Bear Grease - Ep. 96: The Arkansaw Image

Episode Date: March 8, 2023

What do you think of when you hear the state, Arkansas? This is Clay Newcomb’s beloved homeland, and on this episode he dives deep into the long-standing national image of Arkansas. It hasn’t always been great. Scholars say it was the most picked on state in America in the 20th century and to this day remains the most “hillbilly” state per the internet. But is that truth, or just the results of branding and strong stereotypes? Clay interviews Dr. Books Blevins, Dr. Jeanie Whayne, and Dr. Bob Cochran to get to the bottom of this image. It’s fascinating, entertaining, and in the end you may wish you were bare-footed and grinning ear-to-ear, living the highlife in Arkansas. Clay visits one of the nation’s premiere American art museums, Crystal Bridges, in Arkansas. He visits the Walmart museum to talk to Sam Walton’s hologram, and lastly, he’ll release a never before heard interview with Arkansas’s first son, Bill Clinton -- for real. All this will prove that there are really two Arkansas’s -- the stereotype and the real thing. We really doubt you’re going to want to miss this one. 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 in 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. 1851 Moby Dick gets published. There's one mention of Arkansas. Arkansas was portrayed as crazy, violent, and stupid, all in one line. I've waited my whole life for this opportunity.

Perhaps this was even the primary reason for my birth in what some have called the creation state, the bear state, my beloved Arkansas. If this is the last bear grease podcast I ever make, my soul will be satiated by the sweet nectar of having had the last word, by being given a chance to explain things that the world in its frivolous pursuit of progress has yet to slow down enough to understand. I'm quite certain this is the greatest place on planet Earth,

but on this episode we're going to talk about the Arkansas image. Some say it was the most picked on state in America in the 20th century, but there are a lot of other places kind of like us. So why? We've been branded as a haven for barefoot, uneducated, feuding and poverty-stricken folks, gifted with an inferiority complex and defensiveness as part of our cultural inheritance.

It's time we set the record straight and separate fact from fiction. We'll learn those characterizations weren't far from the, truth, but they were oversimplified and myopically viewed by a nation who deeply wanted us to be that. We'll explore the power of regional identity and why Arkansas is still shaking its frontier image. We'll talk with Dr. Brooks Blevins, Dr. Jeannie Wayne, and Dr. Bob Cochran to understand the roots of this image, its impacts, both good and bad, and we'll have some surprise guests that will certainly shock you. We'll talk with the curator of one of the finest museums of American art in the country. We'll hear from the founder of Walmart. Yeah,

I said we'll hear from him directly. And we'll hear a never-before-released interview with none other than Arkansas's own first son, Bill Clinton. You think I'm kidding, but I'm not. And regardless of if you care anything about Arkansas, you're going to learn something about the complexity of how things came to be as they are and how meaningful it can be to be connected to place. I really doubt, for real, you're going to want to miss this one. But before we start, I want you to take an inventory of the image of Arkansas that you have in your mind. What do you think when you hear about this state?

Where did it come from? From the very earliest days, there has been this sort of defensive inferiority complex that is just, it's almost part of your heritage as someone who grows up in Arkansas. You just expect people are going to make fun of you. My name is Clay Newcomb, and this is the Bear Greece podcast, where we'll explore things forgotten but relevant. Search for insight in unlikely places and where we'll tell the story of Americans who live their lives close to the land. Presented by FHF Gear, American-made, purpose-built, hunting, and food. fishing gear that's designed to be as rugged as the places we explore.

Happened. Happened in Arkansas. Where else could it have happened? But the creation state, the finishing up country, a state where the soil runs down to the center of the earth, and the government gives you title to every inch of it, then it's air. Just breathe them. And they'll make you snort like a horse. It's a state without fault it is.

Jim Doggett. The Big Bear of Arkansas. The Arkansas image has been brewing since the late 1600s, and it's still alive today. I'll be braving the river of stereotypes and honest to God truth to see which one makes it to the other side. My friend, Dr. Brooks Blevins, I think, loves Arkansas as much as I do. And that's what qualifies us to speak so frankly and with such keen perception. And he says that the Arkansas image is associated with violence, ignorance, shiftlessness, laziness, with generous doses of racism, moonshining, clannishness, barefootedness, floppy hatedness, and general cussedness.

