00:00:05
Speaker 1: Welcome to this country Life.
00:00:06
Speaker 2: I’m your host, Brent Reeves from coon hunting to trotlining and just in general country living.
00:00:12
Speaker 1: I want you to stay a.
00:00:13
Speaker 2: While as I share my experiences in life lessons. This Country Life is presented by Case Knives from the store More Studio on Meat Eaters Podcast Network, bringing you the best outdoor podcast that airways have to offer. All right, friends, grab a chair or drop that tailgate. I’ve got some stores to share the screen door. There’s usually very little reason and hardly a rime to the things that I’m doing and talking about on these episodes. For the folks keeping score at home, this is gonna be another prime example, and there’s no better way than to.
00:00:55
Speaker 1: Just get started and get to it. Y’all join me at the fire. Let’s get started.
00:01:07
Speaker 2: Outside of the physical placement of a door. The next two stories I’m about to tell you have nothing else in common other than that it was the first story, written and sent in by a listener that gave me the inspiration for the second. I never know where I’m really going with these things until they’re done, so including what lit the fuse?
00:01:32
Speaker 1: In?
00:01:32
Speaker 2: What little creativity that I have seemed only fitting for this episode. Also, it’s my show, and I can do anything I want. But I imagined our protagonist Ryan Polsey knocking on screen door after screen door and talking to landowners and farmers seeking permission to hunt, just like I have a million times, even though he didn’t mention a single one in his essay. It’s just the way my mind works or doesn’t work, according to how you see it. Anyway, Ryan is a turkey hunter when he hadn’t taken wedding pictures and videos, amongst other things, requiring a professional photographer. And Reever Hanson, my faithful sidekick, is going to put a link in the show description to Ryan’s website should you need your picture took or your next wedding filmed? Anyway, in Ryan’s words in my voice, here we go. I started knocking on doors across southern Maine in early March, working through the list of addresses I collected on on acts. I had a hopeful attitude, but this usually earns a lot of polite rejections. It took almost twenty attempts before one guy said he’d think about it, and he asked me to come back in a few weeks, and I did, but by then he had a few buddies that would be hung the land. He didn’t feel right about it, so I was disappointed, but I understood his position. His cousin was there and he’d been quietly leaning against his truck, and he spoke up to say that I could hunt his farm.
00:03:11
Speaker 1: Well.
00:03:11
Speaker 2: I ran back to my car and I grabbed my phone and got his information.
00:03:15
Speaker 1: At the same time.
00:03:16
Speaker 2: There was a piece of public land near my house that i’d grown fond of the year before. I’d killed a big old gobbler there on opening the morning. I’d been back there since the scouting, and it looked promising. I had gotten permission to hunt that private property, but I didn’t know these folks at all, and I wasn’t about to start showing up every day before daylight. The kind of thing, even the permission, that can wear out a welcome. So my idea was to keep it in the back pocket and use it but not abuse it. On opening day, I went back to that public spot I tagged my opening morning bird. The year prior, I had a gobbler responding to calls early in the morning, but he ended up getting romanced away by real At this point I could hear another turkey hunter working their way into the woods with an owl cal I figured that was my cue to move on. I slipped out and I made a big loop around the ravine, trying to cut that bird off.
00:04:13
Speaker 1: I put my.
00:04:14
Speaker 2: Back against a nice tree and started calling.
00:04:18
Speaker 1: He was on the.
00:04:18
Speaker 2: Movie, and it felt like I had a chance right up until the distant crack of a shotgun cut the air. No more turkey. There wasn’t a big deal. Birds were gobbling and the woods were waking up. On the second day, I had a buddy Tack along as an observer. He was new to hunting and wanted to see what it was all about. We met that morning, had a beautiful sunrise, a light breeze, and birds gobbling on the roost. Fly down time. My hen came into our setup, and I was grateful she’d made an appearance. The morale boost helps to keep a first time engaged gobling. Tom’s were heading away from us, and we went after him. After climbing up and down a series of steeper v I found an open flat. We sat along the edge of the flat and there was an extremely thick and long brush pile acting as a natural wall. I thought This could really work in my favor, blocking that gobbler’s line of sight and drawing him in closer before he expected to see a hen. Didn’t take long before we heard two toms working their way. I twisted my body and I pointed towards the direction. I had my right hand on the gun, propped up on my knee, and I used my left to scratching the leaves. And these birds were coming in hot, and they were close, probably fifty yards is still out of sight, and five shotgun blasts rang out. Another hunter had cut him off. My new hunting buddy said should we go see? And I said no, I don’t want to go see. We left the woods before noon. I’d had enough with that spot. That afternoon, I stopped by to confirm my permission on the private property and to ask if they had any stipul relations.
