Speaker 1: Also media, Harry everyone, Robert Evans here and on Thursday
Speaker 1: September twenty fifth at eight pm, Behind the Bastards is
Speaker 1: doing a live show. The show itself is in Portland, Oregon,
Speaker 1: but all of the in person seats have sold out. However,
Speaker 1: there are live stream tickets available if you go to
Speaker 1: Alberta Rose Theater t h E A t r E
Speaker 1: Behind the Bastards on just type that into Google or
Speaker 1: whatever search engine you use. Alberta Rose Theater Behind the
Speaker 1: Bastards you can find a link to buy tickets for
Speaker 1: the live show. This is to benefit the Portland Defense Fund,
Speaker 1: which helps bail people out who don't have, you know,
Speaker 1: resources of their own, so it's a good cause. Tickets
Speaker 1: are twenty five dollars for the live stream version of
Speaker 1: the show, So please go to Alberta Rose Theater Behind
Speaker 1: the Bastards and pick up a live stream show to
Speaker 1: check it out. On Thursday September twenty fifth at eight pm.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, what time is it is? It is
Speaker 1: it's Behind the Bastards thirty or whatever. No, not my
Speaker 1: best effort. This is the show about bad people, the
Speaker 1: worst in all of history, and to distract everyone from honestly,
Speaker 1: just a disappointing introduction. I feel bad about it. The
Speaker 1: person that I feel worse when I'm incompetent in front
Speaker 1: of my old boss, Dan O'Brien. Dan, welcome to the show.
Speaker 1: I'm so sorry that's me.
Speaker 2: Don't apologize. I was hoping this was one of the
Speaker 2: episodes where we would shake things up and not do
Speaker 2: a bastard? Do you not do those?
Speaker 1: Just like psych you for Christmas? Okay, what's the year?
Speaker 2: Rats?
Speaker 1: You want to come on for Christmas? Dan and hear
Speaker 1: about a nice person?
Speaker 2: Just once? Just want to hear about one nice person.
Speaker 1: Well, that's not this week. That's not what we're doing
Speaker 1: this week, although we are going to be learning a
Speaker 1: lot about what it was like to grow up in
Speaker 1: rural Tennessee in the nineteen forties, which, as a spoiler
Speaker 1: bad it was a horrible time to be a person. Okay, Rats,
Speaker 1: So that's gonna be fun. So Dan, who I forgot
Speaker 1: to introduce my former boss at Cracked, one of the
Speaker 1: best writers and mentors that I've ever had in my
Speaker 1: life and also writer for last week Tonight with John Oliver,
Speaker 1: where you have one uh not an oscar and not
Speaker 1: a Tony, but the one the nimmy right you're at
Speaker 1: Are you at two? Now?
Speaker 2: I really hate that you're making me do this. I
Speaker 2: am at six now.
Speaker 1: You're at six. Jesus Christ, So did I miss four?
Speaker 2: It's so rude that you made me do that. It's
Speaker 2: the worst thing in the world to correct someone on.
Speaker 2: I couldn't let it go.
Speaker 1: No, Dan, you have to come on. We have my
Speaker 1: friend patches on to celebrate his Grammy. We have to
Speaker 1: celebrate my award winning friends. I love that episode.
Speaker 2: What a what a delightful person?
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, oh greasy yes, oh greasy will who will
Speaker 1: be listening to this? Well, Dan, I'm proud of you
Speaker 1: and I'm really excited to take you through really a
Speaker 1: dark and depressing story about one of the worst police
Speaker 1: officers that this country ever had. So do you know
Speaker 1: anything about Buford Pusser?
Speaker 2: Great name. I love the name. Yeah. Apart from that, no.
Speaker 1: It's incredible. It's an amazing name. Yeah, it's almost that
Speaker 1: he has almost the name from the Cop as, the
Speaker 1: same name as the cop from Smoking in the Bandit.
Speaker 1: But no, this was a real cop. Have you seen
Speaker 1: the movie Walking Tall the original like nineteen seventy three.
Speaker 2: No, not the original.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean there was a reboot in like two
Speaker 1: thousand and four with the Rock but like both Walking
Speaker 1: Talls and there's actually several Walking Tall movies. It became
Speaker 1: like a whole franchise. They're all based on a real guy,
Speaker 1: a real cop who up until literally like a year ago,
Speaker 1: was almost universally viewed to have been like a hero.
Speaker 1: And his name was Buford Pusser, And.
Speaker 2: It's a name that that were you writing a screenplay,
Speaker 2: someone would be like, Haha, this is a fine placeholder,
Speaker 2: but like, no one's gonna buy it for your bad
Speaker 2: guy character.
Speaker 1: You gotta get a real name. Yeah, yeah, I don't
Speaker 1: even know if like Buford or Pusser is more ridiculous,
Speaker 1: but like together, it just does not sound like a
Speaker 1: real person.
Speaker 2: Absolutely not no, but no, it was.
Speaker 1: A real man and his story came out on film.
Speaker 1: The kind of like the the shorthand version of the
Speaker 1: story is that he's this cop who this like Tennessee
Speaker 1: cop who declared war on this like local organized crime group,
Speaker 1: the State Lion Gang, who were like doing running, gambling
Speaker 1: and prostitution and a legal liquor because McNairy County was
Speaker 1: a dry County and he went to war. He smashed
Speaker 1: up their stills with like a baseball bat or just
Speaker 1: like a big Sometimes you'll just see him like wielding
Speaker 1: a log and like that's kind of Buford Pusser's like legend.
Speaker 1: Is this cop who went head to head with the
Speaker 1: mafia and like beat mafia guys to death with boards
Speaker 1: basically right, Like that's the version of him from the movie.
Speaker 2: Yes, this is Hacksaw Jim Duggan, Yes adjacent, Yes, Yes,
Speaker 2: very much so.
Speaker 1: And he kind of became because the movie comes out
Speaker 1: in seventy three and because it's supposed to be a
Speaker 1: real guy. There were a lot of news stories about
Speaker 1: this guy's actual exploits and he is personally like the
Speaker 1: model that you get around the seventies and eighties of
Speaker 1: like the gritty, hard boiled cop who he breaks the law,
Speaker 1: he doesn't play by the rules, but he gets results.
Speaker 1: Like Bauford Pusser is the origin in a lot of
Speaker 1: ways of a lot of that mythos, Like he's not
Speaker 1: the only person it's based off of, but he's the
Speaker 1: real guy that a lot of that stuff gets kind
Speaker 1: of wrapped around, Like there's a lot of Buford Pusser
Speaker 1: and Dirty Harry, you know, like he's and it kind
Speaker 1: of makes sense that seventy three is when this guy
Speaker 1: in his movie get famous and blow up, because you know,
Speaker 1: seventy three is when Nixon resigns. It's this period in which,
Speaker 1: like crime is raising and Americans are there's just kind
Speaker 1: of this general sense of exhaustion both at like crime
Speaker 1: in the streets and crime at like the top of
Speaker 1: the country. So people were kind of craving this like
Speaker 1: just law paladined figure who didn't wait for you know,
Speaker 1: the court system to catch up, didn't wait for the
Speaker 1: niceties of the galer, just went right after the bad
Speaker 1: guys and took them down.
Speaker 2: You know, that makes a lot of sense. I do
Speaker 2: have to say, and I don't want to note you
Speaker 2: to death. You've You've come a long way since you
Speaker 2: were my intern, and the podcast is great and everyone
Speaker 2: loves it. I will say, if you're going to say
Speaker 2: a sentence like there was a lot of Buford Pusser
Speaker 2: in Dirty Harry, you've got to leave some air. You've
Speaker 2: got to give some space for someone to say something
Speaker 2: you can't barrel on through after that.
Speaker 1: Really, I mean, you know, I kind of just thought
Speaker 1: maybe maybe we just maybe we just let that lie. Okay,
Speaker 1: I didn't know, I didn't I don't know, Dan, this
Speaker 1: is These are the kind of life and death choice
Speaker 1: people in our field have to make. I'm ready for
Speaker 1: all your Pusser jokes and Buford jokes. He was played
Speaker 1: in nineteen seventy three by Joe Don Baker, which is
Speaker 1: actually sounds more like a real sheriff's name than Buford Pusser. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so before we get into this guy's story, I want
Speaker 1: to give you a little bit of like how he's
Speaker 1: known in pop culture before the myth gets busted, which
Speaker 1: really has just happened, like in the last year or so,
Speaker 1: there's been a lot of crimes that have been reinvestigated
Speaker 1: that Buford was involved in that has kind of tarnished
Speaker 1: his legacy. But prior to that point, here's how the
Speaker 1: La Times described Walking Tall, which went on to make
Speaker 1: more than forty million dollars off of a half a
Speaker 1: million dollar budget during his six years in office. Pusser,
Speaker 1: known for carrying a big hickory stick he used as
Speaker 1: a weapon, fought a gang of bootleggers and conmen who
Speaker 1: are operating along the Mississippi Tennessee state line. He was
Speaker 1: shot and stabbed on several occasions, killed a thieving meat
Speaker 1: FEMA motel owner who ambushed him, and in nineteen sixty seven,
Speaker 1: was way laid in his car by the criminals who
Speaker 1: shot him and murdered his wife, Pauline. Almost none of
Speaker 1: that's true, with the exceptional fact that he did get
Speaker 1: shot and stabbed on several occasions. Everything else kind of
Speaker 1: open for reevaluation given the more recent facts that we've got.
