Speaker 1: They said, Stuart, we've got it narrowed down. We've gone
Speaker 1: through about six hundred other young man, we've narrowed it
Speaker 1: down to four. When you're one of those four, I said, oh,
Speaker 1: well cool. On this episode of the Bear Grease Podcast,
Speaker 1: we're on part two of our look into the cultural
Speaker 1: impact of the book Where the Red Fern Grows by
Speaker 1: Wilson Rawls. He drove the bus to the game where
Speaker 1: the coon Hunters showed pop culture what was up and
Speaker 1: made us all proud. We'll talk with the childhood actor
Speaker 1: Stuart Peterson, who starred in the original nineteen seventy four
Speaker 1: Walt Disney movie and learned how he got into acting
Speaker 1: and why he got out. His reason might surprise and
Speaker 1: challenge you, and he'll tell us if that mountain lion
Speaker 1: fighting the dog in the movie was real. Well again,
Speaker 1: talk with Redbone coonhound man Ronnie Smith, and we'll have
Speaker 1: a discussion with Dr Sean Teuton about the key emphasis
Speaker 1: of the book, which is that period of life when
Speaker 1: an adolescent boy becomes a man, and we'll talk about
Speaker 1: crying boys. If you haven't watched the original movie or
Speaker 1: read the book, you ought to check it out. But
Speaker 1: regardless you're not gonna want to miss this one. And
Speaker 1: the irony is that his lack of education actually makes
Speaker 1: him a bed a person. He can get his education
Speaker 1: from the woods itself. It's mythologized in the life of
Speaker 1: Abraham Lincoln. This is what Teddy Roosevelt thought. That's why
Speaker 1: he went west and reinvented himself. He really wanted to
Speaker 1: reinvigorate his masculinity in the practice of frontier life. And
Speaker 1: that is really an American thing, it is. My name
Speaker 1: is Clay Nukelem, and this is the Bear Grease Podcast,
Speaker 1: where we'll explore things forgotten but relevant, search for insight
Speaker 1: and unlikely places, and where we'll tell the story of
Speaker 1: Americans who lived their lives close to the land. Presented
Speaker 1: by f HF gear, American made, purpose built hunting and
Speaker 1: fishing gear that's designed to be as rugged as the
Speaker 1: places we explore. It makes me mad. Folks like that
Speaker 1: getting such a fine hound who as I'm alive, it'll
Speaker 1: wind up being as mean as they are. Billy and
Speaker 1: his grandfather are watching the Pritchard brothers ride away with
Speaker 1: a hound pup, so I would like to buy it
Speaker 1: for you. Billy, I ain't much better off than your part.
Speaker 1: You'll have your own hands before long. I don't know, Grandpa.
Speaker 1: Sometimes I think God don't want me to have any Yeah,
Speaker 1: so what well, I've been asking him for dogs as
Speaker 1: long as I can remember. Nothing's happened yet. It could
Speaker 1: be that you ain't doing your fair share. What do
Speaker 1: you mean, Well, if God was in mind to get
Speaker 1: you dogs slick as cutting line, and he'd be doing
Speaker 1: all the work, that wouldn't be good for your character.
Speaker 1: I don't want character. I want dogs. You want dogs
Speaker 1: bad enough, Billy, You're gonna get dogs, But you want
Speaker 1: his health. You're gonna have to meet him halfway. In
Speaker 1: part one of the series, we introduced the American literary
Speaker 1: classic Where the Red Fern Grows, and we celebrated how
Speaker 1: the obscure pastime of raccoon hunting with hounds did a
Speaker 1: three sixty slam dunck on mainstream culture. It's a wild
Speaker 1: case study because the book has sold over six million
Speaker 1: copies and has been mandatory reading in elementary schools from
Speaker 1: Seattle to Miami since the nineteen sixties. The book was
Speaker 1: also made into two major motion pictures, and we already
Speaker 1: met the childhood actor Stewart Peterson, who played Billy Coleman
Speaker 1: in the original movie. We learned a ton about Woodrow
Speaker 1: Wilson Rawls, the author, and how he wrote the original
Speaker 1: manuscripts on brown paper bags, and late in his life
Speaker 1: he finally got the book published. He only wrote two books,
Speaker 1: and both of them were after he served multiple prison
Speaker 1: terms in two states. Our interest in his criminal life
Speaker 1: wasn't to point fingers, but rather to paint on the
Speaker 1: canvas of redemption as we looked into the life of
Speaker 1: an ex convict that became a beloved children's author and speaker.
Speaker 1: Fist bump to Wilson Rawls. American literary classics are heavy hitters.
Speaker 1: They go deep and you can't cover it all in
Speaker 1: a short time. I want to continue digging into the
Speaker 1: book with literary expert Professor Shaun Tuton of the University
Speaker 1: of Arkansas. He's about to give us insight into by
Speaker 1: such an obscure place and lifestyle could have such general
Speaker 1: appeal and will learn something about novels. I've read that well.
Speaker 1: It was in the preface of this book Claire Vanderpool,
Speaker 1: and she spoke of that Wilson Rawls clearly established a
Speaker 1: deep sense of place. Why is place so significant if
Speaker 1: you've never been there, Because most people that read this
Speaker 1: book have never lived in the Ozarks. Why do we
Speaker 1: why do we like that? Well? This goes back actually
Speaker 1: actually the history of the novel itself and the rise
Speaker 1: of the novels were written as early, I mean in
Speaker 1: our European tradition as early sixteen o five with with
Speaker 1: Servants wrote Doute. Robinson Cruso right by Daniel Dafoe was
Speaker 1: written in seventeen nineteen. Both of those novels. You think
Speaker 1: about that, what what drew? What draws readers? And the
Speaker 1: why are they time? This classic? Still today we make
Speaker 1: movies about Robinson Cruso. It's the difference, right, It's the
Speaker 1: unusual life being offered to us. And we learned as
Speaker 1: we as we encounter something utterly beyond our world. And
Speaker 1: that's the reason why we call it the novel itself.
Speaker 1: It means something that's new. Right. So this the novel
Speaker 1: emerged during the These were the first novels that humans
Speaker 1: ever wrote. Some say their earlier novels in China, but
Speaker 1: in Europe this is some of the first novels during
Speaker 1: the Industrial Revolution in England, when people had the division
Speaker 1: of labor grow where they wouldn't really know about the
Speaker 1: other lives people had. You wouldn't work in the same
Speaker 1: place anymore, and it alienated labor. And people were dying
Speaker 1: to know how other people live, right, And so they
Speaker 1: saw the novel take off in that moment because people
Speaker 1: would finally get a window into the daily life of
Speaker 1: someone living completely different. Yes, so the whole point of
Speaker 1: why place is so significant is if you've never been there.
Speaker 1: That is the point is that you've never been there,
Speaker 1: And so if you can really dive in and see
Speaker 1: the rootedness of this human in that place, that's the
Speaker 1: beauty of it. See that that wouldn't have been intuitive
Speaker 1: to me. If you think about the introduction of the
Speaker 1: novel was probably as powerful a moment for humanity as
Speaker 1: the introduction of the Internet, maybe even more powerful. The
Speaker 1: idea that made up stories written as words on a
Speaker 1: page that could be read anywhere and could create an
Speaker 1: out of body experience for the reader who had been
Speaker 1: trapped in their own mind and world their whole life
Speaker 1: was a wild concept. They didn't have television's, radio, or
Speaker 1: video games. Imagine a world with no fiction books. I
Speaker 1: don't think I've realized how much identity and instruction we
Speaker 1: get from novels that have impacted our culture. Even if
Speaker 1: you're not a reader, your life has been influenced by
Speaker 1: fiction writing and Professor Teuton's book called Native American Literature,
Speaker 1: he said this, in reading, we enter a world where
Speaker 1: actual people or characters relate experiences, perhaps extremely different from
Speaker 1: our own. Through that process, we may come to understand
Speaker 1: or even are some views or values of another. In
Speaker 1: literature is the power to transform end of quote, Professor Tuton.
