Bear Grease - Ep. 136: BEAR GREASE [RENDER] - The Greatest Flood

Episode Date: August 16, 2023

On this episode of the Bear Grease Render, Clay Newcomb is joined by his wife Misty, Josh “Landbridge” Spielmaker, Gary “Believer” Newcomb, Brent Reaves, and for the first time, Brent's wife, Alexis. The crew discusses Josh’s recent adventures in trapping coons, the newest episode of This Country Life, and Misty’s disdain for cats. Afterward, they begin dissecting the most recent Bear Grease episode that centered around the three men who helped shape the modern Mississippi River - Charles Ellett, Andrew Humphries, and James Eads, as well as the disastrous 1927 Flood covered in John M Barry’s book, Rising Tide. Connect with Clay and MeatEater Clay on Instagram MeatEater on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and Youtube Shop Bear Grease MerchSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an I-Heart podcast. Guaranteed Human. First Lights fieldware collection is made for the work that happens long before opening day and continues when the season ends. Products built for early mornings, full days and real use. Hard wearing where they need to be versatile where it matters. No shortcuts. Just gear designed for the work that earns the season.

Built to perform, built to last. Check out. First Light's new field. Worldware Gear at firstlight.com. My name is Clay Newcomb, 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 FHF Gear, American Made, Purpose Built, Hunting and Fishing Gear that's designed to be as rugged as the places we explore. Brent.

Have I told you about my raccoon woes? No. So you guys know I have two very large dogs. Yep. Great Danes. Great Danes that eat a lot of dog food. And I keep the dog food on my back deck. And I have it in a big tub because I buy it 100 pounds at a time.

And it lasts like for three weeks. I go through about 100 pounds of dog food in about three, three and a half weeks. but I've the the dog food lid was off a few times a couple months ago it was off a few times I'm like what's going on and then I put two and two together that the raccoons have figured out how to open up my dog food tub no way yes so I got a rack so I knew I had a raccoon because this raccoon was leaving me a little deposit on the back deck every night too so so finally I got around a bar on a live trap from a friend of ours. To try to help with things, I bought a new dog food tub that has locking handles on the end.

I got you. So I put the live trap out, put a little bowl of dog food in there on the, you know, the little deal that springs the trap. Yeah. And I,

my dogs, I hear him wrestling in the night because I sleep in our room. And I was like, oh, man. And I had put a ring camera out on the back porch. And I was, I popped it up.

and I see a pair of eyes. I'm like, yes, I got that raccoon. And I go outside. And lo and behold. And your Great Dane was in the trap. No, no. Lo and behold, I got two raccoons in one trap. Really?

Oh, my goodness. And so I was like, I told you we shouldn't have come in here. Yeah, exactly. They look pretty young. So. Yeah, kid. It's time for them to be. That was on Wednesday.

When I went out there to check the trap, those sorry suckers, had flipped the handles down on the dog food bin, and they were getting in there and getting dog food out of there first. Oh, wow. That don't surprise me. And so I caught him. I was like, yes, all my problems are solved until that was on Wednesday night. Thursday night.

The dog food bin is open, and there's raccoon tracks in the water bowl. I was like, are you kidding me? There's more. Yes. So I put the trap out again last night. and at 5 o'clock this morning, I hear. Like, it sounded like somebody was knocking on my door, like they needed to get in.

And I'm kind of in a stupor, and I'm like, what's going on? And then I realized, I got a raccoon, and I got that other raccoon. And I go out. And he knocked on your door? Yeah, he, like, totally knocked on the door. That was his lawyer. So I go out to the back porch and open the door, and what do I see? Two raccoons in the track.

Wow, two for. And not only that, two more raccoons on the door. the deck. Are you kidding? Right in the middle of town. Six. Six raccoons. And I don't know.

There might be a hole, like they may have moved in next door and I didn't know. Wow. Yeah. Six raccoons. That's crazy. But catching them two at a time. That's pretty impressive. Yeah.

It's efficient. I got a dog you can rent. I was going to say, wait a. Well, I asked Clay, I said, you need. I'm coon dog poor right now, man. Did y'all notice on the podcast this week, Clay's chair squeaked? People talk about it all the time. I literally get messages to my Instagram.

Oh, really? On the Bear Grease podcast? Yeah. Really? Mm-hmm. I need to oil this baby up. Welcome to the Bear Greas render. My, oh, my, what a monumentous day.

We have, we have two, we have a return guest. I just want to say reports of his death have been largely exaggerated, greatly exaggerate. We have back at the. Meteor South global headquarters. We have Gary Believer-Nookum. Back from back. Man, it's good to see you with Bionic Nees. Good to be here.

I can walk without pain now. Yeah, man. It's going to be dangerous. He's been spritting up and down. I wore them out, scouting for deer. Mm-hmm. And now I'm going to quit hunting and start playing golf. Oh, wow.

That's a tragedy, isn't it? Well, it's good to have you back. Yes, thank you. Good to have you back. And this is a long time coming. Brent, why don't you introduce our guests? To my left. To my left is my lovely wife, Alexis Reeves.

Hello. Fresh from the Bozeman, Montana, North headquarters of me, either. Yes. Northwest. It's so good to finally be here. You had to prove yourself on someone else's podcast. So Alexis was on the Meat Eater podcast. And never heard of it.

She had to be vetted through Meat Eater before she could be allowed on this podcast. Oh, that's what I've been missing all these years. No, Alexis, it's great to have you. I'm excited to be here. You are clearly the best thing going on with Brant. Absolutely. You are so right. True.

And then to my left, the best thing going on with me, Misty Nooncombe. Oh, sweet. And then Josh Lambridge filmmaker. I'm here. I'm here. Yeah. Did you get a chance to read that Berengia book? I've started on it.

Have you really? Yeah. Good. Yep. Good. It's very interesting. It's not what I expected. Well, hey, we have a lot to do on this podcast today.

first of all, I would like to present the Reeves with some Newcomb Farm apple butter. Oh, that's a big into apple butter. Josh, Oh, I got one too. I love Apple Butter.

