August 13, 2013 • 35 mins
If there is an American legend who is both real-life and larger-than-life it is Davy Crockett. While he may not have ""kilt him a b'ar"" when he was three, he definitely did personify both the best and the worst of American individualism during the age of Manifest Destiny. Learn all about the man behind the coonskin cap in this episode.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to you stuff you should know from house stuff
Works dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
Josh Clark, and there's Charles W. Chuck Bryant and Jerry's back. Yeah,
where's that little plastic clappy machine? We can just Jerry's back.
(00:25):
Jerry can I mentioned had surgery on her back to
add a third limb. She does not have the third limb,
but she uh is. It's been a while on her
back recuperating, then eventually was in a chair and now
she's walking around and now she can do push ups
with the third arm coming out of her back. It's
(00:46):
pretty awesome. But soon enough Jerry will be like pain
free for the first time this year, which is very excited. Yes,
but for the time being, she's on some pretty dynamite pills.
Oh yeah, I to her. Um, Jerry, how are you
doing over there? So welcome back, Jerry. We didn't know
(01:08):
how much we missed you until you were gone for real.
All right, again the applaustic that's about as much sentiments
we allow. You know, my throat dried up. I had
like some sort of adverse reaction to that. All right,
let's do this. Oh really, yeah, man, fine, let's Davie Crockett.
I should point out first off that when I was
(01:29):
a kid visiting my grandparents in Memphis, Tennessee, Davy Crockett land, Um,
I have a great picture, and people who always say, like,
why don't you ever post the pictures you talk about?
But I had this great picture of me when I
was like five years old. Coon skin cap, fringe, vest, boots,
little plastic bowie, knife, long muzzle loading. Must get. I
(01:54):
think I know this very must get you're talking about. Yeah,
so I was just like totally rigged out and of
cessed with watching the old Davy Crockett show, even though
it was like nineteen and that show ran the fifties.
It was one of those deals like we still grew
up on Gilligan's Island on these older shows. Well, yeah,
I think Disney Walt Disney Presents or something like that.
They ran a lot of that stuff years later. Yeah,
(02:16):
I was way into it. That's awesome because I was
into camping early on, and it was just really fit
the bill for me. I love the song the whole deal. Yeah,
I had a coonskin cap too, But so did Jerry.
The only yes she did h the only extray couch
from all I had was a deer skin water bag
filled with wine. Oh yeah, yeah, a boda bag. Yeah,
(02:37):
I didn't have one, but Emily does and she still
puts wine in it and sneakes it in the concerts.
All right, so let's do it. Uh so, Chuck, you
you made reference to Davy Crockett from the fifties, the
Disney thing, not Daniel Boone. No, Daniel Boone was prior
to Davy Crockett. Davy Crockett became Daniel Boone's successor. Is
(02:59):
the the um personification of the American push westward. For
a long time, David Crockett personified the conquering of the
Indian Um, the wrestling of the bear, taming of this
land and through America, America. Although he spent like his
(03:21):
entire life in Tennessee pretty much, No, that's not true.
He went to Texas, he did, But he spent a
lot of time in Alabama and actually homesteaded there for
a little while around Talladega. Not for too long, though,
for long enough. Like his family in Tennessee are all
very adamant about being a lifelong Tennessee guy, right and
in his heart he would agree with that entirely. Um.
(03:42):
He was born in Tennessee, near Knoxville, Greene County. Yeah,
he uh spent most of his life there, even when
he argue and in O F t um, he was
in Tennessee, I believe for the most part. Um. He Uh.
His autobio bography was titled UM David Crockett of Tennessee
(04:05):
parentheses really yeah not Alabama. Yeah, he went to West
Tennessee for a while too. We'll get to all this,
but yeah, let's go back to the Disney's a volunteer.
So twenty years after, Yeah it is? Is that where
it came from him? No? I don't think so. Okay,
but because he did volunteer, maybe you never know. Maybe
I wonder if that was like kind of a thing
(04:26):
and it wasn't just him. But yeah, the Tennessee is
the volunteer state, and Davy Crockett was a big time volunteer.
Or maybe he felt pressure too because he was in Tennessee.
He's like, I really the peer pressure state. Want to
but I guess I must. Ye. Um, so Disney, I'm
talking about Disney, whether you like it or not, No,
but let's do it. I love that show. So twenty
years after Disney runs five episodes, that's the run of
(04:49):
the Davy Crockett Show. Yeah, there was only five episodes.
I even looked that up because I was like, that
can't be right. Yeah, I saw a hundred of them. Yeah,
you saw those five times each. Um, so they in
from ninety five and you was a kid in nineteen seventy,
one full year before I was born, by the way, Yeah,
I was four. I was still watching it, loving this stuff.
(05:11):
So I had staying power. But what had even more
staying power was Davy Crockett himself, because the Disney thing
ran a full hundred and fifteen years after Davy Crockett died. Yeah,
he was already kind of a legend in his own
time as well. But this Disney thing, there was Disney
Davy Crockett fever in the mid fifties. Yeah. They supposedly
(05:32):
at its peak, five thousand coon skin caps a day
were selling. Within a couple of months of the premiere
of the first Davy Crockett episode, a hundred million dollars
had been made off of the Davy Crockett franchise. Yeah,
(05:52):
he just came on like a ton of bricks and uh,
of course you know the coinskin cap if you Simpsons,
Jebediagh Springfield as ensconcedin, was it bronze? Is that a
bronze statue? I can't really tell. It's on TV and
that cartoon form, so it's a statue. Uh. And we
(06:14):
don't know for sure if he actually wore a coonskin cap.
He did, Well, that's not what I saw. I saw
that Daniel Boone did not for sure, and Davy Crockett
more likely wore wildcatter, fox and possibly coon skin on occasion.
I was gonna say that it was very apropos that
that picture of you all dolled up like Davy Crockett
(06:35):
was taken in Memphis, because that is supposedly the first
time he wore the little fringe e hunting shirt and
the coonskin cap when he had it out from Memphis
to Texas, which we'll talk about later. That's what I saw,
man alive. This is interesting, but I think this illustrates
a really great point about Davy Crockett. There are few
people who definitively lived who have more legends and possible
(06:59):
half truth swirling around them then Davy Crockett yeah. I
think some people out there might even think that he
wasn't even a real dude. It's just like a tall
tale guy. Yeah, you know, he very much lived. Um.
And we got to mention the song. Well. First of all,
Fess Parker started as Davy Crockett. Best Parker also start
as Daniel Boone. Is that right? I guess they were
(07:20):
like it's typecast that um. And he also the the
TV theme song was sung by the Wellington's the famous
song King of the Wild Frontier. UM. But in ninety
four different people recorded it, and all four of them
in the same year recorded the same song landed in
the top ten. That's how popular that song was, or
(07:43):
that's how just kind of um undemanding audiences were in
the fifties radio audience, maybe so. But Best Parker did
one of the virsions. He also did sang yeah, man,
that guy made some dough off of Davy Crockett, unbelievable. Ironically,
he was afraid of snakes, was he really? Isn't that
a wine too? Best Parker h not a winery, not
(08:05):
that I don't know of. That's that's a dingy winery
right there. It's wine pass through. Best Parkers cap there's
some winery that has a name similar to that. Best Parker. Yeah, no,
nont know, Test Parker, I don't know. I know, I'm
getting confused. So I tell him about the Davy Crockett,
the U. S. Armies Davy Crockett. That was a rocket.
(08:28):
Did you see that thing? Uh? No? Was it cool? Yeah? Yeah,
it was in the nineteen sixties the Army. It was
a artillery launcher lightweight that fired mortars that had nuclear warheads,
and they called it the Davy Crockett. Yeah, it fired
seventy pound nuclear warheads. That's what it was designed to do.
