Rural Life and the Old Codger - Part 2

The story was began in a post a couple of days ago as Rural Life and the Old Codger.

The great day with Mr. M. was an opportunity to view some Arkansas back country that is on the real estate market. Since my job is to finance this sort of property, I find opportunities such as this one to "inspect" the real estate for future prospects.

The drive to the property is about 45 minutes of small Arkansas rural highways with lots of twists and turns. As it would be, this took us right through the rural area where Mr. M was born and raised. This prompted several boyhood stories to be related including things like,

"Over there in that Little Schoolhouse is where I got introduced to the "board of education". "Mind you, I didn't do anything wrong, but some of those guys that I hung around with were might ornery."

Well, on to the property. As we arrived, Mr. M wanted to know if I wanted to ride the 4 wheelers in or take the truck since the property boundary was about a half mile off the highway. Makes no difference to me so he decides we will take the truck. Glad it was four wheel drive. If this had been in my little two wheel drive truck, we wouldn't have made the first 100 yards, especially pulling a trailer with two 4 wheelers.

Arrived at the property line in just a few minutes and out of the woods pop this quaint cabin built only a few years ago. Cabin would be a great weekend hideway. But I digress.

Well, I made sure and told Mr. M that I had not had opportunity to ride 4 wheeler in a while and I might be a little rusty. Not a problem. He pulled it off the trailer and we commenced to ride a trail around what I would think would be a hunters paradise.

We rode the perimeter of the property with a brief jog toward the center. Wow - 5 deer stands already up and in place. Look over there - a food plot area in front of each of the deer stands.

Man somone took a lot of pains to clear out that shooting lane. Several hundred yards of cleared area both directions from that deer stand. Look at all of that hardwood timber sprinkled with pines in several areas. Got to be lots of wild game in here!

"Hold on a minute Mr. M waives me down" You know how to put that thing down in crawl gear. Here, let me fix it for you."

My mind was racing. We had been moving fairly slowly anyway. Why does he want to know if I can put it in "crawl gear".

Well we took off again and as we moved across a ridge the bottom dropped out of the world. In front of us loomed a steep slope going down to a beautiful, trickling creek and a great slope to ascend on the other side. Ok now slow down. Can't this thing go any slower. Man this slope is steep. If I had stayed in the gear range I was in earlier, I would have been in the ravine going down or flipped over backwards coming out the other side.

On the other side we stopped and Mr. M. just laughed. "That was kind of like looking at the corners of the property that first time we met." Just needed to see if you would do it"

He grinned as he pointed at another trail behind us that was much smoother and would have taken most of the challenge out of that last stretch.

Well we finished the ride - loaded back up and back to town with no real incidents, lots of good stories and as stated - a great day.

Man - Mr. M. sure reminds me of my dad! - That makes a great day!