Speaker 1: My name is Clay Knucomb and this is a production
Speaker 1: of the Bear Grease podcast called the Bear Grease Render
Speaker 1: where we render down, dive deeper, and look behind the
Speaker 1: scenes of the actual Bear Grease podcast. Brought to you
Speaker 1: by Tokvi's Boots. I'm a cowboy boot man and I've
Speaker 1: been wearing to Covis for years. The most comfortable boot
Speaker 1: I've ever put on. Good boots for good times.
Speaker 2: Your finger is exactly this length of your nose, from
Speaker 2: this joint to the tip right here, this joint, the
Speaker 2: middle joint. If you put that up to the end
Speaker 2: of your nose, that is a trick. Look here, yeah,
Speaker 2: I'm finger. Your finger will go.
Speaker 3: From there, which finger are you index finger?
Speaker 2: If you put your thumb just below the knuckle, just
Speaker 2: below the knuckle, look look like this.
Speaker 4: And put it right your misty where your knuckle, where
Speaker 4: it goes from the tip of your nose to where
Speaker 4: your nose geins right there. It's not a trick.
Speaker 5: Unless you have a spillmaker nose. And there's so a
Speaker 5: lot of landscape there.
Speaker 2: What is happening is I I told Bailey that one time,
Speaker 2: and it's also the same length as your ear believe
Speaker 2: it or not, that's true until you.
Speaker 4: Get to be sixty.
Speaker 2: So I'm sitting there and I've told this, and I
Speaker 2: caught Bailey sitting on the couch one day looking at
Speaker 2: me and looking at my looking at the profile of
Speaker 2: my nose and doing this to herself, and she had
Speaker 2: the saddest.
Speaker 6: Look on her face. I'm gonna get daddy's nose. So
Speaker 6: when I called her, what you do? I let her
Speaker 6: do it for well while I look around, and she's
Speaker 6: just like, I'm like, I may have made the dance team,
Speaker 6: but I'm gonna have to tote that around eventually.
Speaker 1: So welcome to the Bear Grease Render. We uh. We
Speaker 1: got Brent Reeves sitting in his Brent Reeves chair, Josh Lambridge, spillmaker,
Speaker 1: Bear John Newcomb, doctor mister Newcombe in the toa Covis
Speaker 1: hot seat. This is big. Yeah, we were expecting a.
Speaker 4: Lot of you today.
Speaker 1: Okay, yeah, this episode because this is an incredible episode.
Speaker 1: But I want to start the episode out with a story.
Speaker 2: When you say story, let me tell you what my grandma.
Speaker 2: This would be real quick. I hate to keep interrupted,
Speaker 2: but I didn't. I need to know what kind of
Speaker 2: story you're talking about she if something got broke unbeknownst
Speaker 2: to me, she would hend me up in the corner
Speaker 2: of the yard stick and say, Brent, what happened to
Speaker 2: the window? Don't tell me no story? So is this
Speaker 2: a true story? Or is this because that she meant lie?
Speaker 3: Maybe she meant I don't want to be entertained right now, doubtful.
Speaker 1: When I tell you this story, you're going to know
Speaker 1: this story is true because of how bad it makes
Speaker 1: a lot of well, one particular animal look so all right,
Speaker 1: So yeah, that's a true story. It's a very true story.
Speaker 1: So I, as as some of you might know, I
Speaker 1: have a year probably a fifteen month old plot registered
Speaker 1: plot coonhounds. It's not really a coon hound. It comes
Speaker 1: from coonhound stock, really good coonhound stock, as a matter
Speaker 1: of fact, I mean, as plots go. And but I
Speaker 1: have not hunted this dog much the dog. So it's
Speaker 1: not the dog's fault that it's not a coon dog,
Speaker 1: of it's a little bit of its faults. It's pretty shy,
Speaker 1: like cripplingly shy.
Speaker 3: It's what you might call the dog world a limon.
Speaker 1: I still have inkling of hope because based upon.
Speaker 5: One that dog ends up on the on the meat
Speaker 5: Eater auction house.
Speaker 1: So this dog I like the dog. We call her Polly.
Speaker 1: It's named after David Crockett's first wife who died tragically.
Speaker 4: Who was not a lemon.
Speaker 1: She's a good woman, according to Crockett. Uh and Polly,
Speaker 1: Me and Polly and Connie, our little feist dog, went
Speaker 1: for a walk the other day and I had Polly off,
Speaker 1: no lead, no caller, no nothing, and she usually just
Speaker 1: stays fairly close, just kind of hunts up in the woods.
Speaker 1: And we walked during the day down this gravel country
Speaker 1: road that I live on, and nothing that everything is fine.
Speaker 1: And they don't ever run off, you know, they'll chase
Speaker 1: squirrels or And it's been a long time since I've
Speaker 1: actually seen a deer, like from my house. We have
Speaker 1: plenty of deer around here, but you don't see him
Speaker 1: that much. I'm walking Polly. Come around the corner down
Speaker 1: here on the gravel road, Brent and pointing towards the west,
Speaker 1: I see a deer fawn standing in the road forty
Speaker 1: yards away, just like we just come around the corner
Speaker 1: and just bam, there's a deer fawn standing the road.
Speaker 1: And here's me and Polly and Connie and we all
Speaker 1: see it at the same time, and like me and
Speaker 1: the two dogs just kind of like look at each other,
Speaker 1: and I go, this is not going to be great,
Speaker 1: and Polly. The plot just takes off after this fawn,
Speaker 1: and the fawn flags and runs, and they're running dead
Speaker 1: away from me due west, which is good because due
Speaker 1: east a half a mile is a paved road and
Speaker 1: is a city. Okay, half a mile the opposite direction.
Speaker 1: But they're running towards the country, right, And so here
Speaker 1: goes Polly, and I start yelling, hey, hey, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: no clapping, and here she goes, and here's a race
Speaker 1: or and I just hear him going, and Polly's after this,
Speaker 1: and the fawn's big enough that it can outrun the dog,
Speaker 1: so the fawn's not in danger. The fawn runs out
Speaker 1: there about two hundred and fifty yards and makes a
Speaker 1: loop through the woods and comes back and hits the
Speaker 1: gravel road. And I'm running down the gravel road trying
Speaker 1: to break up this deer race, and I see the
Speaker 1: fawn coming back towards me, headed towards town, and the
Speaker 1: woods are cramped onto the road, and that deer runs right.
Speaker 1: I mean I could have reached out and like petted
Speaker 1: the deer when it ran back past me after the
Speaker 1: race had already started. I mean, if this happened a
Speaker 1: million times on planet Earth, it would not happen this
Speaker 1: way again. That deer runs out there, turning for the yards,
Speaker 1: and here it comes run down the road, and I'm
Speaker 1: just like, and it just runs right past me. But
Speaker 1: then here come Polly full just full tilt, loping like
Speaker 1: a corter horse. And what do I do. I just
Speaker 1: do everything I can. I just raar back and I
Speaker 1: mean just try to grab it, you know, as it
Speaker 1: runs by, and she gets through me. And I see
Speaker 1: them just running down the road straight towards town. Well,
Speaker 1: I take off running after him, and you kind of
Speaker 1: come around a corner and you can see a straight
Speaker 1: stretch like all the way to the black top. You
Speaker 1: can see for a long ways. I watch them run
Speaker 1: out of sight, and that deer never leaves the gravel
Speaker 1: road really, And I go back and get Misty and
Speaker 1: I'm like, we gotta get the canam. We got to
Speaker 1: go into town. Polly is after a deer, and and.
Speaker 4: We just going to the store to buy some corn.
Speaker 1: We drive down there and this would come out later.
Speaker 1: My sweet elderly neighbors just happened to be looking out
Speaker 1: the window when the gravel turns to black top and
Speaker 1: they see a deer and Polly just going down the
Speaker 1: black top.
Speaker 3: And shortly behind this a.
Speaker 1: Major road cross a major road headed towards the White River,
Speaker 1: run right through the guy's yard on the other side,
Speaker 1: and they're just gone that that deer ran a half
Speaker 1: mile down the middle of a gravel road that turned
Speaker 1: to pavement. Is that not a story?
Speaker 4: Yeah, So what happened with Polly, Well.
Speaker 1: She eventually gave up the race and like came back.