And they never deployed it. But it was basically a
bunch of pipes that like you drive up on your
jeep about one to two miles away from the enemy.
(08:51):
In Europe, the Ruskies, I guess, and assembled this thing
real quick and dropped the seventy pound warhead mortaring and
shot it off under the enemy. It was never used,
though not as far as I know. It was tested
and there's pictures of, like, I mean, it might as
well be like a GHI Joe drawing, like the pictures
of this thing being tested with like the jeep and
the guys standing next to it, and there's like, it's
(09:13):
just cool. You have to check that out. Yeah, Luckily,
I don't think they anyone's ever set off a warhead
on anybody in battle, aside from Herashima Nagasaki, aside from us.
All right, Davy Crockett shameful, um alright. So he was
born in Tennessee in six uh. At twelve years old,
(09:34):
his dad sent him off to this dude, Jacob Siler,
to help drive cattle to Virginia, and like, you know,
as a twelve year old, like they're working hard back then,
and this dude, the job ended up, you know, ended
and the Silas guy like forcibly detained him as like
(09:55):
a slave of sorts. And he was like, screw this,
I'm gonna a hike seven miles in the snow out
of here in the middle of the night. What's crazy
is in two hours? Yeah, he ran it. I don't
even think I could run on a flat plane seven
miles and two hours. Well, they don't write songs and
TV shows about either, No, they didn't. Actually, we did
(10:16):
have a TV show in a song about us. Yeah,
but we commissioned it virtually. Yeah, that's true. Yeah, alright,
So he drops out of school while he does a
lot of hooky, and his dad gets pretty ticked off
at him. So he's like, basically, I'm gonna leave home
at a young age because I'm not into the school
and thing. Yeah he um. He for across his lifetime
(10:38):
he became a very successful person. Um, and he kind
of wore the fact that he didn't have much school
and as a badge of honor, like he was very
proud of how far he'd gotten in life without formal education. Um.
But yeah, as a kid, he hated school. Is the
impression I have. Yeah. He called it a strategic withdrawal.
(11:00):
Left for two and a half years, came home like
a grown person. It was like sixteen, and his family
was like, who is this larger version of my son?
And they forgave him and it was all good. Yeah.
He actually stuck around and um, helped work off some
of his father's seventies six dollar debt for a year,
and went to school as a peace offering for another
(11:21):
six months, and then said okay, let's to forget it.
I'm gonna go make my own way. And this is
when he begins to volunteer. That's right, volunteered with the
Tennessee Militia. Yeah, his military career started. There lots of
militia action going on, like he was in a bunch
of different militias. It seemed like, yeah, and what he
was part of. UM is one of the more despicable
parts of American history, the removal of Indians, specifically, in
(11:44):
this case, the Southern Indians from their lands. There was
a lot of land UM in what are now the
Southern United States and southeastern United States that was right
for cotton growing, and there were a lot of people
who on at that land, and there were a lot
of treaties. Basically, the the militias would go in battle
(12:09):
the Creeks or the Choctaws or the Cherokees or whoever,
and UM then after their defeat, would force a treaty
on them. And Andrew Jackson, who later became president, was
personally responsible for nine of eleven treaties between eighteen fourteen
and eighteen twenty four, which means nine of eleven Indian massacres.
(12:30):
Basically the American h and there are massacres on both sides,
and Davy Crockett actually took place in one of the massacres.
A a attributive massacre, right, yeah. I think that was
his first military duty. He enlisted to avenge the attack
on Fort MEM's, Alabama, and with Andrew Jackson, Uh did
so Indian massacre right, very sad. Yeah, it was the
(12:55):
name of the town was Tolosa Hatchie and it was
in Alabama. Um. And I believe they killed about two
d Indian men and uh eighty four women and children
were captured. And then whoever he's left alive, I guess
Andrew Jackson came in and negotiated a treaty. They probably
(13:16):
kept one man alive to sign the right exactly, and
it basically said all the rest of you have to
get off this land, but you can go west. And
then as this happened time and time again, UM, more
and more Americans moved south and established plantations around this time.
So that's the context of what was going on in Davy.
Crockett was volunteering with the militia basically. Yeah, and it
(13:37):
seemed like he really hoped all over the place between like, uh,
some military militia work, because these are when you enlisted.
It was like a ninety day enlistment. It wasn't like
years and years, UM and then like some political work
before he you know, got real serious. He was a
town commissioner for a little while. He was a Justice
of the Piece for a couple of years. So he
(13:59):
was just sort of floating around, a little militia work,
a little political work, Indian fighting. Yeah, he was a
man of many fringe jackets. I guess he really was. Well, uh,
before we keep going, you want to do a message break, Yeah,
I think it's a good time. And then things get
serious for Davy Crockett. So we were talking Chuck about um,
(14:22):
how Davy Crockett wore many many hats, and we want
to say also that he although he was an Indian
fighter and actually became very much respected as one. That's
part of his initial legend was that he was an
Indian fighter, which was very much admired among UM Americans
(14:43):
at the time. UM. He eventually it parted from that
image very publicly, but first he kind of had to
create a public platform to do that on I guess right. Yeah,
he Uh. He was a commissioner for a while in
UM Tennessee, and then he was elected to the Tennessee
(15:06):
Legislature and then finally in UM he won a seat
in Congress. Yeah, his first his first like he was
actual Congressional Representative Tennessee seven, that's right, and served two
terms and then lost basically the third term because he
(15:30):
came out so vehemently opposed to what Jackson was doing
with like taking back the land. Yeah. So the Supreme
Court ruled that, um, that that Native Americans had a
right to occupancy. Yes, they can live in North America,
but that is trumped by Americans right of discovery. Somehow
(15:51):
they decided that we discovered this land that you already
lived on, which trumps your right to live on it.
Did that anyone ever? Say? No, no, no, we discovered
it because we're here, right, And they were cut down
where they stood. Um. So the the I guess the
idea the issue of Indian removal in this time was
being played out in the courts. Andrew Jackson becomes president,
(16:13):
gets the Indian Removal Act passed through, which basically says,
I'm the president, I deal with treaties with Indians. I'm
taking this out of the hands of the courts, and
I'm by the way, Andrew Jackson, And you know how
I feel about Indian removal. Y'all can get out west right,
and apparently this is egregious enough to make David Krack
would say, you know what, I'm totally rethinking this land
(16:34):
use policy, this land grab, the Indian Removal Act. And
even though we're both from Tennessee and we're both in
the same political party, I'm publicly separating myself from you
and your policies. Mr President. That was a big deal
on He lost because of it, he did, but he
lost very narrowly, I believe two fifty two votes. Um.
And actually, in our we have a video series people
(16:56):
called Trapped in a Meeting, And in this week's Trapped
in a Meeting, we learned that while Andrew Jackson was
in office, he had an assassination attempt on his life.
And Davy Crockett, this guy like this, this mentally ill guy,
went to shoot Andrew Jackson on the steps of the Capitol.
I think you remember we talked about in the Insanity
Defense episode. Yeah, and Davy Crockett was one of the
(17:17):
guys who subdued. He like jumped into action because he's
Davy Crockett. Yeah, even though they already a post one
another politically at this poet's still going to help save
the President stand up guy. Yeah, Davy Crock he was.
It turned out to be a pretty cool dude. Um.
