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 f HF Gear,
Speaker 1: American made purpose built hunting and fishing gear that's designed
Speaker 1: to be as rugged as the place as we explore.
Speaker 2: Brent haven't told you about my raccoon woes.
Speaker 3: No, So.
Speaker 2: You guys know I have two very large dogs, ye
Speaker 2: great danes. Great Danes that eat ate a lot of
Speaker 2: dog food. And I keep the dog food on my
Speaker 2: back deck and I have it in a big tub
Speaker 2: because I buy it one hundred pounds at a time
Speaker 2: and it lasts like three weeks. I go through about
Speaker 2: one hundred punds of dog food in about three three
Speaker 2: and a half weeks. But I've the dog food lid
Speaker 2: was off a few times. A couple months ago. It
Speaker 2: was off a few times, and I'm like, what's going on?
Speaker 2: And then I put two and two together that the
Speaker 2: raccoons have figured out how to open up my dog
Speaker 2: food tub. Yes, so I got a rack. So I
Speaker 2: knew I had a raccoon because this raccoon was leaving
Speaker 2: me a little deposit on the back deck every night too.
Speaker 2: So so finally I got around a bar on a
Speaker 2: live trap from a friend of ours to try to
Speaker 2: help with things. I bought a new dog food tub
Speaker 2: that has locking handles on the end. So I put
Speaker 2: the live trap out, put a little bowl of dog
Speaker 2: food in there on the you know the little deal
Speaker 2: that that on the spring of the trap. Yeah, and
Speaker 2: I my dogs. I hear them wrestling in the night
Speaker 2: because I sleep in our room, and I was like,
Speaker 2: oh man. And I had put a ring camera out
Speaker 2: on the back porch and I was. I popped it
Speaker 2: up and I see a pair of eyes. I'm like, yes,
Speaker 2: I got that raccoon. And I go outside and lo
Speaker 2: and behold, your great dane was in the trap. Lo
Speaker 2: and behold, I got two raccoons in one trap. And
Speaker 2: so I uh, I was like, I.
Speaker 1: Tried, you was shopping to come in here?
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly. They look pretty young. So that was on Wednesday.
Speaker 2: When I went out there to to to check the trap.
Speaker 2: Those sorry suckers had flipped the handles down on the
Speaker 2: dog food ben and they were getting in there and
Speaker 2: getting dog food out of there first, and so I
Speaker 2: caught him. I was like, yes, my all my problems
Speaker 2: are solved. And till that was on Wednesday night. Thursday night,
Speaker 2: the dog food bind is open and there's raccoon tracks
Speaker 2: in the water bowl. I was like, are you moaning me?
Speaker 1: There's more?
Speaker 2: Yes, So I put the trap out again last night,
Speaker 2: and at five o'clock this morning, I hear like it
Speaker 2: sounded like somebody's knocking on my door, like they needed
Speaker 2: to get in. And I'm kind of in a in
Speaker 2: a stupor, and I'm like, what's going on? And then
Speaker 2: I realized I got a raccoon, and I got that
Speaker 2: other raccoon, and I got knocked on your door, knocked
Speaker 2: on the door. So I go out to the back
Speaker 2: porch and opened the door and what do I see?
Speaker 2: Two raccoons in the track, two fruits, and not only that,
Speaker 2: two more raccoons on the deck. Six six raccoons, and
Speaker 2: I don't know there might be a hole, like they
Speaker 2: may have moved in next door and I didn't know. Yes,
Speaker 2: six raccoons, that's crazy, but catching them at.
Speaker 1: A time, that's pretty impressive.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I got a dog grint.
Speaker 2: Well, I asked Clay, I said, you need you need.
Speaker 1: I'm coon dog poor right now?
Speaker 3: Man?
Speaker 2: Did y'all notice on the podcast this week Clay's chair squeaking.
Speaker 4: People talk about it all the time. I literally gets.
Speaker 1: On the Grease podcast. Really I need to oil this
Speaker 1: baby up. Welcome to the Bear Grease Render mile My.
Speaker 1: What a monumentous day we have. We have two, We
Speaker 1: have a return get.
Speaker 2: I just want to say reports of his death have
Speaker 2: been largely exactly.
Speaker 1: We have back back at the Meter South Global Headquarters.
Speaker 3: We have Gary.
Speaker 1: Believer nucom back back from back.
Speaker 3: Man.
Speaker 2: It's good to see you with ions.
Speaker 5: Good to be here. I can walk without pain now. Yeah,
Speaker 5: man will be dangerous.
Speaker 4: She's been spritten up and down.
Speaker 3: A whirl out scouting for deer.
Speaker 6: Mm hmm.
Speaker 5: And now I'm we'll quit hunt and start playing golf.
Speaker 5: Oh wow, that's tragedy, isn't it. Well, it's good to
Speaker 5: have you back. Yes, thank you. Good to have you back.
Speaker 5: And this is long time coming, Brent. Why don't you
Speaker 5: introduce our guests.
Speaker 3: To my left.
Speaker 6: To my left is my lovely wife, Alexis Reeves, fresh
Speaker 6: fresh from the Bozeman, Montana head North headquarters.
Speaker 7: Yes, so good to finally be here.
Speaker 2: You had to put yourself on someone else's podcast.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so Alexis, Alexis was on the meat Eater podcast
Speaker 1: and uh.
Speaker 2: And never heard of it.
Speaker 1: She had through meat Eater before she could be allowed
Speaker 1: on this.
Speaker 7: That's what I've been missing all these years.
Speaker 1: Alexis. It's great to have you. You are clearly the
Speaker 1: best thing going on with Brent. Absolutely, and then to
Speaker 1: my to my left, the best thing going on with me,
Speaker 1: mister newcam And then Josh Langbridge filmmaker, Josh, Yeah, did
Speaker 1: you did you get a chance to read that Brendia book?
Speaker 2: I'm I'm I've started on it.
Speaker 1: Have you really?
Speaker 3: Yeah? Good?
Speaker 2: Ye good, It's very interesting. It's not what I expected.
Speaker 1: Way, we we have a lot to do on this
Speaker 1: podcast today. First of all, I would like to to
Speaker 1: present the reeves with some new Coom Farm apple butter. Josh, you, Christine,
Speaker 1: that is some good apple butter. And I've already given
Speaker 1: Juju and Dad.
Speaker 2: That's good color.
Speaker 1: We've had a bumper crop by apples. Yeah, and so
Speaker 1: so we made apple butter, which apple butter is pretty
Speaker 1: much cooked down apples brown sugar and butter, no butter,
Speaker 1: no butter and uh and uh uh cinnamon and some
Speaker 1: vanilla and a few other secret ingredients. We got a
Speaker 1: whole whole ingredients.
Speaker 7: But it looks very good.
Speaker 1: It's good. It's good apple butter. You know, you can
Speaker 1: use apple butter in a lot of different ways. I've learned.
Speaker 1: I've been using it like a side dish, kind of
Speaker 1: like on Thanksgiving, like cranberry sauce. Like if you're eating
Speaker 1: meat or eggs or whatever, you can just have a
Speaker 1: big dollar of apple butter and just use it. And
Speaker 1: it's fantastic, fantastic. I got to introduce this. I got
Speaker 1: permission too. This is ad around the first of September,
Speaker 1: Phelps Game Calls is going to come out with what
Speaker 1: they're calling the clay newcomb Achorn grunt bleat. This is
Speaker 1: not a joke. This is a really high end and
Speaker 1: when I say high end, it's a it's actually quite
Speaker 1: a revolutionary deer call. It is a two and one
Speaker 1: grunt bleat, which I didn't realize. I was with Jason
Speaker 1: Phelps in Mexico and I we were just talking about
Speaker 1: deer calls and Phelps has a deer bleat and they
Speaker 1: have a grunt and I said, man, we need a
Speaker 1: two in one call. I don't want to carry two calls.