But in the positive column, Arkansasans are known as independent, resourceful, nonconformist, close to nature, unpretentious, generous, and non-materialistic. There are two sides to every story. And if I know one thing, it's this. Things are usually more complex than they seem. So I'd suggest that if you're not from here, you just listen and learn. This place is full of squirrel dogs, fortune 500 companies, banjo pickers, world-class American art, a president, and some fine mules. By the time we get to the end of this, you might be wishing you were barefoot, greener.

grinning ear to ear, eating at fancy restaurants, and living the high life in Arkansas like me and Brent Reeves. On the last episode, we established that prior to the Civil War, the newly formed state of Arkansas was branded to America as the bear state, fueled by a firebrand comedic genre of writing that featured bear hunting called Southwest Humor. It portrayed eccentric southern characters speaking in dialect, in outlandish tales from what Jim Dogg called the creation state, Arkansas. The short story, the Big Bear of Arkansas was published in New York City and had a virality that pushed everybody and their brother to start writing and even painting about Arkansas bear hunting.

And this place was truly a haven for bear hunters. On our death of a bear hunter episode, a man named Erskine was killed in the early 1840s by a bear being bathed by dogs. and Native Americans buried his body in a shallow grave roughly 25 miles from my house. In Independence County, Arkansas, there is a community called oil trough where market hunters established a commercial bear rendering facility that shipped bear oil and hollow logs down the White River to the Mississippi, then to New Orleans to be burned in streetlights

and used by those Cajun chefs who preferred bear grease over other oils. It's recorded that 936 bear skins and a case, considerable amount of bear oil were shipped in 1806 by a single company in the Rivertown, Arkansas Post. A traveling writer once described a bear hunter he saw in Hot Springs, Arkansas in 1834. He said the man was a singular fellow who shunned society, was dressed all together in skins of animals he killed and seemed never to have washed. He lived in the woods miles from the springs and only visited when he had bear and deer skins to sell. This writer met another hunter near the Cato River. He said he was a genuine hunter dressed in leather prepared by himself from the skins of animals he'd killed. He was going with his rifle

on his shoulder and his dog some 20 miles off to hunt bears. The man, although between 30 and 40 years old, had never been out of his neighborhood and had no idea of the world beyond his own pursuits. This was the Arkansas that people wanted to talk about, but this backwoods romantic image of bear hunters would be the bright spot compared to what was about to come. Over the next 200 years, Arkansas would become the most maligned and made fun of place in America. But why? There were lots of places with poverty and hunting.

Why Arkansas? Dr. Brooks Blevins wrote a book in 2007 titled, Arkansas, Arkansas, how bear hunters, hillbillies, and good old boys define the state. It's an incredible book. In the title, the first Arkansas is spelled correctly, but the second is spelled with a w at the end, the way the bear hunter Jim Dogg had spelled it in 1841. Dr. Blevins makes a case that there are two Arkansases, which I think by the end of this you'll agree with.

Let's talk about identity. Here's Dr. Blevins. You're right. We don't allow anything to go unlabeled or unbranded. And we have a little shorthand ways of characterizing everybody and everything. And states were no different. You know, you think about it, every state went through its frontier stage. And every state had these trappers and hunters and things like that at one stage in their development. But most states eventually get to sluff that off. go on about their business and modernize. But Arkansas, because of the timing, when it becomes a state right there in kind of the heart of the Southwestern humor era, when people were writing all these stories, because Arkansas in many ways and in many places still was kind of a frontier when it becomes a state. It gets branded at that moment, and that brand really sticks with it for years and years to come. Dr. Blevins makes a strong case that the frontier image of Arkansas never really

gets replaced, even though all states had a frontier period, but perhaps we've gotten ahead of ourselves. I think we need to go even further back to understand Arkansas's origins. We're going to have to go way back. This is Dr. Jeannie Wayne of the University of Arkansas. What does the name Arkansas mean? Well, it's, it was the name. name that the group of Illinois Indians who were accompanying the Marquette and Joliet trek down the Mississippi River in the 17th century gave to the Indians that we know of as the Kwa'paa, but the way they pronounced it was something like Arkansas in the French pronunciation. Oh, really? So they were trying to say Kualpaw. They were called, the Illinois were calling them what they believed their name to be. The French interpreted it as Arkansas, something like that.

And it became, it was ultimately corrupted to Arkansas. What about, I've heard Arkansas means land of the downstream people. That's the downstream people. So, okay, so that's the guapa. That was the word that meant land of the people downstream, which was downstream on the Mississippi from Illinois. And the Illinois Indians considered then the downstream people because they were part of their people at some point. land of the downstream people. Even our naming by the Native Americans is subtly dismissive.

