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Speaker 1: Yes, I have it. I'll give you an idea of

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Speaker 1: a hunt in which the greatest bar was killed that

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Speaker 1: ever lived, none excepted. On this episode, we're going to

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Speaker 1: explore an uncanny bear hunting story written in eighteen forty

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Speaker 1: one by a man from New York. I'd be surprised

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Speaker 1: if you've ever heard it, but its influence almost single

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Speaker 1: handedly branded estate and plowed a furrow from which some

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Speaker 1: of America's greatest Southern authors set root in a rose.

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Speaker 1: Its impact was more than significant. We'll talk about the

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Speaker 1: remarkable and pretty darned new to Planet Earth power of

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Speaker 1: media to influence our imaginations about people will never meet,

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Speaker 1: places will never go, and how it can influence who

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Speaker 1: we think we are, for better or worse. It seems

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Speaker 1: we're putty in the hands of the creative storytellers of

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Speaker 1: our time. I got a three pack of some of

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Speaker 1: the greatest guests known west of the Mighty Mississippi, renowned

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Speaker 1: Ozark historian and author doctor Brooks Blevins, University of Arkansas

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Speaker 1: folkloris doctor Bob Cochrane, and like a hickory nut between

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Speaker 1: two acorns, meat eaters own Stephen Ranella. We're about to

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Speaker 1: dive in deep into a story called The Big Bear

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Speaker 1: of Arkansas, one of my personal favorite stories of all time.

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Speaker 1: And if you're a bear greezer at heart, I really

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Speaker 1: doubt you're gonna want to miss this one. I'm very

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Speaker 1: slow now to say, you know, just sort of with

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Speaker 1: tremendous confidence, there is no realm that that's out there

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Speaker 1: that I simply can't access. I think this is one

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Speaker 1: of the great things about the story. This good is

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Speaker 1: it makes us aware of that. And so across two

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Speaker 1: hundred years, you know, I can stand in that guy's shoes,

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Speaker 1: I can stand in the bear hunter shoes. I've had

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Speaker 1: experiences that are uncanny. Do not live in a world

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Speaker 1: did I fully understand? My name is Clay Nukeam, and

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Speaker 1: this is the Bear Grease Podcast, where we'll explore things

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Speaker 1: forgotten but relevant, search for insight and unlikely places, and

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Speaker 1: where we'll tell the story of Americans who live their

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Speaker 1: lives close to the land. Presented by f HF Gear

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Speaker 1: American Maid, purpose built hunting and fishing gear as designed

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Speaker 1: to be as rugged as the place as we explore.

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Speaker 1: A steamboat on the Mississippi frequently and making her regular

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Speaker 1: trips carries between places varying from one to two thousand

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Speaker 1: miles apart, and as these boats advertised to land passengers

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Speaker 1: and freight at all intermediate dings, the heterogeneous character of

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Speaker 1: the passengers of one of these upcountry boats can scarcely

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Speaker 1: be imagined by one who's never seen it with his

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Speaker 1: own eyes. Starting from New Orleans and one of these boats,

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Speaker 1: you'll find yourself associated with men from every state of

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Speaker 1: the Union and from every portion of the globe. And

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Speaker 1: a man of observation need not lack for amusement or

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Speaker 1: instruction in such a crowd, if he will take the

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Speaker 1: trouble to read the great book of characters so favorably

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Speaker 1: open before him. Here may be seen Joscelyn, together the

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Speaker 1: wealthy Southern planter and the peddler of tinware from New England,

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Speaker 1: the Northern merchant and the Southern jockey, a venerable bishop

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Speaker 1: and a desperate gambler, the land speculator and the honest farmer,

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Speaker 1: the professional men of all creeds and characters, wolverines, suckers, hoosiers, buckeyes,

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Speaker 1: corn crackers, and besides a plentiful sprinkling of the half horse,

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Speaker 1: half alligator species of men who are peculiar to old Mississippi,

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Speaker 1: and who appear to gain a livelihood simply by going

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Speaker 1: up and down the river in pursuit of pleasure or business.

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Speaker 1: I have frequently found myself in such a crowd. In

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Speaker 1: the beginning of our story, the listener finds himself on

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Speaker 1: a Mississippi riverboat headed north out of New Orleans. This

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Speaker 1: wasn't America's first riverboat tail, but it was close, and

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Speaker 1: the cultural atmospherics were beyond interesting to people in the

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Speaker 1: East hungry for tales of frontier life. The regions west

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Speaker 1: of the Mississippi were mysterious and in some ways a

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Speaker 1: blank slate to Americans. But nothing on this planet can

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Speaker 1: sit long without being labeled. Like a cockle bird of

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Speaker 1: cotton riches, identity has barbs and attaches itself and won't

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Speaker 1: let go. But no one knew how much these early

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Speaker 1: stories would stick. We're reading a story called The Big

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Speaker 1: Bear of Arkansas, written in eighteen forty one by a

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Speaker 1: New Yorker named Thomas bangs Or, who moved to Baton Rouge,

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Speaker 1: Louisiana in eighteen thirty seven for health reasons. He was

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Speaker 1: a painter and an author known for his ability to

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Speaker 1: describe nature, and even though he was new to the South,

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Speaker 1: he was enamored with folk speech and was gifted at

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Speaker 1: capturing the dialect of his subjects. The Big Bear Story

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Speaker 1: would become the greatest by far story of this genre

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Speaker 1: of writing called Southwest humor. Later will learn how influential

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Speaker 1: it was on the young state Arkansas. And yep, I

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Speaker 1: am foreshadowing. Do y'all remember when that iTunes reviewer said

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Speaker 1: I foreshadowed too much? In this first section, Thorpe used

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Speaker 1: colorful phrases to describe the men of the Mississippi River Valley,

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Speaker 1: one that had been heard before, spoken by none other

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Speaker 1: than David Crockett himself. While passing through Arkansas in eighteen

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Speaker 1: thirty five, he said at a public speech in Little

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Speaker 1: Rock that was recorded in a newspaper, he said, if

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Speaker 1: I could rest anywhere, it would be in Arkansas, where

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Speaker 1: the men are the real half horse half alligator breed

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Speaker 1: such as grows nowhere else on the face of the

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Speaker 1: universal earth. It's interesting that Thorpe used Crockett's exact words. Anyway,

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Speaker 1: We're about to be back on the riverboat, and our narrator,

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Speaker 1: an anonymous city slicker from New Orleans, is about to

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Speaker 1: introduce us to an interesting character. While I was thus

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Speaker 1: busily employed in reading, and my companions were more busily

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Speaker 1: still employed in discussing such subjects as suited their humor's best,

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Speaker 1: we were startled most unexpectedly by loud Indian whoop uttered

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Speaker 1: in the social hall, and that part of the cabin

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Speaker 1: fitted off for a bar. Then was to be heard

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Speaker 1: a loud crowing, which would not have continued to have

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Speaker 1: interested us, such sounds, being quite common in that place

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Speaker 1: of spirits, alcohol had not The hero of these windy

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Speaker 1: accomplishments stuck his head into the cabin and hallooed out

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Speaker 1: Hurrah for the Big Bear of Arkansas, and then might

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Speaker 1: be heard a confused hum of voices. This continued interruption

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Speaker 1: attracted the attention of everyone in the cabin. All conversation dropped,

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Speaker 1: and in the midst of this surprise, the big bar

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Speaker 1: walked into the cabin, took a chair, put his feet

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Speaker 1: up on the stove, looking back over his shoulder past

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Speaker 1: the general and familiar salute of strangers, how are you?

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Speaker 1: He then expressed himself at home as much as if

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Speaker 1: he had been in the forks of the Cypress, and

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Speaker 1: perhaps a little more so. Some of the company at

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Speaker 1: this familiarity looked a little angry and some astonished, But

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Speaker 1: in a moment every face was read and a smile.

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Speaker 1: There was something about the intruder that won the heart.

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Speaker 1: On sight, he appeared to be a man enjoined perfect

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Speaker 1: health and contentment. His eyes were a spark Lena's diamonds,

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Speaker 1: and good natured to simplicity. Then his perfect confidence in

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Speaker 1: himself was irresistibly droll. The word droll means curious or

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Speaker 1: unusual in a way that provokes dry amusement. I had

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Speaker 1: to look that up. This writing is now over one

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Speaker 1: hundred and eighty years old, and I find myself lost

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Speaker 1: at times, but by the next sentence I'm usually understanding again.

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Speaker 1: You might be the same. The author is setting the

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Speaker 1: context for our story. The riverboat is full of strangers

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Speaker 1: from all over the country. When a loud, charismatic, and

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Speaker 1: unusually likable man enters the cabin, introducing himself as the

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Speaker 1: Big Bar of Arkansas. The author spells the word like

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Speaker 1: he wants us to say. It be a r pronounced

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Speaker 1: like an iron bar with a little more belly in

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Speaker 1: it bar. Many in the South still say it this

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Speaker 1: way today. Later we'll learn that our storyteller's given name

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Speaker 1: is Jim Doggett. He goes on to tell a story

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Speaker 1: about killing a forty pound turkey and how planting corn

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Speaker 1: in Arkansas is dangerous because he once had a soal

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Speaker 1: hog fall asleep on some corn seed and the percussion

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Speaker 1: of its sprouting killed her. He then says, I don't

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Speaker 1: plan anymore. Nature intended Arkansas for a hunting ground, and

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Speaker 1: I go according to nature. A passenger then asked, in disbelief,

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Speaker 1: where did all this happen? Again, here's dogged Where did

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Speaker 1: all that happened? Ask to cynical Hoosier, happen. It happened

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Speaker 1: in Arkansas. Where else could it have happened? But in

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Speaker 1: the creation state the finishing up country. A state where

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Speaker 1: the soil runs deep to the center of the earth,

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Speaker 1: and the government gives you a title to every inch

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Speaker 1: of it. Then it's airs. Just breathe them and they'll

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Speaker 1: make you a snort like a horse. It's a state

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Speaker 1: without thought. It is dog it. The Big bar describes Arkansas,

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Speaker 1: which he spells with a W at the end, as

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Speaker 1: a state without thought, the creation state, the finishing up country.

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Speaker 1: Its meaning is a complete mystery. But it's clear he

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Speaker 1: knows something we don't. The descriptor is clearly spiritual, almost

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Speaker 1: as if God created Arkansas first and the rest of

156
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Speaker 1: the world resulted from its wake. Americans on the frontier

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Speaker 1: were heavily influenced by Native Americans, and this was particularly

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Speaker 1: strong in the Mississippi River Delta region of eastern Arkansas,

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Speaker 1: where the fictional character dog It lived. Many tribes had

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Speaker 1: site specific religions and believed their homelands to be the

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Speaker 1: center of the world. I'm speculating, but dog It's doctrine

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Speaker 1: doesn't mesh with Western religious doctrine. Arkansas became a state

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Speaker 1: in eighteen thirty six, just five years prior to this writing.

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Speaker 1: Some of the first reporting of the Arkansas territory going

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Speaker 1: back to America was in the eighteen twenties from a

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Speaker 1: dad gum New York Yankee, and I'm not talking about

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Speaker 1: a baseball player, but a real Yankee named Henry Rose Schoolcraft,

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Speaker 1: who despised the people he met here and spoke extremely

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Speaker 1: critical of their backwards, grubby, crude Frontier lives to this day,

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Speaker 1: Schoolcraft's demeaning accounts still sting a little. It's interesting that

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Speaker 1: Thorpe chose for his fictional character dogg It to be

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Speaker 1: so certain that this Arkansas spelled with a W was

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Speaker 1: a place without fault. We're gonna learn that they were

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Speaker 1: actually making fun of us, and this could easily be

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Speaker 1: traced to a trend in the twentieth century. And I'm

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Speaker 1: saying us because I'll have you know that my great

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Speaker 1: great great great grandfather, Thomas James Newcomb came to Arkansas

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Speaker 1: via Kentucky in the early eighteen thirties, So this whole

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Speaker 1: thing is close to home for me. Back to our story,

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Speaker 1: the New Orleans traveler has now heard the big bar

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Speaker 1: mentioned bears, so he asked if he hunts them and dog.

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Speaker 1: It quickly brings up his two favorite things, his gun

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Speaker 1: and his dog. The way I hunt them. The old

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Speaker 1: black rascals know the crack of my gun as well

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Speaker 1: as they know a pig squealing. They grow thin in

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Speaker 1: our parts. It frightens them so, and they do take

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Speaker 1: the noise dreadfully, poor things. That gun of mine is

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Speaker 1: an epidemic among bar If not watched closely, it will

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Speaker 1: go off as quick on a warm scent as my

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Speaker 1: dog boy knife will. And then that dog, whoa why

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Speaker 1: the fella thinks that the world is full of Barry

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Speaker 1: finds them so easy. It's lucky he don't talk as

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Speaker 1: well as think, for with his natural modesty, if he

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Speaker 1: should suddenly learn how much he is acknowledged to be

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Speaker 1: ahead of all other dogs in the universe, he would

196
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Speaker 1: be astonished to death in two minutes, strangers. That dog

197
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Speaker 1: knows a bar's way as well as a horse jockey

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Speaker 1: knows a woman's. He always barks at the right time,

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Speaker 1: bites at the exact place, and whips without getting a scratch.

