in there to grab a crawfish before
they were gone, and peeled at them so fast they
didn't really take time to look at them. It wouldn't
have mattered because they didn't have a light with enough
juice in it to look at him anyway, He said,
the first one he d it was a little chewy, but
he had it swallowed and was working on his second
one and thinking to himself, man, they didn't rinse them
(03:26):
very well because the first one was not on a chewy,
but he was a little gritty. He was having a
time peeling the second one when someone hollered, hey, these
crawfish ain't done well. Somebody grabbed the pot off the
hook and held it down near the fire so they
could see in there, and Tim said the dead ones
weren't cooked, and the live ones were mad at the
(03:48):
world and spoiling for a fight. They cut the live
ones loose. They figured they'd earned that by then, and
they kept the dead ones for bait, and they fished
the taters out of the pot to eat. Now, apparently,
when they dropped all those crawfish in, they're probably a
dozen or so, they landed on their feet like cats,
and we're doing the hot foot to stay alive, using
(04:11):
those taters like islands of sanctuary in a sea of
ball and water. And according to my brother Tim, that's
just how that happened. Camping means a lot of things
(04:32):
to a lot of different folks, but a simplistic definition
is the activity of spending a vacation living in a camp,
tent or a camper. Now. I've done a whole lot
of it throughout my life, and I enjoyed very much.
Coffee tastes better, the food you eat tastes better. The
whole experience to me is refreshing and a reboot from
(04:54):
my brain. Last January, Clay and I spent the night
on an island on the Mine Mississippi River while filming
a deer and duck hunting film for the Bear Grease
road Show. There were two other guys on that trip, cinematographers,
Drew stick Line and Dave Gardner. They were there, and
they were sleeping in a big boat that Sea Arc
Boats had provided for us to use. That Rascal had
(05:18):
a canopy that fully enclosed the cabin into a heedable retreat,
complete with lights and couches that doubled his beds very comfortable.
I guess Clay and I were eighty yards away on
a point of land down inside the bank that shielded
us from the cold wind but did nothing to protect
us from the cold ground. After a supper, we each
(05:40):
crawled into our separate tents, and I realized, after getting inside,
cocooning myself in my sleeping bag and laying down, that
I'd made an egregious error not only in figuring the
slope of where I'd set up my solo tent, but
also the orientation of it. My feet were uphill, then
(06:01):
climb with such that the material of my sleeping bag
was sliding off the air mattress, and there would be
no way I'd be able to get any sleep cause
of it. I laid their way in my options I
could get back up and reset everything by tearing my
tent down and turning at one hundred and eighty degrees.
Or I could just flip around and put my feet
(06:21):
where my head was. Now that makes sense, I'm sure
while I was reciting it's the majority of you were saying,
just turn around, dummy. Well, if it were on that easy,
that solo tent was sloped, narrowed in height, and wit
making one end specifically designed for your feet. To break
(06:43):
it down, I'd have to get dressed, unload everything from inside,
and redrough the whole operation from start to finish. By
this time, we'd all been up for over twenty hours.
I was ready to go to sleep. We'd be up
and going again the next morning in daylight, try and
beat the rain that was moving in. Was still another
one hundred and twenty five miles to go. Every minute
(07:07):
I was awake, it was a minute I wasn't going
to get to sleep. I'll just flip around. My face
only be a few inches from the tent where normally
my toes would be pointed. But so what I was tired.
I think I could have hung myself on a nail
by the shirt collar and rested. That option sounded better
than what actually happened. Did I mention that I have
(07:30):
sleep at me? I probably should have, because that also
played a major role in that night's slumber party. I'd
prepared fire Night under the Stars by purchasing off the
interwebs a big rechargeable power supply that was guaranteed to
run a seapap machine for nine hours. I'm not sure
what nine hours in China is where that big battery
(07:52):
was made, but it converted to about three hours inside
the levees of the Mississippi River. Also, because of how
cold got that night, the condensation that built up in
the air holes had me hollering for a lifeguard half
a dozen times before the battery finally died two and
a half hours before the alarm went off. Nothing like
(08:13):
trying to sleep with a bubbling plastic tube hooked up
to your face and finally drifting off to sleep, only
to inhale a nose full of water. I might as
well have been sleeping in the live well on that boat,
but instead I was flying out of my tent, sliding
off that air mattress like a Laddin was singing a
whole new world to me as I fought gravity to
(08:35):
stay inside. Could this night get any worse Yep, it could,
and it did. The inside of the tent at the
footbed where I'd been trying to sleep had frosted over
on the inside and was beginning to melt and drip
on my face as I lay there trying to remember
I was having fun while placing over like a groundhog
(08:58):
sawmill in his tent next door. I crawled outside to
a heavy frost. I brought the air mattress and my
sleeping bag, and I laid down on a little less
grade and dozed on and off for what seemed like
eternity until the alarm went off. Oh yeah, camping is fun.
