Speaker 1: What are the things you have in your life that
Speaker 1: are really valuable but you don't pay for and you
Speaker 1: couldn't quite sell them.
Speaker 2: In January of twenty twenty four, the Gillette Coonsupper celebrated
Speaker 2: its eightieth annual dinner. This bizarre wild game tradition has
Speaker 2: made a name for itself as one of the premier
Speaker 2: political events in Arkansas. But it's more than that. It's
Speaker 2: holding a struggling but strong community together. This is one
Speaker 2: of the most unique Beargrea stories we've ever told. It's
Speaker 2: a deep dive into small town America and what makes
Speaker 2: us what we are. We'll go to the Coon Supper
Speaker 2: and hear from the cooks, the coon hunters, and some
Speaker 2: hungry people. We'll interview best selling author Tim P. Carney
Speaker 2: about why traditions like this matter and believe it or not.
Speaker 2: We'll also hear from former President Bill Clinton about his
Speaker 2: interaction with the Coon Supper. This episode will surprise and
Speaker 2: impact you, and we'll teach you something about yourself and
Speaker 2: about society. Eating barbecue raccoon has never been so good.
Speaker 2: I really doubt you're gonna want to miss this one.
Speaker 2: What would you say? There's a prime cut on a Coon.
Speaker 3: Absolutely not.
Speaker 2: It's all it's all prime. It's all prime, all prime,
Speaker 2: all right. My name is Klay Nukem, and this is
Speaker 2: the Bear Grease Podcast, where we'll explore things forgotten but relevant,
Speaker 2: search for insight and unlikely places, and where we'll tell
Speaker 2: the story of Americans who live their lives close to
Speaker 2: the land. Presented by f HF Gear, American made purpose
Speaker 2: built hunting and fishing gear as designed to be as
Speaker 2: rugged as the places we explored.
Speaker 4: My name is Scott Place. I'm from Gillette, Arkansas. I
Speaker 4: live on Main Street and I've been associated with the
Speaker 4: Coon Supper all my life. My dad was a master
Speaker 4: of ceremonies for it from the beginning up until nineteen
Speaker 4: eighty nine or ninety. So I had to go to
Speaker 4: the Coon Supper one night I was even a little
Speaker 4: guy because there was nowhere else to be. You couldn't
Speaker 4: hire a babysitter or anything like that because everybody was
Speaker 4: at the Coon Supper.
Speaker 2: The first recorded coons Supper took place in nineteen thirty three.
Speaker 2: Scott was born in nineteen fifty four. He's seventy years
Speaker 2: old and he was born in the house he's sitting
Speaker 2: in right now. In downtown Gillette. It's a handsome, well
Speaker 2: taken care of brick home with white modern sighting. It
Speaker 2: was his parents before it was his. Scott is a
Speaker 2: second generation rice farmer.
Speaker 4: My dad was at the first coon Supper. He was
Speaker 4: a people person, and he sang and danced on the
Speaker 4: stage when he couldn't sing and dance. And it started
Speaker 4: as just a stag gathering from coon hunters around the area.
Speaker 4: Well then you can imagine that got a little rough,
Speaker 4: and so the next year or two they decided to
Speaker 4: invite the women, and then it took off from there.
Speaker 2: Gillette is a small farming town in the Delta of
Speaker 2: southeast Arkansas. Their Coon Supper is more than a citywide tradition.
Speaker 2: It's an event that brings an entire region together, really
Speaker 2: an entire state. Today. Scott place, like his father, is
Speaker 2: kind of the grand marshal of this event, not officially,
Speaker 2: and he wouldn't want me to say that, but that's
Speaker 2: my perception. The Coonsuper's importance to anyone who's been to
Speaker 2: it is clear, but it's hard to nail down. Amid
Speaker 2: the complexity of economic challenges and the loss of population,
Speaker 2: people are leaving places like this and not coming back.
Speaker 2: These are real problems for many small towns in America.
Speaker 2: Existential time is moving forward without you, kind of stuff
Speaker 2: that seems to hover over the delta like a biblical plague.
Speaker 2: Just down the street from Scott's house lives Gillette's top politician,
Speaker 2: the mayor, Randy Womack. He lives on the corner of
Speaker 2: Main Street. He and Scott were college roommates. We're gonna
Speaker 2: need some info on Gillette.
Speaker 5: Back when we.
Speaker 6: Moved here in the sixties. At that time there was
Speaker 6: close to nine hundred people the best I can remember,
Speaker 6: say since last census, best I can remember around five
Speaker 6: hundred and twenty five. But it's changed, like a lot
Speaker 6: of delta towns have changed as the tractor's got bigger
Speaker 6: and eliminated a lot of a lot of the workers,
Speaker 6: so it's gradually gotten smaller.
Speaker 2: This is a row crop farming community where soybeans, rice, wheat,
Speaker 2: and corn grow in alluvial soils. They call buckshot, which
Speaker 2: is fertile clay that holds water, sticks to your boots
Speaker 2: and they say it holds the world together. She Lett
Speaker 2: is four miles north of the Arkansas River and forty
Speaker 2: river miles southeast or twenty eight point two seven crow
Speaker 2: flying miles to where the Arkansas River flows into the
Speaker 2: Mighty Mississippi River. The bigger name for this bigger region
Speaker 2: is the Delta. You've heard us talk about it a lot,
Speaker 2: but more specifically, Gillette is in the Grand Prairie. These
Speaker 2: soils have been built by ten thousand years of flooding.
Speaker 2: The Quapalls farmed here from time immemorial into the early
Speaker 2: eighteen hundreds, and modern farming commercial operations have only been
Speaker 2: practiced here for roughly one hundred years. But one thing
Speaker 2: is certain, if you live here, you're invested. Something about
Speaker 2: the flat, muddy ground of the Delta evokes that in people.
Speaker 2: There's a word for a person's relationship with their community.