200
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Speaker 1: I never could tell whether he was made expressly to

201
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Speaker 1: hunt bar or whether a bar was made expressly for

202
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Speaker 1: him to hunt. I hope you're beginning to hear the

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Speaker 1: colorful way dog it speaks. What made this story so

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Speaker 1: famous was the brilliant dialect capture by Thorpe Doget's dog

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Speaker 1: bowie knife was so good. It isn't clear whether he

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Speaker 1: was made to hunt bear or the bear was made

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Speaker 1: for him to hunt. What a brilliant thought. This man

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Speaker 1: was a genius. The Big Bar was a larger than

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Speaker 1: life character, articulate and opinionated. He proclaims his gun is

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Speaker 1: an epidemic amongst bears and Bowie Knife, who is naturally

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Speaker 1: modest but is the best bear dog on planet Earth,

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Speaker 1: is kept humble only because he can't talk with his verboseness.

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Speaker 1: The big bar is setting himself up to be one

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Speaker 1: of those most interesting men in the world characters. The

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Speaker 1: passengers are mesmerized and shocked at the life he's revealing,

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Speaker 1: one that is more complex and interesting than their own.

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Speaker 1: And I haven't even mentioned the wildly risque and suggestive

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Speaker 1: horse jockey metaphor. We'll talk about this in a minute

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Speaker 1: with Doctor Cochrane. Now, our narrator asked dog It for

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Speaker 1: a bar hunting story in this manner, The evening was spent,

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Speaker 1: but conscious that my own association with so singular a

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Speaker 1: personage would probably end before the morning, I asked him

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Speaker 1: if he would not give me a description of some

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Speaker 1: particular bear hunt, adding that I took great interest in

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Speaker 1: such things, though I was no sportsman. The desire seemed

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Speaker 1: to please him, and he squared himself round towards me,

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Speaker 1: saying that he could give me an idea of a

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Speaker 1: bar hunt that was never beat in this world or

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Speaker 1: in any other. His manner was so singular that half

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Speaker 1: of his story consisted in his excellent way of telling it,

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Speaker 1: the great peculiarity of which was the happy manner he

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Speaker 1: had of emphasizing the prominent parts of his conversation. As

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Speaker 1: near as I can recollect, I have italicized them and

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Speaker 1: given the story in his own words. Stranger he said,

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Speaker 1: in bar hunts, I am numerous, and which particular one,

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Speaker 1: as I say to you, I shall tell, puzzles me.

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Speaker 1: There was an old she devil I shot at the

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Speaker 1: hurricane last fall, and then there was the old hog

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Speaker 1: thief I've popped over at the bloody crossing. And then, yes,

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Speaker 1: I have it. I'll give you an idea of a

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Speaker 1: hunt in which the greatest bar was killed that ever lived.

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Speaker 1: None accepted. Our New Orleans narrator includes how striking the

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Speaker 1: delivery of the story was. You can feel the intensity

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Speaker 1: and passion of the big bar. This is a fictional story,

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Speaker 1: but it's clear our author Thorpe had heard men like

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Speaker 1: this before. Doggett is an exaggerated caricature of the half horse,

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Speaker 1: half alligator men that Crockett met here. This was the

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Speaker 1: early stages of the Southern storyteller speaking in dialect being

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Speaker 1: exported to broader America, which will learn would be highly

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Speaker 1: interested in for centuries to come. Some would laugh, some

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Speaker 1: were endeared to these people. Some would see them as

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Speaker 1: sensational and simple minded, crude and grotesque, and some love

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Speaker 1: to just have someone to sneer down their noses at.

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Speaker 1: Whatever the reason, America couldn't get enough of the Southern voice,

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Speaker 1: the big bar dog. It is now going to tell

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Speaker 1: us about the greatest bar that ever lived, none excepted

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Speaker 1: well stranger. The first chase I ever had with that

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Speaker 1: big critter, I saw him no less than three distinct

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Speaker 1: times at a distance. The dogs would run him over

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Speaker 1: eighteen miles and broke down, and my horse gave out,

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Speaker 1: and I was nearly as used up as a man

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Speaker 1: could be made by my principle, which is patent. Before

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Speaker 1: this adventure, such things were unknown to me to be possible.

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Speaker 1: But strange as it was, that bear got me used

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Speaker 1: to it before I was done with him, For he

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Speaker 1: got so at lass that he would leave me on

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00:17:01,840 --> 00:17:05,119
Speaker 1: a long chase quite easily. How he did it, I

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00:17:05,240 --> 00:17:08,880
Speaker 1: never could understand that a bar runs at all is puzzling.

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Speaker 1: But how this one could tire down and bust up

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Speaker 1: a pack of hounds and a horse that were used

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Speaker 1: to overhauling everything they started after no time was past

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Speaker 1: my understanding. Well stranger, that bar finally got so sassy

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Speaker 1: that he used to help himself to a hog off

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Speaker 1: my premises whenever he wanted. The buzzards followed after what

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Speaker 1: he left. And so between that bar and the buzzard,

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Speaker 1: I'd rather think I was out of pork dog it.

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Speaker 1: Like any good storyteller, is setting us up with the

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Speaker 1: backstory of his hunt for a bear that will learn

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Speaker 1: is unhuntable. Things had gotten personal, as this sassy bear

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Speaker 1: was still in pigs and could mysteriously outrun his hounds.

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Speaker 1: And horse horses and hunting dogs are big thing down here,

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Speaker 1: and his desire to kill this bear starts to effect

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00:17:57,160 --> 00:18:01,080
Speaker 1: his health, and agger is slang for the ague, which

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00:18:01,119 --> 00:18:06,280
Speaker 1: is like malaria. Well, missing that bar so often took

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Speaker 1: hold of my vitals, and I was wasted away. The

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00:18:09,400 --> 00:18:11,960
Speaker 1: thing had been carried too far and reduced me in

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00:18:12,080 --> 00:18:15,280
Speaker 1: flesh faster than an agar. And I would see that

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00:18:15,320 --> 00:18:19,520
Speaker 1: bar and everything I did he hunted me, and that too,

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00:18:19,880 --> 00:18:22,159
Speaker 1: like a devil, which I began to think he was.

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Speaker 1: While in this fix, I made preparations to give him

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Speaker 1: a last brush and to be done with it, having

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Speaker 1: completed everything. To my satisfaction, I started at sunrise, and

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Speaker 1: to my great joy, I discovered from the way the

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00:18:35,320 --> 00:18:38,240
Speaker 1: dogs ran that they were near him. Finding his trail

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00:18:38,359 --> 00:18:40,679
Speaker 1: was nothing, for that had become as plain to the

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00:18:40,680 --> 00:18:44,200
Speaker 1: pack as a turnpike road. On we went, and coming

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00:18:44,240 --> 00:18:46,439
Speaker 1: to an open country, what should I see but the

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Speaker 1: bar very leisurely ascending a hill, and the dogs close

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Speaker 1: at his hills, either a match for him this time

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Speaker 1: and speed, or else he did not care to get

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Speaker 1: out of their way. I do not know which, But

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00:18:59,359 --> 00:19:02,720
Speaker 1: wasn't he a beauty? Though I loved him like a brother?

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00:19:04,600 --> 00:19:07,080
Speaker 1: In my opinion, this is one of the greatest moments

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00:19:07,080 --> 00:19:10,440
Speaker 1: in American literature. Dog it seizes the bear with bay

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00:19:10,480 --> 00:19:13,640
Speaker 1: and hounds surrounding him. He can't tell if the dogs

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00:19:13,680 --> 00:19:16,200
Speaker 1: had him hemmed up and caught, or if the beast

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00:19:16,320 --> 00:19:19,280
Speaker 1: just didn't care that they were there, but he declares,

308
00:19:19,920 --> 00:19:22,760
Speaker 1: wasn't he a beauty? Though I loved him like a brother.

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Speaker 1: You'll hear me and Steve Vernella talk about this later,

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00:19:26,119 --> 00:19:30,399
Speaker 1: but Thorpe's insight seems beyond his time. This is also

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00:19:30,600 --> 00:19:33,399
Speaker 1: when the reader begins to see that the big bear

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00:19:33,440 --> 00:19:37,960
Speaker 1: of Arkansas is more than an uncultured barbarian. The hunt

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00:19:38,040 --> 00:19:49,119
Speaker 1: continues on he went until he came to a tree,

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Speaker 1: the limbs of which formed a crotch, about six feet

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00:19:51,680 --> 00:19:54,840
Speaker 1: from the ground. In the crotch he got and seated himself,

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Speaker 1: and the dogs were yelling all around it. And there

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00:19:57,680 --> 00:20:00,280
Speaker 1: he sat I and them as quiet as a bond

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00:20:00,359 --> 00:20:03,159
Speaker 1: and low water. A green horned friend of mine and

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00:20:03,280 --> 00:20:06,840
Speaker 1: company reached shooting distance before me and blazed away, hitting

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00:20:06,880 --> 00:20:09,400
Speaker 1: the critter in the center of the forehead. The bar

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00:20:09,480 --> 00:20:11,640
Speaker 1: shook his head as the ball struck it, and then

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00:20:11,800 --> 00:20:15,040
Speaker 1: walked down from that tree as gently as a lady

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00:20:15,080 --> 00:20:18,200
Speaker 1: would from a carriage. Twas a beautiful sight to see

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00:20:18,280 --> 00:20:20,920
Speaker 1: him do that. He was in such a rage that

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00:20:21,000 --> 00:20:23,480
Speaker 1: he seemed to be as little afraid of the dogs

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00:20:23,560 --> 00:20:26,479
Speaker 1: as if they had been suckling pigs. And the dogs

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00:20:26,520 --> 00:20:28,879
Speaker 1: weren't slow and making a ring around him at a

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00:20:28,920 --> 00:20:33,119
Speaker 1: respectful distance. I tell you, even Bowie Knife himself stood

329
00:20:33,160 --> 00:20:36,919
Speaker 1: off then the way his eyes flashed while the fire

330
00:20:37,000 --> 00:20:40,000
Speaker 1: of them would have singed a cat's hair. In fact,

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00:20:40,200 --> 00:20:43,720
Speaker 1: that bar was in a wrath all over. Only one

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00:20:43,760 --> 00:20:46,000
Speaker 1: pup came near him, and he was brushed out so

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00:20:46,240 --> 00:20:50,399
Speaker 1: to tally with the bears left Paul that he entirely disappeared,

334
00:20:50,800 --> 00:20:53,679
Speaker 1: and that made the old dogs even more cautious. Still,

335
00:20:54,200 --> 00:20:57,440
Speaker 1: in the meantime, I came up and taking deliberate aim,

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Speaker 1: as a man should do, at his side, just as

337
00:20:59,720 --> 00:21:02,360
Speaker 1: the back of the fore leg. If my gun did

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00:21:02,440 --> 00:21:05,360
Speaker 1: not snap, call me a coward, and I won't take

339
00:21:05,359 --> 00:21:09,080
Speaker 1: it personal. Yes, Stranger, it snapped, and I could not

340
00:21:09,359 --> 00:21:14,840
Speaker 1: find a cap about my person. His eyes flashed with

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00:21:14,920 --> 00:21:17,520
Speaker 1: such fire it would have scorched a cap. And we

342
00:21:17,600 --> 00:21:21,120
Speaker 1: now see that this is no ordinary bear. He swatted

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00:21:21,160 --> 00:21:24,840
Speaker 1: a dog and it vanished, and this veteran hunter's muzzloader

344
00:21:24,880 --> 00:21:28,360
Speaker 1: popped a cap, meaning it didn't fire. But now he's

345
00:21:28,400 --> 00:21:30,960
Speaker 1: beginning to plan for his final hunt, and if he

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00:21:31,000 --> 00:21:34,600
Speaker 1: doesn't kill it, he's leaving Arkansas. Or maybe he'll be dead,

347
00:21:34,800 --> 00:21:42,240
Speaker 1: it's unclear. Then I told my neighbors on that Monday morning,

348
00:21:42,520 --> 00:21:45,119
Speaker 1: naming the day, that I would start that bar and

349
00:21:45,200 --> 00:21:47,600
Speaker 1: bring him home with me, or they might divide my

350
00:21:47,680 --> 00:21:52,080
Speaker 1: settlement among them, the owner having disappeared, well, Stranger. On

351
00:21:52,240 --> 00:21:55,440
Speaker 1: that morning previous to the great day of my hunting expedition,

352
00:21:55,720 --> 00:21:58,040
Speaker 1: I went into the woods near my house, taking my

353
00:21:58,160 --> 00:22:01,440
Speaker 1: gun and bowie knife along just from habit, and they're

354
00:22:01,480 --> 00:22:05,160
Speaker 1: sitting down also from habit. What should I see getting

355
00:22:05,240 --> 00:22:08,840
Speaker 1: over my fence but the bar. Yes, the old varmint

356
00:22:08,880 --> 00:22:11,480
Speaker 1: was within a hundred yards of me, and the way

357
00:22:11,520 --> 00:22:15,359
Speaker 1: he walked over that fence stranger. He loomed up like

358
00:22:15,400 --> 00:22:18,520
Speaker 1: a black mist, and he seemed so large. He walked

359
00:22:18,600 --> 00:22:23,119
Speaker 1: right towards me. I raised myself, took deliberate aim, and

360
00:22:23,320 --> 00:22:28,320
Speaker 1: fired instantly. The varmint wheeled and gave yale and walked

361
00:22:28,320 --> 00:22:31,720
Speaker 1: through the fence like a fallen tree wood through a cobweb.

