Ep. 95: Bear Grease [Render] - Hall of Fame Inductions and Big Bear Breakdown

On this week's episode, Clay Newcomb is all business. After introducing the render crew - Misty Newcomb, Gary Newcomb, Brent Reaves, Josh "Landbridge" Spielmaker, and Ben Lagrone - Clay gives a quick recap on the Bear Grease Hall of Fame, emphasizing its seriousness and immutability, before introducing not one, but two new candidates! Following the vote, the discussion turns to Clay's Magnum Opus, the most recent episode on "the Big Bear of Arkansas." The gang dissects a few topics like the nuance in culture, language, and accents even within a given region, the importance of the written word, and how remarkably media can impact culture. And stick around, because you're not gonna wanna miss Josh's take on why angling is better than hunting...

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:14):
My name is Clay and Nukam and 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

(00:35):
that's designed to be as rugged as the place as
we explore. Welcome to the Bear Grease Render. We have
a pretty normal crew of the Render here today and
we're gonna talk about the magnum opus of my life. Wow,
this podcast is the best podcast that's ever been created,

(00:59):
none accepted. Wow. Wow, that's that's my opinion. Let me
introduce who's here today. I have my lovely wife, Missy
knucom to my left. Hello, great to have you here,
Great to be here. To Missy's left, Brent Reeves Bent. Okay, glad,

(01:22):
I want to hear what you think about this this podcast.
All right? I listened to Brent's left, Ben Lagron, thanks
for all the time, buddy. You've been here a couple
of times on the burgera surrender a couple of times,
one time. If you've been here one time, you've been
here a couple of times. That's right. That's right. And
Ben Ben feels particularly familiar today because he has a
nineteen eighties Bess Pro Shop hat on. Yeah. Those are

(01:44):
hard to come by these days out here. Yeah, or
maybe not hard to come out with their popular. That's
why I wore the meat Eater shirt to make sure
there wasn't too much of it of companies. You got
his meat your shirt on two. Ben's laft. Josh Lambridge,
spillmaker who's been wreck is starting to get wreck nuys
once every other week. Yes, it's my micro celebrity grows

(02:05):
by the every other week by weekly tell us where
someone like I got recognized by a great young man
by the name of Jacob down at the tool Local
tool rental business doing some remodel work on my house.
Had to go rent some tools and he was like,
are you Landing, Hey, Well, you asked me my name,
and I was like, Josh Billmaker, and he goes, are
you familiar with the Bear Grease podcast? I said, way

(02:27):
too familiar. He said what's your middle name? And you
were like land Bridge, that's right. One at a time,
that's great. To your left, the man who's been missing
for a couple of episodes, the pattern Familius, Gary Believer, NWCAM.
Good to be here, yeah, man, good to have you. Yeah,
I've been listening to your stuff at last. Render group

(02:50):
was really good. Did you like it? Yeah? I really did. Man.
I'm at the Squirrel yeah camp, Yeah did you Yeah.
Good to hear, good to hear. Hey, I'm like all
business today because today is a monumental. This is a
monumental Beargreas Render because we are well. Let me back,
let me back up one step. There is such a thing.

(03:10):
There is such a thing called the Beargrease Hall of Fame,
which is a very real thing. This isn't a joke.
Like one day, I believe there will be a mountain
somewhere in the Ozarks with the faces of these people
carved into it. Beargrease Hall of Fame. Very real. Men
who qualify women, who qualify, People who qualify to be

(03:34):
in the Beargrease Hall of Fame have a very some
very evident, and some very intangible qualities about their life
that make them shoe ends. And sometimes these qualities are
hard to articulate, but when you see it, you know it. Okay.
The current the current Beargrease Hall of Famers are number one.

(03:58):
My dear friend James Lawrence from Mina, Arkansas. Yes, long time,
you know I've used the word mentor. That's probably not
the best descriptor of him to me. But we love
James Lawrence. Love James mountain man, backwoods man, incredible, washtam
mountain deer hunter, humble, honest, hard working, a lot of

(04:21):
good things about James. Number two Warner Glenn. Warner Glenn,
eighty seven year old cowboy from Arizona. We got a
film coming out about him that is going to be
on the meter and there's a film premiere, yeah, that
on March the third in Bentonville. You want to be hey,

(04:41):
give can is it? Is it too soon? I mean
this time, I'm certain. I hope that all the tickets
are sold. Well, we only had two hundred tickets. The
venue we got could just hold two hundred people. We
we we put it up. Two hundred tickets are sold,
So if you don't have a ticket, I'm very sorry,
but maybe will do this again. But Warner Glenn, when

(05:02):
you meet a cowboy like him, you would think you
were gonna meet a proud man. Warner Glenn is one
of the most humble guys I've ever met, hardest working.
Just no one ever told he was told him he
was cool. He doesn't to this date, he doesn't know
that he's cool. When he sees a film about himself,
he's gonna be like, I'll be darn you know that

(05:22):
kind of guy? Okay? James Lawrence Warner, Glenn Roy Clark,
my dear friend, Roy Clark and East Tennessee plot man,
multi generational plot man and bear hunter. Just a relic
of a man, a relic of Appalachia. He grew up
in a family where alcoholism was a pretty big deal.
Roy Clark made a decision when he was a young

(05:43):
man that he wasn't going to touch the stuff, and
he has been a bear hunter's bear hunter ever since.
I don't think he's ever been out of a pair
of overalls. I have never seen the man wear a
pair of pants. Incredible world class bear dogs. But le's
Roy Clark. Number four. Daniel Boone, God Rest his soul.

(06:04):
Daniel Boone was one of America's first heroes, and he
forged much of what, especially people who live close to
the land and hunting, what we know of the American identity.
So much of it came from Boone. The love of wilderness.
People used to be afraid of wilderness. In the dark Ages,

(06:26):
people wanted to get as far away from wilderness as
they could. Wilderness is where he went to die. Daniel
Boone went into the wilderness the American Frontier and came
back with articulation that the world had never heard before
about the beauty of the wilderness and the beauty of
solitude and living one with nature. He was fifty something

(06:49):
years old before he ever became famous, so all the
stuff he did that made him famous he did before
he was ever famous, So he wasn't trying to show
out incredible incredible man. Daniel Boone lived to be eighty
four years old and just had scrapes with death that
would blow your mind. Okay. Number five. Frederick Gerstacker. Frederick

(07:12):
Gerstaker was a German that came to Arkansas in eighteen
thirty seven. He stayed here for about six years. He did.
He spent quite a bit of time within twenty miles
of where we sit today in the Ozarks. He was
a young educated German that just kind of wanted to