Speaker 1: Part of the book that Wilson Rawls I think did
Speaker 1: such a great job of showing just a window into
Speaker 1: Billy Coleman's life was when he went to Talaqua. He
Speaker 1: traveled thirty something miles upriver from where he lived, and
Speaker 1: he went to the big city of Tallaquah, Oklahoma, which
Speaker 1: is a real city, and it is not a big
Speaker 1: city at all. It says that there are eight hundred
Speaker 1: people in the city of Talaqua, which to him was
Speaker 1: this massive place, and there's a series of things that
Speaker 1: happened that It's just such a powerful literary mechanism because
Speaker 1: by showing us the city and Billy's response to it,
Speaker 1: we see his world and One of the things that
Speaker 1: happens is he walks in front of down an old
Speaker 1: downtown street where there was shops and stores and big
Speaker 1: glass windows, and he's dops in front of a window
Speaker 1: and he sees for the first time the full reflection
Speaker 1: of himself in a window, and he just kind of
Speaker 1: becomes a little bit self conscious about that. I mean,
Speaker 1: where did Wilson Rawles come up with this? I mean
Speaker 1: that is such a powerful moment there, because you just think,
Speaker 1: holy cow, these people were so poor they didn't have
Speaker 1: even have a mirror in their home. It's also humorous, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's it's a genius passage, you know, excellent, right,
Speaker 1: because the way that works as a piece of irony
Speaker 1: and literary theory, that'd be irony. What happens is we
Speaker 1: are drawn into into Billy's world so seamlessly, they were
Speaker 1: not really unaware of it. We get a little description
Speaker 1: of him, but it's a literary device to put something
Speaker 1: in front of a mirror, and you're not gonna have
Speaker 1: a mirror, you know, in the frontier kind of home
Speaker 1: like that. When he finally sees himself, we're kind of
Speaker 1: jarred by this, you know, and specially the ladies who
Speaker 1: were on the sidewalk. We see that he's wild, right
Speaker 1: because again, like I was talking about wilderness in the
Speaker 1: notion of being uncivilized, you know, in a good way, right,
Speaker 1: you're also innocent and you're uncontaminated by society or right.
Speaker 1: And then becomes clear when when he walks along very
Speaker 1: politely and runs into the kids from the school. That
Speaker 1: school is a two story schoolhouse. It's got a fire
Speaker 1: escape that they're playing down going down the tube, so
Speaker 1: it's a it's a big school. And they're not nice
Speaker 1: to him, and and he doesn't care. He shrugs it off.
Speaker 1: You know what, what do they what slang derogatory term
Speaker 1: did they use when they see him? They called him
Speaker 1: a hillbilly? Oh, cut through the heart. They called him
Speaker 1: a hillbilly. You know what's interesting to me about that
Speaker 1: is that these were these were kids from Taliquol who
Speaker 1: were rural kids by every estimation anywhere in the world. Yes,
Speaker 1: these quote city kids from Taliquo would have been viewed
Speaker 1: by anybody outside of this region as hillbillies themselves. They
Speaker 1: were familiar with that term, and in a derogatory way, obviously,
Speaker 1: because the way they used it and then they see
Speaker 1: a real hillbilly in their mind and they're like, you hillbilly,
Speaker 1: And I love that term. I to me, it's a
Speaker 1: term of an dearmant now, but it urped Billy Man. Hey,
Speaker 1: he's got to check it down. Dog business, down these
Speaker 1: dogs along to a rich manor and he's holding for dogs.
Speaker 1: This is the classic scene where Billy Coleman fights the
Speaker 1: city kids. Mine let me buy. Hey, this guy's trying
Speaker 1: to escape. Don't do that again. You want to fight?
Speaker 1: Uh no, don't touch my dogs again. So in the
Speaker 1: movie they didn't use the word hill billy, but Wilson
Speaker 1: Rawls did in the book. I would have probably been
Speaker 1: offended if Walt Disney had said it. At some point.
Speaker 1: I'm going to dive into the deeper meaning of the term,
Speaker 1: because it's different than some of the other descriptors used
Speaker 1: to define rural people. But in my book, it's got
Speaker 1: a touch of nobility. And it sure was a fast
Speaker 1: way to take off Billy Coleman, which was not something
Speaker 1: you wanted to do. I had some advice that I
Speaker 1: would have given to Wilson Rawls, but let's see what
Speaker 1: Dr Teuton thinks and we'll cut right to the heart
Speaker 1: of what this book is about a boy becoming a man.
Speaker 1: As I read this book and looking at it from
Speaker 1: a literary perspective, I'm amazed at the amount of stuff
Speaker 1: that's going on that's really intriguing, From the dogs fighting
Speaker 1: with the city kids, to the Pritchard's to win the
Speaker 1: championship coon hunt, to the dogs dying and a red
Speaker 1: fern popping up at the end. I mean, it's just
Speaker 1: like it just stacked with these little subplots. If you
Speaker 1: would have told me that, I would have advised Wilson Rawls, well, buddy,
Speaker 1: you might be getting a little too complex. This is
Speaker 1: just weaving people like in and out of so many
Speaker 1: ups and downs. You know, you may be you may
Speaker 1: want to simplify this a little bit. How did he
Speaker 1: pull that off? Or is there and obviously it's that
Speaker 1: would have been terrible advice. Is it common to have
Speaker 1: that many ups and downs that we even to a
Speaker 1: to a story. You can map a novel, you know,
Speaker 1: and scholars have done this, and a good writer you
Speaker 1: can get books on how to write a novel and
Speaker 1: they'll tell you how to map it out. Often, if
Speaker 1: you read a novel and you put it down, it
Speaker 1: doesn't keep your interest. It's because they didn't honor that
Speaker 1: the continuum in the novel. Novel has to have a
Speaker 1: crisis action and a falling action. That means you have
Speaker 1: to have conflict, and usually that conflict occurs somewhere in
Speaker 1: the middle, and then you have maybe one more minor
Speaker 1: conflict and then everything is resolved. And then the other
Speaker 1: point is that characters have to can be flat. Around.
Speaker 1: If they're flat, it means they're just um. There's people
Speaker 1: walk in and out like the sheriff and can never
Speaker 1: see again. But around character is a character that has
Speaker 1: to grow, so by the other novel they're changed, there's
Speaker 1: something different about them. At any rate. When you map
Speaker 1: this novel, it fits perfectly to that crisis action you
Speaker 1: got certainly you got you got the Pritchard's, you know,
Speaker 1: the terrible death. Then you have the competition, and then
Speaker 1: of course you have the cougar. But the way that
Speaker 1: the novel ens in a beautiful resolution, if you will,
Speaker 1: is is the dog's buried on the hillside. Is that
Speaker 1: kind of what makes it what it is? That the
Speaker 1: resolution at the end that it's like a bitter pill
Speaker 1: to swallow, but also really redemptive. Yeah. Yeah, And his
Speaker 1: father even tells him right here at the end it's
Speaker 1: it's not He's Papa tried, Billy. He said, I wouldn't
Speaker 1: think too much about this if I were you. It's
Speaker 1: not good to hurt like that, I believe. I just
Speaker 1: try to forget it. Besides, you still have little aunt.
Speaker 1: That's of guys. From a man to another incipient man.
Speaker 1: You know he's gonna become a man soon. This novel
Speaker 1: is so full of tears. I mean, Billy cries at
Speaker 1: anymore all the time. I thought that was a little unusual.
Speaker 1: I did. I thought so too. But as a as
Speaker 1: a writer, I think Wilson Rawls is trying to make
Speaker 1: it clear there's a contrast, you know, between what a man,
Speaker 1: how a man experiences emotions and deals with loss, from
Speaker 1: how a boy experience emotion deals with lost. When his
Speaker 1: father says it's this is not good for you. You You
Speaker 1: shouldn't do that, it's kind of a bitter, like you say,
Speaker 1: bitter sweet, right. His father is saying, like my father
Speaker 1: would tell me, you can't cry like that. So that
Speaker 1: that's another aspect of this novel. It's very uh, Like
Speaker 1: I said, I found a little. I have to say,
Speaker 1: if there's a critique in the novel, meanbe a little overdone.
Speaker 1: The crying. Yeah, I had the exact same thing. I thought, again,
Speaker 1: he's crying again, man, Yeah, he was crying at stuff
Speaker 1: that I wouldn't have thought a kid would cry at.
Speaker 1: But I I cried my fair share as a kid.
Speaker 1: But I don't think I would have been known as
Speaker 1: like a crier. But I didn't know some people that
Speaker 1: were quote criers. I look back at a period in
Speaker 1: a boy's life when he would be a few steps
Speaker 1: away from tears at any moment, and that's pretty. That
Speaker 1: is a really vulnerable, beautiful, unique period of a man.
Speaker 1: You know what will become a man of a man's life.
