January 29, 2025 • 78 mins
On this episode of the Bear Grease Render, join host Clay Newcomb, Gary "Believer" Newcomb, Terrell Spencer, and Josh "Landbridge" Spielmaker along with special guests Jeff Gardener and Drew Harrington, who are natives of the Black Patch region of Kentucky as they discuss the Tobacco Wars series. Plus, Gary receives a special gift from a listener.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:14):
My name is Clay Nukleman.
Speaker 2 (00:16):
This is a production of the Bear Grease podcast called
the Bear Grease Render, where we render down, dive deeper,
and look behind the scenes of the actual bear Grease podcast,
presented by f HF Gear, American made purpose built hunting
and fishing gear that's designed to be as rugged as
(00:37):
the place as we explore.
Speaker 3 (00:43):
Well, I've been looking forward to this render for a while.
We kind of got off schedule we did the first
night Rider Tobacco War episode. Now we usually have a
render where we talk about it like immediately, but we
kind of had a fill in render with Rich Frohning.
But this works out perfect. Never heard of him, never
(01:03):
heard of the Fittest man in the world, which frowning
the uh so we had we had. We've now played
these two night Rider Tobacco War episodes.
Speaker 1 (01:16):
So that's what we're here to talk about.
Speaker 3 (01:18):
And we have a pretty good, pretty good guest list
here a varied assortment of guests. Yes, we got my dad, Gary, Bilievernukom,
who I have some I have someone sent you a gift.
I'm gonna go ahead money, I'm gonna go ahead money,
I'm gonna go ahead and introduce everybody. Uh, then I
have Jeff Gardner. Now you're not from Kentucky, but I
(01:42):
am from Kentucky.
Speaker 4 (01:43):
You are from currently don't live in Kentucky, correct, currently
in Oklahoma.
Speaker 3 (01:48):
But Jeff, Jeff did something that's very rare in the
Bear Grease world is that he basically like hand delivered
this podcast to us.
Speaker 1 (02:00):
For real. I'm not kidding.
Speaker 3 (02:01):
People all the time suggest stuff, which I love, I mean,
keep them coming. A lot of times the suggestions are
about stories that maybe people don't have the full grasp
on and maybe it's a great idea. It's not someone's
fault if they send me an incomplete. But when somebody goes,
this is a great story, here's the book about it.
(02:23):
I know the author, here's his number. Also know a
secondary guest that you could interview about.
Speaker 1 (02:29):
I think this.
Speaker 3 (02:30):
Would happen to be my wife's grandpa, right, I mean,
he just like hand delivered the whole thing. And then
so we ordered the book and we were just like, yeah,
this is great. And so anyway, thanks Jeff.
Speaker 4 (02:44):
Hey happy to help. A big fan. Love what you
guys do. And like I said, you know, I'm sure
we'll get into it. But I read the story and
was like, I literally was sitting there in my wife's
grandfather's house and I went, man, I just I bet
you could make a killing with a podcast of this.
But then I was like, you know, I would love
to hear somebody do this. And then it just clicked.
(03:05):
I was like, this is exactly what these guys do. Yeah,
and I was able to find a you know, email
for you and get it to your.
Speaker 1 (03:12):
Worked out here we are.
Speaker 3 (03:13):
So your your grandfather is doctor Lloyd Murdoch, Is that correct?
Speaker 4 (03:18):
So my wife's grandfather, Yeah, he wife, you know, uh
selfishly consider him my grandfather.
Speaker 1 (03:24):
He's been like grandfather to me.
Speaker 4 (03:25):
So I may refer to him that, and you may
hear us refer to him as Bubby because that's what
the rest of the world calls him outside.
Speaker 3 (03:32):
Of So he was he was on the first episode,
and he's essentially as.
Speaker 1 (03:38):
Agronomus and was a tobacco expert.
Speaker 3 (03:41):
So he was the one real soft spoken guy that
spoke on the first episode.
Speaker 1 (03:47):
So that that was great.
Speaker 3 (03:49):
And then so your brother in law, So you are
married to sisters whose grandfather married my sister.
Speaker 1 (03:56):
I'm just not gonna.
Speaker 5 (04:00):
Yeah, family is Drew's grandfather.
Speaker 1 (04:04):
He is my grandfather, he's your grandfather. We're from Kentucky.
It's family, get messy.
Speaker 6 (04:11):
I read the motto of Kentucky was fifteen million people,
fifteen last names.
Speaker 1 (04:16):
Wow. Wow, I like it.
Speaker 3 (04:18):
I like it anytime we can jab somebody else.
Speaker 5 (04:20):
Exactly, yeah, exactly. You know we're at in Kentucky. Are
you all from?
Speaker 1 (04:24):
So?
Speaker 7 (04:24):
I was actually uh born in Princeton, where one of
the Reds happened, and where my that's where my.
Speaker 1 (04:30):
The Vatican of the Night Ridership.
Speaker 7 (04:33):
Ye, my U and my grandparents still live there. It's
where Josh came down and did the interviews with my grandfather.
In one county over was where Bill Conningham was. And
but now I've since shifted. I'm in Lexington, Kentucky.
Speaker 1 (04:46):
Now, okay, okay, awesome man. Well I'm from Louisville, born
and raised in Louisville.
Speaker 5 (04:51):
Are both y'all? So both y'all are Louisville fans. We are, yes, okay.
Speaker 1 (04:55):
Yes, we're all sad to see Cali party go. It
didn't make any different, man.
Speaker 7 (05:02):
Yeah, I mean I I kind of wish he was
still there because they'd be.
Speaker 5 (05:09):
Loves Mark.
Speaker 4 (05:12):
But we are actually two cardinals in a family of wildcats.
So and now I got a little one of my
own that it's it's tough, clay Man. They're they're wearing
him out, they're bringing them over to their side. But
he loves he loves his So I got a feeling,
you know, the more we start running around together, he'll
be all right, he'll yeah yeah.
Speaker 3 (05:33):
Well to finish out introductions, this is my neighbor friend,
the best chicken farmer that I know, Charles Spencer known
as Spence, and uh man, I just do you mind
picking up your t jar. I have a deep respect
for a man to drink tea out of a pickle
jar Man, this.
Speaker 1 (05:52):
Is uh actually that Spence.
Speaker 3 (05:57):
Spence comes to our church every week with a different
jar showing out everybody.
Speaker 5 (06:03):
I get called out. This is like you know when
you talked about Honore Farmers on this podcast. You call
a farmer out, he's just gonna dig in right.
Speaker 3 (06:12):
Well, it's funny because everybody brings water bottles. Now, this
generation is obsessed with hydration. I mean back when I
was a kid and Dad you'd be the same.
Speaker 1 (06:22):
I mean we watered like cattle, like once a day.
Speaker 4 (06:26):
You know.
Speaker 3 (06:27):
And uh, and now everybody has like huge water bottles,
Stanley cub this is acceptable in my book, like just
like a like a jar, you know, rather than a
big water bottle or something.
Speaker 5 (06:38):
So he tastes better out of a jar. But I agree.
Speaker 3 (06:41):
Spence is a farmer and he uh, he's got he
kind of had some insight into the the farm side
of it. So wanted to have Spence here. But what
I haven't told you, if you haven't figured it out already,
is that, uh, there's a federal officer amongst us.
Speaker 1 (06:57):
Jeff works for the FBI. What what I do that
Dad wouldn't have come if I Gary, what's your hiding? Gary?
I drove from up here in thirty five minutes, so
outside of my jurisdiction I can do about that.
Speaker 3 (07:15):
No, And I know we don't have to go into
detail about it, but that's interesting.
Speaker 1 (07:20):
How long you worked for the FBI.
Speaker 4 (07:22):
It'd be five years this summer. Okay, yeah, so I'm
I'm fairly new, you know, to the career as a whole.
But it's been to call you kid Utah, Utah, give
me to Kentucky.
Speaker 1 (07:34):
That's right now.
Speaker 4 (07:36):
But yeah, about five years and and like I said's
how we ended up out in Oklahoma?
Speaker 3 (07:40):
Were you in law enforcement before? Like, what's the what's
your career path? Tell you what, Clay, It's been an
interesting ride. So, you know, me and Drew met in college.
Speaker 4 (07:51):
We both played college baseball at at University Louisville, and
then uh graduated there, kicked around the minor leagues for
a little bit, and then and literally was finishing playing,
was getting married and to his sister and let me next.
So I studied criminal justice in college, and then in
(08:11):
twenty seventeen, I was just gotten engaged to Drew's sister,
Chelsea and needed something to say at Thanksgiving other than
I was going to go play independent league baseball again
for you know, eleven hundred bucks a month for four months, okay,
and so and so, you know, I was always interested
(08:33):
in law enforcement. My dad was a police officer, my
mom's dad was a police officer, and it's always.
Speaker 1 (08:40):
Been big in my family. So I looked into it.
Speaker 4 (08:42):
My dad had always mentioned, you know, trying to go
the federal route, and so I started looking some of
that up on USA jobs and I was like, hey,
you can just apply for the FBI. I checked this out.
So I kind of just did it on a whim
and made it through the first couple of steps and
then got denied, didn't get in. But the more I
looked at it, thought, man, I think this is what
(09:02):
I actually want to do. So I had to wait
a year, Like I said, I finished playing baseball one
more year, came back home, got into uh believe it
or not, like trying to sell advertisements and tickets for
a like minor league wrestling outfit.
Speaker 5 (09:20):
So if you look at this, watch Nacho Lebra for
a birthday the other day.
Speaker 4 (09:27):
Okay, So if you go on Netflix and you watch
there's a documentary called like Wrestlers or something or wrestling,
and it's a documentary where they follow Ohio Valley wrestling. Well,
a buddy of mine who had told me whenever I
was done playing, you know, he'd offered me a job
in medical sales, which is what he did, and I
from my locker of my last game, I sent him
(09:50):
a text and said, hey, dude, just finished up. I'm
getting married in a month. I need a job, Like,
is that still you still open? He said, yeah, come
see me on Monday. So I did, and I'm expected
like all right, we're gonna start talking about this whole
medical sales thing.
Speaker 1 (10:03):
Well, now he says, I got a I got a
job for you.
Speaker 4 (10:06):
He says, I just bought this minor league wrestling you
ever heard of? It was like, if you follow wrestling,
it's it's huge because like a lot of the greats
from the old days came up through this Ohio yeah,
Ohio Valley wrestling. And so it's looking at it on
on Netflix is a pretty interesting documentary. You could see
a little insight to to that world. But I did
that for a few months and then he finally let
(10:28):
me in on the medical sales side. And so I
was in and out of spine surgeries for about a
year and a half and then had reapplied to the
bureau and and ended up getting in. Okay, so it's
been a wild ride. Wow, here I am, Here, I am.
Now you're a professional podcast scout here.
Speaker 5 (10:46):
It's not far from wrestling.
Speaker 3 (10:49):
I just know if you have anything else you Well,
that's interesting, very interesting.
Speaker 1 (10:56):
So Dad, a guy sent this to you. We have
his name.
Speaker 3 (11:00):
We get that little letter right there, the little handwritten letter.
It's torn in half. Not don't know why.
Speaker 1 (11:05):
Get the top part. So Yeah.
Speaker 3 (11:08):
Jeff Dwyer out of Washington sent this to Gary Believer
nukelem Wow and uh, man, it's so old that it
has a plug that's like a quarter inch and has
two little plugs.
Speaker 1 (11:20):
But it actually it used to work. You may get
shocked it.
Speaker 5 (11:28):
It's disco lamp.
Speaker 1 (11:30):
It pretty much works. Unfortunately it was broken in transit.
It cracked.
Speaker 3 (11:38):
He did a great job of packing it. But uh,
do you mind if we keep this here? Though you can,
do you mind?
Speaker 6 (11:46):
It's it's a lamp, but it's also like an ashtray, yeah,
or an ashtray, or like a plan like put your
bed in there, you put your pocket knife and your
wall in there at night.
Speaker 3 (12:01):
Well, this is a throwback to the to the Black Panther.
The first episode of Bear Grease. We did a We
did an episode called the Myth of the Southern Mountain Lion,
and at the end of it we talked about black
panthers and not a week goes by. I'm without exaggeration,
but someone doesn't send me something online about black panthers
because dad believes in them. Yeah, just spurning the science.
(12:25):
So anyway, you got a new lamp. I appreciate it.
Speaker 1 (12:31):
It looks like a work on This is just terrible.
Speaker 3 (12:34):
I mean it hardly even looks like a panther, but
you can see his tail curled right here. I mean,
like the person that made that, I mean, I don't know,
but it's it's wonderful. So congratulations, than Jeff stylized, Yeah,
thank you, Jeff.
Speaker 8 (12:51):
That was That's pretty awesome. And I never had a
gift that I would treasure more.
Speaker 5 (12:55):
I don't think he wrote in.
Speaker 6 (12:57):
He wrote in and sent me a picture of it
and said, I'd like to say this to Gary Believernewkam
And I said, I got an.
Speaker 3 (13:02):
Address, will take it. And I had my believer head
in the truck and I forgot.
Speaker 1 (13:08):
To put it on. Oh man, So anyway, that's very nice.
Speaker 3 (13:12):
Well, uh, the night Rider or Tobacco War of Tennessee
and Kentucky farinating.
Speaker 5 (13:19):
So sorry.
Speaker 1 (13:20):
So would y'all have grown up knowing about this story.
Speaker 4 (13:23):
I didn't learn about it until, you know, I married
into the family. I think my first trip to Princeton
was actually during the black Patch Festival.
Speaker 1 (13:31):
Yeah, first time going down there.
Speaker 7 (13:33):
So Princeton still holds the black Patch Festival every fall
and around the time that their smoke, fire and tobacco,
and uh, I went to that festival ever since.
Speaker 1 (13:42):
I was really what do they do there?
Speaker 7 (13:45):
Oh, it's just they shut down main street. They have
all kinds of little tints and things set up selling stuff.
I remember when I was super young, we would always
do like a frisbee contest where accuracy distance and stuff
like that, So I was always geared up for that.
They do pancake breakfast and serve the town.
Speaker 1 (14:03):
How big is Princeton, Kentucky?
Speaker 7 (14:06):
Probably four or five thousand people maybe something like that.
Speaker 3 (14:09):
Yeah, when you can you smell the dark fire tobacco,
when it's smell like hickory smoker, does it smell like
tobacco smoke?
Speaker 7 (14:19):
It's very very unique. I will say that you get
the smell of hickory, you know, much like you you know,
if you throw something in the smoker and put put
hickory chips in it. It's a lot like that kind
of smell. But it does have a have a distinct smell.
Speaker 1 (14:33):
Because I get I mean, the tobacco is not burning.
Speaker 7 (14:36):
No, no, it's not. It's the woods are the wood
on the bottom of the of the floor of the
barn are covered with sawdust and it's just that smoke
that rises up.
Speaker 1 (14:46):
And did you have family that grew tobacco?
Speaker 7 (14:49):
Nope, nope, no, No, I don't have any. We don't
have any other than Western Oklahoma. We don't have any
farmers out in our family.
Speaker 1 (14:55):
Yeah.
Speaker 5 (14:55):
I went to basic with the guy that their family
grew tobac I was thinking about it, and I'm not
sure it just in Kentucky, isn't it. A big old
dude name wrecked in He'd talk about going in the
tobacco patch and if it was wet, like they'd get
sick like when they worked it. I guess because the nicotine.
So anyway, oh really it was like brushing up against them. Yeah,
(15:16):
I guess just working in the You can't go in
there when it's wet. But I just randomly remember that
the other day listening to this m M.
Speaker 1 (15:24):
That's my interesting It used to be all over too,
I mean even in there. I can recall I grew.
Speaker 4 (15:31):
Up in basically in the city in Louisville, and so
there would be times where you'd drive through and you'd
see patches of open land, you know, within city limits,
where people were growing to back it in and.
Speaker 1 (15:45):
It just in your lifetime. Absolutely. Yeah.
Speaker 4 (15:47):
I remember in fourth grade it was still like that's
the grade in Kentucky where you learn all about Kentucky
history and all that. And I remember learning that that
was like the number one cash crop.
Speaker 1 (15:59):
Huh back then, I doubt it is now. I'm sure
it's no is it? So?
Speaker 4 (16:06):
I mean it's always been huge, you know, It's Kentucky's
kind of funny.
Speaker 1 (16:10):
We were just known for man's vices like tobacco, bourbon,
and horse racing. You know, if you want to, if
you want to, you know, get drunk, have a cigarette,
and horses.
Speaker 7 (16:24):
It is a one stop.
Speaker 1 (16:25):
Shot man I started.
Speaker 3 (16:28):
You know, I don't think they grew a lot of
tobacco here in the Ozarks. It's certainly I think it
was grown at times, but this was not known for that.
I really started learning about tobacco when I started going
to East Tennessee and uh running around with Roy Clark
whose gouy that Roy's still alives in the seventies, and uh,
(16:50):
they they had tobacco allotments. They just sold their tobacco allotments,
as I understand it, in the last twenty years. But
but you know, that's that's the way it went that,
I don't know if you knew it. We didn't really
get into the modern tobacco stuff. But back in the day,
just people grew it and there wasn't a lot of regulation.
But after after about the time of the Tobacco Wars,
(17:13):
and a lot of federal regulation came in on the
tobacco market and they started doing allotments for tobacco and
and basically the government would say, like, you can grow
five acres or tobacco period every year, but you could
sell your allotment to a farmer. And so if you
didn't want to grow it, is that am I?
Speaker 1 (17:34):
Is this right? Do y'all Do y'all know some of
that stuff?
Speaker 7 (17:36):
Yeah, so my grandfather knows obviously a little bit more
about the allotment. But but from what I've gathered, that's
that sounds pretty accurate.
Speaker 1 (17:43):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (17:44):
Yeah, And so Roy Clark grew up. And now they
call it backer. I'm sure that's I can't believe I
went through this whole episode without saying backer, But that's
the way they say it in East Tennessee. Like, yeah,
they're not joking or trying to be cute.
Speaker 1 (17:56):
It's just it's backerbacker or tobacco, tobacco, tobacco.
Speaker 7 (18:01):
Bill Comingham said it several times.
Speaker 1 (18:02):
Tobacco, tobacco, yeah, tobacco. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (18:06):
But uh but you know Roy was in his lifetime
plowing with a with a horse like hand, plowing tobacco.