Speaker 1: And I love a dough bleat. I've called up so
Speaker 1: many deer with a dough bleed, especially before the rut.
Speaker 1: During the rut, all you hear about in deer hunting
Speaker 1: is grunt calls during the rut to get an aggressive
Speaker 1: buck to come in. What you don't hear about is
Speaker 1: in the early season using a bleat or what you
Speaker 1: hear about it. But you know mainly guys are talking
Speaker 1: about grunt calls. Well, I said, man, I want to
Speaker 1: inhale exhale grunt call, and he was like, well, they
Speaker 1: don't make any there's there isn't one. And they came
Speaker 1: up with an incredible design. And this call is about
Speaker 1: probably three it's probably longer than that. I was going
Speaker 1: to say five and a half six inches, But it's
Speaker 1: got a it's got a uh, it's got a a
Speaker 1: good grunt that you can't top out. You can do
Speaker 1: it real low.
Speaker 3: Or you can do it.
Speaker 1: You can it doesn't peg out. A lot of cheaper
Speaker 1: grunt calls will peg out. Blow it as hard as
Speaker 1: you can blow it. It won't peg out. But from the
Speaker 1: same side you can inhale a very supple dobe blue. Wow,
Speaker 1: that is awesome.
Speaker 3: Can it around and blow?
Speaker 1: Well, So that's the thing. So if when you're hunting
Speaker 1: real cold weather, if you want to not exhale into
Speaker 1: the call and freeze the reeds, you can flip it
Speaker 1: and suck inhale to get a grunt and then blow.
Speaker 1: So anyway, anyway, and yeah, yeah, I was flipping it back. Yeah,
Speaker 1: y'all couldn't see that. Okay, So there's not a call
Speaker 1: like this. So in theory, you could inhale to get
Speaker 1: a doe bleat and flip it and inhale to get
Speaker 1: a butt grunt if you didn't want to freeze the reeds.
Speaker 1: But what I like about the call this is, you know,
Speaker 1: the can calls are so good, the little primos can calls,
Speaker 1: I mean they really are. I wanted a call that
Speaker 1: you could replicate that soft and you can do it
Speaker 1: on these. But but this is the Akron grunner. This
Speaker 1: is the deer huntunter's grunner. Spell it too, Acron a
Speaker 1: k E r n spelled spelled the the the old,
Speaker 1: the old way, the way. Twenty percent of us in
Speaker 1: the country say, and uh, this is made of genuine
Speaker 1: white oak. Oh go and this is a deer hunter's call.
Speaker 3: That's a great call.
Speaker 1: It really is, man and uh, it's even man. I
Speaker 1: didn't ask them to do this, they did it.
Speaker 3: I love it.
Speaker 1: It's got my signature on it. They're making really hundred
Speaker 1: of these, making only five hundred of them. It is
Speaker 1: called the it's called the acorn grunner, the acorn grunt
Speaker 1: and bleat. And it's beautiful, little green uh, little little
Speaker 1: green band in the middle, but it's made of white oak.
Speaker 1: I mean that tree right there fed deer.
Speaker 3: Hey, it'll go quick man. Yeah, lanyard too.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so you can get that phelps in early September.
Speaker 1: This is a big getting big and uh you need
Speaker 1: a dough bleat is you can call in a pretty
Speaker 1: high percent, judas in the early season, bleeping at him.
Speaker 3: Has that been your experience, Alexis?
Speaker 4: Every time?
Speaker 7: Yeah, every time I've been looking for something just like that.
Speaker 1: Thank you, good, good, excellent, excellent, Brent. I have I
Speaker 1: have a couple of questions for you. So I was
Speaker 1: listening to this Country Life, Yeah, just today, and uh,
Speaker 1: there's a story you telling there about punching your dad
Speaker 1: in the stomach.
Speaker 3: Well he was asleep.
Speaker 1: Yeah, what was going through your mind.
Speaker 3: I can't.
Speaker 6: I don't know, and I even told talked about it
Speaker 6: in there, but it was like, I mean, I can
Speaker 6: remember that, and it was like I watched that on
Speaker 6: TV because I can't believe I would do it. I
Speaker 6: was not a violent child by any means, and was
Speaker 6: not a behavior problem either. But I was just laying
Speaker 6: there and I guess I'd run out of things to
Speaker 6: think about it.
Speaker 3: Other than going swimming.
Speaker 6: And when I just looked over there at him, he
Speaker 6: laid that he was so peaceful, that he was sleeping
Speaker 6: so good.
Speaker 3: It was like he was in a coma.
Speaker 6: And and Reva Man she you know, she edits the
Speaker 6: podcast Reva Hansen does, and she put that him in
Speaker 6: there snore and it was absolutely perfect. I mean, I
Speaker 6: was took right back to that spot. But I thought
Speaker 6: I laid there and I looked at my little little
Speaker 6: arms in the elementary school. I looked at my arm
Speaker 6: and I thought, I wonder how hard I would have
Speaker 6: to hit him to get elbow deep. So I just
Speaker 6: set up on the edge of the bed. And you
Speaker 6: are no more relaxed when you're in that first ten
Speaker 6: minutes of real good sleep. I mean, you are out
Speaker 6: because he was you could just just breathe and was
Speaker 6: just like the ocean.
Speaker 3: Man, it was just flowing, just easy.
Speaker 6: I just set up on the bed and as hard
Speaker 6: as I could, I tried to put my fist from
Speaker 6: his belly to his backbone. And let me tell you,
Speaker 6: it don't regardless of how good your dad is sleeping
Speaker 6: or what kind of state of coma tose he's in,
Speaker 6: he comes wake pretty quick when when you do that.
Speaker 3: And it was I couldn't. I got two steps.
Speaker 6: Away from the bed, you know, thinking right then the
Speaker 6: best place I could be was anywhere that he wouldn't
Speaker 6: And he caught me, and I just know I'm dead.
Speaker 6: He's gonna kill me. But he didn't.
Speaker 3: Obviously I lived through it and he didn't.
Speaker 1: That's part of the story. So this is this is
Speaker 1: a story on this country life podcast. It's about swimming
Speaker 1: holes and and and the climax of the story is
Speaker 1: his dad takes him swimming after this. Okay, but what
Speaker 1: but his dad wanted to take a nap before they
Speaker 1: went swimming.
Speaker 6: We'd been fishing that morning. We've been fishing that morning
Speaker 6: was from Yep, Briam fishing. Caught a big mess of fish,
Speaker 6: and when took him up there and cooked them for dinner,
Speaker 6: some folks would say lunch, they'd be wrong.
Speaker 3: And then we took it.
Speaker 6: Then he said, as soon as we get this, get
Speaker 6: you cleaned up, we're gonna we're gonna rest am in
Speaker 6: it and then we're gonna go swimming. Well, I knew
Speaker 6: rest am in it was nap and I ain't about
Speaker 6: no nap. Or let me let me rephrase that. I
Speaker 6: wasn't about no nap. Then then, yeah, I see the
Speaker 6: value of it.
Speaker 3: I don't know. I was in the fifth or sixth grade,
Speaker 3: so mm hmm.
Speaker 1: Yes, what were you thinking when you married Brent?
Speaker 7: I don't know how long have y'all been about it.
Speaker 4: What we told Steve twelve.
Speaker 7: Years, I think is what we told him.
Speaker 3: That's what we're telling people, I think.
Speaker 8: But I'm a little worried about this story about him
Speaker 8: punching his dad during that time, because I'm a big napper.
Speaker 4: You're concerned.
Speaker 8: I'm a little concerned about this, and maybe this is
Speaker 8: why I've heard that story.
Speaker 1: And yeah, you haven't heard this story. You told me
Speaker 1: that story before, Yeah, you have when it when he
Speaker 1: came on, I remember you didn't give me the context
Speaker 1: of swimming holes. I remember one time you're saying you
Speaker 1: punched your dad in the stomach.
Speaker 3: Sleep.