Speaker 1: And that's kind of the whole point of this book.
Speaker 1: I think Wilson Rawls was just like trying to pound
Speaker 1: at home. This is a boy. He acts like a man,
Speaker 1: he does things that a man would do, But this
Speaker 1: is a boy. As a father, it's painful to watch,
Speaker 1: you know. And I remember my father telling me, and
Speaker 1: he was kind of rough about it. He'd say something
Speaker 1: to lip in you, you can't cry. I'm a little
Speaker 1: more gentle with my kid. My son's and yet I'll
Speaker 1: tell them then you know, there's there's other ways to
Speaker 1: handle this, you know, because sometimes they'll cry out of frustration.
Speaker 1: I said, you gotta take deep breaths and we'll make
Speaker 1: a plan. We're gonna fix it, you know. And I
Speaker 1: try to be practical with them. But I think about
Speaker 1: the same thing about how dad's handle boys crying, because yeah,
Speaker 1: it evokes something in us of like, boy, you better
Speaker 1: stop that, because that's not what a man does and
Speaker 1: what we're in this mentality and movement of bringing them
Speaker 1: to manhood. But yeah, it kind of made me wonder
Speaker 1: if I was too hard on my boys, because you
Speaker 1: know they're going to grow out of it, But in
Speaker 1: the moment, you're like, man, what if this guy's years
Speaker 1: old and still crying, and so you feel like you
Speaker 1: gotta do something. You know, you better suck about kid.
Speaker 1: But then you see, uh, Billy's dad probably manage him
Speaker 1: the way you would hope to be managed. But I
Speaker 1: bet a real ozark dad probably would have been a
Speaker 1: little rougher on him. Yeah, his mom is one's getting
Speaker 1: the whippings though too. Yeah she gets a switch and
Speaker 1: she's she's whipped him before It's always a question in
Speaker 1: fatherhood whether your son changes it gets be on a
Speaker 1: difficult point his life and you think, was it because
Speaker 1: I said stopped crying or did you just grow out
Speaker 1: of it? Yeah? Exactly, because if you didn't say it,
Speaker 1: maybe crying his whole life. So you know, you don't
Speaker 1: have to be a perfect father. You just got to
Speaker 1: be a present father. I think, yeah, that's the important partner.
Speaker 1: And I never would have known that novel will be
Speaker 1: about fatherhood. But I'm also thinking about the father. You know,
Speaker 1: I have a feeling these good, incredible works of the
Speaker 1: literature find us where we're at. Good writers find us
Speaker 1: where we're at, and that's exactly what old Wilson Rawls did.
Speaker 1: But why do a bunch of coon hunters like us
Speaker 1: care about literary mechanisms. If I am irrationally moved by
Speaker 1: something to the point of an impact in my life,
Speaker 1: I want to understand why a fundamental and constant in
Speaker 1: our lives is media. And by media I mean books, television,
Speaker 1: social media, podcasts, basically any type of human communication that
Speaker 1: isn't human to human. And don't say I don't take
Speaker 1: in media clay, because your and to a podcast, right now.
Speaker 1: Our lives are full of media different forms, and it
Speaker 1: uses natural forms of human communication to draw us into
Speaker 1: being interested in something for better or worse. News agencies
Speaker 1: often use hype and hysteria to get people fired up.
Speaker 1: Podcasters use long form conversation to make us feel like
Speaker 1: we're in the room. Television uses radical and often underalistic
Speaker 1: circumstances to draw us into a captivating stupor. Sports engages
Speaker 1: with our love of competition and delivers a magnetic pool
Speaker 1: towards tribalism. The point is this, there are great powers
Speaker 1: at work, and if we are aware of ourselves and
Speaker 1: those powers, we can choose where to spend the energy
Speaker 1: of our life. I'm very interested in things that control
Speaker 1: us beyond our recognition. Personal awareness and responsibility is powerful us.
Speaker 1: Back to the central idea of this novel, which we've
Speaker 1: declared is a boy becoming a man. I think this
Speaker 1: issue of bringing boys in the manhood is extremely relevant,
Speaker 1: as it seems manhood in our culture is up for
Speaker 1: grabs on its definition of all people. To speak on
Speaker 1: the subject, I'd like to introduce my wife, Misty Newcomb.
Speaker 1: You would have heard her on the render. She's an educator.
Speaker 1: She runs a private school. She's a mother of boys,
Speaker 1: and she has some insight into the development of young boys,
Speaker 1: which is the theme of our book. So I run.
Speaker 1: I run a private school, a K twelveth private school
Speaker 1: at the seventh twelfth grade level. We have a student
Speaker 1: population that male. We found that parents were bringing their
Speaker 1: young boys to us because of concerns about how modern
Speaker 1: Western culture treats young boys. And there was concerns about
Speaker 1: how they're being brought up to kind of loathe certain
Speaker 1: aspects of their just natural identity. And these young boys
Speaker 1: have a very unique biological developmental trajectory and a lot
Speaker 1: of what we consider bad, not well behaved, not good
Speaker 1: is actually really normal. So they're they're actually even been
Speaker 1: studies where and just so that you understand a little
Speaker 1: bit about academics, test scores, standardized test scores are not
Speaker 1: subjective at all. They that's the idea behind having a
Speaker 1: standardized test is that there's no human opinion. Grades at
Speaker 1: school are very subjective, and so a teacher's opinion matters
Speaker 1: on how they respond to essays, how they respond to
Speaker 1: participation points, and things like that. Studies have shown that
Speaker 1: even though boys and girls they've they've looked at a
Speaker 1: group of boys and girls, and they don't have any
Speaker 1: difference on their standardized test scores, but the grades that
Speaker 1: teachers give them are different based off of whether they're
Speaker 1: a boy or girl. And I don't think teachers are
Speaker 1: sitting back there saying, you know, I don't like boys,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna mark them off. I think that there's behaves
Speaker 1: that boys naturally have that are less desirable in a
Speaker 1: traditional classroom. And that's a problem, like that's that's a
Speaker 1: problem because it's communicating that these characteristics are bad. What
Speaker 1: you see inside of the red Fern grows, for example,
Speaker 1: you see Billy just kind of running wild, working with
Speaker 1: his hands and having to think through complex situations with
Speaker 1: these these k dogs. And you know, there's not really
Speaker 1: a lot of experiences or environments that young boys have
Speaker 1: to develop those types of skills in modern society. So
Speaker 1: Billy's development, now he lacked on the academic side, we
Speaker 1: do know that. But but this idea of letting a
Speaker 1: boy be a boy, yeah, is a good thing. And
Speaker 1: now that I think we could get confused and we're
Speaker 1: not saying let a kid be rebellious and not do
Speaker 1: what you say. No, no, Billy didn't do that. But
Speaker 1: we're not saying tell all the little guys to sit still,
Speaker 1: put their papers, never run around, never move rocks, never
Speaker 1: chase the cat. Never. Instincts are always something to be suppressed.
Speaker 1: Sometimes they should be suppressed. Really, there's a lot like
Speaker 1: if you think about just the wildness of Billy's life
Speaker 1: and of his experience, that is extremely valuable. It's not
Speaker 1: the only thing that's valuable. It's not the only thing
Speaker 1: that should be emphasized. But there's an aspect of of
Speaker 1: his upbringing that you, as a young man look at
Speaker 1: and say, man, I'm glad I had parts of that,
Speaker 1: or I wish I had that, And you want it
Speaker 1: for your sons. You probably want it for your daughters
Speaker 1: to hey, hey, let me say one more thing. I
Speaker 1: will say that we had two girls and then two boys,
Speaker 1: and everyone I ran into always told me, oh, your
Speaker 1: middle school years are going to be so hard with
Speaker 1: those girls. They're gonna cry, They're gonna be so emotional.
Speaker 1: No one, no one told me about middle school boys.
Speaker 1: And I remember being an absolute shock, more emotional than
Speaker 1: any girl guys I think he was. I mean, I'm
Speaker 1: just saying it is it will shock you how much
Speaker 1: boys cry. I don't think I don't think he was
Speaker 1: overplaying his hand at all. I think that he was
Speaker 1: tapping into he was he had to have been a crier.
