Speaker 1: My name is Clay Nukeleman. This is a production of
Speaker 1: the Bear Grease podcast called The Bear Grease Render, where
Speaker 1: we render down, dive deeper, and look behind the scenes
Speaker 1: of the actual bear Grease podcast, presented by FHF Gear,
Speaker 1: American Maid, purpose built hunting and fishing gear that's designed
Speaker 1: to be as rugged as the place as we explore.
Speaker 2: So, Tim got in trouble last night.
Speaker 1: He did Tim the squirrel dog.
Speaker 3: He almost never does anything wrong. He's very smart. We
Speaker 3: were gone for the weekend. He might have been neglected
Speaker 3: a little bit by his caretakers.
Speaker 1: And by neglected meaning he wasn't like pamper pampered effort
Speaker 1: and petted and table food like. Perhaps he had to
Speaker 1: live like a normal dog for that day.
Speaker 3: He got in our trash last night, which is he's
Speaker 3: never ever done before.
Speaker 1: And well it wasn't last night because he was up
Speaker 1: last night, but he got into the trash. I walk
Speaker 1: outside today and this morning and trash was all over
Speaker 1: our porch. I had left some trash out. I angrily
Speaker 1: pick up the trash and we tried to figure out
Speaker 1: what it was. I mean, we don't really see stray dogs.
Speaker 1: We did have a stray pig out last night.
Speaker 2: Possible it was our straight pig.
Speaker 1: Yes, it was definitely our pig. Maybe it was a pig,
Speaker 1: maybe it wasn't. I let Tim out, and I already
Speaker 1: picked up the trash, resacked it up, put it on
Speaker 1: the porch, about to take it down to our trash can,
Speaker 1: which is a long way from.
Speaker 2: Our house, a tenth of a mile from our house.
Speaker 1: And I walk out and Tim has shredded the trash
Speaker 1: and it's everywhere, which is so uncharacteristic. Tim is like
Speaker 1: the perfect dog, like he he just does everything right
Speaker 1: and then so you.
Speaker 3: Can and so so. Anyway, so he seemed like he
Speaker 3: got chestised pretty hard. And it's because Tim has this
Speaker 3: huge shame complex.
Speaker 1: He's like a He was chestised very hard.
Speaker 3: If Tim were an vineagram, he'd need an enneagram one.
Speaker 3: And so he perceives. He takes everything he really wants
Speaker 3: to do right. He's trying to read the room at
Speaker 3: all times, trying to be morally upright.
Speaker 2: Whatever.
Speaker 3: Anyway, clearly he did wrong, and he has been hiding
Speaker 3: behind the table all day long.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I guess, so, I guess so, so Clay.
Speaker 3: And I are standing like how far distance wise feet wise,
Speaker 3: would you say and a half feet Oh, I think
Speaker 3: it was longer than that. It was further than that
Speaker 3: because we were and I said, what did you? I said,
Speaker 3: did you did you get Tim in big trouble because
Speaker 3: he's been hiding all day? And Klay said, Tim, come here,
Speaker 3: and Clay's like trying to make up with him Tim.
Speaker 2: Tim hikes his butt up in the air.
Speaker 1: He does this weird the weirdest.
Speaker 3: Thing I've ever seen an animal do. He hikes his
Speaker 3: butt up in the air, and he like SLINKs to Clay.
Speaker 1: It's like a sidewalk. He's like walking towards me with
Speaker 1: his head.
Speaker 3: His legs are up really high every step he takes,
Speaker 3: and he's like coming over to Clay. He gets to
Speaker 3: me first, and he comes and he like wraps his
Speaker 3: legs and body around me and like slides over to Clay.
Speaker 1: This whole time he's looking at me because I have
Speaker 1: I have shamed him. And you know, I think you
Speaker 1: can tell a lot about a man by his dog
Speaker 1: scolding voice. I know for sure, Spencer, Yeah, I could
Speaker 1: scold that. I tremble thinking about about yours.
Speaker 4: It looks like a mange. When I'm done with.
Speaker 1: All I did was give Tim a a full throttle
Speaker 1: scolding and I threw my hat at him.
Speaker 4: Threw my hat and you know, you went junior high
Speaker 4: coach on him.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: But he finally walked over to me and I I
Speaker 1: just kind of rubbed him behind the ear a little
Speaker 1: bit and he kind of warmed up to me and
Speaker 1: he thinks everything's okay now ye. So yeah, that was
Speaker 1: that was Tim the squirrel Dog. Welcome to the Beargary
Speaker 1: shrender everybody, it's a man. Do we ever have? We
Speaker 1: have a very interesting group of people here today. Two
Speaker 1: new guests on the podcast. There's seven of us here.
Speaker 1: We only have six headphones. We've got one mystery guest
Speaker 1: who will be revealed after I introduced regular guests. To
Speaker 1: my left, I have my lovely wife, doctor Misty Nukeom Welcome.
Speaker 2: Thank you, happreat to see you.
Speaker 1: Thank Christy, you're becoming such a regular. I don't even
Speaker 1: I want to give you a nickname.
Speaker 5: Okay, we'll think about that.
Speaker 1: Yes, so Christy Spillmaker, why.
Speaker 2: She's please don't code.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: They so great to have you. Thank you, Josh Landbridge spilmmaker. Yes, hey,
Speaker 1: I found the book that you inspired me to buy
Speaker 1: would you would you read this if I if I
Speaker 1: lent it to you, Yes, Barringia, the last Giant of Beringia.
Speaker 1: I remember when I read this back in like two
Speaker 1: thousand and four or whenever I remember. I just remember
Speaker 1: reading it being like, is this sky real Scott Pictures. No,
Speaker 1: it's good, it's good. It's a great book.
Speaker 6: You've underlined some things in here.
Speaker 1: Always always wait till you got to see some of
Speaker 1: my new books. That was back in the early days.
Speaker 1: To Josh has left, Tarrell across the Creek Farm thou
Speaker 1: Wag Spencer. Great to have Terrell. I've never called you Teryl.
Speaker 4: Why did?
Speaker 1: When I get on this I call you? Spence is
Speaker 1: our local pastured poultry farmer. Foul wag, longtime dear friend
Speaker 1: of ours and Spence, why don't you introduce our our
Speaker 1: real guest.
Speaker 7: Of the day.
Speaker 4: Yeah, a former Yeah, drum roll, drum roll, former Cross
Speaker 4: County Arkansas, Rice queen and much better half. And Carla Spencer.
Speaker 8: Carla, this is big. I've tried to get you on
Speaker 8: here before and stuff just happened. She's a talented woman's
Speaker 8: in demand. Man, Hey, Carla. Every time I see Carla,
Speaker 8: she's always I can tell I keep a beat on
Speaker 8: people on how close they're paying attention to Bear Grease,
Speaker 8: you know, with friends, and a lot of them are
Speaker 8: just kind of posers. I mean they're like, oh, man,
Speaker 8: that whole call your series, that was great, and I'm like, dude,
Speaker 8: that was six months ago, and you know, stuff like that,
Speaker 8: like I'm filing away.
Speaker 1: Sometimes I say it directly, other times I hold it
Speaker 1: back and just file it away. It's like, okay, kind
Speaker 1: of behind stuff like that. Carla stops me on the road,
Speaker 1: like the day of pod cast comes out and she's like,
Speaker 1: oh excited, Yeah, so you should have been here a
Speaker 1: long time ago.
Speaker 4: Well yea, and not on your game now.
Speaker 1: Great to have your Carlo, and you were raising the Delta.
Speaker 1: We're going to talk about all this. I was the
Speaker 1: real mister River Delta. Yeah, the real deal, the h
Speaker 1: our mystery guest though first time appearance, actually not No.
Speaker 2: He's been on here for.
Speaker 1: You think this young man has been on this podcast before.
Speaker 2: Without a shadow of doubt.
Speaker 1: He's been on this podcast Montana.
Speaker 4: Yeah, shamed me on my own River Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean, like just mystery guest is Bear John Newcom
Speaker 1: Good to see brother, huge fan huge fan, Big fan
Speaker 1: tell us about that bullet. First of all, how long
Speaker 1: did it take you to grow that sucker? What do
Speaker 1: you feed it? It's been about a three year cycle.
Speaker 6: It's down officially below the collar.
Speaker 2: I think he's going to have to give it a
Speaker 2: little snip stick before. What I think is.
Speaker 1: Funny in our school about the Bear is going to
Speaker 1: be a senior in high school and Josh is his principal.
Speaker 2: And that's not at all true.
Speaker 4: Art, but he just got a little more business up front.
Speaker 3: Now there's a pretty strict uniform policy. What I love
Speaker 3: about about bears bullet is he just described it as
Speaker 3: a cycle. One of my favorite Bears mullet stories is
Speaker 3: that when Bear was you know, Bears, Bears had heis
Speaker 3: and lows in his academic journey. And I'm not trying
Speaker 3: to throw you out.
Speaker 4: Of the platform.
Speaker 3: But one time Bears g p a fell below what
Speaker 3: Clay thought was appropriate. And Clay said, you can have
Speaker 3: a mullet, but you can't be.
Speaker 1: The So you can have a mull it, don't act
Speaker 1: like a person that has a mullet. I was like,
Speaker 1: it's okay if you have a mullet, But.