That is some good apple butter. I can't wait. And I've already given Ju-Ju and Dad a jar of it. That's a good color. That's the color you want your apple butter. We've had a bumper crock by apples. We really have.

Never had as many as we had this year. Yeah, and so we've made Apple. butter, which apple butter is pretty much cooked down apples, brown sugar. And butter. No butter. What? Weirdly, no butter. And cinnamon.

And some vanilla and a few other secret ingredients. Secret ingredients in there. We got a hold back. We got a whole back. Can't wait. But it looks great. It looks very good. It's good.

It's good. Apple butter. You know, you can use apple butter in a lot of different ways I've learned. I've been using it like a side dish, kind of like on. Thanksgiving like cranberry sauce. Yeah. Like if you're eating meat or eggs or whatever, you can just have a big dollop of apple butter and just use it. And it's fantastic. Fantastic. I got to introduce this. I got permission to introduce this.

This is pretty excited. This is huge. Around the 1st of September, Phelps game calls is going to come out with what they're calling. the Clay Newcomb Acorn grunt bleat. This is not a joke. This is a really high end. And when I say high end, it's actually quite a revolutionary deer call.

It is a two and one grunt bleat. Which I didn't realize. I was with Jason Phelps in Mexico, and we were just talking about deer calls. And Phelps has a deer bleat and they have a grunt. And I said, man, we need a two and one. call. I don't want to carry two calls and I love a dough bleat.

I've called up so many deer with a dough bleed, especially before the rut. During the rut, all you hear about in deer hunting is grunt calls during the rut to get an aggressive buck to come in. What you don't hear about is in the early season using a bleat or what you hear about it, but, you know, mainly guys are talking about grunt calls. Well, I said, man, I want to inhale, exhale grunt call and he was like, well, they don't make any. There isn't one.

And they came up with an incredible design. And this calls about... Four and three quarter inches. It's probably longer than that. I was going to say five and a half, six inches. But it's got a... It's got a good grunt that you can't top out. You can do it real low.

Or you can do it. It doesn't peg out. A lot of the cheaper grunt calls will be. peg out. Blow it as hard as you can blow and it won't peg out. But from the same side, you can inhale a very supple dough bloat. Wow. That's awesome.

That's pretty good. Can you flip it around and blow? Well, so that's the thing. So when you're hunting real cold weather, if you want to not exhale into the call and freeze the reeds, you can flip it and suck. Inhale to get a grunt. And then blow. So anyway.

Any way you... He's flipping it back and forth. Wow. Yeah, I was flipping it back. Yeah. Y'all couldn't see that. No. But, okay, so there's not a call like this.

So in theory, you could inhale to get a dough bleed and flip it and inhale to get a butt grunt if you didn't want to freeze the reeds. Yeah. But what I like about the call, this is, you know, the can calls are so good, the little Primos can calls. I mean, they really are. I wanted a call that you could replicate that soft and you can do it on these. But this is the Akron grunner. This is the deer hunter's grunner. Spell it too.

Acron. A-K-E-R-N. Mudd. Spelled the old way, the old way 20% of us in the country say. And this is made of genuine white oak. Oh, my goodness. And this is a deer hunter's call. That's a great call.

It really is, man. Man, I didn't ask him to do this. They did it. I love it. It's got my signature on it. They're making 500 of these. They're making only 500 of them. It's called the Acre and Grunner, the Acre and Grunt and Bleat.

And it's got a beautiful little green, little green band in the middle, but it's made a white oak. I mean, that tree right there fed deer. Hey, it'll go quick, man. Yeah. Come with a lanyer, too. Yeah. So you can. get that from Phelps in early September.

This is big. Getting in line. And the reason you need a dough bleed is you can call in a pretty high percentage of doughs in the early season bleating at them. Has that been your experience, Alexis? Every time. Yeah. Every time.

I've been looking for something just like that. Thank you. Good. Good. Excellent. Excellent. Brent, I have a couple of questions for you. So I was listening to this country life just today.

and there's a story you tell in there about punching your dad in the stomach while he was asleep yeah what was going through your mind i can't i don't know and i even talked about it in there but it was like i mean i can remember that and it was like i watched that on tv because i can't believe i would do i was not a violent child by any means and and was not a behavior problem either but i was just I lay in there, and I guess I'd run out of things to think about it other than going swimming. And when I just looked over there at him, he laid that he was so peaceful, that he was sleeping so good, it was like he was in a coma.

And Riva, man, she, you know, she edits the podcast, Reva Hanson does, and she put that him in there snoring. It was absolutely perfect. I mean, I was took right back to that spot. But I thought, I laid there, and I looked at my little old arm, was in the elementary school. I looked at my arm and I thought, I wonder how hard I would have to hit him to get elbow deep. So I just set up on the edge of the bed and you are no more relaxed when you're in that first 10 minutes of real good sleep. I mean, you are out because he was, you could just, his breathing was just like the ocean man.

It was just flowing just easy. I just set up on the bed and as hard as I could. I tried to put my fist from his belly to his backbone. Let me tell you, regardless of how good your dad is sleeping or what state of comatose he's in, he comes awake pretty quick when you do that. And it was, I couldn't, I got two steps away from the bed, you know, thinking right then the best place I could be was anywhere that he wasn't. And he caught me. And I just know, I'm dead.

He's going to kill me. But he didn't, obviously. I lived through it. And he didn't even want me. That's part of the story. So this is a story on this country life podcast. It's about swimming holes. And the climax of the story is his dad takes him swimming after this, okay?

But his dad wanted to take a nap before they went swimming. We'd been fishing that morning. We'd been fishing that morning. We spent the night. Yep, brim fishing. He taught a big mess of fish. Went and took them up there and cooked them for dinner. Some folks would say lunch, they'd be wrong.

And then he said, as soon as we get this kitchen cleaned up, up, we're going to rest a minute, and then we're going to go swimming. Well, I knew rest a minute was nap, and I ain't about no nap. Or let me rephrase that. I wasn't about no nap then. Then. I see the value of it. I don't know.

