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Speaker 1: Welcome to this Country Life. I’m your host, Brent Reeves from coon hunting to trotlining and just general country living. I want you to stay a while as I share my experiences in life lessons. This Country Life is presented by Case Knives from the store More Studio on Meat Eaters Podcast Network, bringing you the best outdoor podcast that airways have to offer. All right, friends, grab a chair or drop that tailgate. I’ve got some stories to share. Small knife, big life. Who could have imagined the blessings that pocket knives would have on my life? Not me or anyone else around me. My dad handed me the first one to put in my pocket when I was just a little boy. I would have never dreamed that one day our name would be associated with those same knives. A recent trip to Missouri brought a lot of that home for me, and I’d like nothing better than to share some of it with you now. But first, I’m going to tell you a story. A couple months back, I was in Montowna at the med Eater office and we were having some meetings and activities and wound up doing some shooting out at a ranch owned by mister Mike Anderson. I had never met him before, and the access to his property was broken by a friend of ours, Peter Howell, and mister Anderson rode up on a four wheeler to watch some of the shooting and visit with a gaggle of folks he didn’t know that were in the process of trading trigger squeezes for metal pings. He wore what I assume would be similar to his daily attire as he went about his chores on his ranch, faded blue jeans, a khaki work shirt, and black suspenders. His cap was dusty and weatherbeat, a description that might identify mister Anderson in a different setting, but here he was part of the landscape, and his eighty something year old eyes twinkled with delight against his sun tanned face as he talked about his time there. The steward of the ranch he bought a half century ago, he stuck out his hand and introduced himself. I followed suit, and he looked at my case T shirt and said, do you work for Case Knives. I told him about my association with him, a brief history of what most of you listening have heard before, and when I finished, he told me about a knife his father had given him, but he was a young man. We talked for a couple of hours. I was supposed to be shooting, but I skipped out to talk to this man about his life, his land, and the things that are still being made in America. Before we left, I got his address. I said, my friend Alexzander, who manages the meat eater store in Bozeman, send him one of my signature knives. A week after it was delivered to his home, I received a handwritten letter from mister Anderson. So in his words, grammatical inflection and my voice, I’m going to read it to you now. August thirteenth, twenty twenty five, Dear Brent, today was Christmas in Montana. Santa Claus came to my mailbox with the finest president of all. Thank you very much for the case knife. Can can one be too rich to think they have too many knives and guns? I don’t think so. Through college, I was the advertising manager for the University of Idaho newspaper. Now I mentioned this as my thoughts still turned to the question of how do I convey something of value to the public. As I hold my new knife in one hand and write my thoughts with the other, here’s my thought. You never truly own a case knife, you just hold it in trust for the next generation. I still carry the case knife my father gave me nearly eighty years ago. It has been lost, found, lost again, and found again. Is getting more careful attention now as I try to determine which one of my children will inherit it. I’ve used it to clean hundreds of fish, many birds, and a small herd of elk and deer. Would I part with it for ten thousand dollars? I don’t know if there’s a number out there that could get it out of my pocket. As for your gift, what a beautiful combination of workmanship. Thanks again. I represented a concern for over forty years. They were founded in eighteen fifty seven and had a history of excellence in all of their products from the that date to today. History conveys to those who are part of it a special feeling, I am sure is shared by the family that represents case nives. I hope so the craftsmanship tells me that I am right about that. Again, many thanks, warmans regards to you and yours. Mike. PS. If you have a case catalog, I would appreciate having one well, that, folks, is mister Mike Anderson, a true representative of a generation of people who worked hard for what they have and value the sweat equity of those that came before them. Mister Anderson made a difference in my life during a two hour conversation. Sometimes that’s all it takes, and that’s just how it happened. I get asked all the time, which pocket knife should I carry, which one should I buy my child for their first knife? And what age should I give it to him? Man, that’s a hard question. There are so many factors that go into the decision. What are they going to be doing with it? But most importantly, have you done your due diligence in preparing them for the responsibilities of being safe with one, how to take care of it properly and to use it when it’s appropriate. A listener sent me a message not long after I started this country life, and you want to know about one as a present for his youngin that was in elementary school. Now, I’ll tell you my first thought was to tell him no bad idea, But then I thought about the wooden knife kids that case has, and I asked him if he was familiar with him, and since he wasn’t, I sent him one with this advice, why not make a father’s son project out of it? Learn learn about how a pocket knife works, how it’s made, all the parts, while teaching him about how to safely use one. The one I sent him is an exact replication of all the pieces to scale of a mini trapper, like I told in My Pocket, but I’ve seen them in multiple patterns of different models. The canoe, the Texas, toothpick, and teardrop models are easily found on the internet with a simple search. That idea was well received and one that I hope will catch you on with adults everywhere. Bailey and I have put together several and I