Speaker 6: Clay comes single handedly offending every mullet where.
Speaker 1: The author of that book, man, yeah, that's God bless him.
Speaker 2: He had to trim it up and he got a
Speaker 2: g p A up.
Speaker 6: Then he never heard of that being a reward, like
Speaker 6: if you get your GPS, you.
Speaker 4: Can have a mullet until then a three point mullet.
Speaker 1: Every point of g p A is like an extra jus,
Speaker 1: you get a four point zero sound.
Speaker 6: If you take some AP classes, you get some lines.
Speaker 1: Oh man, he had stripes for a while.
Speaker 9: So Missy, I thought you were going to tell the
Speaker 9: story about him getting a technical.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, him really good.
Speaker 4: So we had what was a technical mullet.
Speaker 3: Correlation was strong, Yeah, it was strong, and we had
Speaker 3: you know, back during COVID, you there were all these
Speaker 3: like rules governing games, and so it was a very
Speaker 3: difficult time to keep up a basketball program because schools,
Speaker 3: you know, a whole team would get it and have
Speaker 3: to cancel their game. And that December of twenty twenty,
Speaker 3: I think that kept happening and for people who don't know,
Speaker 3: our state remained pretty open, but at certain points things
Speaker 3: would start to kind of slow down. So anyway, Bear
Speaker 3: had a mullet during that time. We had a lot
Speaker 3: of cancelations. Bear John, we decided one night, hey, we're
Speaker 3: just going to do like a spirit night. Our kids
Speaker 3: have all been around each other, so we had refs
Speaker 3: already hired, We had the gym and everything. So we
Speaker 3: had a game and it was just like a blue
Speaker 3: and gray game. So our team played each other and.
Speaker 1: It was a scrimmage.
Speaker 3: It was like a scrimmage basically, and our coach was
Speaker 3: highly offended at Bear's mullet, like he just hated it.
Speaker 3: And he came over to the ref and he said, hey,
Speaker 3: in this next play, could you please, could you please call.
Speaker 1: That guy out?
Speaker 3: And she was great, she was She totally played a
Speaker 3: long and she blew the whistle and she looked at
Speaker 3: Bear and she said technical foul.
Speaker 2: And Bear was like, what, he's in the.
Speaker 1: Middle of the game of the crowd scrimmage, but there's
Speaker 1: like a real basketball game.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And she called technical found and then she did
Speaker 3: this hand motion like sweet bag and she said technical foul.
Speaker 2: That's an offensive hair, dudelet. And all of.
Speaker 3: The moms, because all the moms were also offended that
Speaker 3: we let Bear get this hair haircut, and all the
Speaker 3: moms in the stand just lit up. It was the
Speaker 3: most like they started cheering. They were like, yes, it
Speaker 3: was kick them out out of the game.
Speaker 2: Cut your hair.
Speaker 1: Sorry you had to go through that, son. Well okay,
Speaker 1: so I brought you on for one story. This is
Speaker 1: like a one shot wonder story. Tell me about the
Speaker 1: saga of the Hillbilly Tarpin. Hillbilly Tarpin is a gar
Speaker 1: on fly Okay, yes, well it wasn't quite on a fly. Well, okay,
Speaker 1: just tell you the whole cality sequence.
Speaker 6: It's a worthy technicality.
Speaker 7: Yeah, okay, Well for some backstory, I've been trying to
Speaker 7: catch a gar on a fly rod for like almost
Speaker 7: a year and a half now, and I've used like
Speaker 7: the nylon rope that everybody says.
Speaker 1: That, like a thousands of people on Instagram have told
Speaker 1: me thank you. Yeah, yeah, yeah, So I did that
Speaker 1: like a lot last year.
Speaker 4: I had a few said it wouldn't work.
Speaker 1: I had a few like, hit it, but they immediately
Speaker 1: spit it out.
Speaker 7: They're pretty like pressured gar Like I know a lot
Speaker 7: of people who try and pressure it's like, yeah, it's like.
Speaker 4: I can't get caught by a guy at the bullet
Speaker 4: a fly fisher with the mullet.
Speaker 1: Have you ever been swimming across and one grab your.
Speaker 6: Bullet tangled up in that?
Speaker 4: That's a trick man. Yeah.
Speaker 7: And so I know like a lot of people who
Speaker 7: try and catch gar at this particular spot, and I
Speaker 7: think they've just kind of got it figured out, Like
Speaker 7: Uncle Zach has caught one there before using the nylon.
Speaker 1: Oh really yeah, our Zach nukelem yep.
Speaker 4: Wow.
Speaker 1: And so I've tried it before. I've had him take it.
Speaker 7: I've had him go for it and swerve it, but
Speaker 7: I've never had it really like get tangled up right.
Speaker 7: And so Uncle Josh actually made me like a really
Speaker 7: nice one with like a dumbbell head on it, and
Speaker 7: it was like a yellow nylon rope, nice and feathers
Speaker 7: and it was like a real fly like it wasn't
Speaker 7: like just like the rope, but it did have the
Speaker 7: rope in it, and I had to take that. But
Speaker 7: they just like took it so soft and spit it
Speaker 7: out so quick. It didn't do anything. And so I
Speaker 7: was out the other day and I had just like
Speaker 7: what's called like a streamer on which basically is supposed
Speaker 7: to just.
Speaker 1: Look like a little bit fish.
Speaker 7: Yeah, So I was there with the streamer, and I
Speaker 7: was I was trying to catch bass because it's a
Speaker 7: real where I'm at is like a real deep pocket
Speaker 7: in this river. And for the most part, it's just shallow.
Speaker 7: There's a few kind of maybe like three footholes, but
Speaker 7: then you get here and it's I mean, it's like
Speaker 7: seven or eight feet.
Speaker 4: And it's really hot and I right now and so
Speaker 4: like the river's really there's only a few habitable spots
Speaker 4: and that's kind of a honey hole where he's at.
Speaker 7: Yeah, and it's it's a real it's probably the widest
Speaker 7: point of the river for a long time, so there's
Speaker 7: whitest and deepest. So there's there's like a few bluffs
Speaker 7: and rocks on the side of this little hole. And
Speaker 7: basically I was fishing next to these bluffs because there's
Speaker 7: caves that go back in them where there's bass and
Speaker 7: just you know, the gar will sometimes you go back.
Speaker 4: There, mermaid.
Speaker 7: Yeah, And so I was trying to catch them, and
Speaker 7: I caught like a little of brim.
Speaker 1: I think it was like a long eared sunfish.
Speaker 7: The real colorful ones long eer ye and uh, and
Speaker 7: it I kind of fought it and got it in
Speaker 7: and I see a gar go right out in front
Speaker 7: of me probably, and I'm standing on like this rock
Speaker 7: that's about three feet above the water, and I just
Speaker 7: kind of like put it out there in front of
Speaker 7: that gar and it goes for it and takes it
Speaker 7: and basically it pulls it off the hook. And so
Speaker 7: I was like, huh, I wonder if I could catch
Speaker 7: one this way. And so I tied on a midge,
Speaker 7: zebra midge, which is something that's no bigger than like
Speaker 7: an apple seed maybe, and I put it out there,
Speaker 7: caught a little sunfish.
Speaker 6: That's an interest measures I like it.
Speaker 1: I was about to say, why we got to bring
Speaker 1: zebras into this, This is North America. I always get
Speaker 1: upset when I see zebras in North America.
Speaker 7: Carry I just got stripes. But and so I caught
Speaker 7: one that was probably two inches long. And the midges
Speaker 7: they don't have barbs on them, and I didn't really
Speaker 7: think about that, and so I was kind of putting
Speaker 7: it out there as I watched these gar rice, and uh,
Speaker 7: they would.
Speaker 1: I had a few spence use barbs on everything.
Speaker 4: I'm there to eat and get groceries.
Speaker 7: Well, and I had a few take again, but they
Speaker 7: just pulled them off the hook. And so finally I
Speaker 7: caught another one. I took a stick and I pushed
Speaker 7: that midge like all the way down it like all
Speaker 7: the way down its throat into probably stomach, and I
Speaker 7: put that out there and it started swimming and I
Speaker 7: just kind of guide it towards the middle. And what
Speaker 7: they would do is they'd go out in the middle
Speaker 7: and they'd get under like a rock or something to
Speaker 7: try and hide from the bigger fish.
Speaker 1: And so I had bigar, know the brand brim yep.
Speaker 7: So I would kind of pull them out from under
Speaker 7: these rocks and just make them fight because anytime like.
Speaker 1: It seemed to like them look wounded or something.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 7: Yeah, because like I'd see, like the guar just swim
Speaker 7: right next to a perfectly healthy, you know fish and
Speaker 7: wouldn't even think about it. But as soon as that
Speaker 7: fish started struggling, they'd go for it. And so one
Speaker 7: hit it, and I just gave it a bunch of
Speaker 7: line because I knew, you know, like their mouths are
Speaker 7: real bony, so you can't really hook them. And I
Speaker 7: didn't even have a hook that was exposed, and so.
Speaker 4: Wet pound test start using.
Speaker 7: I'm using line as a five x tippet, so it's
Speaker 7: probably like five or six pound test and so I
Speaker 7: just give it all the line at once, and I
Speaker 7: just kind of let it chew on it because I
Speaker 7: you know, there was no way to catch it unless
Speaker 7: it swallowed.