I was in the fifth or sixth grade. Alexis, what were you thinking when you married Brandt? I don't know. How long have y'all been married? I'm still thinking about it. what we told Steve 12 years I think is what we told that's what we're telling people 12 years because I think that's accurate but I'm a little worried about this story about him punching his dad during that by time because I'm a big napper you're concerned I'm a little concerned about this and maybe this is why I haven't heard that story yet yeah you haven't heard this story

you told me that story before yeah you have I remember when it when you came on I remember you didn't give me the context of swimming holes yeah I remember one time you said you punched your dad in the stomach well I never did anything like that after that before or after so I don't know it was... Did you ever punch your dad, Clay? No, I don't think so. No, no. I would have killed him. He knew better.

Yeah, I don't know. I don't think so. I do remember one time we were taking care of my littlest brother when he was just a baby and you were asleep and me and Zach were just kind of like tired of messing with him. And so I remember putting him on your belly and like running.

You got her. It was like, this is this guy's responsibility. No, okay, Brent, tell me, so since Alexis is here, and tell me, I remember one time you told me, so Alexis is kind of a city girl. Am I right or am I right? Very accurate. Very much so. Okay.

And you told me one time that you quoted the words to a Loretta Lynn song to her telling her a story. And she thought, we hadn't been married long. And it was coming before Christmas. Before the realization. Yeah. And it was before Christmas. And long before we had, long before we ever had Bailey. And she asked me something about a Christmas ornament.

She said, you have a special Christmas ornament from when you were. a child and I said she got looked over at me and I sad as faces I could put on I said no we didn't have Christmas ornaments we were poor and she's oh you know and just like oh you know I'm not going to go there it's obviously a bad place and I said now if I can get their lyrics right here I said you know in the in the in the summertime we didn't have shoes to wear she said you didn't I said no I said but in the wintertime we'd all get a brand new pair she said oh that's good i said i said my mama my mama would order them from a mail a mail order

catalog she said really i said yeah it was money made for my dad selling the hog she said did you grow up on a little house on my prairie and i said no that's the lyrics to colemanor's daughter and she ain't trusted the thing i've said said she called me an idiot she said you idiot Josh, can you play us that song? You know that song? I know of it. I've never played it. But, mm, mm.

Yeah. So, dad, yesterday was your 50th wedding anniversary. 50 years. Congratulations. Yeah, quite a deal. How have you kept Judy with you for that long? You must be quite the charm. You got married in 1973.

73. 73. Yeah. August, I believe. 50 years. Yeah. That's pretty good, man. That's got to be the longest hostage case in history.

Yeah, I tell you what, it's been terrible, but we suffered. Now, if you know Miss Judy Newcomb, she's a real sweetheart. Oh, gosh, yeah. So anyway, I've been real blessed to have Judy Newcomb. So was I. Pretty fortunate. Yeah, you are lucky you had her when you were raised up. She was the kind of mother that would just, she wouldn't discipline or whip or anything.

He's all loved. And on the other side, it was me. So it made a good balance, really. Good cup, bad cop. Good cup, bad cop. Yeah. Well, that's congratulations on 50 years. That's big.

Thank you. That's a pretty big deal. It's a really big thing. On blood trails, the stories don't end when the hunt is over. They just get darker. I've seen something in the road. I instantly thought it was a sleeping bag, and there was a full of blood. Oh, my God, he doesn't have a hit.

Blood Trails is a true crime podcast born in the outdoors, where the terrain is unforgiving, the evidence is scarce, and the truth gets buried under brush and silence. Indications were he should be right there, but he wasn't. This season, we're going deeper, from cold case files to whispered suspicions, from remote mountains to frozen back. Backwoods. Each story begins in the wilderness and ends in darkness. Because out here, there are no witnesses, no cameras, just fragments and the people left behind trying to piece them back together. He's not an honest person. He's incapable of being honest.

Somebody somewhere knows something. I'm Jordan Sillers. Season two of Blood Trails premieres April 16th. Follow now on Apple, Iheart, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. Alexis, what was it like being on the Meteor podcast? So Alexis, have we already said that yet? Alexis was on the Meteor podcast. Yes, but you can never say it too much. In reality, in reality, I just said hi in how many years I was married to Brent. But I was there. Talking about dire wolves and all kind of stuff.

Correct. And I love dogs. So it was great. I learned a lot. I did learn a lot. It was fun. I was honored to be there. You know, Brent's,

little video kind of went viral on Meteor's TikTok. He just showed it to me. Talking about cats eating the nose off of dead people. Yeah. Weirdly, I've actually heard you say that before. You were the first person I've ever heard say that.

Well, I just saw what was happening is I was just scrolling through and I saw if a cat and I was like, Brent's about to tell them that cats eat dead people. You know, the words came up, and I was like, oh, man. And so I paused to see if you did, and he did. And I thought, that's the nastiest thing.

Oh, yeah. You always tell that story. You always I could forget it. Misty Newcomb loves cats. I actually hate cats. I wish I didn't, and I don't know why I do. And I've had some real extreme responses to cats. When we first moved out here, you know, this was just kind of a wild place, like we didn't have.

Oh, yeah. And I think Clay always, he. He always, my dad kind of, he didn't like cats. And so every time we'd see when, he'd like, I hate cats. And so Clay just thought, well, that's why Misty doesn't like cats. It's just kind of like a family culture thing. And so he always told me, I don't want you passing that on to our kids. There's no reason to hate cats.

So we're not going to hate cats. I mean, I hate cats, but there's no reason to just be, like, afraid of cats. Yeah. So I would always just try to keep it under wraps, you know. And when we moved out here, there wasn't a whole lot going on out here before we got here. We had a clear out land. And it was still kind of wild. You would see all sorts of animals coming around.

And usually that was fun. Well, the girls were little. They were three and two. And Bear was a newborn when we moved out here. And we were coming in, I think, from getting groceries or something. And I brought Bear in. He was asleep. I brought Bear in, and I left the door open so that the girls could come in behind me.