So he loses that after for his third bid, third
consecutive term, he loses, uh, his bid, and um he
(17:41):
goes off and starts making money by making and selling
barrel staves, like the slats he used to make whiskey
and wine barrels. It's apparently it's pretty lucrative at the time. Yeah,
he almost doing it though. Yeah, there was a boat
wreck on the Mississippi River carrying those barrel staves and
he almost died then. And he almost died earlier in
his life when he had malaria when he was home
(18:02):
studying in Alabama. So he's he you know, he was
a rough and tumble guy, you know. Um. Supposedly also
during this time he killed a hundred and five bears
in a year, killed him one when he was only three,
which well, that's a Disney legend. And also we should
say that the idea that he was a King of
the Wild Frontier, that term, that label came directly from
(18:23):
Disney as well. He obviously didn't wrestle a bear when
he was only three, but he was a very well
known bear hunter. Um. Whether he killed a hundred and
five or not, that's kind of up for debate. But
if you want to read his firsthand account of it,
there's an awesome article called bear Hunting in Tennessee Colan
Davy Crockett tells Tall Tales. It's on George Mason University's website.
(18:48):
Check it out. It's he's a pretty awesome author. He
was talking about how he's hunting with his eight dogs,
and his dogs are the best dogs on the planet,
flushing out bear. Um. And he saw some other fellas
come up and they wanted to hunt with him, and
they had like twenty dogs, but all the dogs were terrible.
He said they couldn't bark at a bear without having
to lean up against a tree to rest for a
(19:09):
little while. Um. So he left the dogs behind and
let him chew on some bare bones and he took
his dogs out. It's awesome, like this guy is totally
uneducated frontiersman who also went to Congress and kind of
a humorous too. Yeah. I think the song actually originally went,
um hike seven miles in the snow and two hours
(19:31):
when he was only twelve, and they're like, let's just
make something up. Killed him a bear. It wasn't even
killed it's k I l T killed him a bar. Yeah. Yeah,
um probe that song is still just like instantly comes
in my head, the lyrics and everything. So he lost
his third congressional bid um and then he starts gaining
(19:53):
more fame and notoriety. And this is at a time
where you know, it's it's it was pre internet. Yeah,
was the pre internet a little it was pre Internet,
and it was a time where it was you know,
it wasn't the easiest thing to gain this kind of notoriety.
Like that just shows how popular he was, Like he
was one of the most famous people in the country. Um,
(20:14):
they had these uh Davy Crockett Almanacs published um lots
of books written about him. One lied and said that
it was an autobiography to sell books, and the Almanacs
actually came out of that. They used that book as
the basis of it. Yeah. So so that just kind
of perpetuated all these lies, and since it was attributed
(20:34):
to him, that gave him a reputation for spinning tall
tales about himself. But she didn't necessarily that that wasn't
necessarily untrue. He just didn't spin him quite as much
as as other people did about him. There was a
play by James Kirk Paulding called The Line of the West,
and the character Nimrod Wildfire was based on Davy Crockett.
(20:56):
And um, he finally did get together with with of
because as you said, he wasn't educated, so he had
got a little help. But he eventually did write his
own autobiography with with the help of a co author. Yeah,
he did. And um you can very much compare it
to Barack Obama writing The Audacity of Hope, because it
was released at a time when the Whigs were starting
(21:17):
to tout Um Davy Crockett as a possible challenger I
guess to Andrew Jackson for the presidency. Uh A Native
A Native A narrative of the life of Davy Crockett
of the State of Tennessee by Thomas Chilton, and Davy
Crockett was the official one. Yeah. So the problem is
(21:37):
Chuck he Um didn't win his re election bid, so
his his um idea of going into the presidency. The
primary I guess in eighteen thirty six was that his
plan that yeah, he was going along with that, and
some of the Whigs were like, let's do it. But
since he he was knocked out of Congress in eighteen
(22:00):
thirty five, he did make a third trip back to
Congress from eighteen to eighteen thirty five, but then he
was defeated by a peg leg lawyer, yeah, named Adam Huntsman. Yeah. Um,
very narrowly, but he lost. So I think at that
point he was like, I'm kind of done with Congress
for a while. Yeah, And that his losing to the
(22:21):
that peg leg lawyer, as he was dubbed um, gave
rise to his famous quote, Uh, since you have chosen
to elect a man with a timber toe to succeed me,
you may all go to Hell and I will go
to Texas. And he was basically like, I want to
go check out Texas and see what's out there. You know.
This was like he didn't go westward, like, you know,
(22:43):
to California anything like that. Like Texas was super west
at the time. Yeah, and it was a Mexican state
that was um in a struggle for independence. There was
a rebellion going on there. Yeah, that's not why I
went though. No, apparently he got caught up in that.
But he went there just to explore and I was
going to settle down with his family and just you know,
live on the hand, right, there's a lot of money
to be made there. Well, yeah, he said, what I've
(23:04):
seen of Texas, there is a world of country here
to settle. I had rather be in my present situation
than to be elected to a seat in Congress for life.
So he really thumbed his nose at politics at that time.
Or he was just really happy too with Texas. Yeah,
that's true. Um. He also it didn't take very long
for him to get there, and I guess get caught
up in the rebellion that was going on that really
(23:27):
kind of spoke to him in his spirit. Yeah. They
said he loved a good fight. Yeah. I think he
just couldn't resist. Yeah. Um, well, I mean he was
a bear hunter for goodness sake. Um. So he gets
there and um basically aligns himself with the rebel movement
who asked him in his traveling companion to sign an
oath of allegiance to it, and uh, in it, it
(23:49):
basically says like I Davy Crockett am pledge allegiance to
this rebellion and any future government that may come out
of it. David Krack is like, I'm not signing that
in she put Republican before government because he wasn't about
to sign his allegiance over to some you know, tyrannical
government that came out of this rebellion. He didn't know.
So he was one to head his bets, that's right,
(24:12):
very smartly, so he signed it and um very famously,
Uh died at the Siege of the Alamo, which I
know you have visited the Alamo and there's no basement.
There's no basement, and it's I always hear from everybody
that visits. I have not how small it is. Everyone's
always underwhelmed. It's basically like one room. Yeah. Yeah. Umi
(24:32):
took me there and it's in San Antonio. You go
in and you're like, it's this lump of history in
the middle of downtown San Antonio. Yeah, and it's just
it's like was this a bank or was it the Alamo? Yeah,
I mean like there's it's just there's a couple of
side rooms, but it's really just one main room. Yeah.
I always just pictured, you know, some huge fort. Yeah
you'd think so, And um, I'll visit it one day
(24:55):
for sure. The gardens, the grounds are amazing. Yeah, yeah,
it's it's very cool. It's worth going to for sure. Yeah.
Well I love being historical landmarks. Do you know you
should do south by Southwest to fly into San Antonio
and drive to Austin. Yeah, that's what you did, right.
So the Alamo is great. I'm gonna visit. He famously
died defending the Alamo, but there are many versions of
(25:16):
how that exactly that went down from um died surrounded
by sixteen dead Mexicans that he killed with his hand
on a knife in the back of one. Two captured
and executed. Two killed at the very beginning of the
thing and didn't even see much action. Yeah, but we
think we have a pretty definitive story. Yeah, there's um
(25:39):
some other stuff that he supposedly did do. Like he
was um documented is running all over the Alamo, like
keeping everybody animated, keeping one write exactly. UM. And he
supposedly played his fiddle a lot like very rousing tune,
just tried to keep everyone's spirits and energy up and
they're defending the small little building. Um. He supposedly took
(26:02):
out five gunners in succession who were trying to shoot
a cannon at the Alamo with Old Betsy his musket. Yeah.
And um. He also supposedly came very close to hitting
um Antonio Santa Anna, the general who was leading the siege. Um,
but just missed him, even though Santa Anna thought he
(26:23):
was well out of range of the guns. And I
see him, but there's no way he can do yeah, exactly. Um.