Speaker 1: It was kind of what I was thinking.
Speaker 7: And then once it swallowed, I could reel it in,
Speaker 7: and so it I probably sat on this rock for
Speaker 7: like twenty or thirty minutes, and my cousin was across
Speaker 7: the river and she was fishing, and uh.
Speaker 1: So I started.
Speaker 7: I got to a point where I was like, I
Speaker 7: think it's about to I think it's probably swallowed it.
Speaker 7: And so I waited for you knew it was still
Speaker 7: on there, yeah, and I could see the line. It
Speaker 7: moved the line, and I waited till it swam pretty
Speaker 7: close to me. I didn't want to start reeling it
Speaker 7: in when it was way out there, yep. And then
Speaker 7: I started pulling them in, and I mean it was
Speaker 7: a pretty nice one. It was probably two and a
Speaker 7: half feet maybe, and I called my cousin, I was
Speaker 7: like three inches.
Speaker 1: Better, yeah, yeah and a half. I'd say it's probably
Speaker 1: one hundred and eighty apples, ye.
Speaker 10: And so so he didn't cut your line though, No,
Speaker 10: I was, and I was just happened last night, and
Speaker 10: and and I hadn't I hadn't got the full stords.
Speaker 1: Well well and so.
Speaker 7: Yeah, and so she was swimming over with the net
Speaker 7: and I was, you know, I was, I had the drive. Yeah,
Speaker 7: you have to swim across, swimming it.
Speaker 1: And so you just pulled them right in. Well not yet, well,
Speaker 1: I get it right on. The story just keeps going.
Speaker 1: She comes over and she doesn't have the net yet,
Speaker 1: and that one breaks off. This isn't even the one. Wow,
Speaker 1: the story hasn't even started.
Speaker 4: Started.
Speaker 1: Well, but then I realized that I could catch them,
Speaker 1: and so the next day I went back with kalo. Oh,
Speaker 1: this isn't even the same day. This reminds me of
Speaker 1: the first time Bear came home and told a deer
Speaker 1: story to his grandmother. We have a video of like
Speaker 1: a fourteen minute story of a six year old Bear
Speaker 1: telling every second of the story that happened on his
Speaker 1: first dear in a monotone voice, staring at the camera.
Speaker 1: The deer he came out. Dad was excited, and then
Speaker 1: all of a sudden there were two.
Speaker 3: Except for Bear has a lot more infection in his
Speaker 3: way because of the mullet.
Speaker 1: Okay, so you might speed us through.
Speaker 7: The next day with my friend Caleb, and we're both
Speaker 7: I'm just gonna like pretty much do the same thing.
Speaker 7: I swim across the river, get on the rock. I
Speaker 7: probably go through like six or seven little you know,
Speaker 7: brim before I finally get.
Speaker 6: One brims.
Speaker 7: And uh, finally one took it and it brought it
Speaker 7: like under one of these caves, and it sighed under
Speaker 7: there for a long time, and I figured by that
Speaker 7: point it probably swallowed it if it was sitting there,
Speaker 7: but I let it swim around a little more and
Speaker 7: then uh, let it get close.
Speaker 1: I started reeling it in.
Speaker 7: Caleb swims across and he grabs you, buddy, different day.
Speaker 4: Yeah, someday they'll learn to stay on the same side
Speaker 4: of the bank.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, yeah, stay on the same side of the
Speaker 1: banks as the fisherman.
Speaker 7: And uh, pretty much he swims over to a spot
Speaker 7: it's real deep, so he can't really touch, and I'm
Speaker 7: just bringing this gar.
Speaker 1: Like right next to him, trying to net it.
Speaker 7: And we tried to net it like three or four times,
Speaker 7: and then it would go on a big run and
Speaker 7: then we'll bring it back and finally, and there were
Speaker 7: some people that were up on a big bluff watching us,
Speaker 7: like because we just now hooked into like a really
Speaker 7: big bass and they were bass fishing, so we kind
Speaker 7: of had their attention, so they were all like yelling
Speaker 7: at us and stuff. And Caleb, he finally gets it
Speaker 7: in the net and we go get it up on
Speaker 7: this rock. And it was a very nice one, about
Speaker 7: the same size as the other one, one hundred and
Speaker 7: eighty apple seed probably yeah, probably close to that. Well,
Speaker 7: I thought it was some good ingenuity and uh, yeah,
Speaker 7: the world really wants you to use a piece of
Speaker 7: the inner workings of a piece of para cord and
Speaker 7: so Josh.
Speaker 1: Yes, but I'd like to do it too. But it's
Speaker 1: they're just sometimes like that.
Speaker 4: You got the Texas rig and all these different setups.
Speaker 4: Why can't you have like the bear rig or the
Speaker 4: mullet rig or the mullet rig.
Speaker 6: The mullet rig, I'm gonna make them fly that looks
Speaker 6: like a punkin two inch pumpkin seed with a mullet
Speaker 6: that's made out of paracord.
Speaker 1: Wow, with a with a pair of cord tail.
Speaker 4: I feel like you guys are pushing your paracord on Bear.
Speaker 1: Well so did the world since Bear, thank you very much.
Speaker 1: All right, Bear, Bear won't be here anymore.
Speaker 6: Get lost.
Speaker 2: It was really fun to having you Bear. Thanks for letting.
Speaker 4: Us Silas almost all the way up. He had to
Speaker 4: like within two foot of him, and he was so excited.
Speaker 4: He's squealing in the light because he's talking all kinds
Speaker 4: of trash and he doesn't even have it in and
Speaker 4: he gets it and we see it flopping and it
Speaker 4: cuts the line and swims off crest. So he's like, yeah,
Speaker 4: I remember the time I caught a gar. It's like, no,
Speaker 4: no Spencer's ever caught a gar.
Speaker 9: But that story does remind me of like the little
Speaker 9: old lady who swallowed a fly, right, and so then
Speaker 9: you have to swallow the next thing and then the
Speaker 9: next thing in order to get it.
Speaker 11: So there you go.
Speaker 1: I need I need to catch up on my h
Speaker 1: woman who swallowed a fly. Yeah I can't.
Speaker 5: I don't know why she swallowed.
Speaker 11: There you go, thank you?
Speaker 1: Okay, okay, well.
Speaker 6: Wow, that was exhausting, emotional.
Speaker 1: We got to the climax of the story and realized,
Speaker 1: I don't know, I don't know. That was fun So
Speaker 1: second episode Missippi River Podcast. We're going to talk about that.
Speaker 1: But first let me say, if you're listening to this
Speaker 1: podcast on the day it comes out or the day after,
Speaker 1: which would be excuse me, the second, the second or
Speaker 1: third of August, the meat Eater has their season opener sale,
Speaker 1: which is meat Eater, First Light, Phelps and FHF gears
Speaker 1: biggest sales of the year, twenty to fifty percent off
Speaker 1: on just about anything. So if you're listening to this
Speaker 1: in like twenty twenty five, like, don't worry about it.
Speaker 4: It's like the rest of the place. Friends.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, exactly, I'll get there. So, but if you're
Speaker 1: if you're listening to this like Carla does on like
Speaker 1: the day it comes out.
Speaker 11: I'm faithful.
Speaker 2: Yes, good job.
Speaker 5: I'll have to shout out Will No, my my brother
Speaker 5: in law, listen faithfully every.
Speaker 4: Okay, one of the best farm hands I ever had,
Speaker 4: Kenyan farm hands.
Speaker 1: Okay. So I'm with Will that we got to stop
Speaker 1: this story the season opener cell So Will. I was
Speaker 1: with Will for like an hour and he made some
Speaker 1: obscure reference to the Bear Grease podcast, and I said,
Speaker 1: do you listen to the podcast? And he looked at
Speaker 1: me and he said, I've listened to every single episode
Speaker 1: you've ever made. Pretty pretty sure, that's what he said, yep,
Speaker 1: And I said really and he said oh yeah, and
Speaker 1: he started spouting off stuff from like that week. So
Speaker 1: hat tip to Will.
Speaker 6: You know what we went while they were here visiting
Speaker 6: us for Mallory's wedding. We went out with some buddies
Speaker 6: and had some dinner and we're waiting for our table
Speaker 6: outside and this guy comes out and Will's wearing a
Speaker 6: bear greas hat. Okay, and this guy goes bear grease man.
Speaker 6: He's like, he's like, you listen to the podcast. He's
Speaker 6: like yeah. He's like he's like, you know, you know,
Speaker 6: you need to come to the Bear Banans the Black
Speaker 6: Bear Banans and meet Clay and he goes he goes, well, yeah,
Speaker 6: that's a good idea. He's like, I know him and
Speaker 6: he's like, that's Langbridge right there. The guy spins around.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, Lmbridge like the bear grease Yeah man,
Speaker 1: yeah man, great, great faithful listener. Faith So if you're like,
Speaker 1: well and listen to this on those days, you can
Speaker 1: go to the Mediator store and get all kinds of
Speaker 1: cool stuff so on this podcast, we're here to talk
Speaker 1: about Mississippi River Episode two, which is took a wild turn.