(07:32):
get away from his his his background in Europe and
he you know, they had money and he came to Arkansas,
and he was the first guy that came to the
backwoods of Arkansas and came out with this glowing review
of the people and the way they lived, which was
massively contrasted with like who we talked about in this

(07:55):
podcast about Schoolcraft, most guys came down here and went
and reported back to the world that this was a backwater,
just rough, dirty place full of scoundrels. Well, Gerstalker came
here and he said that these were some of the
finest people on planet Earth. And he and he stayed
with families and he was a big hunter. In one

(08:18):
of the first podcasts I did called the Death of
a bear Hunter. That story we know that story because
Gerstalker and he was. He was on a bear hunt
with dogs where his acquaintance Erskine was killed about twenty
five miles from where we said in the Ozarks. Incredible man,
incredible writer, an incredible romantic. That's a phrase that people

(08:41):
would use to describe how someone views reality in a way.
And I like romantics because you could you could make
a decision tomorrow that your life is terrible and that
the world is no good, or you could wake up
and be like you know what, it's a pretty good place.
Frederick Gersharker number five, number six. The current last member

(09:01):
of the Bear Grease Hall of Fame is none other
than George mcjunkin. He was that He was born a
slave in the eighteen fifties in Texas, moved out to
New Mexico after the emancipation, became a landowner, became a
big ranch hand, and was a very intelligent man, an

(09:23):
educated man. Learned to read on a chuckwagon cattle drive.
Was he was a naturalist. He collected bones, and he
took archaeology. He made he made mechanisms to measure the
wind speed in direction. And one day he was out
riding riding his horse, and he came across an unusual

(09:46):
bone pile sticking out of the ground in this arroyo,
and he goes, those are not normal bones. He takes
a couple of the bones home with him. It was
in nineteen oh eight. He spins the next over t
In the years trying to get people to come out
and look at the bones, he'd go back into town
and talk with people and say, hey, y'all, somebody needs

(10:07):
to come here and look at this. They never came.
He dies in nineteen twenty three, so it's fifteen years
he tried to get people to come out there. He dies,
and literally three months after he dies, an amateur archaeologist
goes to this place where they're, like George said, there
was a pile of bones over here. They see the
bones and they go, oh my, after they send them

(10:29):
somewhere and then they go, these are the bones of
a bison antiquis, which is an ice age bison is
no longer here, and some museum says, well, we got
to excavate those bones. They start excavating the bones and
they find stone points inside inside of the bones indicating
that these animals weren't This wasn't just a pile of

(10:51):
dead animals. These animals were killed by humans. And at
the time, the greatest minds on planet Earth, with all
the data information, would have been no different today than
the great minds of our time telling us something that
was a matter of fact. No different. I mean, it
would be like them saying, absolutely, this is the truth.

(11:12):
They believed that humans have been in the North American
continent for about three thousand years. Well, they knew that
these bison bones were over ten thousand years old. And
that these it. By finding these stone points, it meant
that they had humans had been here for over ten
thousand years, and it totally rescripted how long humans had
been in North America, and that became the Folsome point.

(11:36):
They found folsome points there. And so George mcjunkin African
American Cowboy found this site and died before we ever
knew that it was there. Yeah, so those are the
six current Barghrias Hall of Famers today. This day we
are going to induct Josh. We're going to h yeah, yeah, okay,

(12:05):
y'all picking up on the wrong intents. Clark wore overalls
every day. I'm trying to get in. Uh. None of
them had great must or notable mustaches. Um, so maybe
that's okay, No, tell me Gerstocker didn't have a notable Yeah,
there's some photos of him later in his life. So

(12:27):
we're gonna we're gonna. I'm gonna put on the table
the proposition to induct not one, but two men into
the Burghers Hall of Fame. So just works. We're gonna
give Ben voting rights today because he's uh, you know,
the rules change as as my whims change, so necessarily

(12:49):
a regular. But I know Ben's character and judgment for
long enough that we're gonna give him an active vote
and something that cannot be repealed. No historical revisionists will
ever be able to come back and tell me that
Warner Glenn did something wrong. I don't care, all right,

(13:09):
so irrevocable, once in, always in. Okay, the man that
I would like to put on the table to be
inducted into Bargheras Hall of Fame, there would be a vote,
There would be a we will go one by one
and you will vote yay or nay. Okay, the man
I would like to induct into the Burgheras Hall of Fame.
It's it's overdue. Hault Collier Whult Collier was born in

(13:30):
the eighteen fifties, died in the eighteenth and died in
the nineteen thirties, and his story is too long to tell.
He fought for the Confederate Army. He became a nationally
renowned bear hunter with dogs in Mississippi. He guided President

(13:50):
Teddy Roosevelt on multiple bear hunts. Halt Collier was a
deputy sheriff. Halt Collier shot and kill Old uh two
white men, shot one white man, and was never acquitted.
It was acquitted of all charges. He was a brilliant
man and he was from Greenville, Mississippi. He's buried in Greenville,

(14:14):
Mississippi to this day. That the series that we did
on Hulk Caller was incredible. It's learning his story. Yeah,
and what's so wild is that his story is hardly
known by America. There's one book written written by Minor
Francis Buchanan, a lawyer in Jackson, Mississippi, who wrote a
book on Whult Collier. That's it, and it's hard to get.

(14:39):
He now has books he made after the podcast, he
reprinted the book. Awesome because I'm still getting DM ye.
He reprinted the book and so you can now go
to Minor Francis Buchanan's website and order the book Hulk Collier. Well,
so Misty, what say you? Yeah, Brent yay bah yeah,

(15:04):
Josh yeah, Gary yeah yeah yeah yeah, Clay yea, all right,
Holt Caller is now officially people in the Bargreas Hall
of Fame voted twice. Garry voted twice. Yeah he's yeah, yeah,
but I'm all in good putting me down for he's
a worthy candidate, right, Yeah, are we conducting someone else too. Yeah,
so this is this is a big day, big day

(15:25):
for Holt Caller. Okay. The second person that I would
like to induct into the Bear Grease Hall of Fame
irrevocable by historical revisionists one hundred years from now. If
you're if you're a hundred years from now listening to
this on some archival mechanism that you can listen to
stuff like this, you can't change this. I would like

(15:48):
to induct to Kumsa, the Shawnee Shawnee leader. Incredible. The Really,
when I do these series, I just I just get
into these guys and I just feel like I know him.
And we did a big three part series just finished it.