Speaker 2: It's called social capital. Just file that away for a minute,
Speaker 2: and we're about to go to the Coon Supper. But
Speaker 2: there's still one important piece of the story that we
Speaker 2: haven't talked about yet. The Gillette school system. Something happened
Speaker 2: to their.
Speaker 6: School football games. Doesn't matter what the record was. Stadium
Speaker 6: was going on be full basketball game, kind of the
Speaker 6: center part of the town when the consolidation had all
Speaker 6: come and I understand what it was cased in the
Speaker 6: state in as many school district as the were, or
Speaker 6: so they went about and you know, putting limit on
Speaker 6: what the tennis was once you got to blow that number.
Speaker 2: You may have heard Randy grunt right there at the
Speaker 2: end when he did. He was shaking his head as
Speaker 2: if something died and he didn't want to speak it
Speaker 2: out loud. The school was central to the town. It
Speaker 2: was the social glue. Do you let schools consolidated with
Speaker 2: the bigger school system in two thousand and four. I
Speaker 2: wonder what Scott thought about the school closing.
Speaker 4: It's awful, but one thing led to another, the suspense
Speaker 4: of whether the school was going to shut down after
Speaker 4: it was officially consolidated, know the district, how long was
Speaker 4: it going to stay open? So nobody moves into town
Speaker 4: and your slow death. It's agonizing. But the way farming
Speaker 4: farm economy has changed, and the land that we farm
Speaker 4: in the fifties supported twenty families and now the three
Speaker 4: or four and everybody has two kids instead of nine.
Speaker 4: There's not enough kids support us a school in this
Speaker 4: area anymore. And so this is just inevitable.
Speaker 2: Inevitable is a powerful and intimidating word for rural America.
Speaker 2: Two thousand and four was the beginning of the end
Speaker 2: for Gillette schools. They kept them open for five years,
Speaker 2: but in two thousand and nine they completely closed the
Speaker 2: high school in junior high, but the grade school K
Speaker 2: through five stayed open until twenty twenty one, when the
Speaker 2: last of the Gillette schools were completely closed. Today the
Speaker 2: kids bus fourteen miles to de Witt or d Wit
Speaker 2: as some would say. But it's not all bad. It's
Speaker 2: just a matter of perspective. This is seth place. Scott's son,
Speaker 2: he's in his early forties, lives in Gillette, but his
Speaker 2: kids go to DeWitt schools.
Speaker 7: It got heated there for a while with the school
Speaker 7: consolidation and all that stuff. And it was no big
Speaker 7: secret about some hard feelings here and there or whatever.
Speaker 7: But when I think about Gillette and how it used
Speaker 7: to be, that's how I feel when I go where
Speaker 7: my kids go to school up here at d WIT.
Speaker 7: Though it's basically from my perspective, the community has grown.
Speaker 2: That's an optimistic perspective, and Gillette does have a history
Speaker 2: of expanding its reach. On January thirteenth, twenty twenty four,
Speaker 2: Gillette held its eightieth annual Coon Supper. Despite the child olenges,
Speaker 2: this event is a bright spot on the calendar that
Speaker 2: brings this community together. It gives it identity and is
Speaker 2: one of the only anchors that is held. Myself, my
Speaker 2: wife Misty, along with Brent and his wife drove to
Speaker 2: the Grand Prairie to see it for ourselves. This is
Speaker 2: about to get wild, folks, but let's not jump the gun.
Speaker 2: The first stop that we made was not at the
Speaker 2: Coon Supper, but at the Gillette Pre Coon Supper. That's right,
Speaker 2: the pre Coon Supper, which starts about two hours before
Speaker 2: the Coon Supper. We've driven a couple of miles down
Speaker 2: a gravel road in park by a large metal building.
Speaker 2: This is the late Congressman Mary and Barry's farm shed.
Speaker 2: What is this? I hear music? I've never been here before.
Speaker 8: Name is Clay Clay Leslie.
Speaker 2: Nice to see a guy in dark framed glasses wearing
Speaker 2: a man dadish kind of barbecue and apron greets me.
Speaker 2: He carries himself like a guy in charge. I bet
Speaker 2: he knows what's up with this pre coonsupper stuff. Hey,
Speaker 2: how's it going? Hey doing kway? Newcomer? Give me like
Speaker 2: a little overview of the Coon Supper or and maybe
Speaker 2: even this event.
Speaker 9: So uh so, yeah, we're we're here at the at
Speaker 9: the very farm shop. So this is uh the pre
Speaker 9: coonsupper reception.
Speaker 3: So this, this.
Speaker 9: Event, you know, really goes back fifty years. Uh So
Speaker 9: former Congressman Marrion Barry, he used to live right across
Speaker 9: the street from the Gillette High School and uh when
Speaker 9: people and elected officials and Canadas would come down and
Speaker 9: come to the Coon Supper, they'd stopped at his house
Speaker 9: to have a cocktail before going over the coon Supper.
Speaker 2: That was Gabe Holstrom, and he just told us a
Speaker 2: very important component of the tradition that has become the
Speaker 2: political event of Arkansas. Let's see who else is here.
Speaker 10: My name is Jeremiah Moore. I'm from Clarenon, Arkansas. Currently
Speaker 10: serve as a state representative for House District sixty one
Speaker 10: in the Arkansas State Legislature. My district runs from Amigon
Speaker 10: in Jackson County all the way down to Gillette in
Speaker 10: Arkansas County. And I would be remiss if I did
Speaker 10: not say that District sixty one has the best duck
Speaker 10: hunting in.
Speaker 2: All the world.
Speaker 10: You know, we're here right now at the Gillette pre
Speaker 10: Coon Supper.
Speaker 2: We're about to be confused with the coon souber. This
Speaker 2: is a pre coon safer.
Speaker 10: We're about to head on to the actual coon Supper
Speaker 10: in a few minutes. And I always say that this
Speaker 10: is the foremost political event in the entire state of Arkansas.
