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Speaker 1: Hey man, have you ever have you ever looked at

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Speaker 1: barbed wire and thought that could be a phone? Oh?

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Speaker 2: Boy?

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Speaker 3: Well, no, it scares me barbed wire. I find it

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Speaker 3: to be oppressive and sharp and pointing and usually rusting. Yeah,

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Speaker 3: it really does.

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Speaker 2: No.

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Speaker 3: But back in the day, some very industrious farmers figured

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Speaker 3: out how to do just that, essentially, turn the barbed

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Speaker 3: wire fences that comprise their farms into a way of

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Speaker 3: communicating between farms, essentially like a self contained telephone network.

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Speaker 3: Pretty cool stuff. But how do they do it? Well,

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Speaker 3: we'll find.

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Speaker 1: Out in this classic episode for all fans of improvisation mcgiver, etc.

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Speaker 1: Improvise adapt to overcome. Seriously, though it's so weird it's wild,

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Speaker 1: let's roll it. Ridiculous. History is a production of iHeartRadio.

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Speaker 1: I think Casey could we could we start this episode

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Speaker 1: off with the old school dialing a number kind of

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Speaker 1: telephone things.

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Speaker 2: There we go, I'm ben Hello, I mean hello, it's

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Speaker 2: me happened man along?

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Speaker 1: Oh yeah, no, no, okay, I was I thought the

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Speaker 1: who Hold music was good enough that I was. I

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Speaker 1: was going to sit there with everyone for a while.

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Speaker 2: I was thinking about it like that. I was just

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Speaker 2: doing a little telephone related music number from Todd Runggren

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Speaker 2: by way of Adele, and.

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Speaker 1: You're here to listen to that holding music as well.

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Speaker 1: Thanks so much for dropping by, folks. This is ridiculous history, Noel.

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Speaker 1: Before we begin, I have to ask you something that

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Speaker 1: I'm sure both you and our super producer Casey Pegrim

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Speaker 1: have heard numerous times in our meetings here. If you've

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Speaker 1: ever been on hold at a conference call and there's

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Speaker 1: this terrible song about being on hold on a telephone.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, that's that's uber conference, I think, is what you're

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Speaker 2: talking about, Ben, I mean waiting on conference. I wonder

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Speaker 2: where are my friends? I wonder where are my friends?

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Speaker 2: Where did they go? It's really and it's sort of Yeah,

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Speaker 2: it's cute the first time you hear it, but then

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Speaker 2: it just it just kind of wears on you, grapes

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Speaker 2: on you.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, it never ends. At some point, it indeterminably loops

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Speaker 1: and you're still waiting.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, and it's weird because listeners peep behind the curtain.

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Speaker 2: When we're not podcasting, we're on conference calls, and typically

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Speaker 2: on conference calls where the people we're waiting for never

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Speaker 2: show up, So we just hear that song over and

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Speaker 2: over and over again.

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Speaker 1: It's like a more Internet trolley version of Waiting for goodo.

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Speaker 2: Yeah. And you know that kind of figures into the

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Speaker 2: story for today, because there's a lot of themes in

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Speaker 2: this story that are kind of pre internetty, aren't they been?

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Speaker 1: Absolutely in a very prescient way. I would argue, it

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Speaker 1: turns out so that we don't bury the lead too much.

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Speaker 1: Back in the day, before the days of snazzy cell phones,

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Speaker 1: before the days of even those awkward nineteen eighties Wall

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Speaker 1: Street hot shot phones. You know what I'm talking about.

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Speaker 1: Sure for everybody I'm miming awkwardly to know that this

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Speaker 1: is the big antenna.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, he's due as sort of a swoop of the arm.

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Speaker 2: I'm also thinking about the ones that came in a bag.

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Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah. Before the days of all that stuff,

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Speaker 1: when the telephone was a new, fancy and vital invention, right,

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Speaker 1: people ran into problems. One of the big problems was infrastructure,

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Speaker 1: especially in rural areas. In the early nineteen hundreds, there

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Speaker 1: were so many amazing innovations. We got refrigerators, radios, electric

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Speaker 1: washing machines, and so on. But one of the more

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Speaker 1: simplistic innovations of the let's say late eighteen hundreds. That

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Speaker 1: played a huge role in communication for a while was

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Speaker 1: oddly enough, barbed wire.

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Speaker 2: That's right. It was incredibly effective and innovative in exactly

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Speaker 2: the thing that it was meant to do, which was

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Speaker 2: to keep things in or not let things out. And

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Speaker 2: it was patented in eighteen seventy four by Joseph Glidden,

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Speaker 2: that's right. And not long after that at all. Telephone

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Speaker 2: was patented in eighteen seventy seven, and barb wire played

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Speaker 2: a big role in helping to spread the use of

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Speaker 2: the telephone to some of those rural places that did

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Speaker 2: not have access to that infrastructure. Because ma Bell, as

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Speaker 2: it was known, had to get the most bang for

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Speaker 2: her buck, right, so she was going to install those

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Speaker 2: lines only in the places where they could have the

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Speaker 2: most customers, that were the closest together, right.

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Speaker 1: Right, therefore cities, right, urban populations, And we see we

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Speaker 1: see a similar thing happening with telecommunications construction in rural

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Speaker 1: areas of the United States at least today. But once

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Speaker 1: the patents, once the patents for the phone began to

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Speaker 1: expire in around eighteen ninety three or so, other companies

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Speaker 1: were making phones. Willy Nilly Sears Roebuck made a phone.