And as I'm walking up the stairs, I see a cat that was abnormal. I mean, it wasn't like a normal cat. It was mangy. It had blood on it. It something had happened to this cat. And rather than meowing, it was barking. And I just said, girls, don't touch that cat. Don't look at it.

Don't invite it over here. Because, you know, River would have like, come here, kitty. And so I was like, don't. Something's wrong with that cat. Y'all just come inside. And I walked out and took bear inside. When I walked out, that cat was in our living room. Oh.

And my girls were sitting there. Cat burglar. And it was just the girls and I. But I instinctively did what most people would do, and I just started turning circles and screaming out loud. But remembered that I'm not supposed to pass that trait onto my kids. And so what I'm screaming is, everything's okay.

Don't panic. There's no worry girls. But I am in an at a tall. I mean, you could have wrapped a snake around my arms, and I would have been calmer than seeing that cat right there in my living room. And I just start screaming. I get on the phone. Clay was out of town that I called my aunt and uncle who are like just up the road.

And I am in a panic. They don't know if something's wrong with one of the kids. And I'm just screaming, there's a cat in my house. And I'm going crazy. They came down here. When they walked in my aunt Terry, I mean, she walked in less than five minutes and they live 10 minutes away, less than five minutes from the time I made that call and she had Lysol, she had

Windex, she had like gloves. I don't know what she thought had happened. She was ready. She thought maybe a cat had eaten someone. I don't like cats. I've not missing Nickham. We don't know what happened to the cat. For 20, probably 22 years

and we've been very good friends but I came very close to ruining our friendship one time by shoving a kitten in her face and it was not her thing. Let's just say. Yeah, it's not like a thing in my head that I'm choosing. I think Clay believes this is a choice that I have made. I don't know why.

I choose to hang cats. Gary's asked me before if something bad happened to me with a cat. If that happened, that's repressed deep in my... I think it's been fed. You think it's been fed? I think it's... I think even the more we talk about it, the bigger it gets. Okay.

Well, I need people to just rest assured when they wake up, they got a cat in the house. They wake up in the morning. Check on your loved ones. And Fluffy is laying on your chest. and you think, oh, this cat loves me so much. He's checking to see if you're breathing because he's fixing to eat your nose. And I think that deep down, I know that. Like, I didn't need you to tell me that.

When you said that I was like, that's exactly what I'm afraid of. I know the potential that this cat has. Exactly. It's going to kill me. That'll get some hate. The ultimate predator. House cat. There you go.

Well, we're on the third Mississippi River episode. Were we supposed to listen to that before we came here? Yes. Yes, you were. Yes, you were. Are you joking? I'll wait outside. We should go to Trinist's group.

You know, I thought this episode was really good. Like, she wasn't expecting it. Well, I wasn't, Clay. I kind of felt like it was, it was a little, it was like too much, just a little too much information. He, Clay. Alexis is like, yep, you won't get an invite back to Alexis. That's fine. I got one.

That's all I needed was one. He kind of preps, like, he'll come out after he finishes a podcast and I always know what he thinks about it. And that shapes how I hear it. So when I listened to it, I was kind of expecting this to be like over the top. But I thought it was really good. I found it super interesting. It was all like I never put anything in the bear grease that I don't think is essential. Like it's it's got to be essential.

There's no filler. Like I don't have to make a podcast an hour long. I can make it 30 minutes. I can do whatever. So everything that was said, I felt like was essential for the story. It was just, there was just, there was a lot. There was nothing redundant in it. Yeah.

Yeah, it was good. I think that when you're doing a podcast like the Mississippi, I mean, for example, I thought, as I listened to it, I thought, oh, he's about to talk about blues music. Like, I thought that was the direction. Oh, when he. When you started playing that. Yeah. And then you didn't go that direction. And I think that, and we've kind of talked about this whole whole, you said it at the beginning.

It's hard to know. There's so much people need to know, and it's hard to know which one to give you first. Yeah, and then you'll come back to something or not. What I, what I've, the reason I feel. like knowing who Ellett, Humphreys, and Eads are. Those three guys. And not that everybody in the world needs to remember it. But when you see the depth of work and human investment and engineering and thought and everything that went into Taming that river, it just makes you respect it. Because, I mean, we just drive over it and just think that this river just, it's just here. It's just

not that big a deal. But I mean, this was one of the greatest feats of human engineering on planet Earth was taming this river. And these guys, and their story is so fascinating because there's these two guys that are being paid by the government to give reports on the river.

And they hate each other. They hate each other. And there's this ego rivalry. And they both agree on the same thing. There needs to be levies and outlets. And yet, because one of them wants to be different than the other, he says levies only will work, even though his

research said that it wouldn't. They adopt that policy for like 50 years in the Corps of Engineers and then levies only fails and causes the greatest natural disaster, greatest financial natural disaster in American history. It's just kind of wild when you see the human nature, how it's played. And, you know, man and rivers have always been, have always been linked and rivers any kind of obstacle a natural obstacle brings out the kind of the the showcase of human possibility good guys bad guys cheaters those that have integrity heroes villains you know it's like anything can happen but so yeah what brant what stood out to you in this one anything stand out oh a couple of things one of them do you like when they ate that horse oh yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah they're great. That was one of my favorite parts. Cabaza de Vaca when that horse drowned along with Juan Velazquez.

I know. I know that they, they hit the bank down there in Florida, but where did that happen? So the first inland journey into what is now America from Europeans was down kind of in south central Florida. So you don't know. I'm asking what? river do you know did they know oh they yeah it's in there i don't know what okay i offhand i don't

but i mean that wasn't when i was talking about i just i thought about that when it happened when i when i heard it but the bureaucracy and both of us having i'm not going to steal alexus thunder here but knowing something doesn't work and going on with it anyway yeah and put money behind it and sweat equity and people in there. And it failed miserably. Yeah. And catastrophic to, I mean, forget the farms. Just think about all the people.