But it was such a convenient crop because you could
grow a small acreage and make that much money.
Speaker 1 (18:21):
Yeah, which was astonishing. I did.
Speaker 3 (18:23):
We had a couple of corrections on this episode, and
one of them there was a modern tobacco farmer that
told me, actually, the the the yield ton per acre
yield that we said was way off. We said it
was four thousand pounds per acre, and he said even
(18:43):
today in like the best case.
Speaker 1 (18:46):
Scenario, you don't get that much. He said, you get
like two thousand.
Speaker 3 (18:49):
So anyway, but point bing, you could grow a small
amount of the of tobacco and it just had this
enormous value. And I mean when you start doing the
and you see that, you could almost like if you
were just a subsistence guy making well from what Joe
Scott said twenty five cents a day to a dollar
(19:11):
a day, Doctor Murdoch said, you can make a dollar
a day. Joe Scott was talking about making twenty five
cents a day.
Speaker 1 (19:17):
Did y'all hear that?
Speaker 3 (19:19):
And so essentially you're making that range of money for
just an uneducated labor and then you could like double
your income by having three or four acres or tobacco. Yeah,
and you just you kind of get the sense of
how important that would be.
Speaker 5 (19:36):
Yeah, you know, and moving from subsistence to like where
you can actually buy things. Yeah, that's one of the
problems on a fund is you can produce a lot,
but converting it into cash is a big deal, you know.
And I don't know that was just I understand why
where they're coming from, you know, like just to have
something you can grow and just there's a ready set market.
Speaker 1 (19:59):
Man.
Speaker 5 (19:59):
It just that kind of thing is extremely rare. An egg, yeah,
you know, so, especially on that small of a acreage.
It's just I understand, like a lot of white people
got upset and blood and all that stuff. You know,
Like it really was kind of a unique situation. Yeah,
compared to like cotton or something else where, you know,
(20:20):
by that you need so much land to do it
and the labor. You know, a small family could, like
you said, double their income and he gave all the
like put a calico dress for Easter and you have
shoes and yeah in that, Like, I don't know, it's
just it's kind of a unique situation.
Speaker 1 (20:35):
He's really cool to hear about.
Speaker 3 (20:37):
Yeah, I think I'll start off by just asking you guys,
what stood out to you? Jeff, I might start with
you just like the whole podcast, because there's a hundred
things I want. I want to talk about the Joe
Scott interview. Uh, I want to talk about Bill Cunningham.
(20:58):
I mean, there's a whole there's one hundred different things
want to talk about. But usually that's what we did
is just kind of like go around the room and
just be like what stood out to you? What was
your favorite thing or something new you learned? But what's
that to you?
Speaker 4 (21:10):
Jeff, tell you what, man, I think the biggest thing
is it's you know, I think I said this when
of our first sent it to you all.
Speaker 1 (21:16):
It's such a challenging story.
Speaker 4 (21:18):
You know, you have these people who felt like they were,
you know, being taken advantage of, and by all means
they were, and so they you can't blame them for
wanting to you know, eventually, like you're saying, eventually getting
to the point where there's bloodshed because they're upset. But
I think I sent you all the email to this
(21:39):
thing after I read the first chapter of that book
and the way it had always been painted to me
was obviously from the local standpoint of who the Night
Writers were, why they were standing up against Duke. Well,
if you read the first chapter of that book, I
mean he was an American success story too.
Speaker 1 (21:56):
Yeah, you know, his daddy lived home from the Civil
War too. I think he had lost his wife. You know,
they were kids, were living with either an ann or an.
Speaker 4 (22:06):
Uncle something like that, and all they had was one
mule in a patch of tobacco, you know what I mean.
Speaker 3 (22:12):
And that was Washington Duke, James James Buck, Duke's dad.
Speaker 4 (22:16):
Exactly who became in Buck and and Buck hops on
the trailer behind the mule and they go start selling
this tobacco. And next thing, you know, you know, Buck
is growing this thing, and he's moving to New York
and he's the you know, he's the rebel now in
New York City trying to make a name for himself.
Speaker 1 (22:34):
And so you know, in America we celebrate that person too. Yeah.
Speaker 4 (22:38):
Yeah, But then at what point does it become where
it gets too much, and that's where you saw Washington Duke.
You know, there's a quote he has in the book
where he says something along the lines of, you know,
there's two or three things I've never understood in this world.
Speaker 1 (22:54):
The Trinity and my son, my son Buck is that
I remember that?
Speaker 4 (22:58):
And you know he says he says that, and it
goes you know, and Judge Cunningham mentioned the same thing
in there that you know, a successful entrepreneur sometimes is
in the DNA. And so you have this guy who
built this company up and probably reached a point where
he could have started giving back. And you know, at
some point in his career he he forgot what it
(23:20):
was like to be the farmer and to be the
guy grinding every day. But then you also have this
other side. And what challenges me is you have a
guy like David Amos, where you know, I hate to
say it, like this guy, I haven't had this thought
till recently, but I go, this was an educated man
who rallied up a lot of probably uneducated people to
(23:41):
go do his bidding to Was he fulfilling a desire
or dream to be this war general that he never
got to carry out from his days and I think
he went to like Hopkinsville Military School. Yeah, so you
kind of wonder that, right, like was this two egos
(24:02):
that ultimately were collide or is it even not that big?
Speaker 1 (24:06):
Am I overthinking that? You know what I mean? Like
that's great. It's just a lot we.
Speaker 3 (24:11):
Don't really ever see really why David Amos did what
he did, like that he never really tips his hat completely.
Speaker 1 (24:20):
I mean, uh, Judge Cunningham, who.
Speaker 3 (24:24):
I probably should have referred him as Judge Cunningham of
the podcast, Sorry sir, uh I called him Bill I
he he he kind of painted the picture of him
being this uh well, it was just easy to buy
into being this kind of guy that was just looking
out for his people.
Speaker 5 (24:44):
With the freed slaves. He treat the freed slaves.
Speaker 4 (24:47):
Yeah, yeah, and it makes sense, and I think the
way the book reads is that that's the case. But
I don't know, you know, I just my mind started
going there a little bit, and and that probably is
partly to do what I do for a living. You
you kind of try to examine both sides ago, all right,
what's the motive behind this?
Speaker 1 (25:06):
But I can't help but think was that potentially part of.
Speaker 3 (25:09):
Well man, that's the that's the same thing that happens
in every story we tell, like we we have in
our mind a narrative that fits something inside of us.
Because I was thinking the same thing, is like David
Amos a villain or a hero and I honestly don't
know still like what I think about him because it
(25:32):
a story. Yeah, because he could have I mean, if
you could have just met him and talked with him,
you probably could have got a sense of does this
guy really like feel sorry and empathetic towards people being
take advantage of by this like corporate criminal or.
Speaker 1 (25:49):
Or was it was there ulterior motive vindictive?
Speaker 5 (25:52):
Yeah, if you saw him like a bunch of guys
whooping up on someone with his kids screaming and his
wife in their front yard beating them senseless.
Speaker 1 (26:01):
You'd probably it'd probably be pretty easy.
Speaker 5 (26:03):
To make a judgment, you know, and like there's some
real violence in this thing.
Speaker 3 (26:08):
And then he absolutely had seemingly everything to do with that.
Speaker 5 (26:12):
Yeah, oh yeah, because I mean that was a whole
organization and we're gonna have captains and you're gonna have
squads and yeah, you know, I.
Speaker 4 (26:18):
Mean just and I guess that part where you and
I apologies for cutting you off and on I guess
that part's what what does it for him? It makes
me go there because you know, it makes a point
to mention that in the book of how this guy
was raised and I think his daddy was a doctor too,
So you go, is this one of you Do you
see this in movies and all that where you see
(26:38):
people who their family wants them to continue down the
family line or what have you. But did he inside
always want to be, you know, in this other world
and now this was his opportunity to And that's speculation,
you know, I mean, I don't know, but.
Speaker 1 (26:53):
Well, and it was said in the book.
Speaker 3 (26:55):
We didn't maybe we said it, but he he he
idolized these Civil war military Yeah so maybe we said that,
but uh yeah, no, that's that's a great point, Drew.
Speaker 1 (27:08):
What stood out to you?
Speaker 7 (27:10):
So first, phenomenal job on the podcast. I've heard, like
I said, heard about this story since I was I
was young, young, and and growing up in that in
that area and region of Kentucky. These guys have always
night writers have been idolized. You know, David Amos, he
still has signs in cop Kentucky. I think Josh saw
one of you know, home of David Amos. I mean
(27:33):
he's still here, they're proud of Oh yeah, absolutely, And
uh so I was always one sided towards towards the
Night Writers. But then once you start having experiences you
get older, you kind of are like, I don't know
if they should have been. But as far as the
podcast goes, what I really loved about it was the
(27:56):
the book and I think I think Judge Cunningham talked
about it a little bit, but you know, he was
trying to be unbiased when he wrote the book. But
that the last monologue of the second one where he
really gives his expresses, his opinions and especially what he
did for a career, his whole life, when you know
he he swore to uphold the Constitution in the law
and h to really get his his perspective on it
(28:20):
all where he sympathizes with him but he can't approve
of it. I love that whole, the whole last twelve
fifteen minutes whatever it was, where he he kind of
ran down his thoughts of it. That was a that
was a really good perspective.
Speaker 3 (28:33):
Yeah, it was you know he he brought such authority
on this subject. He was a perfect guest, like really
he was in and we didn't get into his background
a ton other than just I kept saying that he
was a Kentucky Supreme Court judge. He was more than
that though, I mean he was a Prime Court justice justice.
Speaker 1 (28:54):
Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, but but.
Speaker 3 (28:58):
Yeah, him him saying what he said was like a
pretty balanced view of it. And then his interpretation is
conclusion of how kind of the country handled the situation.
I wouldn't have thought of it because he said, he said,
the the corporate criminal got dealt with and and you know,
(29:19):
the monopoly was broken up. Excuse me, and uh, but
also David Amos didn't get didn't even go to prison,
which you know, you could look at that and say, well,
that's being soft on a pretty hard criminal. But he
saw it as kind of like this this balance. And
then when he talked about jury nullification, nullification, which was
(29:42):
a mistake that we made.
Speaker 1 (29:44):
Someone sent it in.
Speaker 3 (29:45):
I said, I thought Judge Bill Cunningham said jury notification,
which didn't make sense to me. He said, he said,
he said jury nullification, which that makes sense when a
jury knows someone's guilty and basically just like, let's the
guy off. And he was saying that that was like
(30:05):
this kind of balance, which now that is the jury nullification.
You could clearly see how that could be used in
a good old boy system and totally be misused. But
at the same time, sometimes somebody does something they don't
really deserve what the law prescribes, and so it's you know,
(30:26):
kind of a kind of a gray area, probably, but
it sounds like it happens all the time and probably
usually used in a positive way. But yeah, I liked
it when he said he said, I've sent a lot
of people to the penitentiary that.
Speaker 1 (30:41):
I sympathized with.
Speaker 3 (30:43):
Yeah, for some reason, that like gave a kind of
like humanize the law almost, Like not that it makes
any difference to the guy who's going to the pen
for twenty years to know that the judge sympathized with him,
but it makes you feel a little bit better.
Speaker 6 (31:00):
Interesting, how much faith you put in the judicial system,
even if there were things like dream mullification, like that
person went through the proper channels and was dealt with
and now it's done, you know.
Speaker 5 (31:13):
Yeah, it was interesting.
Speaker 7 (31:15):
Well, and also we have you know, we have the
book or we have the two hour podcast to refer
back to. But at the time that the jury nullified,
this was nineteen eleven and it had been over for
two to three years, so, you know, in the way
when I heard Judge Cunningham talk about it, he's like,
we're just going to put it into this.
Speaker 5 (31:34):
It's done for me. Let's let's just move and bury
the hatchet.
Speaker 3 (31:37):
Yeah, move on right, yep, Yeah, Spence, what stood out
to you about it?
Speaker 5 (31:42):
There was a part where he was the gentleman. I
get all the names mixed up, but the guy that
was the Supreme Court justice, that's someone's grandpa.
Speaker 1 (31:49):
I apologize sisters, and my kids are the tall, blonde ones.
Speaker 5 (31:58):
That's how I go my life. But it's the just
when he talked about like, you know the thirty there's
that lady got thirty five thousand, and it's like, but
Duke was worth two hundred million, didn't even know if
he even knew of the tobacco war.
Speaker 1 (32:12):
Yeah. That was kind of a letdown, wasn't it.
Speaker 6 (32:14):
Yeah?
Speaker 5 (32:14):
And I thought about like Solomon when he's like vanity
of vanities, All things are vanities, you know, and it's
just like like, man, all this people beat, people ruined,
you know, just these lifetime with terrible memories, all the
towns burned down, and the guy that it was all
(32:35):
fighting against didn't may not have even known it was happening,
and just like, golly but it I don't know. And
also just there, so there was that part of just
like and I don't know what to do with that.
Just it's a thinker, yeah, you know, like and you
ask questions of like which side would you would have
been on? And I would have been on the vigilante
(32:59):
side as a young guy, but I wouldn't now because
I change, like like looking at myself in the mirror,
you know, I probably would have turned narc you know,
like at some point the first time I watched some yeah,
well just watching some guy get beat in front of
his kids, Like that's not cool.
Speaker 1 (33:16):
You know.
Speaker 5 (33:16):
It's one thing, you're fighting someone that wants to fight.
But so I don't it just and I think it's
like that with a lot of American history because it's
our history. You know, It's it's complicated, it's not one side,
it's mixed, and and I think that's what makes these
stories so powerful, Clay, that you go about is it's
(33:37):
okay that it's complicated because we're complicated when we're flawed,
and a guy. You can respect a guy but really
hate something he did, you know, and just like us,
like there's things I'm ashamed of in my past and
I hope they don't define me. Yeah, yeah, you know,
so that there's that aspect. And then also just like
I've been on the receiving end of something similar to this,
(33:58):
and like pot guests, it's probably it's probably not that big,
but you know, and I sent you a text to
like man that it really hit home. And Carlo was
my wife. We were sitting there, I was having coffee
and when it it was really cold, and so like
that's it's a great way to stay inside by talking
to your wife.
Speaker 1 (34:17):
You know.
Speaker 5 (34:18):
It's in the teens. But and just like we were
kind of reminiscent over that, you know, stuff that happened
like a decade ago. And it is hard being an
independent farmer, you know, and farming's just hard, and so
much of like the you know, farmers are great folks generally,
I mean, we're it's a slice of society. You got
(34:39):
your dirt balls in that. But like there's a reason
we romanticize them, like you talked about that. But it's
just like I just feel like sometimes a farming community
throughout the at least in American history, because I don't
have a you know, I don't have a viewpoint to
look at other countries. But Galy, like you know, like
you were talking about there that two hundred million, what
(35:02):
if he would have made a hundred million and all
these other lives could have been radically changed, Like kids
could have went to school with shoes on, and no
one's towns were burned. But there's that thing that always
just like you know, the average farmer gets five cents
of a dollar or something, you know, like, and it's
just that there it's so easy to extract from agriculture,
(35:23):
and those guys so rarely get what's deserved from something
that we all do three times or maybe more day,
you know. So it just it's just a thinker, man. Yeah,
this was really impacted analysis.
Speaker 1 (35:35):
Man.
Speaker 3 (35:35):
I like what you said about a young you would
have been a vigilanti, but an older you wouldn't have.
And it's you know, the luxury that we have today
is that we get to hear this whole story and
we're not really emotionally involved with it. I mean, even
if you're from there, you know, you weren't there during
that time. And we can like you know, historical revision,
(35:56):
we can look back on it and be be think
we can understand it. There's stuff going on today that
they'll be making, you know, Turkey groups podcasts about you know,
fifty years from now that maybe we're a part of.
Speaker 1 (36:13):
You know, I think about that.
Speaker 3 (36:14):
It's like, what would be an equivalent today of something
like this.
Speaker 1 (36:18):
It's but it's pretty extreme.
Speaker 3 (36:19):
I mean, violence is violence, whether it was done three
thousand years ago or today in in the but but
human nature is still the same. So people still still
are violent and do crazy stuff even with the law,
and perhaps it's perhaps it's less than it would have
been anyway.
Speaker 1 (36:39):
Point being, I'm.
Speaker 3 (36:41):
With you, I think I think I would have sided
with the farmers one hundred percent.
Speaker 1 (36:46):
But I would have hoped I would have been reason
oh gotcha got the association farmers.
Speaker 3 (36:53):
Yeah, I really would have because I just would have been, like,
you know, the corporation getting that much just seems unjust
and what they were doing. But I think I would
have been I would have been like, hey, there's a
better way to do this, you know, And I would
hope that's the best version of my interpretation, which I
don't know if it really would have been true. But
(37:16):
I also think that I also think going back to
your question of did it really matter, and essentially Bill
Cunningham's conclusion was that it really didn't. Like this, the
black patch is like thirty counties out of how many
maybe one hundred plus counties that maybe grow tobacco in
(37:36):
the country.
Speaker 5 (37:37):
I don't know, it was, yeah, probably more than that,
probably more than because Virginia and North Carolina.
Speaker 1 (37:41):
Yeah, in all tons of counties.
Speaker 3 (37:43):
I mean, maybe it's like I'm just guessing ten percent
of the tobacco country might be the black patch maybe
or maybe less.
Speaker 1 (37:52):
So, you know, how would this have.
Speaker 3 (37:54):
Affected these guys And maybe it didn't really affect them
at all. James buck Duke wouldn't even known what was
going on, But it seems like it did get the
attention of the nation at the time, as was evidenced
by articles being written in national publications. And you can't
help but think that it would have brought attention to
(38:15):
the powers that be that had the you know that
we're changing some of these things. So maybe it had
more impact than you would think to.
Speaker 5 (38:23):
Break up the monopoly and yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3 (38:25):
But then but I guess the main thing was just
the economic factors, you know, that change, just like people
started smoking more so just like the demand just kept skyrocketing.
Speaker 1 (38:37):
But all pretty wild?
Speaker 3 (38:41):
Did y'all think I did a good enough job of like,
uh shaming tobacco users?