Speaker 1: Somebody called me, oh no, somebody called me. I was like, hey,
Speaker 1: I got a dog over.
Speaker 5: Here, like if any animal is loose, and they called Clay.
Speaker 3: And the two dogs. So so the neighbors told Baron I.
Speaker 3: They said, hey, we think they didn't know about Polly.
Speaker 3: They knew about the feist Connie Connie the conquista door,
Speaker 3: and they told me, they said, hey, we think we
Speaker 3: might have seen your dog. They said, we saw a
Speaker 3: deer a fawn run past, then we saw a big
Speaker 3: black dog, and then we saw your tiny squirrel dog
Speaker 3: running behind them. Trying to catch up, and the neighbors
Speaker 3: told us that the squirrel dog and the coon dog
Speaker 3: in air quotes were in the field just running around playing.
Speaker 3: They called their names, and they ran up to them,
Speaker 3: and we're just happy to see them. So they looked
Speaker 3: at the collar. They called us, and we went and
Speaker 3: we were trying to track them, but we kept finding
Speaker 3: it had rained, and so there was some runoff where.
Speaker 1: I was, I was tracking them on the asphalt from
Speaker 1: the mud on their feet. Really see the tracks down
Speaker 1: the asphalt. So that's my that's my that's my story.
Speaker 2: I'm glad you put a name with that dog because
Speaker 2: I didn't know that dog. But we just met Connie and.
Speaker 3: I, oh, yeah, the conquistador.
Speaker 4: Yeah. I had stopped.
Speaker 2: My grandmother coming right back into this this story anytime.
Speaker 2: You know, roadside places to stop for convenience on long
Speaker 2: trips were few and far between back in the day,
Speaker 2: and she would tell my grandfather to pull over.
Speaker 4: She needed to change.
Speaker 2: Her coat, take her coat off, That's what she said,
Speaker 2: I need to take my coat off, which man, she
Speaker 2: had to go to the bathroom. So wow, I had
Speaker 2: rented you, only you only rent a big quarter of
Speaker 2: smart water. You don't buy it. So I was paying
Speaker 2: the piper right down here, m hmm, hundred yards from
Speaker 2: the end of the driveway, on my way here to
Speaker 2: this very immense yes, and talking on the phone on
Speaker 2: the speakerphone.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, A lot going on, A lot going on.
Speaker 3: I'm just trying to interpret this.
Speaker 2: And facing I'm getting there and I'm facing away. I'm
Speaker 2: facing away, and a little dog comes up and jumps
Speaker 2: up behind me that I did not know was there.
Speaker 2: I may not pick again for six months.
Speaker 1: Keep for a stone.
Speaker 2: When that happened, about threw a shoe, it scared the
Speaker 2: fire out of it.
Speaker 4: And there was Connie.
Speaker 1: Honey, honey.
Speaker 6: I looked and I saw, well, that's one of Newcomb's dogs.
Speaker 6: But her name is Connie.
Speaker 1: That's Connie. So I just wanted to I just wanted
Speaker 1: to throw that story out there.
Speaker 4: That's good. So are you glad the little coon dog
Speaker 4: was got a little game.
Speaker 1: I mean, the dog doesn't tell The story gets worse.
Speaker 1: Two nights ago, I walked over on some property just
Speaker 1: across the road to check on a fire and that
Speaker 1: we had. We burned a brush pots and uh shined
Speaker 1: a pond, and there was a coon waiting in the pond.
Speaker 1: I go back and get Polly, and I think I'm
Speaker 1: gonna just put her right on this coon track and
Speaker 1: just see what happens. She did not. She didn't bark,
Speaker 1: she didn't trail. She just was like, she's like, look
Speaker 1: at that coon. She's like, yep, I smell it. If
Speaker 1: it was a deer now, oh, if it was a deer,
Speaker 1: she would have burned it up.
Speaker 3: This is what we call a lemon.
Speaker 4: Poor dog.
Speaker 1: All right, So man, do we ever have an episode?
Speaker 1: As if you're watching this, you might notice that four
Speaker 1: of us in this room are wearing bear grease bibs
Speaker 1: and look really good. So the day that this comes
Speaker 1: out is July twenty second, and on July twenty third, Like,
Speaker 1: if you're listening to this today it comes out, the
Speaker 1: bear grease bibs will be for sale on the meat
Speaker 1: eater dot Com store, meat Eaterdum, meat eater dot com.
Speaker 1: Pretty sure it's them meat eater dot Com slash bibs. Okay,
Speaker 1: And these are the bear grease bibs that I have
Speaker 1: been working on for for for over over six years.
Speaker 4: Have you drawing?
Speaker 1: I drew the first sketch of this in there's.
Speaker 4: An ad out.
Speaker 5: I don't see a the bib overalls ad that came
Speaker 5: out yesterday.
Speaker 1: You can see the drawing.
Speaker 4: See the actual drawing.
Speaker 1: I drew that in twenty nineteen before I even worked
Speaker 1: for Meat Eater and submitted it to first Light because
Speaker 1: I was I was wearing first Light and working with
Speaker 1: first Light and I said, hey, you need a utility
Speaker 1: and at the time, I called it a utility backcountry bib.
Speaker 1: And if you read what we said, it is basically
Speaker 1: this exact bib. And uh there. They're really cool and
Speaker 1: they're they're going to be for sale tomorrow.
Speaker 3: I don't know how I missed that all of you
Speaker 3: were matching until now. Yeah, I completely miss that working
Speaker 3: not working, Larry, Daryl and Daryl here.
Speaker 1: Hey, the reason this is cool is that this is
Speaker 1: the first time that first Light has collaborated with a
Speaker 1: with a with anything cool, with any with with any
Speaker 1: with a brand. I mean like Bear Grease being kind
Speaker 1: of a brand in and of itself.
Speaker 5: And for those are those of you just listening, it's
Speaker 5: got this really cool little Bear Grease patch.
Speaker 1: But it also you wouldn't know it unless you bought them.
Speaker 1: But it also has a secret message on the inside.
Speaker 1: I don't think I realized that it says don't tell people. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you can tell you. I was going to say, like
Speaker 1: you have to, I'll just say it has a secret
Speaker 1: message on the inside of the bibs.
Speaker 4: Yeah. And uh, you gotta get to Steven Nello, the
Speaker 4: coder ring you're.
Speaker 3: Disaster impending.
Speaker 4: That's fabulous.
Speaker 3: They look good and.
Speaker 5: Brent, Brent has a BIB overall connoisseur.
Speaker 4: What do you think I like him? I do. I
Speaker 4: like them.
Speaker 2: I never thought they were going to come to Fruition.
Speaker 2: They were teased a little bit. We're working on we're
Speaker 2: working on man nothing.
Speaker 6: And then back it comes and here we are all
Speaker 6: setting in them like a bunch of What.
Speaker 1: It's got What I wanted is so it has a
Speaker 1: chest pouch that is a water resistant pouch, so you
Speaker 1: could put your phone in there and if you fell
Speaker 1: in the river, your phone wouldn't get wet.
Speaker 4: Suitable for get really sweaty.
Speaker 1: You get really sweaty. Yeah, it's got a big ventilation
Speaker 1: zippers on the side. I mean the zipper the side
Speaker 1: stuff is major. I mean you can go way down clay.
Speaker 4: That's the thing.
Speaker 1: That's what BIB overalls are good for those ventilation. Got
Speaker 1: big kangaroo zippers, like you can put stuff all in here.
Speaker 1: It's got one pocket here for whatever you want. That's
Speaker 1: a right there. Yeah, that's for getting stuff out when
Speaker 1: you're sitting. And now this is what Brent Reeves didn't
Speaker 1: initially want, but is a zipper up the leg. I
Speaker 1: just wanted it to be able to get in and out.
Speaker 4: I was happy with the size.
Speaker 1: You didn't want a big zip.
Speaker 4: I want a big zipper.
Speaker 6: Because like I'll wear rubber boots and I'll put my
Speaker 6: my breeches on the inside and that man, it invariably
Speaker 6: would always get on my ankle yes, and I'm walking
Speaker 6: somewhere and it's like I got my.
Speaker 4: Foot and steel trap.