Speaker 10: Now you tell me any state east or west of
Speaker 10: the Mississippi where the foremost political event revolves around eating
Speaker 10: a raccoon, and.
Speaker 5: Now it'll be right here in Jillette.
Speaker 2: So now, this pre he Coonsupper became a must attend
Speaker 2: event in part because of Arkansas's most famous son, a
Speaker 2: young man who became Arkansas's governor in nineteen seventy eight.
Speaker 2: This is the guy that Gary Believer Nukan went to
Speaker 2: high school with, and you may recognize his voice. We'll
Speaker 2: step out of the pre coon Supper for a minute
Speaker 2: to a speech this former governor made in twenty twenty three.
Speaker 11: So when I started to run for office, the lad
Speaker 11: had about eight hundred people and they were about as
Speaker 11: I recall, a minimum of fifteen hundred people that showed
Speaker 11: up at the Coon Sufferer.
Speaker 2: This is former President Bill Clinton. Turns out he's a
Speaker 2: long time coon supper guy.
Speaker 11: And someone I said, you know, you've got to do this,
Speaker 11: and you've got to call Marion Barry and you got
Speaker 11: to go down there and see him make all over
Speaker 11: the deal and act like you think coon is better
Speaker 11: than Philet Mignon. So I show up and it was
Speaker 11: already kind of required appearance to go to Marion's house first,
Speaker 11: and all the paul for there and other people, and
Speaker 11: then we'd mody over to the dinner.
Speaker 2: He's talking about the pre coon supper, and.
Speaker 11: So I said, Marrying, do I actually have to eat
Speaker 11: his coon? He said no, He said not if you
Speaker 11: don't want to carry this place ever again, you don't
Speaker 11: have to eat it at all.
Speaker 12: And I said, well, okay.
Speaker 11: How do I eat it? He said, what do you mean?
Speaker 11: I said, I've seen it prepared for eating, and I said,
Speaker 11: there's a lot of gristlin fat right near the bone.
Speaker 11: How do I eat it without getting sick? He said, well,
Speaker 11: most people think they're eat coon meat with a little
Speaker 11: barbecue sauce. You should think of it in reverse, thinking
Speaker 11: you're eating barbecue sauce with a little coon. Mea, there's
Speaker 11: no such thing as too much barbecue sauce.
Speaker 2: Ironically, This is the second time Bill Clinton's voice has
Speaker 2: been on the Bear Grease podcast, and he was once
Speaker 2: involved in a plane crash on the way to the
Speaker 2: coon Supper, but that's another story. But Clinton helped put
Speaker 2: this tradition on the legendary column of Arkansas events. But
Speaker 2: it's now time for us to go to the supper.
Speaker 2: We're really about to eat some coon. This isn't a joke.
Speaker 2: So we just left the pre coon supper party. Brent,
Speaker 2: what are your thoughts?
Speaker 3: Oh, well, there was no coon served, but lots of conversation.
Speaker 3: But the food was good. There was duck poppers that's
Speaker 3: duck wrapped with bacon and jalapenos, and there was ribs
Speaker 3: and sausage.
Speaker 2: And so we're driving on a gravel road in the
Speaker 2: Grand Prairie of Arkansas. It's dark, the sun has set
Speaker 2: and there's a light glow on the horizon on the
Speaker 2: western horizon, and we're now headed to the Gillette Coon Souper.
Speaker 2: As we get into the Gillette city limits, the streets
Speaker 2: are filled with parked cars and people walking towards the school.
Speaker 2: We get out of our car. It looks like we're
Speaker 2: walking up to an old gymnasium it's dark outside, stars
Speaker 2: are out a beautiful uh waning GiB us moon above us.
Speaker 2: This is the old Gillette High School gym. It looks
Speaker 2: like the movie Hoosiers could have been filmed here.
Speaker 5: Here.
Speaker 2: We are awesome. We just got our tickets and the
Speaker 2: tickets are numbered. We gotive. Oh wow, we're gonna have
Speaker 2: to split up sorrow. All right, it's on we go.
Speaker 2: This year they had eight hundred tickets and they sold out.
Speaker 2: The gym is lined with tables with white tablecloths. At
Speaker 2: each place setting is the annual glass cup with the
Speaker 2: coonsupper emblem. In the year, people collect these. But each
Speaker 2: table has an aluminum foil trade of barbecue raccoon. I
Speaker 2: see a guy, I want to talk to you. Tell
Speaker 2: me your name of.
Speaker 3: Who you work.
Speaker 8: Zach Hartman, chief policy officer for Ducks On Limited.
Speaker 2: Why the heck are you at the coon suburb? Man
Speaker 2: at the coons eat duck eggs?
Speaker 13: Well, the most important thing for net success is habitat.
Speaker 2: But I'm not opposed to eating a few coon.
Speaker 8: But I am not opposed to eat a few coons.
Speaker 13: But the really reason that we're here is because this
Speaker 13: is a great event for a great cause. We're here
Speaker 13: to raise money for Arkansas State's Foundation and the scholarships
Speaker 13: that they provide to students that want to get involved
Speaker 13: in ag policy, and they have an opportunity to learn
Speaker 13: about agriculture conservation, which is an increasingly important component of
Speaker 13: our working lands these days.
Speaker 2: Okay, enough all that, man, what do you think of
Speaker 2: eating coon?
Speaker 8: How my man had Penny over here, who you know.
Speaker 13: I brought him here for his first time, and I
Speaker 13: took him to the coon supper and I gave him
Speaker 13: I sat him down and I said, you know, you
Speaker 13: gotta eat some coon. And he ate a piece of
Speaker 13: coon and then he grabbed another piece and I said
Speaker 13: it or are you going back for seconds? And he
Speaker 13: said yeah, it's good, and I said really, and I
Speaker 13: tasted it and it was and it like ruined.
Speaker 8: The whole joke.
Speaker 2: Bret and I both grab a leg of coon and
Speaker 2: have a bite, and he's right, it ain't bad. But
Speaker 2: we've both had it before. We're old coon hunters.