Speaker 6: Yeah, I never did anything like that after that, before
Speaker 6: or after, So I don't know it.
Speaker 3: Was, do you ever?
Speaker 1: No, I don't think so. No, I would have killed him. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't know. I don't think so. I do remember
Speaker 1: one time we were taking care of my littlest brother
Speaker 1: when he was just a baby, and you were asleep,
Speaker 1: and we were Me and Zach are just kind of
Speaker 1: like tired of messing with him, and so I remember
Speaker 1: putting him on your belly and like running you got
Speaker 1: It was like, this is this guy's response. No, okay, Brent,
Speaker 1: tell me so since Alexis is here, and tell me.
Speaker 1: I remember one time you told me so Alexis is
Speaker 1: kind of a city girl.
Speaker 3: All right?
Speaker 1: Or am I right very much? Okay? And you told
Speaker 1: me one time that you quoted the words to a
Speaker 1: Reda Lynn song to her telling her a story, and
Speaker 1: she thought.
Speaker 6: We hadn't been married long and it was coming before
Speaker 6: Christmas before yeah, and we had it was before Christmas
Speaker 6: and before we had long before we ever had Bailey.
Speaker 3: And she asked me.
Speaker 6: Something about a Christmas ornament. She said, do you have
Speaker 6: a special Christmas ornament from when you were a child
Speaker 6: and I said. She got looked over at me and
Speaker 6: sad face as I could put on. I said, no,
Speaker 6: we didn't have Christmas ornaments.
Speaker 3: We were poor. And she said, oh, you know, just
Speaker 3: like oh, you know, I'm not going.
Speaker 7: To go there.
Speaker 3: It's obviously a bad place.
Speaker 6: And I said, now, if I can get their lyrics
Speaker 6: right here, I said, you know, in the in the summertime,
Speaker 6: we didn't have shoes to wear. She said you didn't.
Speaker 6: I said no, I said, but in the winter time
Speaker 6: we'd all get a brand new pair. She said, oh,
Speaker 6: that's good, I said, I said my mama. My mama
Speaker 6: would order them from a male order catalog. She said really,
Speaker 6: I said, yeah. It was money made for my dad
Speaker 6: selling the hog. She said, did you grow up on
Speaker 6: the Little House on my period? And I said, no,
Speaker 6: that's the lyrics to Cold Miner's daughter. She ain't trusted
Speaker 6: the thing.
Speaker 3: Up, said yeah. She called me an idiot.
Speaker 1: She said, you idiot, Josh, can you play us that song?
Speaker 1: You know that song?
Speaker 3: I know of it.
Speaker 2: I've never played it, but.
Speaker 1: So Dad, yesterday was your fiftieth wedding anniversary. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: quite a deal.
Speaker 2: If you kept Judy with you for that long, you
Speaker 2: must be quite.
Speaker 1: That you got married in nineteen seventy three, seventy three,
Speaker 1: seventy three, Yeah, August, I believe fifty years. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: pretty good man.
Speaker 3: That's got to be the longest hostage case in history.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I'll tell you what it's it's been terrible, but
Speaker 5: we suffered too. If you know miss Judy new Come,
Speaker 5: she's a real sweetheart. Oh gosh ya, no, anyway, have
Speaker 5: been real blessed to have Judy nukelem mm hmm.
Speaker 1: So was I pretty fortunate?
Speaker 3: Yeah, y'are lucky you had her when you were raised up.
Speaker 5: She was the kind of mother that would just she
Speaker 5: wouldn't discipline or whip or anything.
Speaker 3: He's all love.
Speaker 5: And on the other side it was me. It made
Speaker 5: a good balance, really.
Speaker 1: Good cup, bad cup.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Well, that's congratulations on fifty years.
Speaker 3: That's big, thank you.
Speaker 4: It's a pretty big deal, really big thing.
Speaker 1: Alexis, what what was it like being on the Meteor podcasts?
Speaker 1: So Alexis, have we already said that yet? Alexis was
Speaker 1: on the media.
Speaker 8: But if you can never say it too much and
Speaker 8: in reality, in reality, I just said hi, and how
Speaker 8: many years I was married to Brent?
Speaker 1: But I was there talking about dire wolves and all
Speaker 1: kinds of stuff.
Speaker 7: Correct, and I love dogs, So it was great. I
Speaker 7: learned a lot. I did learn a lot. It was fun.
Speaker 7: I was honored to be there.
Speaker 1: You know, Brent's little video kind of went viral on
Speaker 1: just showed it to me talking talking about talking about
Speaker 1: cats eating the nose off of dead people.
Speaker 4: Yeah, weirdly, I've actually heard you say that before. You
Speaker 4: were the first press I've ever heard say that. Well,
Speaker 4: I just saw, I saw what was happening is I
Speaker 4: was just scrolling through and I saw if a cat,
Speaker 4: and I was like, Brent's about to tell them that
Speaker 4: cats eat dead people? You know that words came up
Speaker 4: and I was like, oh man, And so I paused
Speaker 4: to see if you did, and he did. And that's
Speaker 4: the nastiest thing.
Speaker 3: I wish I could. I wish I could forget it.
Speaker 2: Misty Nuke loves cats.
Speaker 4: I actually hate cats. I wish I didn't, and I
Speaker 4: don't know why I do. And and I've had some
Speaker 4: real extreme sponsors to cats. When we first moved out here.
Speaker 4: You know, this was just kind of a wild place,
Speaker 4: like we didn't have And I think Clay always he
Speaker 4: always my dad kind of he didn't like cats, and
Speaker 4: so every time we'd see when he'd be like, I
Speaker 4: hate cats, and so Clay just thought, well, that's why
Speaker 4: Missy didn't like cats. It's just kind of like a
Speaker 4: family culture thing. And so he always told me, I
Speaker 4: don't want you passing that on to our kids. There's
Speaker 4: no reason to hate cats. So we're not gonna.
Speaker 1: Hate I hate cats, but there's no reason to just
Speaker 1: be like afraid of cats.
Speaker 4: Yeah, So I would always just try to keep it
Speaker 4: under wraps, you know. And when we moved out here,
Speaker 4: there wasn't a whole lot going on out here. Before
Speaker 4: we got here, we had to clear out land, and
Speaker 4: it was still kind of wild. You would see all
Speaker 4: sorts of animals coming around, and usually that was fun. Well,
Speaker 4: the girls were little, they were three and two, and
Speaker 4: Bear was a newborn when we moved out here, and
Speaker 4: I would we were coming in, I think from getting
Speaker 4: groceries or something, and I brought Barry and he was asleep.
Speaker 4: I brought Barryn and I left the door open so
Speaker 4: that the girls could come in behind me. And as
Speaker 4: I'm walking up the stairs, I see a cat that
Speaker 4: was abnormal. I mean, it wasn't like a normal cat.
Speaker 4: It it's tail, it was mangy, it had blood on it.
Speaker 4: It's something had happened to this cat. And rather than
Speaker 4: me ow and it was barking. And I just said, girls, don't,
Speaker 4: don't touch that cat, don't don't look at it, don't
Speaker 4: invite it over here, because you know, River would have like,
Speaker 4: come here, kiddy. And so I was like, don't that
Speaker 4: something's wrong with that cat, y'all just come inside. And
Speaker 4: I walked out and took Bear inside. When I walked out,
Speaker 4: that cat was in our living room. Oh and my
Speaker 4: girls were sitting there and it was just the girls
Speaker 4: and I. But I instinctively did what most people would do,
Speaker 4: and I just started turning circles and screaming out loud,
Speaker 4: but remembered that I'm not supposed to pass that trait
Speaker 4: onto my kids, and so what I'm screaming is everything.