So he did do some stuff. He's documented to doing
something probably truthful. But the problem there was always a
problem with how he died, in that he was captured,
and a great brave Indian fighting bear hunter like is
(26:44):
who represents all of America, isn't supposed to be captured
because if you capture, that means you put your gun
down or you didn't die fighting. Well, I supposed he
ran out of bullets and then we started clubbing them
with his gun, killing them with his you know, bare
hands in a in a butt of a gun. Right,
So that's the fictitious version. The other versions from eyewitnesses
(27:04):
contradict that. So America long struggled with how Davy Crockett died.
And then in um the diary of one of the
Mexican Army soldiers who was there at the siege was
published and um, it basically laid to rest, like, yes,
David Crockett was among those captured. It was five or
(27:26):
six people, yep, like everybody else had been killed or
or um, we're women basically uh. And Crockett was among
like five or six soldiers who were captured. Despite Santa
Anna Um saying don't take any prisoners, they did anyway, Yeah,
they did, but he was not. Um the account says
that it was not He wasn't shamed, though he still
(27:49):
died bravely. They were bayonetted and shot. And the quote
pain is quote was the Mexican soldier whose diary these
unfortunates died with complaining without humiliating themselves before their tortures.
So I think it was like one of those Red
Dawn scenes where they start singing America the Beautiful. Yeah,
probably you know, like you're about to shoot me, but
(28:11):
my head is held high, or like who is it
we did last week? The the lady, Oh, Mota Hary, Yeah,
Mota Hary. Yeah. Davy crock and Mana Hary they're virtually indistinguishable,
that's right. So his reputation remained intact. And uh that
the Alamo and then Walt disn't got a hold of it,
and a hundred years later became a sensation. Yeah. I
(28:31):
mean even even beyond the remaining in tech dying at
the Alamo, defending the Alumo. It's like mushroom clouded his
personality and his reputation is a legend. Like it just
sealed it forever, like Davy Crockett, American hero, King of
the wild front here. Yeah, Timbertoe No, not a Timber too.
I actually had to look that up. I was like,
(28:52):
what does that mean. I was like, oh, I wouldn't
like got it. He was pretty clever. Oh and that quote,
by the way, was said while he was drinking with
his buddies in Memphis at the Union Hotel. And I
did a little digging, and that is the Union Hotel
was what is now the grounds of Auto Zone Park
(29:13):
where the Memphis Redbirds playball. Oh yeah, yeah, I need
to get back to Memphis. My family has all gone
from there now, so aside from visiting the graves of
my grandparents, there's really no other reason to go back.
The grave of Elvis. Yeah, I've been there. Yeah, we'll
go again, all right. That the station not gonna fund itself, Yeah,
(29:34):
that's true. Um, okay, you got anything else, Davy Crockett? Oh,
you know what, I have one other thing. Something occurred
to me while we were researching this. Um, if you
think of Davy Crockett and you're an American, it's just
all these images come to mind. It's the national hero,
and there's he's complex and everything. Think about how every
(29:56):
single country has at least somebody like that, and just
how totally unaware we are of those people that are
like that in all those other countries. Yeah, like who
was Finland's Davy Crockett exactly? Yeah, you know, but it's
neat to think that there's somebody like that out there
for at least one for every country on the map.
(30:16):
Francais that Davy Crockett. I'm sure Napoleon Davy Croquette. Uh yeah.
And you know what, in listener, man, we should ask
for your country's version Davy Crockett. Do that. Okay, So
until then, UM, if you want to learn a little
more about Davy Crockett, you can me in this article
(30:38):
that I wrote years and years ago, Um, by searching
Davy Crockett in the search bar, and that's d A. V. Y.
The early nineteenth century version of Davy and where else?
What was that website we also used to get this information?
Was that? Uh, if you look in the source the
source list on the Lots More Information page of my article,
it's in there. There's some good stuff. So I think
(31:00):
it's like the Texas Online Handbook maybe ye, something like that. Yeah,
and don't forget to go read that first person account
of bear hunting with Davy Crockett on George Mason University website.
Since I said George Mason, I mean it's time for
listening now. Uh. This is about um e c T
electro convulsive therapy that we've podcasted on and about civil
(31:25):
rights of people forced into stuff like this, and it's
from Jamie. Hey, guys, in your ECT podcast you mentioned
anti psychiatry with regards to the resistance of e c T.
Hope that one day you'll do a podcast about the
Consumer Survivor X patient movement c s X. It's one
of the remaining civil rights movements in the country and
(31:46):
around the world. Mind Freedom dot Org is a great
resource to start with. It was one of the first
CSX organizations and insistence and still going strong today. Robert
Whittaker A journalist wrote Mad in America, where he describes
inventors of torture devices peddling their machines to various mental
institutions which held the belief that patients can be shocked
or tortured into sanity. Lobotomies were finally discontinued because storzine
(32:09):
was introduced as the new lobotomy to a pill that
metrosol injections and insulin shock were tortuous and highly feared
by patients who received them. Much of when what went
on in one flow of the Cuckoo's nest is still
true for today's modern institutions, including forced east. Nowadays, the
tortures are more subtle. I was on a drug personally
(32:30):
called Howdall that to this day I believe would make
an excellent torture drug. I was also literally blinded by
another drug called h mellaril, which was forced upon me
while in a hospital. My eyesight was restored many layers
many years later, thanks to Emory Eye Center here in Atlanta,
but I was never warned about the possibile side effects
(32:52):
of mellaril or given a choice to take it or not.
Today's modern medications routinely caused diabetes and rapid weight gain,
as well as dependence in early death. When people try
to discontinue their use, their face with symptoms far worse
than symptoms for which they were originally treated. In fact,
many school shooters were either on one of these drugs
or drawing from them. When you do the research, I
(33:12):
was a patient in the mental health system for twenty
plus years and now I operate an alternative to traditional
mental health services Indicator Georgia, which is near where I live.
Recovery is possible when you reclaim your power taken from
you in psychiatry, and guys, I'm not anti psychiatry, but
I am no longer blinded or threatened by the tactics
that they can sometimes use. I believe in civil rights
(33:35):
for people who have been diagnosed and labeled as mentally ill.
And please understand that anyone walking into a psychiatrist office
can effortlessly walk out with the label that will follow
them for the rest of their lives. Yeah, there's a
stigma totally. So I hope you will consider UH podcasting
on this powerful but often oppressed the civil rights movement.
I love I love the podcast on a lot, Thanks
(33:57):
a lot Jamie have it is very interesting. I've not
heard of that before. Yeah, C S C SX movie.
I will definitely be checking it out to. That is
a great listener mail where we're told about something we've
never heard of before in our entire lives but find
intensely interesting. That's a good one, thanks, Jamie. Um. If
you oh yeah, I forgot Um. If you have a
(34:20):
national hero in your country and you're not in the US,
like myth and legend in truth all wrapped up sort
of like Davy profit right, UM, we want to know
who that is and know a little bit about him
if you're in the US or her. Oh yeah, good one,
chuck UM. If you're in the US, you can still
have an opportunity to write and tell us something that
(34:42):
we don't know about that's intensely interesting. There's your homework,
everybody to work. Uh. You can tweet to us at
s Y s K podcast on Twitter. I should say,
I don't want to presume everybody knows what tweeting is. UM.