00:06:01
Speaker 1: Just have fun and be safe, they told me. Well.
00:06:04
Speaker 2: I did a little scout in that afternoon and found a route that would let me slip in undetected the next morning. Now, when I woke up the next day, my legs felt like cinder blocks.
00:06:14
Speaker 1: Between the first two.
00:06:15
Speaker 2: Hunts, I had logged sixteen miles, mostly vertical and I debated about going back out. Eventually, I pulled myself out of bed and I got ready. It was a warm and clear morning. I slept along the tree line that was bordered the hayfield until I reached a corner. In front of me, the land rolled gently into a tight stand of Materier pines. I let out my best out and was immediately answered by multiple birds. I tuck myself into a patch of brush and used my range finder. I started to find and count the birds in the trees across the field, four hens.
00:06:52
Speaker 1: And three tombs.
00:06:53
Speaker 2: I kept my calling light matching their cadence and only let out soft calls. I watched as each bird dropped down from their roofs and disappeared behind the hill in front of it. Took off my hat and I began flapping it against the branches hanging above me, mimicking a fly down. And then I waited, and I gave out a few clucks and purrs, and they answered instantly. Seconds stretched into minutes as I sat still, not making a sound, just letting it play out.
00:07:23
Speaker 1: And then I heard.
00:07:24
Speaker 2: It, the unmistakable sound of spitting the drumming the man that prehistoric noise only a spring gobbler makes I peered through my makeshift blind to try to find the source, but I never saw it. As time started to drift away, I was worried I’d missed them.
00:07:45
Speaker 1: But how could I have missed them. They would have had to walk right past me.
00:07:50
Speaker 2: Maybe it was my calling and they were making their way onto the next property, or they were still down there, just kneeling around. I had this conversation with myself over and over until finally I saw the tips of the tail feathers crest the hill full feeding hens, followed by all three tomes, full strut winged a wing putting on a real spring shoulder. It was an unforgettable moment for me, the kind of moment that inspires paintings and creates dreams. The sky was cobalt blue with whistle of thin clouds floating overhead. The sunlight filtered through the thick woods behind me, creating a perfect spotlight.
00:08:32
Speaker 1: On my performers.
00:08:34
Speaker 2: I was so focused on the show that I almost missed the bearded hen that snunk in from right behind my right shoulder. She was ten feet away, heading in their direction. The birds were right in front of me at thirty yards lifted my shotgun off my knee and I waited a minute, but could not see a scenario where I didn’t shoot all three tomes. They were stuck like glue. If one moved slightly, the other two were and a beat. I waited as they moved across the shot line and began drifting into the corner of the lot, and just then that bearded hen crossed between the toms and me, and the tom on the left peeled off just a hair That was the window, and I squeezed the trigger. Birds scattered in every direction. Some ran, some flew, and distant birds gobbled far off, answering the shot. As I walked out of the woods toward the birds, five deer crossed the field in front of me, as if queued by some backstage director. The woods were sending me off with a final scene, and I didn’t need a mirror to know that I had a big, wide smile. Two birds with one stone. I approached the down Toms with a profound sense of gratitude and pride. I checked my watch. It was five fifty five am. I sat with him for a while, reminding myself not to rush the moment because it only happens once a year. I snapped a few pictures and I loaded the birds in my decoy bag, and then I called my dad.
00:10:15
Speaker 1: And according to Ryan Pulsy, it’s just how that happened.