Speaker 1: So part of the render as we tell what happened
Speaker 1: on the backside. I interviewed Earl Jasper the day before
Speaker 1: the podcast came out. Oh wow, I mean, or the
Speaker 1: day before I had to turn it in to the
Speaker 1: powers that be that Phil Phil Taylor, and it just
Speaker 1: came about really quick and I had you know, it
Speaker 1: happens fairly often on Burgrease where I'll have an idea
Speaker 1: for something and then all of a sudden, you just
Speaker 1: have to get it. I messaged him and he was.
Speaker 1: He was ready to go.
Speaker 4: He didn't even need such an awesome.
Speaker 1: Explanation for what I was doing. He was just like, Clay,
Speaker 1: whatever you need, I'll do it. He met with me
Speaker 1: and we we obviously had a much We had an
Speaker 1: hour long conversation and you heard like twenty minutes of it.
Speaker 1: I wish I could play the whole thing just because
Speaker 1: it was so interesting just to sit and interview him.
Speaker 1: But that was really cool. We'll talk about mister Earl
Speaker 1: Hank Burdine. Man Hank Burdine is carrying this Mississippi River
Speaker 1: series on his shoulders. Yeah, he is, like Hank is
Speaker 1: such an entertaining guy to listen to, so knowledgeable about
Speaker 1: the Delta, the Mississippi River. He's on the Misissippi River
Speaker 1: levee commission for the section of the river. As I
Speaker 1: understand it, there's levee commissions for different sections of the river.
Speaker 1: That's the way I understand it. And so he he
Speaker 1: is on the Mississippi and they're big sections. It's not
Speaker 1: like like Town's or something. But he's on the Mississippi
Speaker 1: River levee board, which is a big deal. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: super knowledgeable. But his all the stuff he told me
Speaker 1: about the way that part of the Delta was settled
Speaker 1: was so fascinating.
Speaker 11: Yeah, so fascinating.
Speaker 4: Yeah, man, he can he can describe it so well. Yeah,
Speaker 4: when he talked about the cane breaks and you know,
Speaker 4: it just it being a wildlife paradise, you know, you know,
Speaker 4: I mean he could paint a picture and is that
Speaker 4: he's got that like Southern Mississippi accident and it's alligator.
Speaker 1: He sounds like an alligator.
Speaker 4: Yeah. Much. When you were quoting Mike Mark Twain, were
Speaker 4: you kind of went into a gear where you, oh,
Speaker 4: I had to you were saying, like, was that was
Speaker 4: that artistic?
Speaker 1: No? No, no it was.
Speaker 4: It sounded like foghorn, leghorn and FDR mixed.
Speaker 1: It was pretty, but it was, I know, except what
Speaker 1: you're talking about. No, Mark Twain does that all the time.
Speaker 1: He would, he would, he would, he would write fanatically.
Speaker 1: He was trying to write like the what he perceived
Speaker 1: the people in Vicksburg sounded like when they were talking
Speaker 1: about the wall. They don't have ours it actually. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so yeah, you're really perceptive that you picked up that that.
Speaker 1: I was like trying to do that. Thank you.
Speaker 6: I thought maybe you had a two thinkers.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, the.
Speaker 1: Wall in the wall.
Speaker 9: And yeah, all I know is as I listened to that,
Speaker 9: I noticed that I started speaking more drawn out to
Speaker 9: my coworkers, and to the point where I even noticed it.
Speaker 4: I'm like, yeah, you tap tapes of her when I
Speaker 4: first fell in love with her, like when she was
Speaker 4: eighteen or nineteen. The accent is so strong.
Speaker 1: She's really stronger than that.
Speaker 4: Yeah, oh yeah, she's lost. It's probably ten percent of
Speaker 4: what it was lost to the work entertaining well.
Speaker 1: One thing that there's a bunch of interesting stuff and
Speaker 1: I'm torn on talking talking with Carla or talking to
Speaker 1: everybody else first about their interest in coming back to Carla.
Speaker 1: Car we should start with Carla because the Mississippi River.
Speaker 1: What we didn't talk about is that we Hank talked
Speaker 1: about the Mississippi side of the river, so the east
Speaker 1: side of the river. What we didn't talk about just
Speaker 1: because there wasn't space, is that Arkansas was actually settled
Speaker 1: later than Mississippi.
Speaker 2: That's so wild.
Speaker 1: The forest was cut, the swamps were drained later because
Speaker 1: Mississippi became a state in eighteen seventeen. Arkansas didn't become
Speaker 1: a state until eighteen thirty six. Yeah, and so there
Speaker 1: was a lot more incentive incentive to be a US
Speaker 1: citizen and being a US state.
Speaker 4: And you didn't have to cross the river, right.
Speaker 1: Didn't have to cross the river. There were more people there.
Speaker 1: I mean, Arkansas was like a wild country. And Carl,
Speaker 1: that's where your family grew up and where you're from. Absolutely,
Speaker 1: So where are you from?
Speaker 11: So I'm from Cross County, Arkansas.
Speaker 1: And does that touch the river?
Speaker 11: It does not. It's a couple of counties.
Speaker 1: In right, So we're right, it's in the delta.
Speaker 9: It's in the delta where it's very flat, and you know,
Speaker 9: if it's not flat enough, they'll.
Speaker 11: Precision land level it.
Speaker 9: So yeah, but there's a ridge that runs through it
Speaker 9: that separates you know, Western Cross County.
Speaker 11: There's a ridge that goes through.
Speaker 4: A LUs ridge less. Yeah, it's a yeah, it's it's
Speaker 4: a sand. It's sand deposited by like the wind. By wind. Oh,
Speaker 4: it's like a geographical phenomenon. It is wow out in
Speaker 4: the middle of the delta.
Speaker 11: Yeah.
Speaker 9: And so everything is super flat except for this ridge
Speaker 9: that goes through the middle of it. And I remember
Speaker 9: when Terrell and I were in school done at Southern
Speaker 9: Arkansas University.
Speaker 1: That's kind of what we do here.
Speaker 9: I'm okay, but we were looking through this book and
Speaker 9: it was funny.
Speaker 5: It's okay, Carlic, call your husband whatever you want.
Speaker 1: Christy, you're invited back. Christy was laughing, Okay, go ahead.
Speaker 9: We were looking through this book for a class. It's
Speaker 9: called Fishes of Arkansas that our professor had written, and
Speaker 9: I was like, hey, this picture right here looks just
Speaker 9: like where I grew up.
Speaker 2: And it was.
Speaker 9: It actually was. It was the town closest to where
Speaker 9: my school was. And they were describing the different kinds
Speaker 9: of you know features there and the fish that were there.
Speaker 1: So your failure of farmers. Yeah, tell me about it.
Speaker 1: Tell me about the history of the land and what
Speaker 1: your family did and everything. Yeah.
Speaker 9: So I grew up on a ris and soybean farm
Speaker 9: where we were like fourteen miles from town, right, so
Speaker 9: town meaning where there was a Walmart.
Speaker 2: Okay, nice, Yeah, that's the definition of towns.
Speaker 4: When everybody had Yeah.
Speaker 11: Yeah, definition, you're not buying grass.
Speaker 6: It was a Walmart, not a supercenter.
Speaker 2: That's right. We drove where did you buy your grass?
Speaker 2: Almost three hours to go visit.
Speaker 9: It's really fascinating how the world is a very different
Speaker 9: place than it was back then because fourteen miles from town.
Speaker 9: I mean we do that multiple times a day and
Speaker 9: our kids to school. Right, but back then, like my parents,
Speaker 9: my mom would go to town once a week to buy.
Speaker 1: This would have been in the eighties.
Speaker 4: In the eighties.
Speaker 9: Yeah, yeah, so yeah, but yeah, so rice and soybean
Speaker 9: farms always lots and lots of mosquitoes.
Speaker 11: Terrell got to be eaten up by them whenever.
Speaker 3: He came home.
Speaker 4: Yeah, we went out for like a romantic walk rot
Speaker 4: out to the Yeah, there was a breeze and We
Speaker 4: got out to like one of the pumping wells, and
Speaker 4: I went to make my move, and just as I did,
Speaker 4: the breeze stopped, and there was like a three or
Speaker 4: four second pause. And if I'm telling this wrong, feel
Speaker 4: free to correct me. But I just remember hearing this humming.
Speaker 4: You do, and Carlos said run, and we were running
Speaker 4: through clouds of mosquitoes.
Speaker 11: Oh my goodness, it's it's so thick out there.
Speaker 4: Yeah, your grandpa started the farm.
Speaker 11: How many acres?
Speaker 9: So I grew up on a four hundred acre farm.
Speaker 9: Teeny tiny these days, it's teeny tiny. But my grandpa,
Speaker 9: whenever he bought it in the late fifties, I mean,
Speaker 9: that was a really big deal. So he had grown
Speaker 9: up in a cotton farming family and decided that that's
Speaker 9: not the life that he wanted to live as sharecroppers, right,
Speaker 9: I don't know, Okay, So I did call my dad
Speaker 9: because I wanted to back.
Speaker 1: I had to get yeah, or fact checking the day.
Speaker 1: So your dad didn't know for sure if he was
Speaker 1: a sharecropper.