can easily admit I had just as much or more fun as she did putting them together. Appropriate age is one you’ll need to figure out yourself. No one is gonna know you’re young and better than you. A good rule of thumb for handling a first knife is the blade should be about as long as the person’s ending finger that’s using it. Now. That is going to save you some band aids, because it’s easier to gauge where the knife tip is when comparing where your fingertip would be when you’re skinning and cleaning fishing game, that knife should be a natural extension of your hand, and with time and practice, it will be. When my father handed me his mini trapper after a squirrel hunt when I was just a boy, he was teaching me how to skin a squirrel. He was also showing me how much he’d loved me, because as much as he’d loved squirrel hunting, he wouldn’t have eaten one if he’d been starving. Slapped to death. For the uninitiated on my father’s feelings about squirrels, allow me to do a small review. He lived somewhat of a dual life, as his love for squirrel hunting put him in the midst of his greatest fear. He had an issue with anything anything that looked like a ram. He didn’t like eating squirrels, he didn’t like holding squirrels. He didn’t want anything to do with him outside of hunting them with a dog. Whoever he was hunting with was responsible for picking up the squirrels that were shot out of the tree. If he was working a new puffy and hunting by himself, or if others couldn’t go when he could, he’d bring them out either stuffs in a saddle bag or tied to a lanyard on the saddle horn, where he could easily dump them out or drop them off at whoever’s house he stopped at to give him away or trade for a iron of snake bite medicine. But he wouldn’t waste them ever. But he would have touched them only once after the dogs treat them, and that was when he placed them in the saddle bager on his lander. Unless I was with him. If it was just me and him, we’d skin them out to cook. And he hated every second of it. I can see his face now as he the feet and I began making an incision above that squirrel’s exhaust pipe at the base of his tail. Son. Now, that knife is sharp, so don’t cut too hard. Find the joint where his tail connects to his behind. Eased the blade through it, and continue down his backside a little bit. Don’t cut too hard. I cut too hard, and his tail came off in my hand. And my dad, whose only kryptonite was the idea of having to touch anything that resembles a rat, now had to hold the carcass of a reasonable fact simile of something whose only bushy identifier that been carelessly removed by his baby boy, A descriptor he used for me until he passed away when I was forty five years old. The last ones I remember him frying up for me to eat. He and I sat at the table, and he had something else. He had a disgusting look on his face while he watched me rick every piece he was able to struggle through that he’d fried for me. How much did that man love me? Good night, nurse. But the gift of that first knife was important to us, had signified the subliminal passing of the torch, casual handing down of the legacy of all who came before the person getting a knife. I was too young to realize any of that when I got my first one, and as happy as I was to get it, I deserved it only in keeping with the tradition that there would come a time during the day when I wouldn’t need a knife, a sharp knife, doing chores on the farm, or skinning a critter i’d caught, or cleaning fish. I was expected to handle my own business, we all were. There wasn’t a set of written instructions. There there wasn’t a Reeve’s legacy playbook from which to operate from in the literal sense, just an observational education on how to do things and what to use when you did. Just like the ones who came before us, there was a lot of do it your way until you come up with a better one, because no one was going to do it for you. Those were thoughts, feelings, and things involving those knives that I believed to be singularly hours. I found out a couple of years ago how wrong I was. Now I was reminded of that fact last weekend in Levendon, Missouri. I was invited by the Reed family to come speak at their Celebration of the Ozarks event at their Shepherd Hill store. The Reeds are longtime residents of the area and what I’d consider to be case family royalty. In nineteen seventy two, miss Ida Reed and her husband Reed that’s right, his name is Reed Red opened Shepherd Hills Gift Shop. It was located in the front of a motel in Lebanon on historic Route sixty six highway now that stretched through Illinois, Missouri, Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and winding up on the west coast of California. The sole mission for this store was to raise the funds to send their sons, Rod and Randy to college, and it worked. They started out being a factory outlet for Chicago Cutlery, and then in the early nineteen nineties they started selling case knives. Fifty three years later, that business has grown to two additional locations, one an hour and a half south in Branson and the other three hundred and seventeen miles east in Eddyville, Kentucky, miss Ida. Is still sir as president of Shepherd Hills, and mister Reid passed away several years ago. Rod and Randy run the day to day operations. Rod’s wife, Becky, handles the catalog sales on website and runs the camp case for kids during the celebration each year. Randy sons are involved as well, and that family has built what started out as a humble gift shop with a singular focus and powerful mission into the largest case knife dealership in the world. With the Reed grandsons I met who were helping out during the event last weekend, that tallied four generations. That’s special and even though I consider them Case family royalty. They were working hard to serve everyone else. Every minute I was there all of them. There was no air of authority around any of them. And that’s how you accomplished something big. Everyone works together and stays mission and focus. These folks understand that their customers are the lifeblood of this family business, but they treat their customers more like family and not the weird cousin your mama makes you be