Our name is in relationship to an unnamed place upstream. We don't even get our own landmark. Or maybe I'm reading into this and it's just my Arkansas persecution complex talking. It's hard to know because this is the only people the Newcoms have had out into the known world since the early 1830s when we arrived in the Wachita Mountains of Montgomery County near the community of Bumblebee Arkansas. And we all know that Bumblebee wings are too small for them to fly, but despite the negative press, they've made quite the name for themselves.

So has Arkansas. It's believed Arkansas was first inhabited by paleo Indians 10 to 12,000 years ago. In 1541, the Spaniard, Hernando de Soto, was the last. the first European to set foot here. And not surprisingly, the old codger was looking for gold. He didn't find any, but he found substantial agrarian villages of numerous native tribes in Arkansas. He walked into a thriving civilization of what anthropologists called the Mississippian

culture. DeSoto declared himself the son of the sun. He wreaked havoc on the tribes for the year he was here before he died of fever. His body was wrapped in a blanket, waited. with sand and sunk in the Mississippi River. It would be over 140 years before another European dude would come here. In 1682, a French guy named LaSalle found the majority of the villages De Soto reported completely gone. Nothing but ruins.

It's an incredible mystery, but it's believed De Soto and his 600 men carried smallpox, plague, yellow fever, tuberculosis, the flu, typhus, and measles. to the tribes nearly wiping them out. And tree ring analysis of that time shows an incredibly severe 100-year drought that hit the tribes with a double whammy of crisis. Whatever happened, most of them were gone. LaSalle ends up in a small village of friendly Quapal's and in 1682 makes the first European settlement here called Arkansas Post just up the Mississippi River on the White River. Why is this important to the Arkansas image?

We're about to learn. The French presence in Arkansas was very light. And the French hunters became dependent in their own way upon the Kwapa for military alliance, for agricultural goods. And they engaged in trade. They engaged in a kind of cultural blending. So, yes, this... And they intermarried? They intermarried.

they, again, military alliances, intermarriage, trade. And there was a descriptive phrase or word used to describe them. Matisse. Matisse. Yeah, so the French and the Cua'a in there, them intermarrying the Matisse. It's unusual for us to imagine this, but there were times early on when the tribes accepted Europeans helped them and they even live together. At Arkansas Post, the cultural lines blurred in the extreme isolation.

forming what they called the Matisse. That's a French word which means mixed, and in this case, a unique blend of the French in Quapal. Do you remember how I said the big bar of Arkansas, Jim Dogget's philosophical doctrine sounded non-European to me? Well, this is probably why. Some of the European backwoods cultures had 150 years of deep Native American influence. In the 1700s, however, this would backfire on the image of Arkansas

as Native Americans began to get a worse and worse rap in the colonies. A Frenchman named Francois wrote of the people at Arkansas Post, quote, They pass their time playing games, dancing, drinking, or doing nothing similar in this as other things to the savage peoples with whom they pass the greater part of their lives. A guy in Louisiana wrote about these people in Arkansas Post, and he said these men consist of scum of all.

kinds of nationals who have become stuck here through their fondness of idleness and independence. Hardly do they know they are Christians. They excel in all vices and their kind of life is a real scandal. End of quote. And not to belabor the point, but Louisiana and Morris Arnold accused the hunters of Arkansas of this time of being murderers, rapists, and fugitives from justice. And as lazy, shiftless, given to excess drink. and libertinage and irredeemably lawless and amoral.

That gum, that stings a little, but it might have been true. This was the beginning of the Arkansas image all the way back in the 16 and early 1700s, and things don't get better for Arkansas. Here's Dr. Blevins. You know, first impressions are very powerful. That first impression can stick with you for a long, long, time. And in many ways, that's what happens to Arkansas. Its first impression on the national scene is of this kind of backwoods, bear hunting place that's semi-civilized, probably a little dangerous, and maybe,

you know, not the funnest place to visit. And when it gets branded with that, what happens is for the rest of the 19th century and into the 20th century, there's just kind of this continual piling own of imagery. The imagery just started. started piling on. And to give a very short version of European immigration into Arkansas for a hundred years after the establishment of the Arkansas Post in 1883, there was very little happening here until the late 1700s when the number of market hunters increased,

and they were here in good number through the time when Arkansas achieved territorial status in 1819. That's when the numbers of people started to increase. Just remember all that. It's important. Trust me, this is a lot. But people in Arkansas have to carry a lot of stuff, okay? And this is really important.

