How many miles
Did the Big Man ride
Behind a bird dog
Puppy, Derby, All-Age?
Through heat and storm
On prairie and in pines
From Canada to Florida
From boy to aging man Read more
How Many Miles
Blog
The Florida Championship or How I Became the Reporter
How was I ever so lucky
As to end up the Reporter
Of the Florida Open All-Age Championship?
Me born a mountain boy sheep farmer?
Luck pure Luck
The main force in my life
And I’ll bet in yours
Some good some bad of course Read more
Chinquapin in January’s Second Week
Chinquapin
Where it all begins
As dawn emerges from dark
And quail awake
From their huddled sleeping state Read more
2007 Florida Open All-Age Championship
Funseeker's Rebel Named 2007 Champion, House’s Snake Bite, Runner-Up, Chickasaw Bud, Top Qualifier
On the sandy hills of Chinquapin
A bird dog casts into the wind
With each breath he seines for scent
Of Bobwhite quail–that southern gent Read more
A Solution — Sort Of
Ben Reach had a Monday morning appointment he dreaded. After breakfast at Millie’s with Sam he trudged to his office to “face the music,” as his father said whenever his mother insisted he join her at a symphony performance (quarterly). He had spent most of a sleepless night working out what his advice would be this morning to Gilbert Spain. Read more
Debit Man ~ A Story for Christmas and 2020
Ben Reach and Sam Nixon MD had long enjoyed a secret Christmas season ritual. It required the conspiratorial help of The Debit Man, a man even shorter than Ben Reach but the only Caucasian who had the information Ben and Sam required to fulfill their annual ritual.
What is a Debit Man? If you must ask that question you did not grow up among Poor People in the South in Ben and Sam’s era. Read more
Hawfield
Captain William Crenshaw’s Farm
Until he died in 1897
In 1948 its 2760 acres lay abandoned
Its antebellum manor burned
Read more
An Easy Fix
“What is on the book this week?” Ben Reach asked Joanne when he arrived at the office Monday morning.
“You have new clients at ten this morning, Sally and Sam Collins, about their mother Mary’s estate. She died two weeks ago. I put her will and trust agreement on your desk along with a summary of her assets. Her accountant, Ron Cease, will be with them — he is a co-executor and co-trustee with them. I’ll bring you a cup of coffee.”
Read more
Just For Fun
Ben Reach found himself in a new role at the Deep South Quail Championship being run at Knotty Pine Plantation. He had gone expecting just to ride in the gallery, but discovered on arrival that the dog truck driver had failed to show, so Ben volunteered for the job. Read more
The Callimores
The father, Jim, worked at S&M Milling for minimum wages, unloading and loading hundred-pound burlap sacks of grain hauled in by farmers for milling and mixing into animal feed. Jim and his wife had sixteen children, according to rumor. I knew only three, Billy, Freddy and Jean. Read more