Speaker 14: You know.
Speaker 2: Brent's wife won't even try it. But Misty took a
Speaker 2: nibble and the report wasn't great, though she was a
Speaker 2: little embarrassed to show her displeasure. Anyway, I see somebody
Speaker 2: else I want to talk with. This is awesome Booth,
Speaker 2: the director of the Arkansas Game and Fish. Why are
Speaker 2: you at the coon supper?
Speaker 11: Sir?
Speaker 15: Well, it's an Arkansas radition for us Flatlanders. It's a
Speaker 15: good way to point out the nexus between public service
Speaker 15: and young Arkansas and also a great way to see
Speaker 15: the Grand Prairie in his most beautiful time of the year.
Speaker 2: Shoot some ducks and eat some coon. Now? Are we
Speaker 2: also not trying to reduce the coon population in the
Speaker 2: state of Arkansas?
Speaker 15: Sir, always and proudly.
Speaker 2: This is a good way to do it right as popularize.
Speaker 2: You know, there's a strategy you can If we can
Speaker 2: popularize eating coon meat to the level that every child
Speaker 2: in America, every man, woman, and child, wants to go
Speaker 2: kill a coon and eat it, then we might we
Speaker 2: might be winning. Do you agree with this?
Speaker 15: I think coon Wellington would be an American tradition forever.
Speaker 2: Austin Booth is a former marine, a lawyer, and native
Speaker 2: our cans and and our youngest Game and Fish director ever.
Speaker 2: For my angle, he's exemplifying some legit leadership while navigating
Speaker 2: the very complex wildlife issues of our state. Hat tip
Speaker 2: to Austin. Oh look, here's somebody else i'd like to
Speaker 2: talk with.
Speaker 16: I'm leslie right Ledge, the Lieutenant governor of Arkansas for
Speaker 16: the past year. I was the attorney general for eight
Speaker 16: years prior to that. I grew up on a cattle farm.
Speaker 16: I'm married to a rogrot farmer. So I love being
Speaker 16: here in Arkansas farm lamb, you know, celebrating our way
Speaker 16: of life, our heritage, and then doing something really awkward.
Speaker 8: Which is eat raccoon.
Speaker 2: Pardon me, madame, Lieutenant governor, but is it really awkward
Speaker 2: to eat raccoon? Is that the right word? And by
Speaker 2: the way, when i'm governor, Brent will be my lieutenant governor.
Speaker 16: You know, we're doing this odd thing of eating barbecued raccoon.
Speaker 16: But it's really to talk about what the needs are
Speaker 16: here in Arkansas County, what the needs are for the
Speaker 16: farmers in this area.
Speaker 2: Okay, so here's a real question after all that, how
Speaker 2: do you like coon?
Speaker 16: Well, it's best not eating. But if you have to
Speaker 16: eat it, I certainly suggest getting like one of the yeah,
Speaker 16: the banks or something where it looks big but it's
Speaker 16: very little meat.
Speaker 2: Oh, you got a strategy to get a big beecet,
Speaker 2: but not getting much. That's right, you know, strategy, it's
Speaker 2: all about strategy.
Speaker 4: That was good.
Speaker 2: I want to get into the nitty gritty of how
Speaker 2: they're coming up with all this raccoon meat. This is
Speaker 2: their main supplier, Tommy Cantrell. And how long have you
Speaker 2: been supplying the coons over with coons?
Speaker 17: Probably six or seven years probably now.
Speaker 3: Uh huh?
Speaker 2: So how many you usually catch for them?
Speaker 3: I put it this way.
Speaker 17: Last year I carried him like six d and fifty pounds, right,
Speaker 17: and they're probably average seven pounds six to seven pounds
Speaker 17: per coon. So you can figure that I trap them.
Speaker 17: And also we hunt them with my dog. I got
Speaker 17: old dog.
Speaker 2: Got a coon dog? What kind of coon dog?
Speaker 17: You well, she's not actually a coon dog coon dog.
Speaker 17: She's about half German shepherd and have something new. But anyway,
Speaker 17: if we find one, you know, and she'll run him
Speaker 17: up a tree or something. But if we shoot him,
Speaker 17: if you ain't got a dog, he gonna get away,
Speaker 17: but she will ketch him. She will catch him.
Speaker 11: Get there.
Speaker 2: So I did the math, and that's about one hundred
Speaker 2: dressed raccoons. But that's just what mister Tommy brought in
Speaker 2: they had a few other suppliers. Now I want to
Speaker 2: know how they cook it. Guess who the head cook is?
Speaker 2: Yep Scott Place, the guy whose dad was the first
Speaker 2: master of ceremonies. So are you you're the main coon
Speaker 2: cook around here?
Speaker 4: Well, I guess I'm the oldest cook.
Speaker 2: Okay, So tell tell me about the process of how
Speaker 2: you're cooking this.
Speaker 4: My son Saith buys the coon and we got freezers
Speaker 4: in the old field house and we'll keep it in
Speaker 4: and then on Thursday we'll come get it out and
Speaker 4: let it fall for a day. And then on Friday
Speaker 4: morning we got a pan saw and we cut it
Speaker 4: up in the pieces and in the salt water brine
Speaker 4: and soak it twenty four hours. And then today is
Speaker 4: our longest day, and we boil it in the big
Speaker 4: pots with a special recipe of stuff that we put
Speaker 4: in the boil of water, almost like a.
Speaker 3: Fish.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and we boil it and then we immediately put
Speaker 4: it on these smokers.
Speaker 2: How many coons did y'all You think y'all cooke today?
Speaker 3: Coons?
Speaker 4: I don't know, but it's right. It's just under eight
Speaker 4: hundred pounds.
Speaker 2: Now. At one time it was a lot bigger than that.
Speaker 2: Y'all cooked like two thousand pounds.
Speaker 4: Y'all back when we just served coon, Well, we've had
Speaker 4: well over a ton before.