362
00:22:32,119 --> 00:22:36,080
Speaker 1: I started after, but was tripped up by my inexpressibles,

363
00:22:36,080 --> 00:22:38,719
Speaker 1: which either from habit or the excitement of the moment,

364
00:22:38,760 --> 00:22:42,080
Speaker 1: where about my heels. And before I had really gathered

365
00:22:42,119 --> 00:22:45,159
Speaker 1: myself up, I heard the old varmint groaning in a

366
00:22:45,160 --> 00:22:48,480
Speaker 1: thicket nearby like a thousand centers, And by the time

367
00:22:48,520 --> 00:22:54,600
Speaker 1: I reached him, he was a corpse. Stranger. It took

368
00:22:54,680 --> 00:22:57,480
Speaker 1: five men and myself to put that carcass on a

369
00:22:57,600 --> 00:23:01,399
Speaker 1: mule's back, and old long airs waddled under his load,

370
00:23:01,600 --> 00:23:04,280
Speaker 1: and if he was foundered in every leg of his body,

371
00:23:04,440 --> 00:23:06,880
Speaker 1: and with a common whopper of a bar, he would

372
00:23:06,880 --> 00:23:10,720
Speaker 1: have trotted off and enjoyed himself. Wouldn't astonish you to

373
00:23:10,880 --> 00:23:13,840
Speaker 1: know how big he was. I made a bedspread of

374
00:23:13,840 --> 00:23:16,040
Speaker 1: his skin, and the way it used to cover my

375
00:23:16,119 --> 00:23:19,240
Speaker 1: bar mattress and leave several feet on each side to

376
00:23:19,320 --> 00:23:22,879
Speaker 1: tuck up would have delighted you. It was, in fact

377
00:23:23,119 --> 00:23:26,720
Speaker 1: a creation bar, and if it had lived in Sampson's time,

378
00:23:27,119 --> 00:23:29,359
Speaker 1: and if it had met him in a fair fight,

379
00:23:29,800 --> 00:23:31,760
Speaker 1: it would have licked him in the twinkling of a

380
00:23:31,840 --> 00:23:35,280
Speaker 1: dice box. But stranger, I never liked the way I

381
00:23:35,440 --> 00:23:39,320
Speaker 1: hunted him and missed him. There's something curious about it.

382
00:23:39,359 --> 00:23:43,000
Speaker 1: I never could understand, and I never was satisfied at

383
00:23:43,040 --> 00:23:46,840
Speaker 1: his given in so easily at last. Perhaps he had

384
00:23:46,880 --> 00:23:49,320
Speaker 1: heard of my preparations to hunt him the next day,

385
00:23:49,480 --> 00:23:52,600
Speaker 1: so he'd just come in like Captain Scott's coon, to

386
00:23:52,760 --> 00:23:55,520
Speaker 1: save his win, to grunt with and dying, But that

387
00:23:55,600 --> 00:23:59,720
Speaker 1: ain't likely. My private opinion is that the bar was

388
00:23:59,760 --> 00:24:03,320
Speaker 1: an unhuntable bar and died when its time had come.

389
00:24:07,920 --> 00:24:12,600
Speaker 1: The bear was growning like a thousand centers. I'm impressed

390
00:24:12,600 --> 00:24:15,119
Speaker 1: that thorpe knew that a black bear is one of

391
00:24:15,119 --> 00:24:17,439
Speaker 1: the few animals that we hunt on the planet that

392
00:24:17,520 --> 00:24:20,640
Speaker 1: has a death moan. A double lung shot bear one

393
00:24:20,680 --> 00:24:24,920
Speaker 1: that dies quickly will often give a loud, sometimes spooky,

394
00:24:25,040 --> 00:24:29,280
Speaker 1: elongated groan that can be heard at great distance. I'm

395
00:24:29,320 --> 00:24:32,959
Speaker 1: talking like a couple hundred yards. It usually lasts longer

396
00:24:32,960 --> 00:24:35,200
Speaker 1: than you think it should, and it's a sure sign

397
00:24:35,240 --> 00:24:37,960
Speaker 1: of the bear's death. For a bear hunter, it's a

398
00:24:38,080 --> 00:24:42,159
Speaker 1: bewildering moment of internal conflict, as the excitement of certain

399
00:24:42,240 --> 00:24:47,240
Speaker 1: success wars with a sobriety delivered by the beast's grandstanding

400
00:24:47,400 --> 00:24:52,639
Speaker 1: auditory expression of death. Both feelings are usually of equal measure.

401
00:24:53,520 --> 00:24:56,840
Speaker 1: Dog It also suggests that the bear heard his plans

402
00:24:56,880 --> 00:25:00,320
Speaker 1: for his hunt and basically turned himself in. This sounds

403
00:25:00,320 --> 00:25:03,520
Speaker 1: like a sensational thought, but in the book Make Prayers

404
00:25:03,560 --> 00:25:06,600
Speaker 1: to the Raven by Richard K. Nelson, we learned that

405
00:25:06,680 --> 00:25:10,159
Speaker 1: the Coyukan people of Alaska believe the black bear was

406
00:25:10,240 --> 00:25:13,200
Speaker 1: near the apex of spiritual power in the natural world.

407
00:25:13,600 --> 00:25:16,240
Speaker 1: They believe that when a person plans a bear hunt,

408
00:25:16,320 --> 00:25:19,000
Speaker 1: they should be careful not to speak directly about their

409
00:25:19,080 --> 00:25:22,600
Speaker 1: hunt plans, because the bear will hear them and avoid

410
00:25:22,680 --> 00:25:26,240
Speaker 1: being killed. A hunter must speak in code, using vague

411
00:25:26,359 --> 00:25:30,640
Speaker 1: terms if he wishes to invite others or discuss hunting plans,

412
00:25:30,680 --> 00:25:34,320
Speaker 1: and dog Its suggests that this creation bear may have

413
00:25:34,520 --> 00:25:37,919
Speaker 1: heard him. The death of a hunted bear is regarded

414
00:25:37,920 --> 00:25:41,840
Speaker 1: with such ceremony with the Coyukan that it's second only

415
00:25:41,920 --> 00:25:45,560
Speaker 1: to a human funeral. They regarded bear meat as a delicacy,

416
00:25:45,800 --> 00:25:49,879
Speaker 1: but killing one was a quote quest for prestige in

417
00:25:50,000 --> 00:25:53,640
Speaker 1: a high expression of manhood. This is similar to what

418
00:25:53,760 --> 00:25:57,159
Speaker 1: bear hunting became in the South, and I hope you

419
00:25:57,240 --> 00:25:59,600
Speaker 1: caught it. But dog It says that the bear was

420
00:25:59,640 --> 00:26:03,200
Speaker 1: a creation bar, which is the same descriptor he used

421
00:26:03,200 --> 00:26:07,240
Speaker 1: to describe Arkansas the creation state. This is a spiritual place,

422
00:26:07,359 --> 00:26:11,200
Speaker 1: and beast, no one I've talked to really knows exactly

423
00:26:11,200 --> 00:26:14,639
Speaker 1: what he meant. It's mysterious. But the climax of the

424
00:26:14,640 --> 00:26:17,560
Speaker 1: story is that dog It says the bar was an

425
00:26:17,680 --> 00:26:21,680
Speaker 1: unhuntable bar that died when his time had come, almost

426
00:26:21,720 --> 00:26:24,560
Speaker 1: as if his death had been scripted and the hunter

427
00:26:24,680 --> 00:26:28,040
Speaker 1: had nothing to do with it. The story is now

428
00:26:28,160 --> 00:26:31,879
Speaker 1: handed back to our New Orleans traveler, and he describes

429
00:26:32,000 --> 00:26:37,639
Speaker 1: the peculiar response of the Big Bar. When the story

430
00:26:37,760 --> 00:26:41,199
Speaker 1: was ended, our hero sat some minutes with his auditors

431
00:26:41,240 --> 00:26:44,399
Speaker 1: in grave silence. I saw there was a mystery to

432
00:26:44,480 --> 00:26:47,280
Speaker 1: him connected with the bear, whose death he had just

433
00:26:47,400 --> 00:26:50,919
Speaker 1: related and had evidently made a strong impression on his mind.

434
00:26:51,320 --> 00:26:54,639
Speaker 1: It was also evident that there was some superstitious awe

435
00:26:54,720 --> 00:26:58,520
Speaker 1: connected with the affair, a feeling common with all children

436
00:26:58,560 --> 00:27:01,159
Speaker 1: of the wood when they meet with anything out of

437
00:27:01,200 --> 00:27:04,840
Speaker 1: their everyday experience. He was the first one, however, to

438
00:27:04,880 --> 00:27:08,360
Speaker 1: break the silence, and, jumping up, he asked all present

439
00:27:08,520 --> 00:27:11,439
Speaker 1: to liquor before going to bed, a thing which he

440
00:27:11,520 --> 00:27:14,520
Speaker 1: did with a number of his companions, evidently to his

441
00:27:14,640 --> 00:27:18,159
Speaker 1: heart's content. Long before day, I was put ashore at

442
00:27:18,200 --> 00:27:20,840
Speaker 1: my place of destination, and I can only follow with

443
00:27:20,960 --> 00:27:25,480
Speaker 1: the reader and imagination our Arkansas friend and his adventures

444
00:27:25,640 --> 00:27:32,720
Speaker 1: at the forks of the Cypress on the Mississippi. There

445
00:27:32,800 --> 00:27:37,040
Speaker 1: was some superstitious awe connected with the bear. Doggett was

446
00:27:37,119 --> 00:27:39,800
Speaker 1: moved by his own story, and he left a major

447
00:27:39,880 --> 00:27:43,399
Speaker 1: impression on the fictional people. But the story left an

448
00:27:43,400 --> 00:27:46,560
Speaker 1: impression on the real people of America and the writers

449
00:27:46,600 --> 00:27:50,879
Speaker 1: who had script some parts of our American identity. We

450
00:27:50,960 --> 00:27:54,040
Speaker 1: didn't read the full story, probably only about half of it,

451
00:27:54,320 --> 00:27:58,560
Speaker 1: but now you know the premise. I've known for a

452
00:27:58,600 --> 00:28:00,840
Speaker 1: good part of my life that our Kansas was once

453
00:28:00,960 --> 00:28:04,160
Speaker 1: known as the Bear State. I discovered this while in college,

454
00:28:04,200 --> 00:28:07,960
Speaker 1: studying the thesis writing of University of Arkansas students and faculty.

455
00:28:08,359 --> 00:28:11,960
Speaker 1: But deep in the literature, this golden acren lay there

456
00:28:12,000 --> 00:28:14,960
Speaker 1: for the taken. No one ever told me this. I

457
00:28:15,080 --> 00:28:18,760
Speaker 1: never heard about it growing up. Doctor Brooks Blevins is

458
00:28:18,760 --> 00:28:23,080
Speaker 1: the undisputed historian of the Ozarks. I wanted to ask

459
00:28:23,160 --> 00:28:27,440
Speaker 1: him about why we were called the Bear state Arkansas,

460
00:28:27,480 --> 00:28:30,200
Speaker 1: the Bear State. You know, the truth is, no one

461
00:28:30,280 --> 00:28:35,280
Speaker 1: really knows exactly when or how the state got that nickname.

462
00:28:35,320 --> 00:28:38,320
Speaker 1: There's no you know, it wasn't an official nickname, but

463
00:28:38,440 --> 00:28:42,040
Speaker 1: we know that before the Civil War the state had

464
00:28:42,240 --> 00:28:45,800
Speaker 1: earned the nickname the Bear State. Unofficially. Did he show

465
00:28:45,840 --> 00:28:48,120
Speaker 1: up in literature, Yeah, And I would say there are

466
00:28:48,120 --> 00:28:52,200
Speaker 1: probably two reasons for that. One is that Arkansas did

467
00:28:52,240 --> 00:28:55,640
Speaker 1: become known as a state full of bears. I mean,

468
00:28:55,680 --> 00:28:59,120
Speaker 1: it was a state where bear hunting was very good.