Arkansas had a unique geography that created isolation. The Indian territory bordering Arkansas to the west created a border, the Mississippi River to the east, the giant swap of the East Arkansas Delta, and the challenges of the mountain regions of Arkansas created this unique geographic isolation. They called the Mill Pondas. effect. Arkansas was on the way to nowhere and typically the people who settled here were impoverished, indebted, running from something. Pretty wild. The opinions of people can be influential,

especially when they have the powerful pen of identity scripting in their hand. A dude from Albany, New York, named Henry Rose Schoolcraft, was one such writer. He was a young Greenhorn geologist that came to the Ozarks of Arkansas in 1818 to look at the possibility of mining. Nobody remembers or cares about the minerals he found here because he didn't find much, but my word did he ever brand the state? He was kind of a punk. Here's Dr. Blevins on schoolcraft. He wasn't the first explorer from outside of Arkansas to come through and write about the place

and publish it and for people to read about, But his was probably the most notable. He comes through in 18, 18, 18, 19. So well before Art Exalt becomes a state, very sparsely settled. He spends almost all of his time in the Ozarks in the northern third of the state. And Schoolcraft is a New Yorker. And he's college educated. He's sort of a budding geologist.

But he, you know, he writes this report of his travels. through the Ozarks, and it's published just a couple years after he does this trip. He writes some very, very negative things about the people that he came into contact with. Not all of the people, but for the most part, he's very, very negative. Well, probably most famously, Schoolcraft visits a family by the name of Wells in northern Arkansas, probably, you know, somewhere in the like Mountain Home vicinity. And he has nothing whatsoever good to say about the Wells family. I mean, he really, he really hammers them pretty good.

He calls the children abundantly greasy and dirty. They're all dressed in buckskin. And he says of the mother of the family and the children, they could, quote, only talk of bears, hunting, and the like. The rude pursuits and the course enjoyments of the hunter state were all they knew. And for him, you know, I mean, there were no books in the house. There was nothing that reminded anybody of civilization. there. And so he was completely repulsed by the food, by what they were wearing, by what their house looked like, by the fact that all they could talk about was hunting. I mean, that's what their

life revolved around. Yeah. I mean, there, you know, there were all kinds of hides stretched out on the, on the house. And, you know, it was just, their entire lives were repulsive to him. I wish Schoolcraft would have just stayed in his lane and wrote about rocks and mountain norogony. Keeping the cultural anthropology to the people who know a thing or two about human life. You dirty sap sucker, he called Arkansas a wild semi-civilized race of backwoodsmen. As judgy as schoolcraft was, he made some interesting observations. He wrote, quote, The hunter, although habitually lazy and holding in contempt the pursuits of agriculture,

so far at least as is not necessarily. necessary to his own subsistence, is nevertheless a slave to his dog, the only object around him to which he appears really devoted to him all days are equally unhallowed, and the first and the last day of the week find him alike sunk in unconcerned sloth and stupid ignorance. That was a little harsh, bro. And in deep human history, hunter-gatherers chose not to partake in large-scale agriculture because they hunted for food and they were saving their energy for the hunt. Secondly, you got the dog thing partially right.

But it's not the only thing we're devoted to, but goodness, a good hunting dog is hard to beat. Another thing schoolcraft noted, as unusual, was the violence, which would become a big part of the Arkansas image. He wrote, quote, without moral restraint brought up in the uncontrolled indulgence of every passion and without regard of religion, the state of society among the rising generation in this region is truly deporable. In their childish disputes, boys frequently stab each other with knives, two instances of which have occurred since our residents here.

No correction was administered in either case, and the act being rather looked upon is a promising trait of character. End of quote. You guys know that my annoyance with schoolcraft is partly tongue and cheek. It sounds like he witnessed, some bad characters, but he wasn't the only one who saw it. The Englishman Thomas Nuttall spent some time in the Ozarks before statehood, and he said, quote, the population in this territory is but too favorable to the spread of ignorance and

barbarism. The means of education are at present nearly proscribed, and the rising generation are growing up in mental darkness and have almost forgot that they appertained to the civilized world. End of quote. What's interesting is that not everybody was as hard on Arkansas as these two city-slicken punk elites. Our good buddy Frederick Gerstocker spent six years in America and much of it in the creation state. His perception of Arkansas was vastly different than schoolcraft. He said, quote, I have traversed the state in all directions and met with as honest and upright people as are to be found in any part of the union. End of quote.

