Ep. 448: Render – The Mena Connection

00:00:15
Speaker 1: My name is Clay Nwcomb 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. Brought to you by to Covi’s Boots. I’m a cowboy boot man and I’ve been wearing to Covis for years, the most comfortable boot I’ve ever put on. Good boots for good times. Welcome to the Beara Render presented by to Covis. We’ve got a We’ve got some various special guests today, very special special on a scale, specialist special, the most special guests of all time. We have Juju Nukem. Let’s go cos hot seat today. Wow, this is this is my mother, Juju Newkem. She’s here with us along with Gary Nukem, my father, who’s been here many times before. But you guys are collectively in the toa Covi’s hot seat.

00:01:27
Speaker 2: Okay, I was going to say Juju’s more hot seat adjacent, but yeah, I think we’ve got I like it collected love seat.

00:01:36
Speaker 3: What happens?

00:01:36
Speaker 1: How long have you guys been married?

00:01:37
Speaker 3: What happens in the Takova hot seat?

00:01:41
Speaker 1: All the special question I get some boots. Well, yes, now that you bring it out, yes, but fifty that actually claimed him.

00:01:52
Speaker 4: You can each have one boot.

00:01:53
Speaker 1: That’s fine.

00:01:55
Speaker 4: I bet we could work.

00:01:56
Speaker 1: Now, how long have you guys been married?

00:01:57
Speaker 5: Fifty five?

00:01:59
Speaker 1: Fifty five?

00:01:59
Speaker 5: You think, mom, I think it’s more like seventy.

00:02:05
Speaker 6: Thirteen, twenty three, twenty three, So fifty three years fifty three.

00:02:12
Speaker 2: Wait you get married seventy three seventy three, yeah, seventy.

00:02:16
Speaker 7: Three if you had your anniversary this year already, we don’t keep up this night August night.

00:02:21
Speaker 1: Okay, Well we have Bear John nukembe and then we have Misty doctor Misty Nukem with us and Josh Lambridge Schoolmaker. If you’re watching this video move on YouTube, you will notice that I am fully decked out in dark water first, like Camo. This is not head to knee, head to knee this, yeah, I’ve got I’ve got these snake boots on to COVID. Yeah, they’re collabed. They’re pretty cool. But this is not a stunt. I literally just pulled up a couple hours ago from turkey hunting, Josh and killed big Gobbler.

00:03:03
Speaker 4: I just pulled in from turkey hunting. Only I don’t have one of those.

00:03:07
Speaker 1: So I killed this bird at eleven o’clock today, And I want to tell you what I was this morning when I pulled.

00:03:15
Speaker 4: I just got the barring on it.

00:03:17
Speaker 1: Yeah, I’ve several of the ones we’ve seen this year had that.

00:03:21
Speaker 4: Uh.

00:03:22
Speaker 1: I pulled out this morning at before three am. Yes, actually, actually that’s not true. It was three point thirty. I left really early. I just wanted to make sure I got to my spot early and on public land. And it was a terrible morning, I mean the whole Like I was driving down the highway and I saw the interstate signs like doing like this, and I was just like, why I may even going almost.

00:03:50
Speaker 2: Making the win to those who are listening only.

00:03:53
Speaker 1: Yep, And I almost turned around and came back. But I went out there and there, and it was a productive morning in that you could hear different times, like the wind would die down and you could hear, and then by late morning you could actually hear really good, like the wind completely died down. But I didn’t hear a gobble, didn’t hear a single gobble, and basically was done hunting. On the way home, and I see a gobbler like one hundred and fifty yards away before I just see a gobbler. Okay, okay, I’m done hunting, all right. I see which way he’s going. And I had been crowing Alan.

00:04:33
Speaker 4: Calling I’m scary with his foil gum again.

00:04:36
Speaker 1: Cutting and no gobbles all morning. And I slip off the mountain the same way this turkey’s going, but about three hundred yards from him. Okay, kind I didn’t want to be right on top of him because I saw which way was going, dropped off, kind of got ahead of him, stopped, just got set up, and it was just like, there’s no way this is going to work. Like this turkey doesn’t want a gobble. Yelped, soft yelped, and I know that I’m within two hundred yards of this turkey or so. And five minutes after I yelp, I hear a raspy yelp back just and I think it’s a hen and but I go, well, one answered me, so I called back at it, but it sounded like a jake yelping, and that’s what it was. Two jakes come marching right in, and when I saw their heads, I thought, this is the gobbler, and I thought that they had some association with the gobbler that I only saw one turkey. But I get down there, yelp, here comes two jakes. I think, well, the gobbler’s behind him. The two Jakes come in and just come right in my lap, and I’m just hoping not to get seen, and I’m looking behind them and I’m thinking the gobblers coming behind them. They passed by me. Ten minutes goes no gobbler. I yelp. The Jakes come back. They come right back past me, and I’m just frozen. And they walk back now towards where I thought the gobbler was. I’ve still not heard a gobbler seen a gobbler since I’ve set up. I yelp again. The Jakes come back three times. Call up the Jakes to within twenty yards. The Jakes make a circle, and I don’t realize this, but I’ve got to go to the podcast. I’ve got to come here right and I know I can’t mess around. And I hadn’t heard this turkey gobble. And I just figured with those jakes coming in three times, that they if that gobbler was associated with these jakes, that he would have druke. He would have come in by now do you agree with me, Dad, Well, in desperation, I just cut real hard like i’d been soft yelping, because I knew these turkeys didn’t want to gobble. They weren’t being vocal, so I just and it worked for the Jakes, but this time I just hammered it.

00:07:01
Speaker 5: Man.

00:07:02
Speaker 1: Oh, I was yelping on my prime cuts. Call big gobble just out of sight, right in front of me, right the direction that I thought this gobbler should be like seventy five yards away, and I go, oh, dang, he is here. I hunker down and I wait and wait ten fifteen minutes.

00:07:30
Speaker 7: No, turkey, you didn’t call anymore after that, No, because I.

00:07:34
Speaker 1: Mean I cut at him and he he hammered, and I thought, well, he’s going to come in. Well, I’ve seen these jakes now three times, and this is like forty minutes after I originally saw the gobbler, and I pull a bear nukem and what we’ve labeled the chaos cackle. Yep, I’m telling you it’s the reason that I killed this turkey. And the only reason I knew to do it was because Bear told me he did it the other day. And it made a turkey gobble. I had to leave to come to this podcast, so I took my hat off and I started doing some fighting purs on this, on this, I’m too excited. I’m too excited. I started doing loud purs and I took my hat and started slapping, my clapping my knee, started kicking the leaves, chaos cat kicking the leaves, and then just cut his heart. Just chaos cackle for probably a minute.

00:08:50
Speaker 7: Wow, he gobbles, he’s gonna go break up a catfight, and I just.

00:08:56
Speaker 1: Lock in, and I mean, I’ve given everything I got. There’s nothing left, there’s no more tricks in the bag, and I’ll be dad gun. Probably three minutes after I did that, I see two heads coming.

00:09:09
Speaker 2: Two.

00:09:10
Speaker 1: It’s the Jakes here they come back fourth time, just but ten yards behind the Jakes. There was a third head. Oh, and he was out just a few yards back past him, and I see his beard flopping and he gets into about twenty five yards and I had my gun pointed like this and I just raised up like this, and he saw me lift his head, got him eleven him. It was like eleven o two.

00:09:39
Speaker 5: Really, that’s a great story.

00:09:41
Speaker 1: Chaos cackle multiple times multiple times. Yeah, I called one in Tennessee last year.

00:09:49
Speaker 8: I called one. How’s the first time I ever did it? And I was on this bird for seven hours listening to him gobble following him. But he’s with a hen and uh. The only position I could get in on him was like straight down a hill, and he was up on top of the hill for more than an hour.

00:10:06
Speaker 1: And after a while, I was.

00:10:08
Speaker 8: Like, well, I’ll just try the old chaos cackle, and I beat the leaves and cut real hard and just made it sound like there was chaos going on down there. And exactly three minutes later, I see a head coming down and he comes into twenty five yards.

00:10:21
Speaker 1: It worked pretty cool, it worked. I was not expecting to kill a turkey. It was a terrible morning to kill a turkey. But so that’s why I’m wearing this camo. And he had a little over ten inch beard.

00:10:34
Speaker 2: There we go.

00:10:35
Speaker 1: Yeah, so we had a big, big turkey out in week River killed one bear. I was with Bear when he killed one here in Arkansas.

00:10:43
Speaker 5: Yep.

00:10:44
Speaker 1: It was pretty incredible.

00:10:46
Speaker 4: I’m going to kill one tomorrow.

00:10:47
Speaker 1: Josh is going to Missouri tomorrow.

00:10:49
Speaker 4: Yep.

00:10:49
Speaker 5: And understand bears locating some of these birds.

00:10:53
Speaker 6: Yeah, I’m used to you tell your kids, now, if you go down here and take a left right over there, you kill a bird.

00:10:58
Speaker 5: Now your kids still new where to go.

00:11:01
Speaker 1: That’s right. Put me on all these turkeys, yep, you’re gonna learn. You put your old dad on turkey, turkey. When I go back in there, he’s gonna think twice.

00:11:15
Speaker 2: How do you feel about that?

00:11:16
Speaker 6: Bear?

00:11:16
Speaker 1: I feel great, yeah, yeah.