Speaker 2: How many people you think we're here tonight?
Speaker 4: Sold out of tickets? So right, eight hundred tickets.
Speaker 3: I believe eight hundred people.
Speaker 4: We used to have a thousand tickets, but we took
Speaker 4: a table out, oh, probably twenty years ago, because maybe
Speaker 4: Americans are getting a little bigger and.
Speaker 2: Eating too much coon.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it may be eating too much coon.
Speaker 4: And it was just so crowded.
Speaker 2: I think they've got this coon coulking process dialed. I
Speaker 2: shuffle to sit down quickly as the main speaker is
Speaker 2: about to start. The room quiets as a man in
Speaker 2: a suit approaches the stage. Behind the podium is a
Speaker 2: giant orange handmade mural paper mural commemorating the eightieth Coon Supper.
Speaker 2: On it is a raccoon as big as a picnic table.
Speaker 2: On the lookers left since eight high school seniors. These
Speaker 2: kids go to de Witch schools now, but they're from
Speaker 2: families that live in Gillette. The night is all about them.
Speaker 5: I want to thank you all for trowning. It is
Speaker 5: no weather to come and enjoy yourself tonight or really
Speaker 5: really happy to have you here.
Speaker 18: This is the eightieth time this group has met.
Speaker 5: This coon sover has been put on.
Speaker 2: The speaker's demeanor changes in the room quiets as everyone
Speaker 2: knows what he's about to say.
Speaker 5: Many of you know that we lost Pastor Chad Philip
Speaker 5: this past year.
Speaker 18: Pastor was a great icon of Jellette, the surrounding area
Speaker 18: and the Coon Sobber.
Speaker 5: Just remember Pastor Chad.
Speaker 2: Pastor Chad was a big player here for the last
Speaker 2: several decades. But he's not the only one being remembered
Speaker 2: this year.
Speaker 18: As many of you may know, we've lost another icon
Speaker 18: of Jillette and the Coon Sober this past year. Without
Speaker 18: a doubt, the most famous person from Jillette, Representative Marion Barry.
Speaker 18: Marion love the Lord. He loved his family, he loved
Speaker 18: his farm. We loved you lit its people in the
Speaker 18: Coon Suffer. Mary devoted his life of the service to
Speaker 18: his family and his country and his community. Instead of
Speaker 18: an example to other's an impact that a man from
Speaker 18: a small town can make when seeking direction from God
Speaker 18: and being.
Speaker 5: In service to others. Let's remember Representative Marion Barrier.
Speaker 2: I hope you can feel the sense of community and
Speaker 2: connectedness in this gym, and to think the mechanism that
Speaker 2: it's built around is eating a raccoon. This isn't a joke,
Speaker 2: and it's being done inside the context of a town
Speaker 2: that by measurable statistics might seem like it's wilting. But wait,
Speaker 2: there's more. Here's Senator Tom Cotton.
Speaker 14: Good evening.
Speaker 19: It's great to be back at the Coon Supper again.
Speaker 19: You know, we always join at this time of the year.
Speaker 19: It's the darkest and the.
Speaker 5: Oldest time of the year.
Speaker 19: We have a night of festivities and the warmth of
Speaker 19: community and fellowship. As we've heard, though, we have heavy
Speaker 19: hearts two degree this year because of the passing of
Speaker 19: the pastor chat and Mary and Mary. But I think
Speaker 19: they would want all of us to be here where
Speaker 19: we are tonight, and they're looking down on us, and
Speaker 19: they're proud that this community is continuing with this unique,
Speaker 19: distinctive tradition. I think it's a testament to their legacy
Speaker 19: that we're all joining here together as we always do,
Speaker 19: to help support.
Speaker 5: The great students and kids of this community. Thank you all, Godless.
Speaker 2: The evening comes to a close after every senior is
Speaker 2: recognized for their academic achievements. They each address the crowd
Speaker 2: and tell what their plans are after graduating. One young
Speaker 2: man is going into his family's pest control business, Another
Speaker 2: is heading to the University of Arkansaw. Another is going
Speaker 2: into nursing school. Scholarship recipients are announced, and each senior
Speaker 2: is met by volumeous applause. Despite the town's population shrinking
Speaker 2: the school's closing, the place is riding high on a
Speaker 2: deep sense of community pride. This is really something special.
Speaker 2: As the Coon Supper adjourns, I'm standing outside the doors
Speaker 2: of the event. I ask a passing guy his thoughts
Speaker 2: on what just happened? This is Johnny. You've come to
Speaker 2: this quite a few times.
Speaker 5: Yes, sir, Yes, sir.
Speaker 2: Where are you from?
Speaker 3: I'm from Palm Low?
Speaker 2: So what what what do you like about this?
Speaker 5: I love it. It's just good people.
Speaker 3: One thing about it is it's constant.
Speaker 5: Ain't nothing ever changed. It's gonna always be the same.
Speaker 5: You do not have any problems.
Speaker 2: You're a commercial fisherman. Yes, where do you fishing?
Speaker 4: White River?
Speaker 14: White argistas and awesome man.
Speaker 2: But you're a fan of the Coon something.
Speaker 5: It's beautiful, beautiful, It's beautiful.
Speaker 2: It's good people, stays the same, and it's beautiful. I
Speaker 2: think that's a pretty good synopsis. As I'm leaving, I
Speaker 2: see Seth Place, who's the second in command cook behind
Speaker 2: his dad. I'm a little late in asking him this,
Speaker 2: but he seems to be a coon meat expert, and
Speaker 2: I have a burning question.
Speaker 5: That's what would you.
Speaker 2: Say there's a prime cut on a coon?
Speaker 20: Absolutely not, it's all it's all prime.
Speaker 2: It's all prime, all prime. Okay, all right, all right,
Speaker 2: he asks me if I want to see the cookers.
Speaker 2: So we walk out further into the yard right by
Speaker 2: the gym. So, y'all cook them all on this big
Speaker 2: smoker right here.