On Facebook dot com, you can join us at stuff
you should know, that's our page name. You can send
(35:03):
us an email to Stuff Podcast at Discovery dot com,
and you can join us on our website, The very Awesome,
the Inimitable, the Amazing. Stuff you Should Know dot com
For more on this and thousands of other topics. Is
it How Stuff Works dot Com. This episode of Stuff
(35:31):
You Should Know is brought to you by State Farm
Welcome to you stuff you should know from house stuff
Works dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
Josh Clark, and there's Charles W. Chuck Bryant and Jerry's back. Yeah,
where's that little plastic clappy machine? We can just Jerry's back.
(00:25):
Jerry can I mentioned had surgery on her back to
add a third limb. She does not have the third limb,
but she uh is. It's been a while on her
back recuperating, then eventually was in a chair and now
she's walking around and now she can do push ups
with the third arm coming out of her back. It's
(00:46):
pretty awesome. But soon enough Jerry will be like pain
free for the first time this year, which is very excited. Yes,
but for the time being, she's on some pretty dynamite pills.
Oh yeah, I to her. Um, Jerry, how are you
doing over there? So welcome back, Jerry. We didn't know
(01:08):
how much we missed you until you were gone for real.
All right, again the applaustic that's about as much sentiments
we allow. You know, my throat dried up. I had
like some sort of adverse reaction to that. All right,
let's do this. Oh really, yeah, man, fine, let's Davie Crockett.
I should point out first off that when I was
(01:29):
a kid visiting my grandparents in Memphis, Tennessee, Davy Crockett land, Um,
I have a great picture, and people who always say, like,
why don't you ever post the pictures you talk about?
But I had this great picture of me when I
was like five years old. Coon skin cap, fringe, vest, boots,
little plastic bowie, knife, long muzzle loading. Must get. I
(01:54):
think I know this very must get you're talking about. Yeah,
so I was just like totally rigged out and of
cessed with watching the old Davy Crockett show, even though
it was like nineteen and that show ran the fifties.
It was one of those deals like we still grew
up on Gilligan's Island on these older shows. Well, yeah,
I think Disney Walt Disney Presents or something like that.
They ran a lot of that stuff years later. Yeah,
(02:16):
I was way into it. That's awesome because I was
into camping early on, and it was just really fit
the bill for me. I love the song the whole deal. Yeah,
I had a coonskin cap too, But so did Jerry.
The only yes she did h the only extray couch
from all I had was a deer skin water bag
filled with wine. Oh yeah, yeah, a boda bag. Yeah,
(02:37):
I didn't have one, but Emily does and she still
puts wine in it and sneakes it in the concerts.
All right, so let's do it. Uh so, Chuck, you
you made reference to Davy Crockett from the fifties, the
Disney thing, not Daniel Boone. No, Daniel Boone was prior
to Davy Crockett. Davy Crockett became Daniel Boone's successor. Is
(02:59):
the the um personification of the American push westward. For
a long time, David Crockett personified the conquering of the
Indian Um, the wrestling of the bear, taming of this
land and through America, America. Although he spent like his
(03:21):
entire life in Tennessee pretty much, No, that's not true.
He went to Texas, he did, But he spent a
lot of time in Alabama and actually homesteaded there for
a little while around Talladega. Not for too long, though,
for long enough. Like his family in Tennessee are all
very adamant about being a lifelong Tennessee guy, right and
in his heart he would agree with that entirely. Um.
(03:42):
He was born in Tennessee, near Knoxville, Greene County. Yeah,
he uh spent most of his life there, even when
he argue and in O F t um, he was
in Tennessee, I believe for the most part. Um. He Uh.
His autobio bography was titled UM David Crockett of Tennessee
(04:05):
parentheses really yeah not Alabama. Yeah, he went to West
Tennessee for a while too. We'll get to all this,
but yeah, let's go back to the Disney's a volunteer.
So twenty years after, Yeah it is? Is that where
it came from him? No? I don't think so. Okay,
but because he did volunteer, maybe you never know. Maybe
I wonder if that was like kind of a thing
(04:26):
and it wasn't just him. But yeah, the Tennessee is
the volunteer state, and Davy Crockett was a big time volunteer.
Or maybe he felt pressure too because he was in Tennessee.
He's like, I really the peer pressure state. Want to
but I guess I must. Ye. Um, so Disney, I'm
talking about Disney, whether you like it or not, No,
but let's do it. I love that show. So twenty
years after Disney runs five episodes, that's the run of
(04:49):
the Davy Crockett Show. Yeah, there was only five episodes.
I even looked that up because I was like, that
can't be right. Yeah, I saw a hundred of them. Yeah,
you saw those five times each. Um, so they in
from ninety five and you was a kid in nineteen seventy,
one full year before I was born, by the way, Yeah,
I was four. I was still watching it, loving this stuff.
(05:11):
So I had staying power. But what had even more
staying power was Davy Crockett himself, because the Disney thing
ran a full hundred and fifteen years after Davy Crockett died. Yeah,
he was already kind of a legend in his own
time as well. But this Disney thing, there was Disney
Davy Crockett fever in the mid fifties. Yeah. They supposedly
(05:32):
at its peak, five thousand coon skin caps a day
were selling. Within a couple of months of the premiere
of the first Davy Crockett episode, a hundred million dollars
had been made off of the Davy Crockett franchise. Yeah,
(05:52):
he just came on like a ton of bricks and uh,
of course you know the coinskin cap if you Simpsons,
Jebediagh Springfield as ensconcedin, was it bronze? Is that a
bronze statue? I can't really tell. It's on TV and
that cartoon form, so it's a statue. Uh. And we
(06:14):
don't know for sure if he actually wore a coonskin cap.
He did, Well, that's not what I saw. I saw
that Daniel Boone did not for sure, and Davy Crockett
more likely wore wildcatter, fox and possibly coon skin on occasion.
I was gonna say that it was very apropos that
that picture of you all dolled up like Davy Crockett
(06:35):
was taken in Memphis, because that is supposedly the first
time he wore the little fringe e hunting shirt and
the coonskin cap when he had it out from Memphis
to Texas, which we'll talk about later. That's what I saw,
man alive. This is interesting, but I think this illustrates
a really great point about Davy Crockett. There are few
people who definitively lived who have more legends and possible
(06:59):
half truth swirling around them then Davy Crockett yeah. I
think some people out there might even think that he
wasn't even a real dude. It's just like a tall
tale guy. Yeah, you know, he very much lived. Um.
And we got to mention the song. Well. First of all,
Fess Parker started as Davy Crockett. Best Parker also start
as Daniel Boone. Is that right? I guess they were
(07:20):
like it's typecast that um. And he also the the
TV theme song was sung by the Wellington's the famous
song King of the Wild Frontier. UM. But in ninety
four different people recorded it, and all four of them
in the same year recorded the same song landed in
the top ten. That's how popular that song was, or
(07:43):
that's how just kind of um undemanding audiences were in
the fifties radio audience, maybe so. But Best Parker did
one of the virsions. He also did sang yeah, man,
that guy made some dough off of Davy Crockett, unbelievable. Ironically,
he was afraid of snakes, was he really? Isn't that
a wine too? Best Parker h not a winery, not
(08:05):
that I don't know of. That's that's a dingy winery
right there. It's wine pass through. Best Parkers cap there's
some winery that has a name similar to that. Best Parker. Yeah, no,
nont know, Test Parker, I don't know. I know, I'm
getting confused. So I tell him about the Davy Crockett,
the U. S. Armies Davy Crockett. That was a rocket.
(08:28):
Did you see that thing? Uh? No? Was it cool? Yeah? Yeah,
it was in the nineteen sixties the Army. It was
a artillery launcher lightweight that fired mortars that had nuclear warheads,
and they called it the Davy Crockett. Yeah, it fired
seventy pound nuclear warheads. That's what it was designed to do.