Speaker 2: But these are small and as you know, we've been
Speaker 2: wearing them that the prototype before this for about a
Speaker 2: year now and I've been wearing the fire out of
Speaker 2: them and inside my rubber boots and no issues.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and they have a they have a brier proof
Speaker 1: chapped front on the legs. I would say that these
Speaker 1: are like a like a car heartwork overall would be
Speaker 1: I mean these would be somewhere in between, uh, like
Speaker 1: like the duck cotton is stretched duck cotton, and they're
Speaker 1: made for comfort and wearing, but also durability. I mean,
Speaker 1: to me, the perfect use case for this is small
Speaker 1: game hunting and wrestling.
Speaker 4: Straight up. Look, no holes barred. Here's how you can
Speaker 4: tell the materials.
Speaker 1: I hear that. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, you're scratching it
Speaker 1: with your fingernails. Yeah, yep, that's good.
Speaker 5: Lincoln would have warned these when he was wrestling.
Speaker 1: Yeah, no doubt, no doubt. Man, I can't wait to
Speaker 1: talk about Grant this. This episode is gonna be good.
Speaker 1: But before we do that, oh you might have noticed,
Speaker 1: I say, do you.
Speaker 3: Think most people will be wearing rattlesnake?
Speaker 1: Hey, Josh, get your, get your we're gonna brand.
Speaker 4: Okay, let me get a video.
Speaker 1: So these Areva's invasive pylon python boots come come straight
Speaker 1: out of Florida? Is that the Is that the belly? Yeah?
Speaker 1: I would say so.
Speaker 4: I think, and that on the side ain't Yeah no.
Speaker 1: That's but what we're gonna do today is, ah, we're
Speaker 1: going to uh, we're gonna brand them, so ta cova.
Speaker 1: Uh uh, let's brand them with this bear grease. So
Speaker 1: we got a little bear grease Brandon iron here and uh,
Speaker 1: we're gonna set this here. We're gonna brand them.
Speaker 3: How exciting?
Speaker 1: Yeah, wow on one of my bows. Hey, once you
Speaker 1: film it for him?
Speaker 4: Bear, all right, you ready?
Speaker 1: Where should I put it? Right there?
Speaker 4: That's what I think?
Speaker 1: On the on the leather right there. I don't know.
Speaker 5: Probably I'll start.
Speaker 1: Okay, Josh, you got a blow to argan. We're gonna
Speaker 1: do a meat Eater brand on it. Yep, okay, okay,
Speaker 1: there we.
Speaker 4: Go this safe?
Speaker 5: All right, Bear tell us about your bow.
Speaker 7: All right, I've got here a hop horn beam bow
Speaker 7: fifty pound, twenty eight inches.
Speaker 4: So cool.
Speaker 1: And this bow is on the Meat Eater Auction House
Speaker 1: of Oddities for like a couple more hours today. Yeah.
Speaker 7: I'm pretty sure if you hop on today is still
Speaker 7: available the day that.
Speaker 3: The podcast comes out.
Speaker 1: Yeah right.
Speaker 7: And yeah, So I made this bow and then I
Speaker 7: gave it to an artist in Tennessee named Savannah Gregory.
Speaker 7: And she did all these carvings on there. But all
Speaker 7: of that she did with little ministry tools, oh, like
Speaker 7: a little drimmal tools they use for your teeth.
Speaker 4: Wow.
Speaker 1: And so that's all part of the wood. She pulled
Speaker 1: that out of there. She didn't. She didn't have anything
Speaker 1: on there, but yeah, we kind of animal tracks.
Speaker 7: Yeah, we we kind of decided to do the design
Speaker 7: a little more natural looking, like we could have done
Speaker 7: like a pattern, animal track pattern going up the limb.
Speaker 1: It's like a water hole. Yeah, we kind of wanted
Speaker 1: to make it look like.
Speaker 7: How a bear would walk or a turkey would walk. So, yeah,
Speaker 7: it's got some turkey tail feather and wing feathers up here,
Speaker 7: critter tracks on there.
Speaker 4: Those wing feathers are legit.
Speaker 1: Man, yeah they are.
Speaker 3: It really is cool. And then it also has a
Speaker 3: cool little little quote on it, gonna run.
Speaker 4: That camera, run that video along.
Speaker 7: Bow there and this bow says keep the wild places
Speaker 7: wild right there on the riser.
Speaker 1: Okay, so we got these python boots, Josh, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: let you.
Speaker 4: Okay, put it branded. Which way is up and down
Speaker 4: on that?
Speaker 1: Okay, we're here, i'd say, so yeah, oh we got
Speaker 1: it on there. Oh yeah, look at that nice job.
Speaker 1: Looks great, incredible.
Speaker 4: That's money meat either logo forehead. Let me brand your hat.
Speaker 4: Oh that's cool.
Speaker 5: We'll do the we'll do a bear grease one later.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Yeah. Yeah. Thanks to Covis for sending us these. That's
Speaker 4: pretty cool sweet brands.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I might use those. Let's brand wow. Okay, Well
Speaker 1: now that we got that settled, Yeah, so meteor auction subodities.
Speaker 1: I've also got on there. My bear hide from the
Speaker 1: bear that I killed in Alaska was wearing the wet soup.
Speaker 1: Brent has a bow on therefuse bow.
Speaker 4: With a dialed archery site.
Speaker 1: Is that the bow that Clay gave you?
Speaker 4: It is? It is? Wow two for one wow? Great?
Speaker 1: And I just I mean, you know, it's just it's
Speaker 1: I just I just noticed it was.
Speaker 4: That was the one that I just.
Speaker 1: I'm not I'm glad you. I'm glad you put it up.
Speaker 4: I don't.
Speaker 1: I wasn't saying it like that. I he was like,
Speaker 1: are you upset with me for the bow that you
Speaker 1: gave me? An altercation rate, No, just the way Brent
Speaker 1: looked at me, he was he thought maybe I was
Speaker 1: mad at him.
Speaker 4: I did not care. I just wondered why you was asking.
Speaker 1: Well, I mean, I just wondered if that was the
Speaker 1: bow that I.
Speaker 4: Gave you, it is? Okay?
Speaker 1: Cool?
Speaker 4: Great?
Speaker 1: Well so that's that. Well, uh Man beargree Civil War
Speaker 1: Summer continues. This is part five we do have one
Speaker 1: more episode. We're gonna end up with six Civil War episodes.
Speaker 3: I don't think that we can trust you with that
Speaker 3: number anymore.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's gotten a little out of hand.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know what, I've been doing this long enough
Speaker 1: that when they when they say hey, stop, I say no,
Speaker 1: We're gonna keep going because they've told me this. I've
Speaker 1: stopped before when I didn't want to stop. Who's they
Speaker 1: the they? Okay, just them.
Speaker 2: What class saying is he will show us how to
Speaker 2: beat the hair off a dead horse, not anybody else.
Speaker 4: That's right.
Speaker 1: Well, this, uh, the thing about the the thing about
Speaker 1: the Civil War is that, you know, we said that
Speaker 1: we're dipping a bucket of water out of the ocean
Speaker 1: of the Civil War. And so this is episode five.
Speaker 1: And this episode would have come as a surprise really
Speaker 1: to me kind of just sprang up in my inbox.
Speaker 1: Didn't didn't know that it was going to happen because
Speaker 1: coming into this, and I said it at the beginning
Speaker 1: of the episode, the the person I was least interested
Speaker 1: in learning about, honestly, would have been Ulysses S. Grant.
Speaker 1: And and it's kind of interesting thinking about that, because
Speaker 1: I'm just telling you. That's the way it was. If
Speaker 1: I would have seen Ulysses, s Grant, Roberty, Lee, Abraham, Lincoln, Stonewall, Jackson, Sherman,
Speaker 1: even Sherman. Yeah, William To comes to Sherman on a list,
Speaker 1: and you were like, which one of these do you?
Speaker 4: Are?
Speaker 1: You really not that interested in? I think it would
Speaker 1: have been Grant. I couldn't tell I couldn't have told
Speaker 1: you why. It was just like lack of knowledge, but
Speaker 1: maybe something more, maybe what Misty Wood, what'd you think
Speaker 1: of the Grand episode? Oh?
Speaker 3: I loved it. I loved it. And and I think
Speaker 3: Grant has kind of a little bit taken over our
Speaker 3: our home. Every time claim I get in the car,
Speaker 3: our audible pops up with the narrator's uh, the narrator's book.