Speaker 4: So cat, I am a tall I mean, you could
Speaker 4: have wrapped a snake around my arms and I would
Speaker 4: have been calmer. And seeing that cat right there in
Speaker 4: my living room and I just start screaming. I get
Speaker 4: on the phone. Clay was out of town. That I
Speaker 4: called my aunt and uncle, who are like just up
Speaker 4: the road, and I am in a panic. They don't
Speaker 4: know if something's wrong with one of the kids, if
Speaker 4: something's and I'm just screaming, there's a cat, said, I'm
Speaker 4: going crazy. They came down here. When they walked in
Speaker 4: my aunt Terry, I mean she she walked in less
Speaker 4: than five minutes and they lived ten minutes away, less
Speaker 4: than five minutes from the time I made that call.
Speaker 4: And she had lyesol, she had wind ACKs, she had
Speaker 4: like gloves. I don't know what she thought had happened.
Speaker 1: She was ready.
Speaker 4: She thought maybe a cat had eaten someone. I don't
Speaker 4: like cats.
Speaker 1: We don't know what happened to the cat.
Speaker 2: For twenty probably twenty two years, and we've been very
Speaker 2: good friends. But I came very close to ruining our
Speaker 2: friendship one time by shoving a kitten in her face.
Speaker 2: And it was not not her thing.
Speaker 4: Let's just say no, yeah, it's not like a thing
Speaker 4: in my head that I'm choosing. I think Clay believes
Speaker 4: this is a choice that I have made. I don't
Speaker 4: know why. Here he's asked me before something bad happened
Speaker 4: to me with a cat. If that happened, that's her
Speaker 4: pressed deep.
Speaker 1: I think it's been fed.
Speaker 4: You think it's been fad.
Speaker 1: I think it's I think I think even the more
Speaker 1: we talk about the book, bigger it gets okay.
Speaker 6: Well, just able to just rest assured when they wake up.
Speaker 6: They got a cat in the house. They wake up
Speaker 6: in the morning and Fluffy is laying on your chest
Speaker 6: and you think, oh, this this cat loves me so much.
Speaker 6: He's checking to see if you're breathing because he's fixing
Speaker 6: your nose.
Speaker 4: I think I know that I need you to tell
Speaker 4: me that. When you said that, I was like, that's
Speaker 4: exactly what I'm afraid of. I know the potential that
Speaker 4: this cat has exactly it's gonna kill me.
Speaker 2: Ultimate predator.
Speaker 1: Well, we're on the third Mississippi River episode.
Speaker 2: We were we supposed to listen to so that before
Speaker 2: we came here.
Speaker 1: Yes, yes, you were, Yes, you were.
Speaker 3: I wait outside, you get a group.
Speaker 4: You know what, I thought this episode was really good.
Speaker 2: You you like, she wasn't expected.
Speaker 1: I wasn't. I kind of felt like it was it
Speaker 1: was it was a little it was like too much,
Speaker 1: just a little too much information. He Clay Lexus is like, yeah,
Speaker 1: you won't get it.
Speaker 4: That's fine. I got one on. He kind of preps
Speaker 4: like he'll come out after he finishes a podcast, and
Speaker 4: I always know what he thinks about it, and that
Speaker 4: that shapes how I hear it. So when I listened
Speaker 4: to it, I was kind of expecting this to be
Speaker 4: like over the top, but I thought it was really good.
Speaker 4: I found it super interesting.
Speaker 1: It was all like I never put anything in the
Speaker 1: Bear Grease that I don't think is essential, Like it's
Speaker 1: it's got to be essential. There's no filler, Like I
Speaker 1: don't have to make a podcast an hour long. I
Speaker 1: can make it thirty minutes. I can get whatever. So
Speaker 1: everything that was said I felt like was essential for
Speaker 1: the story. It was just there was just there was
Speaker 1: a lot.
Speaker 3: There was nothing redundant in Yeah.
Speaker 4: I think that when you when you're doing a podcast
Speaker 4: like the Mississippi. I mean, like, for example, I thought,
Speaker 4: as I listened to it, I thought, oh, he's about
Speaker 4: to talk about blues music. Like I thought that was
Speaker 4: a direction when when he when you started playing that, yeah,
Speaker 4: and and then you didn't go that direction. And I
Speaker 4: think that and we've kind of talked about this whole
Speaker 4: whole You said it at the beginning. It's hard to know.
Speaker 4: There's so much people need to know, and it's hard.
Speaker 1: To know what kind of have to pick a direction.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and then you'll come back to something or not.
Speaker 1: What I the reason I feel like knowing who Ellett,
Speaker 1: Humphreys and ads are those three guys, And not that
Speaker 1: everybody in the world needs to remember it, but when
Speaker 1: you see the depth of work and human investment and
Speaker 1: engineering and thought and everything that went into taming that river,
Speaker 1: it just makes you respect it because I mean, we
Speaker 1: just drive over it and just think that this river
Speaker 1: just it's just here. It's just not that big a deal.
Speaker 1: But I mean, this was one of the greatest feats
Speaker 1: of human engineering on planet Earth was taming this river.
Speaker 1: And these guys and their story is so fascinating because
Speaker 1: there's these two guys that are being paid by the
Speaker 1: government to give reports on the river and.
Speaker 3: They hate each other.
Speaker 1: They hate each other, and there's this ego rivalry and
Speaker 1: they both agree on the same thing that there needs
Speaker 1: to be levees and outlets, and yet because one of
Speaker 1: them wants to be different than the other, he says
Speaker 1: Leve's Only will work even though his research said that
Speaker 1: it wouldn't. They adopt that policy for like fifty years
Speaker 1: in the corp of Engineers, and then Levee's Only fails
Speaker 1: and causes the greatest natural disaster, greatest financial natural disaster
Speaker 1: in American history. It's just kind of wild when you
Speaker 1: see the human nature how it's played. And you know,
Speaker 1: man and rivers have always been have always been linked
Speaker 1: in rivers. Any kind of obstacle, a natural obstacle brings
Speaker 1: out the kind of the showcase of human possibility. Good guys,
Speaker 1: bad guys, cheaters, those that have integrity, heroes, villains. You know,
Speaker 1: it's like anything can happen. But so, yeah, what, Brent,
Speaker 1: what stood out to you in this one? Anything stand out?
Speaker 3: A couple of things. One of them do you.
Speaker 1: Like when they ate that horse?
Speaker 3: Oh, they're great.
Speaker 1: That was one of my favorite parts the VAKA when
Speaker 1: that horse drowned along with Juan Velasquez.
Speaker 6: I know that they hit the bank down there in Florida,
Speaker 6: But where did that happen at that?
Speaker 1: So the first inland journey into what is now America
Speaker 1: from Europeans was down kind of in south central Florida.
Speaker 3: So you don't know. I'm asking what river? Do you know?
Speaker 3: Did they know it was dy?
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's in there. I don't know what. Okay, offhand,
Speaker 1: I don't.
Speaker 6: But that, I mean, that wasn't what I was talking about.
Speaker 6: I just I thought about that when it happened, when
Speaker 6: I when I heard it. But the bureaucracy and both
Speaker 6: of us having I'm not going to steal a Lexus
Speaker 6: thunder here, but knowing something doesn't work and going on
Speaker 6: with it anyway, Yeah, and putting money behind it and
Speaker 6: sweat equity and people in there and it and it
Speaker 6: fell miserably, Yeah, and catastrophic to I mean, forget the farms,
Speaker 6: think about all the people. You know, I mentioned on
Speaker 6: I think render number two about my grandfather going over there.
Speaker 6: Are we ready to get into that part? Sure, he
Speaker 6: talked about that. He was he would have been about fourteen,
Speaker 6: or he would have been fourteen when they went over there.
Speaker 6: He was born nineteen thirteen, fourteen when they went where
Speaker 6: when he when they went over there to help with
Speaker 6: the flood.
Speaker 1: Okay, well, yeah, tell us we don't know.
Speaker 3: I'm sorry.