(09:29):
I heard a comedian say one time, if being outside
is so good, why are all the bugs always trying
to get in your house? Well, he got a point.
But if I'd pitched my tent correctly the first time
and properly vetted the power supply for my seapap machine
prior to that trip, I'm confident it would have been
(09:49):
a different experience. I still like to do it. I
just have to deal with the seapap issue. I'm working
on a solution and praying that goes well. Anyway, as
they say, means different things to different people to me.
When I hear we're gonna be roughing it, I'm thinking
on the ground, miles deep in the wilderness with nothing
(10:12):
other than what you could toe it in there with you.
To my wife, roughing it is anything below a suite
at the Hampton End, now she puts it, I'm not
about that little house on the prairie. Life duly noted.
We can't talk about camping without talking about some traditional
camping meals. There's a lot in summer just better than others.
(10:36):
I can't think of anything that ain't better than raw
crawfish like tim his pals or eating but outside of
freshly fried fish, one of my favorites is the old
hobo campfire meal. Now. I heard someone say not too
long ago that it wasn't politically correct to use the
term hobo anymore. I swear I never know what I
(10:57):
can and can't say, But I also don't know whatbody
else to call it. If there's any persons out there
who favor free loading travel by riding the rails over
the security of longtime employment in an address, send me
a message and tell me what I'm supposed to call it,
Because houseless person food doesn't sound too appetized. Anyway, y'all
(11:20):
know what I'm talking about. My son Hunter and I
have made it a hundred times over the years when
we'd be off somewhere hunting and not necessarily camping, but
not wanting to go back into town to eat dinner.
That's the new meal at our house. It's good and
it's easy. Hamburger, meat of some kind, carrots, taters, onions,
some cabbage, if you like, butter, salt, pepper, and aluminifolk.
(11:46):
You wrap it all up, chuck it in the coals
next to fire. In about thirty minutes, you're in business.
The first time I ate it was when I was
in the Boy Scouts. It was in the spring of
nineteen seventy nine. We were headed to Camden, Arkansas for
the Sodo Area Council Jamboree. Scouts from all over Arkansas
were assembled and the area where we were camping was
(12:07):
in a portion of Washita County that had been used
for making bullets to keep Germany in Japan on their
side of the planet back in the forties. Acres and
acres of concrete bunkers were strategically placed all through the woods.
The bunkers were shaped like long iglooes that were underground
(12:27):
except for the openings where you entered, and along with
a regular door, the eggluo had two large barn doors
that would open the line trucks and machinery inside when
it was in use. And now they were just all
sealed and sitting empty and preparedness for a time when
they would be needed again, which would be not long
after my troop finished chowing down on a wheelbarrow full
(12:50):
of houseless person food. We had to close the ceremonies
for the evening, and we're all tucked into our two
man tents when thunder rumbled in the disks. We all
looked outside. The stars were shining back in a tent,
and soon enough, once the boy's buffoonery stopped, we were
all asleep. I woke up sometime in the night to
(13:12):
someone yelling Troop fifty four up and down them fall in.
What in the world's going on? It's still dark outside
except for all the lightning flashes? And why was all
this water running through our tent. I can't find my light,
where's my boots, where's my breeches? Why are all these
adults hollering at us to hurry up. I didn't understand
(13:35):
everything I knew about what was going on, but I
was panicked, and it seemed like it took me forever
to unzip that tent. I poked my head outside to
see what the calamity was about, and there, in the
pouring rain stood mister Jim dem Our, scout Master, lit
up in the glow of a coal and laner. He
was standing there with his hands on his hips like
(13:56):
a hero in a movie. Lightning flashed through the sky behind,
and he had on a red Windbreaker scout Master uniform
shirt neatly tucked into his shorts, hiking boots and woolsocks
rolled down over the top. He was a recruiting poster
for the Boy Scouts of America. And I wasn't afraid anymore.