00:11:18
Speaker 8: I mean, if there’s turkeys, then you might as well kill them. I feel like whenever you’re hunting as a group, it’s like less about who kills the turkey, it’s more about just killing the turkey.

00:11:29
Speaker 2: That’s good.

00:11:29
Speaker 1: That’s good when kills the turkey. I mean, I kill the turkey. And I learned that from Gary Newcomb. He was very that way with me. I always felt like, when I killed the turkey, you were, oh yeah, probably more happy than if you killed one.

00:11:43
Speaker 5: Yeah, a lot of dads would probably be that way.

00:11:45
Speaker 1: Think about how many turkeys he put me on, yeah, yep.

00:11:51
Speaker 2: And also that River killed one was a big deal because River, you guys, came up in that ten year that decade of just terrible turkey hunting in Arkansas, It’s been amazed at how many turkeys have come through our you know, a crossed our threshold this year because I’m so used to turkey hunting in Arkansas being terrible and no one bringing anything home. And River and our kids and the spilmmakers Josh’s kids would go together to hunting. It was always a different person’s turn. And there were four of them in like within three years of each other. And so it went oldest, you know, and and Willow got one, David got one or missed missed one. River did a lot of walking and no turkey hunton and then it kind of skipped over her and went to the next group of one, and so we really owed it to River to get one. I mean she really, she’s really put in the work, really seriously over the years. She’s been on all those uns. She was on all those So finally River and Clay River.

00:12:49
Speaker 1: I said it the other day, but River is really like a top shelf hunting partner.

00:12:54
Speaker 2: Uh.

00:12:55
Speaker 1: I would pick her snacks. No, she doesn’t plan like you do. You bring snacks, but her feet are quieter than yours.

00:13:06
Speaker 2: Yeah, and she’s she’s the.

00:13:09
Speaker 1: Only beef I have with job.

00:13:13
Speaker 4: I fel too heavy.

00:13:16
Speaker 1: River doesn’t get tired. Yeah, she’s got a great as We’ll just walk for days. And she wears a five and a half shoe. Juju, small feet. It’s good for turkey.

00:13:28
Speaker 8: You feel at filled your duties as a father now that all your kids are I have killed turkeys, and.

00:13:36
Speaker 1: Yeah, I’m pretty much done living pretty good lives.

00:13:40
Speaker 4: Yeah, onto the grandkids.

00:13:42
Speaker 1: Yep, yep.

00:13:43
Speaker 3: Well now we know what the next cooking with mom is gonna be.

00:13:46
Speaker 1: That’s right, that is actually right.

00:13:48
Speaker 3: And we’re gonna have some turkey.

00:13:50
Speaker 2: Yeah, we’ve had I mean, we have had a lot of people over the last couple of weeks. It’s been turkey turkey parties every night, and it’s actually making me think. One night River had a bunch of riun’s over for Clay to cook turkey, to fry turkey for them, and then one night Bear had a big turkey party, and I thought, man, you know, all these kids are kind of in the process of moving out. Chipp will graduate this year, and I thought, it’s going to be really sad when everybody moves out. But I think we’ll still have the biggest comeback. We’ll have the biggest kitchen and maybe they can still parties. Yeah, I’m extending an offer to continue Turkey parties at our house because it was It was a lot of fun. And then I went to bed and Bear cleaned up, which was the best part of it.

00:14:31
Speaker 3: The good Boy.

00:14:33
Speaker 1: There’s a couple of housekeeping things we’ve got to talk about here. I want to bring attention to the first Light Fieldwear line. Fieldwear line is just like every day working clothes. Bear’s wearing a pair of those pants. So check out the first Light Fildwear. It’s it’s it’s like a really cool like every day wear work here and really the stuff we’ve been wearing for a while. Yeah, I really like it. Number two. If you haven’t seen Baron Eyes film called Southeast Alaska boat based Bear on Meat Eater’s YouTube channel, go check it out.

00:15:11
Speaker 4: It’s a great film, it is.

00:15:13
Speaker 7: I really enjoyed that one, action packed The scenery is amazing. Get to see things you don’t normally see, like whale skeletons.

00:15:21
Speaker 4: Yes, it’s pretty.

00:15:22
Speaker 1: That was one of the coolest things I’ve ever seen. Whale skeleton. I would have given a lot to have brought one of those rib bones home, no doubt, taller than me, as big as a fence post. And that vertebrae, how cool would that be hanging in here? Very very cool, the vertebrae or the rib bone, either one. Have the rib bone hanging from the ceiling. We could do pull ups on it. If we can do pull ups. Yeah, it was. It was an incredible adventure. Southeast Alaska is just so cool. And then thirdly, Bear has a film coming out in mid May, and we’re tramping you out spring Bear. So Bear went to Montana last year and killed a bear Spoiledeah.

00:16:07
Speaker 8: Actually I hunted twenty days straight bear hunting, with one break in between. One day in between. We were in Alaska, came back home for one day, and then went.

00:16:18
Speaker 1: Went to Montana. Yeah, it was right after that was not yeah wow, so and it was that’s a tough hunt. It’s it took me several years to get one. So you’ll be able to see that, which is really cool.

00:16:31
Speaker 5: And then.

00:16:34
Speaker 1: I I’m the Bear Book is We’re in the final edits of the Bear Book. It’s going to be released next spring.

00:16:42
Speaker 2: Let’s go yep.

00:16:43
Speaker 1: I’m very excited about.

00:16:44
Speaker 2: It, very exciting.

00:16:45
Speaker 1: So those are all the housekeeping issues I So I’ve got Juju and popol here known to our kids as that this appis was really interesting, Yeah, because a lot of history there. I didn’t know about Maria day Campa. Did you guys know about Maria deay Caampa?

00:17:10
Speaker 3: About two weeks before y’all started talking about it, someone put that on Facebook and that’s the first I had ever heard. Wow, And everybody I talked to had never heard of it.

00:17:19
Speaker 1: Isn’t that something? Now? How did you hear about it?

00:17:22
Speaker 4: Josh?

00:17:22
Speaker 7: So, my brother in law was talking to a guy and he sent me the article and when I looked at it, I was like, this is made up, Like this is AI. And so I started researching it and realized it was not. I sent it to you and the very first thing you texted back was this is AI And I was like, actually, it’s not. And I was shocked that you had never heard of it. And I reached out to Gary and he was like, I don’t. I don’t know anything about that, and uh, yeah, I was surprised because it, I mean, such an unbelievable story. You’d think it would be just common knowledge. Everybody, like everybody would have would have known about it.

00:18:00
Speaker 5: Yeah.

00:18:00
Speaker 2: A polar bear was hanging out in the woods. I actually my great aunt. She knows all the history. And I texted her and I said, have you ever heard this story? And she had never heard it. And she would have been growing up. I mean, she actually would have been.

00:18:12
Speaker 5: How old is she that age?

00:18:14
Speaker 1: Gosh, in her seventies, no, eighties.

00:18:18
Speaker 2: Yeah, she’s she’s my dad’s aunt. Okay, so she’s probably close to ninety.

00:18:24
Speaker 4: So she’s like like Harold Coogan’s age.

00:18:26
Speaker 2: Yeah, and she’s she’s pretty energetic. She keeps all the all the news. I mean, I take the kids over to her house once a year so that we can look at the newspapers. I mean, and she I texted her, I said, have you ever heard about this story? And she said she had not.

00:18:38
Speaker 1: Really, that was what puzzled me most, is that in this small town. But that is also why kind of what the point of telling these stories was was that it puzzled me most that in this small town, I had never heard about that grave. I mean, it’s been there since nineteen fifty one. And it was reported in one of the big news outlets that this is the only grave in America that says killed by circus lion, that says that phrase, which it you know, it seems legit, right, And but I think, do you guys have any ideas why I have an idea? Do you have an idea why no one from Mina few people from this small town in Arkansas would know about this bizarre story, any any any thoughts?

00:19:30
Speaker 8: I mean, maybe just because they were passing through. Yeah, no one, No one knew them. That’s when when did y’all.

00:19:38
Speaker 1: Move to Mina.

00:19:40
Speaker 3: Nineteen eighty four, So it.

00:19:41
Speaker 8: Happened like thirty years before y’all moved there. It still seems like something that people will be talking about thirty years later.

00:19:48
Speaker 1: Well, people were there, yeah, I mean like Harold Coogan remembers going to that circus.

00:19:55
Speaker 4: But the night before that accident happened.

00:19:56
Speaker 1: Right, And then another one of my friends that I went to high school with said that his dad went to that circus.

00:20:03
Speaker 3: This may seem crazy, but I wasn’t even born when that happened. Yeah, I was born in fifty one. Wouldn’t that what?

00:20:10
Speaker 4: No, it happened.

00:20:11
Speaker 1: I was born in fifty two.

00:20:12
Speaker 3: I was born in fifty two, fifty two, but she was died in fifty one as well.

00:20:16
Speaker 1: Meant to say, yeah, yeah, so you would have to be. I mean, now, Harold Coogan Todd So Todd Coogan was our main guest, yeap, his father, and he was introduced on the podcast as kind of the historian of me, a really well respected guy, and we tried to get him on the podcast, but it just didn’t work out. Harold Coogan’s eighty eight, so he was born in thirty eight probably.