Speaker 4: But these are the smokers.
Speaker 2: Now do they all bring these in or they stay here?
Speaker 2: These are permanent.
Speaker 20: Smoker now I used to Yeah, the school's closed so
Speaker 20: and then they basically donated the these buildings to the
Speaker 20: Farms and Businessman Club. So we can have this indefinitely
Speaker 20: as long as we can sell tickets, really, but yeah,
Speaker 20: we just keep everything here now.
Speaker 2: So this this used to be Gillette Public School. This
Speaker 2: is Coal Counts. It consolidated to be with.
Speaker 8: But this year is the first year that elementary has
Speaker 8: been gone.
Speaker 2: So this is kind of like a ghost town down here.
Speaker 20: It is, at least in the sense of the school.
Speaker 8: I got to go to school here till I was
Speaker 8: in the seventh grade.
Speaker 2: In my eighth grade year, we consolidated, had to go
Speaker 2: to d with Okay, amid the excitement and energy of
Speaker 2: the event, it's easy to forget this community is struggling
Speaker 2: to stay together. More people were in that gym than
Speaker 2: live in this town. They leave their giant built in
Speaker 2: cookers outside the gym because it's not a functioning gym anymore.
Speaker 2: Just keep that in mind. We're going to go back
Speaker 2: to that. But first, I've had something on mine since
Speaker 2: that first bite of raccoon. We're now in the car
Speaker 2: heading home, and I think it's possible that we've all
Speaker 2: broken the law. I decide to confront Brent on his hypocrisy.
Speaker 2: I'm trying to understand how I'm not the only person
Speaker 2: who thought of this. Okay, So the one problem that
Speaker 2: I've foreseen is that they're buying this coon meat, and
Speaker 2: it is illegal to buy or sell wildlife meat.
Speaker 3: There is an exception, really, yeah, p with coon. Yeah,
Speaker 3: let me tell you something. Are you holding onto that
Speaker 3: mic because yeah, this is a mic drop moment. Okay,
Speaker 3: my brother Tim skins coons and prepares them to be sold,
Speaker 3: and his nephew sells them out the window of their
Speaker 3: pharmacy in Ford Asson, Arkansas.
Speaker 8: Serious, you can go buy the drop off.
Speaker 3: A gun to get picked up, to get cleaned and repaired.
Speaker 3: You can pick up your prescription and you can buy
Speaker 3: a coon.
Speaker 2: Really raise yourself because I got the Okay, what's the
Speaker 2: AGFC say about it? Missy, We've just left the gillet
Speaker 2: coon supper.
Speaker 14: It is.
Speaker 21: It is unlawful to purchase, sell, offer for sale, barter,
Speaker 21: or trade any species of wildlife.
Speaker 14: Or proportions there up period exceptions.
Speaker 21: Hey, fur bear pelts and carcasses taken during a fur
Speaker 21: bear season may be sold.
Speaker 14: Wow, that's the first one.
Speaker 21: May be sold by person who's valid hunting are furred
Speaker 21: to their licenses, legally taken squirrel tails and pelts, rabbit pelts.
Speaker 14: This is a second. This is a like a different
Speaker 14: bullet point.
Speaker 2: I've heard all I need to hear red fox grace legal, Baby,
Speaker 2: We're going into business.
Speaker 14: Alligator high alligators.
Speaker 2: I'm staying corrected. Sounds like Brent's off the hook. Somehow.
Speaker 2: The legality of selling fur bear meat has eluded me.
Speaker 2: But I'll tell you what else has eluded me, the
Speaker 2: real understanding of why something like the coon supper is valuable.
Speaker 2: I mean, it's easy to see and feel the value
Speaker 2: when you're there. It's undeniable. Anybody sees it. Everybody sees it,
Speaker 2: But how could you explain it to someone? I got
Speaker 2: the opportunity to talk with author Tim P. Carney, who's
Speaker 2: written multiple best selling books. One is called Alienated America.
Speaker 2: He's an expert on this kind of stuff. And to
Speaker 2: be more specific about what that stuff is, a lot
Speaker 2: of the Coonsupper's value could be summed up by people
Speaker 2: gaining social capital. I remember I told you to hold
Speaker 2: on to that word, file it away. This is incredibly interesting.
Speaker 2: Here's Tim.
Speaker 1: Social capital is this term that like sociologists ues maybe historians,
Speaker 1: and it's a weird word because capital is kind of
Speaker 1: a financial term, right, you're talking about money. Social is
Speaker 1: showing us that we're talking about something very different. So
Speaker 1: one way to think of social capital is what are
Speaker 1: the things you have in your life that are really
Speaker 1: valuable but you don't pay for and you couldn't quite
Speaker 1: sell them. Do you have a next door neighbor who
Speaker 1: you're just best friends with, that's social capital. Do you
Speaker 1: have extended family who will bail you out if you
Speaker 1: get into trouble, that's having social capital. And so the
Speaker 1: truth is there's real inequality in social capital across America
Speaker 1: in ways that sometimes parallels and sometimes deviates from kind
Speaker 1: of wealth inequality. But one way of thinking of social
Speaker 1: capital is valuable things that you might or might not
Speaker 1: have in your life that are they're social, they're not financial.
Speaker 1: They have to do with your connections and interactions with
Speaker 1: other people, and they usually explicitly are not something that
Speaker 1: you could pay for or sell or directly buy.
Speaker 2: Our society is good at measuring external things that have
Speaker 2: monetary impact. So social capital is hard to make, but
Speaker 2: it's primarily a function of our relationship to other people.
Speaker 2: Whether you're conscious of it or not, every human on
Speaker 2: earth has some level of social capital. Now, this next
Speaker 2: observation about American society is kind of mind blowing.
