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Speaker 1: Eighteen fifty one movie did gets published. There's one mention

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Speaker 1: of Arkansas, Arkansas always portrayed as crazy, violent, and stupid,

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Speaker 1: only one line. I've waited my whole life for this opportunity.

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Speaker 1: Perhaps this was even the primary reason for my birth

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Speaker 1: and what some have called the creation state, the Bear State,

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Speaker 1: my beloved Arkansas. If this is the last Bear Grease

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Speaker 1: podcast I ever make, my soul will be satiated by

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Speaker 1: the sweet nectar of having had the last word, by

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Speaker 1: being given a chance to explain things that the world,

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Speaker 1: in its frivolous pursuit of progress, has yet to slow

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Speaker 1: down enough to understand. I'm quite certain this is the

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Speaker 1: greatest place on planet Earth. But on this episode we're

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Speaker 1: gonna talk about the Arkansas image. Say it was the

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Speaker 1: most picked on state in America in the twentieth century,

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Speaker 1: But there are a lot of other places kind of

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Speaker 1: like us. So why we've been branded as a haven

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Speaker 1: for barefoot, uneducated, feuding and poverty stricken folks gifted with

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Speaker 1: an inferiority complex and defensiveness as part of our cultural inheritance.

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Speaker 1: It's time we set the record straight and separate fact

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Speaker 1: from fiction. We'll learn those characterizations weren't far from the truth,

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Speaker 1: but they were oversimplified and myopically viewed by a nation

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Speaker 1: who deeply wanted us to be that. We'll explore the

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Speaker 1: power of regional identity and why Arkansas is still shaking

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Speaker 1: its frontier image. We'll talk with doctor Brooks Blevins, doctor

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Speaker 1: Jeanie Wayne, and doctor Bob Cochrane to understand the roots

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Speaker 1: of this image, its impacts, both good and bad. And

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Speaker 1: we'll have some surprised guests that will certainly shock you.

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Speaker 1: We'll talk with the curator of one of the finest

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Speaker 1: museums of American art in the country. We'll hear from

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Speaker 1: the founder of Walmart. Yeah, I said, we'll hear from

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Speaker 1: him directly, and we'll hear a never before released interview

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Speaker 1: with none other than Arkansas's own first son, Bill Clinton.

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Speaker 1: You think I'm kidding, but I'm not. And regardless of

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Speaker 1: if you care anything about Arkansas, you're gonna learn something

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Speaker 1: about the complexity of how things came to be as

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Speaker 1: they are and how meaningful it can be to be

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Speaker 1: connected to place. I really doubt, for real you're gonna

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Speaker 1: want to miss this one. But before we start, I

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Speaker 1: want you to take an inventory of the image of

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Speaker 1: Arkansas that you have in your mind. What do you

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Speaker 1: think when you hear about this state? Where did it

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Speaker 1: come from? From the very earliest days, there has been

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Speaker 1: this sort of defensive inferiority complex that is just it's

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Speaker 1: almost part of your hair. Is someone who grows up

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Speaker 1: in Arkansas, you just expect people are going to make

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Speaker 1: fun of you. My name is Clay Nukeam and this

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

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

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Speaker 1: we'll tell the story of Americans who lived their lives

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Speaker 1: close to the land, presented by f HF gear, American

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Speaker 1: maid purpose built hunting and fishing gear that's designed to

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Speaker 1: be as rugged as the place. As we explore, happened

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

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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 down to the center of the earth

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Speaker 1: and the government gives you title to every inch of it.

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Speaker 1: Then it's air. Just breathe them and they'll make you

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Speaker 1: snort like a horse. It's a state without fault. It

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Speaker 1: is Jim Dogged, the big Bear of Arkansas. The Arkansas

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Speaker 1: image has been brewed since the late sixteen hundreds, and

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Speaker 1: it's still alive today. I'll be braving the river of

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Speaker 1: stereotypes and honest to God truth to see which one

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Speaker 1: makes it to the other side. My friend doctor Brooks Blevins,

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Speaker 1: I think loves Arkansas as much as I do, and

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Speaker 1: that's what qualifies us to speak so frankly and with

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Speaker 1: such keen perception. And he says that the Arkansas image

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Speaker 1: is associated with violence, ignorance, shiftlessness, laziness, with generous doses

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Speaker 1: of racism, moonshining, clannishness, barefootedness, floppy hat in general cussedness.

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Speaker 1: But in the positive column, our Canstans are known as independent, resourceful, nonconformists,

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Speaker 1: close to nature, unpretentious, generous, and non materialistic. There are

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Speaker 1: two sides to every story, and if I know one thing,

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Speaker 1: it's this. Things are usually more complex than they seem.

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Speaker 1: So I suggest that if you're not from here, you

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Speaker 1: just listen and learn. This place is full of squirrel dogs, fortune,

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Speaker 1: five hundred companies, banjo pickers, world class American art, a president,

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Speaker 1: and some fine mules. By the time we get to

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Speaker 1: the end of this, you might be wishing you were barefoot,

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Speaker 1: grinning ear to ear, eating at fancy restaurants, and living

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Speaker 1: the high life in Arkansas like me and Brent Reeves.

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Speaker 1: On the last episode, we establish that prior to the

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Speaker 1: Civil War, the newly formed state of Arkansas was branded

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Speaker 1: to America as the Bear State, fueled by a firebrand

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Speaker 1: comedic genre of writing that featured bear hunting called Southwest Humor.

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Speaker 1: It portrayed eccentric Southern characters speaking in dialect and outlandish

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Speaker 1: tales from what Jim Dog called the creation State Arkansas.

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Speaker 1: The short story The Big Bear of Arkansas was published

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Speaker 1: in New York City and had a virality that pushed

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Speaker 1: everybody and their brother to start writing and even painting

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Speaker 1: about Arkansas bear hunting, and this place was truly a

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Speaker 1: haven for bear hunters. On our Death of a Bear

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Speaker 1: Hunter episode, a man named Erskine was killed in the

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Speaker 1: early eighteen forties by bear being made by dogs, and

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Speaker 1: Native Americans buried his body in a shallow grave roughly

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Speaker 1: twenty five miles from my house in Independence County, Arkansas.

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Speaker 1: There is a community called oil Trough, where market hunters

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Speaker 1: established a commercial bear rendering facility that shipped bear oil

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Speaker 1: and hollow logs down the White River to the Mississippi

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Speaker 1: and then to New Orleans to be burned in street

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Speaker 1: lights and used by those Cajun chefs who preferred bear

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Speaker 1: grease over other oils. It's recorded that nine hundred and

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Speaker 1: thirty six bear skins and a considerable amount of bear

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Speaker 1: oil were shipped in eighteen o six by a single

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Speaker 1: company in the Rivertown, Arkansas Post. A traveling rider once

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Speaker 1: described a bear hunter he saw in Hot Springs, Arkansas,

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Speaker 1: in eighteen thirty four. He said the man was a

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Speaker 1: singular fellow who shunned society, was dressed altogether in skins

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Speaker 1: of animals he killed, and seemed never to have washed.

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Speaker 1: He lived in the woods miles from the springs, and

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Speaker 1: only visited when he had bear and deer skins to sell.

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Speaker 1: This writer met another hunter near the Catto River. He

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Speaker 1: said he was a genuine hunter, dressed in leather prepared

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Speaker 1: by himself from the skins of animals he'd killed. He

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Speaker 1: was going with his rifle on his shoulder and his

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Speaker 1: dogs some twenty miles off to hunt bears. The man,

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Speaker 1: although between thirty and forty years old, had never been

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Speaker 1: out of his neighborhood and had no idea of the

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Speaker 1: world beyond his own pursuits. This was the Arkansas that

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Speaker 1: people wanted to talk about. But this backwoods romantic image

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Speaker 1: of bear hunters would be the bright spot compared to

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Speaker 1: what was about to come. Over the next two hundred years,

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Speaker 1: Arkansas would become the most maligned and made fun of

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Speaker 1: place in America. But why there were lots of places

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Speaker 1: with poverty and hunting, Why Arkansas. Doctor Brooks Blevins wrote

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Speaker 1: a book in two thousand and seven titled Arkansas Arkansas,

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Speaker 1: How Bear Hunters, Hillbillies, and good old Boys defined the State.

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Speaker 1: It's an incredible book. In the title, the first Arkansas

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Speaker 1: has spelled correctly, but the second is spelled with a

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Speaker 1: W at the end, the way the bear hunter gym

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Speaker 1: dogget spelled at. In eighteen forty one, doctor Blevins makes

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Speaker 1: a case that there are two arc and saws, which

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Speaker 1: I think by the end of this you'll agree with.

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Speaker 1: Let's talk about identity. Here's doctor Blevins. You're right, we

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Speaker 1: don't allow anything to go unlabeled or unbranded, and we

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Speaker 1: have a little shorthand ways of characterizing everybody and everything,

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Speaker 1: and states were no different. You know, you think about it.

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Speaker 1: Every state went through its frontier stage, and every state

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Speaker 1: had these trappers and hunters and things like that at

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Speaker 1: one stage in their development. But most states eventually get

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Speaker 1: to sleught that off and go on about their business

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Speaker 1: and modernize. But Arkansas because of the timing when it

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Speaker 1: becomes a state right there and the kind of the

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Speaker 1: heart of the Southwestern humor era when people were writing

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Speaker 1: all these stories, because Arkansas in many ways and in

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Speaker 1: many places still was kind of a frontier. When it

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Speaker 1: becomes a state, it gets branded at that moment, and

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Speaker 1: that brand really sticks with it for years and years

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Speaker 1: to come. Doctor Blevins makes a strong case that the

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Speaker 1: frontier image of Arkansas never really gets replaced, even though

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Speaker 1: all states had a frontier period. But perhaps we've gotten

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Speaker 1: ahead of ourselves. I think we need to go even

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Speaker 1: further back to understand Arkansas's origins. We're gonna have to

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Speaker 1: go way back. This is doctor Jeanie Wayne of the

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Speaker 1: University of Arkansas. What does the name Arkansas mean? Well,

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Speaker 1: it's It was the name that the group of Illinois

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Speaker 1: Indians who were accompanying the Marquette and Joliette trek down

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Speaker 1: the Mississippi River in the seventeenth century gave to the

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Speaker 1: Indians that we know of as the Quapaw, but the

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Speaker 1: way they pronounced it was something like Arkansas, and the

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Speaker 1: French pronunciation, Oh really, so they were trying to say

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Speaker 1: Qua Paul they were called. The Illinois were calling them

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Speaker 1: what they believed their name to be. The French interpreted

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Speaker 1: it as Arkansas of something like Kansa, and it became

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Speaker 1: it was ultimately corrupted to Arkansas. What about I've heard

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Speaker 1: Arkansas means land of the downstream people. That's the downstream people. Okay,

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Speaker 1: that was the word that meant land of the people downstream,

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Speaker 1: which was downstream on the Mississippi from Illinois, and the

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Speaker 1: Illinois Indians considered then the downstream people because they were

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Speaker 1: part of their their people at some point land of

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Speaker 1: the downstream people. Even our naming by the Native Americans

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Speaker 1: is suddenly dismissive. Our name is in relationship to an

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Speaker 1: unnamed place upstream. We don't even get our own landmark.

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Speaker 1: Or maybe I'm reading into this and it's just my

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Speaker 1: Arkansas persecution complex talking. It's hard to know because this

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Speaker 1: is the only people the Nucambs have had out into

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Speaker 1: the known world since the early thirties when we arrived

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Speaker 1: in the Washetaw Mountains of Montgomery County near the community

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Speaker 1: of Bumblebee, Arkansas. And we all know that Bumblebee wings

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Speaker 1: are too small for them to fly, but despite the

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Speaker 1: negative press, they've made quite the name for themselves. So

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Speaker 1: his Arkansas. It's believed Arkansas was first inhabited by Paleo

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Speaker 1: Indians ten to twelve thousand years ago. In fifteen forty one,

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Speaker 1: the Spaniard Hernando de Soto was the first European to

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Speaker 1: set foot here, and not surprisingly, the old codre was

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Speaker 1: looking for gold. He didn't find any, but he found

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Speaker 1: substantial agrarian villages of numerous native tribes in Arkansas. He

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Speaker 1: walked into a thriving civilization of what anthropologists called the

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Speaker 1: Mississippian culture. De Soto declared himself the son of the Sun.

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Speaker 1: He wreaked havoc on the tribes for the year he

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Speaker 1: was here Before he died of fever. His body was

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Speaker 1: wrapped in a blanket, weighted with sand and sunk in

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Speaker 1: the Mississippi River. It would be over one hundred and

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Speaker 1: forty years before another European dude would come here. In

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Speaker 1: sixteen eighty two, a French guy named LaSalle found the

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Speaker 1: majority of the villages De Soto reported completely gone, nothing

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Speaker 1: but ruins. It's an incredible mystery, but it's believed De

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Speaker 1: Soto and his six hundred men carried smallpox, plague, yellow fever, tuberculosis,

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Speaker 1: to flu typhus, and measles to the tribes, nearly wiping

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Speaker 1: them out. And tree ring analysis of that time shows

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Speaker 1: an incredibly severe one hundred year drought that hit the

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Speaker 1: tribes with a double wammy of crisis. Whatever happened, most

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Speaker 1: of them were gone. LaSalle ends up in a small

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Speaker 1: village of friendly Quawpaus and in sixteen eighty two makes

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Speaker 1: the first European settlement here called Arkansas Post, just up

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Speaker 1: the Mississippi River, on the White River. Why is this

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Speaker 1: important to the Arkansas image? We're about to learn the

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Speaker 1: French presence in Arkansas was very light, and the French

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Speaker 1: hunters became dependent in their own way upon the Quapa

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Speaker 1: for military alliance for agricultural goods, and they engaged in trade.

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Speaker 1: They engaged in a kind of cultural blending. So yes,

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Speaker 1: they intermarried. They intermarried. They again, the military alliances intermarried

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Speaker 1: trade and there was a descriptive pray or word used

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Speaker 1: to describe Matisse. Yeah, so the French and the Quapaw

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Speaker 1: and they're them intermarrying the Matisse. It's unusual for us

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Speaker 1: to imagine this, but there were times early on when

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Speaker 1: the tribes accepted Europeans, helped them, and they even lived together.

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Speaker 1: At Arkansas Post the cultural lines blurred in the extreme

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Speaker 1: isolation form in what they called the Matisse. That's a

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Speaker 1: French word which means mixed and in this case a

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Speaker 1: unique blend of the French and Quapole. Do you remember

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Speaker 1: how I said the Big Bar of Arkansas, Jim Dogget's

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Speaker 1: philosophical doctrines sounded non European to me. Well, this is

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Speaker 1: probably why some of the European backwoods cultures had one

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Speaker 1: hundred and fifty years of deep Native American influence in

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Speaker 1: the seventeen hundreds. However, this would backfire on the image

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Speaker 1: of Arkansas, as Native Americans began to get a worse

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Speaker 1: and worse rap in the colonies. A Frenchman named Francois

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Speaker 1: wrote of the people at Arkansas Post quote, they passed

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Speaker 1: their time playing games, dancing, drinking, or doing nothing similar

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Speaker 1: in this as other things to the Savage peoples with

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Speaker 1: whom they passed the greater part of their lives. A

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Speaker 1: guy in Louisiana wrote about these people in Arkansas Post,

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Speaker 1: and he said, these men consist of scum of all

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Speaker 1: kinds of nationals who have become stuck here through their

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Speaker 1: fondness of idleness and independence. Hardly do they know they

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Speaker 1: are Christians. They excel in all vices and their kind

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Speaker 1: of life as a real scandal. End of quote. And

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Speaker 1: not to belabor the point, but Louisiana and Morris Arnold

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Speaker 1: accused the hunters of Arkansas at this time of being murderers, rapists,

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Speaker 1: and fugitives from justice, and as lazy, shiftless, given to

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Speaker 1: excess drinking and laburtonage, and irredeemably lawless and a moral

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Speaker 1: that gum that stings a little, but it might have

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Speaker 1: been true. This was the beginning of the Arkansas image,

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Speaker 1: all the way back in the sixteen and early seventeen hundreds,

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Speaker 1: and things don't get better for Arkansas. Here's doctor Blevins.