00:20:42
Speaker 6: So yeah, I was hatched out in forty eight. Forty eight and I’m seventy eight.

00:20:46
Speaker 1: But you didn’t grow up in me. No, No, grew up in Hot Springs.

00:20:51
Speaker 6: Right, and they would I do have something to say about Hot Springs. You made it sound like we just got us a hot rod and this horrible town.

00:21:02
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, that’s that’s kind of the way it was.

00:21:06
Speaker 6: Well, I think up uh, Hot Springs is a great place to raise kids there, there’s nothing wrong with it. But we had a job opportunity in a small town and I thought, man, this is perfect, nice, quiet place to raise kids. And then we get over here and find out about Pete and the temple.

00:21:27
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, we probably.

00:21:30
Speaker 1: I think my version of the story is like a dial like it needs to be dialed back a little.

00:21:35
Speaker 5: Bit about about the reason we came to me.

00:21:38
Speaker 6: No, no, I mean it wasn’t like Hot Springs, and so I was raising Springs.

00:21:43
Speaker 1: I vividly remember you telling me you didn’t want us, you didn’t want to raise us in Hot Springs.

00:21:49
Speaker 2: Well, this is a bat pr but that’s.

00:21:53
Speaker 6: Something I might have said that, but but but really the case was, I had an opportunity to go to a small town, right right, and I thought, okay, well, let’s be even better.

00:22:04
Speaker 1: You’re making lemonade out of out of lemons.

00:22:07
Speaker 6: I don’t know about that, but I knew I’m probably going to have dirtball kids, and I needed to get them down where the town was a little bit more calm.

00:22:17
Speaker 1: Okay, well the record, that’s the way it was portrayed to me.

00:22:24
Speaker 6: All my family was raised in Hot Springs. So they’re all mad, everybody. They won’t even talk to me.

00:22:29
Speaker 1: Now probably now, probably, I think, but I think that’s the way it was. But I think there’s something to that. I mean, and Hot Spring’s funny that we think Hot Springs is a big town. Hot Springs has like thirty thousand people, So for much of America, Hot Springs would be a very small town, But in general Americans typically think a small town like people want to move out of the city to go raise their kids in a small town. Some some people, not all people. But that’s kind of the mind frame. Well that’s the.

00:23:02
Speaker 2: Idealistic version, and in reality, people are migrating to urban areas at an alarmingly fast rate. And I mean that’s like the actual demographic truth is that people are actually migrating to urban area then small Yeah, that’s but I think people idealize and there’s kind of this not a nostalgic feel for small towns. Yes, and there’s a little there’s a there’s there’s a fad right now, and honestly, there’s always been a fad. Like if you look where we live, there’s a bunch of people who were part of the back to Earth movement in the seventies and they all moved out. It’s the same same thing as as what you see on Instagram now where people want to be.

00:23:37
Speaker 1: So would you dispute what I said that, like for setting the context, like you would think this is a safe place.

00:23:45
Speaker 2: I wouldn’t dispute what you said that As far as that, I do think that sometimes people think that people Yeah, people do think that, I don’t necessarily think it’s true, right.

00:23:56
Speaker 1: Well, and that was the point, is that, you know, you really can’t like geographically protect your family from the things that can happen in the world, you know, I mean there’s country del’t unless you’re moving away from Hot Springs. Kidd, we love Hot Springs. We love.

00:24:18
Speaker 5: Well.

00:24:18
Speaker 3: Going back to the story, Harold Googan was fourteen years old when that happened. Yeah, he was at the circus that first night. They said, yes, yes, that was it. Well, and I think the answer is probably pretty obvious. Why no, very few people from Enam would know this or would have passed this story on is that she had no connections there. You know, she was born in Mexico City. This little girl was one of thirteen children. Her parents were.

00:24:48
Speaker 1: High tight rope walkers and.

00:24:53
Speaker 2: In the Catholic church. I think that that your your historian alluded to it. She said, you know, there’s a Catholic church in Mina that took care and she said, and that has its own historical significance. And it does like that. Uh, there there weren’t a ton of and in general in Arkansas, there aren’t. We don’t have a huge Catholic population. You know, if you if you go like if you went to the northeast or if you went to you know, to the west of us, there’s not there’s not a lot. And so I think that that is another another piece of it because I think that and I actually wonder if they’re the ones that are putting the flowers on the grave, and if there’s like some mission for them to take care of that grave. I was curious about that. Who is putting the flowers on the grave?

00:25:38
Speaker 4: I was.

00:25:39
Speaker 7: I talked to the Melanie, the lady that was on the guests there, and she said she’s she goes by there semi semi regularly, and she said there’s always something kind of new on there that that someone has brought of the flowers or some kind of a little trinket or something.

00:25:58
Speaker 4: So somebody still Yeah, yeah.

00:26:01
Speaker 1: There was nurse flowers there when I went there, but there were flowers on all the graves. Maybe there have been decoration recently or something.

00:26:15
Speaker 2: Man I used to play in that cemetery.

00:26:17
Speaker 1: Yeah, so it was just too much. I wanted to tell the story, but Misty’s grandmother lives lived well, I don’t want to get too too deep. But let’s let’s wait for that. Let’s wait for that. We’re going to come back to that, Okay, Maria day Campa, because we got to talk about Pete, to talk about your grandma’s house. Maria day Campa. I felt like, if anything, we cast a little bit too much shade on the potential that the parents didn’t go to the funeral.

00:26:48
Speaker 2: I thought you did too. That was my takeaway when I listened to it. I kind of was like, man, this is this is unfair to these people.

00:26:55
Speaker 1: I thought it was too And it’s kind of you know, you build something, you say something, and then you know, if I had a six months to review some of these, I’d probably change it. But we don’t have any hard evidence they didn’t come. We just don’t. But you wouldn’t any write out the parents. You wouldn’t spec out the parents were at the funeral.

00:27:17
Speaker 5: Right.

00:27:17
Speaker 1: There’s the idea was that the the circus did leave the next day, right, and these people were part of the circus.

00:27:25
Speaker 7: But there were there were the pall bearers were listed in the news article, and they were they were clearly not Mina locals.

00:27:33
Speaker 4: It was like a it was like a.

00:27:35
Speaker 7: Somebody that had a Indian sounding name, like from India, and there was a Decampa, and there was a Decampa that was one of the pall bearers too, So they definitely would have been would have been circus family members, you know, so, and I suspect I suspect if they were there, surely the parents would have been.

00:27:53
Speaker 2: There well, even if they weren’t there, even if the pall bearers were listed as an honorary thing. I think it’s not fair in that time period, in the nineteen fifties, a family that’s making their living and feeding their the other thirteen kids off of showing up at the next town. I think that’s the sad part about this is that a lot of times when you read stories about pioneers, you tend to think, well, they didn’t probably love their kids as much, and so it was probably easier for them to just lose so many. And I’ve actually heard I remember, you know, in history classes people talking about, well, people had so many kids and death was more common back then, and so but their mother’s just the same. You know, these are mothers and fathers and it hurts, but you also have these responsibilities. And I’m thinking, if you’re a circus runner, like, if that’s the thing you do for a living, it’s pretty important that you show up for the circus and that you bring it.

00:28:42
Speaker 1: These people would have been completely out of pocket. It’s yeah, if this happened today, maybe they would have been support systems where it’s like, hey, why don’t y’all take off for a few months, you know, and.

00:28:52
Speaker 5: Go and they witness child.

00:28:54
Speaker 2: Yeah.

00:28:54
Speaker 1: These people were from Mexico, migrating fifty one.

00:28:58
Speaker 2: Yeah, and they it wasn’t that they didn’t care. It’s that they they you didn’t You didn’t have a choice. It was just you. You had to go the next stop. And I felt bad for them thinking about them being tightrope walkers and having to walk the rope the next night after their daughter got I mean, really that’s a sad thought to me, and having to be a performer in the worst of circumstances. I mean, I really felt bad for them. And and so even if they weren’t there, even if even if they weren’t able to actually be there and they had to that to me is actually worse. Like they didn’t get a second to grief. They had to go to the next stop. And that doesn’t make them bad people. That makes them responsible.

00:29:36
Speaker 4: Yeah, and in difficult circumstances.

00:29:39
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, terrible circumstances.

00:29:41
Speaker 1: Yeah, just about that section.

00:29:44
Speaker 3: Yeah, I didn’t think about it a whole lot, but you know, you think about her dying and then leaving the next day that there was probably some of them that stayed behind for the little girl. So I’m with Missy. I think I think either way they shouldn’t be condemned for it.

00:30:03
Speaker 1: Yeah, so we stated this, but I read this in more detail. The very next day there was a court case where they a judge and Mina tried to decide whether they were liable for negligent homicide. And in one day, I guess the guy the people just came and told him what happened. The judge was like, yeah, this is not negligent homicide, and just everything was okay, go ahead. Well I was just going to say it just for if you, if you haven’t listened the they had the lion on a chain bound to like a cart or something.

00:30:47
Speaker 4: A truck, is what I read.

00:30:49
Speaker 1: I feel like, that’s crazy. Well it probably was a tame line. Well, its name was Tame.

00:30:58
Speaker 4: Yeah. Yeah, the name of the line Matame. Yeah.

00:31:01
Speaker 1: I mean, so this is a line that people are like leading around and probably they’re wrestling with it in a cage or something, and so probably when it saw this lone little girl, assumed she was alone. Just in that moment, it just trips something.