He was here about 20 years after Schoolcraft, so maybe some people of higher characters showed up, or Schoolcraft was looking for fault. When leaving the state, Gerstocker said, quote, Of all I had seen in America, Arkansas was the one which

pleased me the most. I may perhaps never see it again, but I shall never forget the happy days I pass there. There were many a true heartbeats under a course frock or a leather hunting shirt. Perhaps most famously, Washington Irving, America's first well-known author passed through Arkansas,

and he wrote, quote, The inhabitants have none of the eagerness for gain, the rage for improvement which keep our people continually on the move. He said they, quote, resided in a contented state of poverty, worked little, they danced a great deal, and a fiddle was the joy of their heart. end of quote. As he left Arkansas, he wrote, quote, as we swept away from the shore, I cast a wistful eye upon the moss-grown roofs and the

ancient elms in the village and prayed that the inhabitants might long retain their happy ignorance, their absence of all enterprise and improvement, their respect of the fiddle, and their contempt for the almighty dollar. End of quote. Schoolcraft, Nuttall, and Irving were all here during Arkansas territorial period from 1819 to 1836. It's easy to see the direction this is all going, but it's just getting started. Remember that inventory that you took about Arkansas? You might be seeing the breadcrumbs of your modern ideas about us leading you way back. And I know that there's been a lot of information to process here,

but in Arkansas, our intellects have to work double hard to overcome our ignorance. So we're used to fast-thinking sage calculations and doing this intellectual calculus on the fly. If you need to pause and rewind, feel free to. 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 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 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. So back to our story, how Arkansas became the most belittled state in America. In 1836, we became a state, but we weren't ready. We only had 52,000 people.

no infrastructure, not much agriculture, but something was a brewing. Here's Dr. Blevins. And the only reason it becomes a state so quickly is because politicians in those days compromisers tried to maintain peace in the country by maintaining a balance between slave states and free states in the U.S. Senate. And Michigan was ready to join the union as a free state. and Arkansas was the closest thing to a slave state that might be ready for statehood in 1836.

So they kind of crammed them together and push them through. So Arkansas prematurely really becomes a state. Arkansas prematurely becomes a state. This is very important for our future, and this was an interesting place socially. Arkansas was divided on being a slave state, but politics and money won out. The short version,

of a very complex story is that the Delta had the farms, the money, the slaves, and the political power. And the Highlands people of the Ozarks and Washtals were the poverty-stricken hillbillies that would become synonymous with the national image of Arkansas. And we'll get into it,

but the word hillbilly didn't show up until the 20th century. It's a relatively new word created as a derogatory slur by people not from here. And I'm about out of breath from all this talking. It ain't easy being from Arkansas and having to know all this stuff. Here's Dr. Wayne telling us yet another reason we got the shaft for coming in as a state

prematurely. And it showcases what Americans hate. Poverty and financial woes. What are you going to tax if they wanted to tax? What kind of economy is there? Farming economy. The wealthiest people are those planters growing up in southeast Arkansas. Boy, those guys could control the political lovers well enough to make sure there were no taxes on them. So where's the commerce? How are you going to support yourself? Who's going to write the check? Who's going to pay the rent?

So we get in deep trouble right away. Both banks go bankrupt. Arkansas is in debt at the beginning. But then a couple of years after it's a state, it's an impossible death. And that is really, that's not clear it up until the 1890s, 1898, I've. This news was going out to America and Arkansas was just kind of this like backwater place. Yes. With corrupt politicians and people, bad debt.

How are you going to get anybody to invest in Arkansas at this point in time in the 1840s and 1850s? We came into statehood with nothing to tax. We started banks and the banks immediately failed. And what do you think that did for the people of Arkansas? It was generations before some people ever put money back in the bank, which added to the slow progress of this place. In Dr. Blevins' book, Arkansas Arkansas, which I now require as mandatory reading to be my friend,

he wrote, quote, Arkansas has provided an antithesis to a variety of American allusions, the idea of American exceptionalism, the blind faith of progress, America's starring role in some cosmic providential plan. In this rendering of the Arkansas image, the Arkansasier becomes a non-conformist who consciously or unconsciously rejects the tenets of an American narrative of the Puritan through progressive continuum,

like C. Van Woodward's post-Civil War Southerners who learned to live for long decades in quiet un-American poverty and learned the equally un-American lesson of submission. End of quote. Did Dr. Blevins just say that Arkansas debunked the idea of American exceptionalism? I think he did. But because Dr. Blevins is one of us, it's okay. The Arkansas image carries with it a healthy dose of non-conformity,

but maybe that's not all bad. This is one of my favorite quotes, A 20th century writer once said, quote, Died in the wool Ozarkers are proudly primitive. Their isolation is a religion and clannishness of virtue. They're the most backwards and deliberately unprogressive region in the United States. End of quote. Now this next one hurts a little.

A writer named C. L. Edson wrote, quote, A people willing to foot it 100 miles through mutt to get nowhere founded Arkansas and achieve their aim. Arkansas has its own popular motto, and it's this. I never seen nothing. I don't know nothing. I got nothing.