Speaker 4 (38:49):
As you bring that up, I think there's a story
that you need to clarify that I would love to
hear more. You said you've thought you heard the voice
of God tell you not to not to anymore, and
I've got to hear that story.
Speaker 3 (39:03):
Well, I mean and when I when I say the
voice of God, I didn't hear the audible voice of God.
Speaker 1 (39:09):
But just and I'm very serious.
Speaker 3 (39:12):
I mean I was probably nineteen years old and uh,
dip skull behind Juju and Pap Paul's back over here.
Speaker 5 (39:22):
Did you know, Gary?
Speaker 8 (39:23):
I knew, you knew I knew other things that you
don't know that I knew.
Speaker 1 (39:28):
Let's hear I know. I maybe I can't tell you.
Maybe I don't not tell you. I might tell you privately,
do do no?
Speaker 3 (39:38):
Okay, Well, I'm very interested to hear what you because
you don't know if I know anything else.
Speaker 1 (39:44):
As soon as you stop wearing tennis shoes, he knew.
Speaker 5 (39:49):
That the moment.
Speaker 3 (39:50):
No, no, but I just it was the time of
my life when I when I started to just walk
closer with God.
Speaker 1 (39:56):
And I just I mean, I.
Speaker 3 (39:58):
Literally remember one time driving down the road chunking a
can of skull. I was littering, FBI, but I chunk
can of skull.
Speaker 1 (40:09):
And uh.
Speaker 3 (40:12):
Official, and and I just knew it was bad. I
just knew that, like, this is not someone wanted to do.
So when I did the story, I'm kind of joking.
I didn't want to glorify tobacco because, in a way,
I mean, the the the agriculture and the farming of
the tobacco is really cool. It's it's an interest, it's
(40:33):
interesting tradition. But then when you when you dive into
it and it's like, yeah, this is really like something
the CD underbelly of of the world. I mean, you know,
and I just don't. I just didn't want people to
get the wrong idea. I don't view personally tobacco use
(40:53):
is just like something casual that is like okay, I
mean I have lots of great friends that chew tobacco.
Probably people listening to this podcast and they should stop. So,
I mean it's a period like so that's just the
way I feel about it. Dad, what do you think
is that?
Speaker 1 (41:12):
Okay?
Speaker 3 (41:13):
Hey, when you when you have your own podcast, you
can be preachy.
Speaker 1 (41:17):
Sometimes you're an FBI am. I right, what's that? I said?
Speaker 3 (41:22):
You're you're an FBI agent. What I'm saying is right, right.
Speaker 1 (41:26):
Yeah, it's all you man, You're I'm the guest here.
I was looking for the FBI stamp of approval, Like.
Speaker 5 (41:38):
Dare McGruff the crime dog was that like back in
the age.
Speaker 1 (41:42):
That's that's me. We're gonna have a branch of bear.
Speaker 5 (41:46):
My middle boy is like head over heels with hunting
and all that stuff. So here in Clay like is
a strong role model saying don't do tobacco. You know,
like sometimes you have that kid and need I need,
I need.
Speaker 1 (41:58):
A little like hand. So I could talk to these grown.
Speaker 3 (42:03):
Men and be like, I'm mister ferres Use, you shouldn't
do tobacco.
Speaker 5 (42:15):
People are gonna have a lot of mixed emotions about this.
Speaker 3 (42:17):
I mean I do too, but it's just sometimes the
truth hurts. But Dad, what stood out to you? Well,
I tell you it was an amazing deal.
Speaker 8 (42:28):
But when you think about it, our country is made
up of amazing deals. I mean, you can just take this,
take the personalities out, and stick it in any place.
You know, the way the Indians were treated, it just
keep going all the way through. And uh, but I
think about Mary Lou. Don't monkey with Mary Lou. Remember
(42:49):
Mary Lou? I mean she was pretty. The women didn't
like her, she was opinionated, the men didn't like her.
Speaker 1 (42:56):
And she ended up getting wealthy over this deal.
Speaker 5 (42:59):
And she pretty much put a shot to quite a
bunch though.
Speaker 8 (43:04):
But she, I mean, she was the first step in
stopping it, wasn't she couldn't you say?
Speaker 3 (43:10):
That's the way Bill described that. She was the first
litigation against the night riders.
Speaker 8 (43:16):
So if you got something going, you know, you need
to veer from Maryland. And then you think about our
country being so new and young. I mean, it hadn't developed,
We didn't have really strong unions. So they have vigilantes,
so you know, I get upset sometimes with union stuff,
but they really served a purpose in our country. They
(43:40):
established the worker to have a voice. They didn't have
a voice. Yeah, anti trust. I mean all it would
have taken was a few years later and have a
law passed where hey, if you get so big, man,
we're gonna bust you up, and we're gonna take care
of you. You we're gonna make sure think you know.
So a lot of legal things that developed out of
(44:01):
this that kind of put up a quietness on the
I love the Vigilantis. When I was young, I used
to think, man, somebody ought to take that kid right there, take.
Speaker 9 (44:11):
Him out behind the barn and juste us.
Speaker 8 (44:16):
But you couldn't do it because you might have five
good ideas, but you could have four bad ideas, you know.
So you need the law of the Constitution to come
in and establish all this. And I think we did
a great job of doing that to keep our country
on track. And this story just absolutely puts a magnifying
(44:42):
glass on all that because we didn't have a lot
of that stuff established. And because of this and many
other stories, you know, the law developed anti trust to
break it up monopolies the unions have where the workers
have voices and so forth.
Speaker 3 (44:58):
It was really insightful to me to hear Bill Cunningham
talk about how this very issue has overthrown a lot
of countries. Yeah, because you know, like when the government
would and I feel like what he's talking about is
like when the government saw that these monopolies had so
much power and they came in and said, we're going
to take some of that power away from you. I
(45:18):
mean that's like a step towards communism in a way.
I mean, it's like government control of business. But they
did it just enough that it allowed people to still
be massively successful without without it just you know, totally
crippling their workers. So they kind of did it like
(45:38):
just enough. And then yeah, the unions, I agree with
what you're saying, like, you know, you kind of have
sometimes the union stuff I don't understand fully, but it
has helped a lot of people in the country. And
so they just did everything kind of just right. That
set America up for the next hundred years, which would
you know, make us you know, so successful in many ways.
Speaker 1 (46:02):
And you had like it.
Speaker 5 (46:04):
They touched on it, and I thought it was really
good because like if you back out a you know,
sometimes you look at little something to get an idea,
but you back out. And this story was playing at
that time, like It was a really turbulent time, right,
Like you had all the barons, like the robber barons
or whatever, like Vanderbilt and all them. You had railroads
(46:25):
going up. You had Upton Sinclair's the jungle with like
people falling into pickle vats or meat packing plants. You
had all the like the automotive stuffs, like where they're
fighting cops and stuff and gunfights. You know, you had
all the al Capone and you know, like Bonnie and
Clyde and like that was all in this time period
(46:48):
coming off the Civil War, the you know, Tulsa was burned,
You had the sharecroppers and like desegregation, all these things.
This country was just roiling and it's all messy, yeah,
you know, and and and I think it's it's just
sometimes it's just messy.
Speaker 3 (47:07):
And it could have gone a lot of different ways.
It could have, and it kind of moved towards stability
to some degree. And you know, there's different groups of
people that would argue that it didn't and and but
in general it moved towards stability, at least as you
compare to other parts of the world, you know. But yeah,
it's such a what I love about these stories. So
(47:27):
this book I've got I've got uh Bill Cliningham's book
right here. This book, as I understand that it would
have been kind of a regionally known I mean, this
wasn't like a New York Times bestseller, But it's a fantastic,
fantastic book, fantastic story that many people outside of the
(47:51):
Black Patch would have never heard.
Speaker 7 (47:54):
Haven't heard it?
Speaker 4 (47:55):
Yeah, Well if you do read, I would encourage anybody
listening to read it because there's so much you guys
just can't cover in a podcast. Like there's small little
you know, anecdotes and different things in there about some
of the other experiences that were going on out there
that are just unreal, you know, and you really get
that feel for how violent it was, you know at
(48:18):
some points and you know, like he mentions.
Speaker 1 (48:20):
And you know, it.
Speaker 4 (48:22):
Was just disgusting there, like it just at some point,
this thing became more violent than it probably was even
intended on on becoming, you know, And I think that's
we see that happen all the time in uh, you know,
in history and in today's where people join in on
something and then all of a sudden somebody else comes
in to escalate it because they're not really worried about
(48:43):
the mission anymore. Yeah, they're just looking to crack some skulls, right,
And you had some of that infiltrated toros in there.
Speaker 3 (48:49):
Well, that and that was something that I'm glad you
brought that up because I wanted to say that on here.
You know, sometimes in an episode you just don't have
enough space or time to say everything. But there was
there was some accusation of the Night Riders being a
racist organization because I mean, it would have been probably
at the pinnacle of like klu Klux klu Klux Klan
(49:13):
q klux Klan. You know, it's the k Ku Klux
q q klux Klan, isn't.
Speaker 5 (49:20):
It kkk though it is according to the Ramones song.
Speaker 3 (49:25):
Has mocked me before over saying the klu Klux Klan you're.
Speaker 1 (49:29):
Taking was founded in your state, wouldn't it.
Speaker 3 (49:31):
Well, now, I don't know about that, but but there
was there was. There was there was some talk of that,
and basically in Bill's book, which is my source, they
he was he had a section where he talked about
how that there were a lot of African Americans in
(49:52):
the association, not necessarily Night Riders though because that was
a segregate a very segregated society, so they kind of
like lived in different places. But as the thing went
further and further, people would under the name of the
night Riders probably do some stuff completely off mission, and
(50:13):
so there probably was some racist stuff going on that
kind of was like this overlap between you know, these
groups of people. So that was something that was talked about.
But then there were a lot of people guys that
just kind of under the hood of a black mask
just started doing crazy stuff that that had nothing to
do with tobacco, but they were kind of lumped in
(50:34):
with night Riders, so it wasn't just all this like
really clear cut mission.
Speaker 1 (50:39):
That a good description, I think, No, I think you're
right on with it. Yeah.
Speaker 6 (50:42):
Yeah, And a lot of a lot of bad things
happen under anonymity, yeah, you know what I mean. Anonymity
seems to be a fuel for fire sometimes. You know
what happens all the time on the internet, you know
what I mean, People even comments and saying horrible things
that I guarantee most of them would never say face
to face to another person. That was a kind of
(51:04):
that time period's version of that where they felt the
freedom to go do that. Maybe not freedom, but they
felt the protection or just that anonymity to go and
do things that they that do.
Speaker 3 (51:18):
You know what somebody should make fun of me for
in this episode is how many times I said clandestine?
Speaker 1 (51:24):
Did you? Well?
Speaker 3 (51:25):
I just felt really smart when I said so. I
think I just kept saying it. And I actually said
it yesterday in like casual conversation with someone, if you
They were like, what And I said clandestine just like secret,
and they were like, that word makes me uncomfortable.
Speaker 1 (51:44):
But you just look square as should What are you hiding?
Speaker 3 (51:57):
Maybe the last thing I want to talk about we
can continue to talking about. Certainly, something I wanted to
talk about was the Joe Scott interview. So for a
Bear Grease podcast and now going back to Jeff giving
us this one like all watered up in a little bundle.
We didn't know about Joe this Joe Scott interview, which
to me is so cool. Anytime that you can reach
(52:18):
back into history and actually hear someone that was there
in an interview format is really unique. It reminded me
of back in the late summer, we did a series
on the formation of the Buffalo National River, which was over.
Speaker 1 (52:33):
Here in Arkansas.
Speaker 3 (52:34):
And in the in the process of interviewing these people,
we'd we'd talked about this lady named Granny Henderson, and
I found out there was this long interview with Grannie
Henderson that essentially nobody had heard.
Speaker 1 (52:48):
I mean, somebody did, but it was very obscure like.
Speaker 3 (52:53):
And I was able to go into that interview and
you could hear Grannie Henderson's voice, this woman born in
the eighteen high hundreds, and hear her talking about her
life and its super interesting.
Speaker 1 (53:03):
This was like that.
Speaker 3 (53:05):
And so this Joe Scott interview, he was ninety seventy
years old in the nineteen eighties.
Speaker 1 (53:10):
Bill Cunningham interviews him.
Speaker 3 (53:12):
When Bill's a young man, Bill's in his eighties now
probably he's think so Bill would have been in his forties.
I guess he interviews Joe Scott and yeah, that's that's el.
Speaker 1 (53:26):
Primo l primo stuff, when you get to hear from
the guy. And it was a long interview.
Speaker 3 (53:32):
It was hard to go through and pick out which
sections to use, but I mainly just wanted people to
kind of hear his voice. And Joe became kind of
like this focal point of Joe as a night rider
and he was doing all this stuff.
Speaker 1 (53:47):
I just couldn't quite put it all in.
Speaker 3 (53:50):
I didn't want to villainize Joe either for being the
last guy and just being willing to talk. But he
said the only thing that he really ever did in
one of the raids was like shoot his gun in
the air, like he was just kind of there.
Speaker 1 (54:06):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (54:06):
Now he did insinuate that he was on some of
the visits, but he didn't ever specifically say like I
beat somebody. But if you think about it, an eighteen
year old kid and they're just looking for warm bodies
to kind of ride with them and just kind of
be there, I have a feeling he didn't actually do much.
He was just kind of present, kind of there. That
(54:29):
was the insinuation I got because he never got super specific.
But but you might, I mean at eighty seven years old,
I mean you might not remember everything.
Speaker 5 (54:38):
But I think those are the things you remember when
you're eighty seven. Yeah, like that kind of stuff, I
think you remember it just like when you talk like
war vets or whatever, like that's those are the things
that are burned into your brain like you burn Because
I think that was it hot Hoganville, Hope, he said
he was there. Yeah, like, I mean that town burned down.
(54:58):
You don't forget about burning down and down.
Speaker 1 (55:00):
Okay.
Speaker 3 (55:00):
They specifically asked him, they said, what did you do it?
Maybe Hopkinsville, And he said, oh, I didn't do nothing.
I just rode around on my horse and shot my
gun in the air.
Speaker 1 (55:08):
A couple of times.
Speaker 5 (55:11):
Your house is burning down, you probably don't take that
viewpoint of those.
Speaker 3 (55:15):
But then again, you know, you wonder how truthful the
guy was being.
Speaker 1 (55:20):
I mean, here he is.
Speaker 3 (55:22):
It seems so not innocent, but it seems so like
like it just was inconsequential him at his age talking
about it. It's not like they're going to send to
prison or something. But he was very worried about that. Actually,
you know, there were parts of the episode when he
was like, maybe I shouldn't be talking.
Speaker 1 (55:43):
But interesting.
Speaker 8 (55:47):
View of this would be what would have happened back
then had doctor Amos had not been there with his
leadership skills, you know it probably he would have just
floundered around and the same thing would have happened. It
would just taken a different route, probably a better route,
I don't know, probably a better route. Yeah, yeah, so
(56:11):
the way to handle it, as you look back, would
be through the courts.
Speaker 9 (56:15):
Hey, we got this big guy out here that's monkeying
with us. Let's let's levelize the playing field. This isn't fair,
you know. And they didn't have those tools to go to.
The only tool they had was, yeah, in a vigilanti stuff.
Speaker 5 (56:30):
Well, because the courts, you ain't gonna win against a
guy with two hundred million dollars. I mean, like that's
the that's also part of the American experience.
Speaker 1 (56:37):
And when you don't even have money.
Speaker 5 (56:39):
To buy for your kids, you know, or the time,
and you need to be working.
Speaker 8 (56:43):
And well, what they did was probably what they sort
of had to do. I mean, they didn't have avenues
like we have today. So it's just like you just
fold up, fold your tents up, let them take advantage
of you, or we're going to fight.
Speaker 4 (57:00):
It's hard to judge somebody from a position you've never
been in. And I think that's that's part of what
you know, Judge Cunningham was getting to when he says
he I've sent people to the pen that I.
Speaker 1 (57:11):
Had empathy for.
Speaker 4 (57:12):
And you know, in our line of work, it's you
see it every day too. I mean, I remember my
dad telling me, you know, when I was a kid,
that you know, in police work and in law enforcement,
the vast majority of people that you're going to interact with,
they got themselves caught up in something they never meant
to get caught up in. And there's there's plenty of
(57:33):
people that it's all they've ever known. Sometimes it's a
lifestyle of all they've ever known, or like Cunningham said,
you know, I knew the guy's dad. I knew his
dad was abusing him his whole life. And you have
empathy for people, and it doesn't make it right. They
broke the law, but you're a human being, and that's
that's what's going to happen, you know. And so I
think it's it's hard to make a judgment on somebody
(57:56):
for any kind of situation if you've never been in
it yourself. And that's something I you know, I think
that's I think that's what this podcast does so well.
And you guys did it with this story. And as
a Kentuckian, I'm honored that you all did it. But
it's you know, the beauty of this this deal that
you all have going on here. Mans You make people think,
(58:17):
and we are constantly in the today's world just find
ourselves and echo chambers and never having to think critically.
And you have to remember, man, life is just history
is messy.
Speaker 1 (58:29):
Life is messy.
Speaker 4 (58:30):
There is not a single thing out here that any
of us, you know, in my opinions, there's been one
perfect person walk this earth, and we put him on
a tree, you know what I mean.
Speaker 1 (58:41):
And so.
Speaker 4 (58:43):
You know, I think it's just you guys do such
a good job of that of causing your listeners to
think about it a go, man, what how do you
digest this story? And how do you see both sides
of it and then come to your best.
Speaker 7 (58:57):
Well and to piggyback off that, not only do we
not know what life was like in that time being
a farmer who was getting taken advantage of by this trust,
but much like Joe Scott, I can't tell you what
I would have done if somebody would have came to
my to my house, stuck a gun in my face
and said, let's go yeah.
Speaker 1 (59:15):
I mean, that's the best line from it.
Speaker 7 (59:17):
Yeah, from that, from that point on, I'm probably like,
let's go yeah, I mean, And you know, you think
about the night Writers, and a lot of times the
night Writers and the association will get put one in
the same. But you had twenty five thousand members of
an association and at most probably five hundred night writers,
So you're talking two percent of this massive, you know,
association that a lot of times will get tied in together.