00:31:19
Speaker 8: But yeah, yeah, I mean I could see, like just being around animals a lot, whenever they kind of pick up on something like like whenever you’re fishing for small mouth, Like you could be like Bob and your streamer right in front of its face all day long. But the second you like twitch, it weird and it like looks like a something weak. It just like triggers something in that fish’s.

00:31:44
Speaker 5: Mind and it goes for it.

00:31:45
Speaker 8: Yeah, and it’s pretty easy to see how that could happen with a wild animal and with a child.

00:31:50
Speaker 1: Yeah, there’s something about vulnerability that a predator picks up on.

00:31:55
Speaker 2: Taking it right back to those turkeys that we used to have, yep, I mean, and I think we actually told the story on the last render, But we had a pair of turkeys, Albuquerque and Tom who were they picked up on vulnerability and they picked on little kids, grandma’s and men with major uh disabilities, uh huh, and they went after them. They they picked up on that whatever it was, and they’d go attack them. And it was very specific. It wasn’t everyone, it wasn’t you know. They never picked on an able bodied man, but boy, they they could pick up on weakness and they were just monsters. And that’s the way they lost their lives because they were picking on a grandma with a cast on.

00:32:33
Speaker 1: Her arm, and my neighbors shot them.

00:32:35
Speaker 2: And they got themselves a wild turkey.

00:32:41
Speaker 1: Yeah, what’d you think about that whole section?

00:32:44
Speaker 8: Bear?

00:32:44
Speaker 1: Well, just like what stood out to you? You never knew that story. Yeah, the thing, that’s what happened to your bill, the bill of your hat over by something.

00:32:52
Speaker 2: Oh, Bear’s cool. This is how the cool kids wear it.

00:32:55
Speaker 1: Well, like it’s tilted up Clay.

00:32:57
Speaker 2: Yeah, Clay wants everybody to like bend on them like we did the night.

00:33:00
Speaker 1: I didn’t do anything to it how it came.

00:33:04
Speaker 8: So what I was thinking whenever I was listening to this section about the circus animals getting loose the next day.

00:33:10
Speaker 1: Yeah was crazy. That seems like something that people would talk about forever for everyone.

00:33:16
Speaker 8: I was thinking, like, if that happened right here, every single person in this entire town would be out with their gun hoping to kill one of the you know, like feeling like they were defending the.

00:33:28
Speaker 1: Town by killing the exotic animals.

00:33:30
Speaker 5: Right right.

00:33:31
Speaker 8: It would probably be chaos for the law enforcement. What would probably be more dangerous would be everybody out there with their guns uncontrolled, just thinking, Okay, there’s a polar bear out here.

00:33:42
Speaker 3: I can’t imagine a gorilla being loose.

00:33:45
Speaker 1: Yeah, that this part of the story. If it wasn’t documented in New York Times and Life Magazine, Life Magazine, I would just not believe it.

00:33:57
Speaker 7: The owner of the circus his name was Ben Davenport, and I don’t know if it would have created as much chaos had he not said he said, the monkeys are harmless, the black bears are tame, but the leopards and the polar bear are dangerous.

00:34:14
Speaker 4: Those were his words.

00:34:15
Speaker 7: So, I mean, you’ve got the night before a lion killing a little girl, and then you have the owner of the circus saying these animals are dangerous that we just loosed into the National Forest.

00:34:27
Speaker 4: I can’t imagine.

00:34:28
Speaker 1: I also can’t believe they didn’t put the line down.

00:34:32
Speaker 2: Yeah, I agree with you that.

00:34:35
Speaker 8: If today, if a dog bites somebody, yeah, like people will put him down.

00:34:41
Speaker 1: Yeah, the lion killed the little girl.

00:34:45
Speaker 3: I’m surprised they didn’t shoot the lion when he had the little girl. Yeah, the sheriff was there, he should have shot. Maybe they couldn’t. Maybe the little girl was would have been hurt worse.

00:34:58
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, nineteen fifty on one might as well have been like a thousand years ago.

00:35:04
Speaker 5: Yeah.

00:35:04
Speaker 1: True.

00:35:04
Speaker 2: How do y’all feel about that?

00:35:07
Speaker 1: No, just in terms of the way people taught about animal welfare and stuff. I mean, right, just just.

00:35:16
Speaker 5: Well, I mean they were making a living with these animals.

00:35:18
Speaker 6: So you know, I’ve got a living with Like I got three tractors working. One tractor does something stupid, well I got to shoot it. I mean, it’s not smart.

00:35:27
Speaker 5: I won’t keep I’ll repair it and keep it.

00:35:29
Speaker 6: So they figured to just take that that tiger and put it in that line and put it in a cage and not not have it on a chain anymore, keep making money off of it.

00:35:40
Speaker 8: Yeah, I bet it was a pretty expensive mistake. Well, just the critter is getting loose. I mean, think about how much it would cost to get monkeys and leopards and polar bears. I mean, yeah, they probably lost so much money to Billy Joe Valentine.

00:35:59
Speaker 1: Shoot that polar bear. Now I thought it was math Singleton Math Singleton. Oh well that was a typo.

00:36:06
Speaker 4: No, I think it’s short from Matthew.

00:36:08
Speaker 1: Didn’t you say? Who was Billy Joe Valentine?

00:36:10
Speaker 5: He eight?

00:36:12
Speaker 1: He was quoted saying it was terrible?

00:36:16
Speaker 2: Yeah, now you would you would disagree with that.

00:36:19
Speaker 1: The polar bear that I was some of the best. I’m truly was some of the best meat. Really, I can remember that.

00:36:26
Speaker 4: So you got to eat someone earlier narcic.

00:36:29
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, mm hmm.

00:36:31
Speaker 4: Interesting.

00:36:32
Speaker 2: It made me wonder about, you know, seeing a polar bear in an ante shop in Arkansas. Oh my god, it made me wonder if perhaps that polar not come from the Arctic, but it.

00:36:44
Speaker 4: Came from Polar County.

00:36:47
Speaker 2: You see what I’m saying.

00:36:48
Speaker 1: If this is a conte, It’s possible that I owned the bear, wouldn’t it be?

00:36:55
Speaker 5: Wow?

00:36:55
Speaker 4: What if you could?

00:36:56
Speaker 1: This is like Collin Jake’s four times and the fourth time they bring the I’m the like, you know, kind of circular.

00:37:04
Speaker 5: Wow.

00:37:06
Speaker 1: Yeah, I haven’t told people about the polar bear.

00:37:08
Speaker 2: Yeah, so we can we can move along.

00:37:11
Speaker 5: Yeah.

00:37:11
Speaker 2: I tried not to.

00:37:13
Speaker 1: Have a polar bear. But it’s not I didn’t kill the polar I have a polar bear that’s over one hundred years old, A polar bear rug that’s that’s Presidy’s that’s over one hundred years old, that legally purchased here in Arkansas, which yeah, yeah, yeah, wow.

00:37:33
Speaker 4: Yeah, that was that was crazy.

00:37:35
Speaker 7: I think it’s you know, there were there were other articles where they tried to, uh try the guys for that shot the bears, for posting so.

00:37:47
Speaker 1: One of the bears, and you know, the language people used back in those days was so dramatic, and you know, they said it surrendered cowardly. You know, it’s like, okay.

00:37:59
Speaker 4: A shame on his back.

00:38:01
Speaker 1: I’m sorry, what’s he supposed to be?

00:38:03
Speaker 7: Like?

00:38:03
Speaker 1: I knew I shouldn’t have done it when I did it then. But three weeks later, five miles away out in the mountains over around Pencil Bluff, some old guy shoots a bear and well, the Game and Fish he did not get in trouble, but there was talk of him getting in trouble because that what’s so cool is that that was right during the time when the Game and Fish was considering restocking bears. The first mention of restocking bears in Arkansas was in the late nineteen forties. By the time you were born, they started talking about it and then but it wasn’t until nineteen fifty eight that they really started in earnest restocking. But they actually restocked some bears in the early fifties, like three or four that got killed. Two Oh really, yes, that got got killed. And so when this guy killed the circus bear, people were like, well, was it the circus bear or was that a.

00:39:00
Speaker 7: Wh I just picture the circus bear probably had a bow tie on.

00:39:05
Speaker 4: Yeah, that’s tell.

00:39:08
Speaker 2: Or when when they said surrendered cowardly. It kind of makes me think of our dogs whenever they do something like when they run in the house and we say, hey, get out of here, and they you know, And that’s what I visioned the bear doing.

00:39:19
Speaker 6: Yeah, I’ve tried free freedom and I didn’t like it home exactly.

00:39:26
Speaker 1: Well, so and leopards, I don’t forget leopards. Well, okay, leopards, And let’s talk about black panthers. I have heard many times people talking about black panthers and they say, well, there was a circus wreck here years ago, not in Mina like down in Falc. So in Falc, Arkansas, there is supposed Falc Monster, which is a gorilla like animal that there’s folklore about the Falc Monster. There’s a movie made in the seventies called Falc Monster. Well, the order the Falc Monster supposedly was that there was a train wreck that had circus animals and some gorillas got loose and somehow they turned into the Falc Monster. Okay, and in different parts of the country you hear about I’ve heard it before that the origin of black panthers came from circus wrecks. I didn’t realize that that was so common in my hometown. There was a circus wreck and leopards got loose.