And they never deployed it. But it was basically a
bunch of pipes that like you drive up on your
jeep about one to two miles away from the enemy.
(08:51):
In Europe, the Ruskies, I guess, and assembled this thing
real quick and dropped the seventy pound warhead mortaring and
shot it off under the enemy. It was never used,
though not as far as I know. It was tested
and there's pictures of, like, I mean, it might as
well be like a GHI Joe drawing, like the pictures
of this thing being tested with like the jeep and
the guys standing next to it, and there's like, it's
(09:13):
just cool. You have to check that out. Yeah, Luckily,
I don't think they anyone's ever set off a warhead
on anybody in battle, aside from Herashima Nagasaki, aside from us.
All right, Davy Crockett shameful, um alright. So he was
born in Tennessee in six uh. At twelve years old,
(09:34):
his dad sent him off to this dude, Jacob Siler,
to help drive cattle to Virginia, and like, you know,
as a twelve year old, like they're working hard back then,
and this dude, the job ended up, you know, ended
and the Silas guy like forcibly detained him as like
(09:55):
a slave of sorts. And he was like, screw this,
I'm gonna a hike seven miles in the snow out
of here in the middle of the night. What's crazy
is in two hours? Yeah, he ran it. I don't
even think I could run on a flat plane seven
miles and two hours. Well, they don't write songs and
TV shows about either, No, they didn't. Actually, we did
(10:16):
have a TV show in a song about us. Yeah,
but we commissioned it virtually. Yeah, that's true. Yeah, alright,
So he drops out of school while he does a
lot of hooky, and his dad gets pretty ticked off
at him. So he's like, basically, I'm gonna leave home
at a young age because I'm not into the school
and thing. Yeah he um. He for across his lifetime
(10:38):
he became a very successful person. Um, and he kind
of wore the fact that he didn't have much school
and as a badge of honor, like he was very
proud of how far he'd gotten in life without formal education. Um.
But yeah, as a kid, he hated school. Is the
impression I have. Yeah. He called it a strategic withdrawal.
(11:00):
Left for two and a half years, came home like
a grown person. It was like sixteen, and his family
was like, who is this larger version of my son?
And they forgave him and it was all good. Yeah.
He actually stuck around and um, helped work off some
of his father's seventies six dollar debt for a year,
and went to school as a peace offering for another
(11:21):
six months, and then said okay, let's to forget it.
I'm gonna go make my own way. And this is
when he begins to volunteer. That's right, volunteered with the
Tennessee Militia. Yeah, his military career started. There lots of
militia action going on, like he was in a bunch
of different militias. It seemed like, yeah, and what he
was part of. UM is one of the more despicable
parts of American history, the removal of Indians, specifically, in
(11:44):
this case, the Southern Indians from their lands. There was
a lot of land UM in what are now the
Southern United States and southeastern United States that was right
for cotton growing, and there were a lot of people
who on at that land, and there were a lot
of treaties. Basically, the the militias would go in battle
(12:09):
the Creeks or the Choctaws or the Cherokees or whoever,
and UM then after their defeat, would force a treaty
on them. And Andrew Jackson, who later became president, was
personally responsible for nine of eleven treaties between eighteen fourteen
and eighteen twenty four, which means nine of eleven Indian massacres.
(12:30):
Basically the American h and there are massacres on both sides,
and Davy Crockett actually took place in one of the massacres.
A a attributive massacre, right, yeah. I think that was
his first military duty. He enlisted to avenge the attack
on Fort MEM's, Alabama, and with Andrew Jackson, Uh did
so Indian massacre right, very sad. Yeah, it was the
(12:55):
name of the town was Tolosa Hatchie and it was
in Alabama. Um. And I believe they killed about two
d Indian men and uh eighty four women and children
were captured. And then whoever he's left alive, I guess
Andrew Jackson came in and negotiated a treaty. They probably
(13:16):
kept one man alive to sign the right exactly, and
it basically said all the rest of you have to
get off this land, but you can go west. And
then as this happened time and time again, UM, more
and more Americans moved south and established plantations around this time.
So that's the context of what was going on in Davy.
Crockett was volunteering with the militia basically. Yeah, and it
(13:37):
seemed like he really hoped all over the place between like, uh,
some military militia work, because these are when you enlisted.
It was like a ninety day enlistment. It wasn't like
years and years, UM and then like some political work
before he you know, got real serious. He was a
town commissioner for a little while. He was a Justice
of the Piece for a couple of years. So he
(13:59):
was just sort of floating around, a little militia work,
a little political work, Indian fighting. Yeah, he was a
man of many fringe jackets. I guess he really was. Well, uh,
before we keep going, you want to do a message break, Yeah,
I think it's a good time. And then things get
serious for Davy Crockett. So we were talking Chuck about um,
(14:22):
how Davy Crockett wore many many hats, and we want
to say also that he although he was an Indian
fighter and actually became very much respected as one. That's
part of his initial legend was that he was an
Indian fighter, which was very much admired among UM Americans
(14:43):
at the time. UM. He eventually it parted from that
image very publicly, but first he kind of had to
create a public platform to do that on I guess right. Yeah,
he Uh. He was a commissioner for a while in
UM Tennessee, and then he was elected to the Tennessee
(15:06):
Legislature and then finally in UM he won a seat
in Congress. Yeah, his first his first like he was
actual Congressional Representative Tennessee seven, that's right, and served two
terms and then lost basically the third term because he
(15:30):
came out so vehemently opposed to what Jackson was doing
with like taking back the land. Yeah. So the Supreme
Court ruled that, um, that that Native Americans had a
right to occupancy. Yes, they can live in North America,
but that is trumped by Americans right of discovery. Somehow
(15:51):
they decided that we discovered this land that you already
lived on, which trumps your right to live on it.
Did that anyone ever? Say? No, no, no, we discovered
it because we're here, right, And they were cut down
where they stood. Um. So the the I guess the
idea the issue of Indian removal in this time was
being played out in the courts. Andrew Jackson becomes president,
(16:13):
gets the Indian Removal Act passed through, which basically says,
I'm the president, I deal with treaties with Indians. I'm
taking this out of the hands of the courts, and
I'm by the way, Andrew Jackson, And you know how
I feel about Indian removal. Y'all can get out west right,
and apparently this is egregious enough to make David Krack
would say, you know what, I'm totally rethinking this land
(16:34):
use policy, this land grab, the Indian Removal Act. And
even though we're both from Tennessee and we're both in
the same political party, I'm publicly separating myself from you
and your policies. Mr President. That was a big deal
on He lost because of it, he did, but he
lost very narrowly, I believe two fifty two votes. Um.
And actually, in our we have a video series people
(16:56):
called Trapped in a Meeting, And in this week's Trapped
in a Meeting, we learned that while Andrew Jackson was
in office, he had an assassination attempt on his life.
And Davy Crockett, this guy like this, this mentally ill guy,
went to shoot Andrew Jackson on the steps of the Capitol.
I think you remember we talked about in the Insanity
Defense episode. Yeah, and Davy Crockett was one of the
(17:17):
guys who subdued. He like jumped into action because he's
Davy Crockett. Yeah, even though they already a post one
another politically at this poet's still going to help save
the President stand up guy. Yeah, Davy Crock he was.
It turned out to be a pretty cool dude. Um.