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Speaker 1: You know, first impressions are very powerful. That first impression

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Speaker 1: can stick you with you for a long long time.

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Speaker 1: And in many ways that's what happens to Arkansas. Its

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Speaker 1: first impression on the national scene is of this kind

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Speaker 1: of backwoods bear hunting place that's semi civilized, probably a

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Speaker 1: little dangerous, and maybe, you know, not the funniest place

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Speaker 1: to visit. And when it gets branded with that, what

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Speaker 1: happens is for the rest of the nineteenth century and

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Speaker 1: into the twentieth century, there's just kind of this continual

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Speaker 1: piling on of imagery. The imagery just started piling on.

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Speaker 1: And to give a very short version of European immigration

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Speaker 1: into Arkansas, for one hundred years after the establishment of

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Speaker 1: the Arkansas Post in sixteen eighty three, there was very

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Speaker 1: little happening here until the late seventeen hundreds when the

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Speaker 1: number of market hunters increased, and they were here in

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Speaker 1: good number through the time when Arkansas achieved territorial status

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Speaker 1: in eighteen nineteen. That's when the numbers of people started

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Speaker 1: to increase. Just remember all that it's important. Trust me,

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Speaker 1: this is a but people in Arkansas have to carry

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Speaker 1: a lot of stuff, okay, and this is really important.

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Speaker 1: Arkansas had a unique geography that created isolation. The Indian

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Speaker 1: territory bordering Arkansas to the west created a border the

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Speaker 1: Mississippi River to the east, the giant swap of the

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Speaker 1: East Arkansas Delta and the challenges of the mountain regions

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Speaker 1: of Arkansas created this unique geographic isolation they called the

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Speaker 1: mill Pond effect. Arkansas was on the weights and nowhere,

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Speaker 1: and typically the people who settled here were impoverished, indebted,

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Speaker 1: running from something pretty wild. The opinions of people can

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Speaker 1: be influential, especially when they have the powerful pen of

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Speaker 1: identity scripting in their hand. A dude from Albany, New

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Speaker 1: York named Henry Rose Schoolcraft was one such writer. He

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Speaker 1: was a young grainhorn geologist that came to the ozarks

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Speaker 1: of Arkansas in eighteen eighteen looks at the possibility of mining.

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Speaker 1: Nobody remembers or cares about the minerals he found here

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Speaker 1: because he didn't find much. But my word, did he

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Speaker 1: ever brand the state. He was kind of a punk.

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Speaker 1: Here's doctor Blevins on Schoolcraft. He wasn't the first explorer

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Speaker 1: from outside of Arkansas to come through and write about

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Speaker 1: the place and publish it and for people to read about,

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Speaker 1: but his was probably the most notable. He comes through

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Speaker 1: in eighteen eighteen and eighteen nineteen, so well before the

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Speaker 1: state very sparsely settled. He spends almost all of his

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Speaker 1: time in the Ozarks and the northern third of the state.

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Speaker 1: And Schoolcraft is he's a New Yorker and he's college educated.

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Speaker 1: He's sort of a budding geologist. But he you know,

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Speaker 1: he writes this report of his travels through the Ozarks

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Speaker 1: and it's published just to come years after he does

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Speaker 1: this trip. He writes some very very negative things about

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Speaker 1: the people that he came into contact with. Not all

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Speaker 1: of the people, but for the most part, he's very

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Speaker 1: very negative. Well, probably most famously, Schoolcraft visits a family

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Speaker 1: by the name of Welles in northern Arkansas, probably you know,

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Speaker 1: somewhere in the mountain Home vicinity. And he has nothing

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Speaker 1: whatsoever good to say about the Wells family. I mean,

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Speaker 1: he really, he really hammers them pretty good. He calls

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Speaker 1: the children abundantly greasy and dirty. They're all dressed in buckskin.

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Speaker 1: And he says of the mother of the family and

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Speaker 1: the children they could quote only talk of bears hunting

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Speaker 1: and the like, the rude pursuits and the course enjoyments

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Speaker 1: of the hunter state where all they knew and for him,

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Speaker 1: you know that, I mean, there were no books in

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Speaker 1: the house. There was there was nothing that reminded anybody

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Speaker 1: of civilization there, and so he was completely repulsed by

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Speaker 1: the food, by what they were wearing, by what their

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Speaker 1: house looked like, by the fact that all they could

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Speaker 1: talk about was hunting. I mean that's what their life

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Speaker 1: revolved around. Yeah, I mean there were you know, there

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Speaker 1: were all kinds of hides stretched out on the house,

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Speaker 1: and you know, it was just their entire lives were

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Speaker 1: repulsive to him. I wish Schoolcraft would have just stayed

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Speaker 1: in his lane and wrote about rocks and mountain erogeney,

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Speaker 1: keeping the cultural anthropology to the people who know a

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Speaker 1: thing or two about human life. Dirty sap sucker. He

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Speaker 1: called Arkansans a wild, semi civilized race of backwoodsmen. As

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Speaker 1: judgy as Schoolcraft was, he made some interesting observations. He wrote, quote,

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Speaker 1: the hunter, although habitually lazy and holding in contempt the

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Speaker 1: pursuits of agriculture so far at least as is not

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Speaker 1: necessary to his own subsistence, is nevertheless a slave to

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Speaker 1: his dog, the only object around him to which he

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Speaker 1: appears really devoted to him. All days are equally unhallowed,

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Speaker 1: and the first and the last day of the week

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Speaker 1: finding him alike sunken unconcerned sloth and stupid ignorance. That

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Speaker 1: was a little harsh, bro And in deep human history,

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Speaker 1: hunter gatherers chose not to partake in large scale agriculture

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Speaker 1: because they hunted for food and they were saving their

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Speaker 1: energy for the hunt. Secondly, you got the dog thing

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Speaker 1: partially right, but it's not the only thing we're devoted to.

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Speaker 1: But goodness, a good hunting dog is hard to beat.

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Speaker 1: Another thing Schoolcraft noted as unusual was the violence, which

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Speaker 1: would become a big part of the Arkansas image. He wrote, quote,

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Speaker 1: without moral restraint, brought up in the uncontrolled indulgence of

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Speaker 1: every passion, and without regard of religion, the state of

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Speaker 1: society among the rising generation in this region is truly deplorable,

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Speaker 1: and their childish disputes boys frequently stabbed each other with knives,

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Speaker 1: two instances of which have occurred since our residence here.

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Speaker 1: No correction was administered in either case, and the act

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Speaker 1: being rather looked upon and is a promising trait of character.

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Speaker 1: End of quote. You guys know that my annoyance with

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Speaker 1: Schoolcraft is partly tongue in cheek. It sounds like he

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Speaker 1: witnessed some bad characters, but he wasn't the only one

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Speaker 1: who saw it. The Englishman Thomas Nuttall spent some time

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Speaker 1: in the Ozarks before statehood, and he said, quote, the

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Speaker 1: population in this territory is but too favorable to the

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Speaker 1: spread of ignorance and barbarism. The means of education are

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Speaker 1: at present nearly proscribed, and the rising generation are growing

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Speaker 1: up in mental darkness and have almost forgot that they

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Speaker 1: appertained to the civilized world. End of quote. What's interesting

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Speaker 1: is that not everybody was as hard on Arkansas as

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Speaker 1: these two city slicking punk elites. Our good buddy, Frederick

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Speaker 1: Gerstalker spent six years in America, and much of it

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Speaker 1: in the Creation State. His perception of Arkansas was vastly

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Speaker 1: different than Schoolcraft. He said, quote, I have traversed the

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Speaker 1: state in all directions and met with as honest and

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Speaker 1: upright people as are to be found in any part

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Speaker 1: of the Union. End of quote. He was here about

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Speaker 1: twenty years after Schoolcraft, so maybe some people of higher

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Speaker 1: character showed up, or Schoolcraft was looking for fault. When

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Speaker 1: leaving the state, Gerstalker said, quote, of all I had

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Speaker 1: seen in America, Arkansas was the one which pleased me

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Speaker 1: the most. I may perhaps never see it again, but

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Speaker 1: I shall never forget the happy days I passed there.

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Speaker 1: There were many a true heartbeats under a coarse frock

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Speaker 1: or a leather hunting shirt. Perhaps most famously, Washington Irving,

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Speaker 1: America's first well known author, passed through, and he wrote, quote,

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Speaker 1: the inhabitants have none of the eagerness for gain, the

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Speaker 1: rage for improvement which keep our people continually on the move.

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Speaker 1: He said, they quote resided in a contented state of poverty,

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Speaker 1: worked little, they danced a great deal, and the fiddle

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Speaker 1: was the joy of their heart. End of quote. As

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Speaker 1: he left Arkansas, he wrote quote, as we swept away

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Speaker 1: from the shore, I cast a wistful eye upon the

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Speaker 1: moss grown roofs, and the ancient elms and the village,

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Speaker 1: and prayed that the inhabitants might long retain their happy ignorance,

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Speaker 1: their absence of all enterprise and improvement, their respect of

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Speaker 1: the fiddle, and their contempt for the almighty dollar. End

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Speaker 1: of quote. Schoolcraft, not all and Irving were all here

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Speaker 1: during Arkansas's territorial period from eighteen nineteen to eighteen thirty six.

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Speaker 1: It's easy to see the direction this is all going,

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Speaker 1: but it's just getting started. Remember that inventory that you

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Speaker 1: took about Arkansas. You might be seeing the breadcrumbs of

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00:26:06,880 --> 00:26:11,320
Speaker 1: your modern ideas about us leading you way back. And

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Speaker 1: I know that there's been a lot of information to

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00:26:13,640 --> 00:26:17,359
Speaker 1: process here. But in Arkansas, our intellects have to work

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00:26:17,480 --> 00:26:20,879
Speaker 1: double hard to overcome our ignorance. So we're used to

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00:26:20,960 --> 00:26:26,000
Speaker 1: fast thinking sage calculations and doing this intellectual calculus on

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Speaker 1: the fly. If you need to pause and rewind, feel

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00:26:29,600 --> 00:26:36,560
Speaker 1: free to. So back to our story how Arkansas became

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Speaker 1: the most belittled state in America. In eighteen thirty six,

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Speaker 1: we became a state, but we weren't ready. We only

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Speaker 1: had fifty two thousand people, no infrastructure, not much agriculture.

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Speaker 1: But something was a brewin here's doctor Blevins. And the

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00:26:52,119 --> 00:26:55,080
Speaker 1: only reason it becomes a state so quickly is because

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Speaker 1: politicians in those days compromisers, tried to maintain peace in

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00:27:00,680 --> 00:27:05,119
Speaker 1: the country by maintaining a balance between slave states and

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00:27:05,240 --> 00:27:08,600
Speaker 1: free states in the US Senate, and Michigan was ready

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00:27:08,640 --> 00:27:12,800
Speaker 1: to join the Union as a free state, and Arkansas

401
00:27:12,920 --> 00:27:16,280
Speaker 1: was the closest thing to a slave state that might

402
00:27:16,320 --> 00:27:19,240
Speaker 1: be ready for statehood in eighteen thirty six, so they

403
00:27:19,480 --> 00:27:21,919
Speaker 1: kind of crammed them together and push them through, and

404
00:27:22,240 --> 00:27:29,080
Speaker 1: so Arkansas prematurely really becomes a state. Arkansas prematurely becomes

405
00:27:29,119 --> 00:27:32,639
Speaker 1: a state. This is very important for our future. And

406
00:27:32,840 --> 00:27:36,840
Speaker 1: this was an interesting place socially. Arkansas was divided on

407
00:27:36,960 --> 00:27:40,280
Speaker 1: being a slave state, but politics and money went out.

408
00:27:40,800 --> 00:27:44,000
Speaker 1: The short version of a very complex story is that

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00:27:44,040 --> 00:27:46,920
Speaker 1: the Delta had the farms, the money, the slaves, and

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00:27:46,960 --> 00:27:50,280
Speaker 1: the political power and the highlands people of the Ozarks

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00:27:50,280 --> 00:27:54,680
Speaker 1: and Washatas where the poverty stricken Hillbillies. That becomes synonymous

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Speaker 1: with the national image of Arkansas. And we'll get into it.

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Speaker 1: But the word hill didn't show up until the twentieth century.

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Speaker 1: It's a relatively new word, created as a derogatory slur

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Speaker 1: by people not from here. And I'm about out of

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00:28:10,880 --> 00:28:14,360
Speaker 1: breath from all this talking. It ain't easy being from

417
00:28:14,480 --> 00:28:18,040
Speaker 1: Arkansas and having to know all this stuff. Here's doctor

418
00:28:18,080 --> 00:28:21,400
Speaker 1: Wayne telling us yet another reason we got the shaft

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00:28:21,680 --> 00:28:25,600
Speaker 1: for coming in as a state prematurely. And it showcases

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00:28:25,640 --> 00:28:31,040
Speaker 1: what Americans hate, poverty and financial woes. What are you

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00:28:31,040 --> 00:28:33,600
Speaker 1: going to tax if they wanted to tax, what kind

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00:28:33,640 --> 00:28:38,160
Speaker 1: of economy is there? Farming economy? The wealthiest people are

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00:28:38,200 --> 00:28:41,760
Speaker 1: those planters growing up in Southeast Arkansas. And boy, those

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00:28:41,760 --> 00:28:45,120
Speaker 1: guys could control the political lovers well enough to make

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00:28:45,120 --> 00:28:48,480
Speaker 1: sure there were no taxes on them. So where's the commerce,

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Speaker 1: Where's how are you going to support yourself? Who's going

427
00:28:51,360 --> 00:28:53,200
Speaker 1: to write the check, who's going to pay the rent?

428
00:28:53,560 --> 00:28:56,840
Speaker 1: So we get in deep trouble right away. Both banks

429
00:28:56,880 --> 00:29:01,080
Speaker 1: go bankrupt. Arkansas is in debt at the beginning, but

430
00:29:01,120 --> 00:29:03,480
Speaker 1: then a couple of years after it's it's a state,

431
00:29:03,600 --> 00:29:07,160
Speaker 1: it's it's an impossible death. And that is really that's

432
00:29:07,200 --> 00:29:10,960
Speaker 1: not cleared up until the eighteen nineties. Eighteen ninety eight,

433
00:29:11,000 --> 00:29:14,800
Speaker 1: I believe this news was going out to America and

434
00:29:15,160 --> 00:29:19,920
Speaker 1: Arkansas was just kind of this like backwater place with

435
00:29:20,080 --> 00:29:24,240
Speaker 1: corrupt politicians and people in bad debt. You aren't gonna

436
00:29:24,360 --> 00:29:27,000
Speaker 1: how are you going to get anybody to invest in

437
00:29:27,160 --> 00:29:29,400
Speaker 1: Arkansas at this point in time. In the eighteen forties

438
00:29:29,400 --> 00:29:34,960
Speaker 1: and eighteen fifties, we came into statehood with nothing to tax.

439
00:29:35,240 --> 00:29:39,120
Speaker 1: We started banks and the banks immediately failed. And what

440
00:29:39,160 --> 00:29:41,480
Speaker 1: do you think that did for the people of Arkansas.