Speaker 2: So I'm assuming that means like murdered thieving woman. The
Speaker 2: parts of that that are are false. It's gonna bum
Speaker 2: me out right right.
Speaker 1: Yes, the murder part is true, the other parts maybe
Speaker 1: a little less clear. His wife getting killed in an
Speaker 1: assassination may not have been exactly how it went down,
Speaker 1: it is worth noting. At the time, one New York
Speaker 1: Times reviewer called Walking Tall a fascist movie, and it
Speaker 1: kind of there's you can see that right, Like it
Speaker 1: is fundamentally about how some people should just be allowed
Speaker 1: to do whatever to enforce the law, even if they
Speaker 1: have to break the law to it, and that's not
Speaker 1: a great message. Joe Don Baker, who played Buford, describes
Speaker 1: the film's appeal, as quote, a response to people being
Speaker 1: sick of crime and politicians like Richard Nixon. They just
Speaker 1: wanted to take a stick and beat up on the government.
Speaker 1: And I think we can all identify with that urge.
Speaker 2: I just but is it the government that Pusser is
Speaker 2: going after in.
Speaker 1: The moment the government he fought is that thieving female
Speaker 1: motel owner Richard Nixon.
Speaker 2: I'm just so goddamn mad about Nixon. I'm gonna go
Speaker 2: in this bar and beat up some people that I've
Speaker 2: decided our criminals.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I do. That's a very American thing, Like I'm
Speaker 1: angry at the government. I need to see a huge
Speaker 1: man beat the shit out of poor people.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So, as I stated, over the last few years, a
Speaker 1: growing body of experts that started to question the official
Speaker 1: story of Buford's life, and particularly the story of the
Speaker 1: night his wife was murdered and he was grievously injured.
Speaker 1: And so we're going to talk as much as we
Speaker 1: can about but the real Buford Pusser this week. He
Speaker 1: was born Buford Hayes Pusser, and Hayes is spelled just wrong,
Speaker 1: hys e. That's not how Hayes is supposed to be spelled.
Speaker 3: I'm incorrect.
Speaker 1: I'm not happy about that. Really took me a long
Speaker 1: time to get over. On December twelfth, nineteen thirty seven,
Speaker 1: Tokarl and Helen Pusser at a farm in McNairy County, Tennessee.
Speaker 1: His dad's side of the family had come over from
Speaker 1: England in the sixteen thirties, and his grandpa had settled
Speaker 1: in Tennessee in eighteen seventy nine after leaving Georgia, where
Speaker 1: he had served in the Confederate military. Probably we don't
Speaker 1: know exactly, but we know that his brother died in
Speaker 1: a Union prisoner of war camp, so pretty likely. Now,
Speaker 1: these guys would not have been We're not talking like
Speaker 1: the slave owning class. These people don't have money, but
Speaker 1: you know that, we're talking like the class of poor
Speaker 1: whites who made up the bulk of the Confederate military.
Speaker 1: You know, like that's that's Beauford's relatives.
Speaker 2: Sure fair enough to say that they were still like
Speaker 2: broadly supporters of the cause.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, oh yeah yeah. Although although Buford is that's
Speaker 1: really not a thing he has an issue with. He's
Speaker 1: actually gonna be one of the first sheriffs to appoint
Speaker 1: a black deputy, I think the first in Tennessee, and
Speaker 1: he has a reputation for being like pretty good on
Speaker 1: race stuff, and in fact, none of his crimes involve
Speaker 1: him being racist, so he might actually get a pass
Speaker 1: on that. Just a murderer. Hey, there we go, small
Speaker 1: victories man, Yeah, you love to see it. So Carl
Speaker 1: and Helen. His parents had three children, and Buford Hayes
Speaker 1: Pusser was the youngest. He was delivered by his nanny
Speaker 1: because the doctor was late getting to their farm house.
Speaker 1: He was delivered right as the doctor was walking away.
Speaker 3: Question, what are is it?
Speaker 1: Did the doctor still Bill? Because I'm guessing.
Speaker 4: Yes, well the doctor definitely still build. But no, what
Speaker 4: what are his siblings names?
Speaker 2: Fantastic question?
Speaker 1: So his brothers? His brother was John Howard and his
Speaker 1: sister was Gallia A y l A. I. Again not
Speaker 1: a real name, so just.
Speaker 3: One normal had They come up with John.
Speaker 1: John Howard that one of the kids they figured had
Speaker 1: to have like a real person name, and the rest
Speaker 1: the rest you can just go for broke. I don't
Speaker 1: understand how they're spelling things. The only answer I have
Speaker 1: is that nobody knew how to spell words properly because
Speaker 1: you just don't. Hayes doesn't need an E anyway. Galeen
Speaker 1: Gayla Pusser gay g A y l i A Pusser,
Speaker 1: Gayla Pusser, Gallia.
Speaker 2: Pusser, Gallia Pusser, Gallia Pusser. I'm so sorry elementary school
Speaker 2: was tough.
Speaker 1: Yeah, right, at least at least she didn't come up
Speaker 1: in like the nineties. That would have really been rough.
Speaker 3: That's actually an amazing stage name.
Speaker 1: Gallia Pusser. Yes, it would be a stage name for
Speaker 1: a very specific kind of performer today, but not maybe
Speaker 1: the easiest name to grow up in Tennessee in the
Speaker 1: forties with. Also true, So, uh, Beuford was huge. She's
Speaker 1: going to be six foot six as an adult, and
Speaker 1: he's noted as being a very big baby. He's got
Speaker 1: a full head of hair by the time of his
Speaker 1: first birthday, so this is a big kid. He's immediately
Speaker 1: eating everything he can get his hands on. He just
Speaker 1: turns out massive. He's just a monster from the jump now.
Speaker 1: Most of our details on Buford's early life come from
Speaker 1: a book written after his death by his daughter, Dwana
Speaker 1: Pusser a d w Ana. This family cannot spell people's
Speaker 1: names normally or give them more leaves. I don't know
Speaker 1: what's going on. And this book is fantastic. It's so funny, Likedana.
Speaker 1: It's not intentionally funny, because Duanna is clearly very proud
Speaker 1: of her dad and buys into the whole hero myth
Speaker 1: of him. She barely got to know him because, as
Speaker 1: a spoiler, he dies pretty early. So the book is
Speaker 1: all her talking about the different family lore that she got,
Speaker 1: both from what she remembers from her dad telling her
Speaker 1: and from what other relatives told her about like her family.
Speaker 1: And she's clearly really proud of it and doesn't realize
Speaker 1: how horrifying everything that she's saying is. And so it's
Speaker 1: this like unintentionally terrifying narrative, and there's a lot of
Speaker 1: humor and like her describing these awful things that are
Speaker 1: happening to him and that he's doing as like, ah,
Speaker 1: boys being boys, that's just how kids were back in
Speaker 1: the day.
Speaker 2: Was this the only book that she wrote or was
Speaker 2: she an author or biographer by trade or anything.
Speaker 1: I don't believe Duana Pusser wrote any other books.
Speaker 2: Okay, it's it's very sweet to do that for your father.
Speaker 2: Do you wanna pusr I appreciate that. I yeah, understand
Speaker 2: that impulse very much, but I also it puts me
Speaker 2: in the right headspace to understand how accurate this is
Speaker 2: going to be.
Speaker 1: Right right, And I would not view this as like
Speaker 1: a very good work of history. I think it's more.
Speaker 1: But it is fascinating in terms of the shit that
Speaker 1: she is willing to admit that he did that she
Speaker 1: doesn't see as bad. But like, I think we can
Speaker 1: look in and be like, oh, this is obviously like
Speaker 1: a fucking psychopath. Like this kid is is deeply, deeply
Speaker 1: damaged and dangerous. That's going to be That's going to
Speaker 1: be a where the sweetness in this first episode comes out.
Speaker 1: So Dwana describes her father. She gives kind of scarce
Speaker 1: details of his first six years of life, other than
Speaker 1: to say he was a mama's boy who fought against
Speaker 1: going to school at first. She describes him kind of
Speaker 1: conflictingly as both a natural leader and someone who was
Speaker 1: bullied from an early age, which quote is one of
Speaker 1: the ways he learned to sympathize with the underdog. Now again,
Speaker 1: this kid is like famously large and famously violent. I
Speaker 1: don't know how much I believe he was like ever
Speaker 1: the underdog at his school. He's also like a basketball
Speaker 1: star at a local at his school. I don't know
Speaker 1: how much bullying I think he actually endured, but maybe
Speaker 1: Duada was convinced of it.