(59:40):
And as we heard later on, as they continued with
the raids and then some of the beatings and stuff,
it probably wasn't even association stuff that they do. So
but you know, I've never had somebody point a gun
at me and tell me to do something, but I
can imagine that give me to react a little bit different.
Speaker 3 (59:59):
Well, that's exactly what Joe Scott's answer wasn't it. When
they say he said why did you join the Night Riders?
He gave such a great, pointed, clear answer. He said,
what would you do if they took a gun in
your face and told.
Speaker 1 (01:00:11):
You to go? You probably go, let's go where.
Speaker 5 (01:00:16):
But it's not just random people either, it's your neighbors
or the holler yeah, you know, like it's if you
say no, well you're going to be looking over your
back for a long time. Right next to this, it
is your community.
Speaker 1 (01:00:28):
Clear too.
Speaker 3 (01:00:29):
Why these guys weren't getting in trouble because you know,
when I when we first got to that point in
the podcast where we're talking about they couldn't prosecute these guys,
Like in some world you'd kind of be like, well, why,
how the heck could they not prosecute them? They're doing
all this criminal activity, But oh gosh it, you would
(01:00:49):
have been you'd been narking on your on, on your family,
on your neighbors, and man, part of the here's one
thing that I thought about when like, what would I
have done? I think in the right scenario, you could
have just navigated yourself out of the situation and not
(01:01:10):
been on either side. I mean, I don't know how,
but I know in my life I do that a lot.
Speaker 1 (01:01:17):
But where would you?
Speaker 5 (01:01:18):
Where would you?
Speaker 1 (01:01:19):
No?
Speaker 3 (01:01:20):
But in a in a I don't know, I don't
know the answer, but I just I just feel like
you can, you could, you could, you could just like
slide under the radar. I just don't know that I
would have been the guy that had been coming to
beat because I was making a big deal about selling
to the to the to the Duke Trust. But also
I don't know, there's ways to do it like, there's
(01:01:42):
there's there's there's social ways to not be a target.
Speaker 7 (01:01:46):
You know.
Speaker 6 (01:01:47):
I was thinking about too. I was thinking about too
because Duke hadn't probably i mean likely had no knowledge
of the details of what was going on there, and
I had to think about, like what was causing them
to drop price, you know, to start paying paying I mean,
you must have had these regional buyers that were making
(01:02:10):
on the fly decisions about what they were going to
pay people, and they were the ones who were really
beating up on them, you know, financially and it you know,
a lot of that stuff was probably had to do
with that middle management, you know what I mean, these
guys that are how are we going to get the
best price for this tobacco? And without this big oversight
(01:02:31):
of the Duke, the Big Duke trust and so it's
you have to be able to to see the small
details of this. And this was their this was their
best response was to create this Planner's Protection Association and
to fight this what they what they perceived as greed.
So you know, there's just so many, so many minute
(01:02:52):
things that you just don't know about. To say who
the good guys are bad guys I think that's what
the title of the of the podcast bred lines Good
Guys Versus Bad Guys, I think is really fitting because
it's it is hard to know, you know what I mean.
And I think that I think that bleeds over into
a lot of the a lot of the the things
(01:03:12):
that we deal with, even in modern times. You know,
it's so easy to jump on a bandwagon and not
know the details of a situation. And I think, you know,
probably people in New York would have had they heard
about this, they would have said, you know that you
got these rebellious farmers down there just doing these horrible things,
and then you've got these small, small town farmers saying,
(01:03:35):
you know, we got we're getting taken advantage of. And
I think it I think it has to cause people
to stop and evaluate and to like try to learn more.
You know, I think about political situations. I think about
you know, how how things are perceived there. You can't
just like you talked about echo chambers or talked about
echo chambers, you can't just listen to an echo chamber.
(01:03:57):
You have to really be on your guard for what
you hear and what you believe.
Speaker 3 (01:04:02):
Let's play trivia. Yeah, we got We're gonna end with
trivia here.
Speaker 1 (01:04:06):
Does that sound good?
Speaker 3 (01:04:08):
You guys think you're all black patch expert? Let me
why his hand out boards. I want to clarify what
I said a minute ago. Basically, what I was saying
was you don't have to pick. You don't have to
be in every fight that's being fought.
Speaker 5 (01:04:22):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (01:04:22):
Yeah, because when I said you can navigate around something,
an old believer said, what that's what I mean. It's like,
you don't have to you don't have to fight every fight.
Speaker 5 (01:04:35):
Why is the serpents harmless as doves?
Speaker 1 (01:04:37):
There you go, there you go, there you go.
Speaker 3 (01:04:39):
All right, We're gonna play a little trivia. Josh has
seven questions. The winner gets the panther lamp. Not true,
not true, We're keeping that one.
Speaker 5 (01:04:49):
Everybody's wives just breathed a sigh of relief. You got
one from me there.
Speaker 1 (01:04:54):
Yes, hey, I tell you what. Here's what I am
gonna do.
Speaker 3 (01:04:58):
This is this is this is this, this is what we're
doing on this this episode. The winner of this trivia,
which I'm not playing. I'm just gonna be commentating. When's
this U Moultrie trail camp?
Speaker 5 (01:05:11):
Oh wow, Silas, I'm trying buddy.
Speaker 3 (01:05:14):
Stakes are high, stakes are high, and I can I
can probably even get you, like a subscription from Moultrie
to to to be able to run this bad boy
because this is a cell camera.
Speaker 5 (01:05:26):
Is Josh ellable?
Speaker 1 (01:05:28):
He's already got something.
Speaker 5 (01:05:29):
Yeah, and Gary, that would be nepotism really.
Speaker 1 (01:05:35):
Down? Three?
Speaker 3 (01:05:36):
Okay, yeah, okay, So the Winter Winners getting a Moultrie
Trail camp, all right, Josh?
Speaker 6 (01:05:41):
Okay, First for we got some questions that you that
everybody should know. We got a couple that you really
had to be on your game to catch.
Speaker 3 (01:05:48):
Could you use the one that I said was going
to be on here?
Speaker 1 (01:05:52):
Were you paying attention? I forgot about it.
Speaker 3 (01:05:55):
I knew, I knew it. I knew when I said
it wouldn't be on here. You can ask that I
said on that, so I said this will be on trivia.
Go ahead, carry on, we'll move through this prequel.
Speaker 5 (01:06:04):
Okay, big question? Who was the founder of the American
tobacco company?
Speaker 1 (01:06:11):
Mmm?
Speaker 3 (01:06:13):
Don't be uh, don't be misled by Okay, go ahead,
Christian lady, do you.
Speaker 1 (01:06:27):
Think people got that joke?
Speaker 3 (01:06:30):
And I appreciate it, Guys, I don't know that like
my twenty year old son or nineteen year old son
would have got it though they don't know what Christian like.
Speaker 6 (01:06:39):
There is no Okay, Terrell Spencer, Duke Duke, James Buck Duke,
James Buck Duke.
Speaker 1 (01:06:49):
Duke. I put Washington, Duke.
Speaker 5 (01:06:52):
It is Washington.
Speaker 3 (01:06:53):
That's got to be the answer. Y'all are right, but
Washington Duke.
Speaker 5 (01:06:57):
I think the more will back this out, the better
for me.
Speaker 3 (01:07:02):
That's that's what I was gonna That's what I was
trying to elude to my preamble. It's got to be specific.
I don't even did we even say that on the
podcast though?
Speaker 1 (01:07:11):
Did we say I? Actually, I don't know, should join
a union?
Speaker 5 (01:07:18):
Okay?
Speaker 6 (01:07:19):
Second question, everyone should get this one. Who is the
who was known as the leader of the night writers?
Speaker 1 (01:07:28):
This is come on that ship.
Speaker 5 (01:07:31):
Everyone should get this one. Okay, everybody should get a gimme.
Speaker 6 (01:07:36):
Okay, Drew was starting with you, David Amos, That is correct,
David Amos, pH d, it's actually m D.
Speaker 1 (01:07:46):
Do I still get the points? Yes, Gary, Sorry, I
just couldn't pull it up. Man.
Speaker 5 (01:07:53):
Okay, zero famous Amos. You think that's the same guy
as a cookie guy?
Speaker 6 (01:07:59):
Probably no, there there's actually a story about that. I
know the cookies are addictive though the office. Okay, here's
a here's a bit of an obscure question that was
mentioned in there. Okay, who was known as the Moses
of the black Patch? That that one's some terrible games.
(01:08:23):
I just need that one's a bit obscure.
Speaker 1 (01:08:28):
Yeah he was. He was only mentioned once. It's a
tough question.
Speaker 6 (01:08:33):
We've got a couple of ringers in here, Gary, Okay,
Drew Felix Felix Ewing, Felix Felix Ewing, Gary.
Speaker 1 (01:08:47):
Seinfeld Seinfeld.
Speaker 6 (01:08:50):
Felix Ewing is correct? Okay, people back in the black
Patch or they're like what here's another question, Spence, you
might remember this one.
Speaker 5 (01:09:01):
Thanks.
Speaker 6 (01:09:02):
What was the term given to those who would scrape
plant beds as an intimidation?
Speaker 1 (01:09:09):
Oh, Spencer, get that?
Speaker 5 (01:09:12):
I don't wow remember the first word? No, I ain't
cheating a man of integrity. Okay, Gary, we're gonna start
with you.
Speaker 6 (01:09:22):
O hands hands okay, close, Jeff, hotteers, hotets, hototers, hotels.
Speaker 5 (01:09:32):
I think it's like a hostess.
Speaker 1 (01:09:35):
You buy them in the gas, some kind of icing
on top of Yeah. Can I ask my question? Yes? Yeah?
Speaker 6 (01:09:44):
Okay, So wait, how many, Jeff you got you've gotten,
he's gotten all that it has been three or four?
Speaker 1 (01:09:52):
Three? Three?
Speaker 5 (01:09:53):
That's four actually?
Speaker 1 (01:09:54):
Okay?
Speaker 5 (01:09:55):
So four three, two and a half two and a half, okay.
Speaker 1 (01:09:58):
Okay, okay. So my question is what was the original
name of the night Writers? There there was?
Speaker 3 (01:10:07):
They were first known as the X but then they
later became known as the night Writers.
Speaker 5 (01:10:16):
People scribbling here every time? See every time you say
night writer, I think of the eighties? Car What was
it that you could ask that? What was the nauld
have been the bonus question? Mm hmm, Sorry, Silas, Who was.
Speaker 1 (01:10:32):
The star of night Writer? Tom all right? Already? Who was?
Speaker 5 (01:10:38):
Yeah? You think of magnum p that was it? Okay, Drew,
I didn't know that was the question.
Speaker 1 (01:10:47):
He's from Princeton though.
Speaker 7 (01:10:49):
Prince Born born. I'm not from Jeff's.
Speaker 5 (01:10:52):
Jeff's.
Speaker 1 (01:10:54):
This is a judgment called Opossum Hunters.
Speaker 7 (01:10:58):
I don't know when we when did we? Did we
just all come together and decide that, oh wasn't going
in front of possum an It's too hard to say.
Speaker 1 (01:11:05):
I mean it was.
Speaker 3 (01:11:06):
It was a conference in eighteen eighty seven in Nashville, Tennessee. Gary,
did you get anything powesome possum crew. The possum crew.
You should get some points for that.
Speaker 1 (01:11:18):
Okay.
Speaker 6 (01:11:19):
Question number six, why did Joe Scott want to tell
his story so late in life?
Speaker 1 (01:11:27):
What was the motivation?
Speaker 5 (01:11:28):
Why was he willing?
Speaker 1 (01:11:29):
Was he willing? That's a better answer.
Speaker 5 (01:11:31):
Story so late in life?
Speaker 1 (01:11:34):
I just mentioned a couple of times.
Speaker 5 (01:11:44):
Okay, Spence, statute of limitations.
Speaker 1 (01:11:50):
That might be the right.
Speaker 5 (01:11:54):
Drew everyone else was dead?
Speaker 1 (01:11:56):
Mmmm, same thing I put. Yep, everyone else was dead.
That's all that is correct.
Speaker 5 (01:12:03):
Mm hmm. Okay, next question, we need to have another
soils based podcast. Where did the mayor of Hopkinsville seek
refuge during the raid?
Speaker 1 (01:12:20):
Mm hmm.
Speaker 5 (01:12:23):
From the God fearing men?
Speaker 6 (01:12:25):
Yeah, be specific. We're looking for a specific answer. Okay, Jeff,
we're going to go with you.
Speaker 1 (01:12:38):
Coal shoot of the Baptist Church. Oh wow, that was specific.
Baptist Church, Methodist.
Speaker 7 (01:12:49):
They's been to the Baptist Church down the coal shoot.
Speaker 1 (01:12:52):
Man.
Speaker 6 (01:12:52):
These guys are good, the Baptist the coal shoot down
the coal shoot of the I think Baptist Church.
Speaker 5 (01:13:00):
Baptist Church, absolutely not the Methodist Church.
Speaker 4 (01:13:02):
He was.
Speaker 1 (01:13:07):
Anybody different than us was just the same. Any denomination
I would have I would have said, that same thing.
I've got nothing against the methods. Okay, lives, easy shot,
right in the kidney.
Speaker 6 (01:13:23):
Our last question, what was the reported net worth of
James B. Duke in nineteen oh seven, Spence, I like
the confidence that you wrote that down with.
Speaker 5 (01:13:39):
I'm really I'm really calipari in this stuff right now.
I'm right in the back of the conference man looking up.
Speaker 6 (01:13:50):
Okay, Spence will start with you. Two hundred million, two
hundred million, two hundred million. They all got it, And
for our final question, we have all right answers, Well
done everybody, Yes, so excellent.
Speaker 5 (01:14:03):
's our trivia.
Speaker 7 (01:14:04):
So Clay said, you know, two hundred million was an
enormous amount of wealth back then, that's an enormous amount of.
Speaker 5 (01:14:09):
Wealth now, yeah, no doubt.
Speaker 1 (01:14:10):
I mean no doubt.
Speaker 7 (01:14:12):
I wouldn't mind two hundred million right now.
Speaker 1 (01:14:15):
I would imagine that would be like a billionaire today.
He was, yeah, yeah, Okay.
Speaker 3 (01:14:24):
Closing down here the final little section of the podcast,
we learned that James Buck Duke buys buys the name
of Duke University, which probably, like when I read that,
I had a tendency to be like, oh, come on,
rich guyd there's probably a bigger story perhaps, or I
(01:14:47):
wonder how.
Speaker 1 (01:14:48):
The people at Duke feel about Like, is that is
that y'all might know? Is that a negative thing? Or
is that part of their history? It's funny. I think,
you know, he touches on it.
Speaker 5 (01:14:59):
Are you a Duke fan? I thought you were.
Speaker 1 (01:15:01):
I'm a little Yeah. We can throw Duke under the bus.
I don't care what you did, man.
Speaker 5 (01:15:06):
Knowing from North Carolina.
Speaker 4 (01:15:08):
Over there, but it's you know, it's interesting he touches
on it in the book that like when Duke first
approached them about giving them this money and want to
rename it, you know, it seems like it was a
fairly devout like Methodist college that was.
Speaker 5 (01:15:21):
Called Trinity College.
Speaker 1 (01:15:22):
Yeah, and there it seemed like there was some administration
that was like, you know, this guy's slinging cigarettes. So
I don't think we can't take any part of this.
Speaker 4 (01:15:32):
And then I think it's just kind of funny, Like
six million dollars I think the Lord gives does.
Speaker 5 (01:15:38):
He not like has called nullification?
Speaker 1 (01:15:43):
That's right.
Speaker 4 (01:15:47):
I think I think the Lord can overlook this one.
How many more souls are we going to save? This
is losing from here. But so it was kind of
funny the way he touches on that, but that seemed
to be his brother was was much more involved with
that school and his dad and his dad right, and
(01:16:07):
they both were fairly devout Methodists. I think I think
that was why it was troubling to them as they
watched Buck kind.
Speaker 1 (01:16:14):
Of take off with this, you know, with the corporation.
Speaker 5 (01:16:20):
And so it's interesting because you'd said that his dad said,
the two things I don't understand are the Trinity and
my son and then his son bias Trinity College.
Speaker 1 (01:16:30):
Yeah, it's just kind of like a full circle, full circle,
it is, man, it's well.
Speaker 4 (01:16:34):
And then the way the book ends with in the
way you ended the podcast, like, I mean, Amos's son
goes on to be the first medical uh you know,
professor medical professor for the like, it's unbelievable. It's just
such a crazy story with such unique, you know, characters. Yeah,
(01:16:56):
it's it's incredible.
Speaker 1 (01:16:58):
So who won? Jeff one?
Speaker 5 (01:16:59):
Jeff one?
Speaker 1 (01:17:00):
Did you did you miss one?
Speaker 7 (01:17:01):
I missed the first one? James Buck instead of oh well, patriarch.
Speaker 3 (01:17:06):
There, congratulations on this. Uh so, Jeff, you're gonna get
a Moultrie edge too. Camera do you do you deer hunt.
Speaker 4 (01:17:14):
Yeah, so this will be useful to absolutely and I
think I can hook you up with three on it
though it's an edge two.
Speaker 3 (01:17:21):
Well this was this was actually my personal camera that
and so the three is uh this is the third one.
But uh but uh yeah, they're they're really good.
Speaker 1 (01:17:31):
That's awesome, man. I appreciate it.
Speaker 5 (01:17:33):
Undercover work too.
Speaker 3 (01:17:34):
Yeah, this is going to revolution. He's going to take
that back to the FBI and they're gonna be.
Speaker 5 (01:17:37):
Like, what's that going to get?
Speaker 1 (01:17:39):
Like we've never had Yeah for about three times a pressure.
This would be good.
Speaker 3 (01:17:49):
Thank you guys so much for coming. Man came all
the way from Kentucky. Much appreciated.
Speaker 7 (01:17:54):
Thanks for having us.
Speaker 1 (01:17:55):
Yeah really and and thanks for the suggestion on the
podcast man. Man, Like I said, I'm honored you guys.
Speaker 4 (01:18:01):
I was not expecting, first off, even to get a reply,
let alone you guys run with it.
Speaker 1 (01:18:06):
But I'm glad you did. And it's been great getting
to work with you guys and meet you guys through this.
Speaker 5 (01:18:12):
Man.