Speaker 9: Yeah, But then he went into timber. And so as
Speaker 9: you're telling the story about how the land was cleared,
Speaker 9: and there was this huge timber industry. It was fascinating
Speaker 9: because it was all of the stories that I'd heard
Speaker 9: about my grandpa, and then just from others as well,
Speaker 9: that you know that there was this whole timber industry,
Speaker 9: and then people that came in afterwards that were able
Speaker 9: to pick up land for a relatively cheap price, because
Speaker 9: I mean it was only good for timber, right, and
Speaker 9: then these big farms were built.
Speaker 1: So the sequence was when your grandpa got it nineteen
Speaker 1: in the nineteen fifties, the nineteen fifties, late fifties.
Speaker 4: He long logged in the twenties and thirties.
Speaker 11: Right, he was born in sixteen.
Speaker 1: Okay, so but when he got the land, I heard
Speaker 1: you say, when he got the land, it had pretty
Speaker 1: much just been logged.
Speaker 9: Yeah, and so they had pretty much they had cleared it,
Speaker 9: but there were still piles of logs. My dad was like,
Speaker 9: I still had to go pick up stumps and you know,
Speaker 9: to help you clean it up.
Speaker 1: I've heard I've heard one of my farming buddies in
Speaker 1: the Delta, Lee Walt tell me that when he was
Speaker 1: a little boy, he remembers them pushing out stumps and
Speaker 1: picking up stuff, and Josh for the record. Most of
Speaker 1: America's agricultural fields were cleared well before the nineteen fifties.
Speaker 1: It's one of this.
Speaker 5: Part of the timber industry.
Speaker 1: Well, just just so civilized agriculture. I mean they're not clearing.
Speaker 1: I mean minuscule amounts of land today are being cleared
Speaker 1: of timber to be commercially farmed. That all most of
Speaker 1: that happened about the nineteenth century farming right now, that's
Speaker 1: part of it. But there's but they cleared, They cleared
Speaker 1: so much land, and they're just they're just not doing
Speaker 1: that anymore. And so the fact that they were cutting
Speaker 1: timber to make agricultural land in the nineteen fifties is
Speaker 1: pretty wild.
Speaker 11: And it's a it's a hard way to go.
Speaker 9: And as I was talking with my dad, he was
Speaker 9: saying about how, you know, whenever he got financing for it,
Speaker 9: that the people were like, oh my gosh, this is
Speaker 9: the biggest loan that we've ever given for you know,
Speaker 9: for farmland, and it was eighty thousand dollars.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 9: And I interviewed my grandpa for a class whenever I
Speaker 9: was in college. You were doing family histories and he said, yeah,
Speaker 9: I said, people were just sitting around waiting on me
Speaker 9: to fail so they could come and scoop it up
Speaker 9: to the land at a better price.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 11: But man, he you know, was lived through the depression
Speaker 11: and knew.
Speaker 4: How to abject poverty. Yeah, like didn't have shoes, yeah,
Speaker 4: you know, for other reasons.
Speaker 1: It's kind of like.
Speaker 9: Mister Earl was talking about, you know, like poverty and
Speaker 9: you know, farming and if you only get paid once
Speaker 9: a year, if you don't spend your money wisely, then
Speaker 9: then there's not money for things like you know, shoes.
Speaker 11: Yeah.
Speaker 4: So so he was like super hard worker yeah, and
Speaker 4: super like just the perfect first generation pioneer kind of farmer. Yeah.
Speaker 4: And used a lot of dynamite to clear out stumps
Speaker 4: because that back then because they didn't have the machinery
Speaker 4: that we have.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and just a lot of hard work. And you know,
Speaker 4: back then farms were smaller and it's before the eighties
Speaker 4: that get bigger, get out and that killed a lot
Speaker 4: of the family farms. But really really neat stuff. And
Speaker 4: her mom was her mom passed away recently, but super
Speaker 4: tough lady. Like when you think about like just a tough,
Speaker 4: hard working woman, that was her mom, and as sweet
Speaker 4: as could be and she I remember here telling me
Speaker 4: like she used to pick cotton by hand, and like
Speaker 4: the big cotton sacks and in summer and stuff when
Speaker 4: they got out of school, Carlisle so picking cott in
Speaker 4: my hand, and so like it would it would be
Speaker 4: really interesting. I was thinking about it. Tayo was cutting
Speaker 4: hay to have mister Earle and Carlo's mom talking the stuff.
Speaker 1: Well, you know, I mean that brings up an interesting point.
Speaker 1: So you know, on this last episode we had mister
Speaker 1: Earl Jasper African American man that talked about growing up
Speaker 1: in the Delta, and it was kind of a classic
Speaker 1: story that surprised me even a little bit, like I
Speaker 1: would have felt like maybe his parents, I didn't know
Speaker 1: that he would have. I knew he would have the
Speaker 1: stories of the racism and stuff like that. That was
Speaker 1: not a surprise him being born in the fifties, but
Speaker 1: like his parents were sharecroppers and he was so involved
Speaker 1: in agriculture his whole childhood. That kind of surprised me.
Speaker 1: But it was clear, and Hank Berdine talked about it.
Speaker 1: Will Primost talked about it. I read a big excerpt
Speaker 1: from John Berry's book about all the Italian sharecroppers, and yeah,
Speaker 1: there were a lot of poverty stricken whites that were
Speaker 1: in the South too, that were that were sharecropping and
Speaker 1: that were Yeah, I mean it was they were there.
Speaker 9: And so it was fascinating to hear that about like
Speaker 9: the all of the different groups because my brother married
Speaker 9: a girl from who grew up in Newport and her
Speaker 9: family was Italian.
Speaker 1: Oh really like Italian? You know. Anyway, I got on
Speaker 1: that boat even after seeing those.
Speaker 5: Side they said, don't do it.
Speaker 4: But you know, if you get on a boat, even
Speaker 4: in Italian, if you're really poor and so desperate, you
Speaker 4: probably can't read.
Speaker 1: Maybe you know, now, where where is your families? Where
Speaker 1: do you think your family's from?
Speaker 4: Do you know?
Speaker 1: I mean like deep history?
Speaker 9: Oh yes, my dad is roll into genealogy, so he
Speaker 9: has traced his family back to Scotland and yeah, so
Speaker 9: lots of Scotch.
Speaker 2: Are not not surprising when you see your kids.
Speaker 4: There's a I brought a significant portion of Slavic blood
Speaker 4: into this, those those British isles genetics.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, no, fascinating, Josh. What stood out to you
Speaker 1: about the podcast?
Speaker 6: So I thought the podcast was fantastic. I I appreciated
Speaker 6: all the history in there. But I have to say,
Speaker 6: after I listened to the podcast, I texted you and
Speaker 6: said that segment with mister Earle might be the best
Speaker 6: thing you've ever had on the podcast.
Speaker 4: I was.
Speaker 6: I was, well, you know, it was more than just
Speaker 6: I enjoyed it and appreciated it, Like it really hit me,
Speaker 6: Like just to listen to him and to hear his story,
Speaker 6: I honestly teared up. And part of it just yeah,
Speaker 6: because I think I think it's I think it also
Speaker 6: helps that we know mister Earl and know the quality
Speaker 6: of a man that he is, and to hear him
Speaker 6: talk about to hear him talk. I think that the
Speaker 6: part that that really got me is when you said
Speaker 6: when he said they integrated the school, and then he said,
Speaker 6: what what was it like? And he paused and he
Speaker 6: was like there was fights every day, you know what
Speaker 6: I mean.
Speaker 1: It was like that's the part that got me too.
Speaker 1: That's the reason I asked you that.
Speaker 6: Yeah, I mean, it was it was like, this is
Speaker 6: a man who's endured, you know what I mean, And
Speaker 6: he's an example there. He doesn't carry this sense of
Speaker 6: I've been wronged or my people have been wronged. He
Speaker 6: carries this attitude of we must progress, you know what
Speaker 6: I mean, And there's a sense of I'll do whatever
Speaker 6: it takes to do my part. And just what what
Speaker 6: an honorable man? I mean, just an absolutely honorable man.
Speaker 6: I have great appreciation for him.
Speaker 4: And mister Earl is one of those guys one you
Speaker 4: always just want to call him mister Earl.
Speaker 2: You're going to get that guy respect.
Speaker 4: But he always talks to you like, I don't know,
Speaker 4: just like his his faith just bubbles out of him
Speaker 4: when he talks to you. He's talking to you like
Speaker 4: because you're a child of God and.
Speaker 6: He loves you absolutely.
Speaker 4: Like everything that he said in there about like the
Speaker 4: spiritual the delta in the church, like there are decades
Speaker 4: of example in life, and just sweetness that exudes from
Speaker 4: I mean.
Speaker 6: He makes this pore feel valuable because they're a child
Speaker 6: of God, you know. And I really liked the way
Speaker 6: he mentioned and he's like, you know, there was the
Speaker 6: what did he say? There was the physical man and
Speaker 6: the spiritual man and you gotta you gotta grow both.
Speaker 6: And yeah, I just that part was impacting to me,
Speaker 6: you know what I mean. It impacted me. I feel
Speaker 6: like it it brought something into my life.
Speaker 1: Yeah, if you actually dissected his words, the words were simple,
Speaker 1: but them coming from him were so powerful. Like hearing
Speaker 1: him talk about Martin Luther King Junior getting sassinated. I mean,
Speaker 1: we've all heard that story. We've grown up with that story.