You know, I mentioned on, I think, rendered number two about my grandfather going over there. Are we ready to get into that part? Sure. He talked about that. He would have been about 14 or he would have been 14 when they went over there. He was born 19, 13. 14 when they went where? when they went over there to help with the flood.

Okay, well, yeah, tell us. We don't remember. No, I'm sorry. My grandfather was born 1913. And when the flood happened in 27, and he lived in southeast Arkansas where I grew up. Mm-hmm. And they were taking boxcar loads of folks

and truck loads of folks over there to help, not only with rebuilding, but for recovery. And he said they did a lot of that recovering bodies and stuff over there. And some folks they never found. And he said, as a young man, he said it was absolutely horrible. He said it was, it was, he said it was like you what even, he had never, he said, I'd never seen anything like that. He didn't fight in World War II. But he said he would have to imagine that that's what it was like for those folks seeing that.

And he said it was just absolutely horrible. Just whole families, some whole family's gone. Yeah. You know, and people walking around trying to find. loved ones and neighbors and he said there was absolutely it was just like a clean slate of mud nothing there man i've always had a pretty strong philosophy about not living near big rivers during the times we live in i mean for real like i don't want to live near big river i think it's i think you and alexis risky where you live risky i don't want to live near an oregon i don't want to live near an

Who in the world gave you an idea that that ocean wasn't going to jump out of those banks and come swallow you, your house, your family, and your mule? Yeah, every September. Mm-hmm. Yeah. The end of time is not a good time to be living on the coast. Well, the end of times, pal, you ain't going to be safe right up here in northwest Arkansas. Good point. True.

Alexis, what did you think? Well, we were talking about this on the way up here. And in all honesty, I have no idea about it. And about this flood. You never heard of it. And I have never heard of it. And I guess what I've decided, as I'm listening, I'm thinking, why? Why do I not know about this?

This was obviously a big deal. And I guess it's because I wasn't raised here. I lived in Texas. That in no way affected anywhere where we would, where we'd be learning about it. Yeah. You know. Well, it's not surprising to me that people wouldn't know about it. I would not have known about the flood of 1927 if it hadn't been for John Barry's book, honestly.

I mean, so I don't know that that's that surprising. They wasn't taught in school where I grew up, but my only key to it was my grandpa talking about it. And my grandparents, they lived in the Delta area. So I'm sure they did know about it. And my parents were raised in Arkansas. So they probably did. We just was never talked about it. And so we were talking about it or listening to it today.

Like, wow, I've really missed out on something. I had no idea about this part of history. And so I learned something. I did learn something from your podcast. Oh, wow. All of it. I learned all of it. You learned everything you know about it.

Today. So, yes. Alexis, you work in, in, we won't say your specific job, but you work inside of systems where you're in bureaucratic structures. Right. Would you say that something like that could happen today? Absolutely. It happens every day.

It's just not with a river. I mean, they're continuously making decisions knowing it's really not going to work. But we do it anyway. We do it all the time. And so, but it was interesting listening to your, you know,

that was way back then. Like 1927, they were making those bad choices. Yeah. And you think, well, 1927, 2023, why are we still doing that?

We haven't learned anything. during that time that, hey, maybe we should have, our instinct was correct. We should really think about before we do something. So that was very interesting. We did talk about that. And just to clarify, when she said we, she didn't mean the place where she works.

She means the bureaucracy as a whole. Yeah, yeah, for sure. Well, I actually read a psychological study and listened to this whole podcast that really talked about the difficulty of back and out of a bad decision. Right. So it's not just like political structures.

It's everywhere. Absolutely. That even in business where profit is king, it's very difficult to step back. If you've attached yourself to an initiative and you know it's going down and it's not going to work, it's very difficult psychologically. You actually have to train yourself to step away from bad decisions because you kind of attach yourself to an initiative. So in this case, it's a little different because this guy was like actually created. Yeah, he was one of the first leaders of the Corps of Engineers. I will also say just in defense of, I mean, the whole podcast was kind of about this struggle with knowing the right answer, but something else happening, is that it is easy for us.

And it was easy for them in 1927 to look back like 70 years prior and, you know, point have fault. So it actually worked for a long time. relatively well. There were floods and different things, but not a flood to this scale. And so... My brother and I bought a duck camp inside the Arkansas River living.

And at that point, the time when we got the loan and we bought it, there hadn't been a flood in there of any degree in 100 years. And after we bought it, we owned it 20-something years. And it got in there. seven or eight times.

Oh, really? Really? Yeah. Wow. So we're sitting there thinking, well, we've got this flood insurance. But all it's doing is getting a little check and then we've got to put it all and cleaning all this stuff back out of it. So you can't flood it just nonstop after not flooding for that area of flooding for like 100 years.

Yes. Yeah. Well, and that's the thing about these rivers is that you're always working against a giant that's unbeatable. and unpredictable. So there had never been a flood and recorded history that big, you know. And what we haven't said yet on the podcast

and we're not really going to get into it was in 2011, there was a flood that was bigger than in 1927. You're not going to get into that? Well, it's, you know, I mean, who wants to hear a good news story? Nobody, not the Bearers podcast listeners. They want to hear about disaster. No, no, I'm joking.

I'm joking. The flood of 2011, it worked. I mean, the Corps of Engineers, it was the flood of the biggest flood and recorded history on this continent. In 2011, the levels were higher than 1927. And it worked. They have floodways.

I have great appreciation for the Corps of Engineers. Oh, there, you know, when I did this, I didn't want it to sound like I was throwing the Corps under the bus. I mean, it's just an interesting story. Yeah. But I mean, they have, what they've done with the river is incredible. And it worked. So, and it's a.

Thanks for the Corps of Engineers. I read a whole book about the flood of 2011. And what they did during that time, they saw what was happening. It was this perfect storm. It was high snow melt in the Rockies, big rains in the Ohio River Valley. I mean, it's not just like raining in southeast Arkansas. saw in Memphis that makes it flood. It's all these factors way up in the drainage basin.