00:40:28
Speaker 7: I mean, I feel like that’s kind of ironic. I feel like that just straight up confirms the theory.

00:40:33
Speaker 1: Well, what I also should have put on this episode, but it was I didn’t want to make light of the ending when we talk about Pete in his life. But Melanie, the lady that you interviewed, Josh, that the lady that talked about Marie ta Kampa. Josh asked her, have you ever seen a black panther? And she was like, oh yeah, and she told a very detailed story hear and believable story about seeing a black panther over in the washtiles and Oklahoma.

00:41:07
Speaker 8: M So, anyway, my buddy Kyle Plunkett told me a story about seeing a black panther.

00:41:16
Speaker 1: The good Kyle from those ar podcasts.

00:41:19
Speaker 8: Sure enough, he said that they were out that his little cousin thought he saw one, and so they went out there as a joke to like go look for it at night, and he says they saw deer, they saw the panther confirmation bias, and then they see deer bones up in the tree, spying deer spine hanging out of the tree.

00:41:41
Speaker 1: And I don’t know about it being a black panther, No, I don’t know. I mean, did Kyle actually think it was a black panther?

00:41:47
Speaker 8: He he thought it was a mountain lion at least, And I mean, who’s to say, but it wasn’t night.

00:41:56
Speaker 1: I feel like crazy things happen at night.

00:41:59
Speaker 4: Aren’t all panthers black at night?

00:42:02
Speaker 1: Yep? Yeah? Man, have you ever seen a black panther?

00:42:07
Speaker 3: No, I’ve never seen a black panther.

00:42:10
Speaker 1: Dad, now me, Mo used to.

00:42:11
Speaker 3: Talk about him.

00:42:12
Speaker 1: Mem all talked about him.

00:42:13
Speaker 3: Yes, she would just talk about hearing them screaming, and her mother would tell them that was some black panther screaming in the night. They lived way out in the country in Oklahoma. It’s still country out there. There’s no houses out there.

00:42:29
Speaker 1: So mem A heard black panthers.

00:42:31
Speaker 3: That’s what her mama told her.

00:42:33
Speaker 1: Well they saw.

00:42:36
Speaker 4: Me, mos, don’t lie, that’s right. Making a T shirt.

00:42:40
Speaker 1: Yeah, black panthers. Now, Dad, going back to the very origins of Bear Grease. In the first episode of Bear Grease over five years ago, Dad didn’t know there was a recorder going. He would have said it if he was, but it was kind of funny because he didn’t know I was recording, and I was like, said something panthers, and he was like, yeah, black panthers. And then you actually saw a regular one, which I believe you a hundred percent. Yeah, you you legitimately saw. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, down where we deer hunted. I can tell you exact spot it was. I mean, yeah, I saw it.

00:43:17
Speaker 5: Yeah. But when Ali and Olie.

00:43:23
Speaker 6: And bucksnort Arkansas, we would go to their house, and I mean it was a treat when you were a little kid, little kid, I mean dog trot, no pain on the wall, you know, just old house trees hanging over the road. Uh, doodle bugs everywhere, you know, you’d hear a panther call casey, I’m not, you know, it’s been so long. I can’t swear that I heard them, but I think I did, and I’m pretty sure they were black.

00:43:58
Speaker 8: Them.

00:43:58
Speaker 5: My story, it’s weaker as time goes on.

00:44:03
Speaker 1: The greatest story about a panther of all time is we’re in uh, we’re at bear camp three years ago. It’s two years ago with who the man who is now coordinator black bear coordinator for biologists for the Arkansas Game and Fish, Spencer Daniels. He would tell the story. Is he the large carnival coordinator. I’m not sure his exact title, but he is the head honcho of the bears in Arkansas. And it was just he was bear hunting with us. It was actually his first time to bear hunt, yep.

00:44:35
Speaker 4: And he was visiting from Mississippi at the time.

00:44:37
Speaker 1: Yes, And he was actually just a grad student time. And he comes back to camp after day one of bear hunting with us, and Spencer’s pretty pretty mild mannered, pretty quiet, straight straight lace, doesn’t you know, just doesn’t realize.

00:44:53
Speaker 4: Everything you want a bear coordinator to be.

00:44:56
Speaker 2: Yeah.

00:44:56
Speaker 1: Yeah, And and he asked Brent. He said, y’all have mountain lions around here. And Brent just was like, that’s a weird question, I mean, and Brent gave him an answer, it’s possible. But and now, Brent, of all people, Brent has seen too.

00:45:16
Speaker 6: Okay, Brent, you know it’s like, well, yeah, allegedly allegedly.

00:45:22
Speaker 1: In and in Spencer. The story I heard I wasn’t there yet, but the story I heard Spencer was just kind of like huh, okay. And then like a few minutes later, Brent’s like, why did Yeah, I was there, you were there.

00:45:36
Speaker 7: I was there when he said it, and he goes, he goes, why do you ask you? Because I just saw one back there like he’d seen he’d seen one.

00:45:44
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, he legitimately saw one out there. And uh and I believe one hundred percent believe he just said Clay had just walked right past my tree stand. He said broad daylight. He was like, big tale, and I mean, this is a biologist of the game. And sure enough, there’s they’re they’re that part of the world gets some legitimate sightings up here. No I mean there just hasn’t been. Uh, there’s parts of the state where they just typically don’t see him, but there are parts of the state where they do. So black panthers.

00:46:23
Speaker 3: So he saw a black panther or a mountain lion, a mountain a mountain lion.

00:46:27
Speaker 6: Okay, Well, but you know black character, I would say he is a mountain lion.

00:46:31
Speaker 4: Yeah, it’s just a melanistic mountain line.

00:46:34
Speaker 5: Yeah.

00:46:34
Speaker 6: So, I mean they’re mountain lions at least the ones I’ve seen were.

00:46:41
Speaker 1: Well, this is a good this is a good place to uh segue into the second part of the podcast. Misty tell us about where your grandma’s house was.

00:46:50
Speaker 2: Okay, so we uh, we grew up in Mina or South Amina, and on Saturdays, all the grandkids would come and hang out. My mom had three sisters and one that were there were three sisters and one sister in law that all lived in the area, and they would come and lock us out of the house and we had to stay outside. We’d come to inside, you know, Arkansas, summer’s parched, and say can we come inside and get a drink? Get a drink and go right back outside. And that was if they were feeling generous. A lot of times it’d be like, no, stay outside, out of the creek anyway nearby very I mean as a site as a kid, it felt like it was a mile away. But Clay took a picture of it when he was there. He could see my grandma’s house from there. I mean, it was just I don’t know how far, but it was very close. But it felt like as a kid because you’d have to go to the backyard around hop a fence, you know, and was the cemetery. And when we were playing outside as directed by the adults, what we were actually doing was just hanging around the cemetery. And I always knew about Pete because of that.

00:47:51
Speaker 1: Because Pete’s grave is less than one hundred yards from Mimi’s old house.

00:47:57
Speaker 2: And I just whenever people getting nostalgic about the nineties, you know, Bear, they always talk about your generation and how great childhood was in the nineties. Just remember, for fun, we would play in cemetery.

00:48:09
Speaker 7: So so the original headstone did it say Pete on it?

00:48:12
Speaker 2: You know, I remember hearing him referred in other ways, and you’ve got to remember, honestly, Please don’t judge my mom, but I couldn’t read. I mean when we were out there playing, I was not at the age. I was not in school yet. We my brothers were just in charge as fourth and third graders, and so so I don’t know. I always heard it referred from everyone in the community, in the director.

00:48:37
Speaker 1: So there’s there’s many versions of this story, and I to this day do not know what is true. I would have I would have told you one hundred percent that his original gravestone said in word pete.

00:48:53
Speaker 2: Oh really, And I would have said the same thing. And I would have also said that it was handwritten, okay. And I saw the picture of it, I was surprised because that’s not how I remember.

00:49:01
Speaker 1: It people that are my age. I asked one of my good friends and he told me that I was wrong. He said it just said pete. And that’s what Todd Coogan remembered was just pete. But in the pictures, did you notice that they there was a small headstone, and then there was another headstone like laid on top of that headstone that said pete. I think that was actually covering up what was formerly there. That’s kind of what it looks like. Yeah, that’s what I think. And then in recent years, like I would say, I mean very recent years. Someone completely replaced the headstone with a with a nice headstone that says the full name Peter Berryman.

00:49:51
Speaker 2: Why did they paint it blue? Don’t know that that was what puzzle because I can tell you for sure it was not blue.

00:49:58
Speaker 7: I mean no, I was there in February and it wasn’t blue.

00:50:03
Speaker 6: Yeah, it’s a leafs are still blue, so they’ve really it’s been recent enough.

00:50:08
Speaker 1: I don’t know if it’s like Yeah, I’m not sure why they had sons painted blue. I mean they didn’t put dates on it. I mean that was kind of weird. Yeah, I don’t They didn’t know when he was born, that was part of it. Now they did know when he died.

00:50:24
Speaker 2: Right.

00:50:26
Speaker 4: What a what a tragic, tragic, horrible.

00:50:29
Speaker 1: Story it really is.

00:50:31
Speaker 2: Yeah.