441
00:29:41,880 --> 00:29:45,440
Speaker 1: It was generations before some people ever put money back

442
00:29:45,440 --> 00:29:48,520
Speaker 1: in the bank, which added to the slow progress of

443
00:29:48,600 --> 00:29:53,560
Speaker 1: this place and doctor Blevin's book Arkansas, Arkansas, which I

444
00:29:53,680 --> 00:29:59,160
Speaker 1: now require as mandatory reading to be my friend. He wrote, quote,

445
00:29:59,360 --> 00:30:04,520
Speaker 1: Arkansas has provided an antithesis to a variety of American illusions,

446
00:30:05,040 --> 00:30:09,720
Speaker 1: the idea of American exceptionalism, the blind faith of progress,

447
00:30:10,040 --> 00:30:15,000
Speaker 1: America's starring role in some cosmic providential plan. In this

448
00:30:15,120 --> 00:30:20,320
Speaker 1: rendering of the Arkansas image, the arkansawyer becomes a nonconformist

449
00:30:20,320 --> 00:30:24,920
Speaker 1: who consciously or unconsciously rejects the tenets of an American

450
00:30:25,040 --> 00:30:30,680
Speaker 1: narrative of the puritan through progressive continuum, like ce Van

451
00:30:30,800 --> 00:30:34,840
Speaker 1: Woodward's post Civil War Southerners who learned to live for

452
00:30:35,000 --> 00:30:40,480
Speaker 1: long decades in quiet Unamerican poverty and learned the equally

453
00:30:40,680 --> 00:30:47,280
Speaker 1: Unamerican lesson of submission. End of quote. Did doctor Blevins

454
00:30:47,320 --> 00:30:51,800
Speaker 1: just say that Arkansas debunked the idea of American exceptionalism?

455
00:30:52,280 --> 00:30:55,520
Speaker 1: I think he did. But because doctor Blevins is one

456
00:30:55,560 --> 00:30:59,560
Speaker 1: of us, it's okay. The Arkansas image carries with it

457
00:30:59,600 --> 00:31:03,280
Speaker 1: a healthy dose of non conformity. But maybe that's not

458
00:31:03,360 --> 00:31:06,360
Speaker 1: all bad. This is one of my favorite quotes. A

459
00:31:06,400 --> 00:31:10,080
Speaker 1: twentieth century writer. What said quote died in the wool

460
00:31:10,160 --> 00:31:14,320
Speaker 1: Ozarkers are proudly primitive. Their isolation is a religion and

461
00:31:14,440 --> 00:31:19,880
Speaker 1: clannishness of virtue. They're the most backwards and deliberately unprogressive

462
00:31:20,000 --> 00:31:23,480
Speaker 1: region in the United States. End of quote. Now this

463
00:31:23,600 --> 00:31:26,680
Speaker 1: next one hurts a little. A writer named C. L.

464
00:31:27,040 --> 00:31:30,800
Speaker 1: Edson wrote, quote, A people willing to foot it one

465
00:31:30,840 --> 00:31:35,360
Speaker 1: hundred miles through month to get nowhere founded Arkansas and

466
00:31:35,440 --> 00:31:39,680
Speaker 1: achieve their aim. Arkansas has its own popular motto, and

467
00:31:39,760 --> 00:31:43,760
Speaker 1: it's this, I never seen nothing, I don't know nothing,

468
00:31:44,200 --> 00:31:48,160
Speaker 1: I got nothing, and I don't want nothing. The dirt

469
00:31:48,160 --> 00:31:51,880
Speaker 1: ball went on to write, few can read in Arkansas,

470
00:31:51,920 --> 00:31:55,840
Speaker 1: and those who can don't. Every old southern state has

471
00:31:55,920 --> 00:32:00,240
Speaker 1: produced a few scholars except Arkansas. No man of first

472
00:32:00,320 --> 00:32:04,560
Speaker 1: classed intellect was born in Arkansas, lived there, or even

473
00:32:04,720 --> 00:32:08,920
Speaker 1: passed through the state. End of quote. What a punk.

474
00:32:09,760 --> 00:32:13,320
Speaker 1: Those are some strong words, mister Edson, and me and

475
00:32:13,440 --> 00:32:17,120
Speaker 1: Brent Reeves will fight any of your living ken right

476
00:32:17,160 --> 00:32:20,440
Speaker 1: now if they've got the gall to show up down here.

477
00:32:21,480 --> 00:32:25,360
Speaker 1: I'm just kidding. We thrive off this stuff. We're used

478
00:32:25,360 --> 00:32:27,600
Speaker 1: to it. It's kind of what made us who we are.

479
00:32:28,480 --> 00:32:31,760
Speaker 1: And we're back to the drawing board and have yet

480
00:32:31,800 --> 00:32:36,520
Speaker 1: another layer of powerful branding. In the eighteen forties, the

481
00:32:36,640 --> 00:32:41,640
Speaker 1: widely popular story of the Arkansas Traveler came out. Here's

482
00:32:41,760 --> 00:32:45,400
Speaker 1: Doctor Blevins. A little bit later, you've got the birth

483
00:32:45,520 --> 00:32:50,600
Speaker 1: of the Arkansas Traveler. It's The Arkansas Traveler becomes a

484
00:32:51,320 --> 00:32:55,120
Speaker 1: popular play in the nineteenth century, where you have this

485
00:32:55,640 --> 00:33:01,280
Speaker 1: sort of sophisticated urbane traveler who ventures into somewhere in

486
00:33:01,280 --> 00:33:04,640
Speaker 1: the back country, you know, depending on who's telling the story. Anyway,

487
00:33:04,680 --> 00:33:06,920
Speaker 1: they venture into the back country and they encounter this

488
00:33:07,000 --> 00:33:10,400
Speaker 1: squatter at a log cabin and he's sitting there sawing

489
00:33:10,480 --> 00:33:12,760
Speaker 1: away on a fiddle, trying to play a song, and

490
00:33:12,760 --> 00:33:14,400
Speaker 1: he can't remember the rest of the song. And then

491
00:33:14,440 --> 00:33:17,680
Speaker 1: there's this humorous back and forth between the traveler and

492
00:33:17,720 --> 00:33:21,920
Speaker 1: the squatter such you know, gems as which way does

493
00:33:21,920 --> 00:33:25,120
Speaker 1: this road go in the squad and the squatter says, well,

494
00:33:25,160 --> 00:33:27,600
Speaker 1: I've been here twenty years and it ain't never went nowhere,

495
00:33:27,920 --> 00:33:30,800
Speaker 1: and you know that, why don't you patch up your roof?

496
00:33:30,880 --> 00:33:34,760
Speaker 1: And the squatter says, well, when it's raining, stu wet

497
00:33:34,800 --> 00:33:36,720
Speaker 1: to patch it up, and when it's dry, don't need

498
00:33:36,760 --> 00:33:40,400
Speaker 1: patching that, you know that kind of you know it's right,

499
00:33:40,880 --> 00:33:44,600
Speaker 1: These are I mean old old comedy bits that go

500
00:33:44,680 --> 00:33:47,200
Speaker 1: back you know how many who knows how many centuries,

501
00:33:47,520 --> 00:33:52,960
Speaker 1: but they're kind of plugged into this new fresh territory Arkansas.

502
00:33:52,960 --> 00:33:56,000
Speaker 1: So you get this Arkansas Traveler legend that turns into

503
00:33:56,040 --> 00:33:59,920
Speaker 1: a fiddle tune that becomes very popular, it turns into

504
00:34:00,040 --> 00:34:02,880
Speaker 1: that play, it turns into paintings that are that are

505
00:34:02,920 --> 00:34:06,240
Speaker 1: still you know, popular, and you see those are around today.

506
00:34:06,480 --> 00:34:09,040
Speaker 1: So you got a name of Arkansas's baseball team, but

507
00:34:09,280 --> 00:34:12,680
Speaker 1: right the Little Rocks baseball team, the Lers, the University

508
00:34:12,680 --> 00:34:16,640
Speaker 1: of Arkansas student newspaper, the Arkansas Traveler. Yeah, I mean

509
00:34:16,719 --> 00:34:20,440
Speaker 1: that that sticks, and I guess Arkansas may still do it.

510
00:34:20,520 --> 00:34:22,920
Speaker 1: I'm not sure, but you know they used to hand out,

511
00:34:22,960 --> 00:34:26,400
Speaker 1: you know, these Arkansas Traveler Awards to people, you know,

512
00:34:26,680 --> 00:34:30,120
Speaker 1: and kind of you've become an honorary Arkansas Traveler if

513
00:34:30,120 --> 00:34:32,400
Speaker 1: you do something good for Arkansas or they want to

514
00:34:32,400 --> 00:34:35,360
Speaker 1: honor you for something. But you know, that's again age

515
00:34:35,400 --> 00:34:40,000
Speaker 1: old comedy stuff right there. But that sticks with the state.

516
00:34:40,040 --> 00:34:44,200
Speaker 1: And this is before the word hillbilly comes into popular usage,

517
00:34:44,680 --> 00:34:47,880
Speaker 1: which is only around the turn of the twentieth century

518
00:34:47,920 --> 00:34:50,920
Speaker 1: when when that comes in. But so Arkansas is already

519
00:34:51,080 --> 00:34:56,160
Speaker 1: strongly associated with what we would consider hillbilly culture come

520
00:34:56,200 --> 00:34:58,880
Speaker 1: the twentieth century. It's also around the turn of the

521
00:34:58,880 --> 00:35:03,280
Speaker 1: twentieth century when you start having these cheap joke books

522
00:35:03,520 --> 00:35:07,040
Speaker 1: that are published, and the most famous of all those

523
00:35:07,120 --> 00:35:09,920
Speaker 1: cheap joke books is on a Slow Train through Arkansas

524
00:35:10,560 --> 00:35:12,719
Speaker 1: and on the front, you know, you know, you got

525
00:35:12,760 --> 00:35:15,040
Speaker 1: this kind of book titled that, Yeah, there's there's an

526
00:35:15,040 --> 00:35:19,399
Speaker 1: old joke on a slow train through Arkansas. And the

527
00:35:19,400 --> 00:35:21,080
Speaker 1: thing about it is, if you if you actually get

528
00:35:21,080 --> 00:35:23,160
Speaker 1: the book and look at it, it's a very very

529
00:35:23,200 --> 00:35:27,279
Speaker 1: offensive book, but not necessarily the people from Arkansas. It's

530
00:35:27,440 --> 00:35:31,960
Speaker 1: it's racially and ethnically and religiously offensive. But the fact

531
00:35:32,320 --> 00:35:35,200
Speaker 1: that the guy who wrote it decided to call it

532
00:35:35,239 --> 00:35:37,800
Speaker 1: on a slow train through Arkansas and have the artwork

533
00:35:37,840 --> 00:35:41,000
Speaker 1: on the cover depict these kind of hillbilly characters in

534
00:35:41,120 --> 00:35:44,560
Speaker 1: Arkansas suggests that by the time the book comes out

535
00:35:44,600 --> 00:35:48,000
Speaker 1: in the early nine very early nineteen hundreds, Arkansas is

536
00:35:48,000 --> 00:35:51,440
Speaker 1: already shorthand for humorous. Yeah that was that was branded

537
00:35:51,480 --> 00:35:53,920
Speaker 1: in and this guy was jumping on the band. He's

538
00:35:53,960 --> 00:35:56,799
Speaker 1: taking advantage of whom any guy what a dirt ball?

539
00:35:57,160 --> 00:36:00,879
Speaker 1: Right Once upon a time in Arkansas, an old man

540
00:36:00,960 --> 00:36:03,320
Speaker 1: sat at its little cabin door. Anything with that a

541
00:36:03,360 --> 00:36:06,200
Speaker 1: tune that he'd liked to Hugh Johnny, tune that he

542
00:36:06,280 --> 00:36:11,120
Speaker 1: fleyed by. The Arkansas Travelers story has multiple potential sources,

543
00:36:11,440 --> 00:36:14,480
Speaker 1: but it started off simply as a story that branded

544
00:36:14,560 --> 00:36:18,680
Speaker 1: us big time. There's a famous painting fiddle tune. Arkansas

545
00:36:18,719 --> 00:36:21,520
Speaker 1: Traveler was the name of a national paper published out

546
00:36:21,520 --> 00:36:25,080
Speaker 1: of Arkansas with the national distribution of eighty five thousand

547
00:36:25,200 --> 00:36:27,960
Speaker 1: in eighteen eighty seven, and in nineteen thirty eight there

548
00:36:28,000 --> 00:36:31,040
Speaker 1: was a Hollywood movie that came out called The Arkansas Traveler.

549
00:36:31,480 --> 00:36:34,400
Speaker 1: It's the name of our only pro baseball team. And

550
00:36:34,480 --> 00:36:37,640
Speaker 1: the student paper at my alma mater of the University

551
00:36:37,640 --> 00:36:41,919
Speaker 1: of Arkansas, Go Hogs, is the Arkansas Traveler. And then

552
00:36:41,960 --> 00:36:48,200
Speaker 1: that dad gum joke book. Yeah, Arkansas from you know,

553
00:36:48,280 --> 00:36:51,080
Speaker 1: from those earliest days when it when he gets branded

554
00:36:51,120 --> 00:36:54,879
Speaker 1: as the Bear State, that becomes some version of that,

555
00:36:55,080 --> 00:36:59,600
Speaker 1: some version of the backwoods hillbilly state becomes its brand

556
00:36:59,640 --> 00:37:03,000
Speaker 1: become it's what everybody in the country knows about it

557
00:37:03,080 --> 00:37:05,160
Speaker 1: really for the rest of the century. You know, it

558
00:37:05,239 --> 00:37:08,680
Speaker 1: shows up in in Mark Twain's writing, you know, that

559
00:37:08,840 --> 00:37:13,160
Speaker 1: there's there are kind of these backwoods crazy characters from

560
00:37:13,280 --> 00:37:16,200
Speaker 1: Arkansas who shows up, and a lot of literature and

561
00:37:16,239 --> 00:37:20,840
Speaker 1: it's almost always Arkansas is it's this backward place that

562
00:37:20,960 --> 00:37:24,600
Speaker 1: never really modernizes like other places. It never gets beyond

563
00:37:24,680 --> 00:37:28,640
Speaker 1: it's it's frontier stage. And that really you know, continues

564
00:37:28,680 --> 00:37:33,920
Speaker 1: into the well into the twentieth century. Arkansas maintains its

565
00:37:33,960 --> 00:37:36,879
Speaker 1: place as kind of the the bud of a national joke.

566
00:37:37,320 --> 00:37:39,640
Speaker 1: Were there other states in the South that had that

567
00:37:39,800 --> 00:37:43,080
Speaker 1: quite like quite like Arkansas? If you're if you're from Arkansas,

568
00:37:43,360 --> 00:37:46,160
Speaker 1: you know, there's the old thank God for Mississippi line,

569
00:37:46,320 --> 00:37:50,040
Speaker 1: which which I've heard people say many many that usually

570
00:37:50,040 --> 00:37:53,960
Speaker 1: comes into play when you're looking at statistical rankings, because

571
00:37:54,000 --> 00:37:58,000
Speaker 1: if anybody's going to be below Arkansas, it's maybe Mississippi.

572
00:37:58,040 --> 00:38:01,560
Speaker 1: We're fighting for fiftieth place. And didn't they like reference

573
00:38:01,719 --> 00:38:06,239
Speaker 1: Arkansas as inside of those cartoons they are there? They

574
00:38:06,239 --> 00:38:09,080
Speaker 1: do that with other SATs. Yeah, well, the one I

575
00:38:09,120 --> 00:38:12,240
Speaker 1: think you're thinking of, it's it's a Warner Brothers cartoon

576
00:38:12,320 --> 00:38:15,960
Speaker 1: from nineteen fifty called Hillbilly Hare and it's bugs Bunny,

577
00:38:16,200 --> 00:38:20,160
Speaker 1: oh Ken Hillbilly Hare. I know they referenced the Ozarks.

578
00:38:20,520 --> 00:38:23,520
Speaker 1: But in that cartoon Hit Bugs, Bunny travels to the

579
00:38:23,560 --> 00:38:25,600
Speaker 1: Ozarks for some reason, you know, he pops up out

580
00:38:25,640 --> 00:38:28,080
Speaker 1: of the ground and he's in the Ozarks, vacation in

581
00:38:28,160 --> 00:38:33,280
Speaker 1: the Ozarks, so quiet, so peaceful, so far from hum

582
00:38:33,280 --> 00:38:37,520
Speaker 1: in danger, so huh. And he gets in the middle

583
00:38:37,520 --> 00:38:40,360
Speaker 1: of this feud between you know, two feud and families.