(16:09):
Unti Kumsa. His name means a panther crossing the sky.
He was a visionary. He was He led the largest
combined Native American forces against the United States of any
Indian leader in American history. Basically, he was the biggest
threat to American expansion westward by Native Americans, and he

(16:35):
was considered by some to be one of the greatest
potentially in so speculatives, we don't have no recordings of them,
but by evidence by the way that he could move people.
One of the greatest orators in American history, potentially great warrior,
great hunter, walked with Olympus whole life because when he

(16:56):
was twenty one, he fell off his horse when he
was hunting a bison. Incredible man, incredible resoluteness. Died when
he was forty five years old. Prophesied his own death,
Shawnee leader to Compson Misty, what say you, yes, as
long as we call him by his proper name, to come,
that's right, good answer, good answer. Well say yea, yeah,

(17:21):
but I'll have to pull a tooth or two to
get to comforth consecutive. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yes, absolutely, one
hundred percent. Ben, definitely. Ben's in. Josh, I'm in. Absolute,
you're in. I'm in. All right, let it be heard.
We've now inducted two new people into the Burghers Hall
of Fame. There's now eight. I'll have to get the

(17:43):
engravers over here, say monument, so let it be ridden.
So let it be done. That's right, this is big,
this is big. Excellent. Well, now we're going to talk
about my magnum opus. I'm told that means it's like
the work of your life. Yeah, okay, um the Big

(18:04):
Bear of Arkansas. This, uh, this short story. I read
it years ago and I've most likely learned about it
from Brooks Blevin's book that I read years and years ago,
his book Arkansas, Arkansas, which we're going to talk about
a lot. The book is titled Arkansas Spelled the Normal

(18:24):
Way with a with a with a hashmark, Arkansas Spelled
with the W as is that title of the book, Arkansas, Arkansas,
And he talked about this, this short story the Big
Bear of Arkansas the Southwest humorists. And what's so interesting
to me is that everything's so complicated, like stuff just

(18:48):
you kind of have these simple stories of the way
things happened, but when you really look into it, it's
really it's really complicated. In this guy Jet, this fictional
character Jim Dogget kind of branded Arkansas. Brent, what did

(19:11):
you think of the podcast? Well, what stood out to you?
Was there a part that was fun that it was surprising?
What what stood out to you? Well, I've never heard
that story before. That was totally ignorant of that amongst
a volume of things. I'm totally ignorant. But it was

(19:31):
kind of ironic that he set the tone and the
idea that people that weren't from your head of Arkansas,
and it was a guy from New York that did
it exactly pretty great. Interesting, Yeah, that was totally removed.
Might as well have been on the other side of
the planet, you know, as far as his relationship to

(19:56):
what was going on at that time. Here he was,
he was is he was coming down the river on
that boat. He was seeing it for the first time too,
you know, so I thought that was kind of ironic. Yeah,
but he did such a good job. Absolutely, even in
the way he told the bear hunt, it was clear.

(20:16):
I don't think people told Thomas Bangthorpe about about bear
hunting because he knew some of the It was intricate
details about about the way bear's bay a dog, and
about the way a big bear will walk a pack
of bay and dogs. It's something that you would you

(20:37):
got the or I got the idea he'd seen it before. Well,
if I described that to someone who had no context
for bear hunting and then I said, okay, go write
a story, they wouldn't include that because it's really it's
it's kind of unusual to see a big old bear
surrounded by a bunch of dogs and the bear acts

(20:57):
like they're not even there, nonchalant. Yeah, it's it's it's like,
what's happening here? And I think he had to have
seen that and then and then all kinds of stuff.
I mean, even the way if that was a coincidence,
it was like a bolt of lightning, and I don't
think it was. Yeah, I think there's some one of

(21:17):
the things. You know, when you see somebody else or
when you see another culture, you pick out things about
that culture that they don't even realize they do themselves. Yeah,
And so I think that's a piece of this is
that he the description the man telling the story sounded
like my uncle's. I mean that it was like, oh, yeah,
that's I know the type of person that's telling the story.

(21:39):
I can see it, I can hear it, I can
I can feel it. And I think it has to
be you never know what would stand out to someone
who had never done something before. And so I agree
he probably did see a bear hunt before, because that
would stick out, but almost like as an unfamiliar person
with it, not like a routine bear hunter, but as
someone who who saw it once and was kind of

(22:01):
surprised now that it was clear that he was He
was enamored with folk speech, is what it was said
about him after literature experts were able to analyze his
whole the breadth of his life as a writer. So
he always was like going in somewhere and talking like
they talked. And so to be able to do that,

(22:21):
you've got to be an astute observer of culture. Yeah,
and these guys that were writers, especially back then, I
sometimes think the modern media is so easy for us
to get that it doles our senses about about people
and perceptions. I don't know, everything spoon fed to us
so much. These guys the only the only entertainment, the

(22:42):
only media they had was either going to like a
live performance of something which would have been rare, and
the written word. And so a writer like Ronnella said,
back in those days would have had the average writer
back in those days would have had a more power
full command of the English language and of their craft

(23:03):
than than probably the writer today. Right, And but it's
clear that he was an observer of typically rural culture. Yeah.
You know, if you listen to a if you're traveling
and you're in Alabama and you watch a newscast, the
local newscast, they talk just exactly like the people do

(23:23):
in California, that in Montana, in Arkansas, the there's and
a lot of them I'm sure from different places. But
like even the people newscasters, the newscasters that are from
Arkansas that are on our local statewide television, they all
they all talk the same. You talk different than me,

(23:44):
We talk different than Josh and Ben. So it's all
what I'm saying is, back then he paid a lot
more at tension to and I guess everything that's now
is is fed or designed to be appealing to everybody's
and back then it was, hey, this is exactly what
this folks, what these people sound like, or this particular
person in this particular spot. Yeah, so that was cool

(24:07):
to me. Well, yeah, it's interesting you say that about newscasters.
They try to find people that have what's what's the
name for an accent that is just so neutral, like
a neutral like a neutral American accent. Yeah, Saint Louis, Yeah,
Midwestern or Midwestern. I think Christie has one. I think

(24:31):
Christie has one too. Josh's wife Christie accent? Really you
think so? Yeah, same as she's from the Midwest. Who jet,
My wife's from the Midwest. This one come across a
not having an accent. Hm, well, they do that politicians
typically do better on a national scale if they have
a generic accent. Is that true. I believe it to

(24:54):
be true. I don't know if it is. Do you
have anything to back any I think, to be honest.
Of all people that I thought would come up on
the Beargage podcast, I heard them say that Barack Obama
had a very generic accent, like he wasn't Southern, he
wasn't northern, he wasn't this, he wasn't that. And they
say that he's one of the greatest orators of American

(25:17):
presidents a long time. Yeah, And I think that's true
when I think about also other other in terms of
like preferences. You know, I agree one hundred percent with
a statement. I think Barack Obama was in an incredible order.
I think if you look at our very own Bill Clinton,