Speaker 1: The greatest work on the United States of America I
Speaker 1: think that was ever written, was written by a French
Speaker 1: guy and was written one hundred years ago. Yeah, it
Speaker 1: was Alexis to Toakville's Democracy in America. You know how
Speaker 1: sometimes somebody shows up at your house and they notice
Speaker 1: something that you don't notice because you just you've come
Speaker 1: to take it for granted. Americans, he was saying, two
Speaker 1: hundred years ago, take for granted how much they kind
Speaker 1: of just rely on not themselves as individuals, but themselves
Speaker 1: and their neighbors, their fellow countrymen, their brothers, or whatever
Speaker 1: other people they know to solve problems.
Speaker 12: He said.
Speaker 1: In England again this is eighteen thirties. In England, people
Speaker 1: they turned to the the big landlord. I mean it
Speaker 1: was semi feudal at that point. There'd be a big
Speaker 1: rich landholder and they turned to him to solve their problems.
Speaker 1: In France, they turned to the government. In the United States,
Speaker 1: if there's a problem, people will like form a you know,
Speaker 1: a ditch digging organization to keep the town from flooding
Speaker 1: when the runoff is coming down from the mountain. So
Speaker 1: that idea that where it's both that were self starters,
Speaker 1: but we're not just individuals. So it's still a sort
Speaker 1: of self reliance, but it's a self reliance in fraternity,
Speaker 1: in neighborhood, in community. And that that was unique to
Speaker 1: America is what Toauville argued, we.
Speaker 2: Have self reliance inside of fraternity, inside of community, and
Speaker 2: this thing was unique to America kind of from the beginning.
Speaker 2: A different term to describe what the Toaueville saw here
Speaker 2: is civic engagement. That word sounds pretty scary to me,
Speaker 2: but it actually determines a lot about our communities. And
Speaker 2: to equate it back to the coon supper, attending or
Speaker 2: volunteering at a community event like this is civic engagement.
Speaker 2: Turns out that stuff is quite important, and it's on
Speaker 2: a dramatic decline in America.
Speaker 1: So you could look at you know, how much do
Speaker 1: people vote, how much do people participate in the census?
Speaker 12: That all matters. How does that relate to social capital?
Speaker 1: Well, if you're the guy who took it on the
Speaker 1: chin and coach kindergarten girls basketball, if you're the guy
Speaker 1: who you didn't even think about it, but you sent
Speaker 1: your sons over to shovel the neighbor's yard sidewalk when
Speaker 1: he was away. It is a little bit like finance
Speaker 1: in that you put a bunch in and then when.
Speaker 12: You need it you can draw it out. But there's
Speaker 12: not like a.
Speaker 1: Ledger being kept. That's the real thing about social capital
Speaker 1: and community. There's just an understanding that we have an
Speaker 1: obligation to look out for other people.
Speaker 12: So we're going to do it.
Speaker 1: We're going to be civically engaged, and the more civically engaged.
Speaker 12: You are, the more capital you had.
Speaker 1: The main way I would say that works is the
Speaker 1: more things that you belong to, then the more things
Speaker 1: you can rely on. That is, I belong to my
Speaker 1: local church. I belong to my kids' schools. I don't
Speaker 1: just cut the check and send my kids there where
Speaker 1: I serve on the board of one. My wife's a
Speaker 1: substitute teacher at another. We show up at things. I
Speaker 1: belong to my employer. You know, I work to get
Speaker 1: to know my neighbors. So I belonged to all these things.
Speaker 1: So a common word in this area of study is reciprocity,
Speaker 1: which again is just relationship. The understanding I'll take care
Speaker 1: of you, you take care of me, and community was
Speaker 1: always built on the fact that we had needs. It
Speaker 1: wasn't just hey, I want to hang out with my buddies.
Speaker 1: It was oh, I need to go into town to
Speaker 1: get something. Oh I need to call on my friend
Speaker 1: to lift this one thing, and if you take away
Speaker 1: some of those needs, then we lose the stuff we
Speaker 1: didn't know we needed, which was a connection, the friendship,
Speaker 1: the camaraderie, the longing. And so the guy who wrote
Speaker 1: the best book on this was Robert Putnam Bowling Alone.
Speaker 1: That came out right as you and I were finishing up,
Speaker 1: you know, our college years there. Two thousand, I think
Speaker 1: was the pub date on that, And he used bowling
Speaker 1: because he said he found out that people weren't bowling
Speaker 1: less in two thousand than they had in nineteen sixty,
Speaker 1: but they were bowling leagues had crumbled everywhere, so people
Speaker 1: were more likely to bowl alone, or bowl just with
Speaker 1: their best friend or their their wife or whatever. And
Speaker 1: that was just almost a little analogy for what was
Speaker 1: happening more broadly. Membership, you know, pta membership had collapsed,
Speaker 1: and all of this stuff what we belonged to, had
Speaker 1: gone down across the board.
Speaker 12: And so I.
Speaker 1: Went and I looked to update the numbers.
Speaker 12: When I wrote Alienated America.
Speaker 1: That came out twenty nineteen, so almost twenty years later,
Speaker 1: and it had just continued. The people just again more
Speaker 1: likely to sort of strike out on them their own.
Speaker 1: When I was on the board of a small organization
Speaker 1: here in DC. We did this study and it came
Speaker 1: back Millennials didn't want.
Speaker 12: To join anything. We should be a member. They're like,
Speaker 12: I don't want to be a member.
Speaker 1: We're like, will you chip in twenty bucks to help
Speaker 1: us out? They're like, oh, yeah, I'll do that, but
Speaker 1: I'm not joining. Okay, I don't want to belong to it.
Speaker 1: And so you and I are at the sort of
Speaker 1: tail end of gen X. And I think that that
Speaker 1: was already in motion.