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Speaker 1: I mean they made almost everything back then, right, they

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Speaker 1: were the costco of their time. But the point is

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Speaker 1: it became much easier to purchase a telephone set. It

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Speaker 1: did not, however, come with in the box a telephone

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Speaker 1: line network.

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Speaker 2: A network.

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Speaker 1: Yeah. And so what several enterprising farmers did is they said, well,

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Speaker 1: if a wire is a wire, right, and if we

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Speaker 1: can transmit sound, is this a riddle? Yeah? Right? How

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Speaker 1: long is a piece of wire? Right? The question they

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Speaker 1: asked is are the wires in fencing that we have

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Speaker 1: already built? Because barbedire was tremendously popular and effective at

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Speaker 1: preventing you know, bulls from getting toward heifer's when it

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Speaker 1: wasn't breeding season.

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Speaker 2: And keeping them away from china shops and keeping them

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Speaker 2: away from the important china shop industry at the time,

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Speaker 2: what they said is, let's give it a go.

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Speaker 1: Let's see what happens if we connect the wire of

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Speaker 1: a telephone to the wire on a barbed wire fence,

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Speaker 1: and it turns out it worked really, really well. Typically,

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Speaker 1: they'd take a smooth wire strung from a telephone in

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Speaker 1: a house or a barn to a barbed wire fence

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Speaker 1: then it would hook to the top strand of barbed wire.

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Speaker 1: Most fences had you know, at least three, maybe four

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Speaker 1: strands of barbed wire, so they would only use the

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Speaker 1: top one, and the telephone signal would follow the wire

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Speaker 1: to whatever other telephone was connected down the line.

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Speaker 2: And typically that would be, for lack of a better term, neighborhoods,

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Speaker 2: because these were neighborhoods the way we think of them.

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Speaker 2: You know, these houses were miles and miles and miles

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Speaker 2: apart from each other, these ranches and these farms, but

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Speaker 2: this network of barbed wire fencing could potentially be connected,

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Speaker 2: and you know, you might have to do something like

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Speaker 2: install a jumper to go over a road to connect

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Speaker 2: to the next segment of fence that might belong to

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Speaker 2: the other property, right And they would do that once

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Speaker 2: they figured out how it worked and word got around

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Speaker 2: that stuff started happening, didn't they.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely, And we have to emphasize how useful this

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Speaker 1: was for people. They were actually building cooperatives, and this

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Speaker 1: kind of approach was not something that was foreign to

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Speaker 1: farming communities at the time. They had built cooperative irrigation

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Speaker 1: projects and things of that nature. This was another example

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Speaker 1: of people coming together and boom, you're able to save

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Speaker 1: a journey of miles and miles. Right, you can just

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Speaker 1: call up one of your neighbors and say, you know, hey,

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Speaker 1: keep an eye out for this lost lamb, or hey,

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Speaker 1: are we still on for Sunday dinner, you know?

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Speaker 2: Or God forbid? You know, Grandmama has her angina. You know,

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Speaker 2: you call instead of having to send a horse or

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Speaker 2: a runner, you just call the house down the line,

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Speaker 2: and maybe there's a dock that can come a running.

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Speaker 1: Right yeah. And that's a really great point because we

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Speaker 1: understand that even today, communication is a vital part of

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Speaker 1: rural life, you know, especially if you're isolated, you need

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Speaker 1: to have an effective means of communicating from point A

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Speaker 1: to point B. And I love how you point out

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Speaker 1: what happens in an emergency, because this system, as ingenious

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Speaker 1: as it is, it was imperfect, right at all.

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Speaker 2: But just like that good old fashioned down home ingenuity

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Speaker 2: that got the system up and running in the first place,

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Speaker 2: they had to come up with interesting little fixes to

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Speaker 2: kind of deal with the imperfect nature of this whole system,

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Speaker 2: right Ben, Yeah.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely no. In an article called before mo Bell

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Speaker 1: Rural Telephone Systems in the West by an author named C. F. Eckhart.

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Speaker 1: They noted the following rain and large bulls with raging

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Speaker 1: hormones were the nemeses of fence line telephone systems. Apparently,

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Speaker 1: it would happen not too infrequently that a bull with

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Speaker 1: a high threshold of pain an intense desire to quote

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Speaker 1: make the acquaintance of heifer's in the next pasture, could

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Speaker 1: just ram through the line, ram through the fence such

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Speaker 1: that it breaks the line, and then.

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Speaker 2: Ram through the heifers.

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Speaker 1: Ram through the heifers. Yeah, it's just rams on rams there.

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Speaker 2: That's crazy.

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Speaker 1: And they would have to have somebody come out and

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Speaker 1: fix that line. And that was a little bit of

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Speaker 1: an easier fix than rain.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, it's true. You know, rain was a big problem

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Speaker 2: because it would cause the signal to dissipate, and you know,

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Speaker 2: if there was frost, they would have to wait until

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Speaker 2: the frost thought entirely to even use the system. We

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Speaker 2: did not mention though, that there would be maybe around

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Speaker 2: twenty phones connected together on one of these systems, the

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Speaker 2: size of the network. But not only that, anytime someone

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Speaker 2: made a call, every single phone would ring.

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Speaker 1: That's the other problem.

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Speaker 2: It's all a party line. They had them, like even

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Speaker 2: in the eighties, I kind of remember them. You'd have

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Speaker 2: them in your house or in a neighborhood. It was

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Speaker 2: I guess it was for fun. I can't think of

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Speaker 2: what the functional reason was to do it later, but

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Speaker 2: this was just an absolute byproduct of how this system

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Speaker 2: was did. You didn't dial anybody you know had a number,

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Speaker 2: so they would come up with these special rings for

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Speaker 2: a family. And the phones that we're talking about were

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Speaker 2: largely these crank generator phones. So if a family's ring

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Speaker 2: code was dot dot dash or like you know, a

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Speaker 2: long long short, you would do crank, crank, crank, you

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Speaker 2: know right.