(25:37):
you know, he had an accent, Yeah, and people liked
them and they found him charming. And you look at
because people like people from the South, if you look
at his campaign like that is that is not That's
not where I was going with that, but not where
I was going. I didn't say that wasn't true. I
was saying, that's not where I was going there. But
I mean, I think he actually appealed to people because

(25:57):
he had that folksy capacity. Yeah, so I'm kind of
disagreeing with There's a difference though, between southern and folksy
because because there was a charm in the way that
Bill Clinton would speak that drew people in. However, you
don't always get that just with the with the run

(26:18):
of the mill southern man. You know what's wild, There
is no run of the mill Southern accent when I
go It's true fifteen miles from right here to the
farm that I've deer huntred on for twenty years and
talked to that landowner who is is connected to this
place as it's possible to be. He has a very
unique Ozark accent. When I interviewed our province thirty five

(26:42):
miles south of here, very isolated in the Ozark Mountains,
he had a very unique accent different than this guy
over here, also in the Ozark Mountains. Um. I mean
when I when I first left my home, the home
of Gary and Judy, knew him and went off into
the world. Um. Misty says that when I would come home,

(27:06):
we realized how big of an accent like dad had
in my accent would increase. Yeah, but when I was
away it was it was kind of less, I mean,
like totally unconscious of what was having. We have a
home video of Claying his dad talking and it's almost
comical to listen to because in the conversation you hear
Clay talking more newcome southern. Yeah. You know, what's what's

(27:28):
interesting about that to me is that my dad taught
what we called a country school back when I lived
in Hot Springs, you know, a pretty good sized place
for Arkansas, and he was he was ten or fifteen
miles out of town at what we called a country school. No,
it was found like now, it's a big school, you

(27:49):
know for Arkansas. And uh, I went there third, fourth,
and fifth grade, and I picked up this accent. My
oldest sister went there. I guess she was about in
the seventh grade when we moved there, and she stayed
there all through high school. She's got the most country
accent you've ever heard. And my other sisters stay at

(28:10):
Hot Springs. And she asked what you'd kind of think
of as a neutral accent and just being being in
that country school for three years, I developed this country accent,
which I think it's not as bad as it used
to be, and bad might not be the right word.
It's probably not as distinct as it was twenty years ago. Well,

(28:30):
and then and then you go down into Brent's part
of the world, which Brent lives three hours from me,
down in the flat lands, and you used to live
even further south than that, and that accent down there
is very different. So point being, there's not really a
Southern accent that everyone could get behind. Perhaps there's certain words,

(28:51):
but but anyway, Thorpe was able to pick up on
something very unique. But truth be known to me, I
would I would like to think everybody in Arkansas in
eighteen forty one was like Jim Doggat. But the reason
that this was a fantastic story is because Jim Doggat

(29:11):
was exceptional. He was a character. He was he was
an exaggerated caricature of probably a I'm not gonna say
a small group of people, because there were a lot
of a lot of backwoods them and then hunters, but
there were also a lot of people in Little Rock
that were that we're trying to get away from that
we're trying to get away from that image that, like

(29:34):
Bob Cochrane said, they wouldn't have liked this story. They
would have been like, that's not who we are. And
there's still people like that today that are trying to
move away from. Yeah, this this image, but no, that's
a good that's a that's a good one. Um. I
want to go around the room and just get your
just like what stood out to you? Whatever it was, Ben,

(29:56):
what stood out to you? Well? I think what I
was pondering a lot during the episode and and I
look forward to the next episode because I think you're
probably gonna hit on this a lot is just how
fast that formed an identity around our Kansans. Yeah, and
I was looking at it from a real broad like

(30:16):
human picture of like, man, why are we all so
quick to try to put a certain people in a
box to understand it? I think there is a desire
to try to understand and identify the similarity so we
can relate to people, identify the differences so we can
better understand them. And sometimes as humans, we try to

(30:37):
compare ourselves to make ourselves feel better, you know. But
I thought that was really interesting part of that story
and how that formed the identity of Americans, And it
made me think about just in my own travels. I've
been fortunate to travel the world soon, but I really
like what the professor said about whenever you shine a

(30:59):
light you it actually makes the space bigger. Analogy name.
His name was Bob Cochrane. Okay, Bob. Jessica. My wife
had like five classes with him. He is like her hero.
I was listening to in the kitchen during lunch today.
She's like Bob Cochrane in fact, like he's a cool
old guy man. He's like seventy five or something. In

(31:20):
the honor school. Like all these believer all these students
like loved him, and they had this kind of this
joke of like does Bob Cochrane know your name? Well,
he knows my name, Like yeah, yeah, just a brilliant man. Well,
I really like that. And you know, I'm talking about
when the light shines on something, You're um, did that analogy?

(31:41):
I had to think about that a little bit before
it made sense. Did it make sense to everybody? Yeah
yeah right away? Yeah yeah, yeah. Well, and I thought
that smart and I thought about just my experiences in traveling.
So when I was in college, I taught English in Cairo, Egypt,
and got to live in a Muslim culture that over
over in America. Did you wear that bass pro hat?
I did not, And uh, you know, in America by

(32:06):
that point that would have been like, I don't know,
like twenty twenty, two thousand and eight something that people
had a very preconceived notion of Muslim life. And I
really enjoyed getting to know that culture for real. But
the more I got to know the culture in Cairo,
I quickly found out it was very different than the

(32:29):
Egyptian culture. And Alexandra, you know, only a couple hours
of north, very different than Jordan or Syria. And but
the more ignorant you are, you kind of just lump
everybody into a certain group. Yeah, And so the more ignorant,
not in a derogatory way, but literally literally like if

(32:49):
you don't know, yeah, you would think all these people
the same kind of Like we talked about it on
the TCMPS episode that in general, a lot of Americans
would think Native Americans were just one group of yeah,
but they were actually very vastly different, hundreds of tribes.
And so it's caused me to do that less like
less generalized and be genuinely interested when I meet somebody

(33:12):
from somewhere not stereotyping. Now. I used to get so
annoyed when I would meet people from big cities and
you know, they found out was from Arkansas. You hear
the same glass, they all wear your shoes. Did you
marry your cousin? I mean this classic stuff that's weird.
You know, I carried that inferior already complex, like like

(33:33):
you kind of hinted on by the next episode, But
I've changed to where now I'm when when I get
those responses, I almost not pity them, and I was
kind of like, oh, wow, like you really don't know
that you're ignorant. You really you've never been in Arkansas. Yeah,
but it's like, wow, your worldview is really small, because

(33:53):
what I've learned is this everywhere you go, there's something
interesting about every place and every person and and so.
I but you could just see back then, when media
is so limited, how that one story would catch catch
fire and that would just brand your way of viewing
that and these are things we just didn't have time