Speaker 6: My grandfather was born in nineteen thirteen and when the
Speaker 6: flood happened in twenty seven. He lived in southeast Tarkans
Speaker 6: where I grew up, and they were taking box car
Speaker 6: loads of folks and truck loads of folks over there
Speaker 6: to help not only with rebuilding, but for recovery. And
Speaker 6: he said they did a lot of that, recovering bodies
Speaker 6: and stuff over there, and some folks they never found.
Speaker 6: And he said, as a young man, he said it
Speaker 6: was absolutely horrible.
Speaker 3: He said it was.
Speaker 6: He said it was like heout even he had never
Speaker 6: he said, I'd never seen anything like that. He didn't
Speaker 6: fight in World War Two, but he said he would
Speaker 6: have to imagine that that's what it was like for
Speaker 6: those folks seeing that.
Speaker 3: He said, it was just absolutely horrible.
Speaker 6: Just whole families, some whole family's gone, yeah, you know,
Speaker 6: and people walking around trying to find loved ones and neighbors.
Speaker 6: And yeah, he said, there was absolutely it was just
Speaker 6: like a clean slate of mud.
Speaker 3: Nothing there. Man.
Speaker 1: I've always had a pretty strong philosophy about not living
Speaker 1: near big rivers during the times we live in I mean,
Speaker 1: for real, like I don't want to live near a
Speaker 1: big river. I think it's I think you in alexis
Speaker 1: risky risky. I don't want to live near an ocean.
Speaker 1: Who in the world gave you an idea that that
Speaker 1: ocean wasn't going to jump out of those banks and
Speaker 1: come swallow you, your house, your family.
Speaker 3: And your mule every September.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the end of time's not a good time to
Speaker 1: be living on the coasts.
Speaker 6: Well, the end of times path, you ain't gonna be
Speaker 6: safe right up here in northwest Arkansas.
Speaker 2: Good point, Good point.
Speaker 1: True, alexis, what do you think?
Speaker 8: Well, we were talking about this on the way up here,
Speaker 8: and in all honesty, I have no idea about it,
Speaker 8: and about this what you had never heard of it?
Speaker 8: And I guess what I've decided. And as I'm listening,
Speaker 8: I'm thinking, why why do I not know about this?
Speaker 8: Was obviously a big deal, And I guess it's because
Speaker 8: it wasn't raised here I lived in Texas, that that
Speaker 8: in no way affected anywhere right where we would where
Speaker 8: would we'd be learning about it?
Speaker 7: Yeah, you know, well.
Speaker 1: It's not surprising to me that people wouldn't know about it.
Speaker 1: I would not have known about the flood of nineteen
Speaker 1: twenty seven if it hadn't been for John Barry's book honestly.
Speaker 1: I mean, so I don't know that that's that well.
Speaker 6: My arising they wasn't taught in school where I grew up.
Speaker 6: But my only key to it was my grandpa talking
Speaker 6: about it.
Speaker 8: And my grandparents they are they lived in the Delta
Speaker 8: Are so I'm sure they did know about it, and
Speaker 8: my parents were raised in Arkansas, so they probably did.
Speaker 8: We just just was never talked about it, and so
Speaker 8: we were talking about it or listening to it today, like, wow,
Speaker 8: I've really met st.
Speaker 7: Out on something.
Speaker 8: I have no idea about this part of history, and
Speaker 8: so I learned something. I did learn something from your podcast.
Speaker 1: Oh wow, all of it.
Speaker 4: I learned all of it and everything you know about
Speaker 4: it today. So yet, Alexis, you work in we won't
Speaker 4: say your specific job, but you work inside of systems
Speaker 4: where you're in bureaucratic structures. Would you say that something
Speaker 4: like that could happen today.
Speaker 8: Absolutely, it happens every day. It's just not with a river.
Speaker 8: I mean, they are continuously making decisions knowing.
Speaker 7: It's really not going to work. But we do it anyway.
Speaker 7: We do it all the time.
Speaker 8: And so but it was interesting listening to your you know,
Speaker 8: that was way back then nineteen twenty seven, they were
Speaker 8: making those bad choices.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and you think, well.
Speaker 8: In nineteen twenty seven, twenty twenty three, why are we
Speaker 8: still doing that. We haven't learned anything during that time that, hey,
Speaker 8: maybe we should have Our instinct was correct, we should
Speaker 8: really think about before we do something.
Speaker 7: So that was very interesting. We did talk about that.
Speaker 6: And just to clarify once she said we, she didn't
Speaker 6: mean the place where she works, the bureaucracy.
Speaker 4: Yeah, well, I actually read a psychological study and listen
Speaker 4: to this this whole podcast that really talked about the
Speaker 4: difficulty of back and out of a bad decision. So
Speaker 4: it's not just like political structures. It's everywhere, absolutely that,
Speaker 4: even even in business where profit is king, it's very
Speaker 4: difficult to step back. If you've attached yourself to an
Speaker 4: initiative and you know it's going down and it's not
Speaker 4: going to work, it's very difficult psychologically. You actually have
Speaker 4: to train yourself to step away from bad decisions because
Speaker 4: you kind of attach yourself to an initiative. So in
Speaker 4: this case is a little different because this guy was
Speaker 4: like actually created.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he was one of the first He was one
Speaker 1: of the first leaders of the Corps of Engineers. I
Speaker 1: will also say just in defense. I mean, the whole
Speaker 1: podcast was kind of about this, this struggle with knowing
Speaker 1: the right answer. But something else happening is that it
Speaker 1: is easy for us and it was easy for them
Speaker 1: in nineteen twenty seven to look back like seventy years
Speaker 1: prior and you know, point have fault. So it actually
Speaker 1: worked for a long time, relatively well. There were there
Speaker 1: were there were floods and different things, but not a
Speaker 1: flood to this scale.
Speaker 6: And so my brother and I fought a duck camp
Speaker 6: inside the Arkansas River levee. And at that point when
Speaker 6: the time and we got the loan and we bought it,
Speaker 6: there hadn't been a flood in there of any degree
Speaker 6: in one hundred years. And after we bought it, we
Speaker 6: owned it twenty something years, and it got in there
Speaker 6: seven or eight times. Oh really really in that span.
Speaker 6: Yeah wow. So we're sitting there thinking, well, we got
Speaker 6: this flood insurance and all it's doing is getting a
Speaker 6: little check, and then we got to put it all
Speaker 6: and cleaning all this stuff back there.
Speaker 1: You can't flood it just NonStop. After not flooding for
Speaker 1: that arad flood years yes, yeah. Well, and that's the
Speaker 1: thing about these rivers is that you're always working against
Speaker 1: a giant that's unbeatable and unpredictable. So there had never
Speaker 1: been a flood and recorded history that big. You know.
Speaker 1: And and what we haven't said yet on the podcast,
Speaker 1: and we're not really going to get into it was
Speaker 1: in twenty eleven there was a flood that was bigger
Speaker 1: than in nineteen twenty seven.
Speaker 4: You're not going to get into that.
Speaker 1: Well, it's it's you know, I mean, who wants to
Speaker 1: hear a good news story. Nobody, not the Burgers podcast listeners.
Speaker 1: They want to hear about disaster. No, No, I'm joking.
Speaker 1: I'm joking. The flood of twenty eleven it worked. I
Speaker 1: mean the corp of Engineers that it was the it
Speaker 1: was the flood of the biggest flood and recorded history
Speaker 1: on this continent in twenty eleven. It was the levels
Speaker 1: were higher than nineteen twenty seven, and it worked. They
Speaker 1: have floodway.
Speaker 2: I have great appreciation for the Corve of Engineers.
Speaker 1: Oh there. You know, when I did this, I didn't
Speaker 1: want it to sound like I was throwing the core
Speaker 1: under the bus. I mean, it's just an interesting story. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but I mean they have what they've done with the
Speaker 1: river is incredible and it worked so and.
Speaker 2: It's a engineers.