(14:16):
I was the troop leader. And he said, Brent, gather
the boys, do a headcount and get them in the
back of that truck. A tornado is coming and we
need to move out. He stood by calmly while I
did what he told me, and we all climbed in
the back of that truck, me next to last and
him after me. The remainder of the night, we spent
(14:37):
one of those bunkers, soaking wet, but sheltered from the storm,
and man, did we have a story to tell. That
was my first real lesson in leadership, making sure the
people of which I was responsible were all accounted for
before leaving for safety. They were my priority, and I
(14:58):
never forgot that lesson. I look back now as an
adult and I see how smart mister Dean was to
allow me the opportunity to lead, even as a child,
while he stood by to take over in an instant
should I not be able to follow through with the task.
It was a defining moment for a thirteen year old
boy in a time I'll never forget. I tried to
(15:19):
carry that lesson throughout my career as a leader of men.
I'll leave you with this one from the first time
I ever slept in a tent. I have no idea
where the tent came from or what happened to it afterwards,
but Dad had it set up in the woods just
down from Grandpa's old home place where my uncle Jimmy
(15:41):
Ray was living. I couldn't have been more than five
or six, and the tent was made from red canvas.
It smelled like pneumonia and moth balls and had so
many holes in it that had it been on the
deck of a ship, you could have accurately navigated by
the stars without ever leaving your sleeping bag. Dad set
it up in a little pine thick for us kids
to play in, and his darkness approached. I begged him
(16:03):
to let a sleep in it, just me and him.
I remember the angst on his face as he tried
to talk me out of it, by steering the conversation
to make it sound like it was my idea. Son.
You don't really want to sleep in that tent, do you.
We'll have to sleep on the ground. We might get cold, Dad.
We can bring some quilts and cover up. It'll be fun.
And we can take your flashlight. Ah, the flashlight. My
(16:28):
dad had a flashlight that he used when he ran
his hounds a night, and to mess with it was
a capital of fence. I scared to look at it,
much less pick it up from its designated spot on
a little table at the end of the couch, just
inside the front door. A place for everything, and everything
in its place. That was my dad's motto. Death to
(16:48):
anyone who didn't respect it was another one, but that
light was an orange Craftsman explorer too, and a portion
of the housing around the lens glowed fluorescent green when
you turned it off, so you could find it in
the dark. It was a present we'd given him, and
it came from the Seers and Roebuck catalog were just
about everything we had came from. Back then. All the
(17:12):
dad's cow hunting buddies used him, and it was a
mark of professionalism to me. My dad was the best
hunter in the world, and if someone in his circle
had something that he had, then that must mean they
were pretty good too, And if we were camping, that
meant I might get to use it. We ate supper
in the house and we went to the tent right
after dark. I got to shine that flashlight around looking
(17:35):
at Peanut, the squirrel dog in the back door of
the single white house trailer that two adults and seven
kids shared until the house was completed. Thinking back on
how chaotic that time was in such a small space,
I'm surprised he didn't have all the kids living out
in the woods like in Oklahoma. But he built a
(17:55):
little fire and we set around it and we washed it,
and I'm sure I asked him me questions and I'm
positive he had a million answers. He still wasn't committed
to stay in all night, even though we had plenty
of quilts to sleep on and cover up with. It
was cool and the fire felt good, and when it
had died down, we laid down in the tent, staring
(18:16):
through the holes in the canvas and looking at the stars.
Occasionally he'd say something to the fact, now, if you're
scared to stay out here, we can go inside and
sleep in the bed. Like me, What did I have
to he's cared about The bravest man in the world
was sleeping in the tent with men. The world's greatest
squirrel dog was sleeping just outside. I don't remember going
(18:38):
to sleep, but I remember him waking me up early
the next morning to go eat breakfast. I thought about
it the gi and times as I've gotten older, how
well this hair was combed and his face was clean shaven,
and how rested he looked. Either he liked camping a
whole lot more than he let on, or I spent
the night in the backyard with Peanut and that's lived
(19:00):
in the house. I never asked him, but I think
I know the answer. Thank y'all so much for listening
to this country life the Rendering bear Grease here on
the Bear Grease Channel. I hope everyone's having a good
(19:20):
and safe hunting season. If you have the opportunity, take
a young and or an adult who might not have
the same opportunities as the rest of us. You'll get
more out of it than you will put into it.
I promise you remember our friends affected by the hurricanes,
and our servicemen and women here at home and abroad.
Until next week. This is Brent Reid signing off. Y'all
(19:42):
be careful
Host
Clay Newcomb
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