00:10:20
Speaker 2: Well, I called Ryan after getting his story, and I told him why I was using it on this episode and thanked him for allowing me to use it. Knocking on doors screening others is the best way to meet folks in this day of DMS and emails and snapchats whatever that is. Anyway, good stuff, Ryan, and thanks for sending. Indeed, the first green door I remember away from home was on a store entrance across the road from my grandparents’ house in Warren, Arkansas. My maternal grandfather find at slide. My grandmother Bulah, ran a store there for many years, from the time my mother was a little girl until after she and my father married and my older brothers till Machuck were wreaking chaos and calamity upon the populace.
00:11:17
Speaker 1: Sly Grocery was a staple for staples on the north end of town.
00:11:23
Speaker 2: Everything from gas grocers, axe handles, and dry goods were available for cash or charge accounts. They eventually closed that store concentrating on the family poultry and cattle business that would create a need for a store on that end of town. No one was constructed right next door to that location. Several different individuals would operate a store there throughout my childhood, but the screen door would remain a constant gateway to the confines of that establishment. I remember staying at mam Slid Papas the names everyone in my family called them, along with most of my friends. I would wake up during the summer on weekends after staying the night with them and find what my Papa called walking around money. He’d drop a couple of several dollars or fifty cent pieces in the toes of one of my shoes. Now that’s between me and you, he’d tell me. My grandmother is no doubt an angel in heaven as we speak. But she was also as tight as a fiddle string when it came to money. You need to be saving that, she’d say, and I would save it right up until I could get somewhere to spend it. And a lot of those times were the thirty seven seconds it took me to get out of the house across the yard in the highway and through that screen.
00:12:40
Speaker 1: Door of that old store.
00:12:44
Speaker 2: There was a bell that hung above the door that would ring with the opening of the interior wooden door as the top kicked it into life, opening and closing. But in the cool of spring and fall, that screen door and an industrial wall in at the rear of that building kept that structure’s temperedture comfortable. As far as I know. The screen door was the same one that had been on that building my whole life. The screen was heavy gauge and tight mesh that masked everything from the outside looking in during daylight, but from the inside looking out only cast a rust colored haze over the exterior scenery. The door was heavily constructed with a metal sign to doorn across the middle brace that greeted you with cursive print welcome as you entered from there. I was one door slam and fifteen cents away from an orange sherbet push up. For a far country boy staying in town with money to burn, eating ice cream from a toilet paper roll was a luxurious treat. Mama slying. Papa’s house had four screen doors. One on the front of the house was only opened on the Halloween on a company or the whole family was there and folks were parking all over the yard. The next one came into the living room on the opposite side of their home and the launchery room at the other end of the house, with the kitchen last located in the middle and the most used access of their home. The squeak of the hinges and the audible strain of that door spring was as good or better than a doorbell. I can remember getting out of a vehicle, running through the carboard round in the corner and across the back patio to hear Mama slide in the kitchen cooking suffer the aroma of everything that was good sifting through that screen that was hardly ever latched, and never.
00:14:36
Speaker 1: If she knew we were coming.
00:14:39
Speaker 2: The middle handle was but a momentary barrier standing between me and my grandparents’ home, the metallic stretch of the spring, creak of the hinges, and the eventual bang of it slamming shut, announcing do all within the earshot that we were there. I mentioned before about how there was no central heating air in there on, just screened windows doors that worked in conjunction with a huge attic fan moving the air through that u shaped home that would have you scratching for cover before morning. On the hottest summer nights. Screen doors also served as a barrier between flies, mosquitos, and all the other winged creatures that patrolled the outside looking for.
00:15:21
Speaker 1: A way in.
00:15:22
Speaker 2: However, none wherever as successful as the lightning bugs. The summer evenings, we find the old folks sitting on the patio after supper and the kitchen was cleaned in front of a box fan or using hand fans to stir the muggy air, while we played ball and climbed a most tree that stood watch over the backyard at the southeast corner of the house.
00:15:47
Speaker 1: And when the first lightning bug was spotted, we.