nice to every Christmas at MEM’s house. Now the family that you can’t wait to see, even if you saw me yesterday, That event could just as easily be called a family reunion. I saw people and collectors there that I saw in Bradford, Pennsylvania, when I was out there last year. The reason for me being there was to speak at the case Collector’s Club dinner. Over five hundred individuals, couples, and families gathered to eat in fellowship. Afterwards, we relocated to a theater where the captive of audience was forced to listen to me for about twenty minutes and privileged to hear from Medal of Honor recipient Sergeant Major Matthew Williams. I talked to about my family’s history and legacy. With the knives and detailed the message I received from Case when they heard the episode I did, explaining our history what started at all, and in that message, Case said, we like the way you talked about our knives, and I got that message. I read the word hour, and I guess you could interpret that as them talking about their knives, but I didn’t take it that way. It boastered my own equity and that of my families. I took it as they included me and mine in the term hour, including my presentation. And then Sergeant Major Williams took the stage and spoke about duty and dedication, discipline, loyalty and sacrifice. It is very moving now, it is a very moving story and a great example of service before self. I highly encourage you to look up Sergeant Major William’s citation for receiving the Medal of Honor and read it for yourself. It’s truly incredible. The next day, we greeted the several thousand folks that had made the trip from all over Creation to be there. Robert Green, Brandon and Chrissy Lynch, Jeremy and Jacob Sloan, Donnie Baker, and my lifelong friends Mary and Toby Neebyer, and countless others that I had the opportunity to meet that are now new friends of mine. We ate chilli and hot dogs and laughed and talked about knives, hunting, fishing, and living in the country, and everyone had a story to tell me, some of them waiting patiently for their turn to talk to me, and I was glad to hear them. It’s like that. Everywhere I go people tell me stories, and no two are ever the same, And yet ninety percent of them are about the one that got away or the one that they got But that’s never the important part of the story. When sometimes they think that’s the point of their story. But I watch them when they tell them to me, and I watch how they tell it. If being a policeman for a third of a century taught me one thing, it’s if you want to learn how someone feels about something, let them tell you about an event that affected them strongly. That sounds simple to do, and it is. But most folks are just waiting for their turn to talk. In any conversation they’re hearing, they’re just not listening. I watched a person after person who told me a story about a deer, a fish, a dog or a relative, and I watched how they told the story, how they emphasize the things that were important to them, and the time they spent on specific details of the tale. I heard a grown man tell me a story about a deer hunt where he talked about the biggest deer he ever shot. He shot it when he was twelve, and he described the deer so poorly that I doubt I could pick it out of a two deer lineup. But the old truck his dad took him hunting in was a two tone white overred sixty nine Ford short wheelbase pickup. His dad was wearing overalls, a flannel shirt, and an old canvas hunting coat that he still has. Dear story. He wasn’t telling me a dear story. He was telling me about a time he shared with his dad, and it just happened to kill the biggest deer of his life as an anecdote now in his head. He was telling me about the deer hunt, but all his emotion, inflection and wistfulness was any time he mentioned his father. I heard dozens of stories, mostly just like that, and I loved every one of them. A few were truly about the game, being pursued, but the biggest part of them, either knowingly or unknowingly, were odes to an older time, a time the world seemed smaller, the times were simpler, and success was measured by the company you shared and not the tag you field. Just like last weekend, we sold all the remaining Brent Reeves signature case knives and enough hatch to outfit a couple of Major League Baseball teams. Success absolutely, and I’m so thankful for all the support you faithful folks afford this show, with your online reviews and sharing them with others, and all the T shirts that we all seemed to enjoy. I appreciate it very much. But outside of that, I got to know my colleague Laura Muscari a little better. I held some of the prettiest babies a fella could hold. I got to spend time with Travis, Miss Becky, Mss Kathy, Mister Rodney, Mister Andy, and his grandsons, a gaggle of young men I planned to be sitting beside a tree with next spring. When I was speaking after the dinner, I looked out and I saw an auditorium of over five people watching and listening to what I was talking about and as is par for the course, I got a little emotional a couple of times while trying to express my thoughts and feelings about those those little knives that inn around about way have afforded me this big life in doing so, I looked on the front row, and sitting there was my youngest daughter, Bailey. I saw her wipe a tear as I talked about her grandfather man she never got to meet, And beside her sat my wife Alexis, her her hands pressed together prayerfully, her eyes overflowing, and her expression want of love and support, and her confidence in me that I could finish the task that I’d been asked to do. Suddenly I felt relaxed. After all, I was there with my people, and I was talking about our knives. Just like the dear story that man told me. I wasn’t talking about knives. I was talking about what and who they represent. Man. They represent some really good folks. Thank y’all so much for listening. Me and o’clay Bow will be at the World Championship Squirrel Cookoff in Springdale, Arkansas, tomorrow, Saturday, September thirteenth. Be there for b Square. That’s your choices until next week. This is Brent Reeves, sign it off. Y’all be careful.
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