Speaker 1: It was before our time, that happened. Most of us
Speaker 1: in this room are like in the range of forty
Speaker 1: years old. You know, we know that happened. But to
Speaker 1: hear him talk about how it impacted him as a
Speaker 1: as a as a senior in high school, and how
Speaker 1: it sent ripples through the black community, and just hearing
Speaker 1: him say it, I just was like, oh, yeah, that
Speaker 1: really would have It wouldn't have been like some celebrity
Speaker 1: getting killed that you really didn't, you know, you just
Speaker 1: knew their name and liked them. I mean, this guy
Speaker 1: meant so much to them, and you kind of felt
Speaker 1: that sting, you know. And then yeah, that part about integrated.
Speaker 1: I didn't really know what I was gonna asks. I
Speaker 1: just knew. I just told him I wanted to talk
Speaker 1: to him about his life, and it just kind of progressed,
Speaker 1: you know. And yeah, when he talked about integration, I
Speaker 1: don't know, I've never really thought that deep about what
Speaker 1: it would have actually been like. Now, we have heard stories,
Speaker 1: especially being from Arkansas about the Little Nine, which was
Speaker 1: the national story of nine students they integrated into Little
Speaker 1: Rock High School and some of those people are still alive.
Speaker 1: It was it made national news, and it was it
Speaker 1: was the a terrible thing for our state Governor Orville
Speaker 1: Pabas was the Wooden Fabs. Yeah, yeah, cassal Art jack
Speaker 1: Wagon of himself. But some of those people are still alive.
Speaker 1: Missy's talked, You've interviewed well.
Speaker 3: So the first black Little Rock teacher and administrator were
Speaker 3: a husband and wife couple and their daughter is a
Speaker 3: friend of mine and she has actually I think you've
Speaker 3: been with us at some of the some of the
Speaker 3: interviews with with her mom.
Speaker 2: She she passed away.
Speaker 3: Recently, her mom did, but she talked a little bit
Speaker 3: about about that. And then my friend Virginia and all
Speaker 3: of her siblings. So the Little Rock nine tried to
Speaker 3: integrate in and they were met with enormous hostility and
Speaker 3: they actually ended up closing down the schools, like completely
Speaker 3: closed down the Little Rock public school system for I
Speaker 3: one or two years. It was an extended time. And
Speaker 3: then when it reopened. It was integrated, you know, and
Speaker 3: that it was like, we have no choice but to
Speaker 3: do this, and so we're going to reopen. And so
Speaker 3: those my friend was part of that second group of
Speaker 3: kids that came in and they didn't have the publicity,
Speaker 3: and some of them would say, or at least I've
Speaker 3: heard them say that they didn't have the support either
Speaker 3: because it was less publicized and a lot more challenging.
Speaker 3: They weren't on national TV and they didn't have the
Speaker 3: eyes of the world watching when they reopened, and it
Speaker 3: was it was incredibly challenging. And they've talked to our
Speaker 3: kids about that and really powerful stories people who have
Speaker 3: endured a whole lot.
Speaker 1: So it was impacting me to hear mister Earle, Christy,
Speaker 1: what's that to you? The whole thing doesn't have to
Speaker 1: be about misster Eeryl.
Speaker 5: I do want to say something about mister Earle, though,
Speaker 5: I think, to me, what I heard inside of what
Speaker 5: he was sharing is it honors the struggle. Like you
Speaker 5: heard him talk about it being hard. You would never
Speaker 5: want your kids to go through that, and then you
Speaker 5: would say, but you just got to stay focused because
Speaker 5: it's not always going to be like that, And so
Speaker 5: there's a sense of hope I think inside of him
Speaker 5: and purpose inside of the struggle, and to find that
Speaker 5: incredibly honorable. I want to live my life like that.
Speaker 5: I don't want to have struggle and think why me.
Speaker 5: I want to think like he did, stay focused, think
Speaker 5: about the Lord. This is not always the way it's
Speaker 5: going to be if you do your part. And then
Speaker 5: that's what I heard inside of him, and I think it.
Speaker 5: I think that's honorable, but it also it also is
Speaker 5: more than that. It makes me not want to make
Speaker 5: his struggle for nothing, Like I find a connection to
Speaker 5: it and think I have responsibility inside of carrying myself
Speaker 5: in a way like he carried himself.
Speaker 2: I don't. I don't.
Speaker 5: Was hugely impacting to me. We were talking earlier. Another
Speaker 5: part that is impacting the Captain Hank Berdine. Yeah, I
Speaker 5: I love his accent and I think I listened to
Speaker 5: him speak and I think there's a stigma that when
Speaker 5: you hear that kind of Southern accent it's less educated
Speaker 5: or not as sophisticated, and that that man is so educated,
Speaker 5: so sophisticated in his knowledge of his of of what
Speaker 5: he does. And I found that I was like this
Speaker 5: is remarkable. Like that stood out to me, and I
Speaker 5: thought it was. I thought it was highly remarkable. And
Speaker 5: I love how I am not a soil person like
Speaker 5: Spens and carlab degrees and soil science and clay biologist,
Speaker 5: Carlos a biologist anyway, like I don't have I don't
Speaker 5: have any of that. But I could hear and picture
Speaker 5: what he was describing and that that is another level
Speaker 5: of ability and educated anyway I was that stood out
Speaker 5: to me.
Speaker 1: Connected to that and Hank Verdon, he talked about how
Speaker 1: this this art and this writing thing came into the
Speaker 1: Greenville area, which was I mean, I never knew that.
Speaker 4: I went to Natchez once, like I was. I did
Speaker 4: some work with Alcorn State, which is a big it's
Speaker 4: a it's a college down there that has a real
Speaker 4: good act program that works with a lot of small farmers.
Speaker 4: And I went walking around and I just thought, Oh,
Speaker 4: it's a town in Mississippi, you know whatever stereotypes right, and
Speaker 4: just walking around the history in that town and like
Speaker 4: the architecture, crazy stuff, Like I.
Speaker 1: Mean, at one time it was one of the richest
Speaker 1: cities in America.
Speaker 4: And like I spent like half a day there and
Speaker 4: like just I had nothing else to do, so I
Speaker 4: just went for a walk. And that was the impression
Speaker 4: when I walked through the town of like this place
Speaker 4: used to really be something. It's still cool town, but
Speaker 4: you could tell this place was like a big deal
Speaker 4: at one time.
Speaker 1: Well, and it's so that what you just said is
Speaker 1: connected to what's coming, and it kind of was revealed
Speaker 1: in the second episode. Is that what happened to the
Speaker 1: Delta was that they couldn't figure out this labor thing.
Speaker 1: I mean, after the Civil War, after the sharecropping regime.
Speaker 1: I don't know if they would say it failed or
Speaker 1: it just didn't work very good, and they the Delta
Speaker 1: lost a whole lot. And the Delta is you go
Speaker 1: to the Delta today, it's way different than what it
Speaker 1: would have been in its prime. I mean a lot
Speaker 1: of the cities look like ghost towns, you know, and
Speaker 1: that's no secret. But it's so interesting to think about
Speaker 1: Greenville being this hub of art and literature and that
Speaker 1: is still you still feel that. And we went to
Speaker 1: Hank's house and and not to get to personal with Hank,
Speaker 1: but his he he had in his house, he had art,
Speaker 1: he had bookshelves full of books he had, he had
Speaker 1: personal personal art and I can say that like pictures
Speaker 1: of his family. I mean I walked in and I
Speaker 1: was like, wow, this guy has documented his journey in
Speaker 1: life more than most people I've been around. And he
Speaker 1: and it inspired me to uh. I mean, you just
Speaker 1: want his house was like a museum and uh and
Speaker 1: and and that's connected. I think back to this, you
Speaker 1: know whatever that brought just in a awareness of of
Speaker 1: the world and art and beauty and how to describe that,
Speaker 1: and this thing inside of humans that wants to wants
Speaker 1: to memorialize life, human life, you know. And so it
Speaker 1: was really neat being around Hanking those guys, and I
Speaker 1: really was inspired. I mean I was like, wow, I
Speaker 1: want to I want to celebrate my culture. I want
Speaker 1: to celebrate the stuff that I'm doing. And not that
Speaker 1: we do that externally with like a painting on the wall,
Speaker 1: but it helps, you know. And then all the writers
Speaker 1: down there. I don't want to give away a future
Speaker 1: Berger's podcast next spring, but there are more Turkey hunting
Speaker 1: writers in Mississippi than anywhere really just everybody. I mean,
Speaker 1: you meet some guy on the street and he's like, yeah,
Speaker 1: my name is Bill. Yeah, I got a turkey hunting book.
Speaker 1: If you're not written a book and published about country
Speaker 1: music exactly, Yeah, I'm serious. Everybody down there has got
Speaker 1: a book. And uh. I went to the to the
Speaker 1: uh uh well, and I just thought, I mean, how
Speaker 1: many turkey hunting writers do I know in Arkansas? And
Speaker 1: I'm like, man, we're just a bunch of hillbillies. These
Speaker 1: people down there cultured and educated Mississippi, Mississippi, they say,
Speaker 1: wah wahaw.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Now, but William Faulkner. I loved the William Faulkner quote. Well,
Speaker 1: he said, he said to understand the world, you have
Speaker 1: to understand a place like Mississippi. And then that quote
Speaker 1: where he said, in two generations they do need denuded,
Speaker 1: de rivered, and d swamped Mississippi. And then he goes
Speaker 1: into that very complicated paragraph about all the different ethnicities
Speaker 1: that were there and how they had all mixed together
Speaker 1: and how that the land would reek it's it was.