Speaker 1 (01:18:12):
It's awesome. And keep it up, man, people need it. Yep,
thanks a lot. Guys. Keep the wild places wild because
that's where the bears love. There's no criminals there and
FBI is not there casually, Chick
My name is Clay Nukleman.
Speaker 2 (00:16):
This is a production of the Bear Grease podcast called
the Bear Grease Render, where we render down, dive deeper,
and look behind the scenes of the actual bear Grease podcast,
presented by f HF Gear, American made purpose built hunting
and fishing gear that's designed to be as rugged as
(00:37):
the place as we explore.
Speaker 3 (00:43):
Well, I've been looking forward to this render for a while.
We kind of got off schedule we did the first
night Rider Tobacco War episode. Now we usually have a
render where we talk about it like immediately, but we
kind of had a fill in render with Rich Frohning.
But this works out perfect. Never heard of him, never
(01:03):
heard of the Fittest man in the world, which frowning
the uh so we had we had. We've now played
these two night Rider Tobacco War episodes.
Speaker 1 (01:16):
So that's what we're here to talk about.
Speaker 3 (01:18):
And we have a pretty good, pretty good guest list
here a varied assortment of guests. Yes, we got my dad, Gary, Bilievernukom,
who I have some I have someone sent you a gift.
I'm gonna go ahead money, I'm gonna go ahead money,
I'm gonna go ahead and introduce everybody. Uh, then I
have Jeff Gardner. Now you're not from Kentucky, but I
(01:42):
am from Kentucky.
Speaker 4 (01:43):
You are from currently don't live in Kentucky, correct, currently
in Oklahoma.
Speaker 3 (01:48):
But Jeff, Jeff did something that's very rare in the
Bear Grease world is that he basically like hand delivered
this podcast to us.
Speaker 1 (02:00):
For real. I'm not kidding.
Speaker 3 (02:01):
People all the time suggest stuff, which I love, I mean,
keep them coming. A lot of times the suggestions are
about stories that maybe people don't have the full grasp
on and maybe it's a great idea. It's not someone's
fault if they send me an incomplete. But when somebody goes,
this is a great story, here's the book about it.
(02:23):
I know the author, here's his number. Also know a
secondary guest that you could interview about.
Speaker 1 (02:29):
I think this.
Speaker 3 (02:30):
Would happen to be my wife's grandpa, right, I mean,
he just like hand delivered the whole thing. And then
so we ordered the book and we were just like, yeah,
this is great. And so anyway, thanks Jeff.
Speaker 4 (02:44):
Hey happy to help. A big fan. Love what you
guys do. And like I said, you know, I'm sure
we'll get into it. But I read the story and
was like, I literally was sitting there in my wife's
grandfather's house and I went, man, I just I bet
you could make a killing with a podcast of this.
But then I was like, you know, I would love
to hear somebody do this. And then it just clicked.
(03:05):
I was like, this is exactly what these guys do. Yeah,
and I was able to find a you know, email
for you and get it to your.
Speaker 1 (03:12):
Worked out here we are.
Speaker 3 (03:13):
So your your grandfather is doctor Lloyd Murdoch, Is that correct?
Speaker 4 (03:18):
So my wife's grandfather, Yeah, he wife, you know, uh
selfishly consider him my grandfather.
Speaker 1 (03:24):
He's been like grandfather to me.
Speaker 4 (03:25):
So I may refer to him that, and you may
hear us refer to him as Bubby because that's what
the rest of the world calls him outside.
Speaker 3 (03:32):
Of So he was he was on the first episode,
and he's essentially as.
Speaker 1 (03:38):
Agronomus and was a tobacco expert.
Speaker 3 (03:41):
So he was the one real soft spoken guy that
spoke on the first episode.
Speaker 1 (03:47):
So that that was great.
Speaker 3 (03:49):
And then so your brother in law, So you are
married to sisters whose grandfather married my sister.
Speaker 1 (03:56):
I'm just not gonna.
Speaker 5 (04:00):
Yeah, family is Drew's grandfather.
Speaker 1 (04:04):
He is my grandfather, he's your grandfather. We're from Kentucky.
It's family, get messy.
Speaker 6 (04:11):
I read the motto of Kentucky was fifteen million people,
fifteen last names.
Speaker 1 (04:16):
Wow. Wow, I like it.
Speaker 3 (04:18):
I like it anytime we can jab somebody else.
Speaker 5 (04:20):
Exactly, yeah, exactly. You know we're at in Kentucky. Are
you all from?
Speaker 1 (04:24):
So?
Speaker 7 (04:24):
I was actually uh born in Princeton, where one of
the Reds happened, and where my that's where my.
Speaker 1 (04:30):
The Vatican of the Night Ridership.
Speaker 7 (04:33):
Ye, my U and my grandparents still live there. It's
where Josh came down and did the interviews with my grandfather.
In one county over was where Bill Conningham was. And
but now I've since shifted. I'm in Lexington, Kentucky.
Speaker 1 (04:46):
Now, okay, okay, awesome man. Well I'm from Louisville, born
and raised in Louisville.
Speaker 5 (04:51):
Are both y'all? So both y'all are Louisville fans. We are, yes, okay.
Speaker 1 (04:55):
Yes, we're all sad to see Cali party go. It
didn't make any different, man.
Speaker 7 (05:02):
Yeah, I mean I I kind of wish he was
still there because they'd be.
Speaker 5 (05:09):
Loves Mark.
Speaker 4 (05:12):
But we are actually two cardinals in a family of wildcats.
So and now I got a little one of my
own that it's it's tough, clay Man. They're they're wearing
him out, they're bringing them over to their side. But
he loves he loves his So I got a feeling,
you know, the more we start running around together, he'll
be all right, he'll yeah yeah.
Speaker 3 (05:33):
Well to finish out introductions, this is my neighbor friend,
the best chicken farmer that I know, Charles Spencer known
as Spence, and uh man, I just do you mind
picking up your t jar. I have a deep respect
for a man to drink tea out of a pickle
jar Man, this.
Speaker 1 (05:52):
Is uh actually that Spence.
Speaker 3 (05:57):
Spence comes to our church every week with a different
jar showing out everybody.
Speaker 5 (06:03):
I get called out. This is like you know when
you talked about Honore Farmers on this podcast. You call
a farmer out, he's just gonna dig in right.
Speaker 3 (06:12):
Well, it's funny because everybody brings water bottles. Now, this
generation is obsessed with hydration. I mean back when I
was a kid and Dad you'd be the same.
Speaker 1 (06:22):
I mean we watered like cattle, like once a day.
Speaker 4 (06:26):
You know.
Speaker 3 (06:27):
And uh, and now everybody has like huge water bottles,
Stanley cub this is acceptable in my book, like just
like a like a jar, you know, rather than a
big water bottle or something.
Speaker 5 (06:38):
So he tastes better out of a jar. But I agree.
Speaker 3 (06:41):
Spence is a farmer and he uh, he's got he
kind of had some insight into the the farm side
of it. So wanted to have Spence here. But what
I haven't told you, if you haven't figured it out already,
is that, uh, there's a federal officer amongst us.
Speaker 1 (06:57):
Jeff works for the FBI. What what I do that
Dad wouldn't have come if I Gary, what's your hiding? Gary?
I drove from up here in thirty five minutes, so
outside of my jurisdiction I can do about that.
Speaker 3 (07:15):
No, And I know we don't have to go into
detail about it, but that's interesting.
Speaker 1 (07:20):
How long you worked for the FBI.
Speaker 4 (07:22):
It'd be five years this summer. Okay, yeah, so I'm
I'm fairly new, you know, to the career as a whole.
But it's been to call you kid Utah, Utah, give
me to Kentucky.
Speaker 1 (07:34):
That's right now.
Speaker 4 (07:36):
But yeah, about five years and and like I said's
how we ended up out in Oklahoma?
Speaker 3 (07:40):
Were you in law enforcement before? Like, what's the what's
your career path? Tell you what, Clay, It's been an
interesting ride. So, you know, me and Drew met in college.
Speaker 4 (07:51):
We both played college baseball at at University Louisville, and
then uh graduated there, kicked around the minor leagues for
a little bit, and then and literally was finishing playing,
was getting married and to his sister and let me next.
So I studied criminal justice in college, and then in
(08:11):
twenty seventeen, I was just gotten engaged to Drew's sister,
Chelsea and needed something to say at Thanksgiving other than
I was going to go play independent league baseball again
for you know, eleven hundred bucks a month for four months, okay,
and so and so, you know, I was always interested
(08:33):
in law enforcement. My dad was a police officer, my
mom's dad was a police officer, and it's always.
Speaker 1 (08:40):
Been big in my family. So I looked into it.
Speaker 4 (08:42):
My dad had always mentioned, you know, trying to go
the federal route, and so I started looking some of
that up on USA jobs and I was like, hey,
you can just apply for the FBI. I checked this out.
So I kind of just did it on a whim
and made it through the first couple of steps and
then got denied, didn't get in. But the more I
looked at it, thought, man, I think this is what
(09:02):
I actually want to do. So I had to wait
a year, Like I said, I finished playing baseball one
more year, came back home, got into uh believe it
or not, like trying to sell advertisements and tickets for
a like minor league wrestling outfit.
Speaker 5 (09:20):
So if you look at this, watch Nacho Lebra for
a birthday the other day.
Speaker 4 (09:27):
Okay, So if you go on Netflix and you watch
there's a documentary called like Wrestlers or something or wrestling,
and it's a documentary where they follow Ohio Valley wrestling. Well,
a buddy of mine who had told me whenever I
was done playing, you know, he'd offered me a job
in medical sales, which is what he did, and I
from my locker of my last game, I sent him
(09:50):
a text and said, hey, dude, just finished up. I'm
getting married in a month. I need a job, Like,
is that still you still open? He said, yeah, come
see me on Monday. So I did, and I'm expected
like all right, we're gonna start talking about this whole
medical sales thing.
Speaker 1 (10:03):
Well, now he says, I got a I got a
job for you.
Speaker 4 (10:06):
He says, I just bought this minor league wrestling you
ever heard of? It was like, if you follow wrestling,
it's it's huge because like a lot of the greats
from the old days came up through this Ohio yeah,
Ohio Valley wrestling. And so it's looking at it on
on Netflix is a pretty interesting documentary. You could see
a little insight to to that world. But I did
that for a few months and then he finally let
(10:28):
me in on the medical sales side. And so I
was in and out of spine surgeries for about a
year and a half and then had reapplied to the
bureau and and ended up getting in. Okay, so it's
been a wild ride. Wow, here I am, Here, I am.
Now you're a professional podcast scout here.
Speaker 5 (10:46):
It's not far from wrestling.
Speaker 3 (10:49):
I just know if you have anything else you Well,
that's interesting, very interesting.
Speaker 1 (10:56):
So Dad, a guy sent this to you. We have
his name.
Speaker 3 (11:00):
We get that little letter right there, the little handwritten letter.
It's torn in half. Not don't know why.
Speaker 1 (11:05):
Get the top part. So Yeah.
Speaker 3 (11:08):
Jeff Dwyer out of Washington sent this to Gary Believer
nukelem Wow and uh, man, it's so old that it
has a plug that's like a quarter inch and has
two little plugs.
Speaker 1 (11:20):
But it actually it used to work. You may get
shocked it.
Speaker 5 (11:28):
It's disco lamp.
Speaker 1 (11:30):
It pretty much works. Unfortunately it was broken in transit.
It cracked.
Speaker 3 (11:38):
He did a great job of packing it. But uh,
do you mind if we keep this here? Though you can,
do you mind?
Speaker 6 (11:46):
It's it's a lamp, but it's also like an ashtray, yeah,
or an ashtray, or like a plan like put your
bed in there, you put your pocket knife and your
wall in there at night.
Speaker 3 (12:01):
Well, this is a throwback to the to the Black Panther.
The first episode of Bear Grease. We did a We
did an episode called the Myth of the Southern Mountain Lion,
and at the end of it we talked about black
panthers and not a week goes by. I'm without exaggeration,
but someone doesn't send me something online about black panthers
because dad believes in them. Yeah, just spurning the science.
(12:25):
So anyway, you got a new lamp. I appreciate it.
Speaker 1 (12:31):
It looks like a work on This is just terrible.
Speaker 3 (12:34):
I mean it hardly even looks like a panther, but
you can see his tail curled right here. I mean,
like the person that made that, I mean, I don't know,
but it's it's wonderful. So congratulations, than Jeff stylized, Yeah,
thank you, Jeff.
Speaker 8 (12:51):
That was That's pretty awesome. And I never had a
gift that I would treasure more.
Speaker 5 (12:55):
I don't think he wrote in.
Speaker 6 (12:57):
He wrote in and sent me a picture of it
and said, I'd like to say this to Gary Believernewkam
And I said, I got an.
Speaker 3 (13:02):
Address, will take it. And I had my believer head
in the truck and I forgot.
Speaker 1 (13:08):
To put it on. Oh man, So anyway, that's very nice.
Speaker 3 (13:12):
Well, uh, the night Rider or Tobacco War of Tennessee
and Kentucky farinating.
Speaker 5 (13:19):
So sorry.
Speaker 1 (13:20):
So would y'all have grown up knowing about this story.
Speaker 4 (13:23):
I didn't learn about it until, you know, I married
into the family. I think my first trip to Princeton
was actually during the black Patch Festival.
Speaker 1 (13:31):
Yeah, first time going down there.
Speaker 7 (13:33):
So Princeton still holds the black Patch Festival every fall
and around the time that their smoke, fire and tobacco,
and uh, I went to that festival ever since.
Speaker 1 (13:42):
I was really what do they do there?
Speaker 7 (13:45):
Oh, it's just they shut down main street. They have
all kinds of little tints and things set up selling stuff.
I remember when I was super young, we would always
do like a frisbee contest where accuracy distance and stuff
like that, So I was always geared up for that.
They do pancake breakfast and serve the town.
Speaker 1 (14:03):
How big is Princeton, Kentucky?
Speaker 7 (14:06):
Probably four or five thousand people maybe something like that.
Speaker 3 (14:09):
Yeah, when you can you smell the dark fire tobacco,
when it's smell like hickory smoker, does it smell like
tobacco smoke?
Speaker 7 (14:19):
It's very very unique. I will say that you get
the smell of hickory, you know, much like you you know,
if you throw something in the smoker and put put
hickory chips in it. It's a lot like that kind
of smell. But it does have a have a distinct smell.
Speaker 1 (14:33):
Because I get I mean, the tobacco is not burning.
Speaker 7 (14:36):
No, no, it's not. It's the woods are the wood
on the bottom of the of the floor of the
barn are covered with sawdust and it's just that smoke
that rises up.
Speaker 1 (14:46):
And did you have family that grew tobacco?
Speaker 7 (14:49):
Nope, nope, no, No, I don't have any. We don't
have any other than Western Oklahoma. We don't have any
farmers out in our family.
Speaker 1 (14:55):
Yeah.
Speaker 5 (14:55):
I went to basic with the guy that their family
grew tobac I was thinking about it, and I'm not
sure it just in Kentucky, isn't it. A big old
dude name wrecked in He'd talk about going in the
tobacco patch and if it was wet, like they'd get
sick like when they worked it. I guess because the nicotine.
So anyway, oh really it was like brushing up against them. Yeah,
(15:16):
I guess just working in the You can't go in
there when it's wet. But I just randomly remember that
the other day listening to this m M.
Speaker 1 (15:24):
That's my interesting It used to be all over too,
I mean even in there. I can recall I grew.
Speaker 4 (15:31):
Up in basically in the city in Louisville, and so
there would be times where you'd drive through and you'd
see patches of open land, you know, within city limits,
where people were growing to back it in and.
Speaker 1 (15:45):
It just in your lifetime. Absolutely. Yeah.
Speaker 4 (15:47):
I remember in fourth grade it was still like that's
the grade in Kentucky where you learn all about Kentucky
history and all that. And I remember learning that that
was like the number one cash crop.
Speaker 1 (15:59):
Huh back then, I doubt it is now. I'm sure
it's no is it? So?
Speaker 4 (16:06):
I mean it's always been huge, you know, It's Kentucky's
kind of funny.
Speaker 1 (16:10):
We were just known for man's vices like tobacco, bourbon,
and horse racing. You know, if you want to, if
you want to, you know, get drunk, have a cigarette,
and horses.
Speaker 7 (16:24):
It is a one stop.
Speaker 1 (16:25):
Shot man I started.
Speaker 3 (16:28):
You know, I don't think they grew a lot of
tobacco here in the Ozarks. It's certainly I think it
was grown at times, but this was not known for that.
I really started learning about tobacco when I started going
to East Tennessee and uh running around with Roy Clark
whose gouy that Roy's still alives in the seventies, and uh,
(16:50):
they they had tobacco allotments. They just sold their tobacco allotments,
as I understand it, in the last twenty years. But
but you know, that's that's the way it went that,
I don't know if you knew it. We didn't really
get into the modern tobacco stuff. But back in the day,
just people grew it and there wasn't a lot of regulation.
But after after about the time of the Tobacco Wars,
(17:13):
and a lot of federal regulation came in on the
tobacco market and they started doing allotments for tobacco and
and basically the government would say, like, you can grow
five acres or tobacco period every year, but you could
sell your allotment to a farmer. And so if you
didn't want to grow it, is that am I?
Speaker 1 (17:34):
Is this right? Do y'all Do y'all know some of
that stuff?
Speaker 7 (17:36):
Yeah, so my grandfather knows obviously a little bit more
about the allotment. But but from what I've gathered, that's
that sounds pretty accurate.
Speaker 1 (17:43):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (17:44):
Yeah, And so Roy Clark grew up. And now they
call it backer. I'm sure that's I can't believe I
went through this whole episode without saying backer, But that's
the way they say it in East Tennessee. Like, yeah,
they're not joking or trying to be cute.
Speaker 1 (17:56):
It's just it's backerbacker or tobacco, tobacco, tobacco.
Speaker 7 (18:01):
Bill Comingham said it several times.
Speaker 1 (18:02):
Tobacco, tobacco, yeah, tobacco. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (18:06):
But uh but you know Roy was in his lifetime
plowing with a with a horse like hand, plowing tobacco.
But it was such a convenient crop because you could
grow a small acreage and make that much money.
Speaker 1 (18:21):
Yeah, which was astonishing. I did.