Speaker 1: I read a whole book about the flood of twenty
Speaker 1: eleven and what they did during that time. They saw
Speaker 1: what was happening. It was this perfect storm. It was high,
Speaker 1: high snow melt in the Rockies, big rains in the
Speaker 1: Ohio River Valley. I mean, it's not just like raining
Speaker 1: in Southeast Arkansas and Memphis that makes it flood. It's
Speaker 1: all these factors way up in the drainage basin. And
Speaker 1: so they what they had to do, who was in
Speaker 1: multiple places blow up the levee at at floodways. So
Speaker 1: there's places where they have dynamite embedded in the levee,
Speaker 1: buried in the levee and they light it. Yeah, ready
Speaker 1: to blow the levee up. And so it diverts the
Speaker 1: water in a strategic place that goes in floods, these
Speaker 1: huge areas that are primarily agricultural areas. And if you
Speaker 1: live in a floodway like you know it. You're like, hey,
Speaker 1: you can build a house here. This is a federal floodway.
Speaker 1: That's the way I understand it. And you just kind
Speaker 1: of bank on your house may flood, or you build
Speaker 1: your house up like these deer camps are built up
Speaker 1: on stilts. And there's a lot of floodways all down
Speaker 1: the Mississippi from basically Memphis down to Louisiana. There's some
Speaker 1: wild stuff like that. And the Atchafalaya River wise off
Speaker 1: of the Mississippi and Louisiana. And they think if it
Speaker 1: hadn't been for the corp of Engineers keeping the Mississippi
Speaker 1: in the Mississippi, the whole Mississippi River would have naturally
Speaker 1: turned into the Atchafalayah Basin and basically the Mississippi River
Speaker 1: would have cut down through Louisiana and just like destroyed
Speaker 1: the place. But they but they continually monitored that section
Speaker 1: of the river and do a lot of thuff. Anyway,
Speaker 1: we're not we're going to get into some of that,
Speaker 1: but pretty wild, dad. What'd you think what stood out
Speaker 1: to you in this one?
Speaker 3: Well?
Speaker 5: How little I knew about it. I mean I've crossed
Speaker 5: the Mississippi River like most everybody, not hundreds, but tens
Speaker 5: of times, and you know, you just cross it and
Speaker 5: look at it and go, what a nice body of water? Yeah,
Speaker 5: and then you find out how complicated, how powerful, and
Speaker 5: you just go, wow, this is probably, you know, one
Speaker 5: of the uh the most powerful batel sources of the world.
Speaker 5: I mean it's just you know, you take water and
Speaker 5: it's it's pretty powerful.
Speaker 1: And uh, you know, I.
Speaker 5: Love Mark Twain's thoughts. You know how he described the river.
Speaker 5: I love that song from Old Charlie. I can sing
Speaker 5: that one when you read the lyrics, you know, and
Speaker 5: he had it, he had it tagged so and the
Speaker 5: human nature of Humphreys.
Speaker 1: And Elliott Elliott, Elliott Elliott. You know those guys.
Speaker 5: You know, they're geniuses, that they're the top of the heap,
Speaker 5: they're the best there are, but they're still humans, man.
Speaker 5: I mean they're gonna lie, cheat and still occasionally. But
Speaker 5: it all worked except you know, maybe maybe the.
Speaker 3: Flood was a little bad.
Speaker 5: But yeah, uh, anyway, I got I really enjoyed it.
Speaker 5: It was more it's like you said, it was almost
Speaker 5: more than I could handle.
Speaker 3: I mean, I'll be honest with my doctor.
Speaker 5: Buddy told me that if you have major surgery, your
Speaker 5: brain doesn't work quite right. And he just had major
Speaker 5: surgery and we were talking. He couldn't think of a
Speaker 5: simple part that we were trying to he said, that's
Speaker 5: an example of what I'm talking about. So my brain's
Speaker 5: not working real well, but it worked well enough to
Speaker 5: realize that I was way over my head with this thing.
Speaker 1: I mean I had to listen to it two three times. Well,
Speaker 1: see that. To me, that's a success inside of this
Speaker 1: because the reason I was interested in the Mississippi River
Speaker 1: two years ago was because of how I realized. I
Speaker 1: knew nothing about it, but I knew that it was
Speaker 1: important to America. I knew that rivers are fascinating, it's
Speaker 1: important to deer camp. According to you, how's that, well,
Speaker 1: you said, you guys bear gries, that gives you something
Speaker 1: to talk about. Yes, well, it just shows you how
Speaker 1: well complex things are all around us, that we have
Speaker 1: no idea what went into it. You just and that
Speaker 1: to me makes the world a deeper, more robust, a
Speaker 1: place where you can be curious and learn and understand things.
Speaker 1: And yeah, the river is absolutely fascinating, and as it
Speaker 1: is as dynamic of a natural feature as we have
Speaker 1: in this country, Like if you think about the Rocky
Speaker 1: Mountains and you think about going to Montana, going to Yellowstone,
Speaker 1: going to all these places where there's this grandiose, like
Speaker 1: big majesty that you look at and go wow. The
Speaker 1: Mississippi River is the same when you look at impact,
Speaker 1: but you might drive over and say, man, it's just
Speaker 1: a big mudhole. You know, it has a different kind
Speaker 1: of beauty.
Speaker 3: But it has a mule float down it occasionally too. Yeah.
Speaker 3: That was crazy.
Speaker 4: It's crazy.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but hey, you think about that river.
Speaker 5: I mean, it runs straight through the country, and as
Speaker 5: the country developed, it came to that river.
Speaker 1: And just stopped.
Speaker 5: Yeah, and then these guys started going, look, we can
Speaker 5: make iron, but that won't build a We're gonna get
Speaker 5: across this thing.
Speaker 1: So it created a totally new product. And steel.
Speaker 5: I mean when you can read about steel, and I
Speaker 5: mean it was a big deal.
Speaker 1: You know for this guy, I forget his name. It
Speaker 1: was ADS that was challenging Carnegie. Yeah, Carnegie. They were
Speaker 1: making steel. Carnegie was a gazillionaire, but it wasn't good
Speaker 1: steal Well, it was the best the market. It was
Speaker 1: the best that they ever had. But AIDS came in
Speaker 1: and basically raised the whole standard by testing every single
Speaker 1: piece of steel, and then they were able to you know,
Speaker 1: that changed the whole steel market you know, you.
Speaker 5: Know a book I read and I think it might
Speaker 5: have been Lewis and Clark. I can't remember. But this
Speaker 5: guy that it was a little different from this story.
Speaker 5: But the guy that designed this bridge, he he had
Speaker 5: to he had to create a product that would work.
Speaker 5: So he builds the bridge across the river, and no
Speaker 5: one would cross it, and he kept trying to figure
Speaker 5: out how I'm I gonna get these people across it.
Speaker 5: So he had a big press conference, had newspapers out.
Speaker 5: He had an elephant, and of course people knew that
Speaker 5: an elephant won't do anything dangerous, and he had to
Speaker 5: across the bridge. And then all of a sudden, here
Speaker 5: they go else. I don't know how true that.
Speaker 1: Was, Okay, Bridges and animals. We were we were riding
Speaker 1: mules uh Saturday in the Ozarks, and we came up
Speaker 1: on We're riding down kind of a county road and
Speaker 1: came upon a big, brand new concrete bridge that was
Speaker 1: really high, and I was riding banjo and a guy,
Speaker 1: a good mule man, was riding with me and he said, Clay,
Speaker 1: is that mule yours ever cross the bridge? And I said, well,
Speaker 1: I don't know, Oh, I guess not. I don't think
Speaker 1: he has. And he said, he was like better you know,
Speaker 1: if you want to go around it, you can. You
Speaker 1: better watch him. It's really high because what happens when
Speaker 1: you walk across a concrete bridge is that just sounds
Speaker 1: clipping across there. It sounds funny, it's hollow, there's it's
Speaker 1: just this unique thing. And so he I was I
Speaker 1: was a little bit worried about across the bridge, but
Speaker 1: Banjo went right across it.