469
00:28:59,440 --> 00:29:02,600
Speaker 1: And you think about in the days before the Civil War,

470
00:29:02,880 --> 00:29:06,600
Speaker 1: you're talking about a really sparsely populated state that has

471
00:29:06,640 --> 00:29:11,560
Speaker 1: a combination of highlands and swamps, but probably more than

472
00:29:12,040 --> 00:29:17,600
Speaker 1: that was because of the literary component you have. And

473
00:29:17,680 --> 00:29:22,080
Speaker 1: I think timing is really important in this. Arkansas becomes

474
00:29:22,080 --> 00:29:26,440
Speaker 1: a state and at that very moment you've got really

475
00:29:26,480 --> 00:29:30,760
Speaker 1: the genre of Southwestern humor is really starting to take off,

476
00:29:31,160 --> 00:29:35,640
Speaker 1: and it becomes in some ways the most popular genre

477
00:29:35,840 --> 00:29:40,920
Speaker 1: of literature before the Civil War. Arkansas became a state

478
00:29:40,960 --> 00:29:43,800
Speaker 1: in eighteen thirty six, and it's hard to say if

479
00:29:43,840 --> 00:29:46,880
Speaker 1: it was expressly created for the bear or if the

480
00:29:46,920 --> 00:29:52,160
Speaker 1: bear was expressly created for Arkansas. And literature is a

481
00:29:52,200 --> 00:29:57,000
Speaker 1: powerful tool for identity. Doctor Blevins believes the Big Bear

482
00:29:57,040 --> 00:30:00,560
Speaker 1: of Arkansas in eighteen forty one, along with other bear

483
00:30:00,640 --> 00:30:05,040
Speaker 1: hunting stories, branded the young state, sucking the backwoods bear

484
00:30:05,120 --> 00:30:09,200
Speaker 1: hunting image into the identity vacuum created by new statehood.

485
00:30:09,400 --> 00:30:13,320
Speaker 1: America desperately wondered who we were. So we don't know

486
00:30:13,360 --> 00:30:16,240
Speaker 1: who said it first, but it's clear it's connected to

487
00:30:16,360 --> 00:30:20,400
Speaker 1: Jim Doggett in this new genre of writing called Southwest humor.

488
00:30:20,840 --> 00:30:26,000
Speaker 1: But what is Southwest humor? As the name would suggests,

489
00:30:26,280 --> 00:30:29,440
Speaker 1: it's a humorous kind of writing that is based in

490
00:30:29,480 --> 00:30:32,640
Speaker 1: the Southwest, and in those days of the Southwest, wasn't

491
00:30:32,720 --> 00:30:36,280
Speaker 1: New Mexico and Arizona. It was Arkansas and Mississippi and

492
00:30:36,440 --> 00:30:40,960
Speaker 1: Alabama and Louisiana and basically the westernmost part of the

493
00:30:41,040 --> 00:30:44,240
Speaker 1: United States at that time, right, So, yeah, that becomes

494
00:30:44,280 --> 00:30:47,479
Speaker 1: the Southwest, and all these these stories are for the

495
00:30:47,480 --> 00:30:53,320
Speaker 1: most part published back east in sporting magazines, sporting periodicals.

496
00:30:53,360 --> 00:30:55,920
Speaker 1: The Spirit of the Times in New York was the

497
00:30:56,440 --> 00:31:00,600
Speaker 1: most prominent publisher of the Southwestern humor stories. And a

498
00:31:00,640 --> 00:31:03,880
Speaker 1: lot of these stories have to do with hunting. A

499
00:31:03,880 --> 00:31:05,600
Speaker 1: lot of them have to do with bear hunting. They

500
00:31:05,600 --> 00:31:07,520
Speaker 1: have to They also have to do with horse racing

501
00:31:07,560 --> 00:31:09,840
Speaker 1: and politics and all kinds of stuff that you see

502
00:31:09,840 --> 00:31:14,440
Speaker 1: out in these kind of frontier rural communities, but so

503
00:31:14,520 --> 00:31:18,480
Speaker 1: many of them have to do with bear hunting. And

504
00:31:18,520 --> 00:31:21,720
Speaker 1: you've got the most famous bear hunting story that comes out.

505
00:31:21,800 --> 00:31:25,400
Speaker 1: That's the Big Bear of Arkansas. This story becomes so

506
00:31:25,520 --> 00:31:30,040
Speaker 1: popular and so famous that some later literary historians in

507
00:31:30,080 --> 00:31:34,600
Speaker 1: the twentieth century would even refer to Southwestern humor as

508
00:31:35,040 --> 00:31:39,040
Speaker 1: the Big Bear genre of literature. I mean, that's how

509
00:31:39,200 --> 00:31:42,400
Speaker 1: much the Big Bear of Arkansas and stories a whole

510
00:31:42,480 --> 00:31:45,280
Speaker 1: bunch of other writers after him, Yeah, all the way

511
00:31:45,280 --> 00:31:49,720
Speaker 1: down to Faulkner and people in the twentieth century, right,

512
00:31:49,920 --> 00:31:55,080
Speaker 1: and all these people are fascinated with these Southwestern humor stories,

513
00:31:55,120 --> 00:31:59,160
Speaker 1: frontier characters in the dialect and all that kind of stuff.

514
00:31:59,160 --> 00:32:03,640
Speaker 1: Here's the universe, Jeve, Arkansas professor and folklore specialist, doctor

515
00:32:03,680 --> 00:32:08,520
Speaker 1: Bob Cochrane, What a cool guy. Tell me why this

516
00:32:08,560 --> 00:32:12,120
Speaker 1: short story, The Big Bear of Arkansas was so influential though?

517
00:32:12,160 --> 00:32:14,880
Speaker 1: That it When this one came out, it was a

518
00:32:14,920 --> 00:32:19,440
Speaker 1: climax piece that was lying in the sand almost of

519
00:32:19,880 --> 00:32:22,240
Speaker 1: and they called them, you know, the Big Bear Humorous

520
00:32:22,280 --> 00:32:26,280
Speaker 1: after that, and then that later would influence other American writers,

521
00:32:26,440 --> 00:32:29,000
Speaker 1: like why was this one so good? I think it was.

522
00:32:29,320 --> 00:32:32,760
Speaker 1: It became so famous because it was recognized right away

523
00:32:33,080 --> 00:32:36,840
Speaker 1: as better. It was more, it was more complex, you know,

524
00:32:36,880 --> 00:32:39,720
Speaker 1: it had the language, it had the jokes, it was

525
00:32:39,960 --> 00:32:44,120
Speaker 1: it was deeper. How was it complex? Well, just it's

526
00:32:44,120 --> 00:32:46,400
Speaker 1: a bear hunt story. But it's more than a bear

527
00:32:46,520 --> 00:32:50,840
Speaker 1: hunt story. It's about crossing into an experience, which is

528
00:32:51,640 --> 00:32:54,360
Speaker 1: the unknown. It's a burning bush story. You know, it's

529
00:32:54,400 --> 00:32:56,480
Speaker 1: something that shocks you out of the way you perceived

530
00:32:56,560 --> 00:32:59,480
Speaker 1: the very world. You don't think the world has this

531
00:32:59,600 --> 00:33:02,720
Speaker 1: in it, and it does. You know. It's one of

532
00:33:02,760 --> 00:33:04,400
Speaker 1: those kind of you know, you're walking along in a

533
00:33:04,440 --> 00:33:07,720
Speaker 1: bush catches on firewheel, it changes your life. Well, he's

534
00:33:07,760 --> 00:33:12,120
Speaker 1: walking along in he sees this bear walk through a fence.

535
00:33:12,440 --> 00:33:14,360
Speaker 1: You know, there's a sense on that line member where

536
00:33:14,360 --> 00:33:18,040
Speaker 1: it's italicized that through a fence, like a tree falling

537
00:33:18,080 --> 00:33:22,400
Speaker 1: through a cobboy web. Yeah, and it almost dematerializes the bear, right.

538
00:33:22,720 --> 00:33:24,560
Speaker 1: And there's a place where the bear hits one of

539
00:33:24,560 --> 00:33:28,720
Speaker 1: the dogs and the dog disappears, right. It doesn't say

540
00:33:28,720 --> 00:33:30,760
Speaker 1: it's yelping off to the side or killed or and

541
00:33:30,880 --> 00:33:33,120
Speaker 1: he says he uses that word, he said the dog

542
00:33:33,560 --> 00:33:36,239
Speaker 1: it's not there. He atomizes the dog, you know. So

543
00:33:36,440 --> 00:33:39,040
Speaker 1: in other words, it's I think it's a complex story

544
00:33:39,160 --> 00:33:44,080
Speaker 1: because it's it takes you into the unknown. It takes

545
00:33:44,120 --> 00:33:48,440
Speaker 1: you into the unknown. I have more questions for doctor Cochrane.

546
00:33:49,440 --> 00:33:51,800
Speaker 1: Let me ask you this, Is there a modern example

547
00:33:52,280 --> 00:33:54,880
Speaker 1: of what this would have been like inside of our

548
00:33:55,000 --> 00:33:58,520
Speaker 1: media today. Would it have been like my seventy five

549
00:33:58,600 --> 00:34:02,040
Speaker 1: year old dad looking at TikTok or well? The first

550
00:34:02,040 --> 00:34:05,840
Speaker 1: thing I think is that many readers would have spurned

551
00:34:05,840 --> 00:34:10,440
Speaker 1: it okay, and many readers would have regarded it as subliterary,

552
00:34:10,480 --> 00:34:12,920
Speaker 1: you know, as as sort of just like a shame

553
00:34:13,000 --> 00:34:14,960
Speaker 1: to our culture. You got it, You got it. The

554
00:34:15,000 --> 00:34:17,800
Speaker 1: way my grandmother felt about country music from West Virginia

555
00:34:17,920 --> 00:34:20,480
Speaker 1: really yeah, oh yeah. She didn't like country music. She

556
00:34:20,560 --> 00:34:22,840
Speaker 1: thought there was a world of difference between a mountaineer

557
00:34:22,920 --> 00:34:26,360
Speaker 1: and a hillbilly, and she was proud of being a mountaineer,

558
00:34:26,640 --> 00:34:29,439
Speaker 1: and she would not abide the word hillbill really yeah.

559
00:34:30,040 --> 00:34:33,120
Speaker 1: So you know we were when we were little kids,

560
00:34:33,200 --> 00:34:36,239
Speaker 1: we were said, don't say hillbilly around grandma. Really in

561
00:34:36,239 --> 00:34:40,000
Speaker 1: West Virginia, West Virginia, and so mountaineers you'd stand up

562
00:34:40,000 --> 00:34:43,240
Speaker 1: in salute. So your grandma wouldn't have liked this because

563
00:34:43,239 --> 00:34:45,640
Speaker 1: it was kind of hillbilly. It made it made fun.

564
00:34:45,680 --> 00:34:48,120
Speaker 1: It was a demeaning stereotype, and that would have been

565
00:34:48,120 --> 00:34:51,919
Speaker 1: true about a lot of people in respectable Little Rock

566
00:34:52,280 --> 00:34:55,759
Speaker 1: wouldn't have liked it either, because the same thing, you

567
00:34:55,800 --> 00:34:59,440
Speaker 1: know it, we still have that today, the state being

568
00:34:59,560 --> 00:35:02,439
Speaker 1: judged by what some people in the state would think

569
00:35:02,480 --> 00:35:06,120
Speaker 1: of as as its lowliest members. But to the people

570
00:35:06,200 --> 00:35:10,040
Speaker 1: that this appealed to, this was wildly popular, wildly popular.

571
00:35:11,920 --> 00:35:17,040
Speaker 1: Wildly popular literature was usually quite formal, and authors writing

572
00:35:17,120 --> 00:35:21,200
Speaker 1: in dialect with something new people loved it. I've got

573
00:35:21,239 --> 00:35:25,719
Speaker 1: more questions. Tell me about where this was published. The

574
00:35:25,760 --> 00:35:29,040
Speaker 1: Spirit of the Times, right, it had some competitors because

575
00:35:29,040 --> 00:35:31,600
Speaker 1: it was so successful, but it was the most successful.