And I don't want nothing. The dirtball went on to write. Few can read in Arkansas, and those who can don't. Every old Southern state has produced a few scholars except Arkansas. No man of first-class intellect was born in Arkansas, live there or even pass through the state. End of quote. What a punk.

Those are some strong words, Mr. Edson. And me and Brent Reeves will fight any of your living kin right now if they've got the gall to show up down here. I'm just kidding. We thrive off this stuff. We're used to it. It's kind of what made us who we are. And we're back to the drawing board and have yet another.

layer of powerful branding. In the 1840s, the widely popular story of the Arkansas Traveler came out. Here's Dr. Blevins. A little bit later, you've got the birth of the Arkansas Traveler. The Arkansas Traveler becomes a popular play in the 19th century, where you have this sort of sophisticated urban traveler who ventures into somewhere in the back country, you know, the depending on who's telling the story. Anyway, they venture into the back country and they encounter this squatter at a log cabin, and he's sitting there sawing away on a fiddle,

trying to play a song, and he can't remember the rest of the song. And then there's this humorous back and forth between the traveler and the squatter. Such, you know, gems as which way does this road go? And the squatter says, well, I've been here 20 years and it ain't never went nowhere. And, you know, why don't you patch up your roof?

And the squatter says, Well, when it's raining, it's too wet to patch it up. And when it's dry, I don't need patching. You know, that kind of, you know, it's... It only leaks when it rains. Right. These are, I mean, old, old comedy bits that go back, you know, how many, who knows how many centuries, but they're kind of plugged into this new fresh territory in Arkansas.

So you get this Arkansas traveler legend that turns into a fiddle tune that becomes very popular. It turns into that play. It turns into paintings. Right. are still popular and you see those around today. So you got- The name of Arkansas's baseball team. Right, the Little Rock's baseball team.

Arkansas Travelers. The University of Arkansas student newspaper, the Arkansas Traveler. Yep. I mean, that sticks. And I guess Arkansas may still do it. I'm not sure, but, you know, they used to hand out, you know, these Arkansas traveler awards to people. Yeah.

You know, and kind of, you become an honorary Arkansas traveler. if you do something good for Arkansas or they want to honor you for something. But, you know, that's, again, age-old comedy stuff right there. But that sticks with the state. And this is before the word hillbilly comes into popular usage, which is only around the turn of the 20th century when that comes in. So Arkansas is already strongly associated with what we would consider hillbilly culture come the 20th century.

It's also around the turn of the 20th century when you start having these cheap joke books that are published. And the most famous of all those cheap joke books is on a slow train through Arkansas. And on the front, you know, you got this kind of... There's a book titled that. Yeah, there's an old joke book. On a slow train through Arkansas. And the thing about it is, if you actually get the book and look at it, it's a very, very offensive book. But not necessarily to people from Arkansas.

It's racially and ethnically and religiously offensive. But the fact that the guy who wrote it decided to call it on a slow train through Arkansas and have the artwork on the cover depict these kind of hillbilly characters in Arkansas suggests that by the time the book comes out in the very early 1900s, Arkansas is already shorthand for humorous. Yeah, that was branded in and this guy was jumping on the bandway. Yeah, he's taking advantage of an image. Yeah, what a dirt ball.

Right. Once upon a time in Arkansas, an old man sat at his little cabin door, and he fiddled that a tune that he liked to hear, a jolly old tune that he played by here, it was raining. The Arkansas Traveler story has multiple potential sources, but it started off simply as a story that branded us big time. There's a famous painting, a fiddle tune. Arkansas Traveler was the name of a national paper published out of Arkansas

with a national distribution of 85,000 in 1880s. In 1938, there was a Hollywood movie that came out called the Arkansas Traveler. It's the name of our only pro baseball team, and the student paper at my alma mater of the University of Arkansas, Go Hogs, is the Arkansas traveler. And then that dadgum joke book. Yeah, Arkansas, from those earliest days, when it gets branded as the bear state,

that becomes some version of that, some version of the backwoods hillbilly state, becomes its brand, becomes its what everybody in the country knows about it, really for the rest of the century. You know, it shows up in Mark Twain's writing. You know, there's, there are kind of these backwoods, crazy characters from Arkansas who shows up in a lot of literature, and it's almost always Arkansas is, it's this backward place that never really modernizes like other places. It never gets beyond its frontier stage. And that really, you know, continues into the, well into the 20th century. Arkansas maintains its place as kind of the bud of a national joke. Were there other states in the

South that had that quite like Arkansas? If you're, if you're from Arkansas, you know, there's the old thank God for Mississippi line, which I've heard people say many, many, that usually comes into play when you're looking at statistical rankings. Right. Because if anybody's going to be below Arkansas, it may be Mississippi. We're fighting for 50th place. Didn't they like reference Arkansas as inside of those cartoons? Do they do that with other states? Yeah.