584
00:38:40,360 --> 00:38:43,920
Speaker 1: They're all bearded and barefoot and overalls, and they got

585
00:38:44,080 --> 00:38:46,720
Speaker 1: you know, shotguns with muzzles on them that are longer

586
00:38:46,760 --> 00:38:53,719
Speaker 1: than the people themselves. Who crew and just who might

587
00:38:53,880 --> 00:38:57,919
Speaker 1: you be? Might be Teddy Roosi belt but I eat

588
00:38:59,160 --> 00:39:02,640
Speaker 1: hey durn foh, what's our idea of time? Knox and

589
00:39:02,760 --> 00:39:09,520
Speaker 1: the rifle Barron just call me freck Ocean. You know,

590
00:39:09,560 --> 00:39:12,319
Speaker 1: it's very very it's funny, and it's stereotypical and all

591
00:39:12,360 --> 00:39:14,040
Speaker 1: that kind of stuff. Well, one of the things you

592
00:39:14,080 --> 00:39:18,080
Speaker 1: find is that by the twentieth century, Arkansas and the

593
00:39:18,080 --> 00:39:22,200
Speaker 1: Ozarks becomes kind of interchangeable in a lot of ways

594
00:39:22,200 --> 00:39:26,000
Speaker 1: in myth making and imagery for the nation. Even though

595
00:39:26,040 --> 00:39:28,719
Speaker 1: the Ozarks only makes up roughly a quarter of the

596
00:39:29,160 --> 00:39:32,800
Speaker 1: state of Arkansas, when it comes to the image of Arkansas,

597
00:39:32,840 --> 00:39:35,520
Speaker 1: in many ways, it's very much tied up with this

598
00:39:35,600 --> 00:39:41,880
Speaker 1: kind of Ozarks hillbilly image. Thank God for Mississippi. I

599
00:39:41,920 --> 00:39:45,080
Speaker 1: actually like Mississippi a lot. That's where Bear Grease, Hall

600
00:39:45,120 --> 00:39:50,000
Speaker 1: of Famer Hulk Callier lived, The Ozarks and Washatas. Arkansas's

601
00:39:50,080 --> 00:39:52,760
Speaker 1: mountainous regions make up about one third of our state,

602
00:39:53,040 --> 00:39:56,439
Speaker 1: but in the twentieth century, the national Arkansas image takes

603
00:39:56,440 --> 00:40:01,000
Speaker 1: a notable turn to depict the poor white highlanders and

604
00:40:01,200 --> 00:40:06,359
Speaker 1: leaves out African Americans, Delta farmers, and Native Americans still

605
00:40:06,400 --> 00:40:10,839
Speaker 1: in Arkansas, the trend was completely based on America's appetite

606
00:40:10,880 --> 00:40:14,880
Speaker 1: for entertainment and intrigue. For some reason, the poor white

607
00:40:14,960 --> 00:40:18,920
Speaker 1: mountain folk were what they wanted to talk about growing

608
00:40:19,000 --> 00:40:21,840
Speaker 1: up here. I didn't realize we were special until I

609
00:40:21,920 --> 00:40:25,400
Speaker 1: was older and started traveling. And without a doubt, I

610
00:40:25,440 --> 00:40:30,000
Speaker 1: am very defensive of Arkansas. Doctor Blevins says that defensiveness

611
00:40:30,160 --> 00:40:34,279
Speaker 1: is part of our cultural inheritance. Doctor Blevins brought up

612
00:40:34,400 --> 00:40:38,920
Speaker 1: Mark Twain's work. And here is doctor Bob Cochrane with

613
00:40:39,000 --> 00:40:43,319
Speaker 1: two major American novels with references to Arkansas. Do you

614
00:40:43,320 --> 00:40:46,680
Speaker 1: know what they are? Okay? One of them is Mark Twain,

615
00:40:46,880 --> 00:40:50,320
Speaker 1: which won't surprise you at all. But in Huckleberry Finn,

616
00:40:50,600 --> 00:40:53,400
Speaker 1: you remember the two fraudulent guys that go around putting

617
00:40:53,440 --> 00:40:56,560
Speaker 1: on the Royal nun such show. They know they're just

618
00:40:56,719 --> 00:41:00,719
Speaker 1: two bombs, but they try to take yokol. And there's

619
00:41:00,719 --> 00:41:04,279
Speaker 1: a place where Arkansas shows up in Huckleberry Fame. So

620
00:41:04,280 --> 00:41:07,839
Speaker 1: when he's putting up a placard advertising their hoochie Guccie show,

621
00:41:07,960 --> 00:41:09,959
Speaker 1: you know, and that's what it is. I mean, there's

622
00:41:09,960 --> 00:41:11,799
Speaker 1: no they have not the show. They're two guys they

623
00:41:11,800 --> 00:41:14,480
Speaker 1: don't have, you know. Then they couldn't do a burlesque

624
00:41:14,480 --> 00:41:16,840
Speaker 1: show if they wanted to. But they put up a

625
00:41:16,880 --> 00:41:19,320
Speaker 1: sign and whatever else. It says down at the bottom

626
00:41:19,400 --> 00:41:22,799
Speaker 1: they say women and children not admitted. And then the

627
00:41:22,880 --> 00:41:25,480
Speaker 1: guy turns the prince tends to the dukes. Is there?

628
00:41:25,600 --> 00:41:28,399
Speaker 1: He says, if that don't get them, that don't bring

629
00:41:28,440 --> 00:41:31,800
Speaker 1: them in. I don't know Arkansas. And so he's referring

630
00:41:31,800 --> 00:41:34,399
Speaker 1: to this specific line. You know that the suckers will

631
00:41:34,440 --> 00:41:37,160
Speaker 1: think there must be something, you know, risque in the

632
00:41:37,200 --> 00:41:39,800
Speaker 1: show just by that line, just by the no women

633
00:41:39,800 --> 00:41:42,480
Speaker 1: and children that admitted. So here's what I'm really saying.

634
00:41:42,600 --> 00:41:46,040
Speaker 1: Arkansas's reputation as a state this would have supported it.

635
00:41:46,239 --> 00:41:50,280
Speaker 1: And there's one even more famous. It's Moby Dick eighteen

636
00:41:50,400 --> 00:41:53,799
Speaker 1: fifty one. Moby Dick gets published. There's one mention and

637
00:41:53,920 --> 00:41:57,239
Speaker 1: one only in moby Dick. Yeah of Arkansas. And what

638
00:41:57,360 --> 00:42:01,480
Speaker 1: it does is make us look bad. That's no surprise

639
00:42:01,520 --> 00:42:04,480
Speaker 1: to you. They love doing that. And here's how he

640
00:42:04,520 --> 00:42:06,800
Speaker 1: did it. Here's how he did it. He it's in

641
00:42:07,000 --> 00:42:11,799
Speaker 1: one sentence. The phrase itself is uh like an Arkansas

642
00:42:11,920 --> 00:42:15,920
Speaker 1: duellist is the phrase where Arkansas comes in. And the

643
00:42:16,000 --> 00:42:20,120
Speaker 1: person who is described as being like an Arkansas duellist

644
00:42:20,400 --> 00:42:24,400
Speaker 1: is Captain Ahab, the monomaniac, you know. And it's he

645
00:42:24,480 --> 00:42:27,080
Speaker 1: is right under the bus, that under the bus, under

646
00:42:27,080 --> 00:42:30,120
Speaker 1: the whale in this case, because he is at that

647
00:42:30,280 --> 00:42:35,000
Speaker 1: moment lunging with a six inch knife at the whale.

648
00:42:35,320 --> 00:42:37,880
Speaker 1: This is when the harpoon gets wrapped around him and

649
00:42:37,920 --> 00:42:40,799
Speaker 1: he's carried down by the whale to his death. But

650
00:42:40,880 --> 00:42:44,560
Speaker 1: it's it's made very explicit. He's trying with a six

651
00:42:44,680 --> 00:42:46,960
Speaker 1: inch blade, I think is the word. He doesn't use

652
00:42:46,960 --> 00:42:50,080
Speaker 1: the word knife to reach the fathom deep heart of

653
00:42:50,120 --> 00:42:55,240
Speaker 1: the whale. That's that's exactly an idiotic thing to do.

654
00:42:54,520 --> 00:42:58,000
Speaker 1: Dumb thing to do, dumb and violent. So Arkansas was

655
00:42:58,080 --> 00:43:03,320
Speaker 1: portrayed as crazy, viol and stupid. Only one line, wow,

656
00:43:03,440 --> 00:43:06,319
Speaker 1: and Arkansas duelist and a duel in that time would

657
00:43:06,360 --> 00:43:09,560
Speaker 1: have been common language for a shootout, right, like you

658
00:43:09,600 --> 00:43:12,600
Speaker 1: would just would would have a conflict and we would

659
00:43:12,640 --> 00:43:15,200
Speaker 1: go have a duel in the street. Which there was

660
00:43:15,360 --> 00:43:18,600
Speaker 1: a legislator killed in the state capital of Arkansas. I

661
00:43:18,640 --> 00:43:21,520
Speaker 1: mean that's not terribly unusual. Poland the guy who wrote

662
00:43:21,520 --> 00:43:24,360
Speaker 1: the Peate Wetstone things, he killed somebody in a duel.

663
00:43:24,600 --> 00:43:29,600
Speaker 1: He killed Governor Pope's nephew. Governor John Pope's nephew insulted him.

664
00:43:29,800 --> 00:43:32,280
Speaker 1: They had to challenge him to a duel. They were

665
00:43:32,400 --> 00:43:36,120
Speaker 1: they were distressingly common duels in those days. They loved

666
00:43:36,160 --> 00:43:39,120
Speaker 1: to go to places where police jurisdiction was a little

667
00:43:39,120 --> 00:43:41,880
Speaker 1: bit in doubt, like islands in a river, is this

668
00:43:42,000 --> 00:43:44,680
Speaker 1: in this county? Here is this in this state? Right?

669
00:43:45,120 --> 00:43:48,320
Speaker 1: And so you know police jurisdiction would be a little

670
00:43:48,320 --> 00:43:51,000
Speaker 1: bit hazy maybe, yeah, I mean that was part of

671
00:43:51,040 --> 00:43:53,520
Speaker 1: the image of Arkansas. It was that these people were

672
00:43:53,520 --> 00:43:57,080
Speaker 1: having duels at the drop, you know, so and you

673
00:43:57,120 --> 00:44:01,239
Speaker 1: know they're all carrying booie knives around and yeah. In

674
00:44:01,400 --> 00:44:05,680
Speaker 1: eighteen thirty seven, State Representative Joseph Anthony was killed in

675
00:44:05,719 --> 00:44:08,440
Speaker 1: a knife fight by the Speaker of the House John

676
00:44:08,480 --> 00:44:12,319
Speaker 1: Wilson at the Arkansas State House and another pair of

677
00:44:12,440 --> 00:44:15,200
Speaker 1: legislators went to an island on the Mississippi River for

678
00:44:15,239 --> 00:44:18,239
Speaker 1: a pistol duel and one of them died. This was

679
00:44:18,280 --> 00:44:22,239
Speaker 1: a wild and violent place. We're gonna skip ahead in

680
00:44:22,400 --> 00:44:26,000
Speaker 1: time to some stuff from the twentieth century. The heyday

681
00:44:26,040 --> 00:44:29,120
Speaker 1: of the hillbilly in American media was in the nineteen

682
00:44:29,200 --> 00:44:33,719
Speaker 1: thirties and forties. There were movies, plays, songs, jokes, but

683
00:44:33,960 --> 00:44:37,640
Speaker 1: leading the charge on the national scene was radio. It

684
00:44:37,760 --> 00:44:41,080
Speaker 1: was huge and there were two men by the name

685
00:44:41,080 --> 00:44:46,360
Speaker 1: of Chester Locke and Norris Goth from my hometown of Mina, Arkansas.

686
00:44:46,800 --> 00:44:50,720
Speaker 1: They had a wildly popular national radio show called Lomon

687
00:44:50,800 --> 00:44:54,720
Speaker 1: Abner that ran nationally for twenty three years from nineteen

688
00:44:54,840 --> 00:45:00,799
Speaker 1: thirty one until nineteen fifty four. I better in my

689
00:45:00,920 --> 00:45:04,480
Speaker 1: life order run him out of town. Oh, he'll come

690
00:45:04,560 --> 00:45:08,399
Speaker 1: to a Shamshire granddam. Abner just ain't used to having

691
00:45:08,440 --> 00:45:10,640
Speaker 1: a lot of money and inch when they Shorter went

692
00:45:10,680 --> 00:45:13,279
Speaker 1: to his head, and he's going to kill somebody with

693
00:45:13,320 --> 00:45:17,400
Speaker 1: that cornhesion. Shets backing and back sheet and keeps punching

694
00:45:17,480 --> 00:45:20,480
Speaker 1: night children the back with his walking keen making him

695
00:45:20,480 --> 00:45:25,200
Speaker 1: go faster. Nineteen thirty three, Lom and Abner were receiving

696
00:45:25,440 --> 00:45:30,040
Speaker 1: fifteen thousand fan letters per week from people hoping to

697
00:45:30,160 --> 00:45:34,480
Speaker 1: connect with these two lovable characters. Their comedy show depicted

698
00:45:34,600 --> 00:45:38,600
Speaker 1: life in the mountains of Arkansas. They spoke of peculiar

699
00:45:38,640 --> 00:45:43,800
Speaker 1: neighbors and sticky situations, but overall it portrayed the Arkansawyers

700
00:45:44,000 --> 00:45:48,839
Speaker 1: as funny, quirky, but noble. In nineteen thirty seven, Lom

701
00:45:48,880 --> 00:45:53,320
Speaker 1: and Abner moved to Hollywood and starting seven movies. These

702
00:45:53,360 --> 00:45:56,520
Speaker 1: guys were a big part of Arkansas's He'll belly image

703
00:45:56,560 --> 00:45:59,839
Speaker 1: being exported to the country, but they didn't create it.

704
00:46:00,320 --> 00:46:03,160
Speaker 1: They just inherited it from the last two hundred and

705
00:46:03,160 --> 00:46:11,280
Speaker 1: fifty years. But America couldn't get enough of Arkansas. Moving forward,

706
00:46:11,440 --> 00:46:15,759
Speaker 1: here's Doctor Blevins on the state's Inferiority Complex and the

707
00:46:15,800 --> 00:46:20,440
Speaker 1: Ozark Mountain, the hillbilly themed theme park called dog Patch

708
00:46:20,560 --> 00:46:25,160
Speaker 1: USA that operated near Harrison, Arkansas from nineteen sixty eight

709
00:46:25,440 --> 00:46:29,440
Speaker 1: until nineteen ninety And No, you can't make this stuff up.

710
00:46:30,200 --> 00:46:33,759
Speaker 1: You know, when I wrote Arkansas Arkansas several years ago,

711
00:46:34,560 --> 00:46:38,480
Speaker 1: by far the funniest job I had in writing that

712
00:46:38,520 --> 00:46:42,960
Speaker 1: book was writing that little chapter on the state's inferiority complex,

713
00:46:43,320 --> 00:46:46,440
Speaker 1: because the funniest characters in the book to me were

714
00:46:46,719 --> 00:46:50,080
Speaker 1: the folks in Arkansas who got got their backs up.

715
00:46:50,360 --> 00:46:54,040
Speaker 1: You know so much about people making fun of them.

716
00:46:54,280 --> 00:46:57,600
Speaker 1: And I think from the very earliest days there has

717
00:46:57,680 --> 00:47:01,920
Speaker 1: been this sort of defensive ferriority complex that is just

718
00:47:02,160 --> 00:47:05,640
Speaker 1: it's almost part of your heritage, part of my heritage.

719
00:47:05,719 --> 00:47:08,280
Speaker 1: Is someone who grows up in Arkansas, you just expect

720
00:47:08,320 --> 00:47:11,040
Speaker 1: people are going to make fun of you. And so

721
00:47:11,080 --> 00:47:13,439
Speaker 1: many people and it was almost always people from Little Rock.