Speaker 1: The conversation right now about the definition of manhood is
Speaker 1: very interesting. There's got to be an accurate definition of masculinity,
Speaker 1: and when it's right, it's healthy and productive in the
Speaker 1: life of the young man and everyone around him. Kind
Speaker 1: of like Billy Coleman. He respected his mother and father,
Speaker 1: he respected and took care of his little sisters. He
Speaker 1: worked hard, he told the truth, he admitted fault, he
Speaker 1: took responsibility. Pop culture has declared manhood as dangerous, incompetent,
Speaker 1: and self focused, which I take offense at. But I
Speaker 1: think that many know that true manhood is defined by
Speaker 1: sacrifice and service to our family. It's about leading by
Speaker 1: example and living a governed life, a life guided by
Speaker 1: principles outside of our self interest. Seems like it would
Speaker 1: be difficult for anyone to find fault with this. That's
Speaker 1: some good stuff, all right. If we were on a
Speaker 1: coon hunt, the dogs just struck a track in an
Speaker 1: unexpected direction, and we're gonna head toward him. On the
Speaker 1: last episode, we met Stewart Peterson, the childhood actor who
Speaker 1: played Billy Coleman. We've already heard his voice on this episode. Ironically,
Speaker 1: Mr Stewart has been on the show Meat Eater and
Speaker 1: you can watch him on Netflix season nine when he
Speaker 1: guided Steve Ronella Janice would tell us and Adam Weatherby
Speaker 1: on a mule deer hunt and Wyoming. That was him.
Speaker 1: The episode is titled Wyoming Mule Deer. His story is
Speaker 1: a winding road and I want to try to connect
Speaker 1: the dots from Hollywood actor to backcountry guide. So, Mr
Speaker 1: Stewart Peterson, you have no idea how neat it is
Speaker 1: for me to see you, and how kind of shocking
Speaker 1: it was a years ago when I learned that this
Speaker 1: boy in this movie. It was real impacting to me
Speaker 1: guided my friend Steve Ronnella in Wyoming for mule Deer
Speaker 1: and then to be here in Wyoming with you now
Speaker 1: it's pretty neat. So my my main question I want
Speaker 1: to start off with is how did you get into
Speaker 1: acting as a child? How did that start? Um, Well,
Speaker 1: it all really started with my mother's brother who was
Speaker 1: in the motion picture production business. At some point he
Speaker 1: had had the idea that he wanted to do a
Speaker 1: film based on the book Where the Red Fern Grows.
Speaker 1: And when he finally got the rights to do that,
Speaker 1: at that point in time, he was had begun kind
Speaker 1: of feeling out what, you know, how he was gonna
Speaker 1: cast and who who he might cast. So he was
Speaker 1: the was he He was the producer, the producer of
Speaker 1: the show. Now where did he live? He lived in
Speaker 1: California at the time. Of course, growing up here, all
Speaker 1: I knew was ranching, so the film industry and even
Speaker 1: and he asked spirations for that, never ever and still
Speaker 1: don't enter my mind. But when he got ready to
Speaker 1: do the film, he had had a script put together
Speaker 1: and had taken it up to Wilson Rawls, the author
Speaker 1: of the book, who lived in Idaho Falls, And on
Speaker 1: his way up he had kind of put out to
Speaker 1: somebody here in coke Field might have been a fourth
Speaker 1: grade teacher, because she was the one that actually made
Speaker 1: a reference to someone in Cokefield that she thought might
Speaker 1: fit the part. Someone that wasn't you, wasn't me. On
Speaker 1: my uncle's way back through on his way back to California,
Speaker 1: he thought, well, I'll just stop in and see if
Speaker 1: I can't meet this other young man as he came through.
Speaker 1: I happened to be at my grandparents home and this
Speaker 1: young man shows up to be introduced to my uncle,
Speaker 1: who then took him into my grandpa's dan and and
Speaker 1: proceeded to interview him. Slash let him read out of
Speaker 1: the script to see what he was going to be like. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: I was just out messing around out there, you know,
Speaker 1: in the living room, probably talking to grandfather. I don't know, barefoot,
Speaker 1: wearing over I never went bear fit in this country.
Speaker 1: This that was really a new one for me. But
Speaker 1: in any case, when he got through with my uncle, uh,
Speaker 1: this friend of mine, why my uncle came out and
Speaker 1: he said, hey, Stewart, why don't you come in and
Speaker 1: read for me in the den? And I said, I'm okay.
Speaker 1: He says, it's not a big deal. He said, just
Speaker 1: come in and read a few He says, you know,
Speaker 1: there's no pressure. I thought, okay. Well, so he brings
Speaker 1: out a script and and he thumbed through some pages
Speaker 1: and he said, well, here, why don't you just read
Speaker 1: Billy Coleman's part here and read it as if you
Speaker 1: were gonna you know, you're gonna say him to somebody,
Speaker 1: and I did a little bit of that. And it
Speaker 1: was kind of a half hearted attempt when I did
Speaker 1: it initially because I wasn't really interested this. Just read this,
Speaker 1: and so I did. There was never an aspiration that
Speaker 1: was a burn to say, please, uncle lyman, why don't
Speaker 1: you let me do this? I I just left it.
Speaker 1: I just did. I walked away from it as if
Speaker 1: it was just something that I had no interest, which
Speaker 1: I didn't. After this initial imprompt to read through with
Speaker 1: his uncle, Stuart's mother got a call a few weeks
Speaker 1: later asking if he would fly to Los Angeles to
Speaker 1: audition in front of the director, which he did. After
Speaker 1: that trip, he got a third call and a few
Speaker 1: weeks later they said, Stuart, we've got it narrowed down.
Speaker 1: We've gone through about six hundred other young man, we've
Speaker 1: narrowed it down to four. When you're one of those four.
Speaker 1: And so I said, oh, well cool. But that's again
Speaker 1: as far as my thought process went, I just didn't
Speaker 1: have any inclination. Ended up uh. In the last phone call,
Speaker 1: they said, we'd like to do one last set of
Speaker 1: screen tests. We'd like you to come to Tulsa, Oklahoma.
Speaker 1: We'll fly you there will be these other three young men,
Speaker 1: uh down there. You know, gosh, little league, a little
Speaker 1: league football was gonna be coming up in a few
Speaker 1: short weeks. Was this like a high budget movie for
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy four? You know, I thought it was high
Speaker 1: budget because I've never heard of those kind of numbers.
Speaker 1: But I think it was just under a million bucks.
Speaker 1: But but it was a high quality product. It was
Speaker 1: a hYP was like it was. It was like a
Speaker 1: first rate movie for yeah, and and for the you know,
Speaker 1: the people that the director, he was very well known.
Speaker 1: He had directed a lot of Disney films. The impression
Speaker 1: that I got as an adult, as I've gone back
Speaker 1: and watched that movie, we just we gathered up the
Speaker 1: whole family watched it just the other night. It was
Speaker 1: really neat. The impression I got was that it was
Speaker 1: actually a really well put together film for the time.
Speaker 1: And I was trying to make a connection of I
Speaker 1: think as I understood it, you know, based on the
Speaker 1: casting of the other people that were fairly well known
Speaker 1: and and the interests that they had, because as I
Speaker 1: went to Tulsa, I did the screen test and there's
Speaker 1: four four guys, so they had us all there and
Speaker 1: there was something that kind of clicked in me that said, Okay,
Speaker 1: I became very competitive from the standpoint I wanted to
Speaker 1: win the part, and I could have cared less whether
Speaker 1: I did the part. After that, understand, I started trying
Speaker 1: to pay attention to what they were trying to do
Speaker 1: to help coach me maybe how to express myself in
Speaker 1: this scene or that. When it was all said and
Speaker 1: done in my own was carefully. He knew that with
Speaker 1: the production of financials that they put into it, he
Speaker 1: needed to try to remove himself from from the decision
Speaker 1: making process. He turned it over to the director and said,
Speaker 1: you know you're you're gonna be the one working with
Speaker 1: the the young man, so you need to make the decision. Uh.
Speaker 1: When they came in and told me that I had
Speaker 1: the part, I didn't know quite how to feel, other
Speaker 1: than the fact that I was already now starting to
Speaker 1: feel homesick because they told me they said. My uncle
Speaker 1: came and said, well, Stewart, you've you've earned apart. We're
Speaker 1: gonna start here probably next week, and so for the
Speaker 1: next week, I'd like you to start toughening your feet up,
Speaker 1: So you need to start going of my questions was,
Speaker 1: how did you get it. I didn't have tough feet,
Speaker 1: because you know, and I tried, I truly tried. I
Speaker 1: took my shoes off, I went and tried to walk
Speaker 1: on the rocks, and I just never went barefoot around here.