Speaker 3: And and so I've kind of feel like I feel
Speaker 3: like Grant's like a brother to us this summer, the
Speaker 3: Civil War summer. But I thought the episode was great.
Speaker 3: You you kind of pulled out a bunch of interesting things.
Speaker 3: It's it's so hard on on something like this to
Speaker 3: condense his life down into one one hour podcast. And
Speaker 3: so I thought, what you what you chose were kind
Speaker 3: of the random pieces, not really the like, nothing about
Speaker 3: his presidency, nothing about the end of the war, just
Speaker 3: kind of this interesting this is what made Grant and
Speaker 3: his wife and you know, his childhood, his dad horsemanship. Yeah.
Speaker 3: I just thought it was great and I thought that
Speaker 3: you had an incredible guest. I thought Louis did a
Speaker 3: great gallo. Yeah, Louis Yallow and uh, but I thought
Speaker 3: it was a great episode and very interesting and kind
Speaker 3: of eccentric.
Speaker 1: Eccentric. Well, I was just trying to just like build, uh,
Speaker 1: the history of Grant that maybe you wouldn't know, like
Speaker 1: his childhood and stuff from his childhood that impacted him.
Speaker 1: And then what was most interesting was just how much
Speaker 1: he struggled. I mean, if there was ever a story
Speaker 1: of a guy that was kind of a failure rising
Speaker 1: to the top, it was it was him. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: you know, and and and some of it was his
Speaker 1: own fault. I mean, you know, like a lot of
Speaker 1: it was with his with his drinking and stuff, and
Speaker 1: there's it's it's hard to really get to the to
Speaker 1: the bottom of his dreaming because there definitely a lot
Speaker 1: when you listen to is his the audible book, it's
Speaker 1: forty eight hours long. Yeah, an audible book on Grant
Speaker 1: is forty eight hours real.
Speaker 3: But I mean when I say every time our car turns.
Speaker 1: On, I've been on a bulldozer again this week listening
Speaker 1: to Grant and uh and what you what you What
Speaker 1: you learn is that his that he had lots of
Speaker 1: political adversaries, even inside the Union, that were not wanting
Speaker 1: him to be president, that were not wanting him to
Speaker 1: get credit for certain battles. I mean, even inside the Union,
Speaker 1: there were people like jockeying for power and.
Speaker 3: So a lot of infighting. I mean, it was very
Speaker 3: it was it was kind of like modern day I mean,
Speaker 3: it was what modern day politics are.
Speaker 1: Well, except even more so because back then politics were
Speaker 1: much more geared towards military figures. Like if you you
Speaker 1: almost had to be in the military to some degree
Speaker 1: to be a politician. That's not entirely true, but like
Speaker 1: that was the way that people got ahead in life
Speaker 1: was going to the military, go to West Point. And
Speaker 1: so there was a lot of that, and so a
Speaker 1: lot of people wanted Grant to not look that good
Speaker 1: and had he had a bad reputation coming into it
Speaker 1: because he had basically been forced out of the army
Speaker 1: in California for drinking, and that's still they don't No
Speaker 1: one quite just says, yes, that's exactly what happened.
Speaker 4: That was it.
Speaker 2: I didn't interpret it that he was forced out. It
Speaker 2: was more like, oh, man, I took it from the
Speaker 2: stuff I was listening to. He was so melancholy about
Speaker 2: being so far away from his family and his child
Speaker 2: he hadn't seen. And yeah, plus the drinking, which is
Speaker 2: obviously the you know, alcohols of depressant sod.
Speaker 1: Was he fired or did he just like it's a
Speaker 1: little bit of all they give him.
Speaker 2: Did they give him the option like, okay, pal, you
Speaker 2: want to quit or you want us to fire you?
Speaker 4: Was it?
Speaker 1: That is exactly the way it happened.
Speaker 3: A lot of people felt like he could have fought it,
Speaker 3: like all of all. A lot of the people up
Speaker 3: there were like, ah, they he wasn't. It wasn't that
Speaker 3: bad what he did. He definitely could have fought this,
Speaker 3: but he was kind of like, I actually just want
Speaker 3: to go home, and he was very depressed. And but
Speaker 3: a lot of the generals thought it was kind of
Speaker 3: unjust that it wasn't what he did didn't didn't cross
Speaker 3: the line into uh. I can't remember the word they used,
Speaker 3: but he basically.
Speaker 1: Throughout his career, his drinking oftentimes didn't roll into his
Speaker 1: to his ability to do this job. And so they
Speaker 1: like knew that he was drinking. They knew that this
Speaker 1: was a little bit dangerous for someone in power to
Speaker 1: drink like this, but he would show up for work
Speaker 1: and just be ready to roll. And so that's why
Speaker 1: they were always like really uncomfortable, bit uncomfortable.
Speaker 4: We call that a.
Speaker 3: Functional alcohol and he wasn't just a high functioning alcoholic.
Speaker 3: He did abstain for a very long period of time.
Speaker 3: He was very specific when he would engage in it,
Speaker 3: and and so that like the record show, it would
Speaker 3: be after a war, so he kind of it was
Speaker 3: well timed alcoholism.
Speaker 4: Well.
Speaker 1: And then they would send people and this wasn't in
Speaker 1: my episode, but Lincoln actually sent a guy during the
Speaker 1: Civil War to spend an extended period of time with
Speaker 1: Grant and his armies. And he had a job to
Speaker 1: do to like report back on the supplies and how
Speaker 1: the troops were doing. But really they were like, hey,
Speaker 1: go down there and make sure that Grant is not
Speaker 1: too much yeah, exactly. And so this guy was with
Speaker 1: Grant's army for a long period of time, and he
Speaker 1: writes a very stunning, very very you know, good look
Speaker 1: at Grant.
Speaker 4: That guy right, there's the lynch pin to the whole thing.
Speaker 1: Yes, but Grant also knows what this guy's doing. Oh
Speaker 1: he does, I mean Grant. This is where I feel
Speaker 1: like Grant did have a high level of character or
Speaker 1: he just had a lot of moxy as he he
Speaker 1: knew that this guy was here to look at him,
Speaker 1: and he was on his best behavior like the whole time.
Speaker 1: So the guy writes back to Lincoln and says, there's
Speaker 1: not another man in this union that's his clear minded,
Speaker 1: sober and as good as you listeness Grant.
Speaker 3: And so he was known for turning his wine glass
Speaker 3: upside down at dinners like he didn't want I mean,
Speaker 3: he didn't take there. Self aware, Yeah, very self aware,
Speaker 3: very self aware and very I mean it was very
Speaker 3: predictable when he was going to get drunk.
Speaker 1: He also had debilitating migraine headaches, and so people would
Speaker 1: right back and there's all this written correspondence in civil
Speaker 1: War that we can track now, and people would say
Speaker 1: Grant is in his tent and is unable to speak
Speaker 1: or something. And it was always like was he drunk
Speaker 1: or is he having a migraine headache? Like you know,
Speaker 1: there there's a little bit of that, but without it sometimes.
Speaker 3: They would they would prescribe alcohol to treat the migraine headache.
Speaker 3: That's right, and so there, I mean, it's it's just
Speaker 3: kind of it's very messy, it's very metal.
Speaker 4: So at the.
Speaker 2: Battle doctor Jack Daniels right there, yeah, yeah, And this
Speaker 2: is where it's it's it's convoluted.
Speaker 1: At the Battle of Shiloh, which was one of the
Speaker 1: bloodiest battles, especially up until that point, it was like
Speaker 1: the Battle of the Civil War. There were reports that
Speaker 1: went back to Lincoln that that Grant was drunk during
Speaker 1: the Battle of Shiloh, and Grant they send somebody down
Speaker 1: to do a report and and Grant never lied about
Speaker 1: his drinking outright, or at least that's the way it portrayed.