576
00:35:31,880 --> 00:35:35,399
Speaker 1: It had a wide readership, and its readership was much

577
00:35:35,440 --> 00:35:38,600
Speaker 1: wider than the people it was discussing it was. It

578
00:35:38,760 --> 00:35:41,279
Speaker 1: wasn't read just by hunters or you know people. It

579
00:35:41,360 --> 00:35:44,239
Speaker 1: was a sporting journal, absolutely if it was interested in

580
00:35:44,280 --> 00:35:46,399
Speaker 1: one thing more than hunting, and I think it might

581
00:35:46,400 --> 00:35:48,200
Speaker 1: have been. It's not like I've sat down and read

582
00:35:48,200 --> 00:35:50,600
Speaker 1: all the back issues of this thing. Yeah, what would

583
00:35:50,640 --> 00:35:54,360
Speaker 1: be the first horse horse racing? Yes, and horse racing

584
00:35:54,520 --> 00:35:56,440
Speaker 1: was a was a big thing back then too. It

585
00:35:56,480 --> 00:36:00,640
Speaker 1: would have been like today's NASCAR. Yeah, and interest In

586
00:36:00,719 --> 00:36:04,360
Speaker 1: the first bit of this story, the Big Bear of Arkansas,

587
00:36:04,680 --> 00:36:08,080
Speaker 1: he makes a horse jockey joke. He said his bear

588
00:36:08,200 --> 00:36:11,600
Speaker 1: dog Bowie Knife, knows a bear the way a horse

589
00:36:11,680 --> 00:36:15,880
Speaker 1: jockey knows a woman. Yeah, which I can only assume

590
00:36:15,960 --> 00:36:18,520
Speaker 1: it means that the horse jockeys were the cool guys

591
00:36:18,760 --> 00:36:21,960
Speaker 1: that the women favorite. Yeah, that's because they were stars

592
00:36:22,040 --> 00:36:24,800
Speaker 1: in a way. Yeah. Yeah, it's it's about as risque

593
00:36:24,920 --> 00:36:28,520
Speaker 1: as you can get. Yeah, this genre of writing was

594
00:36:28,520 --> 00:36:31,160
Speaker 1: was pretty risque for the day. You can get away

595
00:36:31,200 --> 00:36:33,560
Speaker 1: with stuff that you couldn't get away with. And you

596
00:36:34,239 --> 00:36:36,839
Speaker 1: my grandmother would have gasped when she read that. Yeah,

597
00:36:36,840 --> 00:36:38,600
Speaker 1: she might not even picked up. Yeah, this was like

598
00:36:38,719 --> 00:36:42,719
Speaker 1: rebel stuff. Yeah, yeah, and trashy in some ways. But

599
00:36:42,760 --> 00:36:46,160
Speaker 1: the people who read it were not trashy. Financially they were,

600
00:36:46,239 --> 00:36:49,280
Speaker 1: you know, pretty well off. Would cost money to subscribe

601
00:36:49,280 --> 00:36:51,319
Speaker 1: to these things. And yeah, would it have been like

602
00:36:51,360 --> 00:36:53,839
Speaker 1: a print magazine would have been like but a kind

603
00:36:53,840 --> 00:36:59,480
Speaker 1: of tableau. Yeah, and it was extraordinarily popular. Thorpe used

604
00:36:59,520 --> 00:37:03,719
Speaker 1: colorful descriptors and metaphors in some sections I didn't read.

605
00:37:03,880 --> 00:37:06,320
Speaker 1: He said he didn't plan to go to New Orleans.

606
00:37:06,400 --> 00:37:10,160
Speaker 1: In a Crow's Life, using its lifespan to describe a

607
00:37:10,200 --> 00:37:12,800
Speaker 1: measure of time, he said running a bear in warm

608
00:37:12,840 --> 00:37:15,800
Speaker 1: weather would turn him into a skinful of bars grease,

609
00:37:16,239 --> 00:37:20,319
Speaker 1: and once dog hat proclaimed mosquitoes is nature, and I

610
00:37:20,440 --> 00:37:23,920
Speaker 1: never find fault with her if they are large. Arkansas

611
00:37:24,040 --> 00:37:27,280
Speaker 1: is large, her varmints are large, her trees are large,

612
00:37:27,320 --> 00:37:30,440
Speaker 1: her rivers are large, and a small mosquito would be

613
00:37:30,480 --> 00:37:33,560
Speaker 1: of no more use in Arkansas than preaching in a

614
00:37:33,680 --> 00:37:37,200
Speaker 1: cane break. That kind of sounds like something Brent Reeves

615
00:37:37,239 --> 00:37:41,080
Speaker 1: would say. I'm still trying to understand just how popular

616
00:37:41,160 --> 00:37:45,320
Speaker 1: this story was in America. Here's the old hickory nut himself,

617
00:37:45,480 --> 00:37:48,759
Speaker 1: Stephen Ranella, who happens to be one of those high

618
00:37:48,800 --> 00:37:52,399
Speaker 1: falutin New York Times bestselling authors. He's going to talk

619
00:37:52,440 --> 00:37:55,840
Speaker 1: about what he noted about the Big Bear of Arkansas.

620
00:37:57,160 --> 00:38:00,440
Speaker 1: It was very poetic, but in an obnoxious, annoying way

621
00:38:00,600 --> 00:38:02,960
Speaker 1: that they were at that at that time, people were

622
00:38:03,120 --> 00:38:08,800
Speaker 1: using poetic description so effectively. Put him describing in one passage,

623
00:38:08,840 --> 00:38:11,719
Speaker 1: when a bear comes over the fence, it rises over

624
00:38:11,760 --> 00:38:14,480
Speaker 1: the fence like a black mist, and when it goes

625
00:38:14,640 --> 00:38:17,120
Speaker 1: back through the fence, it goes through a fence like

626
00:38:17,120 --> 00:38:21,640
Speaker 1: a falling tree cutting through cobweb. And um, yeah, it's poetic.

627
00:38:22,040 --> 00:38:23,640
Speaker 1: Born of the earth and born of the land, and

628
00:38:23,719 --> 00:38:27,360
Speaker 1: not born of some some writing workshop. You know. You

629
00:38:27,400 --> 00:38:30,839
Speaker 1: think about these guys. They did not have YouTube, they

630
00:38:30,840 --> 00:38:34,560
Speaker 1: didn't have Netflix and Hulu. This was their craft. The

631
00:38:34,719 --> 00:38:38,680
Speaker 1: writing was the primary means of communication and even a

632
00:38:38,760 --> 00:38:43,399
Speaker 1: primary means of entertainment for people. This story, written as

633
00:38:43,400 --> 00:38:46,400
Speaker 1: it was, it would essentially be like saying, dude, you

634
00:38:46,400 --> 00:38:50,160
Speaker 1: should check out that Netflix documentary, It is awesome. Do

635
00:38:50,160 --> 00:38:54,640
Speaker 1: you think writers have gotten better worse at the command

636
00:38:54,640 --> 00:38:57,359
Speaker 1: of the English language community? And really, when you talk

637
00:38:57,400 --> 00:39:00,480
Speaker 1: about the command of the English language, what you're saying

638
00:39:00,880 --> 00:39:04,319
Speaker 1: is are people able to really describe what's happening on

639
00:39:04,400 --> 00:39:07,360
Speaker 1: planet Earth and inside the body of a human. I

640
00:39:07,360 --> 00:39:09,879
Speaker 1: don't want to talk about the population writ large, don't.

641
00:39:09,960 --> 00:39:13,319
Speaker 1: I don't want to just refer to just general adult Americans.

642
00:39:13,560 --> 00:39:18,600
Speaker 1: But I'll say of our leaders, okay, of our prominent figures,

643
00:39:18,840 --> 00:39:21,600
Speaker 1: the use of the English language has suffered since this time,

644
00:39:21,680 --> 00:39:25,520
Speaker 1: since then, I mean, just go simply go read transcripts

645
00:39:25,560 --> 00:39:29,720
Speaker 1: of Lincoln's Wou'd have been, you know, at his prime,

646
00:39:29,760 --> 00:39:31,600
Speaker 1: alive and well at this at the time of this writing.

647
00:39:32,040 --> 00:39:34,440
Speaker 1: Go look at his command and use of the English

648
00:39:34,520 --> 00:39:39,920
Speaker 1: language compared to a transcript of any modern president speaking today.

649
00:39:40,440 --> 00:39:43,200
Speaker 1: I think that the you know, more people of higher

650
00:39:43,239 --> 00:39:47,640
Speaker 1: percentage of people are literate now than then. But the

651
00:39:47,719 --> 00:39:52,399
Speaker 1: level of mastery of the English language, as exemplified by

652
00:39:52,440 --> 00:39:56,080
Speaker 1: like key individuals, has suffered. And I think that that

653
00:39:56,200 --> 00:40:00,800
Speaker 1: ability to speak in such a colorful, flamboyant, like energy

654
00:40:00,880 --> 00:40:05,040
Speaker 1: laden way has gone away. However you feel about him,

655
00:40:05,120 --> 00:40:07,480
Speaker 1: you know, and I've I've followed him and known him

656
00:40:07,480 --> 00:40:09,239
Speaker 1: my whole life and spoke to him. But you go,

657
00:40:09,360 --> 00:40:14,560
Speaker 1: look at the fire inside the language of a figure

658
00:40:14,640 --> 00:40:21,000
Speaker 1: like Ted Nugent. How fiery and colorful and exciting he's

659
00:40:21,040 --> 00:40:23,799
Speaker 1: able to speak, right. It sort of brings to mind

660
00:40:23,840 --> 00:40:26,640
Speaker 1: like the character speaking in this thing, he just like

661
00:40:26,760 --> 00:40:28,839
Speaker 1: he'll say a sentence. You're like, I don't understand how

662
00:40:28,840 --> 00:40:32,600
Speaker 1: you just strung that sentence together without working on it earlier,

663
00:40:32,719 --> 00:40:36,680
Speaker 1: Like an amazing ability to string sentences together to hit

664
00:40:36,719 --> 00:40:41,200
Speaker 1: two sides of the spectrum. Nugent will say sentences that

665
00:40:41,360 --> 00:40:46,040
Speaker 1: blow me away. Obama could string a sentence together that

666
00:40:46,120 --> 00:40:49,080
Speaker 1: When you read a transcript of the sentence, I think

667
00:40:49,080 --> 00:40:51,840
Speaker 1: to myself, how could someone have formed that as a

668
00:40:51,920 --> 00:40:56,239
Speaker 1: spoken sentence having not written it out first. I'm not

669
00:40:56,440 --> 00:41:00,279
Speaker 1: often blown away by people's sentences they put that they

670
00:41:00,320 --> 00:41:03,760
Speaker 1: put together. But but reading this, you know, and again

671
00:41:04,160 --> 00:41:06,440
Speaker 1: we're confusing, like this was created by a writer. This

672
00:41:06,480 --> 00:41:08,640
Speaker 1: wasn't a transcript of a thing, So it was created

673
00:41:08,640 --> 00:41:10,879
Speaker 1: by a writer who did their research and spent their

674
00:41:10,920 --> 00:41:14,000
Speaker 1: time in reading it. I sort of lament that that

675
00:41:14,320 --> 00:41:18,600
Speaker 1: flamboyance with languages isn't normal, And I wonder how normal,

676
00:41:18,680 --> 00:41:22,520
Speaker 1: like was it normal? You know, were these characters out

677
00:41:22,560 --> 00:41:27,080
Speaker 1: there who would speak so in just such a wild, colorful,

678
00:41:27,160 --> 00:41:32,080
Speaker 1: passionate way. I bet you weren't expecting Uncle Ted and

679
00:41:32,200 --> 00:41:36,200
Speaker 1: Barack Obama to come up in this conversation. Neither was

680
00:41:36,239 --> 00:41:42,799
Speaker 1: I here's doctor Cochrane continuing to describe how influential this

681
00:41:42,960 --> 00:41:47,200
Speaker 1: Big Bear of Arkansas story was. There was one volume

682
00:41:47,239 --> 00:41:49,160
Speaker 1: in his life it was published that had nothing but

683
00:41:49,239 --> 00:41:52,000
Speaker 1: his stuff in it, and it was called Hive of

684
00:41:52,080 --> 00:41:55,120
Speaker 1: the b Hunter eighteen fifty four. And there's twenty four

685
00:41:55,200 --> 00:41:58,359
Speaker 1: pieces in that The Big Bears one up and the

686
00:41:58,440 --> 00:42:02,640
Speaker 1: second most frequently include a story in anthology is nothing

687
00:42:02,880 --> 00:42:06,000
Speaker 1: next to the story. It's it's a trivial piece. It's

688
00:42:06,000 --> 00:42:09,160
Speaker 1: called a Piano in Arkansas. And it's a hook story.

689
00:42:09,200 --> 00:42:11,879
Speaker 1: I mean it's it's just got one point. You got

690
00:42:11,880 --> 00:42:14,880
Speaker 1: a village Braggart who's very proud of the fact that

691
00:42:14,880 --> 00:42:17,600
Speaker 1: he's made two trips to the capitol Little Rock, and

692
00:42:17,640 --> 00:42:19,839
Speaker 1: he thinks he knows everything, and he's, in other words,

693
00:42:19,880 --> 00:42:22,520
Speaker 1: he's the expert on the big world, right Yeah, And

694
00:42:22,600 --> 00:42:25,480
Speaker 1: he's heard that a newly arrived family in town has

695
00:42:25,520 --> 00:42:28,680
Speaker 1: a piano and there's a great curiosity in the town

696
00:42:29,000 --> 00:42:31,359
Speaker 1: called something like hard scrabble, you know how they name

697
00:42:31,400 --> 00:42:35,799
Speaker 1: is Faketown. Yeah, nobody knows what a piano is. And

698
00:42:35,880 --> 00:42:38,200
Speaker 1: this guy says, well, he's seen more pianist than what

699
00:42:38,360 --> 00:42:41,160
Speaker 1: they see Woodchucks, I mean, he's see so. And what

700
00:42:41,280 --> 00:42:44,000
Speaker 1: happens is, of course, that he is exposed as a

701
00:42:44,000 --> 00:42:47,200
Speaker 1: as a braggart and a liar because he mistakes a

702
00:42:47,320 --> 00:42:52,320
Speaker 1: newly arrived washing machine for a piano. He thinks, Okay,

703
00:42:52,480 --> 00:42:55,879
Speaker 1: so that story is nothing. It's just a one one.

704
00:42:56,040 --> 00:43:00,160
Speaker 1: That's it. Just told you the whereas this story we

705
00:43:00,200 --> 00:43:02,480
Speaker 1: could spend an hour or two just trying to figure

706
00:43:02,480 --> 00:43:05,160
Speaker 1: out what the final thing this story is about. Yeah.