Speaker 2: As someone who was famously real life bullied in middle
Speaker 2: and high school. I don't think it was much to
Speaker 2: do with how giant I was. That didn't make me
Speaker 2: a target. I don't think. In fact, No, there was
Speaker 2: an verse relationship.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the six the kid who is a foot and
Speaker 1: a half taller than everyone and the best at sports
Speaker 1: is usually not the underdog, right, like, usually not the
Speaker 1: bullied kid.
Speaker 2: That guy so huge, I bet he could throw me
Speaker 2: over the fence. Well, I suppose we'll find out.
Speaker 1: Yeah, let's make fun of him. Hey, basketball guy, you
Speaker 1: like being good at sports. So family law about somebody
Speaker 1: whose legacy became the subject of a successful series of
Speaker 1: movies and several books is notoriously inaccurate. But the family
Speaker 1: law of that Dwana gives is that as a kid,
Speaker 1: Buford mostly socialized with women. Right, he writes, girl or
Speaker 1: she writes, girls were drawn to my father. He liked
Speaker 1: them too. As a child, growing up in the forties,
Speaker 1: he encountered the kind of traumas you'd expect. At age eight,
Speaker 1: he was walking with his siblings and their dog after
Speaker 1: a rainstorm and they found the corpse of a neighbor
Speaker 1: girl his age, who lived nearby and had drowned in
Speaker 1: a ditch. Like this is just like a cash Like, yeah,
Speaker 1: he's on a walk one day after a rainstorm and
Speaker 1: they find the dead body of one of their neighbors
Speaker 1: by me. Yeah, it's a real stand by me kind
Speaker 1: of moment. And Duana does describe this as upsetting to
Speaker 1: her father, but most of her stories of Daddy are
Speaker 1: related as light hearted humor, even when the text of
Speaker 1: what's happening is like fucked up, to say the least.
Speaker 1: And I'll give an example here. By the time Daddy
Speaker 1: got to be a big boy, he was seeing the
Speaker 1: fun of playing practical jokes. I remember hearing about when
Speaker 1: he played on his granddaddy Bliss Harris, who had come
Speaker 1: to stay with the family. Again, not a normal name
Speaker 1: among these people. They had an outhouse and my great
Speaker 1: grandfather Harris went outside to use it. Daddy knew he
Speaker 1: was in there. He fired a shotgun and rained a
Speaker 1: storm of pellets against the side of the outhouse. When
Speaker 1: his grandpa came running out with his pants hanging down
Speaker 1: below his knees, Daddy thought it was the funniest thing
Speaker 1: he'd ever seen. Holy shit, that's not a prank. That's
Speaker 1: just shooting it at your grandpa with a shotgun. Right,
Speaker 1: that's not a prank. That's shooting it someone.
Speaker 2: And it's such a it's such a rich area that like, oh,
Speaker 2: he went into the outhouse and pranks are in the air.
Speaker 2: I think, I bet I know where this is going.
Speaker 2: I bet he's gonna like shake it or do something
Speaker 2: like maybe tip over the outhouse, something with poop involved.
Speaker 2: But it's like, no, it's just standard pedestrian gun violence.
Speaker 1: He just fires a twelve gag.
Speaker 2: Yet his grandfather the toilet is a non factor. Really, Yeah,
Speaker 2: that prank works in any setting.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he could have shot him anywhere, and he will.
Speaker 1: He repeatedly throughout his life, will you will you shooting
Speaker 1: at people with guns? As the punchline of a joke
Speaker 1: like this, that's one of buford Buster's favorite gags is haha,
Speaker 1: I shot you and you got scared.
Speaker 2: Gosh, comedy was so easy back then.
Speaker 1: It really was. I mean, you could just get up
Speaker 1: in front of an audience fire off a shotgun and
Speaker 1: then you know, walk off the thunderous applause and probably
Speaker 1: some screaming Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you get a Comedy Central present special off that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I will say that if that's what like Joe
Speaker 1: Rogan and company were angry about. As opposed to not
Speaker 1: being able to say slurs. Man, you can't even fire
Speaker 1: a twelve gage shotgun at your grandfather anymore and get labs.
Speaker 1: People just get angry. It's this fucking new woke bullshit,
Speaker 1: not allowed to shoot at people as a joke anymore. Tragic.
Speaker 1: So Dwana tells another story about Buford's childhood church. It
Speaker 1: had no outhouse, no bathroom facilities of any kind. So
Speaker 1: I'm number one. It just sounds like a nightmare, like
Speaker 1: going to church doing one of these long services. Churchgoers
Speaker 1: just had to go in the woods nearby if the
Speaker 1: need took them. And there was a side for men
Speaker 1: and another side for women. And Dwana goes on to
Speaker 1: relate this story. Daddy and his friend came across two
Speaker 1: little boys who were fighting, and one of the youths
Speaker 1: had just pulled a pocket knife from his pocket. Daddy
Speaker 1: calmly approached the kid and took it away from him,
Speaker 1: but not before the boy cut Daddy on the wrist.
Speaker 1: Daddy's friend ran and told Papa what had happened. Papa
Speaker 1: told the boy, why son, he'll be all right. Sure enough.
Speaker 1: When he came back, Daddy had simply tied a handkerchief
Speaker 1: around his wrist and acted as though nothing had happened. So,
Speaker 1: just like a casual knife fight at church, you know,
Speaker 1: that's the that's this the attitude towards violence. This guy
Speaker 1: grows up with.
Speaker 2: A church knife fight that he was trying to break end.
Speaker 1: Okay, yes, and wound up getting stabbed. And yeah, when
Speaker 1: his friend freaks out, his dad is like, yeah, don't
Speaker 1: worry about it, you know, like it's just a little
Speaker 1: just got stabbed a little bit. It's barely anything, you know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's so much information that the father's casual response
Speaker 2: to it barely even registered the first time around, was like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 2: that's kind of strange. I hope. The first time I
Speaker 2: got stabbed as a child, my dad was like, that's alarming.
Speaker 2: Let's look into this. Yeah, and this will blow over.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm not going to say there's more than one
Speaker 1: right way to handle your child getting stabbed in a
Speaker 1: knife fight outside of church. But this is probably not
Speaker 1: the ideal way to do it, right, So, as this
Speaker 1: anecdote might key you went on, CPS was not even
Speaker 1: a gleam in Congress's collective eye at this point. And
Speaker 1: so despite all of this stuff happening, all of the
Speaker 1: violence and shootings and whatnot that Beauford is involved in
Speaker 1: before he's like a teenager, there's like, there's never any
Speaker 1: chance that anyone's going to take him or his siblings
Speaker 1: out of the house or like look into what's going
Speaker 1: on in their home environment in any way. That's just
Speaker 1: not a thing like this is this is it's kind
Speaker 1: of important to note, I don't think this is a
Speaker 1: wildly weird upbringing for the time period right like this,
Speaker 1: it's certainly not treated as one by anyone who lives
Speaker 1: around Buford. The family moves to Adamsville, Tennessee in nineteen
Speaker 1: fifty one when he is in eighth grade, or I
Speaker 1: should say his mom moved there and she took the
Speaker 1: kids while Papa was away working on an oil pipeline.
Speaker 1: And the story that Dwana gives is that he refused
Speaker 1: to move and so his wife made the decision for him,
Speaker 1: and he found out when he came back from the
Speaker 1: pipeline and his family was gone. It kind of sounds
Speaker 1: to me like maybe she left him and didn't want
Speaker 1: to kill the kids the truth, and they just got
Speaker 1: back together later. It's a little unclear.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's certainly the most generous way of framing that story.
Speaker 2: It's like, oh, yeah, we wanted to be a fun surprise.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we surprised Vappa by fleeing from him and leaving
Speaker 1: the state.
Speaker 3: Literally.
Speaker 1: You know, who would never abandon their children to work
Speaker 1: on an oil pipeline?
Speaker 4: Me?
Speaker 2: What do you? Yeah?
Speaker 1: My parents, I would.
Speaker 2: It's such a long list.
Speaker 1: Yeah, most people probably wouldn't. And among the most people
Speaker 1: is our sponsors.
Speaker 2: Ah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's what I was trying to do.
Speaker 2: There, Dan, I know the game. I'm gonna fuck with you.
Speaker 1: We're back, and Dan's fucking with me.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 1: Why, Dan? What did I ever do to you? Well?
Speaker 2: This episode's got me in the mood for pranks. I guess,
Speaker 2: in the mood.