Speaker 1: Maybe he did, but in the in the records, he
Speaker 1: would always kind of be like, yeah, that was bad,
Speaker 1: I'm sorry. And he basically says to the guy, he says, am,
Speaker 1: I do you think I'm drunk right now? And the
Speaker 1: guy goes no, and he goes, well, I was just
Speaker 1: as drunk then as I am. I was just as
Speaker 1: drunk then at Shiloh as I am now. He said,
Speaker 1: I hadn't had a drink of liquor and like an
Speaker 1: extended period of time. So some of it was hype,
Speaker 1: and then a lot of it came later when he
Speaker 1: became president. And we know that presidents are just in
Speaker 1: the crosshairs for everybody, sure, like if you're president, even
Speaker 1: if you're a like a well liked president, even Lincoln,
Speaker 1: I mean, Lincoln was today known as one of the
Speaker 1: greatest presidents, if not the greatest president, they say, just
Speaker 1: in his ability to lead and things he did, and
Speaker 1: he was you know, people hated him, so they're always
Speaker 1: trying to tear you down. So again we don't have
Speaker 1: the full story, but it's true that you mean, zip
Speaker 1: that up. It's true that he had a drinking problem.
Speaker 1: But this whole thing about the Lost Cause is interesting
Speaker 1: and uh and that's what Louis and Brooks Blevins told me,
Speaker 1: independent of each other, that the Lost Cause really targeted
Speaker 1: Ulysses s Grant. I mean, we don't really have all
Speaker 1: the information, but I mean, as it was portrayed on
Speaker 1: the podcast, did that seem legitimate that the Lost Cause
Speaker 1: was tearing him down.
Speaker 3: Uh, yeah, I mean you didn't. I didn't think you
Speaker 3: go and you went and ted.
Speaker 1: Or could it? Could it have been? I kind of
Speaker 1: portrayed it as is the reason I don't know anything
Speaker 1: about Grant and don't really am not don't think that
Speaker 1: highly of him because of the lost cause.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think that, Yeah, that was there.
Speaker 1: And I don't know. I don't. I honestly don't know
Speaker 1: if that's true. Do you think that's true, Brent.
Speaker 4: Man, I don't know.
Speaker 2: I mean, growing up in the seventies, fifty dollars bill
Speaker 2: was unlucky. Really, I was told that a fifty dollars
Speaker 2: bill was unlock.
Speaker 1: And Grant is on a fifty dollars bill.
Speaker 2: Grant was on the fifty dollar bill. Really, Now, I
Speaker 2: don't know if it was tied to that.
Speaker 1: Wow, I wish I would have known that. I've never
Speaker 1: heard that on the episode.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I was fifty dollars bill was unlucky. You didn't
Speaker 2: of course I didn't see me. Anybody else was tolding them.
Speaker 2: And if they had plenty, I mean, if they had
Speaker 2: a fifty dollar bill, obviously they were very lucky.
Speaker 5: So you know, honestly, now thinking about it, I can't
Speaker 5: remember the last time I saw a fifty dollars bill, but.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that was the Yeah, they make them, but that
Speaker 2: was I can't remember hearing that.
Speaker 4: I don't, you know. It was just a common, if
Speaker 4: common thing, that.
Speaker 2: That is that's unlucky, Like a four leaf clover is lucky.
Speaker 4: A fifty dollars bill was unlucky.
Speaker 6: Now, whether that's because Grant's face is on it, I
Speaker 6: don't know, but I recall that, and I thought about
Speaker 6: that driving up here today.
Speaker 1: Listening to m That's good Intel.
Speaker 4: Yeah, So was it from that, I don't know, Yeah, plausibly.
Speaker 1: Mm hmmm. We're gonna do potentially a little bit more
Speaker 1: on this idea of the lost Cause, because it's a
Speaker 1: it's a pretty real thing that plays out in reconstruction
Speaker 1: in a major way.
Speaker 3: But uh, I think it's interesting the lost cause. You know,
Speaker 3: working in education, things come along sometimes and people are
Speaker 3: always really paranoid about what who decides what gets taught
Speaker 3: in school, And that's always been kind of interesting to me.
Speaker 3: It feels like there's certain things we could just all
Speaker 3: agree on all the kids need to know, And I
Speaker 3: didn't realize that that's kind of simple thinking, you know,
Speaker 3: and when I first got into education, it was in
Speaker 3: two thousand and eight, and there were a bunch of major,
Speaker 3: i mean, just highly divisive arguments about some major curriculum
Speaker 3: changes that were happening in the US. And I don't
Speaker 3: even want to say it because it was just so polarizing.
Speaker 3: But it's kind of interesting because I remember at the
Speaker 3: time thinking, well, I bet we could come up with
Speaker 3: some things that we just all agree on that kids
Speaker 3: need to be taught. And then you read about this
Speaker 3: lost cause, and you read about the work that people
Speaker 3: went into to making sure certain things were taught certain ways,
Speaker 3: and you realize, no, there's probably really a lot that
Speaker 3: we can't agree on. There's a whole lot that you
Speaker 3: just can't agree on, and it the strategy involved in
Speaker 3: painting certain aspects of the Civil War a certain way
Speaker 3: and the effectiveness of that to the point that you're
Speaker 3: surprised that this guy's a good guy. Yeah, it's kind
Speaker 3: of interesting, it's super interesting. Yeah, and he's a complicated figure,
Speaker 3: but I'm not sure that he's more complicated than some
Speaker 3: of the other some of the other people that we
Speaker 3: I mean, like, I don't think you played this part,
Speaker 3: but I was in then interview, and they were talking
Speaker 3: about George Washington and his slaves, you know, and and
Speaker 3: George Washington free to slaves on his death, but while
Speaker 3: he was still alive, one escaped to Pennsylvania, I believe,
Speaker 3: and he tried to find him and get him brought back.
Speaker 3: That's George Washington, and and and have that guy brought
Speaker 3: back to him. And I don't think those are things
Speaker 3: that people think about when they think about George Washington.
Speaker 3: We think about him as this really great, great person.
Speaker 3: So I'm not sure that Grant was less complicated are
Speaker 3: more complicated than some of those people.
Speaker 1: Yeah, what about Grant owning the slave was again we
Speaker 1: you know, there's so much intel that we're trying to
Speaker 1: pack in here. But his wife came from this Marxuri
Speaker 1: family that owned a bunch of slaves, as many as
Speaker 1: twenty or so, and she carried with her into the
Speaker 1: marriage multiple slaves. And then Grant's father gave actual gave
Speaker 1: Grant a slave that he kept in as his property
Speaker 1: for like a year, and then finally he was like, no,
Speaker 1: I'm going to officially emancipate this guy. And then but
Speaker 1: by the end of the war, like things had shifted
Speaker 1: so much, you know, it became like this is the
Speaker 1: reason for the war is to stop this. It's just interesting.
Speaker 1: Any any thoughts on it?
Speaker 4: Man?
Speaker 5: I thought this episode was really really interesting. I think
Speaker 5: this might be my favorite one that we've done on
Speaker 5: the Civil War yet. And I think that it's interesting
Speaker 5: to look at a guy like like Grant, who you know,
Speaker 5: I have great appreciation for a guy like that who
Speaker 5: doesn't have that sense of and not ambition isn't the
Speaker 5: right word, but self self promotion. Really he's there to
Speaker 5: do what's required of him and do it well. I
Speaker 5: think that's an honorable I think that's an honorable trait.
Speaker 4: And yeah, he had.
Speaker 5: His own things that that that he.
Speaker 4: Had to deal with.
Speaker 5: But when I when I look at a guy who
Speaker 5: who you know, marries into this family, he's given a
Speaker 5: slave and after a year he realizes, hey, I don't
Speaker 5: want to do this.
Speaker 4: And the fact that.
Speaker 5: He wasn't like he didn't feel that pressure to keep
Speaker 5: the slave and he did what he felt was right.
Speaker 5: I think that's honorable, you know what I mean?
Speaker 1: I don't I think he didn't succumb to the pressure.
Speaker 4: No, he didn't, and.
Speaker 3: Especially the time in his life when it really would have.
Speaker 4: It would have benefited him.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean, his his own his own father in
Speaker 5: law said, if you bring your army to my land,
Speaker 5: I'm gonna shoot you, you know what I mean, like
Speaker 5: a like a rabbit. I mean, that's a that's talk
Speaker 5: about drawing some lines with your family, you know. But
Speaker 5: he was willing to do it because of what his
Speaker 5: personal convictions were. I think that's an honorable position. I
Speaker 5: didn't know much about Grant. You know, he kind of
Speaker 5: just he kind of just you know, blow by him
Speaker 5: in the history books a lot of times. And you know,
Speaker 5: I knew he was president, but but just seeing the
Speaker 5: things that would have made him a popular candidate to
Speaker 5: lead the country, you realize, oh, this guy had some
Speaker 5: some good stuff about him. And so I thought it
Speaker 5: was really I thought it was really really interesting just
Speaker 5: learning about him. I had great appreciation that, you know,
Speaker 5: he loved his wife. I mean he was he was
Speaker 5: really smitten with her. And it wasn't a I mean
Speaker 5: there had there had there had to have been something
Speaker 5: about her that he was drawn to, you know what
Speaker 5: I mean.