Speaker 1: We we just didn't. But there was somebody that worked,
Speaker 1: you know, that was a little more creative thought out
Speaker 1: of the box. They said, hey, why don't we just
Speaker 1: put some duct tape on the bottom of his feet,
Speaker 1: And so if I had to run in the stubble,
Speaker 1: if I had to run on the on the gravel,
Speaker 1: they would just get the duct tape and they'd go
Speaker 1: over there and they just slam it layered on the bottom.
Speaker 1: But anywhere in the movie where you can see that,
Speaker 1: I don't think so. I think it was all so quick,
Speaker 1: you know, with the stride that was my introduction, and
Speaker 1: I was thinking I wanted to be home so bad.
Speaker 1: I I really didn't want to be out there doing
Speaker 1: the field, you know. And of course Mom and dad.
Speaker 1: Dad was in the middle of the in this in
Speaker 1: the hay, and and Mom had five other kids at
Speaker 1: home that she was busy with. So she just basically
Speaker 1: assumed that uncle, my uncle Lyman was gonna be and
Speaker 1: he did. He took he washed over me. But I
Speaker 1: thought it was for me. It was it was kind
Speaker 1: of a chance to be independent. That was my first
Speaker 1: experience ever. They gave me a per diem for the week,
Speaker 1: and I remember my They brought a little binna envelope
Speaker 1: to me and it had cash and it was like
Speaker 1: eighty eight dollars for the week, and that's what I
Speaker 1: was to use for my meals. And of course at
Speaker 1: that age, I don't need to eat that much. That
Speaker 1: was a lot of money for thirty. There was I say,
Speaker 1: a real Billy Coleman story going on inside the set
Speaker 1: of the Billy Coleman Story. Yeah, because I just wasn't
Speaker 1: used to that. Being raised on the ranch, we never
Speaker 1: saw that kind of Well, this is the responsibility of
Speaker 1: a young man with money and stuff. So how long
Speaker 1: a period? How long did it take to shoot? It
Speaker 1: was two months filming time, Is that all? Yeah? It
Speaker 1: was two months. Took two months to film and then
Speaker 1: the production it came out in the spring with the premiere.
Speaker 1: Where was the movie actually shot. The movie was actually
Speaker 1: filmed in Tallquah, Oklahoma, within miles of the old Homestead
Speaker 1: and the in the same places that Wilson Rawls roamed
Speaker 1: as a young boy. It's interesting to get a behind
Speaker 1: the scenes look at how all this went down and
Speaker 1: will continue to see the parallels between Mr. Stewart's real
Speaker 1: life and Billy Coleman. In the last episode, we talked
Speaker 1: about some redbone coon hounds, which played a significant part
Speaker 1: in the book and movie. We're Coon Hunters, so this
Speaker 1: kind of stuff is interesting. Here's what Mr You had
Speaker 1: to say about the actual hounds in the movie. And
Speaker 1: how about that dang mountain lion scene. Man, I need
Speaker 1: some answers. We had for that film because of the
Speaker 1: age groups. There were thirteen dogs, you know, because they
Speaker 1: had the pups and then they had the half groans,
Speaker 1: and then they had the adults dogs different thirteen different
Speaker 1: dogs because you considered the two month period of time
Speaker 1: that we filmed. You see him as pups, and then
Speaker 1: you see him as a half groans, and then you
Speaker 1: see him as as adults. But they also they had
Speaker 1: some when they were doing the scene where the mountain
Speaker 1: lion where he's you know, coming back with the dogs
Speaker 1: for the first time. He's nestled down for the night
Speaker 1: there and that mountain lion comes in. When they had
Speaker 1: those dogs, those older dogs going again, they had they
Speaker 1: had a tame when and they had a wild mountain lion,
Speaker 1: and that the wild when they had a cable tied
Speaker 1: to a caller on that cat. The cable you couldn't see.
Speaker 1: I was able to watch those scenes at night as
Speaker 1: they were filming it because it was at night, and
Speaker 1: I was just constrolled by how those dogs would go
Speaker 1: in there and you know, keep that cat at babe.
Speaker 1: But they they had a few different dogs because there
Speaker 1: were a few dogs that they send in and they
Speaker 1: got smacked and they'd yiping off camera and they'd have
Speaker 1: to send another one in. Wow. So so I wanted
Speaker 1: to ask you about that because that wouldn't fly today,
Speaker 1: you know, to have and when I watched it just
Speaker 1: as an adult, and now that we see all this
Speaker 1: uh animation and everything in Hollywood that has to do
Speaker 1: with animals, a lot of it is fake and computer animated.
Speaker 1: When I watched that last week, I was like, that
Speaker 1: is for real. These are red bone hounds being a
Speaker 1: real live mountain line. The winning of the Gold Cup
Speaker 1: brought me and my dog even closer than before we
Speaker 1: became an in separate Bouteau, and although I'd always known
Speaker 1: their love for me was great, I never realized how
Speaker 1: deep it win until the night of their greatest sacrifice.
Speaker 1: As we hunted together in the psychone camera, I don't
Speaker 1: see anything. Do you think the Hollywood world would frown
Speaker 1: on a real mountain lion and the dog fighting today? Clearly,
Speaker 1: in nineteen seventy four, this wasn't an issue. If we're
Speaker 1: talking about historical revision, which is taking today's value system
Speaker 1: and placing it in a different time. This brings up
Speaker 1: some interesting questions about what has changed. But we're in
Speaker 1: the weeds, boys, and we gotta get up out of here,
Speaker 1: and we'll do it by talking to Mr Ronnie Smith.
Speaker 1: He was the red Bone man from Arkansas we went
Speaker 1: hunting with on the last episode, and his grandson bat
Speaker 1: me fifty two dollars that there was a in a tree,
Speaker 1: but it was a dentry complicated situation. Mr Ronnie has
Speaker 1: some information on the real hounds used in the movie.
Speaker 1: I've always wondered if those were just Hollywood dogs or
Speaker 1: real coon dogs. So you have some intel on the
Speaker 1: dogs that were in the movie. So there there are
Speaker 1: two movies that were made what do you know about
Speaker 1: those dogs that were in the mill at the time.
Speaker 1: I was a young fellow in the seventies, not seventy four,
Speaker 1: you know. I graduated high school in seventy four. So
Speaker 1: the movie came out and was no big deal really,
Speaker 1: but we went we watched it. Of course, did you
Speaker 1: watching the movie theater? Do you remember? Yeah? But being that, uh,
Speaker 1: there's one in the town of Rogers if it's called
Speaker 1: the Victory and it's open for plays now it's not
Speaker 1: open for the movie pictures. But but the original dogs
Speaker 1: and they were local dogs in Tallqua that the owner
Speaker 1: of the male dog was Glyn Davis now and and
Speaker 1: I didn't know Glenn personally, but I've been in this
Speaker 1: Red Bone Association since night. So it's good good while,
Speaker 1: you know. And he had the mail dog and he
Speaker 1: called it dog rambling read. The dog that they called
Speaker 1: Dan was rambling, just rambling read, that's all. And Glenn
Speaker 1: got paid to use his dog. He got five hundred dollars.
Speaker 1: They could have probably got the dog and some feet
Speaker 1: along with that if they had one before. That's a landslide.
Speaker 1: Five hundred bucks, you know, now, are you saying that's
Speaker 1: a lot that was a lot of money in nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy four. That was five was rambling read a good conduct.
Speaker 1: The local fellas, and I've talked to a couple of
Speaker 1: them recently since you and I spoke. One of the
Speaker 1: fellas hunted with the dog quite regularly, said he was
Speaker 1: sure enough a top and channel mystery solved. Quote sure
Speaker 1: enough a top notch hound means a lot coming from
Speaker 1: Mr Ronnie. Now that we've got the dog situation and
Speaker 1: squared away, let's talk to Mr Stewart. I want to
Speaker 1: know how he pulled off being such a great actor
Speaker 1: with no experience or training. So had you, at age thirteen,
Speaker 1: had you read the book? I had not. They encouraged
Speaker 1: me too, but you know I was never an avid reader.