Speaker 1: For a casual prank like shooting a shotgun at your
Speaker 1: grandfather or getting stabbed at Cherich, classic pranks. We're going
Speaker 1: to hear some more good pranks in this episode. So Adamsville,
Speaker 1: where the family moves in fifty one, is a comparatively
Speaker 1: large city. There's about a thousand people there at the time,
Speaker 1: so they're no longer just out in the sticks. And
Speaker 1: Buford's earliest memories of life in the big city to
Speaker 1: him involved his mom getting increasingly paranoid about crime. Dwannapuster
Speaker 1: just writes, quote, being new to city life, she didn't
Speaker 1: know what city folks might do, right, so they moved
Speaker 1: to the city, and she's heard all of these it's
Speaker 1: kind of familiar to today, where like kind of rural,
Speaker 1: more conservative people, hear a bunch of horror stories about
Speaker 1: how violent and dangerous the big city is. And so
Speaker 1: when they get to Adamsville, she's just prepared for everyone
Speaker 1: to be a monster. And one night soon after they
Speaker 1: move there, when she's alone with the kids, someone knocks
Speaker 1: on the and her immediate move is to threaten to
Speaker 1: shoot whoever's at the door. And then that person knocks again,
Speaker 1: and here's what Twana writes, quote, the noise started up
Speaker 1: once again, and sure enough, Mama fired her shotgun through
Speaker 1: the door and went back to bed. The rest of
Speaker 1: the night was silent. The next morning, she got up
Speaker 1: and found the family cat stone dead on the front porch.
Speaker 2: God. Incredible, I mean, thank goodness, it was just the cat.
Speaker 2: Good Lord, it was.
Speaker 1: Just the cat. Yeah, then your husband didn't come back, or.
Speaker 2: Or just a neighbor being like, let's welcome you to
Speaker 2: the neighborhood.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I brought a pie, sorry to the cat.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: And there's there's so much information about the character of
Speaker 1: his mother because we get very little explicit, but just
Speaker 1: from the fact that her response to noise is to
Speaker 1: shoot through the door and then not check. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: she doesn't open the door, she fires a shotgun through
Speaker 1: it and then goes to bed like that. That's wild.
Speaker 2: That's if I have to get up to pee, I'm
Speaker 2: not going back to bed. I'm just up and tossing
Speaker 2: and turning for a while. God bless her her the
Speaker 2: inner piece that she has.
Speaker 1: Yeah, she just as soon as she shot, she was
Speaker 1: like calmed out that like, yeah, spiritually cleansed her, had
Speaker 1: got her into that yog state. She was able to
Speaker 1: reach Nirvana after murdering the family cat. And you have
Speaker 1: to imagine again this is all related as these funny
Speaker 1: anecdotes by Dwana that has to have an impact on
Speaker 1: the kid. Your mom shooting the family cat to death
Speaker 1: in the middle of the night, ranting about crime. Now,
Speaker 1: the fact that his mom is so paranoid about crime
Speaker 1: in this period of time would not have been out
Speaker 1: of place for the time in the area. The end
Speaker 1: of World War two had brought an economic boom to
Speaker 1: the whole country, and obviously Tennessee and Mississippi and the
Speaker 1: border regions of those states, which is where the Pusser
Speaker 1: family lives, Like we're included in that boom. But all
Speaker 1: of that money also brought in organized crime. Now traditionally
Speaker 1: in the region, like the big hub of sin and
Speaker 1: vice had been Phoenix City, Alabama, But in the mid fifties,
Speaker 1: the attorney general of the state was assassinated by mafia
Speaker 1: related guys and the governor declared martial law and sent
Speaker 1: in the National Guard to like actually deal with like
Speaker 1: the organized crime problem in Phoenix City. And this cleared
Speaker 1: out Phoenix City, but it sent all of these guys
Speaker 1: who had been set up there fleeing for other areas,
Speaker 1: and a lot of them wound up settling on kind
Speaker 1: of like the state line in McNairy County right around
Speaker 1: where Adamsville, is right. So that's kind of like the
Speaker 1: inciting incident to why there was a surgeon crime in
Speaker 1: and around Adamsville in this time, as all of these
Speaker 1: guys had been cleaned out of Phoenix City, Alabama, and
Speaker 1: so they'd had to relocate.
Speaker 2: The consistency of criminals where they get kicked out of
Speaker 2: their town and they can start over and do whatever
Speaker 2: they want, and they just decide to still do crime
Speaker 2: is genuinely admirable. If I was just to flee and
Speaker 2: go somewhere else, I would just like be a different guy.
Speaker 1: I don't know, Dan, Like when the old place, when
Speaker 1: crack fell apart, we all wound up getting jobs writing
Speaker 1: and doing comedy of some sort. I imagine it's the
Speaker 1: same if you're like a pimp where you get busted, like, well,
Speaker 1: this is what I have ten years experience doing, you know.
Speaker 2: That's true.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's a lot of similarities between pimping and internet comedy.
Speaker 1: Dan absolutely mostly hats Yeah, that's ninety percent of it.
Speaker 2: And famously neither is easy.
Speaker 1: Neither no, no, but they are both necessary. Obviously we
Speaker 1: could go on. So in the nineteen ninety book The
Speaker 1: State Line Mob, author W. R. Morris, and that's if
Speaker 1: you're looking at like a broader history of organized crime
Speaker 1: in the Southeast, the State Line Mob is a good
Speaker 1: book for that. W. R. Morris writes that this crackdown
Speaker 1: basically causes a criminal diaspora and a significant number of
Speaker 1: gangsters settled in the state line joints when authorities closed
Speaker 1: the gambling casinos and whorehouses in Phoenix City. So that's
Speaker 1: a part of what and part of why they picked
Speaker 1: this state line is that in McNary County is still
Speaker 1: a dry county, like alcohol sales are illegal, which means
Speaker 1: when they're kind of looking where are we going to
Speaker 1: go from Phoenix, they're like, well, we can still bootleg
Speaker 1: in McNairy County, you know, So that's an easy choice.
Speaker 1: Like there's a whole extra business here that doesn't exist
Speaker 1: in most of the country because the state's still trying
Speaker 1: to keep a lid on this. So there's money for
Speaker 1: you know, making moonshine and smuggling booze. Again, see the
Speaker 1: documentary Smoking in the Bandit if you want to learn
Speaker 1: more about smuggling alcohol through dry counties. But over the
Speaker 1: course of the late nineteen fifties, a guy named Jack
Speaker 1: Hathcock and his wife Laura Luis Hathcock came to run
Speaker 1: the State Line Gang or the State Line Mafia, which
Speaker 1: is kind of the loose term for all the different
Speaker 1: criminal groups at this area. It's kind of like right
Speaker 1: where Tennessee meets Mississippi along US Route forty five, that's
Speaker 1: where all these folks are based.
Speaker 2: You are presenting me with an inevitable showdown between Pusser
Speaker 2: and half.
Speaker 1: I am I am yes, yes, No. The woman who
Speaker 1: is said to have ambushed him, that he had to
Speaker 1: kill is Laura Louise Hathcock, right, excellent. No, So the
Speaker 1: half Cocks and the Pussers famous family feud.
Speaker 2: As they were the first time they were writing history,
Speaker 2: and so I was like, we just we simply can't.
Speaker 2: I know what's the past, and all of our names
Speaker 2: are different. Just make it half Field and McCoy. Just
Speaker 2: do something else.
Speaker 1: That would be like the studio note. If you were
Speaker 1: trying to do a movie about these people in the
Speaker 1: modern like trying to reboot it, they'd be like, Okay,
Speaker 1: we got to change the names for one thing. The
Speaker 1: audience can't watch the rock. And that's why when they
Speaker 1: did the Two thosand and four reboot, the rock was
Speaker 1: not named after the actual sheriff. They're like, we can't
Speaker 1: have this guy called himself Pusser on screen for an
Speaker 1: hour and forty minutes. That's not gonna work for anybody.
Speaker 2: Right, we're aiming for a PG thirteen here. We can't
Speaker 2: have Pusser said more than once.
Speaker 1: We've gotta lock that down. And people would just be
Speaker 1: confused about Buford because that's not a name that we
Speaker 1: let kids have anymore. Yeah, so Jack had been raised.
Speaker 1: Jack Hathcock had been raised in McNairy County, the same
Speaker 1: as Buford, and like many of his peers, he grew
Speaker 1: up drinking hard and fighting regularly. His father had been
Speaker 1: an alcoholic who was brought load at an early age
Speaker 1: by the jake leg, which is a kind of paralysis
Speaker 1: caused by drinking poisonous moonshine. Since prohibition had hit right
Speaker 1: when Jack Hathcock was a teenager, he immediately it's like
Speaker 1: I was saying earlier. His whole like CV is crime.
Speaker 1: Like from the time he's like fifteen, he's smuggling liquor,
Speaker 1: he's running moonshine. He's literally like selling moonshine to his classmates.
Speaker 1: In his grade school when he's in like seventh or
Speaker 1: eighth grade, so a career criminal. He left home before
Speaker 1: turning eighteen for a very good reason, which is that
Speaker 1: his father shot his twin brother to death and he,
Speaker 1: I guess got the message, like I'm out of twins. Holy,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna take this as a warning. Oh man's got
Speaker 1: a taste for killing people who.
Speaker 2: Look just like me. I gotta get out of here.
Speaker 1: Probably time to bounce. And I do love the idea
Speaker 1: of a guy for whom crime is like it's like
Speaker 1: being a child actor, but like, yeah, yeah, the mafia
Speaker 1: version of that where like, yeah, from the time he's
Speaker 1: like twelve years old, you know, he's getting inculcated into
Speaker 1: the life.
Speaker 2: Yeah, just a nepo crime baby, for sure. There's just
Speaker 2: no way around it.