Speaker 4: And uh, and the fact.
Speaker 5: That he was so faithful to her, and and you know,
Speaker 5: they must have. I can't imagine what some of the
Speaker 5: conversations would have been like in their house with different
Speaker 5: you know, differing opinions on things. But he really valued
Speaker 5: her presence, you know what I mean. There's there's stories
Speaker 5: of him bringing her on the battlefield because he felt
Speaker 5: like he was better when she was there. You know,
Speaker 5: pretty interesting stuff.
Speaker 3: It's super interesting the thing with him and his wife,
Speaker 3: because in some ways, when when you're reading these books
Speaker 3: or when even I feel like when Louis talked about her,
Speaker 3: it was like they have a great relationship. This woman's
Speaker 3: a little bit crazy. Yeah, I mean that's kind of
Speaker 3: the way. That's what you feel. And when I'm listening
Speaker 3: to it, they kind of I don't know that the
Speaker 3: narrator feels a little bit demeaning to her in this
Speaker 3: in this book about Grant, and yet says things like
Speaker 3: the army, the company loved it when she was there,
Speaker 3: that she would come out and talk with him, spend
Speaker 3: a lot of time with the She brought up the
Speaker 3: absolute best in Grant. She you know, she kind of
Speaker 3: pushed him to greatness.
Speaker 1: Was it interesting how she had the dream? Yeah, in
Speaker 1: the eighteen fifties, when he is like kind of a loser.
Speaker 1: I mean, like had to drop out of the army
Speaker 1: basically because of his alcoholism. He's like selling firewood. His
Speaker 1: father in law and his father both just think, man,
Speaker 1: this guy, I wish he could just get his act together.
Speaker 1: And she has a dream. To me, it's always interesting
Speaker 1: in this historically how this stuff comes up. The dream
Speaker 1: is relayed to history by one of the slave women
Speaker 1: that Julia told the story to. Just think that's interesting
Speaker 1: because she was interviewed later. You know, she lived a
Speaker 1: long life and was owned by the Grants, and so
Speaker 1: she was interviewed and she was like, I remember when
Speaker 1: Julia had a dream that Ulysses was going to be president,
Speaker 1: and she just she just always saw this greatness in it.
Speaker 5: And Julia Julia was pretty attracted to till Us Grant
Speaker 5: as well. I mean she was pretty impressed with his
Speaker 5: horsemanship and his what did your graceful form?
Speaker 1: And so on the audio we keep talking about this audiobook,
Speaker 1: we took up who the author was about. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: Julie at one point said, what is.
Speaker 5: She's a quote of her that she she enjoyed his
Speaker 5: graceful form in the saddle.
Speaker 2: Oh, that's like pulling up with the t bird.
Speaker 1: Listened to that and it said she commented on his
Speaker 1: graceful form in the I paused it, and I said, misty,
Speaker 1: this is what a man was in the mule saddle,
Speaker 1: and the.
Speaker 4: Bear grease overall is on the saddle.
Speaker 3: I was literally sleeping.
Speaker 1: We were coming back from saddle sits. You a little
Speaker 1: different on the animal too, all right, So.
Speaker 3: We were coming back from the Presidential Museum and I
Speaker 3: wake up to these two cackling. It made me replay it.
Speaker 4: He's like, go back to you.
Speaker 1: This is the way a woman don't on him. Don't
Speaker 1: you see that? This is what made him great? And
Speaker 1: immediately went home and got on a bulldozer.
Speaker 5: Yeah, same thing, I mean similar, Yes, graceful form in
Speaker 5: the dozer.
Speaker 1: I thought it was super interesting. Their relationship.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think their relationship is interesting, and I think
Speaker 3: the way she's portrayed is kind of interesting. Like I
Speaker 3: think she was a little bit like her own her
Speaker 3: own memoirs. She didn't hurt help herself there, you know,
Speaker 3: the way she portrayed slavery and the way like just
Speaker 3: you could tell she kind of has she's a rose
Speaker 3: colored glasses type of she sees.
Speaker 1: This way she went nineties in her memoir Brent, this
Speaker 1: is the one little data point that's hard to get around,
Speaker 1: and it's hard to judge somebody based upon one thing.
Speaker 1: But basically she said this, this this little enslaved girl
Speaker 1: that grew up with her and they were just best
Speaker 1: of friends. According to her, when when the emancipation proclamation came,
Speaker 1: the girl left and she couldn't understand why the girl left.
Speaker 1: We said, well, we said that on the episode, did
Speaker 1: well she in eighteen nineties, she said that, Yeah, it
Speaker 1: wasn't like in eighteen sixty six. Right like thirty years later,
Speaker 1: she's like, I don't understand why she left. I mean,
Speaker 1: it just shows you a lack of awareness, just a
Speaker 1: little bit of lack of awareness, or maybe a lot
Speaker 1: of lack of awareness.
Speaker 3: But yeah, it's kind of hard to get around that.
Speaker 3: And then so I think that's part of why people
Speaker 3: perceiver the way they do. But and and because there's
Speaker 3: no doubt about it. In these biographies, she is not
Speaker 3: treated with the same respect that Grant is.
Speaker 4: Yeah, don't want to.
Speaker 2: Take him a year to realize he was doing something wrong.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, I like the horsemanship stuff. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: just it's it to me that was cool that he
Speaker 1: was such a good horseman. The best story of his
Speaker 1: horsemanship there, there's there's, it's peppered all through the Grant
Speaker 1: world is how good he was on a horse. The
Speaker 1: one time that it really stood out was he was
Speaker 1: on his horse and there was a battle and they
Speaker 1: were getting away on a on a river boat and
Speaker 1: all the men he was the last one on the boat,
Speaker 1: which says something. But all the men had got on
Speaker 1: the boat and they're like getting shot at, like like
Speaker 1: bullets are flying over their head. And he's on his
Speaker 1: horse and there's a single plank going onto this boat,
Speaker 1: and he takes his thoroughbred horse and walks it across
Speaker 1: a single plank. And the implication was it was you know,
Speaker 1: he says.
Speaker 4: A lot about the horse. Yeah, and Grant.
Speaker 5: Grant was good at picking them.
Speaker 1: So he takes the horse across this single plank and
Speaker 1: jumps it into the boat, and you know, all the
Speaker 1: guys are watching and they're like, wow, what a horseman.
Speaker 1: And I can tell you that when Grant says it's.
Speaker 7: Couldn't get slow trapped to do that.
Speaker 1: Buddy, you'd have been You would have been a Confederate.
Speaker 4: Camp.
Speaker 3: And there's there's another story about him in the Mexican
Speaker 3: American War where they needed to get something, uh, really
Speaker 3: close to the lines and he rides his horse and
Speaker 3: he basically comes off the saddle and turns his body
Speaker 3: sideways and uses the poor horse as a shield as
Speaker 3: he and he gets really close to enemy fire and
Speaker 3: he gets through and he gets to the gets his
Speaker 3: message across. But yeah, I think he was. He was
Speaker 3: really an impressive horseman. And I thought the story. You know,
Speaker 3: there's parts of that story about him negotiating for the
Speaker 3: horse where and you told, yeah, you told that, But
Speaker 3: I just think it's he actually when he was a
Speaker 3: general in the army, he he was like embarrassed about it. Still,
Speaker 3: he brought it up as a general in the army
Speaker 3: and was like, well, like, we're not we're not projecting
Speaker 3: that on him. When he went into some room, he
Speaker 3: was like, well, but there was that one time that
Speaker 3: I when he was like eleven years old and he
Speaker 3: didn't negotia for the horse. He told the guy it
Speaker 3: was such a point of humiliation. You could tell, you know,
Speaker 3: his whole life, he's someone that's kind of plagued by
Speaker 3: these failures and this embarrassment, and he's got this overpowering
Speaker 3: dad who's just a lot to handle and a lot
Speaker 3: to grow up with, and he can't ever meet those expectations.