So he loses that after for his third bid, third
consecutive term, he loses, uh, his bid, and um he
(17:41):
goes off and starts making money by making and selling
barrel staves, like the slats he used to make whiskey
and wine barrels. It's apparently it's pretty lucrative at the time. Yeah,
he almost doing it though. Yeah, there was a boat
wreck on the Mississippi River carrying those barrel staves and
he almost died then. And he almost died earlier in
his life when he had malaria when he was home
(18:02):
studying in Alabama. So he's he you know, he was
a rough and tumble guy, you know. Um. Supposedly also
during this time he killed a hundred and five bears
in a year, killed him one when he was only three,
which well, that's a Disney legend. And also we should
say that the idea that he was a King of
the Wild Frontier, that term, that label came directly from
(18:23):
Disney as well. He obviously didn't wrestle a bear when
he was only three, but he was a very well
known bear hunter. Um. Whether he killed a hundred and
five or not, that's kind of up for debate. But
if you want to read his firsthand account of it,
there's an awesome article called bear Hunting in Tennessee Colan
Davy Crockett tells Tall Tales. It's on George Mason University's website.
(18:48):
Check it out. It's he's a pretty awesome author. He
was talking about how he's hunting with his eight dogs,
and his dogs are the best dogs on the planet,
flushing out bear. Um. And he saw some other fellas
come up and they wanted to hunt with him, and
they had like twenty dogs, but all the dogs were terrible.
He said they couldn't bark at a bear without having
to lean up against a tree to rest for a
(19:09):
little while. Um. So he left the dogs behind and
let him chew on some bare bones and he took
his dogs out. It's awesome, like this guy is totally
uneducated frontiersman who also went to Congress and kind of
a humorous too. Yeah. I think the song actually originally went,
um hike seven miles in the snow and two hours
(19:31):
when he was only twelve, and they're like, let's just
make something up. Killed him a bear. It wasn't even
killed it's k I l T killed him a bar. Yeah. Yeah,
um probe that song is still just like instantly comes
in my head, the lyrics and everything. So he lost
his third congressional bid um and then he starts gaining
(19:53):
more fame and notoriety. And this is at a time
where you know, it's it's it was pre internet. Yeah,
was the pre internet a little it was pre Internet,
and it was a time where it was you know,
it wasn't the easiest thing to gain this kind of notoriety.
Like that just shows how popular he was, Like he
was one of the most famous people in the country. Um,
(20:14):
they had these uh Davy Crockett Almanacs published um lots
of books written about him. One lied and said that
it was an autobiography to sell books, and the Almanacs
actually came out of that. They used that book as
the basis of it. Yeah. So so that just kind
of perpetuated all these lies, and since it was attributed
(20:34):
to him, that gave him a reputation for spinning tall
tales about himself. But she didn't necessarily that that wasn't
necessarily untrue. He just didn't spin him quite as much
as as other people did about him. There was a
play by James Kirk Paulding called The Line of the West,
and the character Nimrod Wildfire was based on Davy Crockett.
(20:56):
And um, he finally did get together with with of
because as you said, he wasn't educated, so he had
got a little help. But he eventually did write his
own autobiography with with the help of a co author. Yeah,
he did. And um you can very much compare it
to Barack Obama writing The Audacity of Hope, because it
was released at a time when the Whigs were starting
(21:17):
to tout Um Davy Crockett as a possible challenger I
guess to Andrew Jackson for the presidency. Uh A Native
A Native A narrative of the life of Davy Crockett
of the State of Tennessee by Thomas Chilton, and Davy
Crockett was the official one. Yeah. So the problem is
(21:37):
Chuck he Um didn't win his re election bid, so
his his um idea of going into the presidency. The
primary I guess in eighteen thirty six was that his
plan that yeah, he was going along with that, and
some of the Whigs were like, let's do it. But
since he he was knocked out of Congress in eighteen
(22:00):
thirty five, he did make a third trip back to
Congress from eighteen to eighteen thirty five, but then he
was defeated by a peg leg lawyer, yeah, named Adam Huntsman. Yeah. Um,
very narrowly, but he lost. So I think at that
point he was like, I'm kind of done with Congress
for a while. Yeah, And that his losing to the
(22:21):
that peg leg lawyer, as he was dubbed um, gave
rise to his famous quote, Uh, since you have chosen
to elect a man with a timber toe to succeed me,
you may all go to Hell and I will go
to Texas. And he was basically like, I want to
go check out Texas and see what's out there. You know.
This was like he didn't go westward, like, you know,
(22:43):
to California anything like that. Like Texas was super west
at the time. Yeah, and it was a Mexican state
that was um in a struggle for independence. There was
a rebellion going on there. Yeah, that's not why I
went though. No, apparently he got caught up in that.
But he went there just to explore and I was
going to settle down with his family and just you know,
live on the hand, right, there's a lot of money
to be made there. Well, yeah, he said, what I've
(23:04):
seen of Texas, there is a world of country here
to settle. I had rather be in my present situation
than to be elected to a seat in Congress for life.
So he really thumbed his nose at politics at that time.
Or he was just really happy too with Texas. Yeah,
that's true. Um. He also it didn't take very long
for him to get there, and I guess get caught
up in the rebellion that was going on that really
(23:27):
kind of spoke to him in his spirit. Yeah. They
said he loved a good fight. Yeah. I think he
just couldn't resist. Yeah. Um, well, I mean he was
a bear hunter for goodness sake. Um. So he gets
there and um basically aligns himself with the rebel movement
who asked him in his traveling companion to sign an
oath of allegiance to it, and uh, in it, it
(23:49):
basically says like I Davy Crockett am pledge allegiance to
this rebellion and any future government that may come out
of it. David Krack is like, I'm not signing that
in she put Republican before government because he wasn't about
to sign his allegiance over to some you know, tyrannical
government that came out of this rebellion. He didn't know.
So he was one to head his bets, that's right,
(24:12):
very smartly, so he signed it and um very famously,
Uh died at the Siege of the Alamo, which I
know you have visited the Alamo and there's no basement.
There's no basement, and it's I always hear from everybody
that visits. I have not how small it is. Everyone's
always underwhelmed. It's basically like one room. Yeah. Yeah. Umi
(24:32):
took me there and it's in San Antonio. You go
in and you're like, it's this lump of history in
the middle of downtown San Antonio. Yeah, and it's just
it's like was this a bank or was it the Alamo? Yeah,
I mean like there's it's just there's a couple of
side rooms, but it's really just one main room. Yeah.
I always just pictured, you know, some huge fort. Yeah
you'd think so, And um, I'll visit it one day
(24:55):
for sure. The gardens, the grounds are amazing. Yeah, yeah,
it's it's very cool. It's worth going to for sure. Yeah.
Well I love being historical landmarks. Do you know you
should do south by Southwest to fly into San Antonio
and drive to Austin. Yeah, that's what you did, right.
So the Alamo is great. I'm gonna visit. He famously
died defending the Alamo, but there are many versions of
(25:16):
how that exactly that went down from um died surrounded
by sixteen dead Mexicans that he killed with his hand
on a knife in the back of one. Two captured
and executed. Two killed at the very beginning of the
thing and didn't even see much action. Yeah, but we
think we have a pretty definitive story. Yeah, there's um
(25:39):
some other stuff that he supposedly did do. Like he
was um documented is running all over the Alamo, like
keeping everybody animated, keeping one write exactly. UM. And he
supposedly played his fiddle a lot like very rousing tune,
just tried to keep everyone's spirits and energy up and
they're defending the small little building. Um. He supposedly took
(26:02):
out five gunners in succession who were trying to shoot
a cannon at the Alamo with Old Betsy his musket. Yeah.
And um. He also supposedly came very close to hitting
um Antonio Santa Anna, the general who was leading the siege. Um,
but just missed him, even though Santa Anna thought he
(26:23):
was well out of range of the guns. And I
see him, but there's no way he can do yeah, exactly. Um.