Speaker 3 (18:23):
We had a couple of corrections on this episode, and
one of them there was a modern tobacco farmer that
told me, actually, the the the yield ton per acre
yield that we said was way off. We said it
was four thousand pounds per acre, and he said even
(18:43):
today in like the best case.
Speaker 1 (18:46):
Scenario, you don't get that much. He said, you get
like two thousand.
Speaker 3 (18:49):
So anyway, but point bing, you could grow a small
amount of the of tobacco and it just had this
enormous value. And I mean when you start doing the
and you see that, you could almost like if you
were just a subsistence guy making well from what Joe
Scott said twenty five cents a day to a dollar
(19:11):
a day, Doctor Murdoch said, you can make a dollar
a day. Joe Scott was talking about making twenty five
cents a day.
Speaker 1 (19:17):
Did y'all hear that?
Speaker 3 (19:19):
And so essentially you're making that range of money for
just an uneducated labor and then you could like double
your income by having three or four acres or tobacco. Yeah,
and you just you kind of get the sense of
how important that would be.
Speaker 5 (19:36):
Yeah, you know, and moving from subsistence to like where
you can actually buy things. Yeah, that's one of the
problems on a fund is you can produce a lot,
but converting it into cash is a big deal, you know.
And I don't know that was just I understand why
where they're coming from, you know, like just to have
something you can grow and just there's a ready set market.
Speaker 1 (19:59):
Man.
Speaker 5 (19:59):
It just that kind of thing is extremely rare. An egg, yeah,
you know, so, especially on that small of a acreage.
It's just I understand, like a lot of white people
got upset and blood and all that stuff. You know,
Like it really was kind of a unique situation. Yeah,
compared to like cotton or something else where, you know,
(20:20):
by that you need so much land to do it
and the labor. You know, a small family could, like
you said, double their income and he gave all the
like put a calico dress for Easter and you have
shoes and yeah in that, Like, I don't know, it's
just it's kind of a unique situation.
Speaker 1 (20:35):
He's really cool to hear about.
Speaker 3 (20:37):
Yeah, I think I'll start off by just asking you guys,
what stood out to you? Jeff, I might start with
you just like the whole podcast, because there's a hundred
things I want. I want to talk about the Joe
Scott interview. Uh, I want to talk about Bill Cunningham.
(20:58):
I mean, there's a whole there's one hundred different things
want to talk about. But usually that's what we did
is just kind of like go around the room and
just be like what stood out to you? What was
your favorite thing or something new you learned? But what's
that to you?
Speaker 4 (21:10):
Jeff, tell you what, man, I think the biggest thing
is it's you know, I think I said this when
of our first sent it to you all.
Speaker 1 (21:16):
It's such a challenging story.
Speaker 4 (21:18):
You know, you have these people who felt like they were,
you know, being taken advantage of, and by all means
they were, and so they you can't blame them for
wanting to you know, eventually, like you're saying, eventually getting
to the point where there's bloodshed because they're upset. But
I think I sent you all the email to this
(21:39):
thing after I read the first chapter of that book
and the way it had always been painted to me
was obviously from the local standpoint of who the Night
Writers were, why they were standing up against Duke. Well,
if you read the first chapter of that book, I
mean he was an American success story too.
Speaker 1 (21:56):
Yeah, you know, his daddy lived home from the Civil
War too. I think he had lost his wife. You know,
they were kids, were living with either an ann or an.
Speaker 4 (22:06):
Uncle something like that, and all they had was one
mule in a patch of tobacco, you know what I mean.
Speaker 3 (22:12):
And that was Washington Duke, James James Buck, Duke's dad.
Speaker 4 (22:16):
Exactly who became in Buck and and Buck hops on
the trailer behind the mule and they go start selling
this tobacco. And next thing, you know, you know, Buck
is growing this thing, and he's moving to New York
and he's the you know, he's the rebel now in
New York City trying to make a name for himself.
Speaker 1 (22:34):
And so you know, in America we celebrate that person too. Yeah.
Speaker 4 (22:38):
Yeah, But then at what point does it become where
it gets too much, and that's where you saw Washington Duke.
You know, there's a quote he has in the book
where he says something along the lines of, you know,
there's two or three things I've never understood in this world.
Speaker 1 (22:54):
The Trinity and my son, my son Buck is that
I remember that?
Speaker 4 (22:58):
And you know he says he says that, and it
goes you know, and Judge Cunningham mentioned the same thing
in there that you know, a successful entrepreneur sometimes is
in the DNA. And so you have this guy who
built this company up and probably reached a point where
he could have started giving back. And you know, at
some point in his career he he forgot what it
(23:20):
was like to be the farmer and to be the
guy grinding every day. But then you also have this
other side. And what challenges me is you have a
guy like David Amos, where you know, I hate to
say it, like this guy, I haven't had this thought
till recently, but I go, this was an educated man
who rallied up a lot of probably uneducated people to
(23:41):
go do his bidding to Was he fulfilling a desire
or dream to be this war general that he never
got to carry out from his days and I think
he went to like Hopkinsville Military School. Yeah, so you
kind of wonder that, right, like was this two egos
(24:02):
that ultimately were collide or is it even not that big?
Speaker 1 (24:06):
Am I overthinking that? You know what I mean? Like
that's great. It's just a lot we.
Speaker 3 (24:11):
Don't really ever see really why David Amos did what
he did, like that he never really tips his hat completely.
Speaker 1 (24:20):
I mean, uh, Judge Cunningham, who.
Speaker 3 (24:24):
I probably should have referred him as Judge Cunningham of
the podcast, Sorry sir, uh I called him Bill I
he he he kind of painted the picture of him
being this uh well, it was just easy to buy
into being this kind of guy that was just looking
out for his people.
Speaker 5 (24:44):
With the freed slaves. He treat the freed slaves.
Speaker 4 (24:47):
Yeah, yeah, and it makes sense, and I think the
way the book reads is that that's the case. But
I don't know, you know, I just my mind started
going there a little bit, and and that probably is
partly to do what I do for a living. You
you kind of try to examine both sides ago, all right,
what's the motive behind this?
Speaker 1 (25:06):
But I can't help but think was that potentially part of.
Speaker 3 (25:09):
Well man, that's the that's the same thing that happens
in every story we tell, like we we have in
our mind a narrative that fits something inside of us.
Because I was thinking the same thing, is like David
Amos a villain or a hero and I honestly don't
know still like what I think about him because it
(25:32):
a story. Yeah, because he could have I mean, if
you could have just met him and talked with him,
you probably could have got a sense of does this
guy really like feel sorry and empathetic towards people being
take advantage of by this like corporate criminal or.
Speaker 1 (25:49):
Or was it was there ulterior motive vindictive?
Speaker 5 (25:52):
Yeah, if you saw him like a bunch of guys
whooping up on someone with his kids screaming and his
wife in their front yard beating them senseless.
Speaker 1 (26:01):
You'd probably it'd probably be pretty easy.
Speaker 5 (26:03):
To make a judgment, you know, and like there's some
real violence in this thing.
Speaker 3 (26:08):
And then he absolutely had seemingly everything to do with that.
Speaker 5 (26:12):
Yeah, oh yeah, because I mean that was a whole
organization and we're gonna have captains and you're gonna have
squads and yeah, you know, I.
Speaker 4 (26:18):
Mean just and I guess that part where you and
I apologies for cutting you off and on I guess
that part's what what does it for him? It makes
me go there because you know, it makes a point
to mention that in the book of how this guy
was raised and I think his daddy was a doctor too,
So you go, is this one of you Do you
see this in movies and all that where you see
(26:38):
people who their family wants them to continue down the
family line or what have you. But did he inside
always want to be, you know, in this other world
and now this was his opportunity to And that's speculation,
you know, I mean, I don't know, but.
Speaker 1 (26:53):
Well, and it was said in the book.
Speaker 3 (26:55):
We didn't maybe we said it, but he he he
idolized these Civil war military Yeah so maybe we said that,
but uh yeah, no, that's that's a great point, Drew.
Speaker 1 (27:08):
What stood out to you?
Speaker 7 (27:10):
So first, phenomenal job on the podcast. I've heard, like
I said, heard about this story since I was I
was young, young, and and growing up in that in
that area and region of Kentucky. These guys have always
night writers have been idolized. You know, David Amos, he
still has signs in cop Kentucky. I think Josh saw
one of you know, home of David Amos. I mean
(27:33):
he's still here, they're proud of Oh yeah, absolutely, And
uh so I was always one sided towards towards the
Night Writers. But then once you start having experiences you
get older, you kind of are like, I don't know
if they should have been. But as far as the
podcast goes, what I really loved about it was the
(27:56):
the book and I think I think Judge Cunningham talked
about it a little bit, but you know, he was
trying to be unbiased when he wrote the book. But
that the last monologue of the second one where he
really gives his expresses, his opinions and especially what he
did for a career, his whole life, when you know
he he swore to uphold the Constitution in the law
and h to really get his his perspective on it
(28:20):
all where he sympathizes with him but he can't approve
of it. I love that whole, the whole last twelve
fifteen minutes whatever it was, where he he kind of
ran down his thoughts of it. That was a that
was a really good perspective.
Speaker 3 (28:33):
Yeah, it was you know he he brought such authority
on this subject. He was a perfect guest, like really
he was in and we didn't get into his background
a ton other than just I kept saying that he
was a Kentucky Supreme Court judge. He was more than
that though, I mean he was a Prime Court justice justice.
Speaker 1 (28:54):
Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, but but.
Speaker 3 (28:58):
Yeah, him him saying what he said was like a
pretty balanced view of it. And then his interpretation is
conclusion of how kind of the country handled the situation.
I wouldn't have thought of it because he said, he said,
the the corporate criminal got dealt with and and you know,
(29:19):
the monopoly was broken up. Excuse me, and uh, but
also David Amos didn't get didn't even go to prison,
which you know, you could look at that and say, well,
that's being soft on a pretty hard criminal. But he
saw it as kind of like this this balance. And
then when he talked about jury nullification, nullification, which was
(29:42):
a mistake that we made.
Speaker 1 (29:44):
Someone sent it in.
Speaker 3 (29:45):
I said, I thought Judge Bill Cunningham said jury notification,
which didn't make sense to me. He said, he said,
he said jury nullification, which that makes sense when a
jury knows someone's guilty and basically just like, let's the
guy off. And he was saying that that was like
(30:05):
this kind of balance, which now that is the jury nullification.
You could clearly see how that could be used in
a good old boy system and totally be misused. But
at the same time, sometimes somebody does something they don't
really deserve what the law prescribes, and so it's you know,
(30:26):
kind of a kind of a gray area, probably, but
it sounds like it happens all the time and probably
usually used in a positive way. But yeah, I liked
it when he said he said, I've sent a lot
of people to the penitentiary that.
Speaker 1 (30:41):
I sympathized with.
Speaker 3 (30:43):
Yeah, for some reason, that like gave a kind of
like humanize the law almost, Like not that it makes
any difference to the guy who's going to the pen
for twenty years to know that the judge sympathized with him,
but it makes you feel a little bit better.
Speaker 6 (31:00):
Interesting, how much faith you put in the judicial system,
even if there were things like dream mullification, like that
person went through the proper channels and was dealt with
and now it's done, you know.
Speaker 5 (31:13):
Yeah, it was interesting.
Speaker 7 (31:15):
Well, and also we have you know, we have the
book or we have the two hour podcast to refer
back to. But at the time that the jury nullified,
this was nineteen eleven and it had been over for
two to three years, so, you know, in the way
when I heard Judge Cunningham talk about it, he's like,
we're just going to put it into this.
Speaker 5 (31:34):
It's done for me. Let's let's just move and bury
the hatchet.
Speaker 3 (31:37):
Yeah, move on right, yep, Yeah, Spence, what stood out
to you about it?
Speaker 5 (31:42):
There was a part where he was the gentleman. I
get all the names mixed up, but the guy that
was the Supreme Court justice, that's someone's grandpa.
Speaker 1 (31:49):
I apologize sisters, and my kids are the tall, blonde ones.
Speaker 5 (31:58):
That's how I go my life. But it's the just
when he talked about like, you know the thirty there's
that lady got thirty five thousand, and it's like, but
Duke was worth two hundred million, didn't even know if
he even knew of the tobacco war.
Speaker 1 (32:12):
Yeah. That was kind of a letdown, wasn't it.
Speaker 6 (32:14):
Yeah?
Speaker 5 (32:14):
And I thought about like Solomon when he's like vanity
of vanities, All things are vanities, you know, and it's
just like like, man, all this people beat, people ruined,
you know, just these lifetime with terrible memories, all the
towns burned down, and the guy that it was all
(32:35):
fighting against didn't may not have even known it was happening,
and just like, golly but it I don't know. And
also just there, so there was that part of just
like and I don't know what to do with that.
Just it's a thinker, yeah, you know, like and you
ask questions of like which side would you would have
been on? And I would have been on the vigilante
(32:59):
side as a young guy, but I wouldn't now because
I change, like like looking at myself in the mirror,
you know, I probably would have turned narc you know,
like at some point the first time I watched some yeah,
well just watching some guy get beat in front of
his kids, Like that's not cool.
Speaker 1 (33:16):
You know.
Speaker 5 (33:16):
It's one thing, you're fighting someone that wants to fight.
But so I don't it just and I think it's
like that with a lot of American history because it's
our history. You know, It's it's complicated, it's not one side,
it's mixed, and and I think that's what makes these
stories so powerful, Clay, that you go about is it's
(33:37):
okay that it's complicated because we're complicated when we're flawed,
and a guy. You can respect a guy but really
hate something he did, you know, and just like us,
like there's things I'm ashamed of in my past and
I hope they don't define me. Yeah, yeah, you know,
so that there's that aspect. And then also just like
I've been on the receiving end of something similar to this,
(33:58):
and like pot guests, it's probably it's probably not that big,
but you know, and I sent you a text to
like man that it really hit home. And Carlo was
my wife. We were sitting there, I was having coffee
and when it it was really cold, and so like
that's it's a great way to stay inside by talking
to your wife.
Speaker 1 (34:17):
You know.
Speaker 5 (34:18):
It's in the teens. But and just like we were
kind of reminiscent over that, you know, stuff that happened
like a decade ago. And it is hard being an
independent farmer, you know, and farming's just hard, and so
much of like the you know, farmers are great folks generally,
I mean, we're it's a slice of society. You got
(34:39):
your dirt balls in that. But like there's a reason
we romanticize them, like you talked about that. But it's
just like I just feel like sometimes a farming community
throughout the at least in American history, because I don't
have a you know, I don't have a viewpoint to
look at other countries. But Galy, like you know, like
you were talking about there that two hundred million, what
(35:02):
if he would have made a hundred million and all
these other lives could have been radically changed, Like kids
could have went to school with shoes on, and no
one's towns were burned. But there's that thing that always
just like you know, the average farmer gets five cents
of a dollar or something, you know, like, and it's
just that there it's so easy to extract from agriculture,
(35:23):
and those guys so rarely get what's deserved from something
that we all do three times or maybe more day,
you know. So it just it's just a thinker, man. Yeah,
this was really impacted analysis.
Speaker 1 (35:35):
Man.
Speaker 3 (35:35):
I like what you said about a young you would
have been a vigilanti, but an older you wouldn't have.
And it's you know, the luxury that we have today
is that we get to hear this whole story and
we're not really emotionally involved with it. I mean, even
if you're from there, you know, you weren't there during
that time. And we can like you know, historical revision,
(35:56):
we can look back on it and be be think
we can understand it. There's stuff going on today that
they'll be making, you know, Turkey groups podcasts about you know,
fifty years from now that maybe we're a part of.
Speaker 1 (36:13):
You know, I think about that.
Speaker 3 (36:14):
It's like, what would be an equivalent today of something
like this.
Speaker 1 (36:18):
It's but it's pretty extreme.
Speaker 3 (36:19):
I mean, violence is violence, whether it was done three
thousand years ago or today in in the but but
human nature is still the same. So people still still
are violent and do crazy stuff even with the law,
and perhaps it's perhaps it's less than it would have
been anyway.
Speaker 1 (36:39):
Point being, I'm.
Speaker 3 (36:41):
With you, I think I think I would have sided
with the farmers one hundred percent.
Speaker 1 (36:46):
But I would have hoped I would have been reason
oh gotcha got the association farmers.
Speaker 3 (36:53):
Yeah, I really would have because I just would have been, like,
you know, the corporation getting that much just seems unjust
and what they were doing. But I think I would
have been I would have been like, hey, there's a
better way to do this, you know, And I would
hope that's the best version of my interpretation, which I
don't know if it really would have been true. But
(37:16):
I also think that I also think going back to
your question of did it really matter, and essentially Bill
Cunningham's conclusion was that it really didn't. Like this, the
black patch is like thirty counties out of how many
maybe one hundred plus counties that maybe grow tobacco in
(37:36):
the country.
Speaker 5 (37:37):
I don't know, it was, yeah, probably more than that,
probably more than because Virginia and North Carolina.
Speaker 1 (37:41):
Yeah, in all tons of counties.
Speaker 3 (37:43):
I mean, maybe it's like I'm just guessing ten percent
of the tobacco country might be the black patch maybe
or maybe less.
Speaker 1 (37:52):
So, you know, how would this have.
Speaker 3 (37:54):
Affected these guys And maybe it didn't really affect them
at all. James buck Duke wouldn't even known what was
going on, But it seems like it did get the
attention of the nation at the time, as was evidenced
by articles being written in national publications. And you can't
help but think that it would have brought attention to
(38:15):
the powers that be that had the you know that
we're changing some of these things. So maybe it had
more impact than you would think to.
Speaker 5 (38:23):
Break up the monopoly and yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3 (38:25):
But then but I guess the main thing was just
the economic factors, you know, that change, just like people
started smoking more so just like the demand just kept skyrocketing.
Speaker 1 (38:37):
But all pretty wild?
Speaker 3 (38:41):
Did y'all think I did a good enough job of like,
uh shaming tobacco users?
Speaker 4 (38:49):
As you bring that up, I think there's a story
that you need to clarify that I would love to
hear more. You said you've thought you heard the voice
of God tell you not to not to anymore, and
I've got to hear that story.
Speaker 3 (39:03):
Well, I mean and when I when I say the
voice of God, I didn't hear the audible voice of God.