00:50:39
Speaker 1: I thought Todd Coogan did a good job just as a historian, Like he didn’t bring a lot of like he just told the story just he didn’t he didn’t try to, like I mean, it’s so hard to tell a story like that, you know, one hundred and twenty five years after it happened, right, And I felt like he just gave all the details that we had and and didn’t try to push it one way or the other, like because he said, yeah, Pete was probably mentally unstable. Yeah, and and in his opinion, he said, the people of Meana seemed like they tolerated him to some degree. But obviously, I mean that didn’t last for very long, right, Bear What stood out to you inside of that story?

00:51:31
Speaker 8: Well, so there’s one part I was kind of confused about. It didn’t make any sense to me. Why the nine year old girl was the one out there fixing the fence.

00:51:43
Speaker 4: Well, that’s that’s kind of unknown.

00:51:45
Speaker 2: Is that is that that crazy? I mean, I don’t know that that’s that crazy. Parents. What year are we talking about? Nineteen oh one, nineteen oh one. I think that she’s just probably the It was just a chore, like a chore that no one else wanted to do and not super productive.

00:51:58
Speaker 1: And I think that that’s part of the story that just could be completely false. It never happened. I just think, I mean, what actually happened between him and that girl? I think that’s what no one really knows.

00:52:17
Speaker 4: I agree, I would agree.

00:52:19
Speaker 1: You know, was it who who turned him in for that? Like, who’s parents of the girl? And did they see it. Is it unclear? That’s what we don’t know. Yeah, I mean probably the little girl came back in I mean if it happened crying or something and said Pete kicked me.

00:52:39
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah she was. I think she was taken to the doctor or something.

00:52:44
Speaker 3: Yeah, well they said she was. It was critical. But did we ever know what the outcome was? She lived? Did she I know she must have lived.

00:52:53
Speaker 1: But see that’s where and I don’t want to jump on like a modern bandwagon, but like, if you’re trying to justify this to the world, you would exaggerate something that happened. But at the same time, he may have almost killed her.

00:53:08
Speaker 2: And at the same time he’s got three three records in the I know, you know, I know people like Pete, you know, who are pretty sweet, well like how how how he was described anyway, who are pretty sweet people a little bit a little bit touched, a little bit peculiar, you know, but that can I.

00:53:27
Speaker 4: Mean there’s an impulsivity about it for.

00:53:29
Speaker 5: Some of them.

00:53:30
Speaker 2: Yeah, and just those other two stories. And of course you don’t know, you don’t know, you don’t know what happened. But but but people who sometimes just snap and when when he was describing the situation and he was reading the old news articles. I’m not saying I’m not saying it was just about it, but just I know people who who snap, who are just a little they’re sweet and they’re good people, and they snap, and you kind of want the world to make allowance for that because they’ve got all this other stuff going on. But sometimes they snap, and they they do mean things that I would imagine nineteen oh one, they weren’t as adept at responding to that.

00:54:04
Speaker 7: Yeah, yeah, I mean there there there was. I mean, just from the accounts, there was there was a like you said, there was a tolerance or a I mean, there must have been something endearing about him that made people kind.

00:54:18
Speaker 4: Of, yeah, not ostracize him.

00:54:21
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, so, I was it seems like with the stuff he’d got into before, if they had wanted to run him out of town or lock him after good, they could have done it based upon what we know.

00:54:33
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I was surprised. That was news to me that there were When he said was it ninety six black people in Mina.

00:54:41
Speaker 1: There was like one hundred and something and then went down to.

00:54:44
Speaker 2: Sixteen, down to sixties. I was surprised that was not the way Mina was when we when I lived close there. I was surprised. I was surprised to learn that those were much higher numbers.

00:54:57
Speaker 1: What do you think, Juju, what when you heard that story in detail? I mean, I don’t know what stood out to you.

00:55:05
Speaker 3: I’ve heard that since we moved to me. Now, you know, we’ve heard off and on, and you know, I just thought that he should have they should have let him have the trial, and you know, he might not have. He might have been in jail for a year or maybe less. You know, it’s just a shame that it had to be that way. But you know, it’s just one of those stories that you hear. In fact, I thought she had died until till you you know, till I was listening to Todd, so I had forgotten that she lived. I thought he had killed her. So you know, that’s but it’s been so long ago that I’ve even heard that story. No, I haven’t heard him may talk about that in years.

00:55:47
Speaker 2: And I don’t think I ever heard the full version. Because I also thought he died as a result of a just of a verdict.

00:55:54
Speaker 5: Oh really, I thought that.

00:55:55
Speaker 2: Yeah, I did not know that they broke into That was the first time I’d ever heard that.

00:56:00
Speaker 3: Yeah, wow, I need say hunging, But I did.

00:56:03
Speaker 2: Did I broke into the prison? And yeah, I didn’t know that.

00:56:07
Speaker 1: So here’s the well, Oh just lost my train of thought, just barely. Oh, I feel like the newspapers I thought it was. I didn’t know where the story was going to go. I didn’t know the details of the story. When Todd Coogan said the people of Mina were outraged and raised money to find these guys, I think, And I’m from Mina, so I want this town to be a good place and have a good reputation. But I feel like it’s possible that it was. It would be easy to kind of say, oh, everybody was everybody was mad about this, but they never caught the guys. I just feel like they could have caught him, don’t you think, dad.

00:57:04
Speaker 6: Oh yeah, they could have caught him. Uh, but they’re your uncle, they’re your dad, you know. I mean, they just let it go under the rug. I did look up to three hundred and eighty five dollars the reward that they raised.

00:57:21
Speaker 5: For for what like the burial or what?

00:57:24
Speaker 2: No, for the reward money.

00:57:28
Speaker 6: Yeah, yeah, okay, And that’s the equivalent of almost fifteen thousand dollars today, So that tells you it kind of supports the idea that the community didn’t like this, all these people doing stupid stuff. And you know, back then, they didn’t have a law like every time something really crazy happens, our legislators get together and go, Okay, we’re gonna we’re gonna create a law against that, and you know, it’s it’s good, it’s worked. They didn’t have a lot of that stuff back then, so vigilant justice probably prevailed a lot more, I know it did back then than it would now. So you had a bunch of little tough guys around that just love to hang out at the coffee shops and go, okay, man, what.

00:58:14
Speaker 5: Are we gonna here’s our deal tonight, you know.

00:58:18
Speaker 6: Yeah, And they were they were probably undercover sheriff department in a way. You know, I mean, if you get out of line, these guys are gonna come get you. But probably wasn’t real prevalent, but I’m sure a little of.

00:58:29
Speaker 5: That was going on. Yeah.

00:58:32
Speaker 1: I just think I just think they a lot of people probably knew who did it, and and it’s not surprising that their family and people protected them.

00:58:44
Speaker 7: Yeah right, you know, but I think raising that money probably made a statement at the very least, yeah, and that hey, we’re not going to tolerate this. You know, this can’t go on and and and you know what, I mean to at least show some kind of some kind of disdain of what happened.

00:59:02
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, any thoughts about that, Missy.

00:59:07
Speaker 7: No.

00:59:08
Speaker 2: I thought it was super interesting too that that was his grandpa that came into town that day and said there was a big rucke.

00:59:14
Speaker 1: His grandfather owns the diary of a man.

00:59:17
Speaker 2: Oh okay, okay, okay. Yeah. For some reason I interpreted that as him saying his grandfather no. But yeah, I thought that was that was very interesting, And I kind of wished we had more diaries because I imagine you would know a little bit more about what happened if you had diaries that if you just had the paper, And that’s a that’s the problem with I was thinking, gosh, if the paper ever represented us or our kids, you know, if that was the full representation, it would be things like they won the spelling bee, you’d think they were all a little geniuses or something like you would be such excuse, that’s not true.

00:59:52
Speaker 7: You know, you know I got to go when I was there, I got to go into the uh the archives that that Harold too. Yeah, I’d got to go in there and see that, and saw an article about Pete in there, and uh, it’s pretty fascinating just getting to see the history in what they you know what I mean that the archive newspapers were damaged in the pornado and so they had gotten wet, and Harold Coogan and a team of folks worked painstakingly to salvage that, and so it was neat to just to be able to scroll through those papers that were, you know, one hundred and twenty years old, to look at that.

01:00:34
Speaker 1: So, yeah, he said to me to start one time it was in daily paper. I mean think about Yeah, it’s hard to do it. But before the internet, before we had you know, you know, early news.

01:00:47
Speaker 3: He mentioned the little parts of the paper that would tell that So and so went to Hot Springs for the first time. That was in the paper when we were getting the Meana star. Being like I own mus had her cousin come visit and they had fried chicken and corn bread.

01:01:07
Speaker 1: Crazy.

01:01:08
Speaker 2: I actually have seen those at my great grit and I remember my brothers and I laughing at that, like see, yeah, that was funny.

01:01:16
Speaker 7: In nineteen eighty four it said it said new residents Gary and Judy Newcomb have raced in from Hot Springs to the.

01:01:24
Speaker 1: Tracks, the bathhouses, the whiskey stills of the Hot Springs, and have come to God’s country the mafia, al Capone, Bill Clinton.

01:01:35
Speaker 2: I mean, come on, hey, I’ll have you know. I was once on the front page of the Mini Star. Oh really for what I was a It’s not quite a representation of who I am if you were to.

01:01:47
Speaker 3: Look at no Princess Gladys.

01:01:52
Speaker 2: That’s right, Juju, that’s right.