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Speaker 1: This shows how even when the system was working perfectly

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Speaker 1: as intended, it had some definitive drawbacks. In a very

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Speaker 1: real sense, everybody knew what you and your neighbor were

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Speaker 1: talking about, and it was considered, especially in these larger

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Speaker 1: communities with maybe twenty phones or something, it was considered

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Speaker 1: a common courtesy not to pick up the phone and

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Speaker 1: eavesdrop if you knew somebody was calling the Jorgensens and

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Speaker 1: not your house. But as it turns out, quote unquote,

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Speaker 1: listening in became a very very popular activity.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, it's true, and I did read somewhere. It was

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Speaker 2: actually in a comment section on a Gizmoto art call

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Speaker 2: about this called barbed wire fences were an early DIY

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Speaker 2: telephone network. Folks were talking about more the party line

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Speaker 2: systems of you know, more recent years. But if anything,

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Speaker 2: that would just be a kind of higher quality version

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Speaker 2: of what we're talking about here. And apparently the more

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Speaker 2: people that are on the line, the signal starts to diminish,

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Speaker 2: kind of like making a copy of a copy of

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Speaker 2: a copy, I guess. And you could kind of tell

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Speaker 2: when someone picked up because the signal dropped a little bit,

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Speaker 2: so kind of people would be like, get off the line,

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Speaker 2: who's on the line? You know that kind of stuck

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Speaker 2: you hear that a lot.

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Speaker 1: This cooperation made it a little easier for them to

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Speaker 1: detect where a break was in the line. Possibly yeah, right,

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Speaker 1: and that's how they could find the bull. I was

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Speaker 1: going to say, the bull breaks, yeah, if we're going

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Speaker 1: to make something up. But rain was a little bit

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Speaker 1: more perfidious because it could soak the fence post as well, sure,

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Speaker 1: and to combat that they needed to have insulate, so

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Speaker 1: you see like porcelain tubes of actually The weird answer

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Speaker 1: is that when especially in Texas, when a huge thunderstorm

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Speaker 1: came through, it would ground the entire system until things

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Speaker 1: dried out. But they solved it by working with saluts,

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Speaker 1: the discarded beer bottles, whiskey bottles and so on. Glass

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Speaker 1: is a great electrical insulator, and so they would collect

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Speaker 1: bottles from the saloons, break the necks off, whittle wooden

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Speaker 1: pegs to fit into the broken bottlenecks, drill holes in

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Speaker 1: the pegs, and these glass insulators got nailed defence posts,

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Speaker 1: and then you could string the wire along the insulator

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Speaker 1: so that you could reliably communicate, you know, but then

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Speaker 1: you know, it's still not perfect, but it sounds pretty cool, right, Yeah.

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Speaker 2: And there's more fun little tricks too. Were talking about emergencies.

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Speaker 2: They'd have a particular ring for emergencies. They even started

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Speaker 2: treating it almost like a pyrate radio network in a

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Speaker 2: way where they would have if you're maybe someone in

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Speaker 2: your household played the banjo and you had a little

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Speaker 2: string band or something like that, you would play into

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Speaker 2: the phone and people you know that listening in on

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Speaker 2: that would be welcome, you know, and that would be

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Speaker 2: almost like a community engagement kind of thing, you know,

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Speaker 2: coming together with your neighbors over these at times quite

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Speaker 2: large distances between households.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, and there are some heartwarming accounts of you know,

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Speaker 1: the one guy, the first guy or first family in

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Speaker 1: the neighborhood to get a radio turning into like the

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Speaker 1: radio hour every nine pm. Here's the up to minute stories.

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Speaker 2: Right.

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Speaker 1: Also, wait, I forgot no, we should talk Turkey, we

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Speaker 1: should talk prices. Because this wasn't a thing that incorporated

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Speaker 1: long distance phone call charges. It didn't have any weird

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Speaker 1: hidden fees. You didn't really have to sign, you know,

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Speaker 1: a binding through your contract.

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Speaker 2: It's like when I every now and then say, you know,

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Speaker 2: I bene thic, I'm going to start a cell phone company.

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Speaker 2: You do say, though, and then you're like, Noel Nolan, no,

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Speaker 2: all my friends, the time for that is passed. But

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Speaker 2: not during this time. This was literally like a from

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Speaker 2: the ground up, no pun intended, maybe a little intended

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Speaker 2: a little bit DIY telecommunications network.

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Speaker 1: Yeah. By one estimate, service ran for a mere three

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Speaker 1: to eighteen dollars a year, and that was way less

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Speaker 1: than the regional phone companies charged and the labor for

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Speaker 1: maintaining these networks was supplied by volunteers, because often if

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Speaker 1: there's barboire already, they would be repairing it in the

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Speaker 1: course of regular farms.

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Speaker 2: Who are you paying?

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Speaker 1: Though?

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Speaker 2: I don't understand that. I thought it was just kind

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Speaker 2: of a cooperative, like a collective kind of thing.

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Speaker 1: Right, So this would vary from cooperative to cooperative organization organization.

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Speaker 1: Let's look at one example in the Montana East Line

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Speaker 1: Telephone Association. It sounds pretty classy, right, it does. They're

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Speaker 1: eight members, seems legit. Oh okay, But they had a

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Speaker 1: leader who identified himself as HBS in farming publications, and

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Speaker 1: he said that he would be able to get them

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Speaker 1: connected for a fee of twenty five dollars each, So

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Speaker 1: that three to ten or whatever, that's a one time feet.