Speaker 1: I I just assuon been outdoors. It's not like I
Speaker 1: was again so interested in trying to become Billy Coleman
Speaker 1: that I was living my own life of the outdoors,
Speaker 1: so to speaking. You know, Mr Stewart, what's so unique
Speaker 1: about that movie? And I I said this before I
Speaker 1: knew you, I knew that I would ever know. It's
Speaker 1: what a good actor you were. I mean that was
Speaker 1: pretty because there's all you know, all of us have
Speaker 1: watched movies where there's a kid actor and they're kind
Speaker 1: of the the weak link of the thing. Then that movie, man,
Speaker 1: you just carried it so well and we're such a
Speaker 1: natural actor, Like, how were you able to pull that
Speaker 1: off well? And see, in my mind when people I've
Speaker 1: had people tell me that before, I'm still saying, are
Speaker 1: you sure? Because I was telling Steve this the other day,
Speaker 1: when Steve Ronnella had called me, I told him I said,
Speaker 1: I really didn't know that I was acting. I think
Speaker 1: I was maybe reliving a lot of what I who
Speaker 1: I am. I honestly don't know, other than I believe
Speaker 1: that a greater power, which I firmly believe in God,
Speaker 1: was how I was able to do what I did
Speaker 1: annoyingly because it wasn't something I I thought about, Okay,
Speaker 1: I need to do this this way or that way.
Speaker 1: I did it the way I felt, And I guess
Speaker 1: if that's that was you know, they say, well, that
Speaker 1: was good acting. I'm thinking, well, I don't know if
Speaker 1: it was good acting or just portraying what the emotion
Speaker 1: of I felt at that time. Well, I think what
Speaker 1: you just described as a good acting, I mean to
Speaker 1: to be able to live a character because you're so
Speaker 1: familiar with that character. I mean, it was just one
Speaker 1: of those things that you didn't have to act like
Speaker 1: a country kid. You were, and you the genuineness that
Speaker 1: you came across inside of it, even inside kind of
Speaker 1: the moral issues inside the story. I see that today
Speaker 1: inside of you sitting here talking to character matters to you,
Speaker 1: and in that movie that was such a strong theme
Speaker 1: of it. It really was if I had to do
Speaker 1: a part that was different than that that maybe wasn't me.
Speaker 1: I don't know what I could do it. It's clear
Speaker 1: to see that character mattered to the real Stewart Peterson
Speaker 1: character also mattered to the fiction character. Billy Coleman character
Speaker 1: mattered to the author Wilson Rawls, who created this story.
Speaker 1: But what's ironic and redemptive is that in the last
Speaker 1: episode we learned that Wilson Rawls served time in prison
Speaker 1: in his younger days for what we can pretty much
Speaker 1: say was a lack of character. And by the way,
Speaker 1: Mr Wilson pleaded guilty to those charges, so it's unlikely
Speaker 1: he was wrongfully accused. My intent in speaking with Mr
Speaker 1: Stewart was just to get a look behind that period
Speaker 1: of his life and to see how it affected him.
Speaker 1: I asked him what it was going back home to Copeville,
Speaker 1: Wyoming as a movie star. All through my the rest
Speaker 1: of my junior high in my high school years, I
Speaker 1: was very aware of the fact that my competitors, whether
Speaker 1: it was football or wrestling, they knew who I was.
Speaker 1: That was a little bit of a challenge for me,
Speaker 1: because I've never forgotten the story of we had a
Speaker 1: little tournament here in Cokeville, and wrestling tournament, and I
Speaker 1: had the fellow who was in my weight had just
Speaker 1: moved there, I guess from California. Was supposed to be
Speaker 1: somewhat of a big deal. And when we got there,
Speaker 1: he'd sent one of his little buddies over and said, hey, you,
Speaker 1: so and so wants to want you to know that
Speaker 1: you were going to be counting lights, which is a
Speaker 1: terminology used in wrestling. You're gonna be on your back,
Speaker 1: you know. And I thought, wait a minute, I'm not
Speaker 1: going to let that happen just because they think I'm
Speaker 1: a movie star that I should be, you know, some
Speaker 1: kind of a badge of honor. If they can beat me,
Speaker 1: you're kind of a target. Then I became a little
Speaker 1: bit of a target, and I kind of I wouldn't
Speaker 1: have wanted to watch you if you're anything like Billy
Speaker 1: Cullman from Well. I just I just didn't want that
Speaker 1: kind of a you know, I didn't I didn't want
Speaker 1: them to think just because I was in the films
Speaker 1: that they were gonna be I was gonna be easy pickings.
Speaker 1: And it was just it was it was kind of
Speaker 1: a poetic justice for me because I was extremely nervous,
Speaker 1: but I was so excited when you know, when when
Speaker 1: it all said and done, you know, he was the
Speaker 1: one counting the lights instead of me, so I won.
Speaker 1: You know, I just thought, well, you know, that's uh,
Speaker 1: that's what I dealt with him. I thought a lot
Speaker 1: about that, and it just kind of felt like it
Speaker 1: was a little bit of a ball and chain in
Speaker 1: many ways, because I never wanted I never wanted to
Speaker 1: to to be and receive the accolades because I've been
Speaker 1: in a film I wanted. Accolades has come because of
Speaker 1: my efforts, like in my wrestling and my football. That's
Speaker 1: where I wanted. And the movie would have been widespread enough.
Speaker 1: I mean, the same was released stor you probably had
Speaker 1: people recognizing you on the street. I mean, and and
Speaker 1: even today as I get you, even losing my hair
Speaker 1: a little bit. And you know this many years down
Speaker 1: the road, really you still have people that recognize. Somebody
Speaker 1: that might have recognized Mr. Stewart was Mr Ronnie. Ronnie
Speaker 1: was in the target audience for the nineteen seventy four
Speaker 1: release of this film. However, you might be surprised by
Speaker 1: his response to it. What year were you born? Okay,
Speaker 1: So Wilson Rawls wrote the book Where the Red Fern
Speaker 1: Grows in nineteen sixty one? Would you have read that
Speaker 1: book as a kid. I have read the book. I
Speaker 1: might have been, but now I'm an avid reader. Most
Speaker 1: folks that was up that I knew never read books
Speaker 1: in their life, that didn't go to school very much.
Speaker 1: To be honest with you, but I've read a little
Speaker 1: bit of everything. But I would have read it. I
Speaker 1: don't know that that book was readily available to me.
Speaker 1: I mean, your dad was you had red bone hounds
Speaker 1: at that time. Did you think much about it or
Speaker 1: just it was it just normal? It wasn't kind of
Speaker 1: like m well, you know what I mean. It was
Speaker 1: just like an everyday kid would have done. Here, Okay,
Speaker 1: so the book it was like life to us. You know,
Speaker 1: really we literally made money picking up soda bottles, you know,
Speaker 1: for five cents deposits, you know, I mean we really
Speaker 1: did to buy hound puppy was you know, it's just
Speaker 1: we're just like the deal, you know, we do that.
Speaker 1: That's what we do. You know, getting to the train
Speaker 1: station you would have been a big deal for us,
Speaker 1: more so than buying the puppies. You know, any any
Speaker 1: book you read, if you're a good reader, you and
Speaker 1: you've had a good author, then you're you become part
Speaker 1: of that book in my mind. You know, I read
Speaker 1: a Western novel literally almost every night, one complete novel
Speaker 1: before I go to bed, uh, you know, Louis Lamore
Speaker 1: and Zane Gray. And I've been that kind of reader.
Speaker 1: I mean, I've read The Red Fern Grows, you know,
Speaker 1: I read the book, you know, probably a couple of times.
Speaker 1: But it wasn't that big a deal because it was
Speaker 1: life in the Hills and truthfully was which that's not
Speaker 1: far from here, talk, it's not very far. How far
Speaker 1: as a crow flies away from Taloqua. I mean, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's an hour and hour in minutes driving. It
Speaker 1: was interesting for me to hear the impact of a
Speaker 1: movie on a person who was almost play by play
Speaker 1: living out a version of Billy Coleman's life. The literary
Speaker 1: mechanism of connecting a far away place and a foreign
Speaker 1: lifestyle didn't hook Mr Ronnie. The truth of it is
Speaker 1: this living in some version of hard times in the Ozarks.
Speaker 1: Wasn't that romantic of a life. It was just life.
Speaker 1: If you listen, this next section is the most impacting
Speaker 1: of my interview with Mr Stewart. I asked him if
Speaker 1: he did any more movies, and his answer surprised me.
Speaker 1: So after the movie, did you do any more movies?
Speaker 1: I did? My uncle, who was into family valued movies,
Speaker 1: he we did about three or four more. So how
Speaker 1: long did your acting career span in terms of years?