Speaker 3: Way to go, buddy.
Speaker 1: Really, just like your elephant, that.
Speaker 4: All things come together. James b Eads was the guy
Speaker 4: that he's talking about.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he was in the podcast.
Speaker 4: I know, that's what I'm saying.
Speaker 1: He was the one that made the elephant. Yeah, no way,
Speaker 1: what's his name?
Speaker 4: The Eads Bridge is a three arts Still Trust bridge.
Speaker 1: It Aids from the Aids is the one that had
Speaker 1: the elephant. Okay, okay, I asked John. For some reason,
Speaker 1: I thought his name was Scott.
Speaker 3: But I'm sure you're sure.
Speaker 1: The one with the elephant.
Speaker 4: Listen, I mean, I'm I'm on the Saint Louis Bank
Speaker 4: website in the mid eighteen hundreds.
Speaker 3: That's it.
Speaker 1: That's all.
Speaker 4: James Buchanan Aids had a learned distress of riverboats and
Speaker 4: deep determination, a necessary combination to construct the unbuildable bridge.
Speaker 2: That was That was the highlight for me.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, come on, it's like eighteen Missouri Elephant? How
Speaker 1: did you get the elephant?
Speaker 2: I've I've always had a fascination with craftsmen and structures,
Speaker 2: and and listening to that part of the podcast was
Speaker 2: just fascinating to me thinking about this guy. I had
Speaker 2: actually never heard of him before, and the way that
Speaker 2: John Barry was talking about his his intellectual prowess and
Speaker 2: and and genius. I found it surprising that he's not
Speaker 2: a more common name.
Speaker 1: Well, he's you know, I think it just goes back
Speaker 1: so deep, and there's only so much that, you know,
Speaker 1: a person can kind of file away in their brain.
Speaker 1: But he he's up there with the great engineers and
Speaker 1: inventors of America.
Speaker 6: Well, the dude told his self calculus, and I couldn't
Speaker 6: have somebody that knew calculus, couldn't teach me calculus.
Speaker 2: I just have great appreciation for structures that stand the
Speaker 2: test of time.
Speaker 1: Can you believe that bridge is still fascinating?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 2: And hat tip to mister.
Speaker 1: Aids well, and I thought it was interesting that in
Speaker 1: Mark Twain's book Life on the Mississippi, he directly addressed
Speaker 1: AIDS and tried to cut him down at the knees,
Speaker 1: Like you think about writing a book and you're a
Speaker 1: best selling author, and you are not just an author
Speaker 1: like you would be today. Today. You're an author and
Speaker 1: there's you're you know, there's also Netflix, and there's social media,
Speaker 1: and there's all these different avenues to get media into
Speaker 1: your brain. Back then, books, newspapers, it wasn't even radio.
Speaker 1: And so Mark Twain is like the I don't know
Speaker 1: the biggest guy on the in the in America, and
Speaker 1: he calls out Aids in his book as a as
Speaker 1: a guy that thinks he knows it all but doesn't.
Speaker 1: And so Twain called it. He was like, you can't
Speaker 1: control this river. You're never going to be able to
Speaker 1: control it. And I felt like it was important to
Speaker 1: put the Mark Twain stuff in there.
Speaker 4: You can't talk about the mississipb.
Speaker 1: Obviously, there's a lot of people that have read Mark
Speaker 1: Twain to maybe this is a surprise to you, Josh,
Speaker 1: I have not. I haven't read Mark Twain.
Speaker 3: Really required reading.
Speaker 4: For kids too.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and where I came from. They never made me
Speaker 1: read Mark Twain.
Speaker 4: That's surprising.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I don't know, but I felt like reading those sections.
Speaker 1: They were they were so witty, and you see Mark
Speaker 1: Twain he was so enamored with riverboat pilots and how
Speaker 1: they had to navigate, which was pretty wild. And then
Speaker 1: his uh my favorite part was when he talked about
Speaker 1: how science back in the day. He was ridiculing the
Speaker 1: most modern science, basically saying that scientists change their minds
Speaker 1: all the time and use inaccurate things to get the
Speaker 1: spiel I made about science.
Speaker 4: That's a pretty good it was a good spell.
Speaker 1: Well, it's not that, you know, there's one extreme of
Speaker 1: not trusting science where you're a flat earth and you
Speaker 1: just don't think science even matters. I'm not there at all.
Speaker 1: I'm a big fan of science. Much of much of
Speaker 1: some part of science is kind of making the best
Speaker 1: speculations of what we can for the future based upon
Speaker 1: what we know or think happened in the past. And
Speaker 1: I mean, if there's one thing that's that is certain
Speaker 1: in science is that it really does constantly change. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's constantly and that's okay. That means it's working, and
Speaker 1: that we're progressing anyway.
Speaker 4: So it's kind of funny when people say you've got
Speaker 4: to you've got to you know, you've got to trust science,
Speaker 4: and they kind of be little people who who question
Speaker 4: some aspects of things that are coming out. You know,
Speaker 4: it's okay to question that stuff. But it's also when
Speaker 4: people treat the scientists as if like they're not credible,
Speaker 4: or they're not they're not intelligent, or they've got some
Speaker 4: sinister motive. That's also wrong because that's just part of science,
Speaker 4: that's part of discovery. Is you gotta you gotta run
Speaker 4: some tests. And all you're saying with science is in
Speaker 4: this test, this is what it looks like. Yeah, that's
Speaker 4: really all you're saying. Yeah, and you could you can
Speaker 4: generalize that out in other ways, but in every you know,
Speaker 4: you put a lot of those little rocks together, you
Speaker 4: get a little mountain.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, but what I'm always saying on Bear Greece
Speaker 1: is that there there are some parts of the human
Speaker 1: existence and life on this planet that will never be
Speaker 1: measured by science, that are more real than gravity.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I could if I if you get a tattoo for
Speaker 1: Bear grease, write that word for word. Have someone look
Speaker 1: it over grammatically to make sure it makes sense. But
Speaker 1: that's the truth. Like the trend of the intelligent is
Speaker 1: to be like the only thing that's on planet Earth
Speaker 1: is what can be measured, seen, tasted, and touched. What
Speaker 1: I was trying to say is that that is new.
Speaker 1: Humans for a long time have known that there is
Speaker 1: a spiritual dynamic to this place. Mister Earle knows it.
Speaker 1: There's a spiritual dynamic and there's a natural dynamic, both
Speaker 1: very real, both very relevant to human existence. I mean
Speaker 1: like love science, yeah, also love the things that will
Speaker 1: never be tracked by science, like asking a pinball machine
Speaker 1: to make bread. How'd you like that?
Speaker 3: Brand?
Speaker 1: Bam bam bam. It sounds like something out of this
Speaker 1: country life.
Speaker 2: I could just see Clay sitting in here in his
Speaker 2: office and thinking, what's the most obscure that I could
Speaker 2: think of?
Speaker 3: Right now?
Speaker 1: That one just came. I didn't even think about it.
Speaker 3: It just it just sometimes they just righted themselves.
Speaker 1: Sometimes they right themselves. Yes, yes, testosterone. Uh any comments
Speaker 1: on the testosterone part. We're getting some eye rolls. Raising
Speaker 1: his hand.
Speaker 6: When I started playing that, when I started playing it
Speaker 6: on the way up here, I said, now, you know,
Speaker 6: it's not going to be a test.
Speaker 3: I don't think sometimes there used to be.
Speaker 6: But but the day ain't over, obviously, I said, But
Speaker 6: just think about something there that that that made sense
Speaker 6: to you, or that or maybe it didn't make sense
Speaker 6: to you. That just something that you grasped onto. And
Speaker 6: and he's because he's going to ask you what what
Speaker 6: you got out of it about it or what stood
Speaker 6: out to you. She's like, okay, we started playing, and
Speaker 6: I started playing it, and when it got to the
Speaker 6: part about the underwear, she's like, can I comment on that?