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Speaker 2: That's cool. See, Ben, I was picturing this all wrong.

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Speaker 2: I was picturing that it was a straight up cooperation

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Speaker 2: between those families that lived in closest proximity. But I

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Speaker 2: realized now that this began to have a much wider reach,

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Speaker 2: didn't they.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, And you're absolutely right now, maybe it was

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Speaker 1: it first, Yeah, yeah, absolutely, And at first was also

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Speaker 1: probably a calculation of necessity more than novelty. Right, So

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Speaker 1: in the case of the Montana East Line Telephone Association,

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Speaker 1: HBS sells the following package for about twenty five bucks each.

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Speaker 1: A telephone set with two dry batteries and a shore

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Speaker 1: ring condenser, a magneto, a lightning arrestor, a ground knob,

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Speaker 1: knobs and tubes, plus ten feet of interior wire and

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Speaker 1: around fifty feet of outside drop wire that could connect

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Speaker 1: to the nearest pole. And then HBS says, you know,

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Speaker 1: beyond that, like, if you're more than sixty feet away

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Speaker 1: from where that nearest pole or wire is, beyond that,

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Speaker 1: you can use any kind of wire you have. And

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Speaker 1: people did have wire laying around, you know, probably barbed wire.

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Speaker 2: Yeah. In fact, and this it started to catch on

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Speaker 2: that this was a valuable commodity in these unwired traditionally areas.

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Speaker 2: And in Arizona, in Hidalgo County, a new railroad that

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Speaker 2: had been installed, some trains killed somebody's bull, and the

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Speaker 2: railroad company as payment, allowed this local network to use

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Speaker 2: some of their railroad sign posts as jumpers for the

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Speaker 2: phone network.

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Speaker 1: Oh cool, you know what, that's one of the few

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Speaker 1: times that we have seen a railroad company portrayed in

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Speaker 1: a positive light.

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Speaker 2: Yes, It's a really good point, and think about that.

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Speaker 2: And you know, as it got bigger and bigger with

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Speaker 2: these associations like you're talking about, things like switchboards even

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Speaker 2: came into the picture, didn't they.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, they would be typically in a store in the

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Speaker 1: local town area, or often in somebody's kitchen, and then

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Speaker 1: they would have switchboard operators who had limited hours, right,

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Speaker 1: so you would ring into the switchboard and then asked

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Speaker 1: to be connected somewhere. There's another thing here. We know

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Speaker 1: you mentioned earlier how these took off and how they

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Speaker 1: grew quite popular at the time. By nineteen oh two,

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Speaker 1: there were more than six thousand small independent phone companies

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Speaker 1: that were actually farmers mutuals, like you know, the farming

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Speaker 1: collective or cooperative phone network.

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Speaker 2: And you know this not only was it functional, and

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Speaker 2: we have that community aspect to it. Right. In an

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Speaker 2: article from Atlas Obscure, there's a really great quote from

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Speaker 2: a woman named Emma Marble who was a young homesteader.

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Speaker 2: We haven't really even talked about the idea of homesteading,

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Speaker 2: how this was a thing where people were given land

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Speaker 2: grants by the government in order to come out and

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Speaker 2: settle some of these more wily parts of the country

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Speaker 2: in the Midwest and such. Right. Emma Marble in this

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Speaker 2: article Who's a Young Homesteader in eighteen ninety nine in Arizona,

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Speaker 2: said that the lines kept loneliness at bay. Right. She said,

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Speaker 2: the theory was that we would answer only when our

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Speaker 2: own rings sounded, but whenever the bell rang, every woman

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Speaker 2: on the line rushed to a receiver. And speaking of

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Speaker 2: the homesteading thing, there was another use where there would

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Speaker 2: be inspections from time to time. Property inspectors were just

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Speaker 2: people like representatives from the government that would come and

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Speaker 2: visit these homesteads to make sure they were operating according

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Speaker 2: to the law that granted them these pieces of land.

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Speaker 2: And whenever they would, someone down the line on that

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Speaker 2: single dirt road leading between these properties would see the

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Speaker 2: inspector coming, those party lines would light up and everyone

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Speaker 2: would know so they could get to work.

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Speaker 1: Right. Yeah, that's cool. That's an awesome fact there. And

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Speaker 1: also just to just to add, we said limited hours

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Speaker 1: about the switchboards, but I feel like we need to

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Speaker 1: be clear. This will be a good example of how

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Speaker 1: kind of ad hoc and casual this was. The switchboard

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Speaker 1: usually shut down around nine PM, so it worked from

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Speaker 1: like maybe five point thirty in the morning to nine pm.

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Speaker 1: It was always shut down around two or three pm

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Speaker 1: on Sunday so families could go to church. And it

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Speaker 1: was also shut down on Saturday night if there were

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Speaker 1: a dance in town. So you know, nobody, nobody had

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Speaker 1: this as a salary job in these situations, and it

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Speaker 1: was something that happened for the benefit of the community.

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Speaker 1: Like when the party line blows up and it's time

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Speaker 1: to it's time to at least look busy, right. Also,

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Speaker 1: I have to say the use of the phrase party line,

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Speaker 1: it still always reminds me of those commercials from the

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Speaker 1: nineteen nineties where they're like call and chat with interesting people.

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Speaker 2: Like nine hundred numbers.