Speaker 3: And then he just fails and fails and fails. And
Speaker 3: if you look at if you look at kind of
Speaker 3: the journey of his life, you see that as actually
Speaker 3: serendipitous that all those failings happen. He wouldn't have gotten
Speaker 3: to where he was, and we wouldn't have the outcome.
Speaker 3: I don't think if you didn't have a Ulysses, says Grant,
Speaker 3: the other generals were just so leary of so leary
Speaker 3: of their own ambition and their.
Speaker 1: Own they were stifled by their fear of messing up.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think that's probably the biggest thing that I learned
Speaker 1: from Grant, is that all these other generals that had
Speaker 1: political ambitions, that had just ambitions to just be great,
Speaker 1: and all of a sudden they're leading these big armies
Speaker 1: during this time when this is the way you became great,
Speaker 1: this is my one shot, and they were crippled by fear.
Speaker 1: Grant comes in there selling firewood on the streets of Galena,
Speaker 1: like he's there to try to just like he just
Speaker 1: wants to make a living. At one time, he says,
Speaker 1: they asked him about his political ambition, and he says,
Speaker 1: you know, I'd like to be the mayor of Galena
Speaker 1: for at least a long enough time to fix the
Speaker 1: sidewalk to my house. Like that was his that was
Speaker 1: his political ambition. And he gets in there and he's like,
Speaker 1: I don't care what people think of me in the future.
Speaker 1: We just have to win.
Speaker 4: Now for mayor.
Speaker 2: You get voted mayor, and you fix the road coming
Speaker 2: to your house, you get you get a risk exactly.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, And I think that's so huge. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, fear of failure just just brings down your
Speaker 1: ability to produce so much. And if if you've got if,
Speaker 1: you've got nothing to lose.
Speaker 3: And I think he had failed. I mean he was
Speaker 3: at the bottom for a decade, you know, he had.
Speaker 3: It's hard to fear fear something you've already gone through
Speaker 3: an experience.
Speaker 2: It's like playing that prevent defense and you're ahead at
Speaker 2: the end of the game. You're playing that prevent defense,
Speaker 2: it usually prevents you from winning the ball game.
Speaker 1: Mm hmmm.
Speaker 4: That's what those cats were doing. Mm hmmm mm hmm, play.
Speaker 1: It safe, play it safe. Yeah. Yeah, they were playing
Speaker 1: it safe and they couldn't win.
Speaker 3: And that's part of why he got a reputation for
Speaker 3: being like they called him the butcher, you know, because
Speaker 3: he was so aggressive that a lot of people perceived
Speaker 3: that needless lives were lost.
Speaker 1: And well, and there's just so many different little things
Speaker 1: coming into this. This was during a time when the
Speaker 1: chivalry was still a big part of war. So like,
Speaker 1: if you had your enemy pinned up against the wall,
Speaker 1: you might be like, Okay, let's come to terms of
Speaker 1: agreement before I send in the bayonets to like kill
Speaker 1: every one of you. Yeah, And and that he just
Speaker 1: saw that that there was no way forward with with
Speaker 1: that kind of action. And so yeah, that's where a
Speaker 1: lot of people were like, this guy is a maniac.
Speaker 5: But I feel like that's not that's not consistent. Like
Speaker 5: I don't feel like you could you could validate that
Speaker 5: based on his time in the Mexican American War when
Speaker 5: he talked about it being an unjust war, you know
Speaker 5: what I mean, he his involvement and that was almost
Speaker 5: you could tell he regretted it because he said it
Speaker 5: was so unjust. So I think his motivations during the
Speaker 5: Civil War were like, we have to get the Union
Speaker 5: back together, and this is what I see as necessary
Speaker 5: to get the Union back.
Speaker 1: Together, right, yeah, and that that became his like pathway
Speaker 1: to peace, was like, we have to have to win
Speaker 1: destroy the South, right, you know, And I mean he
Speaker 1: probably wasn't wrong, you know, but there were other options.
Speaker 1: That's what when you really get into this, you realize
Speaker 1: that there could have been like some compromise. I mean
Speaker 1: that that would have been a possible version of the story,
Speaker 1: was that there's some compromise and they're like, well, you know,
Speaker 1: you can keep slaves in this section, or maybe you
Speaker 1: keep them from twenty years and then they've got to
Speaker 1: be it's totally gone. I mean, there's a lot of
Speaker 1: different versions. But finally Lincoln and all these guys were like, no,
Speaker 1: we gotta we got to crush this now. The you know,
Speaker 1: ending slavery becomes the focal point of the war, which
Speaker 1: we learned in the last episode keeps out European countries
Speaker 1: from coming in. Just so much wild stuff. I was
Speaker 1: going to say, though, Grant his failure really helped him
Speaker 1: to be empathetic towards people that he would beat, even
Speaker 1: though he was not the guy you wanted to be
Speaker 1: in a battle against, because he was gonna, he was
Speaker 1: gonna do whatever it took. He was the guy you
Speaker 1: kind of wanted to surrender to. Yeah, I mean in
Speaker 1: a way, he was quite generous and empathetic with people.
Speaker 1: Over and over, like when they would surrender, he would
Speaker 1: be like he was arms, keep your.
Speaker 3: Horses, Yeah, but required total surrender.
Speaker 1: That's true.
Speaker 3: I mean that, like there's a lot of stories about
Speaker 3: him negotiating and people being shocked that he wouldn't be
Speaker 3: more like compromising in the and he would just say, no, no,
Speaker 3: we're only gonna there's there's no terms except for total surrender.
Speaker 3: So generous, but he was. He was the one. I
Speaker 3: think that the thing about Grant is that he was
Speaker 3: the the strategy. His strategy worked, and his strategy was,
Speaker 3: you know, choke him at every single point, choke you know.
Speaker 3: And so he he commissioned Shridan and he commissioned Sherman.
Speaker 3: Those two were fighting at different different locations, and up
Speaker 3: until that point it was almost like there multiple wars
Speaker 3: going on. But he was the one that brought everything
Speaker 3: into synchrony so that you could really choke off the
Speaker 3: I mean that that's and that's what worked, is that
Speaker 3: every they fought all the battles at the same time
Speaker 3: on the front and cut the supply line to the Confederacy.
Speaker 3: And also you know, held held Lee where he was,
Speaker 3: you know, held him on the defensive, and that that
Speaker 3: ultimately won the war. So he was yes, generous once
Speaker 3: you surrendered, but accepted nothing less than total surrender.
Speaker 1: That's true. Well, I don't know how we could have
Speaker 1: this episode without talking about the Dukes of Hazzard. I
Speaker 1: brought him.
Speaker 5: A pivotal part of my childhood.
Speaker 3: Give us a part of the podcast. When Clay sang
Speaker 3: the entire theme song, I thought.
Speaker 1: Ye, did I really do that?
Speaker 3: You take a bunch of it? Not the entire theme song?
Speaker 1: Just a good old boy.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we got that, we heard that, we can.
Speaker 1: I never really thought about it from the from the
Speaker 1: perspective of the of the lost cause, but the Duke's
Speaker 1: hazard kinda it's like the story just a good old boys,
Speaker 1: never meaning no harm beats all you ever saw, been
Speaker 1: in trouble with the law since the day they were born.
Speaker 5: Rev Roads with you in the s ten pickup not
Speaker 5: circing nineteen Circle two thousand listening to that song.
Speaker 1: I mean they're driving a nineteen sixty nine orange Dodge
Speaker 1: charger called the Generally with a rebel flag on the
Speaker 1: top of it.
Speaker 3: And when Bear Newcombe was born, we lived in a
Speaker 3: house right across from the local school district, and some
Speaker 3: teenager had that exact same had made a replication Generally
Speaker 3: added Generally that also when you honk the horn, it
Speaker 3: would play Dixie. That's your lifetime, but anymore.
Speaker 7: I've seen one in the last like seven years.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, that's a whole nother story and a whole
Speaker 1: nother podcast, like The Generally and The Dukes of Hazard
Speaker 1: and all that, Like never.
Speaker 3: Did you have one? Josh? Oh yeah, my brothers.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Steve Vanella had him shirt in Michigan. How old
Speaker 1: were you during Duke's Hazard days? That's probably your prime?