Speaker 1: Obviously, you know, running liquor and you know, murdering people
Speaker 1: and doing illegal gambling is a lot healthier for a
Speaker 1: teenager than being a child actor. But yeah, absolutely so.
Speaker 1: Jack and Luis meet in nineteen thirty seven. They get
Speaker 1: married soon after, and they're married for like twenty years,
Speaker 1: and for a while it seems to be a really
Speaker 1: good marriage. The two operate a growing assortment of illicit businesses.
Speaker 1: They go from basically nothing to running four or five
Speaker 1: large businesses on the state Line. And yeah, the organization
Speaker 1: that they control comes to be known as the State
Speaker 1: Line Mob. And while they're building their empire, while they're starting,
Speaker 1: because they've got like a hotel and they've got a
Speaker 1: couple of different roadhouses and bars, they've got a couple
Speaker 1: of brothels, and they're gambling at all of these facilities, obviously,
Speaker 1: And while they're building, you know, from nothing into having
Speaker 1: an empire into being like very influential, powerful criminals. Young
Speaker 1: Buford continues to make his way through school. He gets
Speaker 1: his first job at age twelve, working at a general store.
Speaker 1: He is tall for his age. He towers over most
Speaker 1: of the other boys in town, and his primary character trait,
Speaker 1: aside from violence, is that he drinks milk constantly and
Speaker 1: is convinced that it's why he turns out bigger and
Speaker 1: stronger than everyone else, which I guess maybe actually he
Speaker 1: might be right on that one, if the milk ads
Speaker 1: from the nineties I remember were accurate. And he gets
Speaker 1: into the normal huge guy hobbies. He's into football, he's
Speaker 1: into basketball, he plays he's good at football, but he
Speaker 1: doesn't like it as much as he likes basketball, which
Speaker 1: did surprise me because his other favorite hobby is constantly
Speaker 1: every other boy that he can fight in his school.
Speaker 1: His daughter would later write that had it not been
Speaker 1: for athletics, she didn't think her father would have graduated.
Speaker 1: And then she related this anecdote from one of his
Speaker 1: high school teachers. And this is the teacher talking. I
Speaker 1: whipped Buford Pusser. I came into my classroom one day
Speaker 1: and found two holes about the size of your head
Speaker 1: and the top of my desk. Buford was standing on
Speaker 1: my brand new desk wrestling with four or five other boys.
Speaker 1: As they tugged and pulled on him. Bufford's weight had
Speaker 1: sent him sinking knee deep through my desk. After the
Speaker 1: dust settled, I brought him around to the front of
Speaker 1: my desk and tore him up with my paddle. And yeah,
Speaker 1: just a lot there too, both. Number one, your brand
Speaker 1: new desk. How does a boy sink through the time?
Speaker 4: Like?
Speaker 1: What the fuck shit material is your desk made out of?
Speaker 2: Right, there's I'm having I'm not sure which out house
Speaker 2: to point my gun out. I don't know which twin
Speaker 2: to shoot here because like his teacher, for starters, is
Speaker 2: way too preoccupied with their desk. That's like too much,
Speaker 2: too much affection for their desk.
Speaker 1: Yeah, not the like the literal brawl that's happening in
Speaker 1: their classroom, but it does say a lot about the
Speaker 1: time that like fighting. Huh yeah, you know what, the
Speaker 1: punishment for that is getting beat.
Speaker 2: Maybe some violence will beat that at of you.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, violence the violence out of you. Buford. So,
Speaker 1: he and his friends, as we've established, love to play pranks,
Speaker 1: and these are almost exclusively the kinds of pranks that
Speaker 1: would get you a criminal record. Today. Buford's childhood buddy
Speaker 1: Paul Wallace recalled one Halloween where Buford and he and
Speaker 1: several of their friends borrowed a neighbor's wagon from his barn,
Speaker 1: towed it to a nearby town like the town over,
Speaker 1: basically took it apart, carried the pieces up to the
Speaker 1: roof of the general store, and then reassembled it on
Speaker 1: the roof of the general store in that other town.
Speaker 2: Okay, I, which.
Speaker 1: Is at least creative and nonviolent.
Speaker 2: That does resemble a prank to me. That's that's the
Speaker 2: kind of prank I can get behind, because uh, It
Speaker 2: just creates a little bit of in the world. And
Speaker 2: there's like a victim, but not like a like a
Speaker 2: victim victim, you understand, not like a hospitalized victim.
Speaker 1: Right, No, one's like killed or maimed or injured. There's
Speaker 1: no permanent property destry. You've created a conundrum for somebody,
Speaker 1: but it's an amusing one. This will be the only
Speaker 1: real prank that he ever plays. Buford spent the summer
Speaker 1: of his junior year working on a pipeline in Oklahoma
Speaker 1: with his father, And this is actually something. He begged
Speaker 1: his mom for permission to go work on an oil pipeline,
Speaker 1: and she only agreed on the grounds that once he
Speaker 1: came back for class in the fall, he'd have to
Speaker 1: work extra hard to get his grades up to passing.
Speaker 1: So working on an oil pipeline is like his reward
Speaker 1: for promising to study harder. Yeah, very different time and
Speaker 1: a very different kind of person.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it was Sonic the Hedgehog for me. That was
Speaker 2: my pipeline.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, if I guess it was Warhammer forty miniatures
Speaker 1: for me.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So yeah, we had similarly difficult upbringings. To Buford know,
Speaker 1: I would say those are like equal experiences playing Sonic
Speaker 1: the Hedgehog or gluing models together, and working on an
Speaker 1: oil pipeline in the forties or fifties. Yeah, so he
Speaker 1: comes back from the oil pipeline and he's as good.
Speaker 1: He follows up with his promise to his mom. He
Speaker 1: does put in more work. His grades go up well
Speaker 1: enough that he's able to pass. However, the final months
Speaker 1: of his time in public school also saw a continued
Speaker 1: escalation in the severity of the violent encounters that he
Speaker 1: had with his classmates. His friends later recalled that Beauford
Speaker 1: and his crew had a feud with a group of
Speaker 1: boys from the nearby community of Savannah, and this other
Speaker 1: gang of boys was led by a kid named nicknamed
Speaker 1: Big Red Hubbard. Both crews would drive through each other's territory,
Speaker 1: speeding and heckling each other to try to provoke a fight.
Speaker 1: Like they'd drive past, and they'd all be like piled
Speaker 1: in one guy's vehicle. They'd throw some shit at you
Speaker 1: and like try to get you to follow them or something. Right,
Speaker 1: And one day after they drove by, like Beauford runs
Speaker 1: off after them. And then when he comes back a
Speaker 1: few minutes later, he's got like a wound on his leg,
Speaker 1: and he tells his friends that he had been stabbed
Speaker 1: by in the leg by a member of Big Red's crew.
Speaker 1: Now this was a lie. Buford had cut himself taking
Speaker 1: down a volleyball net earlier, and just I guess, had
Speaker 1: saved up the injury, had avoided talking about it until
Speaker 1: Big Red's crew went by, and then he runs off.
Speaker 1: I think he probably reopens the cut and is like, look,
Speaker 1: they fucking stabbed me, and he does this. His daughter's
Speaker 1: explanation is that he decided to lie and say that
Speaker 1: they had stabbed in him because the lie would be
Speaker 1: then quote, the foundation for some future mischief. And this
Speaker 1: is what one of his friends, Paul Wallace, this is
Speaker 1: how he describes the mischief that comes later. A few
Speaker 1: days later, Buford told his mother that I wanted to
Speaker 1: borrow his daddy's shotgun to go squirrel hunting. Those squirrels
Speaker 1: just happened to live in Savannah and liked to playpool
Speaker 1: and drive fast. Buford spotted the car of the Savannah
Speaker 1: squirrels and let go with nine shots into the back
Speaker 1: of that car. It was like a Wild West show.
Speaker 1: We then drove off a little down the road and
Speaker 1: hid next to the river bottom near the levee. We
Speaker 1: were sure that any minute we'd hear police sirens. But
Speaker 1: nothing happened and nothing was ever said. Man.
Speaker 2: As much as we've established that half Cock was a
Speaker 2: born crook, this big giant pusser is a born cop.
Speaker 2: That is some very sophisticated cop creation of reason to
Speaker 2: do violence against people you don't like, that has some
Speaker 2: really early instincts that will pay sweeping dividends for him
Speaker 2: down the line.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it is amazing that, Like his immediate instinct as
Speaker 1: a kid is like, I have to first set up
Speaker 1: a justification for this is some kind of self defense,
Speaker 1: and then I'm going to do what is just to
Speaker 1: drive by shooting right right, And I feel the need
Speaker 1: to emphasize he fires nine shots out of a shotgun. Shotguns,
Speaker 1: especially in that day, most of them, the biggest probably
Speaker 1: aren't going to fit more than like six maybe seven
Speaker 1: shells in the tube, Like that's kind of the max,
Speaker 1: and it was probably less. I don't know exactly what
Speaker 1: he had. What I'm saying is that they he reloaded
Speaker 1: to continue shooting into their car at some point, Like
Speaker 1: this was not like a spur of the moment thing.