Well, the one I think you're thinking of, it's a Warner Brothers cartoon from 1950 called Hillbilly Hair. And it's Bugs Bunny. Oh, okay, okay. In Hillbilly Hair, I know they reference the Ozarks. Okay. But in that cartoon, Bugs Bunny travels to the, Ozarks for some reason you know he pops up out of the ground and he's in the Ozarks

vacation in the Ozarks so quiet so peaceful so far from harm and danger so uh-huh and he gets into the middle of this feud between you know two feud and families they're all bearded and barefoot and overalls they got you know shotguns with muzzles on them that are longer than the people themselves who are the critter and just who Might you be? I might be Teddy Roosevelt, but I ain't. Hey, you darn fool?

What's the idea of tying nuts in my rifle barrel? Just call me freckles. You know, it's very, very, it's funny and it's stereotypical and all that kind of stuff. One of the things you find is that by the 20th century, Arkansas and the Ozarks becomes kind of interchangeable in a lot of ways in myth-making and imagery for the nation. even though the Ozarks only makes up roughly a quarter of the state of Arkansas. When it comes to the image of Arkansas, in many ways, it's very much tied up with this kind of Ozarks hillbilly image. Thank God for Mississippi.

I actually like Mississippi a lot. That's where Bear, Greece Hall of Fame or Hulk Collier lived. The Ozarks and Wachita's, Arkansas's mountainous regions, make up about one-third of our state. But in the 20th century, the National Arkansas image takes a notable turn to depict the poor white highlanders and leaves out African Americans, Delta farmers, and Native Americans still in Arkansas. The trend was completely based on America's appetite for entertainment and intrigue. For some reason, the poor white mountain folk were what they wanted to talk about. Growing up here, I didn't realize we were special until I was older and started. started traveling.

And without a doubt, I am very defensive of Arkansas. Dr. Blevins says that defensiveness is part of our cultural inheritance. Dr. Blevins brought up Mark Twain's work. And here is Dr. Bob Cochran with two major American novels with references to Arkansas. Do you know what they are? Okay, one of them is Mark Twain, which won't surprise you at all. But in Huckleberry Finn, you remember the two fraudulent guys that go around putting on the Royal Nonsut show.

They're just two bombs, but they try to take yokels. And there's a place Arkansas shows up in Huckleberry Fair. So when he's putting up a placard advertising their Hootie Coochoochee show, you know. And that's what it is. I mean, they have not the show. They're two guys. They don't have, you know, they couldn't do a burlese show if they wanted to. But they put up a sign and whatever else it says down at the bottom, they say,

women and children not admitted. And then the guy turns, the prince turns to the dukes, is there. He says, if that don't get them, that don't bring them in, I don't know Arkansas. And so he's referring to this specific line, you know, that these suckers will think there must be something, you know, risque in the show just by that line, just by the no women and children admit it. So here's what I'm really saying. Arkansas's reputation is a state. This would have supported it. And there's one even more famous.

It's Moby Dick. 1851 Moby Dick gets published. There's one mention and one only. In Moby Dick? Yeah, of Arkansas. And what it does is make us look bad. That's no surprise to you, you're right? They love doing that.

They love doing that. And here's how he did it. Here's how he did it. It's one sentence. The phrase itself is like an Arkansas dualist is the phrase where Arkansas comes in. Right. And the person who is described as being like an Arkansas duelist. Arkansas duelist is Captain Ahab, the monomaniac, you know, and he is...

They threw us right under the bus. Under the whale in this case. Because he is at that moment lunging with a six-inch knife at the whale. This is when the harpoon gets wrapped around him and he's carried down by the whale to his death. But it's made very explicit. He's trying with a six-inch blade, I think, is the word. He doesn't use the word knife. To reach the fathom deep heart of the whale. That's exactly. An idiotic thing to do. Yeah, dumb thing to do.

Dumb and violent. So Arkansas was portrayed as crazy, violent, and stupid, all in one line. Wow. And an Arkansas duelist, and a duel in that time would have been common language for a shootout. Right. Like me and you would have a conflict and we would go have a duel in the street, which there was a legislator killed in the state capital of Arkansas. I mean, that's not terribly unusual.