01:01:54
Speaker 3: I were the baddest Misty was Gladys in the best Christmas pageant ever and the Chosen have put out a new video of that, Yes, a new show. And I actually went to Rudy Timmerman and asked him if they had recorded that uh play when Missy was in it, but he did he didn’t. He didn’t know where that would be so cool.

01:02:18
Speaker 2: I was, so you would think if you were reading the Mini Star that I was a thespian and an incredible speller, and I am a good Speller.

01:02:26
Speaker 1: Hey, you know what, I’ve got an actual clip from the Mina Star in this building right here. You do well, it is a big buck I killed down in Howard County is Yeah, there’s a clip from the Man Star.

01:02:43
Speaker 3: Tyler had a place piece in the Mina Star when he talked to Bill Clinton. He had that talk boy from home alone, and Bill Clinton talked into the talk boy for me and that was that was.

01:02:57
Speaker 1: That was at one time really used the clip on Bear Grease. Can’t remember the context. I can’t either, but I told people that there was a never before heard interview. It was it was Arkansas image.

01:03:13
Speaker 4: It was the Possum Supper.

01:03:15
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, because Clinton used to go to the to the coon Supper.

01:03:19
Speaker 4: Coon Supper.

01:03:19
Speaker 2: Yeah, that’s right, not we don’t eat possums.

01:03:23
Speaker 4: Were sorry. They do that in Hot Springs, Yeah, that horing.

01:03:29
Speaker 2: Actually they do that in Hatfield, a little bit south of Mina.

01:03:33
Speaker 1: Well. So to take this out of the local because most people that are listening have never been to this part of the world and probably will never come. Why this stood out to me was that in this one little place that that I grew up, there’s all this history and I mean this isn’t even the half of it. I mean, these were just two unique stories that were connected because these people were in the same cemetery and that that’s all that connected them. And there is just so much that has happened where you live and and what value Sometimes when I tell these stories like Pete, like Pete dying the way he did, you know, sometimes I think, why am I bringing this back up?

01:04:23
Speaker 5: You know?

01:04:24
Speaker 1: I mean, and I don’t have a great answer other than it it It happened, and there’s things to be learned from it, and maybe in some way it honors Pete for what value that would have. But I mean, our our history is so so powerful, even the even the bad parts of it. Yeah, And do you all have any thoughts on that?

01:04:55
Speaker 8: I do?

01:04:55
Speaker 7: I think I think it’s it’s good to tell the stories because it it shows where an ungoverned and I don’t mean governed like having civil government, but I’m talking about like an internally governed people. That it shows like how dark things can get when people are are internally lawless. Like those guys didn’t want to subject themselves to the law. They wanted to take the law into their own hands, and it was dark like it was.

01:05:25
Speaker 4: It was evil.

01:05:26
Speaker 7: What they did was evil, and without a person governing themselves, without a person having standards and morals and ethics, it’s a slippery slope. And I think I think we’ve seen that in our society these days, and that we have to really be people who govern themselves by a high standard.

01:05:50
Speaker 3: Well, you know, when I meet people that I don’t know and I tell them I’m from Mina, they don’t ask me if I knew Maria DeCamp Decampa mm hmm or Pete. They asked me if I know Berry Seal. Yeah, so that’s a whole nother story.

01:06:08
Speaker 1: Yes, well that’s why we left Mina and I raised my kids. My memoir, it’s gonna say I hit the road squealing rubber, so I didn’t have to raise my kids and Mina.

01:06:23
Speaker 3: But we don’t know anything about that either.

01:06:26
Speaker 1: Barry Seal. So, yeah, Mina connection. What’s the movie called American Maid? American Maid? I kind of got the down low from somebody that knows and Mina the other day about Barry Seal. Yeah, he thinks it’s all kind of overblown. Barry Seal did come to Mina, but he thinks he wasn’t running drugs into Mina. But he did come to Meno a lot, but not with drugs. Maybe we’ll talk about that sometimes.

01:06:56
Speaker 3: That’s a big, big subject.

01:06:59
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, Do you know much about that, Dad? Were you involved in that?

01:07:03
Speaker 5: Yeah?

01:07:04
Speaker 1: Yeah at the time.

01:07:10
Speaker 2: I know.

01:07:11
Speaker 6: The one story I do remember a lot is that just one day prosecuting, the attorney was on our board and he came in and we were talking and he started telling me about this whole.

01:07:23
Speaker 1: Deal in the eighties.

01:07:24
Speaker 5: Yes, yeah, yeah, about Barry Seals and the drugs at all.

01:07:27
Speaker 6: He goes, it’s way overblown. He said, it just wasn’t that big of a deal, and they’ve just made it a big deal. It wasn’t thirty minutes in A real good friend of mine who was an airport operator and he loved to be a policeman, so he quit that and became a state trooper. When he was a state trooper, he said, he crawled through sage grass and looked in Freddy, I’m not going to tell you whose hanger was, but he looked in these hangers and he would see different things going on, and he said, I’m telling you it was the real deal.

01:08:03
Speaker 5: But hm, anyway, so pick your story. Which one do you like better?

01:08:10
Speaker 6: I mean, he was seeing stuff come out of those planes and stuff go back in, and you could evaluate the planes and they had.

01:08:18
Speaker 1: Now didn’t I remember a story you’re telling me, probably from the same origin of planes landing in black darkness, like without lights.

01:08:29
Speaker 5: Oh, I don’t remember that much. So I made up a lot of stuff for you. I forget.

01:08:38
Speaker 1: They probably did a version of the story of planes flying into the Mina airport without lights.

01:08:46
Speaker 8: See.

01:08:46
Speaker 5: I had a lot. I had a lot of people coming in and just talking, you know. I mean, it’s fun.

01:08:51
Speaker 6: That’s one thing I liked about my job was people just come in and we’d shoot the breeze and you heard all kinds of crazy stuff learned about Barry Sea. Yeah, yeah, so m but it happened, There’s no question about that.

01:09:05
Speaker 1: It’s just yeah. The extent of Yeah, whether they were trying to pen Clinton, That’s what I’ve heard is that like he was the governor and they were just trying to get him, and so they were like, hey, all this stuff was going on in your watch and you had something to do with it.

01:09:20
Speaker 5: Yeah. I don’t think Clinton had anything.

01:09:22
Speaker 4: Yeah, but.

01:09:25
Speaker 5: Who knows.

01:09:27
Speaker 1: Oh wow, I’m glad you like. I’ve actually considered doing a Burgeris podcast on the Mina connection on the you know, on the uh.

01:09:36
Speaker 4: It would be worth it.

01:09:38
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, expose expose mm hmm.

01:09:44
Speaker 2: Yeah. That we’re getting kind of in in the weeds a bad A bunch of people don’t even know what we’re talking about.

01:09:48
Speaker 5: I bet they do.

01:09:49
Speaker 2: Well, You’re right. When I was a kid, you would tell people where you’re from, and it was the ninety so if you said Arkansas, they would say Bill Clinton. And if you would say Mina, they would say in the Mina area, they would say Barry Seals. They would they would talk about the Mina Airport.

01:10:04
Speaker 5: And if it was nineteen hundred, it was mister Pete, mister Pete. Okay.

01:10:10
Speaker 1: The one last thing, the graves, the Union soldiers that are also buried down there with what I assume is the segregated black section of the cemetery right where Petsbury that was clear segregated cemetery.

01:10:30
Speaker 2: Gary’s got a good Union soldier story. Cemetery story.

01:10:34
Speaker 1: Well it I didn’t go into detail about it, but I don’t think it’s what it appears. It appears like the way I presented it. You might think that, oh those were Union soldiers, they were outcast as well, the way the way I understood it after I researched it, and it just I couldn’t put this in the podcast. The Unions of Veteran Union union organization in Arkansas, years after the Civil War bought that plot of land to bury Union soldiers that now lived in Mina. Oh, apparently there were, because those graves weren’t from like nineteen, you know, eighteen sixty four. Those men were not killed in the Civil War. Oh, they fought in the Civil War as UK soldiers, but died old men in Mina in the nineteen hundred.

01:11:32
Speaker 4: Interesting, you see.

01:11:34
Speaker 1: And so they bought that plot of land and buried those men there.

01:11:41
Speaker 2: Interesting.

01:11:41
Speaker 1: But I mean they sold them the plot of land that was down there in this segregated, far off like not glamorous place, right, you know, So that was kind of interesting.

01:11:52
Speaker 2: That’s really terrible, just that there would be parts of a cemetery.

01:11:56
Speaker 1: That would be I don’t think that oh segregated that you would say.

01:12:00
Speaker 2: A gate of cemetery. I mean, that’s just that’s just terrible. I mean, just what that’s just so so awful.

01:12:07
Speaker 6: I think you might be part of the problem, Clay. I mean, I’m with Misty that that was. It was like, if you’re a Union soldier, we don’t want you in here with our people. We’ll put you down here in the woods. And all of a sudden, Pete comes along and they go, Okay, we got a problem with this guy. Let’s put him down here with the soldiers. This was their first Okay, all right, well so that’s that’s the bad area. Yes, so let’s put these soldiers in there.

01:12:33
Speaker 5: I don’t know. And what Misty’s talking about.