Speaker 1: This was like planned with malice aforethought, right. Yeah, he
Speaker 1: is seventeen or eighteen, and he's done his first drive by,
Speaker 1: so that's good.
Speaker 2: Holy coach.
Speaker 1: And yeah, as you said, like a very copstyle drive by. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and these again, this anecdote, like all these others, is
Speaker 1: described by his daughter as like boys being boys, and
Speaker 1: they could drive by shootings. Not boys being boys, Absolutely not.
Speaker 1: But it is going to graft precisely to his adult
Speaker 1: life and the primary allegations against him as a law man,
Speaker 1: Like he is already the guy he's going to be
Speaker 1: his whole life at seventeen. And I guess you have
Speaker 1: to respect consistency. I don't know if respect is the
Speaker 1: right word, but he's certainly consistent.
Speaker 4: Yeah, but he's consistently Like shit, yes, I'm not gonna
Speaker 4: respect that.
Speaker 2: I feel like it makes me a hypocrite to like
Speaker 2: the the criminal hustle and for some reason not his
Speaker 2: cop hustle. But I guess I'm okay being a hypocrite
Speaker 2: in this direction.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, you know, criminal hustle is like because there's
Speaker 1: usually something beyond it behind, just like violent nihilism, like
Speaker 1: a desire to make money or you know, have access
Speaker 1: to substances that aren't normally legal, as opposed to this
Speaker 1: guy just wanted to shoot some other kids, potentially to
Speaker 1: death for the crime of like yelling at him as
Speaker 1: they drove past.
Speaker 2: Right, It's the difference of people who are doing crimes
Speaker 2: because they recognize, like, this system is rigged. Yeah, everyone's
Speaker 2: everyone's robbing everyone. I'm gonna do it too, and Pusser
Speaker 2: being like, the system is rigged and it's great and
Speaker 2: it's one of the riggers.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm gonna figure out how to rig the fuck
Speaker 1: out of this thing. I love shooting people. I shoot
Speaker 1: my grandfather with a shotgun. You think I won't shoot
Speaker 1: someone else. So Beauford is drawn to crime from an
Speaker 1: early point in his life, not just the violent crime,
Speaker 1: but you know, the gambling and drinking and that sort
Speaker 1: of stuff. He and his little gang of buddies started
Speaker 1: traveling to the state Line in high school and they
Speaker 1: would drive as a group to partake. They'd go to
Speaker 1: these brothels and these roadhouses. They'd drink and they'd gamble
Speaker 1: and they'd horer, and you know, they're paying into the
Speaker 1: state Line mob, right, Like that's who's running all of
Speaker 1: these businesses. So they are consumers of you know, these
Speaker 1: different illegal ventures while he's a teenager. Buford's daughter would
Speaker 1: later insist they mostly went just to stand around in
Speaker 1: gowk as school boys do. And if you believe that
Speaker 1: I've got a bridge to sell you, yeah, I just
Speaker 1: went to the the brothel casino to look. I just
Speaker 1: wanted to gock a little bit, you know, like boys do.
Speaker 1: Do you want to?
Speaker 2: I don't think you know much about brothels. There's not
Speaker 2: like a looking part. Yeah, there's there's there's mostly the
Speaker 2: going in part.
Speaker 1: Oh, you boys are just here to gk. Come on
Speaker 1: in gock away. So Beauford graduated Adamsville High School in
Speaker 1: nineteen fifty six, and he immediately enlists in the US
Speaker 1: Marine Corps. Now I think fifty six the draft was
Speaker 1: still on, So this is probably one of those like
Speaker 1: had to like enlisting gave me a degree of choice
Speaker 1: as opposed to, you know, waiting to get drafted. The
Speaker 1: Tennessee and he does not have a long military career.
Speaker 1: The Tennessee Encyclopedia just summarizes that he was discharged due
Speaker 1: to chronic asthma, and he only serves about three months
Speaker 1: half of which he spends in a military hospital. He
Speaker 1: does get an honorable discharge in November of that year,
Speaker 1: nineteen fifty six, and his daughter notes that he wore
Speaker 1: his uniform all the way home, keeping it on until
Speaker 1: the last moment he legally could, because he was so
Speaker 1: proud of being a marine, even though he really wasn't.
Speaker 1: He's in the job for like three months. That's about
Speaker 1: as long as I worked at Sonic.
Speaker 3: You worked at Sonic?
Speaker 1: Oh, my my first job.
Speaker 3: It was all visuals in my head are as.
Speaker 1: It's a nightmare. It's a nightmare.
Speaker 3: God.
Speaker 1: Yeah, everyone worked king at a Sonic is already dead inside.
Speaker 1: I can tell you that right now.
Speaker 2: Were you the Were you rollerblading out to cars?
Speaker 1: God?
Speaker 3: I hope so.
Speaker 4: No.
Speaker 1: They wouldn't let me rollerblade. They were scared of me.
Speaker 1: They were scared of my power. Dan. That was wise
Speaker 1: of them, Yeah, probably was. So this short chapter of
Speaker 1: his life, well he's briefly a marine, is bookended by
Speaker 1: yet another very normal nineteen fifties experience, nearly dying in
Speaker 1: a horrific car accident because there were absolutely no safety
Speaker 1: measures in vehicles back then. In late November nineteen fifty six,
Speaker 1: within really a couple of weeks of him getting out
Speaker 1: of the Marine Corps, Beauford is riding back from Memphis
Speaker 1: with a friend when the car that they're both in
Speaker 1: crashes and he flies out through the front windshield. He survives,
Speaker 1: but he suffers three crushed vertebrae and he has to
Speaker 1: spend a month in the hospital and he has to
Speaker 1: wear a back brace for an additional two months. Upon release,
Speaker 1: and then, having narrowly survived a brush with death, he
Speaker 1: starts studying to be a mortician and he goes to
Speaker 1: work as a mortician's assistant in March of nineteen fifty seven.
Speaker 1: You know, that's the first positive move. Get this guy
Speaker 1: in a room with the corpses, right, he's not safe
Speaker 1: around a live people, certainly.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's such a this does at the risk of
Speaker 2: saying something positive about this, this massive pusser fellow that
Speaker 2: that that is one of the most interesting decisions coming
Speaker 2: from a person who I don't think it sounds very
Speaker 2: capable of of like thoughtfulness or introspection, you know, like
Speaker 2: like crime to marines to cop is a path that
Speaker 2: makes sense to me. But surviving a terrible accident and
Speaker 2: then being drawn to the work of mortician. Is is,
Speaker 2: I don't know, there's something there's there's something kind of
Speaker 2: poetic about that to me, there's something that that that
Speaker 2: shows he's got some some like real like inner thoughtfulness
Speaker 2: and pathos to himself that I that I I didn't
Speaker 2: initially give him credit for.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it verges on being like a healthy way of
Speaker 1: coping with the near death experience, right, which you wouldn't
Speaker 1: expect from this guy. That is that is an interesting
Speaker 1: like that is one of those weird little I didn't
Speaker 1: I didn't expect that from him, actually, right, I assumed.
Speaker 2: He was going to walk out of the hospital and shoot.
Speaker 1: A car right right to start his start a one
Speaker 1: man war against automobiles. He does shoot at some cars
Speaker 1: in this story, Dan, but that's not he doesn't. He
Speaker 1: doesn't do it in vengeance for the accident. He actually
Speaker 1: seems to be pretty good as a mortician's assistant. At first.
Speaker 1: He takes a weird degree of pride in his work.
Speaker 1: Dwanna relates that he would periodically call his mom over
Speaker 1: to the funeral home to look at the corpses of strangers,
Speaker 1: that he felt like he'd done a really good job embalming.
Speaker 1: Like mom you got to check out this dead lady
Speaker 1: and this dead guy, Like I did a fucking I
Speaker 1: know you don't even know him, but like come over here,
Speaker 1: like look at this corpse. Well, how good I am?
Speaker 2: He looked better alive, but like I did, did a
Speaker 2: pretty decent job.
Speaker 1: Pretty pretty good job. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Also, like as as sweet as it is that he
Speaker 2: takes pride in his work. If I died, even if
Speaker 2: the morticians assistant thought he did a really good job,
Speaker 2: don't like show me to people. I don't want that.
Speaker 2: I don't want your relatives to come in and be like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 2: you really nailed it.
Speaker 1: Literally, oh yeah, great work.
Speaker 4: No.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so morticians, you know, make a note of that,
Speaker 1: and also make a note of these products and services,
Speaker 1: because if you're a working mortician, you get ten percent
Speaker 1: off the next ad that comes on the podcast.
Speaker 2: Wow, that's huge.
Speaker 1: I can't actually promise. That would be cool and we're back. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I hope all the morticians who listen to the show
Speaker 1: got a great deal on what is who sponsors us
Speaker 1: these days? Sophie Halliburton Halliburton. Yeah, I hope you guys
Speaker 1: have got a good deal on Halliburton. You know, Halliburton
Speaker 1: We make corpses and we clean them up. That's their motto.