707
00:43:05,200 --> 00:43:07,560
Speaker 1: So I think it became the most popular story on

708
00:43:08,160 --> 00:43:10,680
Speaker 1: really solid grounds. I think it's as good a story

709
00:43:10,680 --> 00:43:13,879
Speaker 1: if there is, yeah genre, it's the most complex one

710
00:43:13,960 --> 00:43:20,360
Speaker 1: I know. These Southwest humor stories created lovable and interesting characters,

711
00:43:20,640 --> 00:43:24,200
Speaker 1: but they were also setting up my beloved homeland for

712
00:43:24,280 --> 00:43:28,040
Speaker 1: a rough one hundred and fifty years of what scholars

713
00:43:28,040 --> 00:43:31,000
Speaker 1: say was the most picked on state in America in

714
00:43:31,040 --> 00:43:35,440
Speaker 1: the twentieth century by far. We've mentioned that the Big

715
00:43:35,480 --> 00:43:39,880
Speaker 1: Bear school of literature likely had notable effect on Mark Twain,

716
00:43:40,080 --> 00:43:43,360
Speaker 1: who would begin publishing in the late eighteen sixties, becoming

717
00:43:43,400 --> 00:43:48,359
Speaker 1: America's most famous writer. Here's Steve Vernella. A thing that

718
00:43:48,840 --> 00:43:52,760
Speaker 1: I noticed two and was the It was evocative of

719
00:43:53,200 --> 00:43:57,840
Speaker 1: Mark Twain. Yeah. What made Twain Twain was his ability

720
00:43:57,840 --> 00:44:04,200
Speaker 1: to capture vernacular, his ability to live a life of

721
00:44:04,440 --> 00:44:09,919
Speaker 1: research and take almost his characters were born of deep

722
00:44:09,960 --> 00:44:14,960
Speaker 1: experience that he had personally, meaning there was no Huckleberry Finn,

723
00:44:15,200 --> 00:44:18,319
Speaker 1: there was no Tom Sawyer but Mark Twain, and that

724
00:44:18,400 --> 00:44:21,080
Speaker 1: was his pen name. Samuel Clemens spent his life on

725
00:44:21,120 --> 00:44:26,480
Speaker 1: the Mississippi, was raised on the Mississippi, had proximity two slaves,

726
00:44:26,520 --> 00:44:29,640
Speaker 1: grew up in a slave holding place, fished catfish, He

727
00:44:29,880 --> 00:44:33,280
Speaker 1: was a riverboat pilot. He did hang out with people

728
00:44:33,680 --> 00:44:37,439
Speaker 1: he knew. These individuals, huck Finn and Tom Sawyer were

729
00:44:37,719 --> 00:44:42,080
Speaker 1: perhaps more real than actual real people. And what gave

730
00:44:42,120 --> 00:44:45,359
Speaker 1: him so much, his characters, so much humanity, is they

731
00:44:45,400 --> 00:44:49,480
Speaker 1: were They were low class people, but he loved them

732
00:44:49,520 --> 00:44:53,759
Speaker 1: and like he loved them deeply low class people. That

733
00:44:53,880 --> 00:44:57,480
Speaker 1: was his soul, right, was bringing these people to life

734
00:44:57,480 --> 00:45:00,880
Speaker 1: and defying stereotypes. So here you had have you know,

735
00:45:01,120 --> 00:45:05,279
Speaker 1: you're hearing this tale spun by and and this this

736
00:45:05,520 --> 00:45:08,840
Speaker 1: Arkansas bear hunter, but you're looking at like, you know,

737
00:45:08,840 --> 00:45:10,759
Speaker 1: how the narrative is captured is like clearly the writer

738
00:45:10,800 --> 00:45:14,520
Speaker 1: had spent time around people, and you're like this Arkansas

739
00:45:14,640 --> 00:45:18,160
Speaker 1: bear hunter who's sort of being ingest portrayed as this

740
00:45:18,160 --> 00:45:23,640
Speaker 1: this rough and tumble individual, but in fact he's exceedingly articulate.

741
00:45:23,840 --> 00:45:29,040
Speaker 1: He's a very clear communicator. He's full of compassion and empathy,

742
00:45:29,480 --> 00:45:34,719
Speaker 1: and he's he's like a spiritual figure, right, who approaches

743
00:45:34,800 --> 00:45:37,360
Speaker 1: life with like a great lust, you know. And so

744
00:45:37,440 --> 00:45:40,120
Speaker 1: it's loving, right, it's loving in a way that a

745
00:45:40,120 --> 00:45:43,200
Speaker 1: lot of stuff you see when you're watching something now

746
00:45:43,360 --> 00:45:48,240
Speaker 1: and you're watching some stupid Disney movie and a hunter

747
00:45:48,320 --> 00:45:52,279
Speaker 1: comes up, it's not it's hateful, it's he prises a

748
00:45:52,320 --> 00:45:57,560
Speaker 1: Southern accent. He's he's bloodthirsty, he's ignorant. I mean, these

749
00:45:57,560 --> 00:45:59,160
Speaker 1: are all things you see all the time, right, But

750
00:45:59,239 --> 00:46:01,279
Speaker 1: at this time, and you could have this person like

751
00:46:02,239 --> 00:46:07,640
Speaker 1: what steps in the door. Here's this uneducated, uncouth, redneck

752
00:46:07,719 --> 00:46:11,680
Speaker 1: bear hunter. But let's hear him talk. What emerges is

753
00:46:11,760 --> 00:46:16,200
Speaker 1: all those things I said earlier, like very passionate, deeply articulate,

754
00:46:16,520 --> 00:46:21,600
Speaker 1: deeply feeling individual who ascribes like all these emotional things

755
00:46:21,880 --> 00:46:23,480
Speaker 1: to a bear hunt and takes a story in an

756
00:46:23,560 --> 00:46:26,880
Speaker 1: unexpected direction. He loves this bear like his brother and

757
00:46:27,400 --> 00:46:29,920
Speaker 1: misses the bear. And so it's this whole package of

758
00:46:30,239 --> 00:46:32,400
Speaker 1: you know, what comes in is like, you know, you're

759
00:46:32,400 --> 00:46:35,600
Speaker 1: expecting to have this guy be lampooned, but this guy

760
00:46:35,719 --> 00:46:39,800
Speaker 1: is handled with great care. Yeah you like you read it,

761
00:46:39,840 --> 00:46:42,880
Speaker 1: and you like dudes from Markan thought, Yeah, yeah, you

762
00:46:42,960 --> 00:46:46,560
Speaker 1: wish you could talk to that guy. The dichotomy of

763
00:46:46,640 --> 00:46:51,600
Speaker 1: the ignorant backwoodsman being a complex individual with his humanity

764
00:46:51,680 --> 00:46:56,640
Speaker 1: on display is fascinating but not new. Even then here's

765
00:46:56,719 --> 00:47:03,640
Speaker 1: doctor Cochrane. It's like this narrative of the simpletons of

766
00:47:03,680 --> 00:47:06,520
Speaker 1: the South or the or the hill country or Appalachia

767
00:47:06,600 --> 00:47:11,000
Speaker 1: or the Ozarks being portrayed in this complex way of

768
00:47:11,000 --> 00:47:14,239
Speaker 1: being really simple but also educated and in the know

769
00:47:14,840 --> 00:47:17,279
Speaker 1: and kind of this striking contrast. This seems like a

770
00:47:17,280 --> 00:47:21,120
Speaker 1: common narrative the simpleton is actually the the smart guy.

771
00:47:21,520 --> 00:47:23,799
Speaker 1: Was that pretty common back in those days? Well, it's

772
00:47:23,800 --> 00:47:26,400
Speaker 1: an old trope. It's an ancient trope. Jack and the

773
00:47:26,400 --> 00:47:29,080
Speaker 1: Bean story. You know there these uh, you know, Jack

774
00:47:29,200 --> 00:47:31,799
Speaker 1: is a simpleton. But Jack is smart enough to do

775
00:47:31,880 --> 00:47:35,120
Speaker 1: what the guy's daughter tells him to do, and he wins,

776
00:47:35,480 --> 00:47:38,799
Speaker 1: you know, he and winning and killing the giant. So

777
00:47:39,560 --> 00:47:42,680
Speaker 1: the sometimes they're making fun of the guy liking that

778
00:47:42,840 --> 00:47:46,520
Speaker 1: a piano in Arkansas story that the town sophisticate is

779
00:47:46,560 --> 00:47:49,960
Speaker 1: exposed as a as a fraud. But here it's it's again,

780
00:47:50,000 --> 00:47:52,319
Speaker 1: it's part of the wonder of this story. It's it's

781
00:47:52,480 --> 00:47:56,000
Speaker 1: much more complicated if you move to the last paragraph

782
00:47:56,120 --> 00:47:58,680
Speaker 1: or so that when he finishes the story, he's told

783
00:47:58,680 --> 00:48:01,560
Speaker 1: a deep story about it himself. He's told a story

784
00:48:01,719 --> 00:48:03,920
Speaker 1: he's a great hunter, but memory says the bear was

785
00:48:04,000 --> 00:48:06,799
Speaker 1: hunting me. Yea, the bear came and sat across my

786
00:48:06,960 --> 00:48:10,200
Speaker 1: fence and killed a hog whenever he wanted to right.

787
00:48:10,360 --> 00:48:12,760
Speaker 1: In other words, he tells a story about his own defeat.

788
00:48:12,960 --> 00:48:15,440
Speaker 1: So here you have a ring tale roarer. Well, there

789
00:48:15,440 --> 00:48:18,040
Speaker 1: are scores of ring tale roarer stories, but they're in

790
00:48:18,040 --> 00:48:20,960
Speaker 1: a few ring tale Roarer stories where the roarer says,

791
00:48:21,000 --> 00:48:23,680
Speaker 1: here's the story where I got beat. Here's the story

792
00:48:23,760 --> 00:48:26,200
Speaker 1: where I was in over my head. But I don't

793
00:48:26,280 --> 00:48:30,400
Speaker 1: even today really understood what happened there. I mean, this

794
00:48:30,480 --> 00:48:34,040
Speaker 1: story almost is unique for that kind of depth in

795
00:48:34,160 --> 00:48:36,400
Speaker 1: this genre. And if you look at the last paragraph,

796
00:48:36,400 --> 00:48:38,279
Speaker 1: I mean, you read that opening paragraph that he won

797
00:48:38,360 --> 00:48:41,200
Speaker 1: people over right away, and his total self confidence in

798
00:48:41,239 --> 00:48:44,239
Speaker 1: the end, that self confidence is gone. Yeah. When the

799
00:48:44,320 --> 00:48:47,400
Speaker 1: story was ended, our hero set some minutes with his

800
00:48:47,480 --> 00:48:50,680
Speaker 1: auditors in grave silence. Yeah. I saw that there was

801
00:48:50,719 --> 00:48:53,400
Speaker 1: a mystery to him connected with the bear whose death

802
00:48:53,440 --> 00:48:56,320
Speaker 1: he had just related, that had evidently made a strong

803
00:48:56,560 --> 00:49:01,960
Speaker 1: impression on his mind. The Big bar of Arkansas turns

804
00:49:01,960 --> 00:49:04,880
Speaker 1: out to be one of the most interesting, deepest people

805
00:49:04,920 --> 00:49:08,200
Speaker 1: on the boat, leaving the passengers in all his life,

806
00:49:08,320 --> 00:49:12,600
Speaker 1: his philosophy and right smart enamored. Maybe even in this

807
00:49:13,400 --> 00:49:17,480
Speaker 1: this is a popular theme. Doctor Blevins wrote about the

808
00:49:17,560 --> 00:49:22,040
Speaker 1: times having a romantic impulse to exalt and envy the

809
00:49:22,160 --> 00:49:27,040
Speaker 1: supposed and unattainable simple life of the hillman. This idea

810
00:49:27,160 --> 00:49:30,840
Speaker 1: is no less strong today than it was then. Here's

811
00:49:30,880 --> 00:49:36,480
Speaker 1: another layer of depth to this story from Steve and I. Today,

812
00:49:36,600 --> 00:49:40,520
Speaker 1: there's this narrative inside the hunting space that we all

813
00:49:40,600 --> 00:49:44,719
Speaker 1: kind of have attached ourselves to. Is this deep respect

814
00:49:44,760 --> 00:49:49,360
Speaker 1: for our quarry which we sometimes think was absent during

815
00:49:49,480 --> 00:49:52,879
Speaker 1: the market hunting era of this country, and we kind

816
00:49:52,920 --> 00:49:55,040
Speaker 1: of feel like it's new, you know, like now when

817
00:49:55,080 --> 00:49:57,640
Speaker 1: we kill a deer, you know, we like think about

818
00:49:58,520 --> 00:50:02,000
Speaker 1: we've really taken something and this is significant, and this

819
00:50:02,080 --> 00:50:04,799
Speaker 1: is meaningful. This is not a small thing, and you'll

820
00:50:04,840 --> 00:50:08,960
Speaker 1: pay respect to this animal. But really that is so old.