Speaker 3: I don't know. I don't know, Christy.
Speaker 2: Christy asked me. She goes, is that true? And I said,
Speaker 2: I don't know. She's like, she's like, is he talking
Speaker 2: about boxer briefs? And I was like, it's like, well,
Speaker 2: I guess. She's like, is it the same with whitey tities?
Speaker 2: I said, I don't.
Speaker 1: Know that tight man's under obviously be whitey tight.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: No, for it's legitimately with my.
Speaker 6: In my podcast, I talked about me and my dad's
Speaker 6: tripping down to our boxers, you know, so to take
Speaker 6: a nap in the heat. M anything you want to
Speaker 6: say about boxers or.
Speaker 7: I agree with you.
Speaker 8: Can I say, Can I say something else that I
Speaker 8: learned or that I like?
Speaker 7: Could we we talked about this too.
Speaker 8: Is the political part of it always dings for me
Speaker 8: when I'm listening to something because I love it.
Speaker 7: I mean, that's my life, you know. I liked I
Speaker 7: like all that kind of stuff.
Speaker 8: And the Hoover, Yeah, that was so fascinating to me.
Speaker 8: I had no idea about because you never hear about
Speaker 8: him as a president. I'm a big president person. I
Speaker 8: love that history. I love to learn about it.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 7: I knew about the voting, you know, because Lincoln.
Speaker 8: You know, all of that made sense because of what
Speaker 8: I've learned, But I did not know that he was
Speaker 8: such a big part of that and he had you know,
Speaker 8: deceived and you know, all of that makes sense.
Speaker 7: But I didn't know any of that. So that was
Speaker 7: very interesting.
Speaker 1: Well that's a good That's a good thing to talk about.
Speaker 1: Is the is the things that that flood influenced in America.
Speaker 1: And what is one thing John Barry said is that
Speaker 1: it got Herbert Hoover like a president and he was
Speaker 1: a hero of the flood. Right, There was a lot
Speaker 1: of good things that he did. He was a genius,
Speaker 1: as John Barry said. But then yeah, and men, it's
Speaker 1: so interesting that it changed the African Americans from the
Speaker 1: from the Republican to the Democratic Party. I had no
Speaker 1: idea the point when it happened, which is interesting.
Speaker 8: I just didn't know, like it was neat. That was
Speaker 8: neat to learn about that part of history.
Speaker 1: I didn't know about, mister. Any of those five things
Speaker 1: stand out to you, the five things ways four things.
Speaker 4: Well, I did like that. I appreciated your spiel on
Speaker 4: on Mark Twain and science and I we've already covered that.
Speaker 4: I thought. I did not realize that they kept the
Speaker 4: Black family's hostage. Yeah, that was total news to me.
Speaker 4: I knew about the Great Migration that that. I mean,
Speaker 4: there's a lot of like that's a really big part
Speaker 4: of history. But what's interesting is that I've actually taught
Speaker 4: about the Great Migration, but you always teach about it
Speaker 4: in the sense of where they went to and where
Speaker 4: people moved to and kind of what was pushing on
Speaker 4: there when you think about it in terms of Jim
Speaker 4: Crow laws and in Hospital South. But boy, that was
Speaker 4: a whole different that was a whole different level. I
Speaker 4: didn't know any of that that was news to me,
Speaker 4: So I thought that was I thought that was interesting.
Speaker 4: I agree with the lexus. I thought the Hoover thing
Speaker 4: was interesting. Probably my favorite part of the whole thing
Speaker 4: was when you were talking about Mark Twain. I enjoyed
Speaker 4: hearing his his readings. I hadn't heard those, but I
Speaker 4: thought the part about spirituality was interesting. And yeah, Clay
Speaker 4: like to talk about testosterone a lot these days. When
Speaker 4: I listened to it, I was like, good grief, we
Speaker 4: just had this conversation, just like over coffee this morning,
Speaker 4: and so, yeah, that's it. I didn't know that I
Speaker 4: was getting teed up to hear it on the podcast.
Speaker 1: I told you they and John Bray's book, it talks
Speaker 1: a lot about what happened on those Levy refugee camps,
Speaker 1: the murders, the incredible you know, there there were, there
Speaker 1: were There was a time when they when they said
Speaker 1: that a mule was worth more than a person on
Speaker 1: that levee, and uh, there was a yeah, it got
Speaker 1: really wild for a long time, and that river was
Speaker 1: up for a long time, and those people were on
Speaker 1: the levees, and yeah, they wouldn't let the black people leave.
Speaker 1: They would let the white people leave, and it all
Speaker 1: went back to that thing of to Will and Leroy Percy,
Speaker 1: those guys who you know, it's like there's good and
Speaker 1: there's bad.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that was kind of crazy because they were so well, it's.
Speaker 1: Kind of like you know, it got down to uh,
Speaker 1: as they say in the in the cattle industry, down
Speaker 1: to nut cutting time, and they Leroy kind of showed
Speaker 1: his hand about really where he was at.
Speaker 4: It's why motivation. Motivation matters because like you could, you
Speaker 4: could see just this one section from from was It podcast,
Speaker 4: the number two right talked about you, Okay, well these
Speaker 4: are decent people, but then you you listen to part three,
Speaker 4: it's like, well they did some good things because they
Speaker 4: were motivated by this, and therefore the motivation is what
Speaker 4: actually matters the most because here I wouldn't use the
Speaker 4: terms that they just used. I mean, here we go,
Speaker 4: but it really showed their motivation and that actually because
Speaker 4: that's their motivation that influenced their actions in a different way.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, it. I mean, it's the thing about the Percys,
Speaker 1: those that they declared their they never tried to hide
Speaker 1: why they they were like, we're going to build an empire,
Speaker 1: we need labor. We need to empower these people so
Speaker 1: they'll stay here. And then but then when they wanted
Speaker 1: to leave, that's when the percys were like, Hey, these
Speaker 1: guys need to stay here for the for the for
Speaker 1: the farms, for everything that's going on. So yeah, no,
Speaker 1: it's a it's an interesting, interesting, interesting story. We've got
Speaker 1: one more Missisippi River podcast, and it's gonna be totally different.
Speaker 1: It's not gonna be deep and heavy and old. It's
Speaker 1: gonna be fish and turtles and and there's a little
Speaker 1: near inside of it. It's got what there's one near
Speaker 1: death experience. Get ready, get ready, go ahead.
Speaker 3: Well.
Speaker 4: One of the things that I thought was interesting too,
Speaker 4: when they were talking about the year before the flood
Speaker 4: and everybody was like, hey, if it rains anymore, yeah,
Speaker 4: we're gonna be in trouble. I was listening to that
Speaker 4: the day I listened to these people talk about our
Speaker 4: heat this year. Yeah, and they're all like, it can't
Speaker 4: get much harder than this. It's we're gonna be in trouble.
Speaker 4: And I just thought it was kind of interesting, like
Speaker 4: this major natural disaster and crisis that hit America and
Speaker 4: they're kind of having similar conversations right now, and I
Speaker 4: just thought, what would it have been like to have
Speaker 4: read that in the paper. You know, these guys are
Speaker 4: worried about the water, and it would probably be exactly
Speaker 4: like I feel right now hearing about it in a podcast.
Speaker 1: Mm hmm about the heat man, we really put you
Speaker 1: in a bind here?
Speaker 3: Did you really put me in a bye?
Speaker 5: You're not even aware of There's a game camera right
Speaker 5: out there.
Speaker 1: It's been up for years, no problem, it doesn't work well, Alexis.
Speaker 1: It's great to have you on the podcast, you know,
Speaker 1: you know, after seven years of not being on here
Speaker 1: and beg mm hmm, yep, it was worth it. It's time.
Speaker 1: It was time.
Speaker 7: It's worth it, so thank you.
Speaker 1: Yes, Dad, good to have you back.
Speaker 3: Than you.
Speaker 1: I hope everybody has a great life.