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Speaker 1: So I could never when I was a kid, I

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Speaker 1: could never tell if these were, you know, nine hundred

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Speaker 1: numbers of a romantic or sexual nature, or if there

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Speaker 1: were really people who are just calling to be like, hey,

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Speaker 1: what's up. N name's Derek. I just got to town.

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Speaker 2: I want to talk to Derek. See it was awesome.

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Speaker 2: All right. Well, since we've gotten to the modern party lines,

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Speaker 2: let's talk about a little interesting tidbit that I saw

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Speaker 2: about a modern use of this. You had talked about

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Speaker 2: how the parallel between this time with having a hard

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Speaker 2: time getting infrastructure in place in more rural areas comparing

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Speaker 2: to that we're experiencing now with other countries that are

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Speaker 2: very hard to get to where there's a lot of poverty,

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Speaker 2: and even somewhat you know, you're seeing issues with getting

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Speaker 2: high speed internet in more rural parts of the United States.

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Speaker 2: So I was reading this article on gizmoto that I'm

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Speaker 2: in earlier, and in the comments I found some fantastic

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Speaker 2: if I can't confirm this, but I just want to

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Speaker 2: read this to you and see what you think. User

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Speaker 2: chilloncel says, I attended a Cisco networking class where the

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Speaker 2: instructor talked about this sort of thing. He's been deploying

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Speaker 2: network equipment throughout Africa and in some places there was

386
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Speaker 2: no way to keep copper wires from being stolen, so

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Speaker 2: in at least one installation they ran X point twenty

388
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Speaker 2: five over barbed wire. X point twenty five is a

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Speaker 2: standard like a packet, a wide area network, you know,

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Speaker 2: like a very rudimentary Internet.

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Speaker 1: Basically, that's amazing and I can't imagine a better testament

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Speaker 1: to the brilliance of this sort of application.

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Speaker 2: A wire's a wire, A wire's a wire.

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Speaker 1: I hope this is deployed in more areas of the world.

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Speaker 1: In the case of the US barbed wire telephone system,

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Speaker 1: we know that it persisted much much longer then you

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Speaker 1: might typically imagine.

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Speaker 2: In the seventies, especially some places in like Texas. I

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Speaker 2: want to say, yes.

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Speaker 1: Yes, you're spot on. So there's Eckhart in this article

401
00:23:10,800 --> 00:23:16,200
Speaker 1: has a pretty pretty chuckle worthy description of his difficulty

402
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Speaker 1: calling his parents, who still used a Barbier system into

403
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Speaker 1: the seventies. So this is definitely rural Texas. He said

404
00:23:24,760 --> 00:23:27,800
Speaker 1: his parents lived in a place called Liberty Hill, north

405
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Speaker 1: and west of Austin, and outside the system, their own

406
00:23:32,119 --> 00:23:35,879
Speaker 1: cooperative system, their phone number was get this thirty seven.

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Speaker 1: Just that that has.

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Speaker 2: Been there with the thirty seventh couple to get the phone.

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Speaker 1: I guess, so, yeah, you're probably right actually, And inside

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Speaker 1: their Barbeier system, their phone number was three longs and

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Speaker 1: a short. And when this guy was calling his parents,

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Speaker 1: he would have to ring an operator in Dallas and

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Speaker 1: tell her that he was calling Liberty Hill, Texas. She

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Speaker 1: would say where is it? He would say, it's in

415
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Speaker 1: Williamson County. It's you know here in relation to Austin.

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Speaker 1: She would say, that's airy code five to one two.

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Speaker 1: You can dial the number correct, and you would have

418
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Speaker 1: to say, no, believe me, I can't. I do this

419
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Speaker 1: all the time. And she would say what's number, and

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Speaker 1: he'd say thirty seven and she would say, sir, that's

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Speaker 1: not a telephone number. So he would have to tell

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Speaker 1: her to call somebody and then they would dial in.

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Speaker 1: And this the strange thing is to me though, that

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Speaker 1: these systems were able to work with the modern nineteen

425
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Speaker 1: seventies era telephone system. It's very cool and thus ends

426
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Speaker 1: the story for now. At least of the time, farmers

427
00:24:37,920 --> 00:24:41,880
Speaker 1: used barbed wire to you know, start a party.

428
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Speaker 2: Line party all the time on the rural party line.

429
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Speaker 1: Are we going to do some rural party line voices?

430
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Speaker 1: It's actually kind of tough for me to say rural.

431
00:24:50,760 --> 00:24:54,000
Speaker 1: It's like rural duror rural duror well, you did a

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Speaker 1: good job, but it sounded very unnatural. Ben It's hard

433
00:24:56,119 --> 00:24:58,800
Speaker 1: to say, like in the conversation rural duror.

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Speaker 2: Rural yes, no matter.

435
00:25:00,000 --> 00:25:03,560
Speaker 1: Our friend Scott Benjamin is haunted by that phrase, by

436
00:25:03,600 --> 00:25:07,440
Speaker 1: the way, I bet he is. And speaking of communication.

437
00:25:07,960 --> 00:25:10,280
Speaker 1: We can't think of a better way to close out

438
00:25:10,280 --> 00:25:13,399
Speaker 1: this episode than with a little listener mail. What do

439
00:25:13,480 --> 00:25:18,000
Speaker 1: you say, nol I love it, Ben?

440
00:25:18,000 --> 00:25:18,879
Speaker 2: How about you go first?