821
00:50:09,080 --> 00:50:11,800
Speaker 1: But what surprised me and what I loved so much,

822
00:50:11,960 --> 00:50:15,600
Speaker 1: but when Jim Dogg, the Arkansas bear hunter, when he

823
00:50:15,719 --> 00:50:19,880
Speaker 1: saw his dogs walking the bear. The bear was walking

824
00:50:19,920 --> 00:50:21,400
Speaker 1: and the dogs were all around it. He said he

825
00:50:21,440 --> 00:50:24,560
Speaker 1: couldn't tell if the bear even knew the dogs were there.

826
00:50:24,800 --> 00:50:28,759
Speaker 1: And he said, I loved him like a brother. I mean,

827
00:50:29,000 --> 00:50:32,160
Speaker 1: if somebody said that today, that would seem like cutting edge,

828
00:50:32,360 --> 00:50:36,400
Speaker 1: like wow Man eighteen forty one. Thomas Bangthorpe's fictional character

829
00:50:36,480 --> 00:50:39,600
Speaker 1: Jim Dogg at Arkansas Bear Hunter loved him like a brother.

830
00:50:39,880 --> 00:50:43,719
Speaker 1: And I think that that inside of that, it emerged

831
00:50:44,160 --> 00:50:48,520
Speaker 1: a functionalization of that love which turned into the North

832
00:50:48,520 --> 00:50:52,560
Speaker 1: American wile of wildlife conservation. Really, what we're doing managing

833
00:50:52,600 --> 00:50:56,080
Speaker 1: wildlife in this country goes back to Jim Dogg. It

834
00:50:56,280 --> 00:50:59,560
Speaker 1: loving that bear like a brother and now his momenting

835
00:50:59,560 --> 00:51:02,839
Speaker 1: his past. Yeah, and then when the bear dies, he

836
00:51:02,920 --> 00:51:07,640
Speaker 1: said the bear hunter became extremely melancholy and sad, and

837
00:51:07,719 --> 00:51:11,359
Speaker 1: he said he missed the bear, and you wouldn't have

838
00:51:11,400 --> 00:51:13,560
Speaker 1: thought that would have come out of the eighteen four

839
00:51:16,760 --> 00:51:19,680
Speaker 1: I think that's one of the greatest lines in American literature,

840
00:51:19,880 --> 00:51:22,759
Speaker 1: especially as it pertains to the lasting ethic of the

841
00:51:22,760 --> 00:51:27,240
Speaker 1: American sportsman that has functionalized that love of a beast

842
00:51:27,320 --> 00:51:31,920
Speaker 1: into saving wild places in wildlife. Lordie, LORDI, my brothers,

843
00:51:31,920 --> 00:51:34,640
Speaker 1: we have walked into a bird nest on the ground

844
00:51:35,000 --> 00:51:37,799
Speaker 1: as we live in one of the greatest heydays of

845
00:51:37,840 --> 00:51:42,160
Speaker 1: American wildlife, wild places and access to hunting. I believe

846
00:51:42,360 --> 00:51:46,160
Speaker 1: that's why these stories of our heritage, our identity as

847
00:51:46,200 --> 00:51:49,440
Speaker 1: Americans are so powerful in the midst of a rapidly

848
00:51:49,560 --> 00:51:55,040
Speaker 1: progressing society seemingly trying to forget the backwoodsman. We cannot

849
00:51:55,080 --> 00:51:58,840
Speaker 1: forgive who we are. Society needs to continue to create

850
00:51:58,920 --> 00:52:02,520
Speaker 1: space for hunters to manage the lion's share of wild

851
00:52:02,560 --> 00:52:06,319
Speaker 1: places and wildlife. We've got a long track record of success,

852
00:52:06,440 --> 00:52:09,879
Speaker 1: and if we do, there will be space and wildlife

853
00:52:09,880 --> 00:52:13,680
Speaker 1: for all the stakeholders to partake whatever means they like.

854
00:52:14,440 --> 00:52:17,880
Speaker 1: This is America and we're hunters that love the great

855
00:52:17,960 --> 00:52:21,800
Speaker 1: beasts and our caretakers of the wild places where they live.

856
00:52:22,400 --> 00:52:26,240
Speaker 1: Can you say amen to that? I wanted to ask

857
00:52:26,360 --> 00:52:29,799
Speaker 1: Steve why hunters seem to be so enamored with the

858
00:52:29,840 --> 00:52:33,360
Speaker 1: ones that got away or the unkillable animal. Here's what

859
00:52:33,480 --> 00:52:36,879
Speaker 1: he said. It's a good question. You go super deep

860
00:52:36,880 --> 00:52:42,160
Speaker 1: psychology and have it be that you're establishing that in

861
00:52:42,239 --> 00:52:45,520
Speaker 1: the end, the animal can prevail, and that what you're

862
00:52:45,560 --> 00:52:49,960
Speaker 1: doing is exceptionally difficult. And you might see that someone

863
00:52:50,040 --> 00:52:55,160
Speaker 1: that had come from a line of resource destruction, market hunters, whoever,

864
00:52:55,239 --> 00:52:59,680
Speaker 1: where you were like, you're literally wiping species off the

865
00:52:59,719 --> 00:53:03,120
Speaker 1: air his map, that you would have a mythology of

866
00:53:03,160 --> 00:53:06,040
Speaker 1: the ones that can't be got as a way to

867
00:53:06,360 --> 00:53:11,160
Speaker 1: alleviate some of the guilt or blame. Or it could

868
00:53:11,200 --> 00:53:14,880
Speaker 1: be just that it creates that it's like an act

869
00:53:14,880 --> 00:53:19,080
Speaker 1: of reverence. Here's a story from Steve's past about a

870
00:53:19,160 --> 00:53:23,560
Speaker 1: mythical uncatchable fish on the lake that I grew up on.

871
00:53:23,920 --> 00:53:25,719
Speaker 1: We used to have a guy, I don't have this guy.

872
00:53:25,760 --> 00:53:27,960
Speaker 1: This guy whose name is mister Playing, and he was

873
00:53:28,040 --> 00:53:31,200
Speaker 1: a He introduced us all to this thing called speed trolling. Okay,

874
00:53:31,280 --> 00:53:34,200
Speaker 1: so basically he would troll northerns by very fast trolling

875
00:53:34,200 --> 00:53:36,160
Speaker 1: of northerns. He was the first guy ever knew that

876
00:53:36,200 --> 00:53:38,560
Speaker 1: had a fish finder, back when it was a piece

877
00:53:38,600 --> 00:53:40,920
Speaker 1: of graph paper and a pencil. So you when you

878
00:53:40,920 --> 00:53:43,440
Speaker 1: got into fishing, you'd have a paper roll and you

879
00:53:43,480 --> 00:53:47,399
Speaker 1: would unroll three four feet a graph paper and it'd

880
00:53:47,440 --> 00:53:49,759
Speaker 1: show you could carry around your day of fishing on

881
00:53:49,840 --> 00:53:53,319
Speaker 1: a piece of graph paper. And he put it in

882
00:53:53,400 --> 00:53:57,560
Speaker 1: everyone's mind, including mine, that in this small sixty six

883
00:53:57,640 --> 00:53:59,600
Speaker 1: acre lake that I grew up on, which is about

884
00:53:59,640 --> 00:54:01,680
Speaker 1: twenty two feet in as deep a spot, that there

885
00:54:01,760 --> 00:54:05,440
Speaker 1: was a five foot northern pike in there. I carried

886
00:54:05,440 --> 00:54:08,600
Speaker 1: that around with me. Why can't you catch it? No

887
00:54:08,600 --> 00:54:10,480
Speaker 1: one will catch it. We talk about like our dream

888
00:54:10,480 --> 00:54:12,120
Speaker 1: would be the dream and lay can find that thing.

889
00:54:12,680 --> 00:54:15,960
Speaker 1: So it appeals to people. Yeah, I think I think

890
00:54:16,040 --> 00:54:18,399
Speaker 1: deep inside of it, it makes you want to go.

891
00:54:18,760 --> 00:54:21,400
Speaker 1: When I think about the stories of the deer, the

892
00:54:21,480 --> 00:54:24,600
Speaker 1: bear that I didn't kill, it makes me want to

893
00:54:25,080 --> 00:54:29,680
Speaker 1: go back out there again. And ultimately the predator has

894
00:54:29,719 --> 00:54:32,560
Speaker 1: to be rooting for the prey because the prey is

895
00:54:32,600 --> 00:54:36,839
Speaker 1: what keeps the predator alive. So we're hunters, but we

896
00:54:37,120 --> 00:54:41,480
Speaker 1: deeply want like Jim dagga, we deeply want our prey

897
00:54:41,600 --> 00:54:46,440
Speaker 1: to beat us. Hidden deep in the DNA of the predator,

898
00:54:46,520 --> 00:54:50,400
Speaker 1: our checks and balances, offering general assurance that their prey

899
00:54:50,560 --> 00:54:55,200
Speaker 1: will persist as enlightened beasts ourselves. We can articulate that

900
00:54:55,320 --> 00:54:59,520
Speaker 1: sentiment into our stories. If wolves could talk, perhaps they'd

901
00:54:59,520 --> 00:55:05,200
Speaker 1: revere the uncatchable caribou or moose. Doctor Cochrane asked me

902
00:55:05,239 --> 00:55:08,920
Speaker 1: if I was familiar with the writer Barry Lopez. Here's

903
00:55:08,960 --> 00:55:11,960
Speaker 1: what he had to say about the author. Yeah, he

904
00:55:12,320 --> 00:55:15,560
Speaker 1: won a National Book Award for a book called Arctic Dreams.

905
00:55:16,200 --> 00:55:18,760
Speaker 1: But the book I know well because I just taught

906
00:55:18,760 --> 00:55:21,680
Speaker 1: it is a book of his called of Wolves and Men.

907
00:55:22,160 --> 00:55:23,840
Speaker 1: You know, what he did was sit out there and

908
00:55:23,920 --> 00:55:28,480
Speaker 1: watch prey predator interactions a lot, and most of the

909
00:55:28,520 --> 00:55:31,520
Speaker 1: time he observed nothing happens, you know. And he's talking

910
00:55:31,560 --> 00:55:34,080
Speaker 1: about wolves for the most part. And so he would

911
00:55:34,080 --> 00:55:37,479
Speaker 1: see a wolfpack and they would find some caribou, and

912
00:55:37,640 --> 00:55:40,040
Speaker 1: most of the time they look at each other. And

913
00:55:40,120 --> 00:55:42,480
Speaker 1: so there's a phrase he came up with called and

914
00:55:42,520 --> 00:55:46,200
Speaker 1: he called it the conversation of death. That fits perfectly

915
00:55:46,239 --> 00:55:48,680
Speaker 1: with the story at the end where he says, I

916
00:55:48,800 --> 00:55:52,040
Speaker 1: think he was an unhuntable bear. He died when his

917
00:55:52,160 --> 00:55:54,640
Speaker 1: time had come, and he has the sense the hunter

918
00:55:54,680 --> 00:55:56,960
Speaker 1: has a sense that he's the hunted. In that passage

919
00:55:57,000 --> 00:55:59,880
Speaker 1: that we were focusing in on, where it's clear that

920
00:56:00,080 --> 00:56:03,440
Speaker 1: the bear on a previous chase had easily tired out

921
00:56:03,480 --> 00:56:06,640
Speaker 1: his horse and his dogs, right, and this day he

922
00:56:06,680 --> 00:56:08,880
Speaker 1: says or he did not care to get out of

923
00:56:08,920 --> 00:56:11,080
Speaker 1: their way. The next day he did, he could have

924
00:56:11,200 --> 00:56:14,759
Speaker 1: left them like he did before. So Lopez's notion of

925
00:56:14,800 --> 00:56:17,759
Speaker 1: the conversation of death that the bear is choosing, the

926
00:56:17,760 --> 00:56:20,040
Speaker 1: bear is in charge and they're one of the things

927
00:56:20,080 --> 00:56:21,840
Speaker 1: that's always strange to me about the story. And you

928
00:56:21,840 --> 00:56:24,040
Speaker 1: could see it as a clumsy moment in the story.

929
00:56:24,400 --> 00:56:26,680
Speaker 1: You know, there's an island in a lake that appears

930
00:56:26,760 --> 00:56:31,240
Speaker 1: very conveniently in this story. Yeah, so are we supposed

931
00:56:31,239 --> 00:56:33,760
Speaker 1: to at this point in the story that his dogs

932
00:56:33,880 --> 00:56:36,440
Speaker 1: chase what he believes to be the bear cross a

933
00:56:36,560 --> 00:56:39,520
Speaker 1: lake onto an island. Right, he gets out there, kills

934
00:56:39,560 --> 00:56:42,560
Speaker 1: the bear and it's not not the chosen bear, right,

935
00:56:42,680 --> 00:56:46,080
Speaker 1: So are in that point has he mistaken earlier or

936
00:56:46,120 --> 00:56:48,720
Speaker 1: has the bear is the bear? Also, among many other

937
00:56:48,800 --> 00:56:52,600
Speaker 1: sort of almost magical things, a shape shifter that he

938
00:56:52,840 --> 00:56:54,080
Speaker 1: you know, he all of a sudden he becomes an

939
00:56:54,120 --> 00:56:56,840
Speaker 1: old she bear of pathetic size. Remember, the people in

940
00:56:57,000 --> 00:57:00,120
Speaker 1: town make fun of him for it. So and the

941
00:57:00,160 --> 00:57:04,560
Speaker 1: dog just disappears, and he seems to walk through a fence. Well,

942
00:57:04,600 --> 00:57:07,319
Speaker 1: you know, as if he were not a substantial being.