And so they, what they had to do was in multiple places, blow up the levee at floodways. So there's places where they have dynamite embedded in the levee, buried in the levy. And they light it. Yeah, ready to blow the levy up. And so it diverts the water in a strategic. place that goes in and floods, these huge areas that are primarily agricultural areas. And if you live in a floodway, like you know it. You're like, hey, you can build a house here.

This is a federal floodway. It's the way I understand it. And you just kind of bank on your house may flood or you build your house up like these deer camps are built up on stilts. And there's a lot of floodways all down the Mississippi from basically Memphis down to to Louisiana. There's some wild stuff like that. And the Atchapalaya River

wise off of the Mississippi in Louisiana. And they think if it hadn't been for the Corps of Engineers keeping the Mississippi in the Mississippi, the whole Mississippi River would have naturally turned into the Achefalia basin. And basically the Mississippi River would have cut down through Louisiana and just like destroyed the place.

But they continually monitor that section of the river and do a lot of stuff. Anyway, we're not, we're going to get into some of that, but pretty wild. On blood trails, the stories don't end when the hunt is over. They just get darker. I've seen something in the road. I instantly thought it was a

sleeping bed and there was a full of blood. Oh my God, he doesn't have a hit. Blood trails is a true crime podcast born in the outdoors. Where the terrain is unforgiving, the evidence is scarce, and the truth gets buried under brush and silence. Indications were he should be right there, but he wasn't. This season, we're going deeper, from cold case files to whispered suspicions, from remote mountains to frozen backwoods. Each story begins in the wilderness and ends in darkness. Because out here,

there are no witnesses, no cameras. Just for... fragments and the people left behind trying to piece them back together. He's not an honest person. He's incapable of being honest. Somebody somewhere knows something. I'm Jordan Sillers. Season 2 of Blood Trails premieres April 16th. Follow now on Apple, IHeart, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. Dad, what did you think? What stood out to you in this one? Well, how little I knew about it.

I mean, I've crossed the Mississippi River like most everybody. not hundreds but tens of times and you know you just cross it and look at it and go what a nice body of water yeah and then you find out how complicated how powerful and you just go wow this is probably you know one of the most powerful natural sources in the world i mean it's just you know you take water and it's pretty powerful yeah and uh you know i love mark twain's thoughts you know how he describe the river. I love that song from old Charlie. I can sing that one.

When you read the lyrics, you know, I mean, he had it tagged. So, and the human nature of Humphreys and Elliot, Ellett,

Ellett, you know, those guys, you know, they're geniuses. They're the top of the heap. They're the best there are, but they're still human. man. I mean, they're going to lie, cheat, and still occasionally. But it all worked, except, you know, maybe, maybe the flood was a little bad. But yeah, anyway, I got, I really enjoyed it. It was more, it's like you said, it's, it was almost more than I could handle. I mean, I'll be

honest with my doctor buddy told me that after you have major surgery, your brain doesn't work quite right. And he just had major surgery and we were talking it. He couldn't think of a simple part that we're trying. He said that's an example of what I'm talking about. So my brain's not working real well, but it worked well enough to realize that I was way over my head with this thing. I mean, I had to listen to it two or three times. Well, see, that, to me, that's a success inside of this because what I, the reason I was

interested in the Mississippi River two years ago was because of how I realized I knew nothing about it. but I knew that it was important to America. I knew that rivers are fascinating. It's important to Deer Camp, according to you. How's that? Well, you said, you guys, bear gracious, that gives you something to talk about. Yes.

Well, it just shows you how complex things are all around us, that we have no idea what went into it. You just, and that, to me, makes the world a deeper, more robust, It's a place where you can be curious and learn and understand things. And yeah, the river is absolutely fascinating. And it is as dynamic of a natural feature as we have in this country. Like if you think about the Rocky Mountains, and you think about going to Montana, going to Yellowstone,

going to all these places where there's this grandiose, like, big majesty that you look at and go, wow. The Mississippi River is the same. when you look at impact. But you might drive over and just like, man, that's just a big mud hole. Yeah. You know, it has a different kind of beauty. It has a mule float down it occasionally too. That's pretty crazy.

That was kind of crazy. That's crazy. Yeah. But hey, you think about that river. I mean, it runs straight through the country. And as the country developed, it came to that river and just stopped. Yeah. And then these guys started going, look, we can.

make iron, but that won't build a, how are we going to get across this thing? So it created a totally new product in steel. I mean, when you can read about steel, and I mean, it was a big deal, you know, for this guy, I forget his name. It was Eads that was challenging Carnegie. Yeah. Carnegie, they were making steel. Carnegie was a gazillionaire. But it wasn't good still. Well, it was the best, the market, it was the best that they ever had. But Eads came in and basically raised the whole standard by testing every single piece of steel. And then they were able to, you know, that changed the whole steel market, you know. You know, a book I read, and I think it might have been Lewis and Clark.

I can't remember. But this guy that, it was a little different from this story, but the guy that designed this bridge, he had to, he had to create a product that would work. So he builds the bridge across the river and no one would cross it. And he kept trying to figure out, how am I going to get these people to cross it? So he had a big press conference, had newspapers out. He had an elephant. And of course, people knew that an elephant won't do anything dangerous. And he had the elephant walk across the bridge and then all of a sudden, here they go. Some else I learned today. So I don't know how true that was. Hey, in the book. Okay, bridges and animals. We were, we were, we were right.

mules Saturday in the Ozarks and we we came up on we're riding down kind of a county road and came up on a big brand new concrete bridge that was really high and I was riding banjo and a guy a good mule man was riding with me and he said Clay is that mule yours ever crossed a bridge and I said well I don't know I guess not I don't think he has and he said he was like better you know if you want to go around it you can you better watch him it's really high

because what happens when you walk across a concrete bridge is it just sounds clipping across there it sounds funny it's hollow it's just this unique thing and so he I was I was a little bit worried about crossing the bridge but banjo went right across it way to go buddy really yeah just like your elephant dad just went from 10 grand to 15 grand

All things come together. James B. Eads was the guy that he's talking about. Yeah. Yeah. He was in the podcast. I know. That's what I'm saying. He was the one that made the elephant?