00:15:50
Speaker 2: Get Mama Slide to follow us inside the issus jars with lids, only to slam the screen door as one by one we raced outside to Papa, where he said, eating with his pocket knife, to poke holes in the lids so the lightning bugs can breathe after we called him. Sometimes I’d bring them in and they’re pulsating, glowing. The jar on the knights down beside the bed was putting me in a trance as I stared at him. Sleep would come suddenly, as the drone of that attic fan played this monotonous one note symphony above the light snort of my grandfather across the room. I can hear that screen door slamming now, and my grandmother hollering behind me not to do that. We often talk, and me specifically not long ago, on this platform. How music plays such an important role in the soundtrack of our lives. How a random song on the radio can transport you to another place in time. Screen door slamming can do the same thing for me. I asked my wife Alexis if she had any screen door member and other than falling out of one at her grandmother’s house and dying her words, not mine, before the backsteps were finished, she said she didn’t have any. Then Bailey asked me what a screen door was, and it made me a little sad. Somewhere along the way between the years of me chasing lightning bugs and bad guys, screen doors turned into storm doors, exposed metal springs that would pinch a blood blister on you if you weren’t careful, or replaced by an air filled pneumatic cylinder that housed an internal spring that closes the door slowly and safely no more slamming. Not long afterwards, McDonald’s had to start printing caution hot on their coffee cups. I’m still trying to figure out why you wouldn’t know that when you’re the one ordering the coffee. I could see a better statement saying if this ain’t hot, you may be eligible for compensation. Coincidence, No, I don’t think so. Something else that’s disappeared, or the front porches. I talked to my good friend John Hired about that. John’s a house building here in a dang good one. What happened to the porches?
00:18:15
Speaker 1: John?
00:18:16
Speaker 2: Why don’t I see them anymore? On new houses? They got clear in a hurry when he told me how expensive those spaces had gotten. Bottom line is, folks can’t afford to have them.
00:18:27
Speaker 1: I get it.
00:18:28
Speaker 2: Building a house in Arkansas where I live today is close to, if not a little over, two hundred dollars a square foot nineteen sixty six, the year I was born, it would run you about fourteen dollars. A house that cost you sixteen thousand, seven hundred dollars to build then would cost you two hundred and eighty eight thousand. Now that’s a sixteen hundred plus percent increase in cost, while the average household income has only increased barely above thirty teen hundred. There’s your difference. So we’re saving money, but what are we losing? When the storemore folks and I got together to design the studio I’m currently sitting in. I asked for a front porch. They just looked at me and smiled. Brent, you said you wanted a cabin style studio. Porches come standard on them. That porch now has three rocking chairs, one of them I’ve been holding on to since Bailey was a little girl. Our grandkids can still fit in them, even though Bailey has outgrown it. But that front porch is our gathering place in the evening. It’s Me, Alexis, Bailey, and Whaling or any combination of that, sit out there and visit when we watched the world go by it not every day, but but most of them. It also serves as a theater seating from movies we show on our outdoor projector at night, either bundled up in blankets and winter or with a fan turning the warm Arkansas air screen door guarded the threshold between the security of the home and everything outside. Of it, and the sound of it slamming shut could signify the end of a workday, the grand adventure want the comforting feeling of knowing you were safely inside and protected. It was the sound of sanctuary and the feeling of home, And like so many things I take for granted, I never really missed.
00:20:28
Speaker 1: It until it had been gone for a long time.
00:20:35
Speaker 2: If you have a screen door, don’t owe the hinges or fix that rattling spring. This generation needs to hear it, because one day they won’t, and then sometime way down the line they’ll be watching a movie or hear something similar, and then at that moment they’ll think of.
00:20:54
Speaker 1: You, whether you’re here or not.
00:21:00
Speaker 2: The windows of my studio are open, and the breeze that’s winding its way through Lonoke County, Arkansas is quite comfortable right now. The only thing missing is the screen door, but it won’t be missing along.
00:21:15
Speaker 1: Alexis. Get your shoes on, girl, We’re headed to home depot.
00:21:22
Speaker 2: Thank you out so much for listening to all of us here on the Baggaries channel, and apparently there’s a lot of you listening to us on the YouTube podcast channel. That’s a pleasant surprise to me. We’re working on getting the proper background video to play that’ll better fit the storytelling, and when we do, I hope you’ll be there to watch it and share it with the other folks you think to the watch until next week.
00:21:47
Speaker 1: This is Brent Reeves, sign it off. Y’all be careful.
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