Speaker 1: So within days of having his back brace removed, Beauford
Speaker 1: and several of his friends take a trip down to
Speaker 1: the state Line area, presumably to celebrate the fact that
Speaker 1: he doesn't have to wear a back brace anymore. And
Speaker 1: in the book Mississippi Moonshine Politics, author Janis Tracy gives
Speaker 1: a vivid description of how things worked in state Line
Speaker 1: Mob territory. Right, this is the area that he and
Speaker 1: his friends would had probably for the last three or
Speaker 1: four years at this point, had been going up to
Speaker 1: on the weekends to party. During the first two decades
Speaker 1: of their marriage, Jack and Louise owned and operated four establishments,
Speaker 1: the State Line Club, the forty five Grill, built in
Speaker 1: nineteen fifty one after the State Line Club burned, the
Speaker 1: Shamrock Restaurant in Mississippi, and the Shamrock Motel just across
Speaker 1: the line in McNairy County, Tennessee. Jack built and operated
Speaker 1: the latter two establishments in nineteen fifty nine, and Luis
Speaker 1: remained at the forty five Grill, Jack's nephew Wo. Hathcock Junior,
Speaker 1: and Larry's Hathcock Wo's wife operated the Plantation Club, another
Speaker 1: liquor in gambling establishment located directly across US Highway forty
Speaker 1: from the forty five Grill. Large roadside signs advertising country ham,
Speaker 1: red eye gravy, and homemade biscuits for forty five cents
Speaker 1: lured travelers to the forty five Grill, but Luis's Southern cooking,
Speaker 1: served on red and white checkered tablecloths, was only one
Speaker 1: of several offerings at the roadhouse. With their appetites for
Speaker 1: food satisfied, many of the male travelers just passing through
Speaker 1: headed to the game room or the dance hall, where liquor,
Speaker 1: gambling and available women were the main attractions. Most of
Speaker 1: the men who opted for what they believed to be
Speaker 1: a good quick game of three called cardemonti or a
Speaker 1: toss of dice, however, left the place broken alone, and,
Speaker 1: more likely than not, if the gambler complained too loudly
Speaker 1: when he lost the last of his cash, or if
Speaker 1: he threatened to report the halfcock's crooked gambling operation to
Speaker 1: the authorities, he was beaten badly and thrown out the
Speaker 1: door by Jack and his cohorts. Allegedly, Louise often ended
Speaker 1: arguments herself when she beat dissatisfied gamblers about the head
Speaker 1: and shoulders with a ball peen hammer that she carried
Speaker 1: in her apron pocket. You know, cool people, Hi power couple.
Speaker 2: I love the crooked half cocks, There's no way around it.
Speaker 2: I like them a lot.
Speaker 1: I love that. Yeah, her cooking is a draw. And
Speaker 1: also she will beat you half to death with the
Speaker 1: ballpeen hammer she keeps in her apron if you complain
Speaker 1: that you lost buddy.
Speaker 3: It's the ballpeen hammer for me, my friends.
Speaker 1: This is what Vegas casinos have lost is just an
Speaker 1: angry lady with a hammer who will beat you half
Speaker 1: to death if you complain.
Speaker 3: You know, now, the just try to make a fuck
Speaker 3: out of you.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Now, obviously a lot of times people die when you're
Speaker 1: beating them with the ballpeen hammer. And it was it
Speaker 1: was said at least that a number of folks bodies
Speaker 1: wound up thrown in the nearby river as a result
Speaker 1: of you know, Luis or one of her goons going
Speaker 1: too hard when trying to deal with somebody. So these
Speaker 1: are not safe people to quarrel with, right. This is
Speaker 1: a mafia, and anyone who had good judgment would try
Speaker 1: to avoid pissing them off. But no one ever credited
Speaker 1: Buford Pusser with having good judgment. So on this spring
Speaker 1: nineteen fifty seven trip, right after getting out of his
Speaker 1: back brace, he brings three hundred dollars with him to
Speaker 1: the state line, and for whatever reason, he decides to
Speaker 1: try his luck at the plantation cl Now we only
Speaker 1: have the account that he passed down through his daughter,
Speaker 1: but per that account, he was totally winning and beating
Speaker 1: the house before one of the house employees switched the
Speaker 1: dice on him. Now, whether this happened or not, Beauford
Speaker 1: accused the house of rigging the game, which got him
Speaker 1: jumped and pistol whipped by four men. He was robbed,
Speaker 1: dragged out into the rain, and left for dead. Now,
Speaker 1: as I noted earlier, not an uncommon experience for gamblers
Speaker 1: partaking at half Cock owned establishments, and most people who
Speaker 1: survived an encounter like this would thank their lucky stars
Speaker 1: and make a note not to come back. But Beauford
Speaker 1: Pusser was not most people. He gets angry. He has
Speaker 1: to have one hundred and ninety two stitches for his injuries,
Speaker 1: and while they're being sewn, he starts planning his revenge.
Speaker 2: Man, this guy is just so much man. I love it.
Speaker 2: I love when someone from the past. There's just there's
Speaker 2: so few details written about, like a normal person's history,
Speaker 2: but like it's enough that everyone is like, look at
Speaker 2: this huge fucking kid, Like, look at this giant man.
Speaker 2: It really tickles me that he's so big that it
Speaker 2: makes the news. I like it a lot. So it's
Speaker 2: a great defining characteristic.
Speaker 1: Just huge. Yes, a lot of body space for stitches, yeah,
Speaker 1: like yeah, it's a whole canvas for you to beat
Speaker 1: on if you're a goon.
Speaker 2: Yeah, just this enormous acre of pusser clomping down the
Speaker 2: street to your casino.
Speaker 1: So, perhaps spurred by the loss of three hundred dollars,
Speaker 1: Buford makes another career change. At this point, he decided
Speaker 1: that mortitious is he wasn't making enough money as a
Speaker 1: morticians assistant, so he leaves the state for a month
Speaker 1: to work on a pipeline with his dad. And while
Speaker 1: he's over there, he hears from a friend who moved
Speaker 1: to Chicago and is like, Hey, wages are a lot
Speaker 1: better in Chicago. Why don't you try living here. So,
Speaker 1: after working on the pipeline, he moves to Chicago. Now,
Speaker 1: one of the first articles I read on Buford was
Speaker 1: published by the McNairy Historical Society, which is like the
Speaker 1: county that he grew up historical society. And so far
Speaker 1: as I can tell, the historical society, the McNairy Historical
Speaker 1: Society is like ninety nine percent just the Buford Pusster
Speaker 1: Historical Society, since nothing else of note has ever occurred
Speaker 1: in McNairy. And here's how it summarizes this chapter of
Speaker 1: his life. During his time in Chicago, he wrestled professionally.
Speaker 1: He was called Baufford the Bull, and was reported to
Speaker 1: have wrestled to grizzly bear. Didn't happen, didn't definitely, well,
Speaker 1: that didn't happen, but was a little closer to having
Speaker 1: happened than you'd expect, although, as you'd expect from a
Speaker 1: county historical society, all of these details are like wrong
Speaker 1: and their specifics because he does fight a bear, but
Speaker 1: it's not while he's in Chicago. And this brings me
Speaker 1: to my favorite chapter of the Buford Puster story. You
Speaker 1: will hear anytime you run across like a popular history
Speaker 1: of the man, like a news article, or just like
Speaker 1: a you know, an internet clickbait article talking about the
Speaker 1: walking tall guy. You'll hear the claim that he wrestled
Speaker 1: and beat a live grizzly bear. The claim is peed
Speaker 1: by the Sheriff Bufford Pusser Museum, by a bunch of
Speaker 1: different places. And while Beauford was a big guy, I
Speaker 1: just couldn't believe that he actually It's very rare for
Speaker 1: a human being to fight a grizzly bear and win.
Speaker 1: You can find some cases of it. The only ones
Speaker 1: I found were it wasn't like a man with a gun.
Speaker 1: Is like somebody hits the bear with like a huge
Speaker 1: log and manages to do it in just the right place.
Speaker 1: So wrestling a grizzly bear just seems physically impossible to me.
Speaker 1: And I couldn't find any more detailed claims about what
Speaker 1: he'd actually done until I ran his daughter's book, Walking On,
Speaker 1: which says that the match she claims there was a
Speaker 1: match against a bear, but her description of it is
Speaker 1: a lot less impressive sounding. Number One, this doesn't happen
Speaker 1: when he's in Chicago. This is when he's in his
Speaker 1: senior year of high school. Quote. A summer carnival came
Speaker 1: through the area. The bear's owner had a gimmick where
Speaker 1: he challenged local boys to wrestle his black bear. Daddy
Speaker 1: pinned the bear. He would later say it was just
Speaker 1: a little bear that didn't have me teeth or cloths.
Speaker 3: Okay, I'm still choosing the bear.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Again, the details this gives you about this time in
Speaker 1: American history in place where it's like, yeah, this carnival
Speaker 1: owner who just traveled around challenging teenagers.