Yeah. No way. What's his name? The Eads Bridge is a three-art steel trust bridge. It was Eads from the... Eads is the one that had the elephant. Oh, okay. I asked John Barry about that.

For some reason, I thought his name was Scott, but I'm sure... You sure Eads was the one with the elephant? Listen, I mean, I'm on the St. Louis Bank website in the mid-1800s. Okay. That's it. That's our boy. James Buchanan Eads had a learned distressed of riverboats and deep determination, a necessary combination to construct the unbuildable bridge.

That was the highlight for me. Where do you get to an elephant? Yeah, yeah, Eads. Come on, dude. It's like 1850. Missouri. Missouri. Come on, now.

How did you get the elephant? Missouri? Yeah. I've always had a fascination with craftsmen and structures and listening to that part of the podcast was just fascinating to me thinking about this guy. I had actually never heard of him before. And the way that John Barry was talking about his intellectual prowess and genius, I found it surprising that he's not a more common name. Well, he's, you know, I think it just goes back so deep and there's only so much that, you know, a person can kind of file away in their brain. But he's up there

with the great engineers and inventors of America. Well, the dude taught himself calculus, and I couldn't have somebody that knew calculus, couldn't teach me calculus. I just have great appreciation for structures that stand the test of time. Can you believe that bridge is still in operation? I mean, I think that's fascinating. Yeah.

And had the hat tip to Mr. Eads. Mr. Eads. Well, and I thought it was interesting that in Mark Twain's book, Life on the Mississippi, he directly addressed Eads and tried to cut him down at the knees. Think about writing a book and you're a best-selling author. And you are not just an author like you would be today. Today you're an author and there's you're, you know, there's also Netflix and there's social media and there's all these different avenues to get media into your brain.

Back then, books, newspapers, there wasn't even radio. And so Mark Twain is like the, I don't know, the biggest guy in America. And he calls out Eads in his book as a guy that thinks he knows it all but doesn't. And so Twain called it. He was like, you can't control this river. You're never going to be able to control it. And I felt like it was important to put the Mark Twain stuff in there. Oh, yeah.

First of all. You can't talk about the Mississippi. I mean, obviously, there's a lot of people that have read Mark Twain. Maybe this is a surprise to you, Josh. I have not. I haven't read much Mark Twain. It was required reading this school. It was for our kids, too.

Yeah, where I came from, they never made me read Mark Twain. That's surprising. Yeah. I don't know. But I felt like reading those sections, they were so witty. and you see Mark Twain, he was so enamored with riverboat pilots and how they had to navigate, which was pretty wild. And then his, my favorite part was when he talked about how science, back in the day, he was ridiculing the most modern science, basically saying that scientists change their minds all the time and use inaccurate things to get the spiel I made about science there. It was a pretty good spiel.

Well, it's not that, you know, there's one extreme of not trusting science where you're a flat earth and you just don't think science even matters. I'm not there at all. I'm a big fan of science. Much of, much of some part of science is kind of making the best speculations of what we can for the future based upon what we know or think happened in the past. And I mean, if there's one thing that's that is certain in science is that it really does constantly change. Yeah. Constantly. And that's okay. That means it's working in that we're progressing. Anyway, it's soapbox.

It's kind of funny when people say you've got to trust science and they kind of belittle people who question some aspects of things that are coming out. You know, it's okay to question that stuff. But it's also when people treat the scientists as if like, they're not credible or they're not, they're not intelligent, or they've got some sinister motive. That's also wrong because that's just part of science. That's part of discovery is you've got to run some tests.

And all you're saying with science is, in this test, this is what it looked like. Yeah. That's really all you're saying. Yeah. And you can generalize that out in other ways. But in every, you know, you put a lot of those little rocks together. You get a little mountain.

Yeah. Well, but what I'm always saying on bear grease is that, There are some parts of the human existence and life on this planet that will never be measured by science that are more real than gravity. Yeah. I could, if you get a tattoo for bear grease, write that word for word. Have someone look it over grammatically to make sure it makes sense. But that's the truth. Like the trend of the intelligent is to be like, the only thing that's on planet Earth is what can be measured, seen, tasted, and touched.

What I was trying to say is that that is new. Humans for a long time have known that there is a spiritual dynamic to this place. Mr. Earl knows it. There's a spiritual dynamic and there's a natural dynamic, both very real, both very relevant to human existence. I mean, like, love science. Also love the things that will never be tracked by science. Like asking a pinball machine to make bread. How'd you like that, Brent?

Yeah, that kind of came out of nowhere. Bam, bam. Bam, bam. Yeah, that was good. That sounded like something out of this country life. I could just see Clay sitting in here in his office and thinking, what's the most obscure thing I could think of right now to. That one just came. I didn't even think about it.

It just happened. Sometimes I just write themselves. Sometimes they write themselves. Yes, yes. Testosterone. Any comments on the testosterone part? I'm getting some eye rolls. Prince raising his hand

When I started playing When I started playing on the way up here I said now There's not going to be a test I don't think Sometimes there used to be But But the day ain't over

Obviously I said But just think about something there That made sense to you Or maybe it didn't make sense to you That there's something that you Just something that you grasp onto And Because he's going to ask you

What you got out about it Or what stood out to you? She's like, okay. We started playing and I started playing it. And when it got to the part about the underwear, she's like, can I comment on that? I don't know. I don't know. Christy asked me, she goes, is that true?

And I said, I don't know. She's like, she's like, is he talking about boxer briefs? And I was like, well, I guess. And she's like, is it the same with whitey tides? I said, I don't know, babe. Well, tight man's underwear would obviously be. Whitey Tides. Whitey Tides.