01:12:36
Speaker 6: Another cemetery I thought was a big deal, But after I saw this cemetery, it’s probably pretty common. Except this other cemetery is fenced then, and this grave is outside the fence. All these other graves are just facing east. I mean, it’s just clear as daylight. You go in the cemetery and they’re all going to the east. That’s where Christ is coming back from. This guy he’s looking to the west.

01:13:01
Speaker 1: He’s looking the wrong way.

01:13:02
Speaker 5: Yeah, and he’s in the sixty second Infantry.

01:13:06
Speaker 1: Division up the Union.

01:13:08
Speaker 5: Yeah, and ill, old dad.

01:13:10
Speaker 1: This is a different cemetery, thirty miles away, same county, north Amina. The small cemetery maybe fifty graves in the whole cemetery, maybe thirty, probably at least fifty. And it’s just a pretty little rural cemetery, no church, no buildings attached, and it’s like fenced in. All these graves, all faced in the east, way out in the woods like a bowshot away.

01:13:34
Speaker 5: Well, you know, it’s not that far from the fence, maybe ten yards outside.

01:13:39
Speaker 1: Of the Union soldier is buried facing west, outside of the fence.

01:13:45
Speaker 4: Yeah. Interesting.

01:13:46
Speaker 8: I went to a cemetery two days ago when I was turkey hunting. Stumbled across one and I saw there was one grave of a lady who lives to be one hundred and three years old. She was born in the eighteen hundreds, died in the eighties. And then one stone back into the right there was a gravestone from the eighteen hundreds of someone who lived a little boy who lived nine months.

01:14:13
Speaker 4: Wow.

01:14:14
Speaker 1: I thought it was pretty interesting.

01:14:16
Speaker 5: Yeah.

01:14:17
Speaker 2: Cemeteries are so so interesting, And you learn a lot walking. You learn a lot about a place’s history walking through the And I think you know, when we were when we were there, we weren’t. We were as little kids, we’d play war off in the ditch, but we would when we were in the cemetery.

01:14:34
Speaker 4: You don’t remember seeing Aria the campus?

01:14:36
Speaker 2: No, but Josh, really, I was reliant on my older siblings have more storytelling. Well, and maybe I was older. I mean I remember it. I don’t know if I were to remember something when I was three, so I was probably like four to seven. I was very reliant on the older cousins and siblings in the group telling us what was going on. So I don’t I don’t have any memory that I remember. You asked me that, and I don’t have any anym that. But does it say that she was from the circus killed? Yeah? I feel like that would have been so interesting as kids, I feel like they would have. But that was not I have no recollection of that. We would look for people with our last name. We’d look for people. I mean, that was the kind of stuff we were doing as kids. We were looking. Yeah, we but we I can’t believe that that was right there and we missed it. I’ll have to ask my brothers. I’ll have to ask them if they because they were the ones.

01:15:26
Speaker 1: I don’t think any of our generation knew about it. I mean, yeah, just wasn’t talked about.

01:15:33
Speaker 4: Yeah, fascinating.

01:15:34
Speaker 1: Well, well, to bring it full circle today, when I was carrying that turkey out of the woods, uh, I was envisioning there’s a guy that. Have you seen the turkey coffin guy. No, there’s a there’s a there’s a guy that. Uh, there’s probably more than one guy, but I’ve seen a guy that has a little wooden box about this big, made like a coffin, and when he killed and during turkey season, he carries it in the back of the truck and he puts his turkeys in there, in the turkey coffin when he kills a turkey. And I actually thought that would be kind of handy because when you put a turkey in the back of your truck and drive down the interstate, it blows the feathers and if it’s in my truck, that turkey would be flying out there. Has trouble with stuff in the back of his truck. He’s got a camper top and it creates like an odd wind vorte.

01:16:29
Speaker 8: It creates like a tornado back there. And I’ve spent so much stuff on the back of that truck, can’t I mean, I’m serious. If I put a turkey in there, would fly out. Well, juju, it’s been such an odd here is anything.

01:16:45
Speaker 1: That you’d like to tell the people, tell the world. No, enjoyed.

01:16:52
Speaker 3: I’ve had a good time, and that’s I appreciate you letting me come. Okay, but I have nothing new.

01:16:58
Speaker 1: You’ll know that you you as a hero in Polk County, Arkansas.

01:17:03
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, legend.

01:17:05
Speaker 1: She’s how long have you been teaching school?

01:17:07
Speaker 3: Forty years?

01:17:08
Speaker 1: More than that, right, well, forty years five years ago.

01:17:12
Speaker 3: I went back to that two days a week. I didn’t count that.

01:17:16
Speaker 1: Yeah, that’s yeah, you’re right.

01:17:20
Speaker 2: Did you retired for four years?

01:17:22
Speaker 1: Yeah, forty years?

01:17:23
Speaker 3: I did that for four years. So and I actually actually worked last week. No, no, not quite.

01:17:31
Speaker 4: Is there a gymnasium?

01:17:33
Speaker 2: No, no, they need to do that.

01:17:35
Speaker 4: They need to do that.

01:17:36
Speaker 6: No, no, no.

01:17:39
Speaker 1: Well, it’s been good to have you.

01:17:41
Speaker 3: It’s been fun.

01:17:42
Speaker 1: Uh bear anything you want to say?

01:17:44
Speaker 6: Mmm.

01:17:45
Speaker 8: I heard a pretty good term this weekend for what you would call whenever you’re working a turkey and he won’t come to you and you slowly start moving closer. Okay, Bob Catton, Bob Catton, I thought it was pretty good.

01:18:00
Speaker 4: I like it.

01:18:02
Speaker 1: That’s good. That’s good.

01:18:03
Speaker 2: That’s a good We should have a section on the Bear Great Trender where Bear just kind of gives us new terms.

01:18:08
Speaker 1: I have a new term that’s so good I’m not even gonna say it on the podcast. Oh wow, I learned it today.

01:18:13
Speaker 2: You can’t wait to use it like you just want to use.

01:18:16
Speaker 4: It naturally, Yeah, and get recognition.

01:18:18
Speaker 2: Will you tell me later?

01:18:19
Speaker 1: Yeah? Well, okay. One of my good friends, I can’t remember who it was. It’s ironic that I can’t remember who it was. One of my good friends said that when you take someone’s phrase, like if you like KOs three times, you need to attribute it to him. So the next three times that I tell a story about Bobcatton the Turkey, I’ll say, now, my my son Bear calls it Bobcatton. When you move up, like, I’ll attribute it to him. After three times, it’s yours.

01:18:50
Speaker 4: Yeah, you can just say I was bobcatting.

01:18:52
Speaker 5: Yep.

01:18:53
Speaker 1: Yeah, I can respect that. Yeah, So anyway I’ll use that. I’ve already done it once, So two more times and that’s mine.

01:18:59
Speaker 2: What about how many times ago I’ve made that one up?

01:19:03
Speaker 1: The term, the term bear chaos, I’m attributing him to the to the tactic, and it kind of the chaos cackle. It includes fighting purs, but Bear’s version of it is much more dynamic than just fighting purs because somebody could be confused and say, oh, you’re just you fight and purred that thing in. But no, the chaos cackle is fighting purs hat on the wing beats, but busting up the the ground around and a wild cackle and cut well, buddy, when you pull it out, let it be the last stop because you’ve got nowhere else to do.

01:19:44
Speaker 4: It doesn’t work, You’re going home.

01:19:46
Speaker 1: If yeah, just get up and walk away after like eight minutes. If after you’ve done that, just go home.

01:19:52
Speaker 5: You know.

01:19:52
Speaker 2: I think that we should probably come up with a dictionary, like have a Bear Grease dictionary.

01:19:56
Speaker 1: That ship where we Bobby cann’t wait till you hear what I’m about to say. Todiva Lines is the one who’s who said it to me on the phone today, and it’s gotta be good.

01:20:04
Speaker 2: It’s going to be good.

01:20:05
Speaker 5: Yeah.

01:20:06
Speaker 2: We could also include Clay mispronunciations.

01:20:08
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, that’d be a glossary of mis pronunciations.

01:20:14
Speaker 5: This chaos stuff, I find it’s pretty truthful.

01:20:19
Speaker 6: I Turkey hunted till ten eleven twelve o’clock doesn’t happened. So I found me a place to take a nap. And before I took a nap, I just did every call I knew as loud as I could. And then I went to sleep. And about an hour later I heard people walking around me. I thought opened one eye or two big gobblers walking, you know, walking all around me.

01:20:44
Speaker 4: Man, they heard that call.

01:20:46
Speaker 1: Did you kill them?

01:20:47
Speaker 5: No, by the time I got to my gun that they were gone.

01:20:50
Speaker 1: So you tried to just kind of spring it.

01:20:51
Speaker 5: I think I might have shot at one of them. I can’t remember, but that happened to me one time.

01:20:56
Speaker 8: Not gobblers, but I called, took a night, woke up and there was a hen plucking all around me.

01:21:01
Speaker 4: That’s the most Shepherd classic, right, fun.

01:21:09
Speaker 1: Well, this has been a very I don’t even want it to end. That we could just keep talking here, but this has been This has been really good. The Ta Covi’s hot seat is really delivered. Yes, seat, and my Tacba’s snake boots yeah delivered. Yeah, Thank you so much, love you all.

01:21:31
Speaker 4: Indeed, keep the wild places wild.

01:21:37
Speaker 1: You got it, buddy,