(34:16):
to go into on this, but that story just okay,
let's go back. If there was a company. If there
was a YouTube channel that did really good in a
certain space, like in the hunting space, what would happen?
That YouTube channel would be copied and other guys will
start doing the same stuff. I mean, there's a thousand examples,

(34:37):
from meat eater to the hunting public to I mean,
just like a thousand, like everybody kind of well, when
this story came out and it did so good, it
was published in New York City and went all across
the country, and everybody talked about everybody loved it. And
then so what happened is that a bunch of boys
in Arkansas started writing about bear hunting, and so it

(35:00):
kind of fed on its own, on its own gravy,
you know. Well and yeah, and then later Mark Twain
was kicked up on that, on that type of stuff.
But um, what I what me and doctor Blevins talked
about which wasn't on the cut, which is what's so
great about the beargars renders we can talk about this

(35:22):
is that as much as I would love to say
Arkansas was the bear hunting capital of the world during
that time, it was, I mean, it was as good
as there was anywhere, but it certainly wasn't the best.
They were bear hunting everywhere. It was the creation state. Yeah,

(35:44):
but you know in Mississippi they were killing bears like crazy.
In Missouri they were killing bears. In Kentucky they were
killing bears. So it us becoming the bear state was
really tied to this media branding it and and that
is really interesting. And I said on the podcast that
this is a pretty darn near new to earth experience

(36:07):
of media and in Beargrease, in the Beargrease world, we
think about the world and the massive big picture of history. Yeah,
humans have been around for a long long time, and
media with printing and audio and video is an extremely
new thing. To be kind not the idea of marketing.
I'm sure the fulsome hunters would have gone to their

(36:29):
neighbors and been like, dude, you should try out this.
Yeah yeah, so I mean they were marketing. They were
they were, but but and not that marketing media are
different things. They're kind of lumped together. But point being,
it's pretty new in the media like we have today
is a completely new human experiment, really is there has

(36:53):
never been anything like this before. Ye or you're being
so you're being you're being told so many stories and
they all have in a agenda. I mean, just like
the Big Bear of Arkansas. I don't think Thomas bang
Thorpe's was. Thomas Bangsthorpe was wanting to brand Arkansas as
a bear state. That was the last thing in his mind.
But it did it. People took it for that, you know.

(37:14):
And then there's another real famous guy that was actually
more famous than Thomas Bangsthorpe named Pete Wetstone. He wrote
under the name Pete Whetstone and wrote hundreds of articles.
He was from Batesville, Arkansas, and he talked about bear
hunting all the time. A little bit later, a little
bit later, just like maybe just even a few years later.

(37:34):
But I thought it was interesting that Thorpe this was
the pinnacle of his writing career and the second best
was Did y'all understand what Cochran was saying. He said
that The Big Bear of Arkansas was the pinnacle of
Thorpe's career, and it happened early on in his career.

(37:55):
And he said the second best, most receipt well received
short story that he wrote was called A Piano in Arkansas.
He said it was trivial compared to it took him.
It took a minute to tell. Yeah, what did a
good story though, but it was a story like we
would tell today. It didn't have all that Yeah yeah, yeah,

(38:17):
it was like the chandelier story that Jerry Clover told.
I mean, it was that quick. I think. I think
one of the things that I really appreciated about the
story is my when I was in high school, I
had a teacher named Missus, Missus Shoemaker, and she was
a very strict English teacher, but there was something about
her that made you love English, made you love vocabulary.

(38:42):
She just she built that into us. So I've always
had a great appreciation for someone who could paint a
picture in your mind. And I love the way it's
not just the story, it's everything surrounding it. Yeah. And
so when you when you picture him on the riverboat
and you you know, you picture him tall, you picture
him boots, you know what I mean when he tells

(39:03):
when he says, the line that I liked was, um,
I didn't know whether the dog was made front and bear. Yeah.
I loved that. I loved those those phrases that just
make you it's a really novel idea, you know. And
I appreciate that about the story. This podcast. We're recording

(39:26):
this podcast. You're listening to you right now. On the
day that this podcast came out, I've already been somebody's
already sent me a post that someone put on Instagram
and they have their their squirrel dogs sitting in the
driver's seat of their truck and they take a picture
of him and he's all astute looking out the window
at squirrels and it says, I don't know if he

(39:48):
was made for him Instagram. So yeah, I think that's
I mean, the story of the piano in Arkansas, it's
a cute story, but it doesn't create the It's almost

(40:09):
like as you hear him tell the story, it's like
it's like the pictures are unfolding and like someone's painting
it as you're walking through it. And I really I
have a great appreciation for that. Yeah, I think that
was to me one of the I really enjoyed the
part where you and Steve Rannella talked about just language
and and how how they had such a strong command

(40:30):
of the language, and I think it really is something
that is missing in modern in modern discourse, and I
you know, brit In Clay sometimes get on these these
kicks where they write each other via text in old
English format, so they'll write things like lengthy messages it's
been a fortnight since and I am privileged sometimes to

(40:53):
be cced on these messages and I get to enjoy them,
but you know they were there is something to be
said about just like as an educator, and Ben can
probably back me up on this, like when you are writing,
it is doing something different inside your brain than when
you're speaking, or then when you're receiving knowledge, when when
like Josh talks to me, different activities are happening in

(41:15):
my brain than when I write something out, and those
when you're creating things. That's how you become a good speaker.
That's how you become a good writer. Is the brain
activity that's happening when you frequently write. And these guys
were writing all the time. I mean, that's it's it's
becoming a lost art in our culture. And if you
even look at the difference inside of education and curriculum

(41:38):
today versus fifty years ago versus one hundred years ago,
it was much more focused and centered on writing than
it would than what we're doing now. And even as
an educator, you think about the amount of and I'm
not opposed to this, like I'm not one hundred percent
posts of this, but a lot of the emphasis for
us as educators is to be entertainers, like education should

(42:03):
be engaging and entertaining. And yeah, and it's it's interesting
all of those little tiny choices that we've made over
the last whether it's you know, you look at the Internet,
of course that has a big impact. You have smartphones
that has a big impact, but also just even the
basic decisions we're making about how we instruct and how
we teach people. It's taking this wonderful, beautiful thing that

(42:24):
we have in written language that translates to beautiful oratorical feats,
and it's we're losing that as a culture. We're losing that, mister.

(42:45):
I don't know if anybody in here is familiar with it,
but Abraham there's a famous letter that he wrote to
a mother of I think it's a letter to missus Bixby. Yes,
have you read that? I have? I couldn't quote it
for link and wrote one called by first Night. Now, yeah,
part of the loss. Most eloquent letters I've ever written.