So he did do some stuff. He's documented to doing
something probably truthful. But the problem there was always a
problem with how he died, in that he was captured,
and a great brave Indian fighting bear hunter like is
(26:44):
who represents all of America, isn't supposed to be captured
because if you capture, that means you put your gun
down or you didn't die fighting. Well, I supposed he
ran out of bullets and then we started clubbing them
with his gun, killing them with his you know, bare
hands in a in a butt of a gun. Right,
So that's the fictitious version. The other versions from eyewitnesses
(27:04):
contradict that. So America long struggled with how Davy Crockett died.
And then in um the diary of one of the
Mexican Army soldiers who was there at the siege was
published and um, it basically laid to rest, like, yes,
David Crockett was among those captured. It was five or
(27:26):
six people, yep, like everybody else had been killed or
or um, we're women basically uh. And Crockett was among
like five or six soldiers who were captured. Despite Santa
Anna Um saying don't take any prisoners, they did anyway, Yeah,
they did, but he was not. Um the account says
that it was not He wasn't shamed, though he still
(27:49):
died bravely. They were bayonetted and shot. And the quote
pain is quote was the Mexican soldier whose diary these
unfortunates died with complaining without humiliating themselves before their tortures.
So I think it was like one of those Red
Dawn scenes where they start singing America the Beautiful. Yeah,
probably you know, like you're about to shoot me, but
(28:11):
my head is held high, or like who is it
we did last week? The the lady, Oh, Mota Hary, Yeah,
Mota Hary. Yeah. Davy crock and Mana Hary they're virtually indistinguishable,
that's right. So his reputation remained intact. And uh that
the Alamo and then Walt disn't got a hold of it,
and a hundred years later became a sensation. Yeah. I
(28:31):
mean even even beyond the remaining in tech dying at
the Alamo, defending the Alumo. It's like mushroom clouded his
personality and his reputation is a legend. Like it just
sealed it forever, like Davy Crockett, American hero, King of
the wild front here. Yeah, Timbertoe No, not a Timber too.
I actually had to look that up. I was like,
(28:52):
what does that mean. I was like, oh, I wouldn't
like got it. He was pretty clever. Oh and that quote,
by the way, was said while he was drinking with
his buddies in Memphis at the Union Hotel. And I
did a little digging, and that is the Union Hotel
was what is now the grounds of Auto Zone Park
(29:13):
where the Memphis Redbirds playball. Oh yeah, yeah, I need
to get back to Memphis. My family has all gone
from there now, so aside from visiting the graves of
my grandparents, there's really no other reason to go back.
The grave of Elvis. Yeah, I've been there. Yeah, we'll
go again, all right. That the station not gonna fund itself, Yeah,
(29:34):
that's true. Um, okay, you got anything else, Davy Crockett? Oh,
you know what, I have one other thing. Something occurred
to me while we were researching this. Um, if you
think of Davy Crockett and you're an American, it's just
all these images come to mind. It's the national hero,
and there's he's complex and everything. Think about how every
(29:56):
single country has at least somebody like that, and just
how totally unaware we are of those people that are
like that in all those other countries. Yeah, like who
was Finland's Davy Crockett exactly? Yeah, you know, but it's
neat to think that there's somebody like that out there
for at least one for every country on the map.
(30:16):
Francais that Davy Crockett. I'm sure Napoleon Davy Croquette. Uh yeah.
And you know what, in listener, man, we should ask
for your country's version Davy Crockett. Do that. Okay, So
until then, UM, if you want to learn a little
more about Davy Crockett, you can me in this article
(30:38):
that I wrote years and years ago, Um, by searching
Davy Crockett in the search bar, and that's d A. V. Y.
The early nineteenth century version of Davy and where else?
What was that website we also used to get this information?
Was that? Uh, if you look in the source the
source list on the Lots More Information page of my article,
it's in there. There's some good stuff. So I think
(31:00):
it's like the Texas Online Handbook maybe ye, something like that. Yeah,
and don't forget to go read that first person account
of bear hunting with Davy Crockett on George Mason University website.
Since I said George Mason, I mean it's time for
listening now. Uh. This is about um e c T
electro convulsive therapy that we've podcasted on and about civil
(31:25):
rights of people forced into stuff like this, and it's
from Jamie. Hey, guys, in your ECT podcast you mentioned
anti psychiatry with regards to the resistance of e c T.
Hope that one day you'll do a podcast about the
Consumer Survivor X patient movement c s X. It's one
of the remaining civil rights movements in the country and
(31:46):
around the world. Mind Freedom dot Org is a great
resource to start with. It was one of the first
CSX organizations and insistence and still going strong today. Robert
Whittaker A journalist wrote Mad in America, where he describes
inventors of torture devices peddling their machines to various mental
institutions which held the belief that patients can be shocked
or tortured into sanity. Lobotomies were finally discontinued because storzine
(32:09):
was introduced as the new lobotomy to a pill that
metrosol injections and insulin shock were tortuous and highly feared
by patients who received them. Much of when what went
on in one flow of the Cuckoo's nest is still
true for today's modern institutions, including forced east. Nowadays, the
tortures are more subtle. I was on a drug personally
(32:30):
called Howdall that to this day I believe would make
an excellent torture drug. I was also literally blinded by
another drug called h mellaril, which was forced upon me
while in a hospital. My eyesight was restored many layers
many years later, thanks to Emory Eye Center here in Atlanta,
but I was never warned about the possibile side effects
(32:52):
of mellaril or given a choice to take it or not.
Today's modern medications routinely caused diabetes and rapid weight gain,
as well as dependence in early death. When people try
to discontinue their use, their face with symptoms far worse
than symptoms for which they were originally treated. In fact,
many school shooters were either on one of these drugs
or drawing from them. When you do the research, I
(33:12):
was a patient in the mental health system for twenty
plus years and now I operate an alternative to traditional
mental health services Indicator Georgia, which is near where I live.
Recovery is possible when you reclaim your power taken from
you in psychiatry, and guys, I'm not anti psychiatry, but
I am no longer blinded or threatened by the tactics
that they can sometimes use. I believe in civil rights
(33:35):
for people who have been diagnosed and labeled as mentally ill.
And please understand that anyone walking into a psychiatrist office
can effortlessly walk out with the label that will follow
them for the rest of their lives. Yeah, there's a
stigma totally. So I hope you will consider UH podcasting
on this powerful but often oppressed the civil rights movement.
I love I love the podcast on a lot, Thanks
(33:57):
a lot Jamie have it is very interesting. I've not
heard of that before. Yeah, C S C SX movie.
I will definitely be checking it out to. That is
a great listener mail where we're told about something we've
never heard of before in our entire lives but find
intensely interesting. That's a good one, thanks, Jamie. Um. If
you oh yeah, I forgot Um. If you have a
(34:20):
national hero in your country and you're not in the US,
like myth and legend in truth all wrapped up sort
of like Davy profit right, UM, we want to know
who that is and know a little bit about him
if you're in the US or her. Oh yeah, good one,
chuck UM. If you're in the US, you can still
have an opportunity to write and tell us something that
(34:42):
we don't know about that's intensely interesting. There's your homework,
everybody to work. Uh. You can tweet to us at
s Y s K podcast on Twitter. I should say,
I don't want to presume everybody knows what tweeting is. UM.
On Facebook dot com, you can join us at stuff
you should know, that's our page name. You can send
(35:03):
us an email to Stuff Podcast at Discovery dot com,
and you can join us on our website, The very Awesome,
the Inimitable, the Amazing. Stuff you Should Know dot com
For more on this and thousands of other topics. Is
it How Stuff Works dot Com. This episode of Stuff
(35:31):
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