Yeah. No. For, it's legitimately, there are people. In my podcast, well, I talked about me and my dad's tripping down to our boxers. Yeah. You know, to take a nap and the heat. Mm. Anything you want to say about boxers or?

They're great. I agree with you. Well, can I say, can I say something else that I learned or that I like? We talked about this, too, is the political part. of it always dings for me when I'm listening to something because I love it I mean that's my life I'm you know I like I like all that kind of stuff and the Hoover yeah that was so fascinating to me I had no idea about because you never hear about him as a president I'm a big president person I love that history I love to learn about it you know I knew about the voting you know because of Lincoln you know all of that made sense because of what I've learned but I'm a lot of I've learned but I I did not know that he was such a big part of that. And he had, you know, deceived and, you know, all of that makes sense. Right.

But I didn't know any of that. So that was very interesting. Well, that's a good thing to talk about is the things that that flood influenced in America. And what just one thing John Barry said is that it got Herbert Hoover elected president. And he was a hero of the flood. Right. Right. There was a lot of good things that he did.

He was a genius as. John Barry said. Right. But then, yeah, and then it's so interesting that it changed the African Americans from the, from the Republican to the Democratic Party. Yeah, I had no idea. The point when it happened, which is interesting. I just didn't know.

Like, it was neat. That was neat to learn about that part of history. Mm-hmm. I didn't know about. Misty, do any of those five things stand out to you? The five things? Four things? Well, I did like the...

I think they were five. I appreciated your spiel on on Mark Twain and science and I... We've already covered that. I thought... I did not realize that they kept the black family's hostage.

Yeah. That was total news to me. I knew about the Great Migration. I mean, there's a lot of like... That's a really big part of history. But what's interesting is that I've actually taught them. about the great migration, but you always teach about it in the sense of where they went to

and where people moved to and kind of what was pushing them there. And you think about it in terms of Jim Crow laws and the in hospitable South, but boy, that was a whole different, that was a whole different level. I didn't know any of that. That was news to me. So I thought that was interesting. I agree with Alexis. I thought the Hoover thing was interesting.

Probably my favorite part of the whole thing was when you were talking about Mark Twain. I enjoyed hearing his readings. I hadn't heard those. But I thought the part about spirituality was interesting. And yeah, Clay likes to talk about testosterone a lot these days. When I listened to it, I was like, good grief.

We just had this conversation just like over coffee this morning. And so, yeah, I didn't know that I was getting teed up to hear it on the podcast again. Teed. Oh, see what you did there. I wish I was that clever. I told you. they just write themselves.

In John Barry's book, it talks a lot about what happened on those levee refugee camps, the murders, the incredible, you know, there was a time when they said that a mule was worth more than a person on that levy. And there was, yeah, it got really wild for a long time. And that river was up for a long time. And those people were on the levees. And, yeah, they wouldn't let the black people leave. They would let the white people leave.

And it all went back to that thing of, to Will and Leroy Percy, those guys who, you know, it's like there's good and there's bad. Yeah, that was kind of crazy because they were so. Well, it's kind of like, you know, it got down to, as they say in the cattle industry, down to nut cutting time. and they Leroy kind of showed his hand about really where he was at It's why motivation matters because

like you could see just this one section from from I was it podcast at number two Right when it talked about the person And you think okay well these are decent people But then you you listen to part three

It's like well they did some good things Because they were motivated by this And therefore the motivation is what actually matters the most because here, I wouldn't use the terms that Clay just used. Testosterone. I mean, here we go again. But it really showed their motivation

and that actually, because that's their motivation that influenced their actions in a different way. Yeah, yeah. I mean, the thing about the Persis, though, is that they declared their, they never tried to hide why they. they were like, we're going to build an empire. We need labor.

We need to empower these people, so they'll stay here. But then when they wanted to leave, that's when the Persis were like, hey, these guys need to stay here for the farms and for everything that's going on. So, yeah, no, it's an interesting, interesting story. We've got one more Mississippi River podcast. It's going to be totally different. It's not going to be deep and heavy and old. It's going to be Fish and turtles

And there's a little near-death inside of it That's got what? There's one near-death experience Get ready. Get ready. Go ahead. Well, one of the things that I thought was interesting to When they were talking about the year before the flood

And everybody was like, hey, if it rains anymore We're going to be in trouble. I was listening to that the day I listened to These people talk about our heat this year. Yeah. Yeah. And they're all like, it can't get much harder than this,

so we're going to be in trouble. And I just thought it was kind of interesting, like this major natural disaster and crisis that hit America, and they're kind of having similar conversations right now. And I just thought, what would it have been like to have read that in the paper? You know, these guys are worried about the water.

And it would probably be exactly like I feel right now hearing about it in a podcast. Mm-hmm. About the heat. Man, we really put you in a bind here. We did. And you really put me in a bind.

you're not even aware of. There's a game camera right out there. It's been up for years. No problem. It doesn't work. Well, Alexis, it's great to have you on the podcast. It's been an honor to be huge. Thank you.

You know, after seven years of not being on here. And begging. Mm-hmm. Yep. It was worth it. It's time. It was time. It was worth it.

So. Thank you. Yes. Dad, good to have you back. Thank you. I hope everybody has a great life. On Blood Trails, the stories don't end when the hunt is over. They just get darker.

I've seen something in the road. I instantly thought it was a sleeping day. And there was a pool of blood. Oh, my God, he doesn't have a hit. Blood Trails is a true crime podcast born in the outdoors, where the terrain is unforgettable. giving, the evidence is scarce and the truth gets buried under brush and silence. Indications were he should be right there, but he wasn't.

This season, we're going deeper, from cold case files to whispered suspicions, from remote mountains to frozen backwoods. Each story begins in the wilderness and ends in darkness. Because out here, there are no witnesses, no cameras, just fragments and the people left behind trying to piece them back together. He's not an honest person. He's incapable of being honest. Somebody somewhere knows something. I'm Jordan Sillers. Season 2 of Blood Trails premieres April 16th.

Follow now on Apple, IHeart, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an IHeart podcast. Guaranteed Human.