441
00:25:19,119 --> 00:25:23,080
Speaker 1: All right? Sure thing? So our first letter arrives from

442
00:25:23,280 --> 00:25:27,080
Speaker 1: Christ J. And Chris J. Says, Hey, guys, I just

443
00:25:27,080 --> 00:25:29,520
Speaker 1: got done listening to your Wild West episode and I

444
00:25:29,560 --> 00:25:31,840
Speaker 1: thought it was great. I work at an archive in

445
00:25:31,880 --> 00:25:34,760
Speaker 1: Wyoming and we hold all sorts of collections related to

446
00:25:34,920 --> 00:25:38,320
Speaker 1: the Wild West, like some papers of Buffalo Bill Cody

447
00:25:38,400 --> 00:25:41,160
Speaker 1: or Alfred Jacob Miller, who painted some of the first

448
00:25:41,200 --> 00:25:44,520
Speaker 1: images of the West. Myth and West, says Christ, go

449
00:25:44,680 --> 00:25:47,520
Speaker 1: hand in hand. It is so pervasive that the Wyoming

450
00:25:47,600 --> 00:25:51,160
Speaker 1: state government officially and to some of us grown worthily,

451
00:25:51,480 --> 00:25:54,840
Speaker 1: adopted the codes of the West, which is essentially the

452
00:25:54,920 --> 00:25:58,320
Speaker 1: idea of how to live like a cowboy, the mythologized version.

453
00:25:58,359 --> 00:26:01,240
Speaker 1: At least, These myths are everywhere out here, mainly because

454
00:26:01,280 --> 00:26:03,639
Speaker 1: it's become a source of tourism and is what people

455
00:26:03,720 --> 00:26:05,880
Speaker 1: like to see when they travel in this area. Even

456
00:26:05,920 --> 00:26:09,040
Speaker 1: though we're not all cowboys and we don't all ride horses.

457
00:26:09,359 --> 00:26:12,000
Speaker 1: For better or worse, this myth is here to stay.

458
00:26:12,280 --> 00:26:17,199
Speaker 1: Despite exhaustive efforts by many historians and archivists to dispel it.

459
00:26:17,600 --> 00:26:20,800
Speaker 1: One topic Christ says that I thought I might suggest,

460
00:26:20,840 --> 00:26:23,119
Speaker 1: along the same lines as the wild West, that is

461
00:26:23,200 --> 00:26:27,200
Speaker 1: actually wild West is something called the Johnson County War.

462
00:26:27,600 --> 00:26:29,000
Speaker 1: I've never heard of this in all of you.

463
00:26:29,200 --> 00:26:29,520
Speaker 2: I have not.

464
00:26:30,359 --> 00:26:33,200
Speaker 1: Essentially, in the late eighteen hundreds, a group of cattle

465
00:26:33,240 --> 00:26:35,439
Speaker 1: barons who are also in the government, We're trying to

466
00:26:35,440 --> 00:26:37,720
Speaker 1: take back land they perceive to be theirs, even though

467
00:26:37,720 --> 00:26:40,720
Speaker 1: it clearly belonged to settlers and small ranchers. Through a

468
00:26:40,760 --> 00:26:45,480
Speaker 1: series of events including lynchings, cattle wrestling, corruption, and outlaws,

469
00:26:45,560 --> 00:26:48,600
Speaker 1: a war broke out between the townspeople of Buffalo the

470
00:26:48,640 --> 00:26:51,800
Speaker 1: surrounding area and the cattle barons and their hired guns,

471
00:26:52,080 --> 00:26:55,240
Speaker 1: culminating in a siege and butch cassidy in the Sundance

472
00:26:55,359 --> 00:26:58,400
Speaker 1: Kids style shootout at a ranch house. Thought you guys

473
00:26:58,480 --> 00:27:02,000
Speaker 1: might be interested. Keep up the good and keep being ridiculous.

474
00:27:02,359 --> 00:27:04,280
Speaker 2: You know, that makes me think of just bringing back

475
00:27:04,320 --> 00:27:07,240
Speaker 2: this mythologizing of the wild West. That's scene in the

476
00:27:07,240 --> 00:27:09,960
Speaker 2: World Tenebaums where Owen Wilson's character is doing a reading

477
00:27:10,000 --> 00:27:12,080
Speaker 2: from his book. His character you like hash, I had

478
00:27:12,080 --> 00:27:13,159
Speaker 2: to look at it. Because of this I wanted to do.

479
00:27:13,200 --> 00:27:13,679
Speaker 2: I want to read it.

480
00:27:13,720 --> 00:27:14,119
Speaker 1: Go for it.

481
00:27:14,720 --> 00:27:17,479
Speaker 2: The crickets and the rust beetles scuttled among the nettles

482
00:27:17,520 --> 00:27:21,840
Speaker 2: of the sage thicket. Vaminos, amigos, he whispered, and threw

483
00:27:21,880 --> 00:27:24,639
Speaker 2: the busted leather flint crawl over the loose weave of

484
00:27:24,680 --> 00:27:28,440
Speaker 2: the saddlecock, and they rode on in the friscillating dust light.

485
00:27:29,680 --> 00:27:33,760
Speaker 1: That sounds almost like a like a dig against Cormack McCarthy.

486
00:27:34,200 --> 00:27:37,200
Speaker 2: I love it so much, man. But thank you very much,

487
00:27:37,480 --> 00:27:41,520
Speaker 2: Chris J. For the lovely email. And I've got one more.

488
00:27:41,880 --> 00:27:44,520
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, Well you know what, it's just stick with.

489
00:27:44,520 --> 00:27:47,200
Speaker 2: His wild West theme. We've got one here from Dennis Oh.

490
00:27:47,680 --> 00:27:50,040
Speaker 2: And he says, hey, troops, just a quick couple of thoughts.

