Bob Cain and Booty Blevins
Was up in North Dakota
Their twentieth summer
Working bird dogs
They’d come up from South Georgia
Where they was based at
Where they lived in a single wide
When not on the circuit or training on prairie
Bob was the handler
Booty the scout
But in truth they was both
Bird dog Gypsies Read more
Category: Short Stories
A Boy and a Derby
Ben Reach had a place reserved for the lad in his heart. He had promised the father to look out for the boy.
The father was Wally Steel, an all-age field trial trainer-handler based in Lee County who had died in his prime from lung cancer, cursed by his cigarette-smoking habit. At that time the boy, Sammy Steel, had been eighteen and apprenticing under his father, following the trial circuit fall to spring, training in North Dakota July to mid-September.
After Wally’s death Sammy had been trying to carry on with his string. Wally’s owners liked Sammy but were unsure he had what it took to make it. The four owners would give him a chance for a season with the dogs they had with Wally at his death, but placed no new prospects with him. Sammy had partnered up to travel in one rig with a contemporary of his father, Dan Eanes, also based in Lee County. Read more
The Lucky Trade
Truck tires were still rationed and mostly unavailable. The War was over in Europe but not yet in the Pacific.
The first breakaway was at seven tomorrow morning at Pinehurst. Jess and Booty figured they could just make it if they drove all night. They did not know if they had a dog in the first brace but with six entered of a draw of about thirty Jess figured there was a pretty good chance they did. Read more
Illegal
Ben Reach had warned Pete-Bob Dix from the start not to embark on his quest to make money from “portability,” a feature of the federal estate and gift tax law since 2011.
Under portability, a spouse could give to a surviving spouse on death his or her unused gift and estate tax exemption. When Pete-Bob repeatedly asked Ben supposedly hypothetical questions about the portability rules, Ben said, “Do not ask me for advice about “portability.” Ben knew how Pete-Bob’s mind worked and thus the opportunities Pete-Bob saw in “portability” from reading about it in the Wall Street Journal. Read more
Minerva’s Rescue
Minerva was a pointer, seven years old. She was handled by Arch Reams, age seventy-five, and the last of a breed of handlers of the old school, who rode the pace set by the judges and mostly in sight of them and let a dog hunt ahead and make its pattern, hopefully to the front. He was quiet, sang with a voice Minerva heard but did not shout or ride frantically to turn her or see where she coursed over a hill ahead. Read more
A Pup From Kentucky, Part I
There is a long tradition of father-son apprenticeship in the pointing dog trainer-handler trade. Jake and Bobby were part of that tradition. Jake had been a for-the-public trainer-handler four decades, taught his son Bobby who scouted for him. Jake had turned his string and owners over to Bobby five years ago. Now Jake, age seventy, assisted Bobby with puppies and derbies, gave advice occasionally, sometimes welcomed, more often not. Read more
A Good Deed Rewarded
At the end of this day, number five, sixty pointers would have each hunted an hour in braces. Before the last brace was released, the judges announced that two of the dogs that had gone down earlier in the week should be ready to go down together at the end of this last scheduled brace in a call-back, its length to be, “Until ordered up.” Read more
A Hiring Choice
Ben Reach was often asked for advice by quail plantation owners on hiring decisions. It was not for legal advice but people advice, or in modern parlance, Human Resources advice. Ben was known as a sound judge of human beings, of character and management skill, particularly in the quail plantation realm.
For a person to manage traditional quail hunts, horseback and mule-wagon type, the first consideration was safety. This required skill and judgment and what Ben and Sam called First Responder attitude. A person who never lets anything distract them from safety. Character was an equally important trait. Lack of it had ended the careers of many, in plantation management as in all jobs in requiring honesty, and that was all jobs.
It was March. Fly fishing for panfish was much on the curmudgeons’ minds. Ron Silver, owner of Noyankees Plantation, had asked for a meeting with Ben (his lawyer for Georgia-centric problems) and Sam (his personal physician while in Georgia). In summer Ron lived in Massachusetts where he had made and still invested his considerable fortune. He had in Boston other lawyers and physicians. Read more
A Rivalry
T’was in a time when men (and sometimes women) from small towns in our region were often competitors, and rivals, in whatever engaged them, be it commerce or profession or sport, or all the above.
In the town concerned in this yarn, an adjoining place was a military base, a large training area called “Fort X” or “Camp X” depending on the decade, but the same Defense-Department-owned ground, named for the same long-dead Confederate Commander, the “X”. Read more
Another Pete-Bob Scheme
“Pete-Bob wants to see you,” Joanne greeted Ben as he arrived at his office Friday morning after breakfast at Millie’s Diner with Sam Nixon MD.
“What about?” Ben asked, skepticism in his voice.
“Says he has a special opportunity, just wants to be sure it is legal,” Joanne said. Read more