Speaker 1 (39:09):
But just and I'm very serious.
Speaker 3 (39:12):
I mean I was probably nineteen years old and uh,
dip skull behind Juju and Pap Paul's back over here.
Speaker 5 (39:22):
Did you know, Gary?
Speaker 8 (39:23):
I knew, you knew I knew other things that you
don't know that I knew.
Speaker 1 (39:28):
Let's hear I know. I maybe I can't tell you.
Maybe I don't not tell you. I might tell you privately,
do do no?
Speaker 3 (39:38):
Okay, Well, I'm very interested to hear what you because
you don't know if I know anything else.
Speaker 1 (39:44):
As soon as you stop wearing tennis shoes, he knew.
Speaker 5 (39:49):
That the moment.
Speaker 3 (39:50):
No, no, but I just it was the time of
my life when I when I started to just walk
closer with God.
Speaker 1 (39:56):
And I just I mean, I.
Speaker 3 (39:58):
Literally remember one time driving down the road chunking a
can of skull. I was littering, FBI, but I chunk
can of skull.
Speaker 1 (40:09):
And uh.
Speaker 3 (40:12):
Official, and and I just knew it was bad. I
just knew that, like, this is not someone wanted to do.
So when I did the story, I'm kind of joking.
I didn't want to glorify tobacco because, in a way,
I mean, the the the agriculture and the farming of
the tobacco is really cool. It's it's an interest, it's
(40:33):
interesting tradition. But then when you when you dive into
it and it's like, yeah, this is really like something
the CD underbelly of of the world. I mean, you know,
and I just don't. I just didn't want people to
get the wrong idea. I don't view personally tobacco use
(40:53):
is just like something casual that is like okay, I
mean I have lots of great friends that chew tobacco.
Probably people listening to this podcast and they should stop. So,
I mean it's a period like so that's just the
way I feel about it. Dad, what do you think
is that?
Speaker 1 (41:12):
Okay?
Speaker 3 (41:13):
Hey, when you when you have your own podcast, you
can be preachy.
Speaker 1 (41:17):
Sometimes you're an FBI am. I right, what's that? I said?
Speaker 3 (41:22):
You're you're an FBI agent. What I'm saying is right, right.
Speaker 1 (41:26):
Yeah, it's all you man, You're I'm the guest here.
I was looking for the FBI stamp of approval, Like.
Speaker 5 (41:38):
Dare McGruff the crime dog was that like back in
the age.
Speaker 1 (41:42):
That's that's me. We're gonna have a branch of bear.
Speaker 5 (41:46):
My middle boy is like head over heels with hunting
and all that stuff. So here in Clay like is
a strong role model saying don't do tobacco. You know,
like sometimes you have that kid and need I need,
I need.
Speaker 1 (41:58):
A little like hand. So I could talk to these grown.
Speaker 3 (42:03):
Men and be like, I'm mister ferres Use, you shouldn't
do tobacco.
Speaker 5 (42:15):
People are gonna have a lot of mixed emotions about this.
Speaker 3 (42:17):
I mean I do too, but it's just sometimes the
truth hurts. But Dad, what stood out to you? Well,
I tell you it was an amazing deal.
Speaker 8 (42:28):
But when you think about it, our country is made
up of amazing deals. I mean, you can just take this,
take the personalities out, and stick it in any place.
You know, the way the Indians were treated, it just
keep going all the way through. And uh, but I
think about Mary Lou. Don't monkey with Mary Lou. Remember
(42:49):
Mary Lou? I mean she was pretty. The women didn't
like her, she was opinionated, the men didn't like her.
Speaker 1 (42:56):
And she ended up getting wealthy over this deal.
Speaker 5 (42:59):
And she pretty much put a shot to quite a
bunch though.
Speaker 8 (43:04):
But she, I mean, she was the first step in
stopping it, wasn't she couldn't you say?
Speaker 3 (43:10):
That's the way Bill described that. She was the first
litigation against the night riders.
Speaker 8 (43:16):
So if you got something going, you know, you need
to veer from Maryland. And then you think about our
country being so new and young. I mean, it hadn't developed,
We didn't have really strong unions. So they have vigilantes,
so you know, I get upset sometimes with union stuff,
but they really served a purpose in our country. They
(43:40):
established the worker to have a voice. They didn't have
a voice. Yeah, anti trust. I mean all it would
have taken was a few years later and have a
law passed where hey, if you get so big, man,
we're gonna bust you up, and we're gonna take care
of you. You we're gonna make sure think you know.
So a lot of legal things that developed out of
(44:01):
this that kind of put up a quietness on the
I love the Vigilantis. When I was young, I used
to think, man, somebody ought to take that kid right there, take.
Speaker 9 (44:11):
Him out behind the barn and juste us.
Speaker 8 (44:16):
But you couldn't do it because you might have five
good ideas, but you could have four bad ideas, you know.
So you need the law of the Constitution to come
in and establish all this. And I think we did
a great job of doing that to keep our country
on track. And this story just absolutely puts a magnifying
(44:42):
glass on all that because we didn't have a lot
of that stuff established. And because of this and many
other stories, you know, the law developed anti trust to
break it up monopolies the unions have where the workers
have voices and so forth.
Speaker 3 (44:58):
It was really insightful to me to hear Bill Cunningham
talk about how this very issue has overthrown a lot
of countries. Yeah, because you know, like when the government
would and I feel like what he's talking about is
like when the government saw that these monopolies had so
much power and they came in and said, we're going
to take some of that power away from you. I
(45:18):
mean that's like a step towards communism in a way.
I mean, it's like government control of business. But they
did it just enough that it allowed people to still
be massively successful without without it just you know, totally
crippling their workers. So they kind of did it like
(45:38):
just enough. And then yeah, the unions, I agree with
what you're saying, like, you know, you kind of have
sometimes the union stuff I don't understand fully, but it
has helped a lot of people in the country. And
so they just did everything kind of just right. That
set America up for the next hundred years, which would
you know, make us you know, so successful in many ways.
Speaker 1 (46:02):
And you had like it.
Speaker 5 (46:04):
They touched on it, and I thought it was really
good because like if you back out a you know,
sometimes you look at little something to get an idea,
but you back out. And this story was playing at
that time, like It was a really turbulent time, right,
Like you had all the barons, like the robber barons
or whatever, like Vanderbilt and all them. You had railroads
(46:25):
going up. You had Upton Sinclair's the jungle with like
people falling into pickle vats or meat packing plants. You
had all the like the automotive stuffs, like where they're
fighting cops and stuff and gunfights. You know, you had
all the al Capone and you know, like Bonnie and
Clyde and like that was all in this time period
(46:48):
coming off the Civil War, the you know, Tulsa was burned,
You had the sharecroppers and like desegregation, all these things.
This country was just roiling and it's all messy, yeah,
you know, and and and I think it's it's just
sometimes it's just messy.
Speaker 3 (47:07):
And it could have gone a lot of different ways.
It could have, and it kind of moved towards stability
to some degree. And you know, there's different groups of
people that would argue that it didn't and and but
in general it moved towards stability, at least as you
compare to other parts of the world, you know. But yeah,
it's such a what I love about these stories. So
(47:27):
this book I've got I've got uh Bill Cliningham's book
right here. This book, as I understand that it would
have been kind of a regionally known I mean, this
wasn't like a New York Times bestseller, But it's a fantastic,
fantastic book, fantastic story that many people outside of the
(47:51):
Black Patch would have never heard.
Speaker 7 (47:54):
Haven't heard it?
Speaker 4 (47:55):
Yeah, Well if you do read, I would encourage anybody
listening to read it because there's so much you guys
just can't cover in a podcast. Like there's small little
you know, anecdotes and different things in there about some
of the other experiences that were going on out there
that are just unreal, you know, and you really get
that feel for how violent it was, you know at
(48:18):
some points and you know, like he mentions.
Speaker 1 (48:20):
And you know, it.
Speaker 4 (48:22):
Was just disgusting there, like it just at some point,
this thing became more violent than it probably was even
intended on on becoming, you know, And I think that's
we see that happen all the time in uh, you know,
in history and in today's where people join in on
something and then all of a sudden somebody else comes
in to escalate it because they're not really worried about
(48:43):
the mission anymore. Yeah, they're just looking to crack some skulls, right,
And you had some of that infiltrated toros in there.
Speaker 3 (48:49):
Well, that and that was something that I'm glad you
brought that up because I wanted to say that on here.
You know, sometimes in an episode you just don't have
enough space or time to say everything. But there was
there was some accusation of the Night Riders being a
racist organization because I mean, it would have been probably
at the pinnacle of like klu Klux klu Klux Klan
(49:13):
q klux Klan. You know, it's the k Ku Klux
q q klux Klan, isn't.
Speaker 5 (49:20):
It kkk though it is according to the Ramones song.
Speaker 3 (49:25):
Has mocked me before over saying the klu Klux Klan you're.
Speaker 1 (49:29):
Taking was founded in your state, wouldn't it.
Speaker 3 (49:31):
Well, now, I don't know about that, but but there
was there was. There was there was some talk of that,
and basically in Bill's book, which is my source, they
he was he had a section where he talked about
how that there were a lot of African Americans in
(49:52):
the association, not necessarily Night Riders though because that was
a segregate a very segregated society, so they kind of
like lived in different places. But as the thing went
further and further, people would under the name of the
night Riders probably do some stuff completely off mission, and
(50:13):
so there probably was some racist stuff going on that
kind of was like this overlap between you know, these
groups of people. So that was something that was talked about.
But then there were a lot of people guys that
just kind of under the hood of a black mask
just started doing crazy stuff that that had nothing to
do with tobacco, but they were kind of lumped in
(50:34):
with night Riders, so it wasn't just all this like
really clear cut mission.
Speaker 1 (50:39):
That a good description, I think, No, I think you're
right on with it. Yeah.
Speaker 6 (50:42):
Yeah, And a lot of a lot of bad things
happen under anonymity, yeah, you know what I mean. Anonymity
seems to be a fuel for fire sometimes. You know
what happens all the time on the internet, you know
what I mean, People even comments and saying horrible things
that I guarantee most of them would never say face
to face to another person. That was a kind of
(51:04):
that time period's version of that where they felt the
freedom to go do that. Maybe not freedom, but they
felt the protection or just that anonymity to go and
do things that they that do.
Speaker 3 (51:18):
You know what somebody should make fun of me for
in this episode is how many times I said clandestine?
Speaker 1 (51:24):
Did you? Well?
Speaker 3 (51:25):
I just felt really smart when I said so. I
think I just kept saying it. And I actually said
it yesterday in like casual conversation with someone, if you
They were like, what And I said clandestine just like secret,
and they were like, that word makes me uncomfortable.
Speaker 1 (51:44):
But you just look square as should What are you hiding?
Speaker 3 (51:57):
Maybe the last thing I want to talk about we
can continue to talking about. Certainly, something I wanted to
talk about was the Joe Scott interview. So for a
Bear Grease podcast and now going back to Jeff giving
us this one like all watered up in a little bundle.
We didn't know about Joe this Joe Scott interview, which
to me is so cool. Anytime that you can reach
(52:18):
back into history and actually hear someone that was there
in an interview format is really unique. It reminded me
of back in the late summer, we did a series
on the formation of the Buffalo National River, which was over.
Speaker 1 (52:33):
Here in Arkansas.
Speaker 3 (52:34):
And in the in the process of interviewing these people,
we'd we'd talked about this lady named Granny Henderson, and
I found out there was this long interview with Grannie
Henderson that essentially nobody had heard.
Speaker 1 (52:48):
I mean, somebody did, but it was very obscure like.
Speaker 3 (52:53):
And I was able to go into that interview and
you could hear Grannie Henderson's voice, this woman born in
the eighteen high hundreds, and hear her talking about her
life and its super interesting.
Speaker 1 (53:03):
This was like that.
Speaker 3 (53:05):
And so this Joe Scott interview, he was ninety seventy
years old in the nineteen eighties.
Speaker 1 (53:10):
Bill Cunningham interviews him.
Speaker 3 (53:12):
When Bill's a young man, Bill's in his eighties now
probably he's think so Bill would have been in his forties.
I guess he interviews Joe Scott and yeah, that's that's el.
Speaker 1 (53:26):
Primo l primo stuff, when you get to hear from
the guy. And it was a long interview.
Speaker 3 (53:32):
It was hard to go through and pick out which
sections to use, but I mainly just wanted people to
kind of hear his voice. And Joe became kind of
like this focal point of Joe as a night rider
and he was doing all this stuff.
Speaker 1 (53:47):
I just couldn't quite put it all in.
Speaker 3 (53:50):
I didn't want to villainize Joe either for being the
last guy and just being willing to talk. But he
said the only thing that he really ever did in
one of the raids was like shoot his gun in
the air, like he was just kind of there.
Speaker 1 (54:06):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (54:06):
Now he did insinuate that he was on some of
the visits, but he didn't ever specifically say like I
beat somebody. But if you think about it, an eighteen
year old kid and they're just looking for warm bodies
to kind of ride with them and just kind of
be there, I have a feeling he didn't actually do much.
He was just kind of present, kind of there. That
(54:29):
was the insinuation I got because he never got super specific.
But but you might, I mean at eighty seven years old,
I mean you might not remember everything.
Speaker 5 (54:38):
But I think those are the things you remember when
you're eighty seven. Yeah, like that kind of stuff, I
think you remember it just like when you talk like
war vets or whatever, like that's those are the things
that are burned into your brain like you burn Because
I think that was it hot Hoganville, Hope, he said
he was there. Yeah, like, I mean that town burned down.
(54:58):
You don't forget about burning down and down.
Speaker 1 (55:00):
Okay.
Speaker 3 (55:00):
They specifically asked him, they said, what did you do it?
Maybe Hopkinsville, And he said, oh, I didn't do nothing.
I just rode around on my horse and shot my
gun in the air.
Speaker 1 (55:08):
A couple of times.
Speaker 5 (55:11):
Your house is burning down, you probably don't take that
viewpoint of those.
Speaker 3 (55:15):
But then again, you know, you wonder how truthful the
guy was being.
Speaker 1 (55:20):
I mean, here he is.
Speaker 3 (55:22):
It seems so not innocent, but it seems so like
like it just was inconsequential him at his age talking
about it. It's not like they're going to send to
prison or something. But he was very worried about that. Actually,
you know, there were parts of the episode when he
was like, maybe I shouldn't be talking.
Speaker 1 (55:43):
But interesting.
Speaker 8 (55:47):
View of this would be what would have happened back
then had doctor Amos had not been there with his
leadership skills, you know it probably he would have just
floundered around and the same thing would have happened. It
would just taken a different route, probably a better route,
I don't know, probably a better route. Yeah, yeah, so
(56:11):
the way to handle it, as you look back, would
be through the courts.
Speaker 9 (56:15):
Hey, we got this big guy out here that's monkeying
with us. Let's let's levelize the playing field. This isn't fair,
you know. And they didn't have those tools to go to.
The only tool they had was, yeah, in a vigilanti stuff.
Speaker 5 (56:30):
Well, because the courts, you ain't gonna win against a
guy with two hundred million dollars. I mean, like that's
the that's also part of the American experience.
Speaker 1 (56:37):
And when you don't even have money.
Speaker 5 (56:39):
To buy for your kids, you know, or the time,
and you need to be working.
Speaker 8 (56:43):
And well, what they did was probably what they sort
of had to do. I mean, they didn't have avenues
like we have today. So it's just like you just
fold up, fold your tents up, let them take advantage
of you, or we're going to fight.
Speaker 4 (57:00):
It's hard to judge somebody from a position you've never
been in. And I think that's that's part of what
you know, Judge Cunningham was getting to when he says
he I've sent people to the pen that I.
Speaker 1 (57:11):
Had empathy for.
Speaker 4 (57:12):
And you know, in our line of work, it's you
see it every day too. I mean, I remember my
dad telling me, you know, when I was a kid,
that you know, in police work and in law enforcement,
the vast majority of people that you're going to interact with,
they got themselves caught up in something they never meant
to get caught up in. And there's there's plenty of
(57:33):
people that it's all they've ever known. Sometimes it's a
lifestyle of all they've ever known, or like Cunningham said,
you know, I knew the guy's dad. I knew his
dad was abusing him his whole life. And you have
empathy for people, and it doesn't make it right. They
broke the law, but you're a human being, and that's
that's what's going to happen, you know. And so I
think it's it's hard to make a judgment on somebody
(57:56):
for any kind of situation if you've never been in
it yourself. And that's something I you know, I think
that's I think that's what this podcast does so well.
And you guys did it with this story. And as
a Kentuckian, I'm honored that you all did it. But
it's you know, the beauty of this this deal that
you all have going on here. Mans You make people think,
(58:17):
and we are constantly in the today's world just find
ourselves and echo chambers and never having to think critically.
And you have to remember, man, life is just history
is messy.
Speaker 1 (58:29):
Life is messy.
Speaker 4 (58:30):
There is not a single thing out here that any
of us, you know, in my opinions, there's been one
perfect person walk this earth, and we put him on
a tree, you know what I mean.
Speaker 1 (58:41):
And so.
Speaker 4 (58:43):
You know, I think it's just you guys do such
a good job of that of causing your listeners to
think about it a go, man, what how do you
digest this story? And how do you see both sides
of it and then come to your best.
Speaker 7 (58:57):
Well and to piggyback off that, not only do we
not know what life was like in that time being
a farmer who was getting taken advantage of by this trust,
but much like Joe Scott, I can't tell you what
I would have done if somebody would have came to
my to my house, stuck a gun in my face
and said, let's go yeah.
Speaker 1 (59:15):
I mean, that's the best line from it.
Speaker 7 (59:17):
Yeah, from that, from that point on, I'm probably like,
let's go yeah, I mean, And you know, you think
about the night Writers, and a lot of times the
night Writers and the association will get put one in
the same. But you had twenty five thousand members of
an association and at most probably five hundred night writers,
So you're talking two percent of this massive, you know,
association that a lot of times will get tied in together.
(59:40):
And as we heard later on, as they continued with
the raids and then some of the beatings and stuff,
it probably wasn't even association stuff that they do. So
but you know, I've never had somebody point a gun
at me and tell me to do something, but I
can imagine that give me to react a little bit different.