Speaker 1: So it was like a wildly complex paragraph. But you know,
Speaker 1: William Faulkner from Mississippi.
Speaker 4: And it's like a when you look at it today,
Speaker 4: when you look at like stuff that's happening in the Amazon,
Speaker 4: you know, like I mean, like our seeds are kind
Speaker 4: of boiling right now, as in the golf, like I
Speaker 4: think it was one hundred and one in the golf,
Speaker 4: like in near Florida. You're seeing that thing play out
Speaker 4: and and it's just that's anyways. It just like that
Speaker 4: thing that was said was just like a truth.
Speaker 1: He said they the people will inflict the lands revenge. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and it was it was like, whatever's happening, it's going
Speaker 1: to be paid for at some point.
Speaker 4: And it's easy to look and think, oh, well that
Speaker 4: was back then, but it's like we still haven't learned
Speaker 4: that lesson. If I think if you were to look
Speaker 4: around and be like, those words still haven't been heated,
Speaker 4: you know. So it's really good.
Speaker 1: Quote and I'm stealing all I'm picking all the low
Speaker 1: hanging fruit. What I learned on the podcast was that
Speaker 1: the Mississippi Delta was one of the last places in
Speaker 1: America to be settled because of the river. When you
Speaker 1: think about all the land that doesn't have a river
Speaker 1: and you can just walk in there and build a
Speaker 1: house and not have any major problem. The biggest river
Speaker 1: on this continent where it floods near near where it
Speaker 1: enters the Ocean, you know, you know, five hundred miles
Speaker 1: up from it, one thousand miles up from it ere
Speaker 1: Cape Girardo, which is yeah, it floods, so you can't
Speaker 1: build a house there until the levees of the late
Speaker 1: eighteen sept the government levees of the late eighteen seventies.
Speaker 1: So you know, the trans Continental Railroad had gone across America,
Speaker 1: the Sequoias had been cut, but the Mississippi Delta was
Speaker 1: still relatively unsettled. And when you think too about the
Speaker 1: Civil War, it took me a while to understand what
Speaker 1: these people were saying. You know, there literally weren't people
Speaker 1: in western Mississippi, many people at all before the Civil War.
Speaker 1: I mean, they were just they had just cleared some
Speaker 1: land right on the river if you can get out
Speaker 1: of the boat and clear land. But the interior of
Speaker 1: the Yazoo Mississippi Delta and on the Arkansas side of
Speaker 1: the river, they're just people were not there. It was
Speaker 1: a virgin wilderness. And that's where our boy Bearger's Hall
Speaker 1: of Famer Hult Coggier made his living for about twenty years,
Speaker 1: commercial bear hunting and feeding logging camps. And that's why
Speaker 1: he killed three thousand bears with his hounds in his lifetime.
Speaker 1: It was a virgin wilderness. But mister, what stood up
Speaker 1: to you?
Speaker 3: Well, you know, obviously I thought I thought the podcast
Speaker 3: was really good.
Speaker 2: I've we've box thanks man.
Speaker 3: Yeah, We've done the Jaspers for a while, and I've
Speaker 3: heard pieces of his story before.
Speaker 2: And I think with someone someone like.
Speaker 3: Earl Jasper, who's live the life he's lived, who, like
Speaker 3: Christy said, has endured a whole lot, has maintained a
Speaker 3: certain posture, I always feel whenever I hear people who
Speaker 3: have had those kind of experiences and who are I mean,
Speaker 3: just who he is, I feel humbled, just just like,
Speaker 3: don't talk, don't just let's let him tell his story
Speaker 3: and just listen, don't you know, don't say a word,
Speaker 3: just listen. And I think I was a little bit
Speaker 3: I don't know that concerned is the right word. But
Speaker 3: just when you when you wanted to interview him. I
Speaker 3: was in the room when you were interviewing him, and
Speaker 3: I heard what he said, and I knew, like, this
Speaker 3: is this is good. I mean it is poetic, like
Speaker 3: what some of the things he said were poetic, but
Speaker 3: in a in a certain sense like his the life
Speaker 3: behind it is what gave it so much power. And
Speaker 3: when he said there's a physical delta and a spiritual delta,
Speaker 3: it was his life that gave that statement power. And
Speaker 3: those words coming from his mouth mean more than those
Speaker 3: words coming from from my mouth. And and and I
Speaker 3: think when I listened, I listened to the rough draft,
Speaker 3: which I don't always listen to the rough draft of
Speaker 3: Bear Grease podcast. And at the end, you know, it
Speaker 3: just ends with him and then it's just over, and
Speaker 3: it's you know, I don't know if y'all pick that up.
Speaker 3: And then at the you know, then the music starts
Speaker 3: in Clay gives like the summary statements, but usually Clay
Speaker 3: would come on and interpret or whatever, but he just
Speaker 3: kind of.
Speaker 2: Left it, and I was I was really grateful he
Speaker 2: did that. Like I I walked.
Speaker 3: We were outside, both of us, and I was listening
Speaker 3: to it in the garden and Clay was walking around
Speaker 3: listening to it. And we both finished it about the
Speaker 3: same time, and we kind of met up in the
Speaker 3: yard and he said, what do you think? And and
Speaker 3: he kind of said to what he you know, he
Speaker 3: just felt like, let let let him speak and whatever
Speaker 3: he says, that's I'm not going to add to that
Speaker 3: or because you can't, like you can't take you can't
Speaker 3: add or our takeaway from that. And I was like, no,
Speaker 3: I knew exactly, I knew exactly what you were doing.
Speaker 3: But there's a sense when it came out, I wanted
Speaker 3: to make sure, like I wanted to kind of control
Speaker 3: everybody in the world that listened to the Bear Grease
Speaker 3: podcast and just make sure I wanted everybody to appreciate
Speaker 3: who he was, like, I know, I appreciate him because
Speaker 3: I know him. I know like he walks, he walks,
Speaker 3: the talk you know, he is what you're hearing is
Speaker 3: and I kind of wanted to protect that. And I
Speaker 3: just was really grateful as we heard feedback from the
Speaker 3: Bear Grease, you know, even just comments on Instagram or
Speaker 3: different places, I felt like people were able to hear that.
Speaker 3: I felt like, you know, people were and people respected
Speaker 3: him and were able to give to give that, and
Speaker 3: I was just appreciative.
Speaker 2: I think his story. We're in a time right now where.
Speaker 3: There's a lot of people that tell you how you
Speaker 3: should talk about things, how you should feel about things,
Speaker 3: how you should say things, and it's it's it can
Speaker 3: be a little bit risky to even for you you
Speaker 3: Clay to bring you know, to have that conversation. It
Speaker 3: could be risky for him to bring his story into it.
Speaker 3: And I I just kind of wanted to protect everyone.
Speaker 3: But I just felt like everybody treated treated the story
Speaker 3: the life with respect that it that it deserves, and
Speaker 3: I was grateful for that and because his life deserves
Speaker 3: respect and it deserves Uh. I like, if I could
Speaker 3: just tell people how to listen. I've Earl has spoken
Speaker 3: at our school and UH, and the way I want
Speaker 3: to tell all the kids is just hush, just hush
Speaker 3: and listen, and they always.
Speaker 1: Do before and go okay, everybody, just hush.
Speaker 2: And that's kind of what I wanted to say to everybody.
Speaker 3: Just hush, just listen, don't don't say anything. And I
Speaker 3: felt like when I listened to the podcast, that's what
Speaker 3: I heard was just it. I felt that in my
Speaker 3: in my heart, I felt like the whole world just
Speaker 3: hushed and listened. And I was hoping that when people
Speaker 3: heard it, they would do that without me saying hush,
Speaker 3: and they did and that's an appropriate response.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I could have scolded them like I did Tim.
Speaker 1: The people of the world.
Speaker 4: You hush up, stay out that trash.
Speaker 1: No, it was really special having mister Earl. And you
Speaker 1: know what, I what I came away thinking about it
Speaker 1: was how grateful I am that we have a platform.
Speaker 1: I mean, I think I think it's a testament to
Speaker 1: the world that we can on a hunting platform if
Speaker 1: that's what you call bear grease, which we would, I mean,
Speaker 1: Meat Eater is a hunting conservation media company. I mean,
Speaker 1: our core people are going to be hunters, even though
Speaker 1: we have a big number of people that would listen
Speaker 1: that aren't hunters, like Carla and like thal Wag that
Speaker 1: has done some hunting in the past.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so you're a hunter prefer to let people hunt
Speaker 4: my land?
Speaker 1: That Yes, Yes, I'm grateful that we've got a platform
Speaker 1: that we could talk about stuff like this. I mean,
Speaker 1: I think it's cool. I feel grateful that we have. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this space is kind of is here, which I think
Speaker 1: is really cool because you know, the well, the human
Speaker 1: experience for real. I feel like I kind of captured
Speaker 1: a tagline for bear Graace that I'm going to continue
Speaker 1: to talk about is that we are in pursuit of
Speaker 1: understanding the world. Yeah, We're in pursuit of understanding the world.