491
00:27:50,280 --> 00:27:52,040
Speaker 2: I love the show overall. By the way, while the

492
00:27:52,080 --> 00:27:55,199
Speaker 2: Wild West wasn't wild by any stretch of Hollywood, that

493
00:27:55,240 --> 00:27:58,159
Speaker 2: doesn't mean that there weren't firearms back then. And then

494
00:27:58,200 --> 00:27:59,960
Speaker 2: he gives us a link to an Economis article. He says,

495
00:28:00,000 --> 00:28:02,800
Speaker 2: the Economist article arguing against America's love affair with the

496
00:28:02,800 --> 00:28:05,480
Speaker 2: gun actually shows that gun ownership in the latter part

497
00:28:05,480 --> 00:28:08,760
Speaker 2: of the nineteenth century, especially on the frontier, was incredibly common.

498
00:28:08,960 --> 00:28:12,760
Speaker 2: People had guns, sure of course, they just like today,

499
00:28:12,880 --> 00:28:15,320
Speaker 2: rarely used them to kill a stranger because he liked

500
00:28:15,320 --> 00:28:18,480
Speaker 2: a different brand of rot gut than they did, or

501
00:28:18,560 --> 00:28:21,320
Speaker 2: salsa exactly. But my real reason for emailing you is

502
00:28:21,359 --> 00:28:25,000
Speaker 2: that you should totally do a credit Mobia rh podcast.

503
00:28:25,080 --> 00:28:28,560
Speaker 2: You reference thousand dollars toilets in the like credit Mobia

504
00:28:28,680 --> 00:28:31,480
Speaker 2: may have invented that scam in the modern era. And

505
00:28:31,520 --> 00:28:33,880
Speaker 2: that is the thing we talked about ben with crooked

506
00:28:33,960 --> 00:28:37,440
Speaker 2: contractors and the kind of things you see in the Sopranos,

507
00:28:37,520 --> 00:28:42,880
Speaker 2: with you know, laundering money by overcharging for relatively typically

508
00:28:42,880 --> 00:28:46,040
Speaker 2: inexpensive things. Absolutely, he goes on to say, what you

509
00:28:46,080 --> 00:28:48,680
Speaker 2: may not know is one of the chief congressional architects

510
00:28:48,760 --> 00:28:52,600
Speaker 2: of the bribery scheme was Oaks. Aims Oaks. Now there's

511
00:28:52,640 --> 00:28:54,760
Speaker 2: a name you don't hear anymore and is a good one.

512
00:28:54,760 --> 00:28:56,360
Speaker 2: I like that. I think I might name my second

513
00:28:56,400 --> 00:28:59,400
Speaker 2: born Oaks Oakes and his brother Oliver Oaks and Oliver.

514
00:28:59,480 --> 00:29:00,960
Speaker 2: It sounds like a comedy duo.

515
00:29:01,040 --> 00:29:04,280
Speaker 1: Own thinking acoustic coffee shop band.

516
00:29:04,320 --> 00:29:06,360
Speaker 2: Oh that's very good, like almost lady, you know, like

517
00:29:06,360 --> 00:29:09,520
Speaker 2: a Simon and Garfunkle thing Oaks and Oliver. They didn't

518
00:29:09,560 --> 00:29:11,240
Speaker 2: make it. Simon and Garfunkle overshadowed.

519
00:29:11,240 --> 00:29:13,000
Speaker 1: They're like Faulkner and Falcon I.

520
00:29:13,000 --> 00:29:16,800
Speaker 2: Very much like that. So Oaks and Oliver owned the

521
00:29:16,840 --> 00:29:20,720
Speaker 2: Ames Shovel Shop in Easton, Massachusetts. His roots are in Easton,

522
00:29:21,040 --> 00:29:25,480
Speaker 2: says Dennis. The Ames Shovel Shop invented the pointed tip,

523
00:29:25,720 --> 00:29:30,240
Speaker 2: curved blade shovel. Really, and it was that shovel that

524
00:29:30,360 --> 00:29:33,800
Speaker 2: built the railroad and various hand dug subways and also

525
00:29:33,960 --> 00:29:38,600
Speaker 2: mine gold in California. So this shovel and these brothers Aimes,

526
00:29:39,160 --> 00:29:41,000
Speaker 2: they figured into a lot of the episodes we've done

527
00:29:41,000 --> 00:29:41,800
Speaker 2: of late, don't they.

528
00:29:41,960 --> 00:29:44,560
Speaker 1: Yeah. Absolutely, we have been on a bit of a

529
00:29:44,680 --> 00:29:47,200
Speaker 1: wild West Frontier kick. Is there is there more to

530
00:29:47,240 --> 00:29:47,600
Speaker 1: the story?

531
00:29:47,640 --> 00:29:49,400
Speaker 2: It really is this This letter just kind of keeps

532
00:29:49,520 --> 00:29:51,239
Speaker 2: keeps giving. So he goes on to say, you had

533
00:29:51,240 --> 00:29:54,680
Speaker 2: Congressman Aims involved in the bribing scandal which overpaid for

534
00:29:54,760 --> 00:29:59,040
Speaker 2: railroad supplies such as, wait for it, the very shovels

535
00:29:59,120 --> 00:30:03,120
Speaker 2: he was selling. Further twist, the reason he did all

536
00:30:03,160 --> 00:30:05,400
Speaker 2: of this was it to pat his own pocket or

537
00:30:05,440 --> 00:30:08,120
Speaker 2: to scam the county. He was asked to take this

538
00:30:08,280 --> 00:30:12,320
Speaker 2: over and complete the railroad at any cost by wait

539
00:30:12,400 --> 00:30:15,040
Speaker 2: for it, Abraham Lincoln.