Speaker 1: You know? It tell about nineteen and then and then, uh,
Speaker 1: I had opportunity and have had a few other little
Speaker 1: I guess check backs with me and I just haven't
Speaker 1: ever been compelled again to want to say yeah really so,
Speaker 1: so when something like that, like you've kind of got
Speaker 1: a fuel it by just like going and trying out
Speaker 1: for parts and taking the chance of flying somewhere for
Speaker 1: I mean, I guess I guess somebody in movies like
Speaker 1: stuff just comes to him, but that's not That's how
Speaker 1: everything for me, it all came to me. It was
Speaker 1: never an aspiration or my saying I'm I want to
Speaker 1: do it. I'm an aggressively approach it. When I got
Speaker 1: through with Pony Express, writer and I did I mention
Speaker 1: that one anyway, there was one called Pony Express, right,
Speaker 1: I think that was one of the last ones I did.
Speaker 1: The director of that at he later did a film
Speaker 1: called The Sackets. It's a Western, and he wanted me
Speaker 1: to play one of the Sack brothers. And as I
Speaker 1: read the script, there were just some things that we're
Speaker 1: kind of went against the grain of my values and
Speaker 1: that I told him. I said, I just really don't
Speaker 1: think this is a part from me as as for
Speaker 1: my person. And I've always felt that way that if
Speaker 1: you act and you are into the part, you're gonna
Speaker 1: feel a lot of the same things that you would
Speaker 1: in real life. And uh, in the case of this one,
Speaker 1: this The Sackets, you know, there were some things where
Speaker 1: they'd been out on the range for a while and
Speaker 1: then they came into town and it was party time,
Speaker 1: and you know, with the women and the alcohol, and
Speaker 1: I just said, that's just not me. I can't portray that,
Speaker 1: even though it's acting. I can't do that and didn't
Speaker 1: want that to carry over in any way, shape or form.
Speaker 1: And as a result, you know, once I got married,
Speaker 1: I understood exactly why I didn't want to do that,
Speaker 1: because I didn't want to have to feel anything that
Speaker 1: would be contrary to what it should be, and that's
Speaker 1: fidelity and commitment to my wife. The mind and body
Speaker 1: don't know the difference when you're faking it and when
Speaker 1: it's real. So was that was that a factor in
Speaker 1: closing down it was? I love it, man. It's bizarre
Speaker 1: to me how media portrays human life. They often prey
Speaker 1: upon our extremes and in turn promote the normalization of
Speaker 1: those extremes. I think as a society we could almost
Speaker 1: universally agree that infidelity degrades people in families. However, you
Speaker 1: can hardly watch a sitcom, movie or program that doesn't
Speaker 1: portray it in a compelling way. Think about it, and
Speaker 1: think about how bizarre that is. I absolutely love it
Speaker 1: that Mr Stewart had the fortitude and wisdom at age
Speaker 1: twenty to see the potential pitfalls in the life as
Speaker 1: a Hollywood movie star, and he intentionally navigated around it. Rows.
Speaker 1: That's some high level stuff. This is the part of
Speaker 1: the Bargarase podcast where we proclaim that having character is
Speaker 1: cool around here. You're not the cool kid because you
Speaker 1: do dumb stuff. You're the cool kid because you do
Speaker 1: wise stuff and having a value system that you live by. Nope,
Speaker 1: none of us are perfect. But you got to stand
Speaker 1: for something or you'll fall for anything. Que the errand
Speaker 1: tipping not really, don't do it. Phil Mr Stewart truly
Speaker 1: was an up and coming Hollywood movie star. The road
Speaker 1: was paved before him. He received the Star of Tomorrow
Speaker 1: award in the nineteen seventies, and he purposefully walked away
Speaker 1: from a lucrative future. I love it. He went on
Speaker 1: to build custom homes, running outfitting business called Cricket Sky
Speaker 1: Outfitters and Wyoming and have a wonderful family. So you
Speaker 1: after they are in the early twenties, you were done. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and you went off to have outfitting business and build homes.
Speaker 1: You know. I do some rustic furniture, right. I like
Speaker 1: to be creative with my hands, and I'm I'm a
Speaker 1: person who likes the physical aspect of life and not
Speaker 1: merely an entertained part of life where you know a
Speaker 1: screen or you know some of that stuff. And I'm
Speaker 1: not saying I'm just glad there's there's all types to
Speaker 1: make up the world, because I wasn't born to be
Speaker 1: able to make things happen on a screen or or
Speaker 1: that you know, that kind of stuff. Let's get back
Speaker 1: with Professor Tutan for a final look at Wilson Rawls
Speaker 1: and some of the American ideals that shaped this book.
Speaker 1: I'm interested in why we are the way we are,
Speaker 1: and I'll reveal what the saddest part of the book
Speaker 1: was for me. Now, biographically, we know that Wilson Rawls
Speaker 1: did return. I mean not just to go to prison.
Speaker 1: You know he did return. He returned. Uh. I know
Speaker 1: that he returned because I know I know some Cherokee
Speaker 1: folks over in Oklahoma that said he came with their
Speaker 1: classroom back when they were kids. So he did come back.
Speaker 1: It makes me feel good. But even if he didn't play,
Speaker 1: that land has been sanctified. It's sacred now and there
Speaker 1: will always be some of him there in that land.
Speaker 1: The saddest part to me in the book, even more
Speaker 1: sad than the dogs dying is that he had to
Speaker 1: move away, and that's that line that he never came back.
Speaker 1: Because what makes me pound the table is, I mean,
Speaker 1: I just love rural life so much, people's connection to place,
Speaker 1: and just modern the modern world just disintegrates that in
Speaker 1: so many ways, and it's just part of life. And
Speaker 1: the fact that Billy's the winnings of his championship coon
Speaker 1: hunt where the thing that gave them the money to
Speaker 1: be able to move away and never come and in
Speaker 1: the book they moved to Tulsa and presumably never come back.
Speaker 1: That's what got me. Man. Yeah, this is the genius
Speaker 1: of of literatures is we continue to read it and
Speaker 1: people say, why would you want to read that again? Well,
Speaker 1: some some say that literature reads us. You know, when
Speaker 1: we read it, we read it, and every time we
Speaker 1: read it, especially at the years have gone by, you
Speaker 1: read it differently. When I was a kid, what struck
Speaker 1: me most was the death of the dogs. But like you,
Speaker 1: when I read this recently, when they're the wagons packed
Speaker 1: up and they're gonna leave, and he's looking back at
Speaker 1: that land one last time, and that that humble cabin
Speaker 1: where they work so hard, it's a tear jerker in
Speaker 1: that moment. It is because you know he'll never be back.
Speaker 1: And all of us have that tied to home. And
Speaker 1: many would say that when they dream, When we dream,
Speaker 1: we have a childhood home that's in our dreams, and
Speaker 1: it's always the same house. For me, it's always the
Speaker 1: same house, the same place. I know, the smells, you know,
Speaker 1: and that's home. You Know what's wild too, is that
Speaker 1: in the movie you can actually see this cabin, you know,
Speaker 1: and where they lived. It's like, oh man, that's I
Speaker 1: want to go there. Back in those days for those
Speaker 1: people that really lived in that kind of poverty, that
Speaker 1: kind of isolation, that wasn't a dream like and so
Speaker 1: them going to town was like major upgrade in everything.
Speaker 1: So right now, when all of us live in cities
Speaker 1: and have these urbanized lives, we dream of going back
Speaker 1: to the country. And so you know, you kind of
Speaker 1: have to switch it around. And where they were seemed
Speaker 1: like paradise and they were leaving to go to this
Speaker 1: thing that we now all know, which is it's just interesting. Now.
Speaker 1: You know, what makes a great great work of art
Speaker 1: in literature is his irony. Right when something turns out
Speaker 1: to be the opposite what we assume. And in this novel,
Speaker 1: when Billy finally goes to Talaqua, which is the big city,
Speaker 1: he runs into some kids who were in school and
Speaker 1: they're not nice to him. Is that city living? Is
Speaker 1: that what it means to get in education? Is is
Speaker 1: Billy going to turn out like that? You know? And
Speaker 1: the irony is that his lack of education actually makes
Speaker 1: him a better person. That he can get his education
Speaker 1: from the woods itself. And that's very much an American
Speaker 1: theme right in our literature, is that the land itself
Speaker 1: can teach us something right and we can get you know,
Speaker 1: it's mythologized in the life of Abraham Lincoln. You know,
Speaker 1: he he learned right with a piece of charcoal on
Speaker 1: a on a wooden shovel by firelight in a cabin,
Speaker 1: you know. So we we really value that kind of
Speaker 1: education that um that can that can occur in the
Speaker 1: woods without much technology or or or city living. There's
Speaker 1: even an assumption that city life will uh will weaken men.