722
00:47:13,520 --> 00:47:15,280
Speaker 1: They were they were the ones who were most upset

723
00:47:15,320 --> 00:47:18,040
Speaker 1: about this because what they would do. It wasn't that

724
00:47:18,120 --> 00:47:21,120
Speaker 1: they were trying to defend everybody in Arkansas. They were

725
00:47:21,120 --> 00:47:23,359
Speaker 1: trying to defend themselves and if they had to throw

726
00:47:23,400 --> 00:47:25,160
Speaker 1: the rest of us under the bus to do it,

727
00:47:25,200 --> 00:47:28,720
Speaker 1: they would do that. When when they were talking about

728
00:47:28,760 --> 00:47:32,640
Speaker 1: founding dog Patch USA theme park in the late sixties,

729
00:47:33,040 --> 00:47:35,480
Speaker 1: there were, you know, people in Little Rock who were

730
00:47:35,719 --> 00:47:39,239
Speaker 1: upset about that. You know, their response wasn't, well, you

731
00:47:39,280 --> 00:47:42,960
Speaker 1: know where all of Arkansas is modern and we don't.

732
00:47:43,080 --> 00:47:46,120
Speaker 1: We're not like these people in dog Patch. And their

733
00:47:46,200 --> 00:47:48,920
Speaker 1: idea was, you folks in the Ozarks, don't be dragging

734
00:47:49,040 --> 00:47:54,360
Speaker 1: us into into this stuff. I remember my aunt Terry,

735
00:47:54,480 --> 00:47:57,120
Speaker 1: God bless her, taking us to the dog Patch theme

736
00:47:57,160 --> 00:48:00,000
Speaker 1: park in the late nineteen eighties. All I can remember

737
00:48:00,320 --> 00:48:03,480
Speaker 1: is the log ride in all the overalls. Man, it

738
00:48:03,600 --> 00:48:06,720
Speaker 1: was cool. I think that's where Brett Reeves was born.

739
00:48:07,440 --> 00:48:10,759
Speaker 1: Here's more from doctor Blevins. And one of the things

740
00:48:10,800 --> 00:48:13,239
Speaker 1: I did this was back in I think it was

741
00:48:13,280 --> 00:48:17,880
Speaker 1: back in two thousand and seven. I did these internet searches.

742
00:48:18,360 --> 00:48:20,800
Speaker 1: Not very scientific, but it's about as scientific as I

743
00:48:20,840 --> 00:48:23,200
Speaker 1: could get. I just because I remember thinking one day

744
00:48:23,400 --> 00:48:27,120
Speaker 1: I had almost finished the first draft of my book

745
00:48:27,239 --> 00:48:30,000
Speaker 1: Arkansas Arkansas, which is all about, you know, the image

746
00:48:30,040 --> 00:48:33,000
Speaker 1: of Arkansas, the hillbilly sort of image of Arkansas. And

747
00:48:33,040 --> 00:48:35,200
Speaker 1: I remember thinking, one day, what if I'm writing this

748
00:48:35,360 --> 00:48:37,960
Speaker 1: entire book at how the image of Arkansas came to

749
00:48:38,000 --> 00:48:40,240
Speaker 1: be and what impact it's had on people of Arkansas,

750
00:48:40,480 --> 00:48:43,280
Speaker 1: and nobody really cares. It's not even an issue anymore

751
00:48:43,640 --> 00:48:45,880
Speaker 1: in the twenty first century. What if it doesn't even matter?

752
00:48:46,120 --> 00:48:48,239
Speaker 1: And I'm the only one sitting around thinking about this.

753
00:48:48,480 --> 00:48:50,160
Speaker 1: And so I sat down one day and I started

754
00:48:50,160 --> 00:48:52,920
Speaker 1: doing these like Google searches where I would do exact

755
00:48:52,960 --> 00:48:57,680
Speaker 1: phrase searches and I'd do like Arkansas hillbillys in quotation marks,

756
00:48:58,040 --> 00:49:01,480
Speaker 1: and I would do hillbilly from Arkansas and quotation marks.

757
00:49:01,560 --> 00:49:03,799
Speaker 1: And then I would plug in the names of other

758
00:49:03,920 --> 00:49:06,839
Speaker 1: states and I would do Georgia, and I do Alabama,

759
00:49:06,880 --> 00:49:10,680
Speaker 1: and I do New Jersey or just just whatever, and

760
00:49:10,680 --> 00:49:13,640
Speaker 1: and and I remember being so relieved at the end

761
00:49:13,680 --> 00:49:15,680
Speaker 1: of that day because in that I would count like

762
00:49:15,719 --> 00:49:19,439
Speaker 1: the hits that each of these phrases God, and sure enough,

763
00:49:19,600 --> 00:49:23,759
Speaker 1: Arkansas was still the hillbilliesst state according to the Internet

764
00:49:24,440 --> 00:49:27,920
Speaker 1: in two thousand and I remember, I remember, right, I

765
00:49:27,960 --> 00:49:30,840
Speaker 1: can remember that moment, sitting in my in my office

766
00:49:31,320 --> 00:49:34,440
Speaker 1: and just almost doing a dance because we're still the

767
00:49:34,520 --> 00:49:39,520
Speaker 1: hillbillyist state. And I mean even, you know, we're smoking

768
00:49:39,640 --> 00:49:43,600
Speaker 1: Kentucky and West Virginia and in this competition, and I

769
00:49:43,640 --> 00:49:46,040
Speaker 1: even broke it down like it did the math by

770
00:49:46,080 --> 00:49:49,520
Speaker 1: per capita, and you know, Arkansas just blew everybody away

771
00:49:49,840 --> 00:49:53,520
Speaker 1: in terms of its affiliation with the word hillbilly in

772
00:49:53,600 --> 00:49:57,200
Speaker 1: two thousand sets. So I mean even it survived even

773
00:49:57,239 --> 00:50:00,200
Speaker 1: into the twenty first century. You know, those rude Let's

774
00:50:00,239 --> 00:50:03,480
Speaker 1: go all the way back to those Bear state images

775
00:50:03,520 --> 00:50:06,919
Speaker 1: that we've talked about. I mean, that's how strong that

776
00:50:07,200 --> 00:50:11,400
Speaker 1: connection has been that even Walmart can't remove us from,

777
00:50:11,440 --> 00:50:14,000
Speaker 1: you know, the number one spot that even Crystal Bridges

778
00:50:14,320 --> 00:50:16,840
Speaker 1: Museum of American Art, you know, one of the great

779
00:50:17,000 --> 00:50:22,920
Speaker 1: art museums of the world. Now, in case you're wondering

780
00:50:23,000 --> 00:50:26,480
Speaker 1: why you could feel doctor Blevins and I grinning ear

781
00:50:26,560 --> 00:50:29,760
Speaker 1: to ear when he said Arkansas was the most hillbilly state.

782
00:50:30,320 --> 00:50:34,080
Speaker 1: Let me explain something. I'm very proud to be from

783
00:50:34,120 --> 00:50:38,239
Speaker 1: a small, humble place, and most of us are comfortable

784
00:50:38,320 --> 00:50:42,240
Speaker 1: in our identity. And I have deliberately chosen to focus

785
00:50:42,280 --> 00:50:45,200
Speaker 1: on the positives of our culture, because there are bad

786
00:50:45,239 --> 00:50:49,759
Speaker 1: things too, But I'm proud to be from Arkansas. In

787
00:50:49,920 --> 00:50:54,560
Speaker 1: nineteen fifty four, in essay was published in American Mercury magazine,

788
00:50:54,880 --> 00:50:58,480
Speaker 1: written by an arkansawyer by the name of Eugene Newsome.

789
00:50:59,040 --> 00:51:02,880
Speaker 1: I think he had some good advice for us. He said, quote,

790
00:51:02,960 --> 00:51:06,120
Speaker 1: I say, breed up a race of razorbacks, as the

791
00:51:06,160 --> 00:51:09,359
Speaker 1: Texans are doing with their long horns. Fire the old

792
00:51:09,440 --> 00:51:12,759
Speaker 1: caplock muzzloader at the neighbors once a week, give the

793
00:51:12,880 --> 00:51:16,960
Speaker 1: inquiring stranger directions to possum trot and goose ankle, and

794
00:51:17,080 --> 00:51:19,759
Speaker 1: give him a sample of Uncle Rape's last run of

795
00:51:19,840 --> 00:51:23,600
Speaker 1: corn squeezings. If Arkansas is ever gonna amount to anything,

796
00:51:23,920 --> 00:51:27,880
Speaker 1: she's got to advertise the very characteristics she's been shushing

797
00:51:28,040 --> 00:51:31,239
Speaker 1: for a hundred years. What Arkansas needs to do is

798
00:51:31,280 --> 00:51:35,319
Speaker 1: not look, dress, talk and think like and be indistinguishable

799
00:51:35,400 --> 00:51:38,760
Speaker 1: from other states. She needs to uncurl her little finger

800
00:51:38,840 --> 00:51:43,120
Speaker 1: from the teacup and proclaim her known and recognize honoriness

801
00:51:43,160 --> 00:51:48,080
Speaker 1: to the wide world. End of quote. The Arkansas image

802
00:51:48,080 --> 00:51:51,719
Speaker 1: we've described as strong and deep. However, it's partly a

803
00:51:51,760 --> 00:51:57,320
Speaker 1: product of a voracious American media stereotyping people, exaggerating the truth,

804
00:51:57,600 --> 00:52:02,040
Speaker 1: and feeding people what sells. We're not all lazy, but

805
00:52:02,160 --> 00:52:05,799
Speaker 1: I do like to take naps, we wear shoes most

806
00:52:05,840 --> 00:52:08,040
Speaker 1: of the time. A lot of us do have cood

807
00:52:08,080 --> 00:52:11,320
Speaker 1: and squirrel dogs. That's just the truth. But we also

808
00:52:11,400 --> 00:52:15,240
Speaker 1: have four oh one k's health insurance, clean and tidy homes,

809
00:52:15,600 --> 00:52:20,160
Speaker 1: and like going to fancy restaurants. And we're appropriately impacted

810
00:52:20,160 --> 00:52:24,680
Speaker 1: by fine art and literature. Our governor, Sarah Huckabee Sanders,

811
00:52:24,719 --> 00:52:28,040
Speaker 1: our first female and youngest governor, just signed in one

812
00:52:28,040 --> 00:52:31,400
Speaker 1: of the most progressive education reform bills in the country.

813
00:52:31,800 --> 00:52:36,040
Speaker 1: This is happening place, brothers. Doctor Blevins just brought up

814
00:52:36,080 --> 00:52:39,680
Speaker 1: the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art. I think we

815
00:52:39,719 --> 00:52:42,440
Speaker 1: should check it out and see if this place lines

816
00:52:42,600 --> 00:52:45,640
Speaker 1: up with the Arkansas you may have pictured in your

817
00:52:45,680 --> 00:52:52,640
Speaker 1: mind at the first of this podcast. I'm sorry. I'm

818
00:52:52,680 --> 00:52:56,640
Speaker 1: at the Crystal Bridges Museum in Bentonville, Arkansas. Tell me

819
00:52:56,719 --> 00:52:59,839
Speaker 1: who you are. My name is Mindy Pisa. I am

820
00:53:00,000 --> 00:53:02,560
Speaker 1: the curator of American Art, so I oversee the early

821
00:53:02,600 --> 00:53:05,600
Speaker 1: American collection here at Crystal Bridges. But I'm also the

822
00:53:05,600 --> 00:53:08,200
Speaker 1: director of Research and Fellowships, and we have a great

823
00:53:08,239 --> 00:53:12,360
Speaker 1: research program that also attracts scholars from not only across

824
00:53:12,400 --> 00:53:15,719
Speaker 1: the country but internationally to come to Crystal Bridges and

825
00:53:15,960 --> 00:53:20,000
Speaker 1: study art. Let me ask you this put this museum

826
00:53:20,120 --> 00:53:23,600
Speaker 1: into context for me. Pretend like I know nothing and

827
00:53:23,719 --> 00:53:27,399
Speaker 1: where some of the treasures of American art are at

828
00:53:27,440 --> 00:53:30,839
Speaker 1: across the country. And you don't have to be diplomatic,

829
00:53:31,239 --> 00:53:34,719
Speaker 1: But how good is the Crystal Bridges Museum on a

830
00:53:34,840 --> 00:53:38,520
Speaker 1: national scale for American art. It's in the top tier.

831
00:53:38,960 --> 00:53:43,319
Speaker 1: And I say that as of course someone that works here,

832
00:53:43,320 --> 00:53:46,240
Speaker 1: but also someone that I have my PhD in American

833
00:53:46,400 --> 00:53:49,440
Speaker 1: art history. I have been studying American art for a

834
00:53:49,440 --> 00:53:52,399
Speaker 1: long time. I've worked here for eight years for an

835
00:53:52,400 --> 00:53:55,759
Speaker 1: American art museum. Some of our comparatives might be the

836
00:53:55,800 --> 00:53:59,200
Speaker 1: Amon Carter Museum in Fort Worth, the Smithsonian American Art

837
00:53:59,320 --> 00:54:02,799
Speaker 1: Museum in Washington, tendc. Now they have had a long, long, long,

838
00:54:02,840 --> 00:54:07,480
Speaker 1: long history that we haven't had. But our collection is

839
00:54:07,640 --> 00:54:14,600
Speaker 1: recognizably competitive with other American art museums. Last year's seven

840
00:54:14,719 --> 00:54:19,240
Speaker 1: hundred thousand people visited Crystal Bridges. This is an incredible number.

841
00:54:19,840 --> 00:54:22,520
Speaker 1: But I want to let y'all into a little bit

842
00:54:22,520 --> 00:54:25,640
Speaker 1: of that high aluten big city drama. When all this

843
00:54:25,760 --> 00:54:29,120
Speaker 1: incredible art ended up in the Ozarks, some of those

844
00:54:29,160 --> 00:54:35,680
Speaker 1: fancy folks on the coast weren't that happy. So the

845
00:54:35,800 --> 00:54:39,800
Speaker 1: rumor in Arkansas when Crystal Bridges came into Arkansas eleven

846
00:54:39,880 --> 00:54:43,400
Speaker 1: years ago. We loved it, we loved the hype of

847
00:54:43,400 --> 00:54:47,719
Speaker 1: it was that the art community was a little upset

848
00:54:48,320 --> 00:54:51,920
Speaker 1: that some of this world class American art ended up

849
00:54:52,000 --> 00:54:55,800
Speaker 1: in the po dunk state. Of Arkansas, and we loved

850
00:54:55,800 --> 00:54:59,239
Speaker 1: it because Arkansans love when we're picked on just a

851
00:54:59,280 --> 00:55:03,040
Speaker 1: little bit, but we show the world that we're the

852
00:55:03,080 --> 00:55:07,120
Speaker 1: real deal. Is it true that some people were like

853
00:55:07,160 --> 00:55:10,960
Speaker 1: saying that stuff shouldn't be in this place? Of course

854
00:55:11,160 --> 00:55:15,319
Speaker 1: I would call them doubters, you know. So again, if

855
00:55:15,360 --> 00:55:21,439
Speaker 1: you think of the coasts as being elite art world locations,

856
00:55:21,560 --> 00:55:23,560
Speaker 1: they have long histories. Of course they have a lot

857
00:55:23,560 --> 00:55:27,200
Speaker 1: to be proud of. And they would say Arkansas, where

858
00:55:27,640 --> 00:55:32,279
Speaker 1: is Arkansas even located? Let me help if you don't

859
00:55:32,320 --> 00:55:36,279
Speaker 1: know where Arkansas is. We're almost in the center of

860
00:55:36,320 --> 00:55:39,480
Speaker 1: the country, which will learn as incredibly helpful if you're

861
00:55:39,520 --> 00:55:44,120
Speaker 1: planning to build a global retail empire. The world headquarters

862
00:55:44,120 --> 00:55:47,840
Speaker 1: of Walmart are in Bentonville, Arkansas. More on that in

863
00:55:47,880 --> 00:55:51,800
Speaker 1: a second. Mindy and I are standing within arm's reach

864
00:55:51,880 --> 00:55:56,240
Speaker 1: of a very famous landscape painting showing a spectacular scene

865
00:55:56,239 --> 00:55:59,799
Speaker 1: of green forested mountains. There are two men standing on

866
00:55:59,840 --> 00:56:04,840
Speaker 1: a bluffy crag overlooking a pristine valley. Landscape. Art seems

867
00:56:04,840 --> 00:56:08,640
Speaker 1: to be all about lighting, and this painting almost glows

868
00:56:08,800 --> 00:56:16,040
Speaker 1: with realism. But it didn't show up here without some drama. Okay,

869
00:56:16,040 --> 00:56:18,759
Speaker 1: So tell me about this one. So this painting is

870
00:56:18,840 --> 00:56:23,040
Speaker 1: by Asher B. Durand. It's called Kindred Spirits. This is

871
00:56:23,080 --> 00:56:28,320
Speaker 1: the painting really that prompted the public announcement of Crystal Bridges.