(43:08):
It's it's a short paragraph he wrote to this lady
who had five sons that were killed during during the
Civil War. I do remember that it is uns you
know what. I think it actually in a movie. I
can read it right here, it's so sure. Yeah, Rinella
brought up Lincoln. Yeah, yeah, that's what made me think
about this letter. Read it all right. I've got like

(43:30):
the original version here, and I'm trying to see I've
been dear madam. I have been shown in the files
of the War Department a statement of the Adjudant General
of Massachusetts that you are the mother of five sons
who have died gloriously on the field of battle. I
feel how weak and fruitless must be any words of
mine which should attempt to beguile you from the grief

(43:52):
of loss so overwhelming. But I cannot refrain from tendering
to you the consolation that may be found in the
thanks of the republic they die to save. I pray
that our heavenly Father may assuage the anguish of your
bereavement and leave you only the cherish memory of the
loved and lost, and the solemn pride that must be
yours to have laid so costly a sacrifice upon the

(44:12):
altar of freedom. Yours very sincerely and respectfully a Lincoln.
He wrote that he didn't have a speech writer. Yeah,
that's that is Yeah, that's pretty emotional without without backspacing,
and exactly, yeah dad, what did you think? Well, man,

(44:34):
you off said at all. But oh you know, I
really really really really really really like this. It was
just I don't mean it was it just created at
all of that culture where orators ran the world. I mean,

(44:56):
they were the ones. They were the powerful ones, you know,
you think hunters, you warriors, whatever. Uh. The way he
spoke what was that called the southern something he's Southern dialect. Yeah, yeah,
folk type deal speech, you know, his his little comments

(45:16):
that he would make about the beard had moved and yeah,
you know I loved him like a brother and yeah.
Uh and and we've I think we've lost that, you know.
Um one of them mentioned Mark Twain and Huck Finn
and Tom Sawyer. I mean, how many kids grew up

(45:37):
thinking they were real people, right? I mean I mean
they they created disillusion that that you know, these are
real people, you know, and uh, today we don't need that.
We don't have time for that. I want to turn
on the news, get it quick, you know. Uh. So

(45:58):
I was intrigued by that change in our culture where
you know, writing the written word was powerful. Now you
know the sound yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, there you go
yeah yeah. So uh anyway, and I made little notes
on all these little comments are so what are you?
What's in your notes? So you know? Uh uh? I

(46:22):
mean because it helps me to remind me of some
of the stuffing. Okay, so much. Actually Jiuju did this
as we were coming up here, I said, make some
notes here. Um, the bar was an unhuntable bear bar
who died when his time had come. And in other words,
I could I could envision that so much. You know,

(46:43):
we hear about a guy killing or a girl killing
a big old buck and you know, they don't know
what they're doing, they look up and shoot it, shooted
off the front porch. And when we go that that
animals should not have died that way, right right, And
and you know his analogy was that that the bear
knew his time had come, and there was a spiritual
aspect to it that, yeah, don't when you're with your buddies,

(47:06):
don't talk about how are you gonna hunt this bear?
Because he might hear, he might hear you. Man, I
love that so much. I'm total speculation, but that's what
literary critics do, is that he and Sid I mean, basically,
Jim Dogget said, the bear might have heard me talking
about what I was gonna do. And that is a

(47:27):
legitimate thing inside of for sure the Coukon people, but
probably if you really dissected, would be in other Native
American ideas. But the Coukon, you know, we have this
research and they absolutely believed like you don't you don't
talk about it bear, you speak in code. That the
example they give in the book. Nelson gave him the bookcase.

(47:50):
He said that Josh, if me, if I went out
today and found some bear tracks in the snow and
tomorrow I wanted to go and hunt them, I wouldn't.
I wouldn't say, hey, Josh, let's go hunt that bear.
I would say, Josh, tomorrow, I'm gonna go around the
mountain and probably carry a gun with me. You're interested
in going definitely, And you would know, yeah, wink, you

(48:12):
wouldn't know what I was talking about. I mean, it
wasn't a joke to them. They lived in a very
spiritual world. And I just thought that was so interesting.
And then Moore is going to come out in later episodes.
But dog gets doctrine about the creation bearing the creation state,
very very Native American feel and what you're gonna learn,

(48:36):
and this is foreshadowing, but I'm shining a light on
the shadow so that you see what I'm talking about.
There's a deep one is that in the in the
Arkansas Delta, there was a thing that was happening that
was really unique where some of the first Europeans that
came there were that occupied there, were French and they

(48:57):
lived with the claw poles, and they actually intermarried and
kind of had this weird thing going on where they
just all kind of lived together and got along and traded,
you know, for a pretty short period of time. But
there was a deep indoctrination of some of those backwoods
folks and with Native Americans. So it's like dogg It

(49:19):
for sure had some Native American doctrine running in his blood. Dad,
tell me what else is on your list? Up? Eyes
flashed with so much fire it would have scorched a
cat talking about bear shot. Bear shot in forehead and

(49:39):
walked down the tree as gently as a lady from
a carriage. Yeah, can't you just see it? Just kind
of just kind of just kind of and that that point,
I think he slapped a dog out of sight. Let
me tell you something. Going back to Thorpe knowing bear hunting, right,

(50:03):
I'll tell you there's one group of people in the
world who are experts on bears climbing and coming out
of trees. Do you know who it is? And the
first time that I saw a big black bear up
a tree I was in I was in Appalachia and
West Virginia and there was a bear that was tree.

(50:23):
I bet he was sixty foot up in some big
old gum, you know, big big tree, setting up there
on a limb, and we pulled the dogs off the
We weren't hunting, it wasn't hunting season, it was training season.
We pulled the dogs back off the tree, and the
bear could have come down this pole. This is just

(50:44):
this big limbless tree. But he walked across a limb
about as big as my leg, probably seven or eight feet,
walked across it like a squirrel, jumped onto a little
sycamore about as big as a tell phone poll, and
came down at least fifty foot as fast as a

(51:06):
gray squirrel could have well I'm not kidding you. I've
never seen I mean, a bear hunter is going to
be like, well yeah, but Thorpe saying and it was
just this one smooth motion and it was so weird
because he walked out on this limb, just walked across
this limb, jumped on a tree, and slid down like
a fireman. Hey, right, there is a perfect example of

(51:27):
our culture telling that story. If Thorpe had told that story,
I mean, you would really be glued to your seat,
and it probably would have taken five minutes. You know.
Uh now, I who would have told it? Thorpe? Well yeah,
I mean if he'd have told what's the story you
just told? Right right, it would have been so much combellished. Yeah,

(51:48):
well so we we you're saying, he made a good
metaphor that painted it for us, kind of yeah, in
as more simple way as that would. Yeah, it's like
this stuff I'm reading. Yeah, this bear moaned in a
thing like a thousand centers. Man, I mean, this guy
had some spirituality. But later he said Sampson, Hey man,

(52:09):
if this bear if Samson, Yeah, there was so much
to talk about. But when he said, uh, he said
that this bear groaned like a thousand centers. This was
written in eighteen forty one. This was a time of
massive revival in in frontier America. This was something that

(52:31):
was connecting with people because there were these kind of
charismatic revivals and people would go into these sessions of
repentance and be loud and showy, and so him saying
that connected to people. Oh but he knew that a
bear death moaned. How many Americans could you walk up

(52:51):
to today and say, is there anything peculiar that happens
when you shoot a bear? And it does? I mean, I,
I mean, I don't, I don't know. I don't know
how many out of a thousand a thousand random Americans,
I would say ten, maybe maybe probably. I didn't know that. Okay, yeah,
they have a wild death moan. One of the few animals.