943
00:57:07,400 --> 00:57:09,760
Speaker 1: You know that he was made out of mist or something.

944
00:57:10,280 --> 00:57:13,520
Speaker 1: So there's all this. The word for this that would

945
00:57:13,520 --> 00:57:16,360
Speaker 1: scholars would use for the Washington Irving stories like Rip

946
00:57:16,400 --> 00:57:19,480
Speaker 1: van Winkle or the Legend of Sleepy Hollow would be

947
00:57:19,560 --> 00:57:23,440
Speaker 1: to do stories about the uncanny. And literally uncanny just

948
00:57:23,520 --> 00:57:28,520
Speaker 1: means you can't know it, you can't know it. Here's

949
00:57:28,560 --> 00:57:31,720
Speaker 1: one of the most mysterious descriptors used by dog it

950
00:57:31,840 --> 00:57:37,160
Speaker 1: to describe the bear and Arkansas both. He used that

951
00:57:37,280 --> 00:57:41,600
Speaker 1: term as a descriptor creation. He called Arkansas the creation

952
00:57:41,760 --> 00:57:46,919
Speaker 1: state and this bear the creation bear, which I mean

953
00:57:47,000 --> 00:57:51,760
Speaker 1: creation has this idea of like a like coming first, yeah,

954
00:57:51,800 --> 00:57:56,440
Speaker 1: but it also has this idea of not connected to

955
00:57:56,520 --> 00:58:00,280
Speaker 1: something in this realm. To create something means that almost

956
00:58:00,280 --> 00:58:03,440
Speaker 1: like it came from nothing. And creation bear, when you

957
00:58:03,480 --> 00:58:05,840
Speaker 1: read it, you get a sense that, yeah, this is

958
00:58:05,880 --> 00:58:09,440
Speaker 1: like a special bear, a bear of a different lineage

959
00:58:09,480 --> 00:58:12,280
Speaker 1: than the average bear. And that felt like what he

960
00:58:12,440 --> 00:58:18,080
Speaker 1: was saying about Arkansas, creation bear and creation state. What

961
00:58:18,160 --> 00:58:23,680
Speaker 1: do you think dog? It meant. I've got one final

962
00:58:23,760 --> 00:58:28,560
Speaker 1: question for doctor cochrane about what mysteries remain in modern times?

963
00:58:29,200 --> 00:58:33,080
Speaker 1: Are there any mysteries left? To put this story in context,

964
00:58:33,200 --> 00:58:36,840
Speaker 1: in eighteen forty one, the knowledge base of the general

965
00:58:36,840 --> 00:58:41,160
Speaker 1: populace or the elitely educated populace would have been vastly

966
00:58:41,240 --> 00:58:43,600
Speaker 1: different than the knowledge we have today. I'm talking about

967
00:58:43,640 --> 00:58:48,160
Speaker 1: science and technology, everything. It seems like the audience would

968
00:58:48,160 --> 00:58:54,960
Speaker 1: have been more susceptible to this idea of spirituality or

969
00:58:55,400 --> 00:58:59,080
Speaker 1: a different realm, or these mysteries that can't be explained

970
00:58:59,520 --> 00:59:03,000
Speaker 1: in some way. My question to you is it feels

971
00:59:03,040 --> 00:59:06,600
Speaker 1: like we're still, even though we have all this technology

972
00:59:06,720 --> 00:59:11,800
Speaker 1: knowledge answers about the natural world, that people still are

973
00:59:12,120 --> 00:59:16,000
Speaker 1: asking some of these questions just about what reality is.

974
00:59:16,040 --> 00:59:18,240
Speaker 1: In a way, it makes great sense to me all

975
00:59:18,240 --> 00:59:21,120
Speaker 1: those people a couple hundred years ago, and they were

976
00:59:21,280 --> 00:59:23,680
Speaker 1: credulous about this kind of thing they would believe in,

977
00:59:24,160 --> 00:59:27,400
Speaker 1: And you're right, You're absolutely right. I don't believe in

978
00:59:27,440 --> 00:59:29,480
Speaker 1: those and you know, I don't believe in ghosts and

979
00:59:29,560 --> 00:59:33,000
Speaker 1: I've never seen a ghost, but I'm very slow now

980
00:59:33,040 --> 00:59:36,160
Speaker 1: to say, you know, just sort of with tremendous confidence,

981
00:59:36,800 --> 00:59:40,240
Speaker 1: there is no realm that's out there that I simply

982
00:59:40,280 --> 00:59:43,360
Speaker 1: can't access. I think this is one of the great

983
00:59:43,400 --> 00:59:46,320
Speaker 1: things about the story. This good is it makes us

984
00:59:46,320 --> 00:59:50,360
Speaker 1: aware of that, and so across two hundred years. You know,

985
00:59:50,800 --> 00:59:52,960
Speaker 1: I can stand in that guy's shoes, I can stand

986
00:59:53,000 --> 00:59:56,680
Speaker 1: in the bear hunter shoes. I've had experiences that are uncanny.

987
00:59:57,200 --> 00:59:59,680
Speaker 1: I do not live in a world that I fully understand.

988
01:00:00,080 --> 01:00:05,120
Speaker 1: You know, that's the easiest statement I've ever made. You know,

989
01:00:06,280 --> 01:00:08,560
Speaker 1: I don't think it myself as any in any way

990
01:00:08,640 --> 01:00:11,280
Speaker 1: have any kind of psychic powers or you know, I'm

991
01:00:11,280 --> 01:00:13,800
Speaker 1: a stone compared to some of the people I know.

992
01:00:14,080 --> 01:00:16,520
Speaker 1: But I think all of us have had at least

993
01:00:16,680 --> 01:00:21,680
Speaker 1: some experiences where you think, wow, the trend of the

994
01:00:21,720 --> 01:00:25,320
Speaker 1: age just with everything, but primarily having to do with

995
01:00:25,440 --> 01:00:29,400
Speaker 1: technology and just general knowledge of what we believe we

996
01:00:29,480 --> 01:00:34,439
Speaker 1: know about the earth, the physical nature of the earth. Humans.

997
01:00:34,240 --> 01:00:37,560
Speaker 1: It's like we feel like all the questions about us

998
01:00:37,680 --> 01:00:41,560
Speaker 1: are answered, but really, when you look at what we know,

999
01:00:42,040 --> 01:00:44,800
Speaker 1: we have the same questions that they had back then.

1000
01:00:44,880 --> 01:00:48,720
Speaker 1: They're just a little bit different. Everything we know hasn't

1001
01:00:48,880 --> 01:00:51,720
Speaker 1: brought us really that much closer to the answer, and

1002
01:00:51,800 --> 01:00:55,880
Speaker 1: there is still an incredible amount of mystery inside the

1003
01:00:55,920 --> 01:00:59,240
Speaker 1: earth today. Amen, I say amen to that. Yeah, it

1004
01:00:59,320 --> 01:01:01,440
Speaker 1: seems to me that there's as much mystery as there

1005
01:01:01,440 --> 01:01:04,040
Speaker 1: ever was. And actually one of the one of the

1006
01:01:04,040 --> 01:01:06,280
Speaker 1: ways I'd like to understand knowledge. I mean, I'm working

1007
01:01:06,360 --> 01:01:10,040
Speaker 1: a university and get paid for supposedly contributing to knowledge.

1008
01:01:10,320 --> 01:01:12,960
Speaker 1: What knowledge does if you cast it in a metaphor

1009
01:01:13,000 --> 01:01:16,800
Speaker 1: of light, When if knowledge throws light into previously darkened areas,

1010
01:01:17,040 --> 01:01:22,320
Speaker 1: it also enlarges the area. So you know, the for

1011
01:01:22,440 --> 01:01:25,400
Speaker 1: every inch you gain and stuff you see clearly, maybe

1012
01:01:25,880 --> 01:01:28,400
Speaker 1: there's another couple of yards of stuff that you that

1013
01:01:28,520 --> 01:01:33,400
Speaker 1: you see dimly for the first time. So there's you know,

1014
01:01:34,120 --> 01:01:36,240
Speaker 1: for me, that's always been a kind of dominant image.

1015
01:01:36,400 --> 01:01:38,360
Speaker 1: Just think of it. We live in a world. I

1016
01:01:38,360 --> 01:01:40,320
Speaker 1: don't know the numbers here, but I you know, I

1017
01:01:40,360 --> 01:01:44,000
Speaker 1: try to read these these articles about scientists talking about

1018
01:01:44,040 --> 01:01:48,440
Speaker 1: the cosmos, something like, you know, three fourths of the

1019
01:01:48,520 --> 01:01:51,360
Speaker 1: cosmos is made up of stuff that seems to me

1020
01:01:52,000 --> 01:01:58,320
Speaker 1: almost comically labeled. It's called dark energy and dark matter. Okay, Well,

1021
01:01:58,600 --> 01:02:00,800
Speaker 1: I think the word dark there implies that we don't

1022
01:02:00,880 --> 01:02:04,919
Speaker 1: see it very well, you know, And here we've got

1023
01:02:05,160 --> 01:02:08,640
Speaker 1: you know. I mean, I believe in the scientific enterprise,

1024
01:02:08,760 --> 01:02:11,480
Speaker 1: you know. I love it when telescopes see further and

1025
01:02:11,520 --> 01:02:15,080
Speaker 1: stuff like that. I just said, Amen, I can't. I

1026
01:02:15,120 --> 01:02:18,760
Speaker 1: think mystery surrounds us. I think mystery is close to

1027
01:02:18,840 --> 01:02:26,600
Speaker 1: home and far away. Mystery surrounds us. It's close to

1028
01:02:26,680 --> 01:02:30,200
Speaker 1: home and far away. The short story The Big Bear

1029
01:02:30,280 --> 01:02:33,240
Speaker 1: of Arkansas is one of my all time favorite pieces

1030
01:02:33,280 --> 01:02:37,840
Speaker 1: of American literature. It influences genre of incredible American writers

1031
01:02:37,960 --> 01:02:40,800
Speaker 1: who told our story to the world. It branded the

1032
01:02:40,880 --> 01:02:44,600
Speaker 1: young state to an America hungry to learn this new place.

1033
01:02:45,240 --> 01:02:48,280
Speaker 1: It's not known who said it first, but Arkansas being

1034
01:02:48,320 --> 01:02:51,680
Speaker 1: known as the Bear State is directly linked to this

1035
01:02:51,840 --> 01:02:55,120
Speaker 1: one piece of literature. And the takeaway for me is

1036
01:02:55,160 --> 01:02:59,120
Speaker 1: that media is powerful, and much of this story's influence

1037
01:02:59,320 --> 01:03:02,479
Speaker 1: was positive for Arkansas in the South. But we'll learn

1038
01:03:02,560 --> 01:03:06,720
Speaker 1: on the next episode about how Southwestern humor characters like

1039
01:03:06,840 --> 01:03:10,560
Speaker 1: Jim Doggett set up Arkansas to be the most ridiculed

1040
01:03:10,720 --> 01:03:15,200
Speaker 1: and belittle place in America. In nineteen fifty four, writer

1041
01:03:15,360 --> 01:03:19,160
Speaker 1: Eugene Newsom said, it's safe to say I believe that

1042
01:03:19,360 --> 01:03:22,600
Speaker 1: Arkansas has been the butt of more jokes running from

1043
01:03:22,720 --> 01:03:26,800
Speaker 1: raillery to ridicule than any other political entity in the country.

1044
01:03:27,120 --> 01:03:30,560
Speaker 1: An article in Time magazine in the nineteen thirties said

1045
01:03:31,000 --> 01:03:37,160
Speaker 1: Arkansans had developed a mass inferiority complex unique in American history.

1046
01:03:37,600 --> 01:03:41,320
Speaker 1: On the next episode, we're going to explore the Arkansas

1047
01:03:41,360 --> 01:03:45,640
Speaker 1: image from barefoot fiddle play and Hillbillies to fortune five

1048
01:03:45,760 --> 01:03:49,720
Speaker 1: hundred companies all the way to the Oval Office. I

1049
01:03:49,760 --> 01:03:54,880
Speaker 1: think you'll be fascinated by what we learned. I can't

1050
01:03:54,960 --> 01:03:58,360
Speaker 1: thank you enough for listening to Bear Grease. Please share

1051
01:03:58,440 --> 01:04:01,640
Speaker 1: our podcast with somebody this week and leave us a

1052
01:04:01,680 --> 01:04:05,000
Speaker 1: review on iTunes, And I look forward to talking about

1053
01:04:05,040 --> 01:04:09,120
Speaker 1: the big bar of Arkansas with all those grubby hillbillies

1054
01:04:09,160 --> 01:04:11,080
Speaker 1: on the Render next week. Who