Speaker 1: I think that's a legitimate statement inside of the topics
Speaker 1: we're talking about looking back at deep human history and
Speaker 1: some of the cultural stuff here in the US of
Speaker 1: rural America, and we're in pursuit of understanding the world,
Speaker 1: and that means given. But here in mister Earl's perspective
Speaker 1: and here in Hank Berdine's perspective.
Speaker 2: And hearing them both together on that platform, I think
Speaker 2: was really really valuable.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's this is this will be wild to
Speaker 1: say Percy, you know, the whole the pot. The podcast
Speaker 1: was talking a lot about the Percys and kind of
Speaker 1: how they built this little circle in the delta that
Speaker 1: was different than much of the other side, which is
Speaker 1: a wild story to tell.
Speaker 4: I mean, I've never heard it. Oh it's kept the
Speaker 4: clan out kept.
Speaker 1: Yes, Like if it wasn't so well documented, you would
Speaker 1: think it was like a whitewash of history, which we
Speaker 1: we hear people talk about and you know you can't
Speaker 1: do that, But there was he They really did stuff
Speaker 1: different inside of a pretty tight little circle.
Speaker 4: It's interesting too, like where you mentioned the Percy guys,
Speaker 4: because like agriculture is my wheelhouse, right and one of
Speaker 4: the things that you you made a statement earlier in
Speaker 4: the podcas where you talked about the delta missed out
Speaker 4: because they couldn't figure out that labor thing, the labor
Speaker 4: and racial thing in the in the business. And that's
Speaker 4: still going on in agriculture, I mean rural communities regardless
Speaker 4: of ethnicity, you know, whatever, there are rural America's collapsing.
Speaker 4: But it's not because there isn't an answer. It's just
Speaker 4: that there's something there to that, like it can be done,
Speaker 4: Like it can be done in a fair way, It
Speaker 4: can be done. You know. It was intensely community based,
Speaker 4: like you know, and I don't know, I just think
Speaker 4: like in a different format there, it would be really
Speaker 4: interesting to pull that stuff apart and apply it to
Speaker 4: what's going on even today, because all those problems, problems
Speaker 4: like that don't go away. Yeah, they just keep rolling
Speaker 4: on and getting more complex. So it was really interesting
Speaker 4: for me, as more on the agricul cultural side to
Speaker 4: hear that, And and I'm like, why don't we learn
Speaker 4: about this these kind of things, you know, Like I
Speaker 4: got a degree inn ag and I never heard anything
Speaker 4: about that. Yeah, And I feel a little cheated. Come on, Bumpers.
Speaker 11: Well.
Speaker 9: So one thing that I felt though, just through everyone
Speaker 9: that was interviewed was just a real honoring of the
Speaker 9: people that lived there, Like just the work ethic, the
Speaker 9: ability to endure. You know, farming is not for the
Speaker 9: faint of heart, and and neither is logging. Yeah like,
Speaker 9: and neither like and neither are any of those things
Speaker 9: or hunting or any of that. Like, I don't want
Speaker 9: to be cold, so I'm not, so I'm not gonna
Speaker 9: be out hunting duck hunting like people do where I
Speaker 9: grew up. But just the way that everyone spoke about
Speaker 9: the people there was really touching to me.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, Hank talking about how his grandparents were the
Speaker 1: ones that cleared land and the Delta and had that
Speaker 1: pioneering spirit that made the Delta unique. Yeah, that was cool,
Speaker 1: And I thought about it and I was like, my
Speaker 1: grandparents did it was yeah in Arkansas, it was later
Speaker 1: than later than that, And it's easy to think about
Speaker 1: that and oh yeah they cleared land.
Speaker 4: Think about like, it's summer right now, it's it's it's hot,
Speaker 4: high humidity, So think about doing that when there's no
Speaker 4: respite from the heat, when there's no respite from Yeah,
Speaker 4: the elements, you know, like there's some mosquitoes, like if
Speaker 4: you get hurt, there's no doctor, and even if there were,
Speaker 4: you can't afford it, you know, like there you're on
Speaker 4: your own. Like Earl. Mister Earl talked about like they had.
Speaker 5: To hunt to live, lots of outside time. He said,
Speaker 5: they weren't playing.
Speaker 1: For existence said he said people used to hire gods
Speaker 1: to go look for sport. He said, yeah, exactly, that
Speaker 1: was good.
Speaker 3: I the thing about Hank Burdine, I think it's really
Speaker 3: easy to think that to especially in like a modern
Speaker 3: worldview where you see the world increasingly polarized and there's
Speaker 3: lines of us them, you know, all the different groups.
Speaker 3: I thought, what have an Earl and Hank Berdine both
Speaker 3: on this podcast, with Earl's words saying, you know they
Speaker 3: we wanted the same thing. You know, we're at the
Speaker 3: end of the day, we're just humans and people are people,
Speaker 3: and you know, we're all made in the image of
Speaker 3: God and all kind of want the same things. And
Speaker 3: I thought this podcast was a very good kind of
Speaker 3: what you're saying, Carla, You're glad that people spoke respectfully
Speaker 3: of and I think what you're saying to Christy. When
Speaker 3: you hear his voice, you wulit necessarily associate that with
Speaker 3: certain characteristics, and yet you see it on here, you
Speaker 3: see and I think that that's just it is really valuable,
Speaker 3: And I agree with you, Clay. I was grateful that
Speaker 3: this platform exists, and I was grateful that the listeners
Speaker 3: gave the proper respect to both of these men. And
Speaker 3: I think it was a way of just kind of
Speaker 3: the podcast itself was just you know, people are humans,
Speaker 3: and at the end of the day, humans are valuable,
Speaker 3: and all the differences that may exist, humans are humans
Speaker 3: and humans are valuable.
Speaker 6: Humans are people too.
Speaker 2: Humans are people to people too.
Speaker 4: Human lives and all humans like shooting stuff.
Speaker 2: Definitely, that's what Well.
Speaker 1: On the next episode of Bear Grease, we're going to
Speaker 1: learn about a lot of nineteen twenty seven Johnny Cash.
Speaker 4: There it is cash maybe so maybe so actually.
Speaker 1: Is a good idea.
Speaker 11: I have to tell you though.
Speaker 4: I was.
Speaker 9: So I've been like telling my family like, oh, you
Speaker 9: need to listen to this, you know this series, and
Speaker 9: my brother tells me, hey, I read a really good book.
Speaker 9: It's about the flood of eighteen nineteen twenty seven.
Speaker 11: It's called Rising Tide.
Speaker 9: I'm like, I've heard about it, and I've only heard
Speaker 9: about it because I've heard you talk about.
Speaker 6: It because you're a faithful listener.
Speaker 11: So I can't wait to hear.
Speaker 1: What John Barry. I love that guy. He's kind of
Speaker 1: a voice you wouldn't expect to hear on Bear Grease.
Speaker 1: He's like, I can't even pretend to have a New
Speaker 1: Jersey accent. But he's got.
Speaker 2: He wrote he read that of that one episode that
Speaker 2: was powerful, that was really he's got.
Speaker 1: He's like, buh, he's got like a real cart that
Speaker 1: he's got. He's got. He's got a really gruff, gruff voice.
Speaker 1: I love John Barry. He really is top notch American writer.
Speaker 1: I mean, he's written some very very successful books. And uh,
Speaker 1: he's a real straightforward guy. Yeah, he's really straightforwarder. He's
Speaker 1: one of those guys that would like tell you if
Speaker 1: he was mad at you, but he would. But you know,
Speaker 1: if he doesn't tell you he's mad at you, he's
Speaker 1: not mad at you. Do you see what I'm saying?
Speaker 1: Because because he was super generous, Misty and I went
Speaker 1: to d C to meet with him. That's not where
Speaker 1: he lives, but he was in d c So we're
Speaker 1: super generous, super you have to figure that out on here.
Speaker 1: Actually it's probably all over the internet.
Speaker 2: But uh, that's enough.
Speaker 1: Great, great guests, and you're gonna be shocked when you
Speaker 1: hear episode four. I'm not even gonna tell you why,
Speaker 1: trust me, how many?
Speaker 4: How many you can have like twenty five episodes on
Speaker 4: this stuff?
Speaker 1: Yeah, this is a big story, Christy. I know it's
Speaker 1: like a meanderinge river, haven't you heard? Yeah, this is
Speaker 1: like you never know where it's gonna go. It's like
Speaker 1: a road that splits into seven different ways and they
Speaker 1: all look the same, like you just have to pick one.
Speaker 1: Thank you guys so much. Carla, thanks for being on.
Speaker 1: Thank you anything else you want to add.
Speaker 11: I'm excited to hear more.
Speaker 4: Okay, asked you to do the wave. There was like
Speaker 4: a Rice queen.
Speaker 1: That translates the audio.
Speaker 4: Her prize winning Broccolian rice recipe.
Speaker 2: Carla give us.
Speaker 1: Uh, Josh, Christy. Great to have you guys.
Speaker 6: Thank you so much, Fair Grace couples of dishes.
Speaker 2: I loved it.