Speaker 1: This is what Teddy Roosevelt thought. That's why he went
Speaker 1: west and reinvented himself, you know, and started hunting, wearing
Speaker 1: bear skin coats and Indian looking clothes. Yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: he got riched glasses. You know, he didn't he want
Speaker 1: he really wanted to reinvigorate his masculinity in the practice
Speaker 1: of you know, frontier life. And that is really an
Speaker 1: American thing, is you know, I'm I'm trying to understand
Speaker 1: this rural American identity and what interests me is specifically
Speaker 1: where it's connected to hunting. And so that's why I
Speaker 1: ask you, is it really an American idea that we
Speaker 1: learned from the land and and you know, we we've
Speaker 1: done series on Daniel Boone where we've seen that this
Speaker 1: idea of solitude and the wilderness is really an American idea.
Speaker 1: Like much of much of the world. Prior to a
Speaker 1: couple hundred years ago, we were doing our very best
Speaker 1: to get away from wilderness because the wilderness is where
Speaker 1: you died. You know, there's themes inside the Bible of
Speaker 1: wilderness being separation from God and all this. But then
Speaker 1: when we get here to what is now America, it
Speaker 1: was different. I guess I'm trying to understand. Even the
Speaker 1: the European settlement of America and all its trouble and
Speaker 1: wild stuff that happened, it was pretty unique to the
Speaker 1: world and that it was it was the last big
Speaker 1: block of the world that was kind of modernized, if
Speaker 1: that's an appropriate word, but a lot of for some
Speaker 1: unique stuff to happen in terms of the way we
Speaker 1: interacted with the land. And and I'm also interested in
Speaker 1: how Native American culture deeply impacts kind of rural American
Speaker 1: culture today in ways that we don't understand, and this
Speaker 1: book shows that strongly too. Definitely, when Europeans arrived here,
Speaker 1: they invented the notion of the frontier. You think about it,
Speaker 1: it's probably obvious, but you know, Indigenous people didn't think
Speaker 1: of the front They didn't have a frontier. This was
Speaker 1: just where they live. Yeah, didn't have a notion of
Speaker 1: wilderness either. They said, you know, there was nothing wild.
Speaker 1: I mean, they say Luther standing bearrom than reading him
Speaker 1: right now. He's a famous suit chief, and he said,
Speaker 1: and he lived in a time before even saw a
Speaker 1: white person on the plains, and he said, uh, it
Speaker 1: was not wild, it was tame. Because they were so
Speaker 1: comfortable in their ancestral land. And it's taken centuries for
Speaker 1: Americans to become comfortable in this land. When the Puritans
Speaker 1: arrived here in six two. They were in armor, breastplates
Speaker 1: and muskets and were you know, are armed and ready
Speaker 1: for that great threat of a wall of forest and
Speaker 1: beyond it. They knew nothing, just that they were already
Speaker 1: stories of savage people that would kill you, and they're
Speaker 1: absolutely terrified. And the first thing they wanted to do
Speaker 1: was clear path. I mean, get some of the trees
Speaker 1: down so they can get see. We were talking about
Speaker 1: the fear of the dark. You know, it's taken Europeans
Speaker 1: in North America were absolutely terrified of a forest, you know,
Speaker 1: I mean the imagination runs wild with you know, indigenous
Speaker 1: people ready to kill you and scalp you. Absolutely terrified.
Speaker 1: And it took, like I said, centuries for people to
Speaker 1: move Europeans and move into the woods and understandably adapt
Speaker 1: some of the ways of Native Americans who knew how
Speaker 1: to do it, and slowly became more American in that process.
Speaker 1: And that's something I didn't come up with. That. Fredis
Speaker 1: Jackson Turner, the famous historian, said that long ago. He
Speaker 1: called that a frontier thesis. And that's what makes us
Speaker 1: uniquely American. If you look into the accounts on the frontier,
Speaker 1: as Europeans would call it Native Americans and frontier people,
Speaker 1: you know, white settlers were living side by side. Often
Speaker 1: they were neighbors, you know. But what's important members these
Speaker 1: people knew each other. They knew each other my name,
Speaker 1: and would live within you know, a gunshot of each other.
Speaker 1: That was the rule back then is you had to
Speaker 1: be able within a gun far enough that you could
Speaker 1: barely hear a gunshot. And so it's a process that
Speaker 1: we're very proud of, right and still today. Those are
Speaker 1: the values that many of us, whether we're thinking of
Speaker 1: becoming a back to the lander or you know, wanting
Speaker 1: to you join the Boy Scouts and take hikes, all
Speaker 1: of that. We're kind of, in a healthy manner, were
Speaker 1: re enacting that, that frontier spirit. And sometimes it can
Speaker 1: be corny if we're not self conscious of it. Reflective,
Speaker 1: like like you said a moment ago, we can romanticize
Speaker 1: tough living in a cabin something that you know, like
Speaker 1: I mentioned my father, they had no running water, you know,
Speaker 1: they had no electricity, and as a child I romanticized that.
Speaker 1: But he was very happy to escape that life, you know,
Speaker 1: although never quite comfortable in a suit, never and as
Speaker 1: soon as he retired, he was oddly regained the Southern
Speaker 1: accident came back to him. Yeah. Yeah, I've never been
Speaker 1: back to the old arcs. All I have left are
Speaker 1: my dreams and memories. Yes, some day, if God is willing,
Speaker 1: I'd like to go back and walk again in the
Speaker 1: hills I knew as a boy, And I'd like to
Speaker 1: touch the heart that's carved in an old sycamore tree,
Speaker 1: just says Dan. And An and I look for that
Speaker 1: sacred spot by the river where the red fern grows.
Speaker 1: Sometimes it's hard to put your finger on it. But
Speaker 1: whatever culture you're a part of, you've been impacted by
Speaker 1: its literature and stories. Going back into deep human history.
Speaker 1: Since the beginning, stories have been inoculated with a live
Speaker 1: value system that is looking for hosts to carry it onward.
Speaker 1: It might be pertinent to ask which came first, the
Speaker 1: story or the value system. Do we create stories to
Speaker 1: carry values or did the values create the stories. A
Speaker 1: famous Native American author named moment Day said, quote, man
Speaker 1: tells stories in order to understand his experience and achieves
Speaker 1: the fullest realization of his humanity in literature. End of quote. Undoubtedly,
Speaker 1: the book Where the Red Fern Grows is one American
Speaker 1: classic that I can fully get behind. Aside from Billy
Speaker 1: hunting them red bone hounds, the story is replete with character,
Speaker 1: and it also has a fundamental component of spirituality that
Speaker 1: I believe is an important and vital part of the
Speaker 1: human story. I still marvel at the widespread reach of
Speaker 1: a book about coon hunting. Surely Mr Wilson tapped into
Speaker 1: an awareness of his own humanity and was truly gifted
Speaker 1: in his ability to connect us to place in such
Speaker 1: a seamless way. We all felt like we were there,
Speaker 1: regardless of our past background, geographic location, or economic status.
Speaker 1: The story is a humble human story, and therein lies
Speaker 1: a pattern for those of us interested in seeing our
Speaker 1: lifestyle of living close to the land persists through time.
Speaker 1: Nobody cares about coon hunting, but they're moved by people's
Speaker 1: story and their connection to place. Thank you all so
Speaker 1: much for listening to Bear Grease. All the things we
Speaker 1: talk about on this podcast are deeply personal to me,
Speaker 1: and me and the team at Metator work hard to
Speaker 1: bring you quality content every week, and I can't thank
Speaker 1: you enough for the support and for listening. Please do
Speaker 1: me a favor and share our podcast with friend and
Speaker 1: foe this week Thanks to you guys, the demand for
Speaker 1: our bear grease hats is off the chart and we're
Speaker 1: sold out again. Our apologies, but we should have some
Speaker 1: new hats by May. When they come in then you
Speaker 1: better get them quick. But we do have some of
Speaker 1: those black panther believer hats on the metator dot com
Speaker 1: right now. See you next week on the Rent