Blog

A Fair Deal

January 17, 2026 | Ben Reach, Short Stories | Comments
Albany, Georgia, lawyer Ben Reach met with Randy Culp on a Monday morning. Randy was a quail hunt manager and general hand on Sunny Slope Plantation near Thomasville. “What can I do for you, Randy?” Ben asked.  “It’s about Mom, Mr. Ben. She has cancer, not expected to live long. She asked me to see you about a will for her.” Read more

My Farming Years

January 9, 2026 | Farming, Remembrances | Comments
Nineteen fifty to 1960 were my farming years, the first three years and two months as my father’s partner. (He also practiced law). On June 29, 1950 I turned twelve, and on that day my father bought for $1200 a John Deere MT tractor for me to operate, retired our draft mare team Maud and Bird, and fired our resident farm tenant. The tractor dealer, Nelson Wimmer, to whom my grandfather had given in 1934 a seed and fertilizer retail business he founded in 1919 that never made money, converted it to a John Deere dealership that prospered many decades. Read more

A Christmas Story

December 24, 2025 | Ben Reach, Short Stories | Comments
Pete-Bob Dix called Ben Reach and Joanne answered. “Miss Joanne, I need to see Mr. Ben and Doc Nixon urgent. I got a problem only they can fix, maybe, I hope.” It was a week before Christmas, coming next Thursday. “What’s it about, Mr. Dix?” Read more

Two Scouts

December 13, 2025 | Short Stories | Comments
This year there were only two in attendance at the Championship, held in North Florida the second week of January. Five decades earlier, when the trial was first held in 1969, each of the handlers attending had one, a year-around full-time employee. I speak of black scouts. The handlers were all white, then and now. Read more

Arnie, Bo and Superboy

November 30, 2025 | Short Stories | Comments
Arnie Eanes and Bo Brown were a handler-scout team of the 1930s, home based in Georgia. Arnie was white, Bo black. They lived at a time and place when almost no one had wealth, and the few who did were from up north and loved to bird hunt and admired good pointing dogs. Arnie and Bo made their meager income training and handling those dogs, for competitions called field trials. This was a sport invented sixty-odd years before in England and imported to the United States in 1874 and since become popular among a few sportsmen, wealthy and not, across the nation. Read more

If

November 26, 2025 | Poetry | Comments
If you hunted birds With your son Over pointing dogs You bred and raised Your son did too And built that bond Where the dogs are the glue And a point binds all generations First, middle and last Read more

Happiest Days

November 15, 2025 | Poetry | Comments
My happiest days Were spent horseback Riding at field trials Watching dogs explore For coveys of quail Or sharp tails or Huns  In wire grass or prairie grass Wheat stubble or weeds  Watching them freeze  Stand rigid and tall Waiting for handler To get there to flush  Then watered and released To stretch out for the front  To find more to point  At the end of a cast From first breakaway To the end of the day Looking for the one  That lays down the great race Read more

Drive at Dawn through Tidewater Farms

November 7, 2025 | Poetry | Comments
I drove at dawn today West through Virginia’s Tidewater counties Soil sandy, flat and fertile British names Suffolk (now a city, used to be Nansemond County) Isle of Wight Southampton Sussex Harvest time has come at last Peanuts dug and in windrows drying Waiting for the combine Farmers fearing rain or freeze or both That renders the precious nut worthless Corn this year grew wonderfully From planting to maturity Most Read more