Speaker 5: To fight his pet bear, right like a like a
Speaker 5: completely harmless bear that he's charging boys to pin for
Speaker 5: bragging rights makes so much more sense.
Speaker 1: Than exactly because like it number one black bear, much
Speaker 1: smaller than a grizzly. But also it sounds from her
Speaker 1: description like this is a sick bear. Maybe it had
Speaker 1: its teeth and claws like removed, like people did shit
Speaker 1: like that. So I wouldn't be surprised if this was
Speaker 1: like a purposefully crippled bear that, yeah, this man kept
Speaker 1: around so that teenage boys could pay to fight it
Speaker 1: and feel like badasses. Yeah yeah, but that does give
Speaker 1: you an idea also of like when we're looking at
Speaker 1: the myth versus the reality of Buford Pusser, like they're
Speaker 1: all kind of this level of off where like, yes,
Speaker 1: there is like an actual real story there, he did
Speaker 1: fight a bear at one point, but it's not It's
Speaker 1: not as impressive as it sounds initially, Right.
Speaker 2: He fought a bear, but so did anybody else who
Speaker 2: had four dollars.
Speaker 1: Right, the bear was sick and dying and had been
Speaker 1: like purposefully hobbled so that he could beat it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: much less impressive.
Speaker 2: Similar to the stories that I shot a clown in
Speaker 2: the mouth so hard that its brain exploded. I mean
Speaker 2: it was at a carnival, and it was a water
Speaker 2: gun and it was a balloon. But like enough of
Speaker 2: the details are true.
Speaker 1: Right, Yeah, that you could you could base your whole,
Speaker 1: your whole legendary career off of yeah, that time you
Speaker 1: shot that clown. I do think we've lost something as
Speaker 1: a country that in that it's no longer acceptable or
Speaker 1: legal for a man to wander around with a pet
Speaker 1: bear and challenge teenagers to fight it. Like, yeah, we
Speaker 1: are missing something as a nation now that we've lost that,
Speaker 1: And it does make me sad.
Speaker 2: Dan, It's such a fun, such a fun time in
Speaker 2: American history to just come up with businesses and just
Speaker 2: be allowed to do them.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, so there just weren't any rules back then. Huh,
Speaker 1: you can just you can just do anything.
Speaker 4: I'm just saying, if that still existed, we might have
Speaker 4: a different US Secretary of Human Health, Health and Human Services.
Speaker 2: That's absolutely true.
Speaker 1: If that still existed, cool zone media would be entirely
Speaker 1: about challenging teenagers to fight bears. But I wouldn't have
Speaker 1: no no beat up black bear. I bring a real
Speaker 1: grizzly you know, like we're we're we're leaving a body
Speaker 1: count behind when these kids, I feel.
Speaker 2: Your business would would be less popular. It would be
Speaker 2: it would make a real splash early on, and then
Speaker 2: people will be like this, this is a.
Speaker 1: He's just feeding teenage boys to bears. So we will
Speaker 1: talk about Buford's career as a pro wrestler, because soon
Speaker 1: after moving to Chicago, he does start wrestling, uh and
Speaker 1: he is he is like moderately successful at it. But
Speaker 1: first we're going to talk about and close this episode
Speaker 1: talking about the most fateful connection that Buford would make
Speaker 1: during his time in Chicago. He met Pauline Mullins, the
Speaker 1: woman who would become his wife. Now, at the time
Speaker 1: they meet, she's already been divorced once and has two
Speaker 1: kids from her first marriage, But this doesn't dissuade Buford,
Speaker 1: and the couple were married on December fifth, nineteen fifty nine.
Speaker 1: Just a little over a week later, Buford Poster would
Speaker 1: return to the state line for the first time in
Speaker 1: two years. So he gets married, and a week later
Speaker 1: he drives up to the state line where he had
Speaker 1: gotten beat up and nearly killed, you know, a year
Speaker 1: or so before. And he drives up on December thirteenth
Speaker 1: with two friends with the plan of ambushing wo Hathcock Junior,
Speaker 1: the owner of the Plantation Club, and beating the shit
Speaker 1: out of him, and they wind up catching him alone,
Speaker 1: and Buford bashes his head and nearly kills him with
Speaker 1: a fence post. And this is the original of like
Speaker 1: the myth.
Speaker 2: You're a married man now you can't old grudges post love.
Speaker 2: I don't understand.
Speaker 4: No. No.
Speaker 1: A week later, like he's supposed to be on his honeymoon,
Speaker 1: but he's like, no, I've got a bit bash a
Speaker 1: man's skull in with a fence post. And this is
Speaker 1: the origin of like the store, like the myths that
Speaker 1: you'll see of him, Like even if you look at
Speaker 1: the poster of the two thousand and four of the
Speaker 1: Walking Tall with the Rock. He's got like a big
Speaker 1: fucking stick in his hand or something like. That's the
Speaker 1: one thing everyone knows about Buford Pusser is he fought
Speaker 1: crime with like fucking logs and baseball bats. The real
Speaker 1: story is that he and his friends ambushed a man
Speaker 1: who was alone, and while they held him down, he
Speaker 1: bashed this guy's head him with a fence post. And
Speaker 1: it wasn't because he hated crime. It was because he
Speaker 1: had been committing crimes badly and they'd beaten him up earlier.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you lost at a casino, illegal casino, the oldest
Speaker 2: tale in the book. And like sure they like maybe
Speaker 2: they switched the dice. Maybe maybe they didn't, and it's
Speaker 2: just casino's win, because casinos win. It's like, yeah, you
Speaker 2: lost or you were fooled. Those are like not reasons
Speaker 2: to hold the grudge for a very long time.
Speaker 1: Yeah. It certainly not to beat someone's head in with
Speaker 1: a fence yeah. Yeah. The fact that he has to
Speaker 1: pass on to his daughter that like, actually I was
Speaker 1: winning first and then they switched the dice, Like I
Speaker 1: think he probably just we're drunk and lost your money gambling.
Speaker 1: But I don't know, maybe maybe you were too good
Speaker 1: at gambling and they had to switch the dice on you.
Speaker 1: I just don't particularly trust that version of events I
Speaker 1: trusted about as much as I trusted the Grizzly Bear story.
Speaker 1: I'll say that. But this is where part one is
Speaker 1: going to end. Buford Poster has just like he's turned
Speaker 1: this from normal business. Oh, this guy got drunk and
Speaker 1: was kind of a dick in our gambling establishment, so
Speaker 1: we beat him up to now we the hath Cocks
Speaker 1: have beef with this kid, Buford Pusser, right, because he
Speaker 1: has now tracked down and ambushed and badly beaten like
Speaker 1: one of our lieutenants. So that has started, as has
Speaker 1: his married life in the end of part one, and
Speaker 1: we'll talk about the rest of Buford Puster's story in
Speaker 1: part two. Dan, you got anything to plug?
Speaker 2: I do. We've talked about the show last week tonight,
Speaker 2: but also a quick question is the podcast that I
Speaker 2: host with Sore and Bowie. He will be familiar to
Speaker 2: those of you who used to watch us on the
Speaker 2: YouTube show After Hours or read our work from crack
Speaker 2: dot com, where we both lived for about a decade
Speaker 2: I read for Last Week tonight, Soren writes for American Dad.
Speaker 2: Sometimes we talk about being TV writers. Sometimes we do
Speaker 2: the kind of pop culture analysis that we used to
Speaker 2: do at Cracked and on After Hours. Sometimes we tell
Speaker 2: inside Hollywood stories, but mostly we just are friends who
Speaker 2: talk on the phone. And you get to listen in
Speaker 2: on it for an hour every week, and it's free.
Speaker 2: It's on YouTube and everywhere you get podcasts. It's called
Speaker 2: Quick Question with Soren and Daniel. I wrote this down
Speaker 2: because I have been ordered by our business guy to
Speaker 2: plug the podcast because I frequently forget to do it.
Speaker 1: You've got so many great stories of and yeah, I
Speaker 1: didn't realize that, you know, he'd killed those people, but
Speaker 1: apparently so Dan. Yeah, yeah, stuff like that on Quick Question.
Speaker 2: I know, and I'm such a fan of his work,
Speaker 2: and I wanted to give him the benefit of the doubt.
Speaker 2: And I was like it was self defense, right, And
Speaker 2: he looked me dead in the eyes. He's like absolutely,
Speaker 2: not absolutely, buddy, I'm giving you a way out and
Speaker 2: he's like I'm not taking it.
Speaker 1: No, no shocking stuff. Now, obviously we've both forgotten which episode,
Speaker 1: but if you just listen through Quick question you will
Speaker 1: hear which of your favorite celebrities is absolutely a murderer?
Speaker 1: You know? I promise that, yes, you know what else?
Speaker 1: I promise nothing go away? The episode's over.
Speaker 4: Behind the Bastards is a production of cool Zone Media.
Speaker 4: For more from cool Zone Media, visit our website cool
Speaker 4: Zonemedia dot com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app,
Speaker 4: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Behind the
Speaker 4: Bastards is now available on YouTube, new episodes every Wednesday
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Speaker 4: at Behind the Bastards