Speaker 2: Studies showed that America's civic engagement peaked in the nineteen
Speaker 2: sixties and has been declining ever since. By the time
Speaker 2: I graduated high school in the late nineteen nineties, it
Speaker 2: had plummeted. I remember my dad, the believer, being involved
Speaker 2: in everything he possibly could his whole life. He was
Speaker 2: in a fraternity in college, he never drank, by the way,
Speaker 2: a member of the Kawanas Club, the Lions Club, the
Speaker 2: archery club. He was a deacon at the church, and
Speaker 2: for decades he was heavily involved in a group that
Speaker 2: helped families with critical construction projects, like if the roof
Speaker 2: was leaking and they couldn't afford to get it fixed.
Speaker 2: Or if some family needed a wheelchair ramp built. He
Speaker 2: was very civically involved, but he grew up in the
Speaker 2: time of America's peak civic engagement. He always wanted me
Speaker 2: to do more stuff, but I just wasn't that interested. Now,
Speaker 2: as an adult, I have maintained high levels of involvement
Speaker 2: in my church my whole life, but I have not
Speaker 2: been nearly as involved in other stuff. I didn't know
Speaker 2: until I talked with Tim that I was just a
Speaker 2: pawn in the common trend of my generation. I didn't
Speaker 2: choose this all on my own, like I thought. It's
Speaker 2: kind of spooky when you realize that you have less
Speaker 2: control over your life than you think. Hmm, that is interesting.
Speaker 2: But who is most affected by this lack of civic
Speaker 2: gay Is it the rich or the poor who are
Speaker 2: less civically engaged? I bet it's those rich folks.
Speaker 12: There are nuances to this.
Speaker 1: It's worse the collapse of of belonging, civic engagement, bowling leagues,
Speaker 1: et cetera. All that stuff is worse in the working
Speaker 1: class in America than it is in the middle class
Speaker 1: or the upper middle class. There's this stereotype that you know,
Speaker 1: wealthier Americans you know, you live behind a gate, or
Speaker 1: you're you know, with your money, you're just buying your isolation.
Speaker 12: But if you go to like these rich suburbs.
Speaker 1: Where houses are really expensive and the property taxes are high, they.
Speaker 12: Have enough Little League coaches for every team.
Speaker 1: They have people leaving the kids lead their bikes out
Speaker 1: on the front yard because neighbors sort of know neighbors.
Speaker 12: The collapse in community, in civic engagement is greater for
Speaker 12: a dozen reasons I go.
Speaker 1: Through in the book in the working class. And that's
Speaker 1: particularly harmful because these are people who rely more on
Speaker 1: social capital. If you're rich and don't have friends, you
Speaker 1: could sort of you could buy stuff. But the irony
Speaker 1: is the richer people in America, not the you know,
Speaker 1: super rich celebrities who have to live in a gated,
Speaker 1: you know, mansion, but the upper middle class. They are
Speaker 1: more likely to know their neighbors, more likely to volunteer,
Speaker 1: more likely to belong to things. And it's because this
Speaker 1: sort of thing isn't just an individual choice, it's a
Speaker 1: community thing. The community has to give you those opportunities,
Speaker 1: and in some parts of America, those opportunities for belonging
Speaker 1: and volunteering aren't there.
Speaker 2: That's very interesting and not what I was expecting. But
Speaker 2: that's just why the community of Gillette is so unique.
Speaker 2: I spent some time describing the Gillette Coon Supper to
Speaker 2: Tim Carney. I wanted to see what he thought.
Speaker 1: Here's what he said, when you describe that, I want
Speaker 1: to go to Jillett and see this and eat the
Speaker 1: food and watch the people. This is the stuff that
Speaker 1: makes America great, really, and I've seen it in other towns.
Speaker 1: There's my favorite town in Iowa. It is this town
Speaker 1: called Imagen, Iowa, which is down to thirty people. How
Speaker 1: does the town survive with thirty people? Well, it has
Speaker 1: an Irish pub, a beautiful Catholic church, and then a
Speaker 1: softball field where they have a big tournament as part
Speaker 1: of what they call Shamrock Days. Because you know Irish
Speaker 1: population traditionally, and it brings in people who used to
Speaker 1: live there and people from the other towns, and these
Speaker 1: sort of things, even if they're only occasional things, they
Speaker 1: really keep a town alive. Tradition, customs, these things are
Speaker 1: social capital that gets passed down from generation to generation.
Speaker 1: It's almost like you're time traveling, right. You're talking about
Speaker 1: these kids in Jillette, and they don't even have a
Speaker 1: high school, but they still they almost get to travel
Speaker 1: back to when they do because suddenly there's a senior.
Speaker 12: Class the high school.
Speaker 1: Let senior class, even though there's no Jillette High school.
Speaker 1: And so that is what customs do they provide.
Speaker 12: I often talk about social capital.
Speaker 1: As providing sort of a I mean, we use the
Speaker 1: word network, but just imagine an infrastructure, something that's a scaffolding,
Speaker 1: a scaffolding that holds you up. Traditions are a sort
Speaker 1: of scaffolding that spans across time. And so that's one
Speaker 1: of the key things that strong communities do is they
Speaker 1: have traditions, they have customs, they have.
Speaker 12: These things, and it just injects a little bit of
Speaker 12: meaning into everybody's life.
Speaker 1: And so these big annual things they can sort of
Speaker 1: keep a town on the map, give it town an identity,
Speaker 1: even if other things are crumbling.
Speaker 2: I think it's pretty unique that we can learn so
Speaker 2: much about ourselves and our community by looking at a
Speaker 2: wild tradition like the coon Supper. I love it, and
Speaker 2: I'd say there's a high likelihood Brent and I will
Speaker 2: be back at the Coon Supper next year that is
Speaker 2: if we can get some tickets. I can't thank you
Speaker 2: enough for listening to Bear Grease. Please leave us a
Speaker 2: review on iTunes, and tell your friends, family, and co
Speaker 2: workers about the amazing stories you're hearing here and on
Speaker 2: Brent's podcast This Country Life. Be sure to check out
Speaker 2: our friend Tim P. Carney's new book called Family Unfriendly,
Speaker 2: How our culture made raising kids much harder than it
Speaker 2: needs to be. I hope you have a great week.