872
00:56:28,800 --> 00:56:32,520
Speaker 1: And I'll tell you why. So the painting had been

873
00:56:33,160 --> 00:56:36,880
Speaker 1: housed and owned by the New York Public Library forever.

874
00:56:37,480 --> 00:56:41,520
Speaker 1: Asher B. Durand was an important landscape painter early in

875
00:56:41,560 --> 00:56:45,160
Speaker 1: our history of American art. And the two figures that

876
00:56:45,160 --> 00:56:48,040
Speaker 1: are represented one as Thomas Cole. He's the guy with

877
00:56:48,080 --> 00:56:51,799
Speaker 1: the hat and the portfolio under his arm. He is

878
00:56:52,200 --> 00:56:58,880
Speaker 1: widely considered the father of American landscape painting, and American

879
00:56:58,920 --> 00:57:01,600
Speaker 1: painting really felt like it came into its own with

880
00:57:01,960 --> 00:57:07,040
Speaker 1: landscape because what we had land didn't have big buildings

881
00:57:07,200 --> 00:57:10,719
Speaker 1: or we had landscapes, we didn't have Greek ruins, you know,

882
00:57:10,840 --> 00:57:14,239
Speaker 1: all the things that would point to history in Europe

883
00:57:14,880 --> 00:57:17,640
Speaker 1: was not found in the United States. So this is

884
00:57:17,840 --> 00:57:22,160
Speaker 1: widely recognized as a hugely important painting for American art.

885
00:57:22,320 --> 00:57:25,560
Speaker 1: So people were upset that it came here. So New

886
00:57:25,640 --> 00:57:30,640
Speaker 1: York Public Library was deaccessioning some works. Now it's their fault,

887
00:57:30,680 --> 00:57:32,200
Speaker 1: it's not our fault. It's not as if we went

888
00:57:32,240 --> 00:57:34,680
Speaker 1: shopping off of their walls, so that means it was

889
00:57:34,760 --> 00:57:37,480
Speaker 1: for sale. It was for sale, and it went to

890
00:57:37,680 --> 00:57:41,560
Speaker 1: a silent bid through one of the big auction houses

891
00:57:41,560 --> 00:57:46,200
Speaker 1: in New York, and that this closed bid wasn't so closed.

892
00:57:46,360 --> 00:57:50,120
Speaker 1: And it very quickly leaked that Alice Walton had purchased

893
00:57:50,120 --> 00:57:53,400
Speaker 1: the painting, and everyone was up in arms, especially in

894
00:57:53,440 --> 00:57:55,880
Speaker 1: New York. Can you tell us how much it costs? No,

895
00:57:55,960 --> 00:58:02,640
Speaker 1: I can't because everything here is priceless, good answer and irreplaceable.

896
00:58:02,720 --> 00:58:06,640
Speaker 1: If I will so closed bid, Alice buys the painting.

897
00:58:06,840 --> 00:58:08,720
Speaker 1: People are up in arms because they think it's going

898
00:58:08,760 --> 00:58:11,840
Speaker 1: into a private collection in the quote middle of nowhere

899
00:58:12,000 --> 00:58:15,760
Speaker 1: in Arkansas, never to be seen again. Now, Alice was

900
00:58:15,840 --> 00:58:19,800
Speaker 1: just making her museum, building the collection, and as she

901
00:58:19,880 --> 00:58:23,000
Speaker 1: would say it, she didn't think anyone cared what she

902
00:58:23,160 --> 00:58:26,560
Speaker 1: was doing, just down in Arkansas, buying some art, making

903
00:58:26,600 --> 00:58:30,040
Speaker 1: a building, normal stuff for us, just normal stuff, you know,

904
00:58:30,200 --> 00:58:36,480
Speaker 1: wasn't very public. And when everything just exploded, it was like, Okay,

905
00:58:36,720 --> 00:58:43,080
Speaker 1: it's time. So she used the controversy around the acquisition

906
00:58:43,120 --> 00:58:46,920
Speaker 1: of this painting to announce her intentions for crystal bridges.

907
00:58:48,440 --> 00:58:52,720
Speaker 1: This kind of sounds familiar the humble billionaires of Arkansas

908
00:58:52,960 --> 00:58:55,680
Speaker 1: just minding their own business and people starting to get

909
00:58:55,680 --> 00:58:58,440
Speaker 1: cranky about it. It's not our fault if we have

910
00:58:58,560 --> 00:59:01,360
Speaker 1: good bear and duck Hutting's spots and have some of

911
00:59:01,360 --> 00:59:04,560
Speaker 1: the richest people in the world. Yeah, you just heard

912
00:59:04,600 --> 00:59:07,680
Speaker 1: the name Alice Walton. This is the daughter of the

913
00:59:07,720 --> 00:59:12,919
Speaker 1: founder of Walmart, Sam Walton, the true Arkansas hero. As

914
00:59:12,960 --> 00:59:16,360
Speaker 1: we walk away from the Kindred Spirits painting, we're heading

915
00:59:16,400 --> 00:59:20,440
Speaker 1: to the painting. I really came to see. It's spectacular.

916
00:59:22,080 --> 00:59:25,040
Speaker 1: Are there any pictures here? Oh, there's there. That's what

917
00:59:25,120 --> 00:59:28,480
Speaker 1: I'm actor right there. I just saw it. So I

918
00:59:28,600 --> 00:59:31,440
Speaker 1: have a copy of this painting hanging in my living rooms,

919
00:59:31,480 --> 00:59:34,640
Speaker 1: a certain like a color when I bought from you guys. Yeah,

920
00:59:34,800 --> 00:59:37,640
Speaker 1: years ago I ordered this and had it professionally framed

921
00:59:37,680 --> 00:59:40,840
Speaker 1: a little smaller than this. But tell me that what

922
00:59:41,000 --> 00:59:43,840
Speaker 1: this is and who who did it? Sure? So this

923
00:59:43,960 --> 00:59:48,680
Speaker 1: is Arthur Fitzwilliam Tate. It's called a Tate fix. So

924
00:59:48,720 --> 00:59:52,720
Speaker 1: it's bear hunting in early winter. It's a large painting

925
00:59:53,360 --> 00:59:56,600
Speaker 1: framed in a gold frame. We have a hunter in

926
00:59:56,720 --> 01:00:01,320
Speaker 1: buckskin really in a compromise sort of heated position, leaning

927
01:00:01,320 --> 01:00:05,480
Speaker 1: back on his arm with a big black bear claws

928
01:00:05,480 --> 01:00:10,880
Speaker 1: out ready to pounce on the hunter. This is an

929
01:00:10,880 --> 01:00:15,520
Speaker 1: incredible painting called a Hunter's Life a tight Fix. It's huge,

930
01:00:15,760 --> 01:00:19,400
Speaker 1: the lighting spectacular, and it shows a buckskin clad hunter

931
01:00:19,640 --> 01:00:22,680
Speaker 1: with a bowie knife drawn in a hand to call

932
01:00:22,880 --> 01:00:27,480
Speaker 1: brawl with Ursus Americanus. There's blood in the snow and

933
01:00:27,520 --> 01:00:30,480
Speaker 1: in the background his hunting partner is taking aim at

934
01:00:30,480 --> 01:00:33,080
Speaker 1: the bear, hoping to save his buddy's life. This was

935
01:00:33,200 --> 01:00:37,240
Speaker 1: painted in eighteen fifty six, and the scene is strikingly

936
01:00:37,400 --> 01:00:41,040
Speaker 1: similar to the one Frederick Gerstalker described in his book

937
01:00:41,080 --> 01:00:43,880
Speaker 1: Wild Sports in the Far West, which was published just

938
01:00:43,920 --> 01:00:47,560
Speaker 1: two years before at eighteen fifty four. It's strikingly similar.

939
01:00:47,880 --> 01:00:50,400
Speaker 1: We did a whole podcast on this story called Death

940
01:00:50,440 --> 01:00:52,800
Speaker 1: of a Bear Hunter. We already said it before, but

941
01:00:52,960 --> 01:00:56,080
Speaker 1: bear hunting was a hot pop culture topic in the

942
01:00:56,080 --> 01:01:00,720
Speaker 1: mid eighteen hundreds. Hunting is deep in the American identity,

943
01:01:01,040 --> 01:01:03,840
Speaker 1: and I'm very proud that this painting is front and

944
01:01:03,960 --> 01:01:08,200
Speaker 1: center at Crystal Bridges. Good job, Mindy and miss Alice.

945
01:01:09,240 --> 01:01:12,120
Speaker 1: I want to jump back to doctor Blevins. He has

946
01:01:12,160 --> 01:01:15,920
Speaker 1: an astute observation and wants to introduce us to a

947
01:01:16,080 --> 01:01:22,560
Speaker 1: unique Arkansan. You know, in In twenty eleven, Crystal Bridges

948
01:01:22,880 --> 01:01:26,320
Speaker 1: Museum opened up. I think they opened on eleven, eleven eleven.

949
01:01:26,400 --> 01:01:29,320
Speaker 1: That was their big thing. November eleven, twenty eleven, they

950
01:01:29,320 --> 01:01:33,240
Speaker 1: opened one of the great American art museums. I guess

951
01:01:33,240 --> 01:01:36,680
Speaker 1: it's probably the greatest in terms of a collection of

952
01:01:36,720 --> 01:01:40,439
Speaker 1: American art, American made art today. And I love the place.

953
01:01:40,480 --> 01:01:43,640
Speaker 1: I've been there several times. But what you saw was

954
01:01:44,040 --> 01:01:47,200
Speaker 1: all of a sudden in the national media there there

955
01:01:47,200 --> 01:01:50,200
Speaker 1: started to be this kind of almost a rebranding of

956
01:01:50,320 --> 01:01:54,120
Speaker 1: Arkansas just because and of the ozark just because of

957
01:01:54,200 --> 01:01:57,800
Speaker 1: this one thing that happens, you know, this one big

958
01:01:57,840 --> 01:02:01,160
Speaker 1: important cultural institution. And it's just a year or two

959
01:02:01,280 --> 01:02:04,440
Speaker 1: later that I believe his name is Joe Wilson, Yes,

960
01:02:04,720 --> 01:02:11,040
Speaker 1: Joe Wilson founds the Squirrel cook Off World champions in Bentonville, Arkansas.

961
01:02:11,160 --> 01:02:14,640
Speaker 1: And it's almost as it's kind of the even things out.

962
01:02:14,680 --> 01:02:17,040
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, you get all of this kind

963
01:02:17,040 --> 01:02:21,520
Speaker 1: of progressive sided publicity because of Crystal Bridges, and it's

964
01:02:21,520 --> 01:02:24,920
Speaker 1: almost as if he realizes, hey, this is not what

965
01:02:24,960 --> 01:02:27,959
Speaker 1: we're about just yet. I mean, we're still We're still

966
01:02:27,960 --> 01:02:31,400
Speaker 1: in Arkansas. We're still in the Ozarks, and there are

967
01:02:31,400 --> 01:02:36,120
Speaker 1: still people who kill and eat squirrels, and so you

968
01:02:36,120 --> 01:02:38,960
Speaker 1: get the you get the squirrels Joe Wilson and the

969
01:02:38,960 --> 01:02:41,240
Speaker 1: World Champions Squirrel cook Off. Yeah, it's kind of It

970
01:02:41,280 --> 01:02:44,840
Speaker 1: brings restores kind of an equilibrium in a way, and

971
01:02:45,200 --> 01:02:50,040
Speaker 1: it reminds people that what Arkansas has been known for

972
01:02:50,480 --> 01:02:54,560
Speaker 1: all of these generations, long before there was a Walton

973
01:02:54,640 --> 01:02:58,000
Speaker 1: family in Bentonville, long before there was a Crystal Bridges.

974
01:02:59,360 --> 01:03:02,400
Speaker 1: Joe Willson is in his late forties. He's got a

975
01:03:02,440 --> 01:03:05,919
Speaker 1: big curled mustache, and he's often wearing a black cowboy hat.

976
01:03:06,560 --> 01:03:09,480
Speaker 1: Joe is a well respected man in Bentonville, but the

977
01:03:09,480 --> 01:03:12,400
Speaker 1: beat of his drummer is slightly different than many of

978
01:03:12,440 --> 01:03:16,600
Speaker 1: the urbane newcomers to this place. Walmart and the company

979
01:03:16,640 --> 01:03:19,680
Speaker 1: Tyson Foods, also found in Northwest Arkansas, which is the

980
01:03:19,760 --> 01:03:23,919
Speaker 1: largest meat producer in America, have truly brought the world here.

981
01:03:24,320 --> 01:03:27,920
Speaker 1: It's pretty incredible. I want y'all to meet my friend

982
01:03:28,400 --> 01:03:34,960
Speaker 1: Joe Wilson. We're overlooking downtown Bentonville, so interesting enough. The

983
01:03:35,040 --> 01:03:38,960
Speaker 1: lady right over here in this corner is where the

984
01:03:39,080 --> 01:03:44,760
Speaker 1: downtown people sit. Who I don't matter, you know, I'm

985
01:03:45,080 --> 01:03:48,760
Speaker 1: free will. So last week I met her in the

986
01:03:48,760 --> 01:03:52,960
Speaker 1: crosswalk and she asked when I was bringing the Squirrel

987
01:03:53,000 --> 01:03:56,480
Speaker 1: Cookoff back to downtown Bentonville. She wants to meet on that.

988
01:03:57,080 --> 01:04:00,600
Speaker 1: So the story of how we got to downtown Bentonville,

989
01:04:00,680 --> 01:04:03,959
Speaker 1: it's pretty simple. I was witnessing the change. I've seen

990
01:04:04,000 --> 01:04:07,400
Speaker 1: the change all around us, switching over from pickup trucks

991
01:04:07,560 --> 01:04:11,840
Speaker 1: to BMW's and Tesla's, and you know, I think there's

992
01:04:12,160 --> 01:04:16,520
Speaker 1: a stereotype of what Northwest Arkansas is Arkansas in general,

993
01:04:17,200 --> 01:04:20,040
Speaker 1: and it really dealt with people like me and you, Clay.

994
01:04:20,640 --> 01:04:22,960
Speaker 1: I think people come here thinking they're gonna see me

995
01:04:23,040 --> 01:04:27,200
Speaker 1: and you or guys that act and look like us,

996
01:04:27,640 --> 01:04:31,080
Speaker 1: and they're hard to find. You know, it's been something

997
01:04:31,120 --> 01:04:35,160
Speaker 1: that's slowly being erased. To find a chicken fried steak

998
01:04:35,480 --> 01:04:37,760
Speaker 1: in Bentonville is a hard thing to do, but you can.

999
01:04:38,400 --> 01:04:41,400
Speaker 1: You can find something pretty dang fancy, and there's nothing

1000
01:04:41,480 --> 01:04:44,400
Speaker 1: wrong with that. I think my kids have a better

1001
01:04:44,400 --> 01:04:49,600
Speaker 1: opportunity of knowing culture, knowing art, all of that. They

1002
01:04:49,640 --> 01:04:52,960
Speaker 1: have less of an opportunity to see the stuff that

1003
01:04:53,040 --> 01:04:55,600
Speaker 1: me and you've seen as kids, and that was knowing

1004
01:04:55,680 --> 01:04:57,640
Speaker 1: what was going to stick you in the Woods right

1005
01:04:57,880 --> 01:05:00,720
Speaker 1: knowing what was gonna make you itch how to cook

1006
01:05:00,760 --> 01:05:03,760
Speaker 1: and clean a squirrel. Those things are kind of disappearing.

1007
01:05:03,880 --> 01:05:06,960
Speaker 1: So I brought the Squirrel cook Off to downtown Bentonville

1008
01:05:07,080 --> 01:05:10,080
Speaker 1: on the square right here to kind of rub it in,

1009
01:05:10,600 --> 01:05:14,280
Speaker 1: you know, and to give people the opportunity to see

1010
01:05:14,280 --> 01:05:17,480
Speaker 1: who we are. And you know, it wasn't just the

1011
01:05:17,520 --> 01:05:21,920
Speaker 1: redneck guy. We had chefs coming out, We had teachers, doctors,

1012
01:05:22,320 --> 01:05:25,960
Speaker 1: had people travel from all across the world to see

1013
01:05:26,040 --> 01:05:28,800
Speaker 1: us cook squirrel and so what started off as me

1014
01:05:28,920 --> 01:05:33,240
Speaker 1: kind of rubbing them, I think they really enjoyed one

1015
01:05:33,320 --> 01:05:36,320
Speaker 1: Saturday out of the year to give us the opportunity

1016
01:05:36,360 --> 01:05:43,040
Speaker 1: to showcase that traditional Ozark lifestyle. This man is a genius.

1017
01:05:43,640 --> 01:05:47,280
Speaker 1: Joe Rogan ought to have Joe Wilson on his podcast

1018
01:05:47,440 --> 01:05:50,680
Speaker 1: for Real. The World Championship Squirrel cook Off will be

1019
01:05:50,720 --> 01:05:54,120
Speaker 1: in late September twenty twenty three, and I'm planning on

1020
01:05:54,240 --> 01:05:57,880
Speaker 1: being there. The diversity of people this event brings in

1021
01:05:58,160 --> 01:06:01,280
Speaker 1: is astounding. It'll blow your mind. A lot of what's

1022
01:06:01,280 --> 01:06:05,040
Speaker 1: happening in Northwest Arkansas right now revolves around Walmart. And

1023
01:06:05,200 --> 01:06:08,120
Speaker 1: say what you will about him, but the ozark Er,

1024
01:06:08,240 --> 01:06:12,200
Speaker 1: Sam Walton simply gave America what it wanted. So don't

1025
01:06:12,240 --> 01:06:15,720
Speaker 1: hate the player, hate the game. And around here, saving

1026
01:06:15,800 --> 01:06:19,680
Speaker 1: money to live better sounds like a reasonable idea. And

1027
01:06:20,080 --> 01:06:22,720
Speaker 1: I will let you in on a little secret. If

1028
01:06:22,720 --> 01:06:25,040
Speaker 1: you want to go to the finest Walmart stores on

1029
01:06:25,120 --> 01:06:28,120
Speaker 1: planet Earth, come to Northwest Arkansas. The closer you get

1030
01:06:28,160 --> 01:06:32,160
Speaker 1: to the Home office, better they get. Here's Joe talking

1031
01:06:32,200 --> 01:06:37,280
Speaker 1: about mister Sam. We're inside of the original Walton five

1032
01:06:37,360 --> 01:06:40,760
Speaker 1: and dime store on the Bentonville Square. And I told

1033
01:06:40,760 --> 01:06:43,200
Speaker 1: you that we were going to talk to mister Sam.

1034
01:06:43,240 --> 01:06:48,720
Speaker 1: Stand by, Yes, so you're inside is Sam's first store.

1035
01:06:48,760 --> 01:06:51,480
Speaker 1: But a lot of people don't know Sam Walton was

1036
01:06:51,520 --> 01:06:54,960
Speaker 1: a hunter. Sam Quell hunted, pheasant hunted. The property where

1037
01:06:54,960 --> 01:06:57,479
Speaker 1: Crystal Bridges was was a place that you know, coon

1038
01:06:57,520 --> 01:07:01,160
Speaker 1: dogs ran through there. His truck that's inside the museum

1039
01:07:01,320 --> 01:07:04,680
Speaker 1: has a dog box in the back. Sam Walton as

1040
01:07:04,720 --> 01:07:06,520
Speaker 1: a hunter, I think that's what he wanted to be

1041
01:07:06,640 --> 01:07:09,440
Speaker 1: known as because all the images you see, I mean

1042
01:07:09,480 --> 01:07:11,800
Speaker 1: there was tons of images in here of him carrying

1043
01:07:11,800 --> 01:07:15,120
Speaker 1: a rifle through the woods with brush fans on the

1044
01:07:15,240 --> 01:07:18,480
Speaker 1: dog food. Old Roy named after one of his dogs.

1045
01:07:18,760 --> 01:07:22,600
Speaker 1: So Lords West Arkansas has had a long, long history

1046
01:07:22,640 --> 01:07:25,480
Speaker 1: of hunting, and Sam Walton's a huge part of it.

1047
01:07:26,040 --> 01:07:29,000
Speaker 1: Sam Walton has a hunter. It's a big part. I

1048
01:07:29,040 --> 01:07:31,200
Speaker 1: hope it's part of the museum when we build it back.

1049
01:07:32,560 --> 01:07:35,640
Speaker 1: Mister Sam used to carry his muddy footed bird dogs

1050
01:07:35,640 --> 01:07:38,200
Speaker 1: with him on his jet and often had a shotgun

1051
01:07:38,240 --> 01:07:40,800
Speaker 1: in his truck when he went to work. They're currently

1052
01:07:40,840 --> 01:07:45,160
Speaker 1: remodeling the Walmart Museum. It's a pretty neat place. Joe says,

1053
01:07:45,240 --> 01:07:47,400
Speaker 1: he wants to take me down the street to meet

1054
01:07:47,520 --> 01:07:51,880
Speaker 1: mister Sam. I'm not exactly sure what he means. We

1055
01:07:52,040 --> 01:07:55,040
Speaker 1: walk a block down the street to the temporary location

1056
01:07:55,040 --> 01:07:58,200
Speaker 1: of the Walmart Museum and he introduces me to a

1057
01:07:58,280 --> 01:08:02,800
Speaker 1: kind lady named Lisa. I'm going to introduce you, do

1058
01:08:02,880 --> 01:08:06,960
Speaker 1: my buddy. This is Clay Newcomb. Yeah, nice to meet you.

1059
01:08:07,320 --> 01:08:13,320
Speaker 1: I'm Clay's got a national broadcasted podcast. And I just

1060
01:08:13,400 --> 01:08:16,400
Speaker 1: walked into the old five and dime. And now he

1061
01:08:16,479 --> 01:08:18,880
Speaker 1: had some questions. He was going to ask, mister Sam, here,

1062
01:08:19,160 --> 01:08:22,280
Speaker 1: can you tell me what this is? This is? It's

1063
01:08:22,320 --> 01:08:25,200
Speaker 1: a hologram with a little bit of it magic. This

1064
01:08:25,280 --> 01:08:28,240
Speaker 1: is an actress portrayal of mister Sam. And then the

1065
01:08:28,280 --> 01:08:32,639
Speaker 1: wonderful company that created this for us. They used facial

1066
01:08:32,720 --> 01:08:36,400
Speaker 1: mapping to put mister Sam's face on the holiday. So

1067
01:08:36,760 --> 01:08:38,920
Speaker 1: we're looking at a it's a it's a. It looks

1068
01:08:38,920 --> 01:08:41,080
Speaker 1: like he's in like a little room and he's just

1069
01:08:41,160 --> 01:08:44,439
Speaker 1: right here by us, and his face is moving a

1070
01:08:44,479 --> 01:08:47,200
Speaker 1: little bit. It looks real, looks like a real man

1071
01:08:47,360 --> 01:08:51,839
Speaker 1: standing it. This is a state of the art hologram machine.

1072
01:08:52,280 --> 01:08:55,639
Speaker 1: It feels and looks like we're talking to a real man.

1073
01:08:56,080 --> 01:08:59,840
Speaker 1: It's bizarre. Mister Sam died in nineteen ninety two, and

1074
01:09:00,120 --> 01:09:03,439
Speaker 1: it's rare to find anybody here that didn't respect Sam

1075
01:09:03,439 --> 01:09:07,240
Speaker 1: Walton as a kid. I vividly remember my grandfather lew

1076
01:09:07,280 --> 01:09:10,640
Speaker 1: and Nucom from Bumblebee, Arkansas, who was a peer in

1077
01:09:10,840 --> 01:09:14,679
Speaker 1: age and fellow Arkansas bird hundred to mister Sam speak

1078
01:09:14,720 --> 01:09:19,400
Speaker 1: incredibly highly of Sam Walton and Billy Graham. He placed

1079
01:09:19,439 --> 01:09:22,920
Speaker 1: these men at the same level. Lisa has a microphone

1080
01:09:22,920 --> 01:09:25,599
Speaker 1: in her hand and she's about to ask mister Sam

1081
01:09:25,600 --> 01:09:30,760
Speaker 1: a question. Do you think that mister Sam knows the

1082
01:09:30,840 --> 01:09:34,639
Speaker 1: name of the nut that comes off of an oak tree?

1083
01:09:34,000 --> 01:09:37,559
Speaker 1: I know he did in real life, but what do

1084
01:09:37,600 --> 01:09:39,360
Speaker 1: you think he would call? Do you know what the

1085
01:09:39,479 --> 01:09:41,200
Speaker 1: name of that nut is that comes off of an

1086
01:09:41,200 --> 01:09:45,200
Speaker 1: oak tree? An acorn? I couldn't think of I'm seeing

1087
01:09:45,200 --> 01:09:52,280
Speaker 1: I would I'm from northwest Arkansas. Okay, I think that

1088
01:09:52,360 --> 01:09:56,200
Speaker 1: kind of fits into what you're after. Well, you're so,

1089
01:09:56,840 --> 01:10:00,320
Speaker 1: there's two versions of the same thing on one would

1090
01:10:00,320 --> 01:10:03,200
Speaker 1: be called an acorn, like you said, and the other

1091
01:10:03,240 --> 01:10:06,120
Speaker 1: one would be called an akern. Do you know the difference?

1092
01:10:06,600 --> 01:10:10,040
Speaker 1: See my memo would sell use an acorn? Okay, I'm

1093
01:10:10,040 --> 01:10:14,280
Speaker 1: telling you your code switching on us. Listen, because all

1094
01:10:14,320 --> 01:10:17,000
Speaker 1: this all this Walton money, your code switching on us,

1095
01:10:17,040 --> 01:10:19,960
Speaker 1: pull it out of your Arkansas heritage calling it an acorn?

1096
01:10:20,280 --> 01:10:24,920
Speaker 1: Are you ashamed of or absolutely not. I'm very proud

1097
01:10:24,960 --> 01:10:27,439
Speaker 1: of my home. I'm very proud of my heritage. Um,

1098
01:10:27,560 --> 01:10:30,000
Speaker 1: it's just that people look at you like you're crazed

1099
01:10:30,520 --> 01:10:32,960
Speaker 1: if you say things like that, like ketty womp us fringet?

1100
01:10:33,439 --> 01:10:36,080
Speaker 1: Have you ever heard the expression? Key? Doug, We dug

1101
01:10:36,160 --> 01:10:38,040
Speaker 1: right into the interior and we found what we were

1102
01:10:38,080 --> 01:10:41,840
Speaker 1: looking for. So does Sam know anything about Old Roy Steel? Yeah,

1103
01:10:41,920 --> 01:10:45,080
Speaker 1: let's ask Yeah. Yeah, we'll see what he says. Okay,

1104
01:10:45,280 --> 01:10:49,920
Speaker 1: mister Sam, can you tell us about Old Roy Roy

1105
01:10:50,320 --> 01:10:56,160
Speaker 1: was a setter, probably the most overrated bird dog in history.

1106
01:10:56,439 --> 01:10:59,360
Speaker 1: He was a merchant, a hunter at all. He would

1107
01:10:59,360 --> 01:11:02,559
Speaker 1: point for having for his hand. But he was a

1108
01:11:02,560 --> 01:11:05,600
Speaker 1: great tennis dog. He would go with me to the

1109
01:11:05,600 --> 01:11:09,240
Speaker 1: tennis court and lay there, and whenever the ball went

1110
01:11:09,320 --> 01:11:11,960
Speaker 1: out of the court or over the fenced or whatever,

1111
01:11:12,600 --> 01:11:15,040
Speaker 1: he would go chasing after it and bring him back

1112
01:11:15,080 --> 01:11:19,000
Speaker 1: to me. And the associates and the customers got a

1113
01:11:19,200 --> 01:11:22,000
Speaker 1: kick out of visiting with him in the stores. And

1114
01:11:22,160 --> 01:11:24,599
Speaker 1: once we put his name in picture on our private

1115
01:11:24,680 --> 01:11:30,040
Speaker 1: label Bigra Fruit, he had sold tons one year alight

1116
01:11:30,439 --> 01:11:34,719
Speaker 1: became the number two dog fruit the Nmmerica. And remember

1117
01:11:35,400 --> 01:11:39,080
Speaker 1: we all may sell it in Walmart. That's so good.

1118
01:11:41,040 --> 01:11:43,640
Speaker 1: Lew and Nucom loved to feed his bird dogs some

1119
01:11:43,800 --> 01:11:47,080
Speaker 1: old roy dog food. But he wouldn't have tolerated a

1120
01:11:47,160 --> 01:11:52,000
Speaker 1: bird dog pointing rabbits. That's another story. There is one thing,

1121
01:11:52,040 --> 01:11:55,080
Speaker 1: though that we have not talked about that's leaving a

1122
01:11:55,120 --> 01:11:59,880
Speaker 1: glaring hole in the modern history of Arkansas. Boy, this

1123
01:12:00,120 --> 01:12:04,799
Speaker 1: some treacherous waters. Bill Clinton. I don't know a person

1124
01:12:05,360 --> 01:12:10,759
Speaker 1: that probably would get behind Bill Clinton politically right, but

1125
01:12:11,280 --> 01:12:14,479
Speaker 1: he's someone that I don't find a lot of people

1126
01:12:14,520 --> 01:12:17,200
Speaker 1: wanting to talk bad about in the state of Arkansas. Yeah,

1127
01:12:17,320 --> 01:12:19,599
Speaker 1: he was like our he was like our our one

1128
01:12:19,640 --> 01:12:22,479
Speaker 1: guy that made it to that's right. Yeah, because people

1129
01:12:22,520 --> 01:12:25,839
Speaker 1: are still pretty defensive of him, like they probably wouldn't

1130
01:12:26,040 --> 01:12:28,639
Speaker 1: talk real bad. That's might have been my experience anyway. Yeah,

1131
01:12:28,680 --> 01:12:31,000
Speaker 1: I think Bill Clinton's a good example of that. I mean,

1132
01:12:31,000 --> 01:12:34,320
Speaker 1: he certainly the most famous person from Market. I guess

1133
01:12:34,360 --> 01:12:36,160
Speaker 1: Johnny Cash would give him a pretty good run for

1134
01:12:36,160 --> 01:12:39,200
Speaker 1: his money. But but on the world stage, I mean

1135
01:12:39,200 --> 01:12:42,760
Speaker 1: we got Bill Clinton, and uh yeah, whatever your politics are,

1136
01:12:43,040 --> 01:12:45,760
Speaker 1: there's there's still a part of you that's proud that

1137
01:12:45,880 --> 01:12:49,600
Speaker 1: here's this small town boy from Arkansas who made it

1138
01:12:49,600 --> 01:12:52,320
Speaker 1: to the White House. And that's just something that you

1139
01:12:52,320 --> 01:12:56,240
Speaker 1: don't expect us to do. I've told y'all before that

1140
01:12:56,320 --> 01:12:58,400
Speaker 1: my dad went to the same high school as Bill

1141
01:12:58,439 --> 01:13:01,839
Speaker 1: Clinton and Hot Springs, Arkansas, a town in which Market

1142
01:13:01,880 --> 01:13:05,360
Speaker 1: bear hunters used to roam the streets and buckskin well.

1143
01:13:05,880 --> 01:13:09,600
Speaker 1: In nineteen ninety three, shortly after Clinton took office, he

1144
01:13:09,680 --> 01:13:14,040
Speaker 1: made a visit to Hot Springs and randomly, Juju Nukam

1145
01:13:14,120 --> 01:13:17,080
Speaker 1: and my little brother Tyler, who was eight years old

1146
01:13:17,080 --> 01:13:20,400
Speaker 1: at the time, we're walking downtown and believe you or not,

1147
01:13:20,800 --> 01:13:24,839
Speaker 1: they ran into the President of the United States, Bill Clinton.

1148
01:13:25,560 --> 01:13:28,920
Speaker 1: My little brother had a talk boy recorder with him.

1149
01:13:29,040 --> 01:13:33,280
Speaker 1: Do you remember those anyway, Here's what happened. It's short,

1150
01:13:33,880 --> 01:13:38,200
Speaker 1: really short, but the world has never heard this unreleased

1151
01:13:38,320 --> 01:13:43,360
Speaker 1: interview of Bill Clinton. Clinton's down ry yeah, yum kum

1152
01:13:43,479 --> 01:13:48,680
Speaker 1: Tom heard grade class and mina and this is a

1153
01:13:48,720 --> 01:13:55,200
Speaker 1: neat machine. I've never seen it before. H Tyler, yum

1154
01:13:55,280 --> 01:13:59,200
Speaker 1: yum to my tum. Tyler's always had a way with words.

1155
01:13:59,680 --> 01:14:02,759
Speaker 1: When we've dug the cassette tape out after thirty years,

1156
01:14:02,840 --> 01:14:06,520
Speaker 1: it was corrupted and about half of the full interview remained.

1157
01:14:06,800 --> 01:14:09,680
Speaker 1: But Tyler asked Bill Clinton to say hi to his

1158
01:14:09,760 --> 01:14:13,479
Speaker 1: third grade class and Mina, Arkansas, and he graciously did.

1159
01:14:14,080 --> 01:14:17,679
Speaker 1: Tyler then boldly asked the President of the United States

1160
01:14:17,720 --> 01:14:21,280
Speaker 1: to repeat, saying Hi Tyler, We'd better listen to that again.

1161
01:14:21,960 --> 01:14:28,519
Speaker 1: Clinton's down ry yeah yeahm Q my Tom, third grade

1162
01:14:28,560 --> 01:14:30,760
Speaker 1: class and mina and this is a neat machine. I've

1163
01:14:30,800 --> 01:14:37,000
Speaker 1: never seen it before. Hi Tyler, that's some good stuff.

1164
01:14:37,240 --> 01:14:41,040
Speaker 1: Good job, Tyler. Did you catch that Clinton and Johnny

1165
01:14:41,120 --> 01:14:43,759
Speaker 1: Cash might be neck and neck for the most famous

1166
01:14:43,880 --> 01:14:47,600
Speaker 1: Arkansans yep, The Man in Black was born in Kingsland,

1167
01:14:47,680 --> 01:14:50,760
Speaker 1: Arkansas in nineteen thirty two, and we're pretty proud of that.

1168
01:14:52,600 --> 01:14:56,519
Speaker 1: I'm still trying to understand why myself, Joe Wilson, and

1169
01:14:56,640 --> 01:15:00,479
Speaker 1: doctor Blevins and so many others are interested in staying

1170
01:15:00,560 --> 01:15:04,959
Speaker 1: true to the original Arkansas image, even with its flaws.

1171
01:15:05,439 --> 01:15:09,320
Speaker 1: Here's doctor Blevins. Well, you know, it all comes back

1172
01:15:09,439 --> 01:15:15,400
Speaker 1: to that old nineteenth century division between the Enlightenment and

1173
01:15:15,800 --> 01:15:19,559
Speaker 1: Romanticism and it and still today. You know, there are

1174
01:15:19,640 --> 01:15:23,160
Speaker 1: people who are going to take schoolcraft side and who

1175
01:15:23,200 --> 01:15:26,000
Speaker 1: are not gonna want to have any anything to do

1176
01:15:26,520 --> 01:15:30,439
Speaker 1: with the hillbilly image of Arkansas or the people who

1177
01:15:31,080 --> 01:15:34,920
Speaker 1: still kind of make that relevant in some way as

1178
01:15:34,960 --> 01:15:36,599
Speaker 1: part of the image of Arkansas. And then they're going

1179
01:15:36,640 --> 01:15:40,120
Speaker 1: to be the people who are excited about it and

1180
01:15:40,160 --> 01:15:44,320
Speaker 1: who are glad that that not everybody is just sort

1181
01:15:44,320 --> 01:15:48,680
Speaker 1: of lining up and running willy nilly into this progressive

1182
01:15:48,720 --> 01:15:51,720
Speaker 1: future that awaits us. That some people are kind of

1183
01:15:51,760 --> 01:15:55,240
Speaker 1: holding back and still doing things by the old ways.

1184
01:15:55,400 --> 01:15:58,960
Speaker 1: Can you can you have both? Yeah? Yeah? And I

1185
01:15:59,000 --> 01:16:02,360
Speaker 1: remember years ago in class, I think I was working

1186
01:16:02,400 --> 01:16:05,240
Speaker 1: on Arkansas, Arkansas when this discussion came up. One of

1187
01:16:05,320 --> 01:16:08,120
Speaker 1: my classes, but I remember we were talking about the

1188
01:16:08,160 --> 01:16:14,400
Speaker 1: state's hillbilly image, and I remember one of the students saying, well,

1189
01:16:14,439 --> 01:16:18,720
Speaker 1: at least they know who we are. And his point was,

1190
01:16:19,080 --> 01:16:21,320
Speaker 1: if you're gonna have an identity, you're gonna be known

1191
01:16:21,439 --> 01:16:25,439
Speaker 1: for something. It's better to be the hillbilly state than

1192
01:16:25,479 --> 01:16:29,200
Speaker 1: to be all of these sort of vanilla cookie cutter

1193
01:16:29,479 --> 01:16:33,519
Speaker 1: states that don't really have any image at all. At

1194
01:16:33,600 --> 01:16:37,440
Speaker 1: Least they know who we are. I think that's pretty profound.

1195
01:16:37,960 --> 01:16:41,400
Speaker 1: A deep longing of every human is to simply be known,

1196
01:16:42,120 --> 01:16:44,800
Speaker 1: and sometimes we don't get to choose what we're known for.

1197
01:16:45,240 --> 01:16:50,280
Speaker 1: It chooses us. I do not understand the psychological complexities

1198
01:16:50,280 --> 01:16:55,280
Speaker 1: of why humans naturally becomes so attached to place. I

1199
01:16:55,400 --> 01:17:00,080
Speaker 1: don't fully understand why I love Arkansas so much. I

1200
01:17:00,120 --> 01:17:04,080
Speaker 1: suspect it's deeply biological and has helped us survive. And

1201
01:17:04,120 --> 01:17:07,040
Speaker 1: it probably has something to do with the incredible natural

1202
01:17:07,080 --> 01:17:11,040
Speaker 1: beauty of our mountains, the clear water of our highland streams,

1203
01:17:11,240 --> 01:17:15,479
Speaker 1: and the enchanting rivers and lowlands of our delta, throwing

1204
01:17:15,560 --> 01:17:19,080
Speaker 1: the hospitable character of our people, many of which have

1205
01:17:19,240 --> 01:17:23,120
Speaker 1: an intangible charm unique to the creation state, and if

1206
01:17:23,160 --> 01:17:27,680
Speaker 1: I'm being honest, I'm quite certain Arkansas must be the

1207
01:17:27,720 --> 01:17:32,479
Speaker 1: best place in America. Loving place makes us curious, it

1208
01:17:32,560 --> 01:17:36,120
Speaker 1: makes us explore, it makes us protect, it makes us

1209
01:17:36,240 --> 01:17:39,519
Speaker 1: value that place, and it can empower us to live

1210
01:17:39,600 --> 01:17:43,320
Speaker 1: the best life that we can possibly live in that place.

1211
01:17:44,000 --> 01:17:46,720
Speaker 1: But I think to take home for this whole discussion

1212
01:17:47,320 --> 01:17:49,479
Speaker 1: is that you may live in a trailer park in

1213
01:17:49,600 --> 01:17:53,240
Speaker 1: rural America or in an urban ghetto, but you can

1214
01:17:53,280 --> 01:17:57,920
Speaker 1: thrive there. You get to interpret first to yourself and

1215
01:17:57,920 --> 01:18:01,439
Speaker 1: then secondly to the world out the place you live

1216
01:18:02,000 --> 01:18:07,200
Speaker 1: by displaying who you are. Where we're born doesn't fully

1217
01:18:07,320 --> 01:18:10,920
Speaker 1: define us, but we can use it to positively shape

1218
01:18:11,000 --> 01:18:14,600
Speaker 1: us or negatively shape us if we let it. And

1219
01:18:14,720 --> 01:18:17,759
Speaker 1: I hope you love where you're from, because it doesn't

1220
01:18:17,800 --> 01:18:20,880
Speaker 1: have to be perfect, but it is where you're from,

1221
01:18:21,160 --> 01:18:25,680
Speaker 1: so I'd suggest make the best of it. In closing,

1222
01:18:25,760 --> 01:18:29,000
Speaker 1: I'd like to thank America for all the jokes, and

1223
01:18:29,120 --> 01:18:32,599
Speaker 1: you're welcome for all the laughs that are expense because

1224
01:18:32,640 --> 01:18:35,320
Speaker 1: in the end we're having the last laugh. Living the

1225
01:18:35,400 --> 01:18:39,080
Speaker 1: high life in the creation state, the Bear state, with

1226
01:18:39,240 --> 01:18:42,760
Speaker 1: all our fancy art making state of the art holograms

1227
01:18:42,800 --> 01:18:46,599
Speaker 1: of our heroes We've got our World Championship Squirrel cook Off,

1228
01:18:46,880 --> 01:18:50,559
Speaker 1: our black Bear Bonanza, and the Razorbacks have the best

1229
01:18:50,560 --> 01:18:55,040
Speaker 1: coach in college basketball, Eric Musselman. One day they'll make

1230
01:18:55,080 --> 01:18:58,240
Speaker 1: a broad statue of him as big as Jerry Clower's

1231
01:18:58,280 --> 01:19:03,000
Speaker 1: Cadillac and coach, Please don't take some big job, Duke

1232
01:19:03,200 --> 01:19:07,040
Speaker 1: or some school out in California. There's no doubt that

1233
01:19:07,120 --> 01:19:09,880
Speaker 1: we love this place, but we've certainly got a lot

1234
01:19:09,920 --> 01:19:12,479
Speaker 1: of things to improve on it. But that's the thing

1235
01:19:12,560 --> 01:19:16,240
Speaker 1: about Arkansas is we never really thought we were perfect.

1236
01:19:16,880 --> 01:19:20,200
Speaker 1: Jim Doggett said we were, and we believed him, but

1237
01:19:20,600 --> 01:19:24,040
Speaker 1: we knew it was kind of an exaggeration. In Arkansas,

1238
01:19:24,160 --> 01:19:27,880
Speaker 1: we don't take ourselves too seriously. We're not too concerned

1239
01:19:27,880 --> 01:19:31,360
Speaker 1: about the hottest trends, and I find our Kansas to

1240
01:19:31,400 --> 01:19:34,920
Speaker 1: be accepting of people with good intentions and a willingness

1241
01:19:34,960 --> 01:19:39,000
Speaker 1: to work to better their lives. In the end, we're

1242
01:19:39,080 --> 01:19:48,200
Speaker 1: just okay being our Kansas. I'd like to close with

1243
01:19:48,280 --> 01:19:51,760
Speaker 1: a song from our own Johnny Cash. I think there's

1244
01:19:51,800 --> 01:19:55,200
Speaker 1: a message here. Well, my daddy left home when I

1245
01:19:55,280 --> 01:19:57,720
Speaker 1: was three, and he didn't leave much jamw and me,

1246
01:19:58,280 --> 01:20:03,040
Speaker 1: just his old guitar and empty bottle of food. Now,

1247
01:20:03,120 --> 01:20:05,519
Speaker 1: I don't blame him because he running head, But the

1248
01:20:05,600 --> 01:20:08,760
Speaker 1: meanest thing that he ever did was before he left,

1249
01:20:09,080 --> 01:20:14,400
Speaker 1: he wasn't named me Sue. This poor man's dad named

1250
01:20:14,479 --> 01:20:17,599
Speaker 1: him Sue and then abandoned him looking. And then one

1251
01:20:17,680 --> 01:20:20,200
Speaker 1: day he meets up with his dad. He said, son,

1252
01:20:21,800 --> 01:20:24,320
Speaker 1: this world is rough, and if a man's gonna make it,

1253
01:20:24,320 --> 01:20:26,240
Speaker 1: he has got to be cough. And I know I

1254
01:20:26,280 --> 01:20:30,720
Speaker 1: wouldn't be there to help you along, so I give

1255
01:20:30,720 --> 01:20:33,240
Speaker 1: you that name, and I said goodbye, and you you'd

1256
01:20:33,240 --> 01:20:36,120
Speaker 1: have to get tough or die. And it's that name

1257
01:20:36,200 --> 01:20:41,280
Speaker 1: that helped to make you strong. Yeah, he said. Now,

1258
01:20:41,320 --> 01:20:43,800
Speaker 1: you just fought one of a fight. And I know

1259
01:20:43,920 --> 01:20:46,280
Speaker 1: you hate me, and you got the write to kill

1260
01:20:46,360 --> 01:20:48,439
Speaker 1: me now, and I wouldn't blame you if you do,

1261
01:20:50,320 --> 01:20:52,840
Speaker 1: but you ought to thank me before I die, for

1262
01:20:52,960 --> 01:20:55,120
Speaker 1: the gravel and your guts in the spit in the eye,

1263
01:20:55,320 --> 01:21:02,160
Speaker 1: because I'm the son of a that named you Sue. Yeah,

1264
01:21:02,200 --> 01:21:05,800
Speaker 1: I feel like I can hear Arkansas saying You've got

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01:21:05,800 --> 01:21:08,360
Speaker 1: the right to be upset for the image I've portrayed

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01:21:08,400 --> 01:21:10,880
Speaker 1: of you over the years, but you ought to thank

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01:21:10,960 --> 01:21:13,439
Speaker 1: me for the gravel in your gut and the spit

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01:21:13,560 --> 01:21:18,759
Speaker 1: in your eye. All I've got to say is, long

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01:21:19,080 --> 01:21:30,400
Speaker 1: live the Arkansas image. I can't thank you guys enough

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01:21:30,479 --> 01:21:33,160
Speaker 1: for listening to Bear Grease. We put our heart and

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01:21:33,200 --> 01:21:36,519
Speaker 1: soul into this thing, and we appreciate y'all following along.

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01:21:37,160 --> 01:21:41,280
Speaker 1: Leave us a review on iTunes and share this podcast

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01:21:41,360 --> 01:21:44,160
Speaker 1: with some of your friends this week. And I can't

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01:21:44,200 --> 01:21:47,240
Speaker 1: wait to talk about this on The Render all those

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01:21:47,400 --> 01:21:51,720
Speaker 1: Arkansas next week, and y'all can join into in the conversations.

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Speaker 1: Your state ever been made fun of?