(53:14):
I tried to look up all the animals that do it.
The only one I know for sure that does is
a Kpe buffalo. That's the only one that's that. I
did not know that. But Dad and I the first
bear that we ever killed, death moaned, and we didn't
know that they did that. And uh, but the way
he described it was so was so what else is

(53:36):
on your list. Good. Hey, hey, one thing you triggered
my thought was I was really um caught up in
the fact that people from the east wanted these stories.
I mean, this was like, please deliver something to us. Yeah,
we want to know what y'are doing, you know out west.
Out west was Mississippi, Arkansas. You know, um, and you

(54:02):
know we're the same way today. I want to get
on the news and I want to find out stuff,
you know, and they were hungry for these type of stories.
The bear fell through a fence like a tree falling
through a cobweb. I mean, you know, we just don't
talk that way. Every every little thought he had he created,

(54:25):
it's an own image in your mind. You know, you're
going like, wow, it's a heck of a bear. Well,
when he came over the fence, he came over like
black smoke. Yeah, And I mean it's like, all of
a sudden, your mind just goes like black smoke being
graceful to barbaric when he lived there. So I tell
the story. Josh tells a story. We go, we tell

(54:45):
the story. You know, we put us off in a room,
we tell the story. We tell it in five minutes.
Hunting stories over this guy. I mean he's created ten, fifteen,
twenty thirty different stories. My mind just sees this bear
running through the woods being followed by a pack of hands.
Only reason he's running, in my mind, it's entertainment. Once

(55:10):
he gets tired, he goes, okay, boys, gigs up, I'm
gonna slap you out of sight or whatever. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
You know, if you've ever seen a bear navigate and obstacle,
it's shocking if you if I don't think he would
have described a deer jumping a fence like a tree

(55:32):
falling through a cobboy, he would have described it different.
But a bear, they are extremely articulate with all their
feet and they can just move through stuff. I mean,
they are some of the most mobile animals and able
to move their body. In the description of it coming
over the fence like a black mist, it's just kind

(55:53):
of like it's kind of like a ball of jello,
just like yeah, just kind of like how did he
do that? What? Look up on YouTube a bear climbing
a chain link fence and it just you're just like,
how did he do that? So Thorpe interesting, Thorpe had
been around bears. I think I think so too. He
almost had to to know that a bear would just

(56:13):
stop after a little bit, just goes man, I'm tired
of playing this game, yep. And only big bears do that. Yeah,
the little bears. The little bears typically today anyway, we
will run and run and run and run and not
even tree. The big ones often stay on the ground
or just barely get up in trees. The midsize bears
are usually I mean a small You can tree a

(56:35):
small bear, but rarely would you tree a big giant
like five or six hundred pound bear. That bear is
almost always going to stay on the ground. Yeah, but interesting. Interesting.
I thought it was interesting the conversation you guys had
about you know, the one that got away or the
order the you know, after killing the trophy there's a

(56:56):
sense of loss, which made me think that that's why
angling is superior to hunting. So just one everything. You
can catch him release. I mean I can catch a
trophy fish on my fire rod, put him back and
dream about catching him again. Well, now if you want

(57:17):
to go there now with bear hunting with the hounds, though,
it's the catching release sport man, you only kill the
ones you want. It's like you with fishing. There you go.
So it really is you can treat him and let
them go. It's tough to tree a deer, though, Well,

(57:38):
yeah you can, I guess. Let them walk, you let him,
you can let him watch something. Something I never did
a whole house. I had a guy I want to
play off something. I had a guy right in you
Remember I asked people, I said, what do you think
he meant by creation, bear, creation state and finishing up state?

(57:59):
What do you think, dad? I think he was putting
a spiritual connotation. It was such a magnificent animal. It
was beyond belief, especially to the Eastern nurse. They would
not believe what he was seeing in the wild. So
it had to be here from the beginning, Sampson, he
would have got whipped by this bear in the state

(58:21):
was the same way. It was such a magnificent place.
That's the way I saw it. I'm gonna see what
do y'all? What do y'all think? It's a tough one.
I kind of thought. I kind of thought a similar
thing like like this bear was was spoken spoken from
the word of God, you know what I mean, into
the earth, and he had just been a fixture you

(58:42):
know what I mean, he was such a magnificent creature
that he'd been a fixture on the earth. You know, Ben,
I honestly didn't know, because and I used to study
a lot of history in that time period. People use
words in ways that we don't know, right, and so
just because we think think that's what creation means, I
honestly have literally no idea what he might have said.

(59:04):
I've never read it. Didn't it do exactly what you
feel like the author wanted it to do? Probably? So yeah,
I mean there's no doubt, Like you don't hear that
and think, oh, this was a inconsequential bear? Yeah, exactly.
You hear it and you're like, oh, this is a
special Yeah, it was very biblical to me listening or
my interpretation of what he was saying. Okay, a guy

(59:24):
from Pennsylvania sent me this. He must listened to the
podcast at four am. Clay, I hope this voice memo
reaches you. Well, Um, I just listened to your podcast
on on the bear, um the creation Bear, and I
just wanted to share my thoughts on on the what
I think the creation bear means and what the creation
state means. I think it's the platonic ideal of a bear. Um.

(59:49):
I think he saw that bear as not only sort
of the perfect representation physically, but also culturally and spiritually
of a bear. U. And I think he used to
Creation's interesting because the same with Arkansas. I believe he
sees it as a as you know, these are two
things that represents God's hand and they aren't muddied up

(01:00:13):
by worldly impurities. So that guy's name is Martin Highly
from Pennsylvania. But what he was saying was that it
was the representative bear, undefiled by anything else, undefiled by
the world. And that fits with him saying Arkansas is

(01:00:35):
the creation state, the perfect state, undefiled by the world,
like Eden. I guess, yeah, like a like an Eden.
We'll say. Yeah. That's the beauty of the way he
wrote is that you create your own answer. Yeah, you know,
you see a bear walking down a tree like a
lady climbing it off a carriage slaps a bear into wherever.