Speaker 4: Seventy nine is that what it was? Yeah? Thirteen?
Speaker 2: Oh man, that was worth the prime everything. I think
Speaker 2: it came on Friday, I can't remember, but oh yeah,
Speaker 2: I love it.
Speaker 1: I watched every episode.
Speaker 4: I love that show.
Speaker 2: But I liked Whaling Jennings long before I ever liked
Speaker 2: The Dukes of Hazzard.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well I got you.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it was a cool show. I liked it. Yeah, well.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and it it. It's complicated now because.
Speaker 2: People make it complicated. You can make anything complicated. I
Speaker 2: didn't see any hatred or anybody on that.
Speaker 4: Show except Crooked Crooked police boss Hog. Nobody liked him.
Speaker 5: And Roscoe well, even Roscoe had a few Yeah, he
Speaker 5: had some endearing qualities.
Speaker 4: Yet Boss Hogg, though he was bad.
Speaker 1: That if you could gauge American entertainment, there would not
Speaker 1: be another show that was like had the cool factor.
Speaker 4: Though.
Speaker 1: If I'm as the Dukes of Hazard period for a
Speaker 1: Southern boy, I'm just telling. I'm just telling the way
Speaker 1: I see it. I'm not trying to just the way
Speaker 1: I see it. I mean it was and and and
Speaker 1: it was also during a time and there weren't many options.
Speaker 4: You know what.
Speaker 5: I remember watching the Dukes of Hazard, but I don't
Speaker 5: remember my parents.
Speaker 4: Watching the Dukes Hassard it.
Speaker 1: I don't think anybody remembers their parents watching it.
Speaker 3: I remember my parents watching like Beverly Hillbillies and Andy Griffith.
Speaker 3: Mm hmmm, so I mean they.
Speaker 5: Watched it was Yeah, I'm just I'm just trying to
Speaker 5: think of my mom My, mom wouldn't have watched that.
Speaker 5: She wouldn't have liked it, and I don't maybe it
Speaker 5: was the type of television show it was. My mom
Speaker 5: was a little more into Magnum p I. Yeah, for
Speaker 5: obvious reasons. Yeah, and Harry chested Ustachio. Yeah, but yeah,
Speaker 5: it was definitely targeted toward that thirteen age demographic.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Well I can't. I'm not endorsing the show completely.
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm not endorsing the show. I'm not I'm
Speaker 1: not saying it was good or b. I don't go
Speaker 1: back and watch reruns. I don't like it didn't come
Speaker 1: up until like this, So it's not like you understand
Speaker 1: what I'm saying. Yeah, I'm just saying at the time
Speaker 1: the show was compelling. Yeah, but yeah, I mean and
Speaker 1: you know, yeah, they're parts of the show that.
Speaker 2: They were single handedly responsible for, like that model Charger
Speaker 2: disappearing from the planet.
Speaker 5: Yes, everybody wanted for real, No, I mean they them Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 5: there were like three or four hundred of them. They
Speaker 5: went through you, Yes, because every time they would jump one,
Speaker 5: it was.
Speaker 1: Done done so and they jumped them every every times. Yeah,
Speaker 1: go around the corner.
Speaker 4: I like it when the tires would squeal on gravel. Exactly.
Speaker 2: It was as dumb as me or getting a skateboard
Speaker 2: from my twelfth birthday.
Speaker 3: And living on a dirt road.
Speaker 1: Dirt road, you had a skateboard.
Speaker 2: I rode it from here to the door on the
Speaker 2: car port. That's all the concrete we had. Yeah, so
Speaker 2: I was Tony Hawk for like ten feet eight.
Speaker 3: Maybe people don't realize how impractical dirt roads really are
Speaker 3: for for leisure. You know, gol to ride a bicycle
Speaker 3: on a dirt road.
Speaker 5: Oh man, I loved it because you could lock up
Speaker 5: them brakes and.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm not sure if that's And if you live
Speaker 3: on a dirt road, you also have to take the
Speaker 3: trash out like half a mile.
Speaker 4: It's true.
Speaker 3: I remember telling someone we were we were talking about trash.
Speaker 3: We were talking at work about like something about the trash.
Speaker 3: I was like, well, yeah, it's kind of a big
Speaker 3: deal around our house because if you leave it on
Speaker 3: the porch, raccoon's getting it. And if you you know,
Speaker 3: that means that whenever that like, it's the worst possible
Speaker 3: chorge to give one of our kids.
Speaker 5: Because I was I was eighteen, we had to drive
Speaker 5: our trash into town.
Speaker 4: We had a burning brow. Yeah, burned our trash.
Speaker 2: And then when that what wouldn't burn got that, that
Speaker 2: fifty five gallon barrel filled up to it and the
Speaker 2: old creek down there started over.
Speaker 4: Those were the good old days.
Speaker 6: It was a gully like behind them. Okay, I got
Speaker 6: the train, but it's eventually going to.
Speaker 4: The water exactly.
Speaker 5: That's what happened back in the day.
Speaker 4: That's what everybody was doing.
Speaker 5: Yeah, well, we better wrap this up and get to
Speaker 5: a watermelon sale.
Speaker 1: Which is by the time this comes out will have
Speaker 1: already happened.
Speaker 5: We'll be rich.
Speaker 1: Hey today, today is this is the day that we
Speaker 1: are going to sell those watermelons that you've heard so
Speaker 1: much about. And uh, well maybe you haven't, but we're
Speaker 1: selling watermelons. And this is part of my lifelong dream fulfilled.
Speaker 3: It's huge for Clay. I mean, like this is this
Speaker 3: is probably bigger than if Clay were given an opportunity
Speaker 3: to perform on the stage of the Grand Ole Opery
Speaker 3: or sell watermelons on the side of the road. I
Speaker 3: think it would be a toss up for him.
Speaker 1: Well, I mean I have played with Evan Felker. The
Speaker 1: term part heard today, Boy, I was walking around Nashville
Speaker 1: this week and I was seeing these guys playing at
Speaker 1: like ten am in these little cafes, laughing at them,
Speaker 1: and I went up and just tapped when I'm on
Speaker 1: the boot. When I walked byes up on the stage
Speaker 1: and I'd be like, hey, man, I'm hoping for I
Speaker 1: was with Evan Felker. I played little music with him, winked.
Speaker 2: S he actually Evan actually opened for us.
Speaker 4: I remind you of that.
Speaker 1: Well, yeah, watermelons will be high on that list. And
Speaker 1: these are good watermelons from Brent's buddy and Cabot lay Yeah,
Speaker 1: layed high goy. He's got an incredible thing going down there.
Speaker 3: Man.
Speaker 2: He is so good and he's such a good person too.
Speaker 2: He's just he's just a great guy, a great family,
Speaker 2: his son, and I know them all and they're just
Speaker 2: they're just good, hard working folks man.
Speaker 4: And they are in watermelons.
Speaker 1: He's called the Cabot Patch, a Cabot Patch.
Speaker 4: It's on Highway eighty nine in Cabin Cabot, Arkansas.
Speaker 1: And it's a they sell beaches and watermelons and BlackBerry.
Speaker 4: And you can find him on He's got his Facebook page.
Speaker 1: The Cabin patch, but he and he grows.
Speaker 4: I g yeah, he grows all of himself on his
Speaker 4: grandmother's land. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Very cool.
Speaker 4: Wow, yep.
Speaker 1: Yeah the watermelons. I mean, I said it and I'm
Speaker 1: in it too.
Speaker 4: I know how you likes. Son.
Speaker 1: The watermelon I had yesterday, that sweet gem like a
Speaker 1: black diamond, dark watermelon. It was as good a melon
Speaker 1: as I've ever had.
Speaker 4: It was.
Speaker 1: It was just right now. We are probably the peak
Speaker 1: of the season, but uh yeah, we're going to be
Speaker 1: selling them today here in West Fork.
Speaker 4: Yep, we got we got to go back in time.
Speaker 1: For the load of watermelons. So all right, thank you, goy, Brent,
Speaker 1: thanks for coming up, mister, thanks for being the Covis
Speaker 1: hot seat.
Speaker 3: Always good to be here.
Speaker 1: God see you nice nice coveralls, Thank you overalls. Thank
Speaker 1: you keep the wild place as well, because that's where
Speaker 1: there's stuff, right
Speaker 3: M