Speaker 3 (59:59):
Well, that's exactly what Joe Scott's answer wasn't it. When
they say he said why did you join the Night Riders?
He gave such a great, pointed, clear answer. He said,
what would you do if they took a gun in
your face and told.
Speaker 1 (01:00:11):
You to go? You probably go, let's go where.
Speaker 5 (01:00:16):
But it's not just random people either, it's your neighbors
or the holler yeah, you know, like it's if you
say no, well you're going to be looking over your
back for a long time. Right next to this, it
is your community.
Speaker 1 (01:00:28):
Clear too.
Speaker 3 (01:00:29):
Why these guys weren't getting in trouble because you know,
when I when we first got to that point in
the podcast where we're talking about they couldn't prosecute these guys,
Like in some world you'd kind of be like, well, why,
how the heck could they not prosecute them? They're doing
all this criminal activity, But oh gosh it, you would
(01:00:49):
have been you'd been narking on your on, on your family,
on your neighbors, and man, part of the here's one
thing that I thought about when like, what would I
have done? I think in the right scenario, you could
have just navigated yourself out of the situation and not
(01:01:10):
been on either side. I mean, I don't know how,
but I know in my life I do that a lot.
Speaker 1 (01:01:17):
But where would you?
Speaker 5 (01:01:18):
Where would you?
Speaker 1 (01:01:19):
No?
Speaker 3 (01:01:20):
But in a in a I don't know, I don't
know the answer, but I just I just feel like
you can, you could, you could, you could just like
slide under the radar. I just don't know that I
would have been the guy that had been coming to
beat because I was making a big deal about selling
to the to the to the Duke Trust. But also
I don't know, there's ways to do it like, there's
(01:01:42):
there's there's there's social ways to not be a target.
Speaker 7 (01:01:46):
You know.
Speaker 6 (01:01:47):
I was thinking about too. I was thinking about too
because Duke hadn't probably i mean likely had no knowledge
of the details of what was going on there, and
I had to think about, like what was causing them
to drop price, you know, to start paying paying I mean,
you must have had these regional buyers that were making
(01:02:10):
on the fly decisions about what they were going to
pay people, and they were the ones who were really
beating up on them, you know, financially and it you know,
a lot of that stuff was probably had to do
with that middle management, you know what I mean, these
guys that are how are we going to get the
best price for this tobacco? And without this big oversight
(01:02:31):
of the Duke, the Big Duke trust and so it's
you have to be able to to see the small
details of this. And this was their this was their
best response was to create this Planner's Protection Association and
to fight this what they what they perceived as greed.
So you know, there's just so many, so many minute
(01:02:52):
things that you just don't know about. To say who
the good guys are bad guys I think that's what
the title of the of the podcast bred lines Good
Guys Versus Bad Guys, I think is really fitting because
it's it is hard to know, you know what I mean.
And I think that I think that bleeds over into
a lot of the a lot of the the things
(01:03:12):
that we deal with, even in modern times. You know,
it's so easy to jump on a bandwagon and not
know the details of a situation. And I think, you know,
probably people in New York would have had they heard
about this, they would have said, you know that you
got these rebellious farmers down there just doing these horrible things,
and then you've got these small, small town farmers saying,
(01:03:35):
you know, we got we're getting taken advantage of. And
I think it I think it has to cause people
to stop and evaluate and to like try to learn more.
You know, I think about political situations. I think about
you know, how how things are perceived there. You can't
just like you talked about echo chambers or talked about
echo chambers, you can't just listen to an echo chamber.
(01:03:57):
You have to really be on your guard for what
you hear and what you believe.
Speaker 3 (01:04:02):
Let's play trivia. Yeah, we got We're gonna end with
trivia here.
Speaker 1 (01:04:06):
Does that sound good?
Speaker 3 (01:04:08):
You guys think you're all black patch expert? Let me
why his hand out boards. I want to clarify what
I said a minute ago. Basically, what I was saying
was you don't have to pick. You don't have to
be in every fight that's being fought.
Speaker 5 (01:04:22):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (01:04:22):
Yeah, because when I said you can navigate around something,
an old believer said, what that's what I mean. It's like,
you don't have to you don't have to fight every fight.
Speaker 5 (01:04:35):
Why is the serpents harmless as doves?
Speaker 1 (01:04:37):
There you go, there you go, there you go.
Speaker 3 (01:04:39):
All right, We're gonna play a little trivia. Josh has
seven questions. The winner gets the panther lamp. Not true,
not true, We're keeping that one.
Speaker 5 (01:04:49):
Everybody's wives just breathed a sigh of relief. You got
one from me there.
Speaker 1 (01:04:54):
Yes, hey, I tell you what. Here's what I am
gonna do.
Speaker 3 (01:04:58):
This is this is this is this, this is what we're
doing on this this episode. The winner of this trivia,
which I'm not playing. I'm just gonna be commentating. When's
this U Moultrie trail camp?
Speaker 5 (01:05:11):
Oh wow, Silas, I'm trying buddy.
Speaker 3 (01:05:14):
Stakes are high, stakes are high, and I can I
can probably even get you, like a subscription from Moultrie
to to to be able to run this bad boy
because this is a cell camera.
Speaker 5 (01:05:26):
Is Josh ellable?
Speaker 1 (01:05:28):
He's already got something.
Speaker 5 (01:05:29):
Yeah, and Gary, that would be nepotism really.
Speaker 1 (01:05:35):
Down? Three?
Speaker 3 (01:05:36):
Okay, yeah, okay, So the Winter Winners getting a Moultrie
Trail camp, all right, Josh?
Speaker 6 (01:05:41):
Okay, First for we got some questions that you that
everybody should know. We got a couple that you really
had to be on your game to catch.
Speaker 3 (01:05:48):
Could you use the one that I said was going
to be on here?
Speaker 1 (01:05:52):
Were you paying attention? I forgot about it.
Speaker 3 (01:05:55):
I knew, I knew it. I knew when I said
it wouldn't be on here. You can ask that I
said on that, so I said this will be on trivia.
Go ahead, carry on, we'll move through this prequel.
Speaker 5 (01:06:04):
Okay, big question? Who was the founder of the American
tobacco company?
Speaker 1 (01:06:11):
Mmm?
Speaker 3 (01:06:13):
Don't be uh, don't be misled by Okay, go ahead,
Christian lady, do you.
Speaker 1 (01:06:27):
Think people got that joke?
Speaker 3 (01:06:30):
And I appreciate it, Guys, I don't know that like
my twenty year old son or nineteen year old son
would have got it though they don't know what Christian like.
Speaker 6 (01:06:39):
There is no Okay, Terrell Spencer, Duke Duke, James Buck Duke,
James Buck Duke.
Speaker 1 (01:06:49):
Duke. I put Washington, Duke.
Speaker 5 (01:06:52):
It is Washington.
Speaker 3 (01:06:53):
That's got to be the answer. Y'all are right, but
Washington Duke.
Speaker 5 (01:06:57):
I think the more will back this out, the better
for me.
Speaker 3 (01:07:02):
That's that's what I was gonna That's what I was
trying to elude to my preamble. It's got to be specific.
I don't even did we even say that on the
podcast though?
Speaker 1 (01:07:11):
Did we say I? Actually, I don't know, should join
a union?
Speaker 5 (01:07:18):
Okay?
Speaker 6 (01:07:19):
Second question, everyone should get this one. Who is the
who was known as the leader of the night writers?
Speaker 1 (01:07:28):
This is come on that ship.
Speaker 5 (01:07:31):
Everyone should get this one. Okay, everybody should get a gimme.
Speaker 6 (01:07:36):
Okay, Drew was starting with you, David Amos, That is correct,
David Amos, pH d, it's actually m D.
Speaker 1 (01:07:46):
Do I still get the points? Yes, Gary, Sorry, I
just couldn't pull it up. Man.
Speaker 5 (01:07:53):
Okay, zero famous Amos. You think that's the same guy
as a cookie guy?
Speaker 6 (01:07:59):
Probably no, there there's actually a story about that. I
know the cookies are addictive though the office. Okay, here's
a here's a bit of an obscure question that was
mentioned in there. Okay, who was known as the Moses
of the black Patch? That that one's some terrible games.
(01:08:23):
I just need that one's a bit obscure.
Speaker 1 (01:08:28):
Yeah he was. He was only mentioned once. It's a
tough question.
Speaker 6 (01:08:33):
We've got a couple of ringers in here, Gary, Okay,
Drew Felix Felix Ewing, Felix Felix Ewing, Gary.
Speaker 1 (01:08:47):
Seinfeld Seinfeld.
Speaker 6 (01:08:50):
Felix Ewing is correct? Okay, people back in the black
Patch or they're like what here's another question, Spence, you
might remember this one.
Speaker 5 (01:09:01):
Thanks.
Speaker 6 (01:09:02):
What was the term given to those who would scrape
plant beds as an intimidation?
Speaker 1 (01:09:09):
Oh, Spencer, get that?
Speaker 5 (01:09:12):
I don't wow remember the first word? No, I ain't
cheating a man of integrity. Okay, Gary, we're gonna start
with you.
Speaker 6 (01:09:22):
O hands hands okay, close, Jeff, hotteers, hotets, hototers, hotels.
Speaker 5 (01:09:32):
I think it's like a hostess.
Speaker 1 (01:09:35):
You buy them in the gas, some kind of icing
on top of Yeah. Can I ask my question? Yes? Yeah?
Speaker 6 (01:09:44):
Okay, So wait, how many, Jeff you got you've gotten,
he's gotten all that it has been three or four?
Speaker 1 (01:09:52):
Three? Three?
Speaker 5 (01:09:53):
That's four actually?
Speaker 1 (01:09:54):
Okay?
Speaker 5 (01:09:55):
So four three, two and a half two and a half, okay.
Speaker 1 (01:09:58):
Okay, okay. So my question is what was the original
name of the night Writers? There there was?
Speaker 3 (01:10:07):
They were first known as the X but then they
later became known as the night Writers.
Speaker 5 (01:10:16):
People scribbling here every time? See every time you say
night writer, I think of the eighties? Car What was
it that you could ask that? What was the nauld
have been the bonus question? Mm hmm, Sorry, Silas, Who was.
Speaker 1 (01:10:32):
The star of night Writer? Tom all right? Already? Who was?
Speaker 5 (01:10:38):
Yeah? You think of magnum p that was it? Okay, Drew,
I didn't know that was the question.
Speaker 1 (01:10:47):
He's from Princeton though.
Speaker 7 (01:10:49):
Prince Born born. I'm not from Jeff's.
Speaker 5 (01:10:52):
Jeff's.
Speaker 1 (01:10:54):
This is a judgment called Opossum Hunters.
Speaker 7 (01:10:58):
I don't know when we when did we? Did we
just all come together and decide that, oh wasn't going
in front of possum an It's too hard to say.
Speaker 1 (01:11:05):
I mean it was.
Speaker 3 (01:11:06):
It was a conference in eighteen eighty seven in Nashville, Tennessee. Gary,
did you get anything powesome possum crew. The possum crew.
You should get some points for that.
Speaker 1 (01:11:18):
Okay.
Speaker 6 (01:11:19):
Question number six, why did Joe Scott want to tell
his story so late in life?
Speaker 1 (01:11:27):
What was the motivation?
Speaker 5 (01:11:28):
Why was he willing?
Speaker 1 (01:11:29):
Was he willing? That's a better answer.
Speaker 5 (01:11:31):
Story so late in life?
Speaker 1 (01:11:34):
I just mentioned a couple of times.
Speaker 5 (01:11:44):
Okay, Spence, statute of limitations.
Speaker 1 (01:11:50):
That might be the right.
Speaker 5 (01:11:54):
Drew everyone else was dead?
Speaker 1 (01:11:56):
Mmmm, same thing I put. Yep, everyone else was dead.
That's all that is correct.
Speaker 5 (01:12:03):
Mm hmm. Okay, next question, we need to have another
soils based podcast. Where did the mayor of Hopkinsville seek
refuge during the raid?
Speaker 1 (01:12:20):
Mm hmm.
Speaker 5 (01:12:23):
From the God fearing men?
Speaker 6 (01:12:25):
Yeah, be specific. We're looking for a specific answer. Okay, Jeff,
we're going to go with you.
Speaker 1 (01:12:38):
Coal shoot of the Baptist Church. Oh wow, that was specific.
Baptist Church, Methodist.
Speaker 7 (01:12:49):
They's been to the Baptist Church down the coal shoot.
Speaker 1 (01:12:52):
Man.
Speaker 6 (01:12:52):
These guys are good, the Baptist the coal shoot down
the coal shoot of the I think Baptist Church.
Speaker 5 (01:13:00):
Baptist Church, absolutely not the Methodist Church.
Speaker 4 (01:13:02):
He was.
Speaker 1 (01:13:07):
Anybody different than us was just the same. Any denomination
I would have I would have said, that same thing.
I've got nothing against the methods. Okay, lives, easy shot,
right in the kidney.
Speaker 6 (01:13:23):
Our last question, what was the reported net worth of
James B. Duke in nineteen oh seven, Spence, I like
the confidence that you wrote that down with.
Speaker 5 (01:13:39):
I'm really I'm really calipari in this stuff right now.
I'm right in the back of the conference man looking up.
Speaker 6 (01:13:50):
Okay, Spence will start with you. Two hundred million, two
hundred million, two hundred million. They all got it, And
for our final question, we have all right answers, Well
done everybody, Yes, so excellent.
Speaker 5 (01:14:03):
's our trivia.
Speaker 7 (01:14:04):
So Clay said, you know, two hundred million was an
enormous amount of wealth back then, that's an enormous amount of.
Speaker 5 (01:14:09):
Wealth now, yeah, no doubt.
Speaker 1 (01:14:10):
I mean no doubt.
Speaker 7 (01:14:12):
I wouldn't mind two hundred million right now.
Speaker 1 (01:14:15):
I would imagine that would be like a billionaire today.
He was, yeah, yeah, Okay.
Speaker 3 (01:14:24):
Closing down here the final little section of the podcast,
we learned that James Buck Duke buys buys the name
of Duke University, which probably, like when I read that,
I had a tendency to be like, oh, come on,
rich guyd there's probably a bigger story perhaps, or I
(01:14:47):
wonder how.
Speaker 1 (01:14:48):
The people at Duke feel about Like, is that is
that y'all might know? Is that a negative thing? Or
is that part of their history? It's funny. I think,
you know, he touches on it.
Speaker 5 (01:14:59):
Are you a Duke fan? I thought you were.
Speaker 1 (01:15:01):
I'm a little Yeah. We can throw Duke under the bus.
I don't care what you did, man.
Speaker 5 (01:15:06):
Knowing from North Carolina.
Speaker 4 (01:15:08):
Over there, but it's you know, it's interesting he touches
on it in the book that like when Duke first
approached them about giving them this money and want to
rename it, you know, it seems like it was a
fairly devout like Methodist college that was.
Speaker 5 (01:15:21):
Called Trinity College.
Speaker 1 (01:15:22):
Yeah, and there it seemed like there was some administration
that was like, you know, this guy's slinging cigarettes. So
I don't think we can't take any part of this.
Speaker 4 (01:15:32):
And then I think it's just kind of funny, Like
six million dollars I think the Lord gives does.
Speaker 5 (01:15:38):
He not like has called nullification?
Speaker 1 (01:15:43):
That's right.
Speaker 4 (01:15:47):
I think I think the Lord can overlook this one.
How many more souls are we going to save? This
is losing from here. But so it was kind of
funny the way he touches on that, but that seemed
to be his brother was was much more involved with
that school and his dad and his dad right, and
(01:16:07):
they both were fairly devout Methodists. I think I think
that was why it was troubling to them as they
watched Buck kind.
Speaker 1 (01:16:14):
Of take off with this, you know, with the corporation.
Speaker 5 (01:16:20):
And so it's interesting because you'd said that his dad said,
the two things I don't understand are the Trinity and
my son and then his son bias Trinity College.
Speaker 1 (01:16:30):
Yeah, it's just kind of like a full circle, full circle,
it is, man, it's well.
Speaker 4 (01:16:34):
And then the way the book ends with in the
way you ended the podcast, like, I mean, Amos's son
goes on to be the first medical uh you know,
professor medical professor for the like, it's unbelievable. It's just
such a crazy story with such unique, you know, characters. Yeah,
(01:16:56):
it's it's incredible.
Speaker 1 (01:16:58):
So who won? Jeff one?
Speaker 5 (01:16:59):
Jeff one?
Speaker 1 (01:17:00):
Did you did you miss one?
Speaker 7 (01:17:01):
I missed the first one? James Buck instead of oh well, patriarch.
Speaker 3 (01:17:06):
There, congratulations on this. Uh so, Jeff, you're gonna get
a Moultrie edge too. Camera do you do you deer hunt.
Speaker 4 (01:17:14):
Yeah, so this will be useful to absolutely and I
think I can hook you up with three on it
though it's an edge two.
Speaker 3 (01:17:21):
Well this was this was actually my personal camera that
and so the three is uh this is the third one.
But uh but uh yeah, they're they're really good.
Speaker 1 (01:17:31):
That's awesome, man. I appreciate it.
Speaker 5 (01:17:33):
Undercover work too.
Speaker 3 (01:17:34):
Yeah, this is going to revolution. He's going to take
that back to the FBI and they're gonna be.
Speaker 5 (01:17:37):
Like, what's that going to get?
Speaker 1 (01:17:39):
Like we've never had Yeah for about three times a pressure.
This would be good.
Speaker 3 (01:17:49):
Thank you guys so much for coming. Man came all
the way from Kentucky. Much appreciated.
Speaker 7 (01:17:54):
Thanks for having us.
Speaker 1 (01:17:55):
Yeah really and and thanks for the suggestion on the
podcast man. Man, Like I said, I'm honored you guys.
Speaker 4 (01:18:01):
I was not expecting, first off, even to get a reply,
let alone you guys run with it.
Speaker 1 (01:18:06):
But I'm glad you did. And it's been great getting
to work with you guys and meet you guys through this.
Speaker 5 (01:18:12):
Man.
Speaker 1 (01:18:12):
It's awesome. And keep it up, man, people need it. Yep,
thanks a lot. Guys. Keep the wild places wild because
that's where the bears love. There's no criminals there and
FBI is not there casually, Chick
Host
Clay Newcomb
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