540
00:30:15,520 --> 00:30:17,400
Speaker 1: Dunk dunk, dun no what it.

541
00:30:17,320 --> 00:30:19,760
Speaker 2: Was, Abraham Lincoln. I mean it's on a question markt

542
00:30:19,960 --> 00:30:23,520
Speaker 2: Abraham Lincoln. Abraham honest Ay says, wow, it puts a

543
00:30:23,520 --> 00:30:25,760
Speaker 2: new spin on old honest Dave.

544
00:30:26,000 --> 00:30:29,240
Speaker 1: Anybody who puts honest in their name and now is

545
00:30:29,520 --> 00:30:31,040
Speaker 1: clearly a deyscepticuling.

546
00:30:31,160 --> 00:30:32,840
Speaker 2: Well, it's sort of like when you're like a gangster

547
00:30:32,920 --> 00:30:36,360
Speaker 2: and your name's tiny, it usually means you're a big bruiser.

548
00:30:36,360 --> 00:30:38,240
Speaker 1: Or like the old prison joke where you know, the

549
00:30:38,360 --> 00:30:42,280
Speaker 1: toughest guy in the in the facility has a name

550
00:30:42,400 --> 00:30:44,640
Speaker 1: like smurf yeah, or baby Cakes.

551
00:30:45,520 --> 00:30:48,360
Speaker 2: Anyway. Dennis finishes by saying the credit movie A story

552
00:30:48,440 --> 00:30:51,280
Speaker 2: is fascinating. Ames was never really vilified for it. Still

553
00:30:51,320 --> 00:30:54,520
Speaker 2: a hometown hero, and he got the railroad built. U

554
00:30:54,680 --> 00:30:57,040
Speaker 2: There is a monument to him and his brother out

555
00:30:57,080 --> 00:31:00,480
Speaker 2: near Layer of me Wyoming. Of course, several years after

556
00:31:00,520 --> 00:31:03,160
Speaker 2: it was built, they moved the railroad and has sat

557
00:31:03,200 --> 00:31:05,240
Speaker 2: alone for the last one hundred and thirty years or so.

558
00:31:05,600 --> 00:31:09,000
Speaker 2: That's it. Enjoy have a great weekend, Asta, bombasta and

559
00:31:09,080 --> 00:31:09,400
Speaker 2: all that.

560
00:31:10,120 --> 00:31:13,640
Speaker 1: Dennis so thank you so much for writing to us, Dennis,

561
00:31:13,640 --> 00:31:17,560
Speaker 1: and you as well, Chris. We immensely appreciate it. And

562
00:31:17,640 --> 00:31:21,520
Speaker 1: this concludes our listener mail, but not our show. If

563
00:31:21,560 --> 00:31:25,640
Speaker 1: you would like to learn more about barbed wire, specifically,

564
00:31:26,040 --> 00:31:29,600
Speaker 1: check out an episode of Stuff of Genius about barbed

565
00:31:29,640 --> 00:31:33,240
Speaker 1: weiers avenor Little Easter Egg for you. It's voiced by

566
00:31:33,400 --> 00:31:38,880
Speaker 1: our own longtime best friend Matt Frederick. Tell you know what,

567
00:31:39,440 --> 00:31:42,120
Speaker 1: Tell them that we sent you.

568
00:31:42,320 --> 00:31:45,280
Speaker 2: Yell that at the laptop screen. He'll hear you in

569
00:31:45,320 --> 00:31:47,600
Speaker 2: his heart. But for now we're gonna have to ride

570
00:31:47,640 --> 00:31:51,040
Speaker 2: off into our own friscalating dusk light. But in the meantime,

571
00:31:51,160 --> 00:31:54,200
Speaker 2: you can write to us at Ridiculous HowStuffWorks dot com.

572
00:31:54,480 --> 00:31:56,680
Speaker 2: You can hit us up on social media or we

573
00:31:56,760 --> 00:32:01,320
Speaker 2: are Ridiculous History on Instagram, Facebook. The other stuff that

574
00:32:01,360 --> 00:32:04,080
Speaker 2: the Ben's friendster is popping off, man, let.

575
00:32:03,920 --> 00:32:05,840
Speaker 1: Me tell you, Yeah, it's then your GEO cities.

576
00:32:05,920 --> 00:32:08,000
Speaker 2: That's what I hear. And of course we'd like to

577
00:32:08,000 --> 00:32:11,200
Speaker 2: thank our super producer, Casey Pegrim for putting up with

578
00:32:11,320 --> 00:32:13,240
Speaker 2: us to the bitter end.

579
00:32:13,480 --> 00:32:17,360
Speaker 1: Our long suffering producer, as well as our regular contributor

580
00:32:17,520 --> 00:32:21,320
Speaker 1: Lori L. Dove, who wrote ridiculous history, ranchers hacked barbed

581
00:32:21,320 --> 00:32:25,880
Speaker 1: wire fences to create phone lines, and our composer, I

582
00:32:26,000 --> 00:32:29,040
Speaker 1: like that we can see you A Heart composer, Alex Williams,

583
00:32:29,320 --> 00:32:34,400
Speaker 1: the incomparable, and most importantly you, friends and neighbors, fellow

584
00:32:34,560 --> 00:32:37,840
Speaker 1: farm Cooperative fans. Thanks for giving us a listen.

585
00:32:42,480 --> 00:32:46,280
Speaker 2: For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,

586
00:32:46,360 --> 00:32:48,520
Speaker 2: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows,