Speaker 1: My name is Clay Nukleman. This is a production of
Speaker 1: the Bear Grease podcast called the Bear Grease Render, where
Speaker 1: we render down, dive deeper, and look behind the scenes
Speaker 1: of the actual bear Grease podcast presented by f HF Gear,
Speaker 1: American Maid, purpose built hunting and fishing gear that's designed
Speaker 1: to be as rugged as the place as we explore.
Speaker 1: So this is this is the offspring. I'm holding a
Speaker 1: about a six week old puppy. This is the offspring
Speaker 1: of a very sought after cross of dogs. This is
Speaker 1: a ten the famous Singing squirrel Dogs pup and O Sage,
Speaker 1: which the Registry of squirrel Dogs. I've been in squirrel
Speaker 1: dogs for a fair number of years. I hadn't had
Speaker 1: squirrel dogs my whole life, but probably for the last
Speaker 1: six seven years. And I still don't completely understand the
Speaker 1: way they register and talk about squirrel dogs because these
Speaker 1: dogs actually could be registered as tree and curves, but
Speaker 1: they're also considered feists because a feist is a category
Speaker 1: of dog. Okay, okay, it's not. It's not a breed.
Speaker 1: It's handled. It's handled as a breed, like you say,
Speaker 1: it's a feist. But there's a lot of different kinds
Speaker 1: of fights. There's mullin phis, there's tree and feist, there's
Speaker 1: mountain feists, and they all look slightly different. But a
Speaker 1: feist is, as I understand that, it is a category
Speaker 1: of dog that's under eighteen inches, under thirty pounds and
Speaker 1: will tree.
Speaker 2: Really like that's the only classification.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So technically, as I understand it, and somebody could
Speaker 1: correct me, and we're gonna.
Speaker 2: Have somebody somebody will yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: We're gonna have at some point a real good squirrel
Speaker 1: dog man that I know that had a lot to
Speaker 1: do with breeding. These dogs got named Tyler Asberry. At
Speaker 1: some point we're gonna have Tyler on here and he
Speaker 1: can describe it. But but as I understand it, if
Speaker 1: you had a dog that met those qualifications, he could
Speaker 1: be considered a feist. But these I call him tree
Speaker 1: and feists.
Speaker 2: So if that dog were to be registered, it would
Speaker 2: be a feist.
Speaker 1: Or it could be registered as a tree and feist,
Speaker 1: and it could also well, tim and test could have
Speaker 1: been registered as tree in curves.
Speaker 2: But they qualify as is one title more prestigious than
Speaker 2: the other.
Speaker 1: Feist.
Speaker 3: See going off those rules, thought, I got a neighbor
Speaker 3: at home he he's got a fist that looks awful
Speaker 3: lot like a Yorkie.
Speaker 1: Will it tree. Yeah, that's where that's where I kind
Speaker 1: of lose like knowledge of it. But welcome to the
Speaker 1: bear Grease render.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I've got a very cute little pup, little brindle pup
Speaker 1: here in my hands. I'm excited about today. I've got
Speaker 1: the one and only Doctor Lake Pickle here from Mississippi,
Speaker 1: straight out of Mississippi. Arkansas's favorite state, the only state
Speaker 1: that we have any right to pick on for any
Speaker 1: statistic you want is Mississippi. Thank you Lake for that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I've enjoyed my time here and I'm gonna leave now.
Speaker 1: Uh No, you know I love Mississippi. And then we
Speaker 1: have Josh Lambridge, spellmaker here here again learning quite a
Speaker 1: bit more and more about the land Bridge. I'll share
Speaker 1: with you something wonderful.
Speaker 4: Excited.
Speaker 1: But our guest of honored today is my friend, been
Speaker 1: a friend for about a decade or so. We decided
Speaker 1: Tracy Jones from East Tennessee Greenville and uh he's also
Speaker 1: known as t L.
Speaker 4: What do you?
Speaker 1: What do you prefer? People call you?
Speaker 4: It's been a weird thing my whole life. Tracy's on
Speaker 4: the birth certificate that my family just always called me Trace. Trace. Yeah,
Speaker 4: anybody that you know was close, mom, dad, grandparents, it
Speaker 4: was always Trace. Then when I began to pastor and
Speaker 4: put my name on the signs and the brochures, some
Speaker 4: people would get confused and think it was a lady
Speaker 4: pastor in the church, which some people wouldn't like. Yeah,
Speaker 4: some people wouldn't come in the building.
Speaker 1: Because you said you You said, Tracy Jones.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I understand. I went to preach a meeting for
Speaker 4: a pastor who was had brochures printed up and he
Speaker 4: didn't want to use the name Tracy, so he put
Speaker 4: Tennessee Jones about a thin blue hair said he went
Speaker 4: to one house, invited a woman to come hander to
Speaker 4: the brochure said Tennessee Jones, and she said, yeah, I've
Speaker 4: heard of him, Indiana Jones cousin.
Speaker 1: I didn't see Jones. Man, if you'd told me that
Speaker 1: ten years ago, you would have never had another name.
Speaker 4: You'd have a career in country music. Man. So what
Speaker 4: I did is I just started using my initials TL
Speaker 4: for you know, Facebook, social media, and.
Speaker 2: It's like your stagua.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I guess. So, Yeah, it's weird.
Speaker 1: But well, people would know you if they follow along
Speaker 1: on Bear Grease. They might not well they wouldn't know it,
Speaker 1: but so we did. Tracy was a part of a
Speaker 1: series that we did two years ago that started out
Speaker 1: as plot Hounds, but the second the second part of
Speaker 1: the series was essentially about your grandfather and your family
Speaker 1: in Houston Valley plots and so so Tennessee, Tennessee. Jones
Speaker 1: Homes is to me in a in an elite class
Speaker 1: of people that are longtime plot breeders, bear dog breeders
Speaker 1: from East Tennessee for real. Yeah, I mean like you
Speaker 1: guys would have heard me talk about Roy Clark, who's
Speaker 1: in the Hall of Fame burgeras Hall of Fame. And
Speaker 1: I was introduced to the to the kind of the
Speaker 1: plot world of Southern Appalachia, which plots aren't just in
Speaker 1: Southern Appalachia, but the epicenter of the universe for the
Speaker 1: plot hound, which is a it's like being a big
Speaker 1: fish in a very small pond. I'm glad Brent's not
Speaker 1: here to talk about his walkers and everybody in the
Speaker 1: world that has one. Uh, the plot world is very
Speaker 1: small comparatively, and there's these it's it's actually hard to describe,
Speaker 1: but their families over in Appalachia that can you know,
Speaker 1: go back generations of having plot dogs and and Tracy's
Speaker 1: family is one of those. And and to this day
Speaker 1: they have a line of dogs called Houston Valley Plots.
Speaker 1: And Tracy's grandfather father him, and then Tracy's son, Ben Jones,
Speaker 1: young man in his thirties, is is as tough of
Speaker 1: mountain bear hunter as I've ever been around. So anyway,
Speaker 1: Tracy's good friend.
Speaker 4: Yeah, glad to be here, Thank you for the invitation.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And so we're going to end up talking about
Speaker 1: a book that Tracy has written, so that that we'll
Speaker 1: get to that'll kind of bell. We'll get to that later.
Speaker 1: But anyway, I was going to introduce Tracy as as
Speaker 1: the only man more paranoid to me that he is involved,
Speaker 1: unknowingly and in an underground wildlife sting. When I when
Speaker 1: I when I first met Brent Reeves, I honestly in
Speaker 1: the back, deep in the recesses of the back of
Speaker 1: my mind, Brent was just way too available, way too generous,
Speaker 1: way too nice. It's suspicious and way too like, hey,
Speaker 1: I'm done with my I mean, it was like, yeah,
Speaker 1: I used to be a in law enforcement, not anymore,
Speaker 1: and at that time I don't know why, but I
Speaker 1: was like very paranoid for someone who doesn't break the
Speaker 1: law and purpose, which I'd say that to anybody in
Speaker 1: the world. I mean like I have a lifetime record
Speaker 1: of not trying to break the law and purpose. Okay,
Speaker 1: I mean like I've broken the law, but not on purpose.
Speaker 1: And to this day, I'm pretty sure Brent's still working
Speaker 1: on her cover. I'm pretty sure t L probably thought
Speaker 1: I was an undercover agent when I first reached out
Speaker 1: to TM.
Speaker 4: Well. In my defense, now, first of all, I'm a
Speaker 4: stickler about trying to keep the law for obvious reasons, yes,
Speaker 4: but I grew up daring what I would call the
Speaker 4: outlaw error of hunting and Appalachia, and most people who
Speaker 4: would hear this podcast would never be able to come
Speaker 4: to an understanding of that culture where a lot of
Speaker 4: them would have been viewed from the outside of outlaws,
Speaker 4: but they didn't see it that way. That was their home,
Speaker 4: they lived there, they settled the place, and then people
Speaker 4: come in from the outside and all of a sudden
Speaker 4: said no, you're going to go with these rules now,
Speaker 4: and they just didn't see a need for it, right,
Speaker 4: And I'm not justifying it or saying it's right or wrong.
Speaker 4: I'm just saying that there's a perspective of difference of
Speaker 4: having people come in from the outside and all of
Speaker 4: a sudden give you a new set of rules you
Speaker 4: got to go by, and then calling you an outlaw
Speaker 4: if you don't keep it. And it took several decades
Speaker 4: for people to transition. And for the most part, all
Speaker 4: that stuff is a thing in the past. But when
Speaker 4: I was growing up, there was a lot of undercover
Speaker 4: agents that were sent into the area to try to
Speaker 4: find people violating the law. Laws. Yeah, so we were
Speaker 4: taught early. You know. Of course, Appalachia is a suspicious place.
Speaker 4: You know, historians say that Appalachia was actually opened up
Speaker 4: after the West. They say the West was settled before Appalachia.
Speaker 4: Are attained before Appalachia was and so you know, I
Speaker 4: the general rule was everybody you don't know as a
Speaker 4: fed and everybody you do know is a possible informant. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, how you were how you're taught to operate.
Speaker 4: Just you know, you weren't sat down told that, but
Speaker 4: you understood that to be the way it worked. Yeah,
Speaker 4: and it's I have mixed feelings on a lot of
Speaker 4: the undercover stuff just because of the deception that has
Speaker 4: to be a part of it and the lies, and
Speaker 4: I especially hate the part of it that involves building
Speaker 4: friendships under the guise of something that's eventually going to
Speaker 4: break you. And I'm not here to say it's right
Speaker 4: or wrong. I'm just saying it's there's a there's areas
Speaker 4: there that I think are not as black and white
Speaker 4: as we make them out to be. Yeah, you know,
Speaker 4: I knew, of course. I mean I knew a deal
Speaker 4: where a guy had to come in to do undercover
Speaker 4: work that married a man's daughter. Oh my goodness, and
Speaker 4: I thought that was one of the most horrific things
Speaker 4: I'd ever heard of.
Speaker 1: You and you the story is told as he married
Speaker 1: the girl just to get in.
Speaker 4: I don't know all the details of it that I
Speaker 4: and I certainly wouldn't share him if I did, But uh,
Speaker 4: he came in to try to set a guy up
Speaker 4: to bust him and ended up marrying his daughter and then
Speaker 4: followed through with knelling the guy wow, wow wow. And uh,
Speaker 4: you I could not imagine what you'd feel like as
Speaker 4: a dad knowing your daughter had been yeah, as a wife,
Speaker 4: knowing your family had been used that way. I mean,
Speaker 4: to me, that's far beyond the pale of acceptance no
Speaker 4: matter what you're trying to catch a guy at. Really, Yeah,
Speaker 4: especially in wildlife related things which are serious, but not
Speaker 4: to the degree of seriousness of catching somebody in sect
Speaker 4: trafficking or something like that.
Speaker 1: It's true. Yeah, yeah, wow, Yeah, it's you know, the
Speaker 1: last couple of years, with some of the stories that
Speaker 1: we've told, you know, I've I've interviewed some undercovered people
Speaker 1: and learned more about it, and I think that's the
Speaker 1: conflict that a lot of us have felt, is that,
Speaker 1: you know, especially with Artie Stewart, Ye, that original Secret
Speaker 1: Agent Man series we did back in the nineties in Ohio,
Speaker 1: there were no there were less rules that they were
Speaker 1: some of the first under wildlife undercover agents, and I
Speaker 1: mean they were just kind of like turned loose, you know,
Speaker 1: That's what it felt anyway.
Speaker 3: And.
Speaker 1: It it's definitely a catch twenty two. But yeah, back
Speaker 1: in the day, there was a lot of there were
Speaker 1: a lot of stings, or maybe not a lot, but
Speaker 1: there were There was the bear gallbladder stuff that went
Speaker 1: on over in Appalachia where they decided the bear hunters
Speaker 1: were selling gallbladders and.
Speaker 4: And there were some people who needed to be caught.
Speaker 4: I mean, there were some people, you know, just killing
Speaker 4: the bear for no other reason than to sell a gallbladder.
Speaker 4: And you can't sustain a bear population if you're just
Speaker 4: slaughtering them for sale. So yeah, I mean, my family
Speaker 4: was the law. My grandfather was a constable. My dad
Speaker 4: eventually was the sheriff of our county. So I'm not
Speaker 4: anti law enforcement, yeah, but I was caught in that
Speaker 4: crux of my family being the law, and I also
Speaker 4: understanding at the same time there was other law you know,
Speaker 4: that would come in and try to set you up.
Speaker 4: I'll give you an example. My grandfather and a group
Speaker 4: of men had a guy come in and made friends
Speaker 4: with them and buy them to think. It was New
Speaker 4: Mexico that they went to. I was already out of
Speaker 4: going away to college when this happened. I think they
Speaker 4: drove all the way to New Mexico to go bear hunting,
Speaker 4: and when they got out there, the guy changed the
Speaker 4: plans on them and said that they couldn't hunt where
Speaker 4: they were going to hunt. But he had an alternative plan. Well,
Speaker 4: the all turned to plan was entirely illegal. My grandfather
Speaker 4: was a pretty wise fella. He said, well, we've been
Speaker 4: set up, let's go home in ever return the dog loose.
Speaker 4: So they turned around in New Mexico and drove all
Speaker 4: the way back to Tennessee, m And to me, that's
Speaker 4: the kind of thing that's that's unacceptable. You know, those
Speaker 4: guys were not sitting in Tennessee thinking let's go to
Speaker 4: New Mexico and violate the law, right, but somebody comes
Speaker 4: and invites them to go out to get them to.
Speaker 1: And do you think this guy was working under cover
Speaker 1: for sure?
Speaker 4: Wow? Yeah, so like an entrapment scenario. Yeah, that was
Speaker 4: absolutely entrapment. But the problem with entrapment is that people
Speaker 4: who get to decide whether it's entrapment or not are
Speaker 4: the same people who get decided to do it to
Speaker 4: begin with.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 4: You know, good luck and court, Yeah exactly. Yeah.
Speaker 2: You know, Tracy, you talked about that that area. I
Speaker 2: got to go with Clay over there. Gosh, it's probably
Speaker 2: been almost probably nine months ago, and it is a
Speaker 2: mysterious feeling country. I mean, you're driving down those curvy roads,
Speaker 2: you got all that cudsh growing up on the side,
Speaker 2: and it feels like you're almost entering another world.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 2: It's like like, yeah, it's it's it's pretty pretty unique place.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, the the it was so neat doing the
Speaker 1: story on on Teal's grandfather, who was this plot man.
Speaker 1: I'll tell you what I remember that just stands It
Speaker 1: kind of stands out. I don't know why, but when
Speaker 1: you described the daily routine of Barry Tarleton, I'll never
Speaker 1: forget that. Yeah, if that were in a book, in
Speaker 1: the way you described it, if that were in a book,
Speaker 1: that's what people would remember because it painted a picture
Speaker 1: of that generation of people so powerfully. And and basically,
Speaker 1: you know, he talked about his grandfather worked at a
Speaker 1: pet milk plant I mean basically in an industrial I
Speaker 1: mean a big plant. Yeah, And basically he described his
Speaker 1: daily routine and how he he his wife did stuff
Speaker 1: for him and anyway it was unique.
Speaker 2: She would like set his breakfast out at night. I
Speaker 2: remember like that that was such a great such a
Speaker 2: great picture of what their relationship was.
Speaker 4: Like.
Speaker 2: I loved that story.
Speaker 4: Well, without drawing it out too long, I mean I
Speaker 4: could rehearse it.
Speaker 1: Let's do it. I was, I.
Speaker 4: Was was, Yeah, she was. She was a stay at
Speaker 4: home wife and wanted to be and he wanted her
Speaker 4: to be at home. And he would leave for work
Speaker 4: in the mornings around four o'clock or so, I think
Speaker 4: he had to be at work, like around four thirty,
Speaker 4: and he would get off around two. And when he
Speaker 4: would come home, you could hear him coming down the road.
Speaker 4: He had great, big what they called co op Gripsburg
Speaker 4: mud tires on his truck, one one one one, one
Speaker 4: on one, and the dogs could hear him, you know,
Speaker 4: for half a mile, and they'd go crazy. Well that
Speaker 4: was mama's sound, you know. She knew he was coming
Speaker 4: then when the dogs wild. So when he pulled the driveway,
Speaker 4: he'd go up into his apple orchard where his dogs
Speaker 4: were and begin to feed them. She would have supper
Speaker 4: already cooked and she'd set it on the table for him,
Speaker 4: and he'd come in from feeding, sit down at the table,
Speaker 4: begin to eat his supper. She would grow dry his
Speaker 4: bath water. When he got up from the supper table,
Speaker 4: he'd go get in the bath and clean up. While
Speaker 4: he was doing that, she'd get his pajamas and his
Speaker 4: underclothes and everything and bring them to him. He come
Speaker 4: out there, he'd go sit in his chair. He washed
Speaker 4: the news religiously. He was a news fanatic. In fact
Speaker 4: that the only spanking he ever gave him my whole
Speaker 4: life was for interrupting the news. He wanted to know
Speaker 4: what was going on in the world. And while he
Speaker 4: was watching the news, she'd go turn his bed down,
Speaker 4: his covers down for him.
Speaker 1: Like unfold the covers so that he.
Speaker 4: Could just like, yes, I told the covers. And when
Speaker 4: the news was over, he went to bed about eight
Speaker 4: to eight thirty to the latest. And when after he
Speaker 4: went to bed, she'd go back to the kitchen and
Speaker 4: she would pour cereal in a bowl, put sugar on it,
Speaker 4: covered up with a luminifol, set on the table. So
Speaker 4: when he got up the next morning, all he had
Speaker 4: to do was poor milk any cereal. And then she
Speaker 4: would pack his lunch box for him for work, in
Speaker 4: an old metal lunch box. She'd put that in the
Speaker 4: refrigerator for him, already packed. So he got up eighty cereal,
Speaker 4: picked his lunch box up and went back to work.
Speaker 4: And she didn't want very much in life. She was
Speaker 4: not a materialistic person. But the one thing she wanted
Speaker 4: was a good car, so he kept her with a
Speaker 4: nice car all the time. She loved great, big, long cars.
Speaker 4: Had a seventy four or four Galaxy five hundred.
Speaker 2: Oh man, that's a big old car.
Speaker 4: Yeah. Drove like a maniac. And you know, my cousin
Speaker 4: races race cars, and he will still tell you that
Speaker 4: one of the only times he was really ever scared
Speaker 4: in the vegles riding with Mammo down the Houston Valley road.
Speaker 4: She'd white knuckle you in that car. It's like crazy.
Speaker 4: She's the only person I know drove so fast. She
Speaker 4: hit a covey of quail.
Speaker 1: You need to put that in here. That's great. This
Speaker 1: will be a great segue into the latest.
Speaker 2: Hite that I was with her.
Speaker 3: That's a really good point.
Speaker 1: Oh I'm going to use that from now.
Speaker 3: Anyone that knows the covey of quill is going to
Speaker 3: go and that's pretty fast.
Speaker 2: Uh.
Speaker 1: You know what, I appreciate it about that story. That
Speaker 1: story could be taken out of context. It was like
Speaker 1: a glorification of like a wife like servant her husband's
Speaker 1: hand and foot. But that was not the point of
Speaker 1: what you said.
Speaker 4: No, if you knew her, you would know that there
Speaker 4: was nothing about her that was you know, the door
Speaker 4: mat mentality that she was being run over. I mean,
Speaker 4: if he got out of hand, she'd light him up. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 4: And I mean she'd light him up good and let
Speaker 4: him know exactly you know she was. I called her
Speaker 4: a pistol. I mean when I was a little kid,
Speaker 4: I was in the bathtub one day, like in the
Speaker 4: middle of the day. You know, Tarzan was a thing.
Speaker 4: I was in the bathtub in my underwear with a
Speaker 4: plastic knife, playing Tarzan in the bathtub because his only
Speaker 4: place I could have water and little kid, and I
Speaker 4: heard come boom, and of course I want to know
Speaker 4: what happened. Somebody had stopped in front of the house
Speaker 4: to gaucket deer, and she didn't like him parking from
Speaker 4: the house, so she lowered a double barrel twelve gage
Speaker 4: over the roof of their car and set her off
Speaker 4: and sent them on road. And she was she would
Speaker 4: drive the liquor cars to town. After he'd pull them
Speaker 4: over and arrest who was in the liquor car. He'd
Speaker 4: take the criminal to town and put them in jail. She'd
Speaker 4: drive the liquor car on end so they have the evidence.
Speaker 4: So she was it was a relationship that I say this.
Speaker 4: She loved him with all her heart and her care
Speaker 4: for him wasn't subservient, it was love. But his care
Speaker 4: for her was the same way he adored her.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 4: So yeah, yeah, yeah, what a great story.
Speaker 1: That's yeah, that's cool. Well, go ahead and tell again.
Speaker 1: This was on an episode two years ago about plot
Speaker 1: hoounds to put it in the show notes of which
Speaker 1: episode it was. You can hear these stories, but tell
Speaker 1: us about when they blew up Barry Tarleton's car.
Speaker 4: Yeah, my mom, Mama and Papa had two daughters. My
Speaker 4: mom is Jane, had a sister named Sandy. Mom I
Speaker 4: think was like two or three, and Sandy was a baby.
Speaker 4: And Papa had made life pretty rough on the Moonshiner's
Speaker 4: because they had He had two brothers killed in relation
Speaker 4: to liquor. One brother had his head blowed off with
Speaker 4: a shotgun and his other brother had his throat cut
Speaker 4: and left him for left him dead in a creek
Speaker 4: up on the mountain. I've taken you up there, and
Speaker 4: he said he was going to have to get revenge,
Speaker 4: either legal or illegally, so he ran for Constable hated liquor.
Speaker 4: It wasn't about revenue. You know, nobody in the mountains
Speaker 4: is for taxes. You know, had nothing to do with
Speaker 4: the revenue. The moonshine trade, then, to me, was very
Speaker 4: similar to what meth does to people today. It was
Speaker 4: wreaking havoc in the mountains. There's nothing funny about moonshe
Speaker 4: and people's lives and families were being destroyed by it,
Speaker 4: and our community, their community was dangerous community. So he
Speaker 4: just said, I need to put a stop to it.
Speaker 4: And he had wreaked so much havoc with the moonshine people,
Speaker 4: they decided to kill him and tried two or three times.
Speaker 4: They ambushed him one time with a tommy gun, and
Speaker 4: he come out with a shotgun and leveled things down.
Speaker 4: And then when they tried to blow him up, they
Speaker 4: snuck up to his house one morning in the early
Speaker 4: hours of the morning and killed his dog that was
Speaker 4: in the yard, and then packed a car full of
Speaker 4: dynamite that was set beside the house, and they packed
Speaker 4: it full of dynamite and set it off and it
Speaker 4: blew up, but it blew up instead of out, so
Speaker 4: it didn't blow the house up. And he was up
Speaker 4: making a baby bottle for his youngest daughter. Your aunt, Yeah,
Speaker 4: my aunt. They heard the dog's barking, and he was
Speaker 4: going to go out and check see what the dogs
Speaker 4: were barking about, and Madama told him no, to go
Speaker 4: ahead and finish making the baby bottle, that he was
Speaker 4: leaving for work, and then KABLUEI. Well, they had just
Speaker 4: put they'd just taken the woodstove out of their house
Speaker 4: and put in an ol stove. My great grandfather, who
Speaker 4: lived across the road, had warned them that that new
Speaker 4: fangled ol stove would blow up and kill them all
Speaker 4: not to get it. So when the dynamite went off,
Speaker 4: he run out into the highway and his long johns. Yeah,
Speaker 4: and I told you that old stove would blow up
Speaker 4: in Killian's hall. Could I ask you a question related
Speaker 4: to that?
Speaker 3: Yeah, because you said this is very specific question, but
Speaker 3: I've never thought about this before. You said, there's nothing
Speaker 3: funny about moonshine. Yeah, so I grew up watching the
Speaker 3: Andy Griffith Show. Yeah, And in the Andy Griffith Show,
Speaker 3: like Andy's always busting steals and there's otis that's always
Speaker 3: you know, drunk from drinking moonshine.
Speaker 1: It's always like very it made very light.
Speaker 3: Of Yeah, would someone from I guess from where you're
Speaker 3: talking about your relatives or whatever. Would they watched something
Speaker 3: like that and like that's not funny at all?
Speaker 2: Or was there?
Speaker 3: Could they see the humor in it?
Speaker 4: No, Appalachian people live such hard scrabble lives. It's incredible
Speaker 4: to the sense of humor they have. Okay, No, everybody
Speaker 4: loved the Andy Griffith Show. I never heard anybody say
Speaker 4: anything about it. But if you notice the only married
Speaker 4: person on that shows otis the town drunk is the
Speaker 4: only one marriage that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I've never thought about that either.
Speaker 4: That's true. Yeah, there's a lot of things that were
Speaker 4: suddenly taught through the Andy Griffith that were really contrary
Speaker 4: to a good family culture. Huh. Yeah, But I mean,
Speaker 4: but it's funny. You know, Barney Fife, You know, my
Speaker 4: dad was an extremely serious guy, I mean dead pan serious.
Speaker 4: But he thought Tim, Tim Conway and Don Notts were
Speaker 4: the two funniest people ever lived.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Yeah, So no, I never heard anybody say anything negative
Speaker 4: about Andy Griffith and the Moonshine deal whatever. They just laughed.
Speaker 4: But if you lived in a home where your husband
Speaker 4: was an extreme alcoholic and he laid drunk all the time,
Speaker 4: and you were already poor, and you were living in
Speaker 4: a rundown house and he was buying liquor instead of
Speaker 4: buying shoes and food. It's totally different context.
Speaker 1: And so I appreciated what Tracy said, which which I
Speaker 1: wouldn't have articulated the same, though I would have felt
Speaker 1: the same way. Like today, Appalachia kind of celebrates liquor
Speaker 1: and moonshine. I mean you drive through and there's big
Speaker 1: billboards about come to the distillery and see it, and
Speaker 1: it's just like this playful thing. And I mean his
Speaker 1: point is that, hey, this actually wrecked a lot of
Speaker 1: homes and still does to this day. And it's interesting.
Speaker 1: Oh shoot, I had something right on tip of my
Speaker 1: tongue that was leading to say, I just appreciate a
Speaker 1: little different perspective on it. Sure you know just about
Speaker 1: how how lightly that we handle alcoholism. I mean, honestly,
Speaker 1: and like with popcorn, sutton and stuff like this Appalachian
Speaker 1: guy that got real famous who you know, it was
Speaker 1: not a guy that you would want to be around.
Speaker 1: I mean that's like you wouldn't want him to be
Speaker 1: your neighbor. I wouldn't.
Speaker 4: Well, just imagine thirty years from now them doing a
Speaker 4: sitcom on myth Yeah right, we would know better, but
Speaker 4: people watching it in the next generation wouldn't.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, No, I appreciate. I appreciate that
Speaker 1: perspective a lot. That's interesting. Oh man, there's there's so
Speaker 1: many directions. I didn't even want to get into it
Speaker 1: with Tracy until I introduced why Lake is here today. Oh,
Speaker 1: Blake's here, Lake's here, Lake Pickle, our friend, Lake Pickle.
Speaker 4: I'm scared.
Speaker 3: I'm scared of I mean, he came out the he
Speaker 3: came out the gate with like some really good stories.
Speaker 4: Want to follow?
Speaker 1: You got nothing? You got nothing? Now see y'all'll be here.
Speaker 1: Well Lake is uh. Lake has a new podcast produced
Speaker 1: through meat Eater that is going to be on the
Speaker 1: Bear Grease feed.
Speaker 4: We got here.
Speaker 1: Heck yeah, we made it. So maybe you've heard this
Speaker 1: by now, because Lake has been on the meat Eater
Speaker 1: podcast by the time this comes out. But June the
Speaker 1: what day, ninth? June the ninth, twenty twenty five. If
Speaker 1: you're listening to this in twenty thirty, you're five years behind.
Speaker 2: Better listen to all the back episodes.
Speaker 1: But if you're listening to this before June ninth, twenty
Speaker 1: twenty five, you could hear the inaugural episode of The
Speaker 1: Backwoods University on the bear Grease Feed. So the bear
Speaker 1: Grease Feed continue to get more complex, folks, and we
Speaker 1: have a lot of trust in you guys.
Speaker 2: You need like a ven diagram so they can know
Speaker 2: how to There's the bear.
Speaker 1: Grease Podcast, which is our documentary style podcast. We have
Speaker 1: the bear Grease Render, which is this where we sit
Speaker 1: around and talk about the bear Grease podcast.
Speaker 4: Yep.
Speaker 1: We have Brent Reeves This Country Life, which is a
Speaker 1: monologue kind of comedy, storytelling and podcast that we all love. Well,
Speaker 1: there's a new one, the Backwoods University, bringing a little class.
Speaker 1: Tell us, tell us what the Backwoods University is like.
Speaker 3: Man, it is it's like a deeper understanding or seeking
Speaker 3: out a deeper understanding of wildlife.
Speaker 1: But also when it started out.
Speaker 3: It was just like a deeper understanding of wildlife and
Speaker 3: wild wildlife biology. The further that I got into it
Speaker 3: and you and I talked about this with you know,
Speaker 3: when we were first starting to put episodes together, it's
Speaker 3: like I can't talk about a single species, a single wildlifecess,
Speaker 3: a single piece of habitat. I can't talk about any
Speaker 3: of it without mentioning the influence that we as humans
Speaker 3: have on it. Positive or negative, could go either way,
Speaker 3: and so that's that's the kind of look at it
Speaker 3: so far.
Speaker 1: It's very very wildlife biology based.
Speaker 3: I try to find perspectives where you get You'll get
Speaker 3: to hear from biologists, but you also get to hear
Speaker 3: from hunters, anglers, you know, people that are out there
Speaker 3: doing doing what we like to do. So you can
Speaker 3: kind of get an introspective look from both views, but
Speaker 3: then also the influence that we as humans have on it,
Speaker 3: because whether we like it or not, we have an
Speaker 3: influence on all of it, and more often than not,
Speaker 3: it's the most powerful influence.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So it's it's a wildlife biology podcast and it's
Speaker 1: it's done really well. It's it's a documentary style podcast,
Speaker 1: so it's it's built in a way like the structure
Speaker 1: of a bear grease proper podcast. And so essentially what
Speaker 1: that does is that Blake is going to biologists, the
Speaker 1: people who's interviewing whatever expertise they have, and he's having
Speaker 1: in depth conversations with him and rather than being there
Speaker 1: for the whole two hour conversations, he's he's telling a
Speaker 1: story and usually in less than thirty minutes. Typically, yeah,
Speaker 1: typically less than thirty minutes, you'll you'll have podcast. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's a it's a it's an efficient listen. But
Speaker 1: where you're gonna get all the information and what are
Speaker 1: some of the topics? Run us through the topics even
Speaker 1: stuff maybe you hadn't even done yet but you may
Speaker 1: be thinking about.
Speaker 3: Right, Yeah, so we're we're doing bison, but bison in
Speaker 3: the Eastern United States.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's episode one that you can listen to. Uh,
Speaker 1: there's Jason in the East. It's really interesting.
Speaker 3: When we're going to Bob white Quill. Uh history of
Speaker 3: Bob white Quill. The first part of it is learning
Speaker 3: why we lost our Bob white Quill, in which there's
Speaker 3: a lot of reasons, one of which my I have
Speaker 3: been running down cubes with a.
Speaker 1: Car, yeah, ma'ama.
Speaker 3: And then the other one that I'm really excited about,
Speaker 3: which you've heard me talk about it a lot. Because again,
Speaker 3: we talk about the animal and then we talk about
Speaker 3: human influence. We also focus on people that you know
Speaker 3: have dedicated their lives to learning these animals conserving them.
Speaker 3: And so we're doing a look at The first wildlife
Speaker 3: biologists in the state of Mississippi was a woman named
Speaker 3: Fanny Cook. And without giving too much away because it's
Speaker 3: an incredible story, she pretty much single handedly saved the
Speaker 3: natural resources of Mississippi.
Speaker 4: Wow.
Speaker 3: Wow in the early nineteen twenties. At the time, Mississippi
Speaker 3: was the only state left that did not have any
Speaker 3: wildlife laws or infrastructure.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 3: So if you can go and look, and this is
Speaker 3: like the fame talk about is out of Loophold actually
Speaker 3: traveled down to Mississippi wow and did a report on
Speaker 3: the state. And you can read his report from nineteen
Speaker 3: twenty nine and he's basically like, this is dismal. So
Speaker 3: to put it in to put it in context, like
Speaker 3: now in twenty twenty five, our white tailed deer population Mississippi,
Speaker 3: our our wildlife department is imploring begging hunters to shoot
Speaker 3: more deer.
Speaker 1: They're like, please kill more.
Speaker 3: We have an estimated I think it's a little bit
Speaker 3: over one point five million white tailed deer population Mississippi.
Speaker 3: When Loopol did his report in nineteen twenty nine, there
Speaker 3: was an estimated twelve hundred deer in the state.
Speaker 4: Are you kidding me? Twelve hundred? Uh?
Speaker 3: He said the wild turkeys have been wiped out in
Speaker 3: all their upland ranges, basically saying the only wild turkeys
Speaker 3: we had left were in the swampy regions and the
Speaker 3: only reason we had turkeys there is because that's where
Speaker 3: humans could not get to as effectively and kill.
Speaker 4: Wow.
Speaker 1: So it was it was bad.
Speaker 2: That's amazing.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So the Fanny Cookies, really, I'll tell you what I
Speaker 1: want to know. In the Fanny cook episode, I have
Speaker 1: a feeling drove fast.
Speaker 3: She did. I don't even know that she did. There's stories,
Speaker 3: So there is a story I got. So there's there's
Speaker 3: ladies that have these.
Speaker 1: Uh. The two ladies that I interviewed about it.
Speaker 3: Uh, there was an interview with Fanny's sister, and she's
Speaker 3: telling this story that like Fanny had. It was she
Speaker 3: was a notorious like fast driver.
Speaker 1: Like I knew it. I plucked that out of the air.
Speaker 3: And the story was that Fanny was driving and it
Speaker 3: was her sister and two of the friends in the
Speaker 3: car and she's driving. The statement she says, she said
Speaker 3: she would put you over and in the gravel in
Speaker 3: a minute, and they're driving to the store. It to
Speaker 3: like a fabric store, and all of a sudden, Fanny
Speaker 3: just pulls off on the side of the road and goes,
Speaker 3: I gotta have that bird, because she was she was
Speaker 3: making she basically like Fanny laid down the groundwork for
Speaker 3: the first you know, you could go on Google right
Speaker 3: now and go what kind of birds are in Arkansas
Speaker 3: and you hit search and you'll and he'll tell you
Speaker 3: what species of bird you have. Where's that come from?
Speaker 3: You know, like, where's the baseline of all that? And
Speaker 3: so Fanny was working on at the time what would
Speaker 3: be the first basically catalog of what species of animals
Speaker 3: were in the state of Mississippi. And she pulls over
Speaker 3: the side of the road, shoots this bird because that's
Speaker 3: how she was collecting specimens. Shoots this bird, goes, swims
Speaker 3: out into the pond, gets the bird, swims back, and
Speaker 3: then all the girls are mad at her because now
Speaker 3: they can't go to the store. She has to turn
Speaker 3: around and tend to the bird and get dried off.
Speaker 3: And her sister said, I was so mad at her,
Speaker 3: I didn't talk to her for two days.
Speaker 2: Oh my gosh.
Speaker 1: Well, good story.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I wonder if she ever hit a covey of quail.
Speaker 1: Probably probably, But well.
Speaker 2: That sounds awesome.
Speaker 4: Man.
Speaker 2: I'm looking forward to it.
Speaker 3: Man, I'm really excited about it. I yeah, I tell
Speaker 3: I was talking to my wife Lacy about it. I
Speaker 3: was like, doing this podcast and having the opportunity to
Speaker 3: do it. It's a curveball I did not see coming.
Speaker 1: But here we are.
Speaker 2: And that'll come out every week, bi weekly, bye weekly.
Speaker 1: Every other week okay, yeah, come out on Mondays. Okay,
Speaker 1: on the Bear Grease Feed.
Speaker 4: Awesome.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I am absolutely pumped.
Speaker 2: Mm hmm, well, congratulations, thank you.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I'll tell you one more like important factoy that I
Speaker 3: couldn't fit into either podcast because it just kind of
Speaker 3: worked out this way. So you said before, when did
Speaker 3: Gerstalker kill the bison in.
Speaker 1: Arkansas in the eighteen forties?
Speaker 3: Okay, and then this like mid eighteen hundreds is when
Speaker 3: they were like bison were pretty much pushed out of
Speaker 3: the east, right. So, one of the things I learned
Speaker 3: in the Bison episode, and we all know this is
Speaker 3: like bison have these very like noticeable impacts on the landscape, right. So,
Speaker 3: and part of the things they studied is like they
Speaker 3: were basically maintaining some like systems of vegetation, and when
Speaker 3: they got pushed out, there was some vegetation that they
Speaker 3: were like basically keeping at bay that were allowed to
Speaker 3: like just kind of explode because they weren't being raised anymore.
Speaker 3: And so when I was talking to the quail, they
Speaker 3: were like in the early like deep times back in
Speaker 3: that we're not deep times, but like eighteen hundreds, like
Speaker 3: quail would have thrived in some of those environments because
Speaker 3: of bison grazing. Say so, bison pushed out in the
Speaker 3: mid eighteen eighteen hundreds the first what do you know
Speaker 3: when the first noted declines of bob whit quail were,
Speaker 3: let me guess eighteen ninety.
Speaker 1: Interesting, so it was connected. It was this ecological web
Speaker 1: yep and bison were probably tramping tramping stuff down, keeping
Speaker 1: successionary forests and woodlands from growing up they were Is
Speaker 1: that what you're saying?
Speaker 3: So much so that I was talking to Jeremy French
Speaker 3: from the Southeastern Graslands Institute, he said that he has
Speaker 3: even like pitched the idea to some quail biologists that
Speaker 3: have contacted them. They contact them about like botanical questions, right,
Speaker 3: But they're talking about like building a habitat for quail
Speaker 3: and you know, trying to restore quail in a certain area.
Speaker 3: And he said so much so that Jeremy has been
Speaker 3: like if you thought about reintroducing bison, wow as a
Speaker 3: way to that.
Speaker 2: Makes hashtag bring back the bison, Bring back the bison, Bring.
Speaker 1: Back to quail. You know, I can I can envision.
Speaker 1: I can envision the scenario where you had a huge
Speaker 1: property and I mean, obviously you'd have to have a fence,
Speaker 1: which has its own problems, but like if you had
Speaker 1: a big five thousand acre property that you're trying to
Speaker 1: to to make habitat for quail, turn loose a herd
Speaker 1: of twenty thirty bison, isn't that crazy? I mean I
Speaker 1: would imagine Byson trails would be, you know, create like
Speaker 1: edge habitat, like bisecting big fields where you know quail
Speaker 1: could travel real quick but then duck in the cover
Speaker 1: and then you know, disperselessly. That's pretty fascinating.
Speaker 3: It's crazy, like and I really didn't expect that, Like
Speaker 3: I picked quail because I had an interest in bison,
Speaker 3: because I had an interest, but figuring out that there
Speaker 3: was some sort of link there between them being pushed
Speaker 3: out potentially was like the reason that first note noted
Speaker 3: declines of quills in eighteen ninety.
Speaker 1: I was like, this is wild. So on this stuff
Speaker 1: you're gonna learn. You're gonna learn some stuff, you know.
Speaker 1: And and it's the cool thing about the format is
Speaker 1: that it's it's it's it's efficient. It's an efficient listen.
Speaker 1: And I mean you could have a podcast where you
Speaker 1: just did like long form interviews with biologists, you know,
Speaker 1: for two hours, and a lot of people do that.
Speaker 1: This is that with all the information just handed to
Speaker 1: you in a nice, wonderful little bundle of communication that's entertaining.
Speaker 1: Lake does a good job. And you might not know
Speaker 1: this offhand, but when I say it, you're going to
Speaker 1: be like, you know what, Clay, You're right is that
Speaker 1: Lake's way ahead in the podcast game because his name
Speaker 1: is Lake Pickle. The things you were kind of behind
Speaker 1: a little bit and the Appalachian pastoral game by your
Speaker 1: name being Tracy. Yeah, yeah, he was ahead ahead.
Speaker 4: Yeah, nobody's going to forget Lake Pickle.
Speaker 3: I've always said, man, like my my career in the
Speaker 3: industry basically kicked off at Primos. Yeah, and part of
Speaker 3: the reason I got that job is I'd been emailing
Speaker 3: Brad Ferris for like a year and a half, and
Speaker 3: when I met Brad Ferris finally in person, I said,
Speaker 3: I'm Lake Pickle and he was like, you're that kid
Speaker 3: that's been emailing me, because like everything about me could
Speaker 3: be forgettable, but I have such an odd name that people.
Speaker 1: Are like, oh, isn't that the truth?
Speaker 4: Like name recognition in media is like the old location
Speaker 4: is everything with store Flunt's right. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Well, when I I hunted with Lake this year killed
Speaker 1: the turkey, I messaged a friend of mine that I'd
Speaker 1: killed the turkey. I said, I killed a turkey with
Speaker 1: with Lake Pickle, and he said, where's that.
Speaker 3: People Typically they either know who I am or they
Speaker 3: hear it and they think it's a good spot to
Speaker 3: catch a walleye. Yeah oh yeah, Lake Pickle.
Speaker 1: I hear the bike's hot right now? Yeah yeah yeah.
Speaker 1: So anyway, well that's gonna be uh, that's gonna be exciting.
Speaker 1: One other good.
Speaker 3: One other thing I got to point out because Steve
Speaker 3: Varnella asked me about it. He's like, because with the
Speaker 3: first two topics being bison in the Eastern United States,
Speaker 3: and then Quail, It's like, are you keeping it eastern
Speaker 3: or southeastern base?
Speaker 1: It's like absolutely not.
Speaker 3: Like I mean, that's because while I was up at
Speaker 3: the media or office last week, I was interviewing some
Speaker 3: guys about grizzly bears.
Speaker 2: So, yeah, so what is the region North America, United States?
Speaker 2: Or I mean, are we going to talk about hyenas?
Speaker 1: We're worldwide, baby, all right, anywhere we want to go.
Speaker 4: I like it.
Speaker 3: Pandas Yeah, oh yeah, I don't know if I'll do
Speaker 3: pandas Maybe, I don't know.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: The only the only thing that I told Lake today
Speaker 1: over breakfast is I said I leaked some information to
Speaker 1: him that I've learned about the Arctic. And I was like, hey,
Speaker 1: you just stay away from the Arctic for a little
Speaker 1: bit until I until I get my bear grease on
Speaker 1: the Arctic. Yeah, I'm working on a working on something.
Speaker 2: A little foreshadowing there a little bit.
Speaker 1: Man, Godlee, the Arctic. You had no, you have no idea, Josh.
Speaker 3: It was the podcaster version of taking a guy to
Speaker 3: a spot on public and going, don't let me catch
Speaker 3: you back here exactly.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, no, Arctic got it?
Speaker 4: Got it?
Speaker 1: I mean for now, I mean, just give me a
Speaker 1: little bit of time. I mean, that'd be a time
Speaker 1: when you know we'll we'll turn you loose on the Arctic.
Speaker 1: But just give me a little bit of time.
Speaker 4: That's fair. No, Blake.
Speaker 1: Blake and I when we're together, we're kind of nerdy,
Speaker 1: like he has a turn that I have a turn,
Speaker 1: and we talk about like this nerdy stuff. Uh tell
Speaker 1: him what? Tell him what your wife said?
Speaker 3: The other day, I was la, well, it was I
Speaker 3: was lad to talk about this because Steve was making
Speaker 3: fun of Clay and I. And then I said, this
Speaker 3: was like I think it was this week. I was
Speaker 3: just talking because when I get on like a particular subject,
Speaker 3: I'm excited about it.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: So like we had just gotten the final, like the
Speaker 3: first like cut of this Bison episode back and so
Speaker 3: I was like back on Bison again. I was super
Speaker 3: excited to talk about Bison, and I'd probably been talking
Speaker 3: about it for way too long, and I mean like
Speaker 3: days on end. And my wife Lacy's like, like, I'm
Speaker 3: so happy for you that you have found this and
Speaker 3: I love that you're excited about Bison. Can we please
Speaker 3: talk about something else?
Speaker 1: I was like, that's fair, Like.
Speaker 4: It's true. That's true.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, the uh, the topic at hand, and the
Speaker 1: reason TL's here is as he wrote a book. When'd
Speaker 1: you publish this book?
Speaker 4: Tale? Last year, last year, last last spring. It's about
Speaker 4: a year old.
Speaker 1: Year old a book called The Old Men Conversations that
Speaker 1: Help Boys Become Men? And uh, so the book is
Speaker 1: is it eighty seven eighty four? It's it's eighty four
Speaker 1: short stories.
Speaker 2: Yeah, collection of short story.
Speaker 1: Collection of short stories that are they're short. I mean
Speaker 1: some of them are like a page long. Some of
Speaker 1: them are maybe two or three pages, but you can
Speaker 1: you can read it like really short little chunks. And
Speaker 1: it's I'll let you talk about it. But but but
Speaker 1: it's eighty four things that t. L Has learned from
Speaker 1: men in his life. And it's it's it's a variety
Speaker 1: of topics, yep, from bear hunting stuff to buying trucks
Speaker 1: to spiritual stuff. It's it's a it's a unique assortment
Speaker 1: of just wisdom. And uh, it's it's really it's it's
Speaker 1: really good. Well, it's funny. I don't know what most
Speaker 1: people's processes for writing a book. I know what mine
Speaker 1: is because I've been in the process of writing a book,
Speaker 1: and uh, I think yours was like a more of
Speaker 1: like a hemming Way style approach. You were like, I'm
Speaker 1: going into the cave to write a book. I'll be
Speaker 1: back in a couple of months. And how long did
Speaker 1: it take you to write this?
Speaker 4: About six weeks?
Speaker 1: And I mean you just worked on it, holy smoke,
Speaker 1: just like every day. Yeah, pretty much then and then
Speaker 1: you were just like done. One day, you were just
Speaker 1: like done, and you were like, all right, gonna publish it.
Speaker 4: Yeah. I'd had a lot of friends, especially pastors, who
Speaker 4: had asked me to put some of the things that
Speaker 4: we had discussed into writing that I was reluctant to
Speaker 4: do that because there's just so many books out there,
Speaker 4: and I think a good philosophy is life is to
Speaker 4: do things that add value to other people's lives. And
Speaker 4: but one particular pastor friend of mine called me, like
Speaker 4: in December, Tom Hatley, and he said, I really want
Speaker 4: this year for you to set aside some time to
Speaker 4: write put some of the stuff you know we talk
Speaker 4: about in private and writing. And I said, well, Tom Watt,
Speaker 4: write about what And he said, well, I was talking
Speaker 4: to my assistant Kevin, and he said, if you would
Speaker 4: write something on manhood, we would read it. But only
Speaker 4: Moron would write a book and say, you know this
Speaker 4: is manhood. You know, do it right. Yeah. So I thought, well,
Speaker 4: if we're going to do that, how how would you
Speaker 4: do that? And I thought, you know, I've had so
Speaker 4: many really good, high quality of men in my life.
Speaker 4: I had said, have said things. And if I have
Speaker 4: a conversation with you, I will often you will say
Speaker 4: one thing that I won't forget. Or if I watch
Speaker 4: a TV show, I will hear somebody say something that
Speaker 4: I won't forget. Like I was listening to a guy
Speaker 4: from Horny to the other Day Talk and he said,
Speaker 4: a bullet never goes anywhere by accident. Well, I was
Speaker 4: done with that podcast at that point because I can
Speaker 4: only think about that particular statement. And I sat down
Speaker 4: and I took out a legal path and I wrote
Speaker 4: down about one hundred and fifty things that old men
Speaker 4: had told me that had really mattered to me. I
Speaker 4: don't mean just trite things, things that had on a
Speaker 4: daily basis, This may come to my mind to help me.
Speaker 4: Like my dad would always say, if you're going to
Speaker 4: do something right, do it right the first time. And
Speaker 4: he lived that he was a perfectionist, and I can
Speaker 4: be getting ready to do something sort of slipshod, and
Speaker 4: my dad's words will come back to me, don't you know?
Speaker 4: Do it right? So I wrote those like one hundred
Speaker 4: and fifty things down, and I narrowed it down to
Speaker 4: eighty four because my grandfather was probably the primary influence
Speaker 4: of my life and he died at eighty four or
Speaker 4: there you go. Yeah, So I cut it off at
Speaker 4: eighty four because that was symbolic to me that the
Speaker 4: primary influence I had in my life was cut off
Speaker 4: at eighty four. So I kept the book off at
Speaker 4: eighty four.
Speaker 1: M you know what you you are. I think it's
Speaker 1: it's a I don't know if it's if you'd call
Speaker 1: it a gift or just a way that someone organizes
Speaker 1: the world. But you you remembering stuff that people say
Speaker 1: in compact ideas is unique and a a powerful thing.
Speaker 1: Like because when you say that process, like, I don't
Speaker 1: know that I could write down one hundred and fifty
Speaker 1: very poignant sentences of things that people have taught me
Speaker 1: that are like your book. I mean, so, I mean, like,
Speaker 1: that's that's a powerful thing. I describe Brent Reeves in
Speaker 1: the same way. It's different. His is different. But Brent
Speaker 1: has an uncanny ability to be somewhere and capture a
Speaker 1: story and a little ball and put it in his
Speaker 1: pocket and never forget it, like he could. He he
Speaker 1: just can do that. Uh. But but what you've done
Speaker 1: here is is really cool.
Speaker 4: What would.
Speaker 1: Take us through a couple of the stories. Yeah, just
Speaker 1: like if you could, if you could even just tell us, like, well,
Speaker 1: there's a chapter about this, and this was the story.
Speaker 4: Well, when I wrote the book, it was to try
Speaker 4: to fill in the gap of what we were doing
Speaker 4: with our young men today. You know, a lot of
Speaker 4: feminization of young men not actually developing into what a
Speaker 4: man ought to be in the historical sense of manhood.
Speaker 4: And so I sort of wrote the book that if
Speaker 4: there was a boy out there who was being raised
Speaker 4: without a dad or good influence, that he could pick
Speaker 4: the book up and read in a few hours the
Speaker 4: things that dads and grandpas give to their sons and
Speaker 4: grandsons over a lifetime, but in a way that could
Speaker 4: be read. The whole book can be read in a
Speaker 4: couple hours by anybody. Yeah, And I wanted to be
Speaker 4: written so that it wasn't for I didn't want to
Speaker 4: write it for preachers and that kind of thing. I
Speaker 4: just wanted to write it for the average guy, you
Speaker 4: know out there. Even a lot of people who don't
Speaker 4: even like to read, you know, have said I read it.
Speaker 4: I picked it up and couldn't put it down. I
Speaker 4: read old thing. Yeah, And I've had a lot of
Speaker 4: young men call me. But the story I think that
Speaker 4: probably epitomizes the book is the one I start out with.
Speaker 4: My grandfather was Barry Tarlton. His dad's name was Hunter Tarlton, Spencer,
Speaker 4: Hunter Enter And there's an old schoolhouse beside the church
Speaker 4: where my grandfather was a deacon that's defunct and it's
Speaker 4: just sitting there today, deteriorating. We were out riding around
Speaker 4: one day and my grandfather said, he said, when I
Speaker 4: was going to school there, he said, I was a
Speaker 4: little boy, and he said, it began to snow, and
Speaker 4: he said it was going to be, you know, a
Speaker 4: good snow, And they decided to send the kids home
Speaker 4: from school, and his dad walked to the school to
Speaker 4: get him and put him on his shoulders and carried
Speaker 4: him home. So he didn't want him to have to
Speaker 4: walk into snow all the way back to their house.
Speaker 4: And when he told me that, I thought, that is
Speaker 4: really what That's what fatherhood and the sonhood is about.
Speaker 4: It's you putting the boys on your shoulders and carrying
Speaker 4: them until they can walk themselves. Then they carry their
Speaker 4: sons till they can walk on their own. And your
Speaker 4: goal is a dad, is not to have to carry
Speaker 4: your son's whole life. You just carry him when he
Speaker 4: has when he needs it, but your goals for him
Speaker 4: to be able to walk on his own, and then
Speaker 4: for him to be able to carry his son until
Speaker 4: he can walk on his own. So the successive stories
Speaker 4: after that are things in my life for my dad
Speaker 4: or grandfather or some other guy sort of put me
Speaker 4: on their shoulders and carried me with some bit of
Speaker 4: wisdom through life. When I was a teenager, I want
Speaker 4: my own vehicle. My dad told me, he said, well,
Speaker 4: your mom is going to buy a new car, and
Speaker 4: she's got her old car. We'll give it to you.
Speaker 4: It was a seventy four Pontiac LeMans. But I didn't
Speaker 4: want it because it wasn't cool, you know. I wanted
Speaker 4: something besides my mom's old car. So I decided I'd
Speaker 4: go find something better than that, and I found the
Speaker 4: eighty one Nissan four whel drive pickup truck is all
Speaker 4: jacked up, had big tires on it, and I thought, man, now,
Speaker 4: look that'll be great. Dad went with me to look
Speaker 4: at it, and he looked it over and he said,
Speaker 4: some kids had this. He's jacked it up, he's put
Speaker 4: all this stuff on it. He said, it's a piece
Speaker 4: of junk. Don't bite. And so I bought it, and
Speaker 4: I had like fifteen hundred bucks in the bank. I've
Speaker 4: paid that down on it, drained myself dry, and then
Speaker 4: had payments to make and the truck actually turned out
Speaker 4: to be a piece of junk, left me stranded all
Speaker 4: the time, had to have rides, caught on fire. I mean,
Speaker 4: it was a complete, absolute train wreck of a deal.
Speaker 4: And that, to me, that's another just illustration of how
Speaker 4: when you're young in life, you I mean, you started
Speaker 4: out like the one old boy said, I was born ignorant.
Speaker 4: I've been losing ground ever since. And we're born ignorant
Speaker 4: no matter who you are. And you have to acquire wisdom,
Speaker 4: and that should be the chief aim of life, is
Speaker 4: to acquire wisdom. Accord the proverbs, and my dad and
Speaker 4: grandfather and other men invested so much in my life
Speaker 4: that Dad said to me one day, and Dad wasn't
Speaker 4: want to set you down teach you. He didn't do that.
Speaker 4: He just said things off the cuff that would stick
Speaker 4: with me. He said, do you know if just one
Speaker 4: generation would learn from the previous generation, it would change
Speaker 4: the world? Yep. And when he said that, I held
Speaker 4: on to it. And then when I was about twenty four,
Speaker 4: I'd got my life turned around. I'd become a Christian.
Speaker 4: I was actually trying to live right. Previously I wasn't.
Speaker 4: And I said, you know what, for the rest of
Speaker 4: my life, I'm going to try to learn from the
Speaker 4: mistakes and successes of other people and limit the mistakes
Speaker 4: that I personally make. I'm gonna pay attention. So Dad
Speaker 4: had said that years ago, but it didn't catch on
Speaker 4: for probably ten or fifteen years after he had told me.
Speaker 4: And that's sort of what the book's about. It's like,
Speaker 4: you know, everybody says experience is the best teacher, but
Speaker 4: it's also the cruelest.
Speaker 1: M Yep, that's really good. I want to I want
Speaker 1: you to keep telling me a couple more of these
Speaker 1: little stories, like if what's another one? That just comes
Speaker 1: to mind. Well, yeah, feel free to look through it.
Speaker 1: It's funny that you brought up the truck one because
Speaker 1: I was gonna that was one that I remembered.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I'll tell you one that has helped me in
Speaker 4: my you know, I'm in the ministry and I was
Speaker 4: going to move out to west somewhere and plant a
Speaker 4: church from scratch. And in the process of doing that,
Speaker 4: an old preacher called me named John Halsey. And John
Speaker 4: Halsey said, I want to talk to you for a
Speaker 4: little while about an opportunity that's going on in Alaska
Speaker 4: and ask you to pray about it. There was a
Speaker 4: pastor in Alaska, I think he was in Juno that
Speaker 4: had a heart to reach the Aleutian Islands. Of course,
Speaker 4: you know, they're strung out for miles in small pockets populations,
Speaker 4: never a pocket really big enough to have its own church.
Speaker 4: But he was going to take a boat and go
Speaker 4: from island to island to island on different days and
Speaker 4: share the gospel with people. And they actually raised money
Speaker 4: to buy the boat. And then the guy was out
Speaker 4: jogging and had a heart attack and died. The pastor
Speaker 4: and Halsey said, I want you to move to Alaska.
Speaker 4: He said, you pastor this church up here, and he
Speaker 4: said they were going to have to send me to
Speaker 4: nautical school become a boat captain. There's a large boat.
Speaker 4: And he said, then you'll pass the church and then
Speaker 4: you will maintain a ministry on the Aleutian Islands. And
Speaker 4: in the process of that conversation, he said, there was
Speaker 4: pastors when we were trying to raise money to buy
Speaker 4: the boat that were didn't have the vision for it.
Speaker 4: And he said they would say to me, well, the
Speaker 4: pockets of people on those islands are not large enough
Speaker 4: to have a church. Why do it that way? And
Speaker 4: Halsey said, I would tell them we can do something
Speaker 4: or we can do nothing. And everything in life's not idealistic.
Speaker 4: You can have idealistic goals, but then there's life and
Speaker 4: you have to constantly modify the way you're functioning in life.
Speaker 4: You know, be willing to be adaptable. And when Halsey
Speaker 4: said that, I never forgot it. You know, there's lots
Speaker 4: of things that you want to accomplish that are not
Speaker 4: just perfect. But you can do something or you can
Speaker 4: do nothing. And that was important to me. Mm hmm, yep,
Speaker 4: you can do something. Or you can do nothing. It
Speaker 4: is true, that's true.
Speaker 1: How about this one? Three dollars? This chapter titled three dollars?
Speaker 4: What's it say on it? Oh? Yeah, Papa and I
Speaker 4: we had it ongoing back and forth. He grew up
Speaker 4: out of the depression, born in nineteen twenty eight. And
Speaker 4: they were poor. I mean they were so poor. They
Speaker 4: would catch a possum and put it in a cage
Speaker 4: and fatten it up to its big enough for a meal.
Speaker 4: And the first time he went to town, he was
Speaker 4: thirteen years old. He thought town was just a larger
Speaker 4: country store. He thought when they got to town, they
Speaker 4: took a wagon, when they got there, just be a
Speaker 4: bigger store. He couldn't believe all the buildings. It's unfathomable,
Speaker 4: all those buildings. To him, he was a penny pincher
Speaker 4: because he was so poor. He didn't want to be
Speaker 4: poor anymore. So anything he spent money on, I mean
Speaker 4: he he waited so he didn't waste. And uh, we
Speaker 4: were at the farm and we were pulling old planks
Speaker 4: off of a building and he'd pull You know how
Speaker 4: a plank on a barn will rot at the bottom
Speaker 4: where water splashes on it. He pulled those planks off
Speaker 4: and saw the rotten bottom off and save them. And
Speaker 4: then he'd drive the nails out of them and straightened
Speaker 4: them and kept them to use again. I hated using
Speaker 4: those nails because they to get one to go straight.
Speaker 4: It's very difficult to straighten the nail and then drive
Speaker 4: it straight again. It wants to bend all the time.
Speaker 4: So in my mind, let's just go to town and
Speaker 4: get nails. And we were going back and forth and
Speaker 4: was never I was never a smart euct to my
Speaker 4: dad or father, because they wouldn't have tolerated. You know.
Speaker 4: Back talk was that that was unacceptable. Our outfit appreciated
Speaker 4: that was not you don't do that. Yeah, you can
Speaker 4: have a different opinion, but you expressed it appropriately, right.
Speaker 4: But I would go back and forth with my grandfather
Speaker 4: about stuff and express my frustrations with him. And I
Speaker 4: told him, I said, if you counted up the time
Speaker 4: that we were spending doing all this, you wouldn't make
Speaker 4: three dollars an hour. Well, I thought it was sound logic.
Speaker 4: I had him.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you thought that was pretty sick.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I had him. He just he was driving. He
Speaker 4: never even phased him. He said, that's three dollars I
Speaker 4: wouldn't have made today. Yeah, he turned it into three
Speaker 4: dollars he was making.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's justned yeah yeah, just so so
Speaker 1: the structure of the book, which is so simple. You know,
Speaker 1: the title of the chapter is three dollars and it
Speaker 1: has the quote from your grandfather. It says, that's three
Speaker 1: dollars I wasn't gonna make and you tell that story
Speaker 1: and just a honestly less than a page.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a great book. I read it and passed
Speaker 2: it on. I appreciate that it's greatly got some got
Speaker 2: some great words of wisdom in it, and I really
Speaker 2: enjoy it. Is an easy read, but it's it's uh,
Speaker 2: it's got some profundity to it.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: You just read that story and there's there's lots of
Speaker 2: great great one life.
Speaker 1: Is this okay? If I just kind of like pointed
Speaker 1: a chapter and have you tell me story, that's fun.
Speaker 4: Okay.
Speaker 1: How about this one called Laziness and the and the
Speaker 1: title is did you ride that three wheeler to the mailbox?
Speaker 4: That's one of my least favorite stories. Oh really, yeah,
Speaker 4: I was. I was terribly mistreated in that story. I
Speaker 4: actually don't remember it so well it I remember that
Speaker 4: one dad, Dad had had bought a three wheeler. It
Speaker 4: was a nineteen eighty five Honda Big Grid. Any story
Speaker 4: that starts with that I had had. It was the
Speaker 4: first year they had reverse on them. Oh so this
Speaker 4: was I mean, this is big, big time, big time. No,
Speaker 4: this was what was the two fifties. I think the
Speaker 4: Big Ridge were. Yeah, I think the Big Gridge for
Speaker 4: two fifties. Yeah. Well, I was fifteen years old, fourteen
Speaker 4: or fifteen, depend on how my birthday was, and it'd
Speaker 4: come a big snow where our mailbox was only fifty
Speaker 4: yards from the front porch, and Dad told me, he said,
Speaker 4: go down the mailbox and get the mail. So I
Speaker 4: walked outside and that brand new three wheeler sitting there,
Speaker 4: and I thought, man, this snow. So I jumped on it,
Speaker 4: started having some good time, you know, fun, went down,
Speaker 4: got the mail and come back up and I came in.
Speaker 4: My dad was like, did you drive that three wheeler
Speaker 4: down the mailbox? I said, yes, sir man. He was mad,
Speaker 4: I mean tick mad. He said, that's lazy. Said I
Speaker 4: can't you know, I can't believe you're that stinking lazy
Speaker 4: that you can't go down to the mailbox and back
Speaker 4: because you know, laziness with a lot of them old
Speaker 4: mountain men, that's you know, yeah, that's there. Yeah, you
Speaker 4: call the man. You can do a lot of things,
Speaker 4: but if you're lazy. And but I didn't do it
Speaker 4: because I was being lazy. I did it because I
Speaker 4: was fifteen and there was snow on the ground. There
Speaker 4: was a free will and yeah, yeah, yeah, but it
Speaker 4: didn't matter because in a dad's mind, you know, here,
Speaker 4: you're as a father. If you're not careful the things
Speaker 4: your kids do right now, you project for the rest
Speaker 4: of their life.
Speaker 2: It's true, that's very true.
Speaker 4: And if you're not real careful, you will overcorrect for
Speaker 4: something that's just a now thing that you think it's
Speaker 4: going to get out of hand. See. To me, I
Speaker 4: just go on the mailbox. But to him, I was,
Speaker 4: you know, forty five years old and a whino out
Speaker 4: on the street who never held a job.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, he was. He was projecting, Yes, this is going.
Speaker 4: To be a p Yeah, this is going to be
Speaker 4: a problem. So he told me, he said, well, I
Speaker 4: tell you what, you're grounded. And I don't remember. It's
Speaker 4: weak or two. I can't remember. I mean, but I
Speaker 4: got hammered over it, and I think it's the only
Speaker 4: time I was ever grounded.
Speaker 1: Really Yeah, yeap, what did what did that produce him?
Speaker 3: Like?
Speaker 1: Did it make you mad?
Speaker 4: Bitterness? Probably? I mean I was not guilt. I was
Speaker 4: not guilty, Yeah, because.
Speaker 3: You were just like, man, I just want to ride
Speaker 3: the three wheeler in the snow.
Speaker 4: Yeah. But looking back as a dad though, I can
Speaker 4: now understand why that was an issue to him. As
Speaker 4: a dad, Yeah, because he's his eyes are what what's
Speaker 4: his son going to be when he's thirty, right when
Speaker 4: he's forty? Yeah, and he wanted to, you know, stamp
Speaker 4: it out.
Speaker 2: So what's the lesson that you learned from?
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 1: Yeah, maybe not even in the moment, but now because
Speaker 1: as you tell that story, I am envisioning a conversation
Speaker 1: I had with one of my sons this week that
Speaker 1: that probably was a little unfair to them. But at
Speaker 1: the same time, in the big picture, I was right,
Speaker 1: but in the small picture it probably was a little unjust.
Speaker 4: Well, one of my favorite stories in that book, I'll
Speaker 4: use that to illustrate took place when I was very young.
Speaker 2: And.
Speaker 4: When I was probably four. I was right at four
Speaker 4: years old, Dad and I were out at the farm.
Speaker 4: When I say, we always call you live here in
Speaker 4: the barns out here and out there as the farm,
Speaker 4: the farms for the barns at you know, we were
Speaker 4: out there next to the barn and Dad he smoked,
Speaker 4: and uh, you know, he had him a cigarette and
Speaker 4: looked cool to me. And I said, can I have
Speaker 4: a cigarette? And Dad said, I'll tell you what I'll
Speaker 4: do and make a deal with you. He said, you
Speaker 4: can have a cigarette, but if you can't smoke the
Speaker 4: whole thing, you better never ask for another one. So
Speaker 4: he had me the cigarette and I got the puffing
Speaker 4: on it, and I couldn't take but just a few puffs.
Speaker 4: I said, no, wait, man, I cannot handle this. So
Speaker 4: I hand it back to Dad and he looked at
Speaker 4: me and he said, never let me catch you with
Speaker 4: another one. And Dad was a man of his word.
Speaker 4: If he said it in nineteen twenty, it would still
Speaker 4: be good in twenty twenty. And uh, well, just maybe
Speaker 4: a few months or a year past. And h you know,
Speaker 4: my family was a little rough. And one day Dad
Speaker 4: and them, if I remember right, him and one of
Speaker 4: my cousins was sitting on the front porch and they
Speaker 4: were shooting at the mailbox with a pistol. Just hoo, rod.
Speaker 2: And welcome to Apple.
Speaker 4: At you.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I was looked at their old mailbox.
Speaker 4: I was at I was on the porch with them,
Speaker 4: and Dad said, I've got to run over the store
Speaker 4: for a few minutes. I'll be back. While I was
Speaker 4: on the porch with my cousin. He's older than I am,
Speaker 4: he's closer to Dad's age. And his name was Johnny.
Speaker 4: And Johnny was smoking and Dad pull on driveway. Johnny said,
Speaker 4: you want a cigarette? And uh, I'm like five, I said.
Speaker 4: I said no, I said. Dad told me if he
Speaker 4: ever caught me another cigarette, he had beat my break.
Speaker 2: So when you first had that first cigarette, you were
Speaker 2: under five.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it was like four.
Speaker 2: I'm thinking eight or ten years old, and that's important context.
Speaker 4: Some I'm like five and Johnny he said, don't worry
Speaker 4: about it. He said, I'll take it for you. I
Speaker 4: won't let you Daddy whip you. So I took the cigarette.
Speaker 4: If you missed. Dad came rolling back in the driveway,
Speaker 4: stepped out of the car, looked at me up on
Speaker 4: the court. Five year old laid back, never said a word,
Speaker 4: walked right up on the porch and got me by
Speaker 4: the hand. We went in the house and kept his
Speaker 4: word on the matter, and Johnny never lifted a finger
Speaker 4: to help me at all. Sorry, dog, And I've told
Speaker 4: him since it I ought to whip him still over
Speaker 4: the matter, and it never helped me all. But fast forward,
Speaker 4: that dad was He was a heavy smoker, but when
Speaker 4: he didn't want me to be a smoker. And it
Speaker 4: was a cat and mouse game because I when I
Speaker 4: got older, I started chewing the back and I loved it.
Speaker 4: I hated smoking, but I love chewing. He didn't want
Speaker 4: me to chew. He didn't want me to be on
Speaker 4: the back at all. Now a lot of people say, well,
Speaker 4: your dad was a hypocrite, and I said, no. What
Speaker 4: you got to understand life as a child, when you
Speaker 4: reach a certain age is your parents love you, but
Speaker 4: they're imperfect and if you hold their imperfections again, you'll
Speaker 4: never learn from them. And it wasn't a matter of
Speaker 4: hypocrisy with Dad. It was a matter if he was
Speaker 4: addicted to nicotine and he couldn't stop. He wanted to quit,
Speaker 4: but it had a hold on him and he couldn't
Speaker 4: let go of it. He didn't want that. For me,
Speaker 4: it wasn't hypocrisy, it was love and having issues as
Speaker 4: parents that you don't want your children to have. A
Speaker 4: lot of kids grow up and despise the imperfections of
Speaker 4: their parents and call them hypocrites and say, well, my
Speaker 4: parents didn't live what they preached and all that kind
Speaker 4: of stuff. But you need to Parents need to be
Speaker 4: good to their children, and their children also need to
Speaker 4: reach a material level where they're good to their parents,
Speaker 4: and you need to understand that. We it's the unfortunate
Speaker 4: thing of life as you start raising your children when
Speaker 4: you don't know how to raise them, yep, and by
Speaker 4: the time you do, they're grown. Yep. You don't know.
Speaker 4: Nobody knows exactly what they're doing parenting. I don't care
Speaker 4: who you are. You just you do the best you
Speaker 4: can with what you have. And then the kids need
Speaker 4: to grow up and be merciful to their parents. And
Speaker 4: pray to God that your kids will grow up and
Speaker 4: be merciful to you. Yep.
Speaker 1: That is such insightful, an insightful look on it. We
Speaker 1: have four children. My youngest is setting now seventeen, oldest
Speaker 1: is twenty three. My oldest daughter is married now and
Speaker 1: people I often feel like when people talk to me,
Speaker 1: they think, oh, Clay, you've been through you know, young parents,
Speaker 1: and they're like, you've done this before. How do you
Speaker 1: feel you got some wisdom to give? And I tell
Speaker 1: you that the most the thing that I feel most
Speaker 1: right now is humility. In terms of man, I look back,
Speaker 1: we were young when we had kids, did it was
Speaker 1: exactly what you described. We did the best we could.
Speaker 1: We really tried to apply the value systems that we
Speaker 1: had into our kids. But man, we made a lot
Speaker 1: of mistakes. Absolutely, And you come into parenting often with
Speaker 1: a very idealistic view of how to be a parent,
Speaker 1: and then at some point a lot of your doctrine
Speaker 1: and the way you did things, you're probably going to
Speaker 1: realize you didn't execute it exactly right. Like if you
Speaker 1: had written down on a paper, if I'd written down
Speaker 1: on a piece of paper everything that I intended to
Speaker 1: do with my kids when I was twenty two, probably
Speaker 1: I would still agree with that list. But if you
Speaker 1: actually took that list and compared it to the to
Speaker 1: the replay video of actually what happened, you would see
Speaker 1: that I was not great at really executing and and
Speaker 1: but I sure tried And yeah, man, right, now, that's
Speaker 1: the thing I hope my kids give Misty and eyes
Speaker 1: is empathy.
Speaker 2: My wife, Christy has this, this theory. She calls it
Speaker 2: the curve of criticality. She says, She says, when you
Speaker 2: when you first become a parent, you find everything wrong
Speaker 2: that your parents did, you know what I mean, and
Speaker 2: you're so unbelievably critical. Then as you get older, you know,
Speaker 2: you get into your forties and you start thinking about
Speaker 2: your parents and you're like, you know, maybe I kind
Speaker 2: of understand why they did that, or you know what
Speaker 2: I mean, And you start having a lot more compassion
Speaker 2: and understanding for your parents as you see the errors
Speaker 2: in your parenting years later.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, I'll try to take a big spin
Speaker 1: here that I think will be relevant. Identity is so powerful,
Speaker 1: Like essentially, when you're raising the kid, you're trying to
Speaker 1: tell them who they are. You're trying to let them
Speaker 1: discover who they're supposed to be. Yep, inside of a context.
Speaker 1: You know, you may you may live in Africa, you
Speaker 1: may live in Appalachia, but you have a context for
Speaker 1: your life. The parent knows that context and how that
Speaker 1: child can be successful. More than that, child you, and
Speaker 1: much of identity is perceiving things that already have a
Speaker 1: very strong identity around you and then triangulating and calibrating
Speaker 1: to figure out who you are. And I think that
Speaker 1: parents act as that, like when your kid becomes an
Speaker 1: adult and gets married and starts having kids and then
Speaker 1: they go, well, mom and dad, sure did it wrong.
Speaker 1: Back here, we're going to do it right. I mean
Speaker 1: they triangulate and basically the parent or the grandparent, or
Speaker 1: or it could be a society or a church you
Speaker 1: went to, or some reference point that has strong identity
Speaker 1: becomes something even if you're critical of it, becomes important
Speaker 1: for you to build identity. Does that make sense? So
Speaker 1: it's almost like as a parent, now I recognize the
Speaker 1: natural tendency and even the it's probably healthy for my
Speaker 1: it's to be a little critical of me, and as
Speaker 1: a parent I kind of just have to be okay
Speaker 1: with that to some degree.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean, you know, like, well, I got a
Speaker 4: feedback off of that story there from a guy, and
Speaker 4: I would never give names or details, but a guy
Speaker 4: sent me an inbox and he said a lot of
Speaker 4: churches have bought these books in bulk and give them
Speaker 4: out for Father's Day and he said, our church gave
Speaker 4: me your book. He said, I read it and I
Speaker 4: wanted to let you know that he was raised in
Speaker 4: one particular state, moved to a more southern state, got
Speaker 4: in church, got his life straightened up, but he had
Speaker 4: an extreme amount of bitterness toward his dad. His dad
Speaker 4: was very abusive when they grew up. And now I
Speaker 4: don't consider my dad abusive at all, but this guy
Speaker 4: considered his dad very abusive and had a hard time.
Speaker 4: He said he read the story about the cigarette and
Speaker 4: the explanation of you got to be merciful to your
Speaker 4: folks and get over some things. And he said, I
Speaker 4: tell you what I did. He said, I've tried for years,
Speaker 4: but I decided to forgive my dad. He said, I
Speaker 4: forgave him. Want to. I wanted to thank you because
Speaker 4: his life, his life's now better because he's not walking
Speaker 4: around with the burden of hating his dad the rest
Speaker 4: of his life. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, that's good. That's cool. Yep.
Speaker 1: Oh man, I mean you've got eighty four stories in
Speaker 1: this book like that that all that, all have all.
Speaker 4: Have a point.
Speaker 1: I'd like to comment on your writing style, which is uh.
Speaker 1: They say they say, uh, himing Way wrote, and I'm
Speaker 1: not a Hemingway expert. I've read a couple of books,
Speaker 1: but that he wrote like very short, very like just
Speaker 1: like very direct.
Speaker 2: Like.
Speaker 1: When I first started reading Himingway, I thought it would
Speaker 1: be this like big, grandiose descriptions of stuff, but he
Speaker 1: actually known for just being like the ocean was blue
Speaker 1: to the point the wind hit us in the face
Speaker 1: from the east. The old man's wrinkles looked like the ocean.
Speaker 1: I mean, like, it's just like and as you get
Speaker 1: into it, you realize how clear it is as compared
Speaker 1: to someone who might be like the ocean sparkled like
Speaker 1: diamonds in the in the in the nether world and
Speaker 1: dolphins in It's like, I mean, you know, there's different
Speaker 1: ways to do it. When I read your book, I
Speaker 1: was I liked how simple and profound it was inside
Speaker 1: of like a very restrained style of writing that was
Speaker 1: like very clear, very to the point, short, but but poignant.
Speaker 1: If that's the right word. I've used that word a
Speaker 1: couple of times. I think that's the right word.
Speaker 4: But anyway, well, there's a story in there about that
Speaker 4: that very thing I think that I don't know I haven't.
Speaker 4: I haven't read the book since I published it. I
Speaker 4: didn't go back and read it. Yeah, but it's I
Speaker 4: think it's called talk less.
Speaker 1: I remember that.
Speaker 4: Sorry. Yeah, And uh, it may seem strange because I'm
Speaker 4: a preacher and I talk all the time from the pulpit,
Speaker 4: but in private life I don't talk a lot. Ben
Speaker 4: doesn't talk a lot. My dad didn't talk a lot.
Speaker 4: Now in private conversation, we might have a long conversation,
Speaker 4: but I can also ride from here to Idaho with
Speaker 4: you don't have to say nothing. And that goes back
Speaker 4: to my dad bear hunting, and he would say the
Speaker 4: reason some people don't kill bear is because they're on
Speaker 4: the radio too much. He say, stay off the radio
Speaker 4: and kill the bear, because trying to get out ahead
Speaker 4: of the bear, if the dogs is after, you know,
Speaker 4: takes focus and movement and action. And there was times
Speaker 4: when we would I would ride with I stay the
Speaker 4: weekend with my grandpa and we would go up on
Speaker 4: the mountain. The hunt wouldn't even know Dad was hunting
Speaker 4: that day. Somebody'd find a track, turn the dogs loose
Speaker 4: on it, and the race could gone all day long
Speaker 4: and you still wouldn't know. He was there, and then
Speaker 4: the dogs may get tread and then you'd hear his back.
Speaker 4: In the old CB days, you could talk maybe a
Speaker 4: couple of miles if you were lucky, but you could
Speaker 4: hear the truck drivers for forty miles, you know. Yeah
Speaker 4: and so, but you'd hear that thing start crackling, the
Speaker 4: way it would when somebody'd keep down on their mic
Speaker 4: and Dad would carry this great, big radio. I'd be
Speaker 4: in the truck with my grandpa and you'd hear that crackling,
Speaker 4: and Dad say, how about it, Barry, it's all over?
Speaker 4: And that's it. I mean, it's the race been going
Speaker 4: all day. I mean it was wild and chaotic and
Speaker 4: a huge, big day. And Dad's comment was I've killed it.
Speaker 1: And y'all didn't even know he was there.
Speaker 4: You wouldn't even know I was hunting. Yeah, it'd say
Speaker 4: about it, Barry, it's all over. One of the things
Speaker 4: that gave him an advantage. He didn't run his mouth
Speaker 4: all the time them. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Mm hmmm, mm hmm. That's tough. That's tough. Council to
Speaker 1: a podcast.
Speaker 3: From Yeah, on the podcast, the next Bear Grease is
Speaker 3: going to be two minutes long.
Speaker 4: Yeah, exactly, next grease.
Speaker 1: No, No, it's gonna be fifty five minutes long like
Speaker 1: all the rest of them, and we're gonna have some
Speaker 1: silence on there. I'm gonna be like, guys, I really
Speaker 1: want you all to think about this for about ten minutes.
Speaker 1: Just music.
Speaker 4: Man.
Speaker 1: That Yeah, that's good man, that's really good. It's been
Speaker 1: when when you when I first I ordered this book
Speaker 1: off Amazon? When you when you when you uh printed
Speaker 1: it and when you published it. I remember, I don't
Speaker 1: remember the details. I remember a story of tobacco, stealing tobacco.
Speaker 1: I don't remember was there wasn't there a story about
Speaker 1: and I think it was you that stole tobacco from
Speaker 1: a country store and yeah, you mind telling that story?
Speaker 4: Oh my goodness. Yeah. Uh there was a country store there.
Speaker 4: It was called Cove Creek, and uh, I mean, I
Speaker 4: just I know it sounds weird for a kid, but
Speaker 4: I just love tobacco. I mean I liked it.
Speaker 1: And uh so voodoo as we call it, the he
Speaker 1: did try a cigarette.
Speaker 4: It for yeah, exactly. So that the hunters would meet
Speaker 4: at Cove Creek in the morning, real early and sort
Speaker 4: of formulate a game plan, then go up on the
Speaker 4: mountain and try to execute the game plan. Well, that
Speaker 4: particular morning, I was with my papa and it's only
Speaker 4: me and him and the guy that owned the store
Speaker 4: in the building at the time, and we were standing
Speaker 4: here to owner, and the tobacco isle was not behind
Speaker 4: the counter. Then it should have been for kids like me,
Speaker 4: I guess, but the tobacco was all over here, and
Speaker 4: I eyed that, and I thought, boy, I'd like to
Speaker 4: have that today I'll be out in the mountains by myself.
Speaker 4: And so I just eased around the side, got down
Speaker 4: on I don't know ten twelve, Yeah, got down on
Speaker 4: my knees, and I just crawled over there, reached my
Speaker 4: hand around and got me a pack, and eased my
Speaker 4: way back to the store bathroom, concealed. It just walked
Speaker 4: out like nothing ever happened. With The sorry thing about
Speaker 4: that is the man that owns the story as a
Speaker 4: family friend, a personal friend of my grandfather. I'd have
Speaker 4: got caught red ended, my grandpa would have been destroyed.
Speaker 4: I mean, it's entirely self centered, selfish thing, not to
Speaker 4: mention just the penalty in my family forgetting caught being
Speaker 4: a thief. And so years went by, I became a
Speaker 4: Christian I went to Bible College. I was out in
Speaker 4: Montana planting the church, and we'd come home to visit,
Speaker 4: and we didn't get home very often. I drove down
Speaker 4: the Houston Valley Road on the way down to Papa
Speaker 4: was and passed the old man's house and on the
Speaker 4: store he had sold it, but then he was still alive.
Speaker 4: And when I passed thy house, the Lord told me
Speaker 4: you stole from him, and now it's time for restitution.
Speaker 4: You claimed to be a Christian and you stole from him,
Speaker 4: and you take care of it. I turned the car around.
Speaker 4: I drove back down to his house. You know, it
Speaker 4: was shame. And I walked up, knocked on his door,
Speaker 4: and he came up the door and he said why
Speaker 4: you know he knew me, and I said, I got
Speaker 4: to talk to you about something. He said, all right.
Speaker 4: I told him what had happened, and I wish it
Speaker 4: had just hit me in the face, but instead he said, Tracy,
Speaker 4: I never would have thought that of You could not.
Speaker 4: That was hard. It's like being poleaxed because Dad wouldn't
Speaker 4: have done it, and Papa wouldn't have done it, but
Speaker 4: their boy did. And I asked him to forgive me,
Speaker 4: and then I asked him what I owed him. You know,
Speaker 4: Zachs was told to pay back four times or offered
Speaker 4: to pay back four times when he stole. And I
Speaker 4: didn't know what the interest was on the pack at
Speaker 4: the back of from the seventies. And the old man
Speaker 4: told me. He said no, he said, you don't owe
Speaker 4: me a thing. He said, don't you worry about it.
Speaker 4: He forgave me so but cleared my conscience. Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: Man, what a good story.
Speaker 4: That is a good story.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that stuff is powerful. I think people people that
Speaker 1: don't understand the way the spirit realm works, which the
Speaker 1: spirit real am is as real as the physical realm,
Speaker 1: don't understand the power of stuff like that. Yeah, truly,
Speaker 1: I mean that that that that's a great story.
Speaker 4: Yeah yeah, yeah, And that that was a good That
Speaker 4: was a good man. And I was glad to have
Speaker 4: that out of the way.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 4: But the Lord will do that after you, after you
Speaker 4: get saved and become a Christian and the Holy Spirit
Speaker 4: lives inside of you, the Lord, I tell I explained
Speaker 4: this to my church a few weeks ago with an
Speaker 4: illustration about turkey calls. When I make a turkey call,
Speaker 4: people ask me how do you make one? I soa
Speaker 4: I just take a piece of wood, it's got turkey
Speaker 4: in it. Then I remove everything that's not turkey. And
Speaker 4: because someone's don't really have turkey in them, they're just
Speaker 4: not good for a call. But and now, like in
Speaker 4: that to being saved, you're never going to be a
Speaker 4: Christian until God's in you. When you get saved, God
Speaker 4: moves in you. Now you've got something for God to
Speaker 4: work with. And then after Christ moves inside of you,
Speaker 4: then God spends the rest of your life taking everything
Speaker 4: out of you that's not Christ.
Speaker 3: Yep.
Speaker 4: And I think when I chip away at those turkey
Speaker 4: calls and move a piece here, and if you ever
Speaker 4: make a box call, it's very intricate in the sound,
Speaker 4: the slope of it, the hall of the inside, the
Speaker 4: shape of it. I mean, you can be so close
Speaker 4: and it's still not sound like a turkey. Then you
Speaker 4: almost get it, and then you go too far and
Speaker 4: there's no going back. So you're trying to hit that
Speaker 4: just right with a removal that would because you can't
Speaker 4: add it back to where it sounds like a turkey.
Speaker 4: And it's better to stop too soon. And I think
Speaker 4: that's discipleship is God taking everything out of you. That's
Speaker 4: not christ.
Speaker 1: Mm hmm. That's good. It's good man. This has been fantastic.
Speaker 2: We've been talking for hour and a half, almost hour.
Speaker 1: And a half. That has been fantastic. Blake, what about
Speaker 1: that silly podcast you've got? What's it called it?
Speaker 3: It doesn't matter anymore?
Speaker 2: Uh?
Speaker 1: No that this has been so good. Yeah, So you
Speaker 1: can order this online.
Speaker 4: Yes, sir, he can order it on Amazon.
Speaker 1: Ordered on Amazon and called the old Man and Tracy
Speaker 1: Tennessee is uh Tennessee Jones. He fulfills these orders himself.
Speaker 1: I mean you got you got? Is that correct?
Speaker 3: Or?
Speaker 4: No?
Speaker 3: No?
Speaker 4: Uh, you can order them straight from me. People do
Speaker 4: that if they want them signed, Okay, they can just
Speaker 4: you know.
Speaker 1: So Amazon is printing them on demand.
Speaker 4: Amazon's print on demand. And yeah, when they first started
Speaker 4: to do it, you know when that when that first dropped,
Speaker 4: it went to uh an Amazon what they call it
Speaker 4: for a new there's some category they have that's a
Speaker 4: new publication. That went to number one right away. Well,
Speaker 4: then Amazon throttled it. They had ai that I guess
Speaker 4: read the book and it was not politically correct. So
Speaker 4: Amazon throttled it. Well, my state representative and the mayor
Speaker 4: of Knoxville got a hold of Amazon said in Tennessee,
Speaker 4: we don't allow discrimination, we believe in free speech, and
Speaker 4: Amazon the very next day gave me a positive review.
Speaker 4: I didn't know AI could be so bendable. Yeah. And
Speaker 4: one of the coolest things I've had happened is I
Speaker 4: got a card from JD Vance that somebody'd give him
Speaker 4: a copy of it. State representative had give him a
Speaker 4: copy and he had read it and he sent me
Speaker 4: a card. Wow, that was pretty cool. Yeah, yep, yeah,
Speaker 4: that's great.
Speaker 1: So The Old Men The Conversations that Help Boys Become
Speaker 1: Men by T. L. Tennessee Jones, Tennessee Jones, T. L.
Speaker 2: Tracy, Tennessee Jones Man.
Speaker 1: Yeah, excellent, excellent. Well Blake Backwoods University, June the ninth,
Speaker 1: June ninth, June ninth, be bi weekly, bi weekly show
Speaker 1: and uh yeah, you'll be hearing more from Doctor Lake
Speaker 1: Pickle on the Bear Grease feed.
Speaker 2: Looking forward to it.
Speaker 4: Happy to be here.
Speaker 1: We've got a nice robust feed. We're gonna have to
Speaker 1: start I talk to Brent about this. I think we're
Speaker 1: gonna have to start some episodes with like a description
Speaker 1: of the channel because bear Grease started as just like
Speaker 1: the podcast, the bear Grease podcast, that's just what all
Speaker 1: it was. It actually started with one bi weekly show,
Speaker 1: which was bear Grease Podcast. After a few months, we
Speaker 1: were like, let's take it the weekly and do this
Speaker 1: thing called the Render, which is this round table a
Speaker 1: little bit more of a traditional style podcast, conversational, long
Speaker 1: form stuff. And then we added this Country Life, and
Speaker 1: then now we've added Backwoods University.
Speaker 2: So basically Monday, Wednesday, Friday, just packing them in.
Speaker 1: You got something, You've got no more room for any
Speaker 1: other podcast.
Speaker 4: And that's what we want.
Speaker 2: Listen, unsubscribe from those other ones.
Speaker 1: We need to We need to find a way to
Speaker 1: like service all the category. I guess we just got
Speaker 1: to figure out what fields we're playing in. I mean,
Speaker 1: we're now in the wildlife, Bilisy field, Brent's and the
Speaker 1: I don't know what Brent's doing. I mean, I don't
Speaker 1: know how you would even describe it. When I try
Speaker 1: to describe what Brent does, I'm just like, I just
Speaker 1: listened to it. I bet you'll like it, and I'm
Speaker 1: always right. I'm always right.
Speaker 4: I can't believe how many people that I run into
Speaker 4: that listen to by Our Grease. I mean it surprises me.
Speaker 4: I mean I'll go somewhere to preach, and like there
Speaker 4: was a I was in Chesapeake, Virginia and I was
Speaker 4: going to preach a sportsman's banquet for a church over there,
Speaker 4: and a little kid, probably I bet he was like
Speaker 4: eight ten years old, walked up to me and he said,
Speaker 4: now you were on bear Grease, right, you didn't care
Speaker 4: if I was there. It was an association. Yeah yeah,
Speaker 4: And so that kid, and it's all and it's people
Speaker 4: you wouldn't even think listen to podcast. It's great. Yeah yeah, yep.
Speaker 1: Oh cool. Well, thank you t Al for coming.
Speaker 4: Yep.
Speaker 1: I really appreciate it. Came all the way from East Tennessee,
Speaker 1: like going it all the way from Mississippi. Thank you
Speaker 1: for coming. Happy to be here, yep. And anything else
Speaker 1: we're supposed to.
Speaker 2: Talk about, I don't think so. I think you're covering
Speaker 2: it all.
Speaker 1: Keep the wild places wild, because that's where the bears live.