(01:00:59):
I mean, so you can take that. I think your
answer would be correct. We don't know what that means,
but to me that's what it meant. It was, you know,
it was bigger than life. It created an image of
dogg It that we wouldn't have had before because it's like, Wow,
this guy, this guy knows something we don't know he

(01:01:21):
And that's that was Bob Cochrane. We weren't able to
include it, but he talked about how this story from
a literary perspective is really unique and how dog It
is set up. And it's because the city slicker from
New Orleans is so anonymous and vanilla, like, there's no
personality to this guy from New Orleans, like everybody is

(01:01:42):
like little, and dog It is huge, and dog It
becomes the envy and people see him and they're enamored
with him. And there there it breaks the stereotypes like
Ronella said of this country bumpkin, rural backwoodsman and Kylie.
This guy's deeper than all of us. This guy has
this robust life. He talks about his dog Bowie Knife,

(01:02:05):
being the most modest dog, but only because he can't
talk and he's the best bear dog in the world.
I mean, just he was able to describe life and
like Ronella said, he lived it with this robust lust
for life. Yeah, but that created that the creation state
and creation bar so interesting. Well, guys, yeah, Dad, I

(01:02:29):
was just I think you might have alluded to this,
but it was Arkansas created for the world or the
world for really, my hat's off to both of you
guys on this deal. I think Ronella really hit it hard,
you know, to the heart. Steve so sharp man. He
you know, he's never read that before, had no knowledge

(01:02:51):
of Thomas Bangsthorpe. Um. I gave him that essay. Well,
I sent it to him. He printed it off. We
were hunting together in Mexico. Here's a bad story. We're
hunting together in Mexico. And I knew I was going
to be with him and have my podcast stuff, and
I said, I want to hear what you have to
say about this essay. All I told him. I told
him it was influential, and you know, and gave it

(01:03:13):
to him. He prints it off, takes it to Mexico
and like we're like, okay, we got to do this
like this afternoon, and he's like, okay, well let me
read that essay, and so he reads it and then
we go right into it and he has like some
pretty in depth analysis of it, you know. So yeah,

(01:03:34):
he's he's sharp with literature stuff, and yeah, he was.
He was cool to have on there. I was disappointed
only in one aspect that well, they said Jim's last
name Wooden Reeves. That's what I was waiting for. We
we wanted him all to all to be our last name. Man.

(01:03:56):
I uh, it's it's it's to me. So as Newcombs,
we're lucky that we had somebody did a pretty extensive
genealogy search of the Nukembs, like our last name, and uh,
there's a book. Uh, I think it's Thomas Joseph Nwcomb

(01:04:17):
has written on the front of it, one guy from
Scotland that came over and it's his genealogy and it
goes and Gary Newcomb's name is in the book. Uh,
you know. And and that's how that's how we know
our history. History gets lost so easy. I mean, it
would be nice to say how easily it gets lost
even in modern day. Yeah. Yeah. And it's neat for

(01:04:41):
me to think that the first Nuncambs came here right
about the time this was written and all this was
going down, and it was in the early eighteen thirties
before Arkansas was the state, and you know, been here
ever since. I love being connected to place. The next podcast,
if you ever thought you wouldn't be interested in something,

(01:05:04):
you'd be wrong on this one. And if you think
I don't care anything about Arkansas, you're wrong. You do
and just don't know it because nobody ever told you.
The next episode is going to be on Arkansas identity,
and it's fascinating and I think there's a lot of
things to be learned. It's about human nature, but also
America inside of this story, which I said it on

(01:05:28):
this one, Arkansas in the twentieth century the nineteen hundreds
was proclaimed by scholars like documentably the most ridiculed state
in America. That's right where we live. So closing thoughts anybody,
I would just say I love it. Gave me a
new appreciation for literature and how artists capture the complexity

(01:05:51):
of an experience. I was thinking about experiences I've had
standing next to somebody and have a totally different perspective.
And I remember one time working on an airplane in
my buddies business where they refurbished airplanes, and it was
he needed some quick help and called me and another
guy in and we'd never had any experience there. Worked

(01:06:12):
there for like ten hours left, and I was like,
that is I never want to do that again in
my life. The guy next to me, he was like,
that was amazing. On the car ride home, all he
could talk about is how much you want to work
on airplanes? How much he loved that work, And it
just it shows that there's people with a gift that
can slow things down and capture the complexity of something.

(01:06:32):
And it makes me want to be more aware of
the experiences I have because there's beauty in it that
I may not have seen before. I liked that about
the writer. That's good. You know, we have a choice
of how we let the modern world impact us. I mean,
just because we talk about all these things coming at

(01:06:52):
us and a media pounding us every direction. We get
to choose how we live and how we develop ourselves.
Like Misty was talking about how people are. They developed
the skill to be able to interpret the world in
such a way and communicate that to other people through language,
and that was a skill that was built and it's

(01:07:12):
less now. Well, I mean, you got a decision of
what you do tonight after the sun goes down, whether
you're gonna go you know, and not that there's anything
wrong with watching television, but you know, you got a
decision of whether you're gonna do that, or whether you're
gonna read a book, or whether you're gonna talk to
talk to your family, like actually talk with your family

(01:07:34):
and build build culture inside of your family. And these
are things I think about. And I don't claim to
have it dialed in, but it's things I think about.
I'm like, man, how can I how can I not
just talk about some of the stuff that we admire
in the past, but like, we don't. We don't have
to be pushed around by by modernity. Ye, so Dad,

(01:08:01):
good to see you, Hey, good to be here. Man.
My dad lives two hours for me, So I don't
see Dad unless he's coming up here. I go down
there and I've been a little while. Yep. Yeah. We
kicked him out of the house and they never came back.
And they never came back. It's like my brother told
my nephews, boys, when you graduate school, you ain't got

(01:08:24):
to go to college. You ain't even got to go
to work. You just got to go. Hey. This podcast
comes out on a couple of days before the Black
Bear Bonanza in Bentonville. It's it's Bentonville, Arkansas, big all
day event. I'll be there, Brent will be there, Ben'll

(01:08:45):
be there, Josh'll be there, Gary believe in Knucom'll be there.
Missy'll be there. Missy had to leave. Um we it's
it's gonna be a big deal. We're doing a live
Burgers rendered podcast there on site. Major big event. Lots
of vent enders and stuff going on, al hooting contest
and you can buy tickets at the door, and it'd
be good if you bought them before you get there,

(01:09:06):
but you don't have to. You can just show up.
And so that's all day Bentonville, Arkansas. You have to
go to the website to get all the details, but
just the website. They'll figure it out. Coil Bar, Arkansas. Yeah,
they'll figure it out all right, guys, Thank you,