Nolan, the guy who wrote the Pete Wetstone things, he killed somebody in a duel. He killed Governor Pope's nephew. Governor John Pope's nephew insulted him. And he challenged him to a duel. They were distressingly common duels in those days. They'd love to go to places where police jurisdiction was a little bit in doubt, like islands and a river. Is this in this county or is this in this state? Right?

And so, you know, police jurisdiction would be a little bit. hazy maybe. Yeah, I mean, that was part of the image of Arkansas. It was that these people were having duels at the drop around. Yeah. So, and, you know, they're all carrying buoy knives around. Yeah. In 1837, State Representative Joseph Anthony was killed in a knife fight by the Speaker of the House, John Wilson, at the Arkansas State House. And another pair of legislators went to an island on the Mississippi River for a pistol duel, and one of them died. This was a white. wild and violent place.

We're going to skip ahead in time to some stuff from the 20th century. The heyday of the hillbilly in American media was in the 1930s and 40s. There were movies, plays, songs, jokes, but leading the charge on the national scene was radio. It was huge. And there were two men by the name of Chester Locke and Norris Gough from my hometown of Mina, Arkansas. They had a wildly popular national radio show called Lumman Abner that ran nationally for 23 years from 1931 until 1954. I never seen such a changed fellow in my life or to run him out of town.

Oh, he'll come to his senses, all right, grandpab. Abner just ain't used to having a lot of money and it sort of went to his head. And he's going to kill somebody with that car, he hasn't. sets back there in the back seat and keeps punching that chaufer in the back with his walking cane and making him go faster. In 1933, Luteman Abner were receiving 15,000 fan letters per week from people hoping to connect with these two lovable characters. Their comedy show depicted life in the mountains of Arkansas. They spoke of peculiar neighbors and sticky situations, but overall it portrayed the Arkansasers as, Funny, quirky, but noble.

In 1937, Lum and Abner moved to Hollywood and starred in seven movies. These guys were a big part of Arkansas' hillbilly image being exported to the country, but they didn't create it. They just inherited it from the last 250 years. But America couldn't get enough of Arkansas. Moving forward, here's Dr. Blevins on the state's inferiority. complex and the Ozark Mountain

the hillbilly themed theme park called Dog Patch USA that operated near Harrison, Arkansas from 1968 until 1990. And no, you can't make this stuff up. You know, when I wrote Arkansas, Arkansas several years ago, by far the funnest job I had

in writing that book was writing that little chapter on the state's inferiority complex. Because the funniest character, characters in the book to me were the folks in Arkansas who got so got their backs up, you know, so much about people making fun of them. And, and I think from the very earliest days, there has been this sort of defensive inferiority complex that is just, it's almost part of your heritage. Part of my heritage is someone who grows up in Arkansas. You just expect people are going to make fun of you. And so many people, and it was almost always people from Little Rock. They were, they were

the ones who were most upset about this because what they would do it wasn't that they were trying to defend everybody in arkansas they were trying to defend themselves and if they had to throw the rest of us under the bus to do it they would do that when when they were talking about founding dog patch usa theme park in the late 60s there were you know people in little rock who were upset about that you know their response wasn't well you know we're all of arkansas is is modern and we don't we're not like these people in Dog Patch and their idea was you folks in the Ozarks don't be dragging us into into this stuff. I remember my Aunt Terry, God bless her, taking us to the Dog Patch theme park in the late

1980s. All I can remember is the log ride and all the overalls. Man, it was cool. I think that's where Britt Reeves was born. Here's more from Dr. Blevins. And one of the things I did, this was back in, I think it was back in 2007. I did these internet searches.

Not very scientific, but it's about as scientific as I could get. Because I remember thinking one day, I had almost finished the first draft of my book, Arkansas, Arkansas, which is all about the image of Arkansas, the hillbilly sort of image of Arkansas. And I remember thinking one day, what if I'm writing this entire book, how the image of Arkansas came to be and what impact it's had on people of Arkansas, and nobody really cares. It's not even an issue anymore. in the 21st century. What if it doesn't even matter?

And I'm the only one sitting around thinking about this. And so I sat down one day and I started doing these Google searches where I would do exact phrase searches and I'd do like Arkansas hillbillies in quotation marks. And I would do hillbilly from Arkansas in quotation marks. And then I would plug in the names of other states. And I would do Georgia and I do Alabama and I do New Jersey or just whatever. And I remember being so relieved. at the end of that day because I would count like the hits that each of these phrases got.

And sure enough, Arkansas was still the hillbilliest state, according to the internet. In 2007. And I remember, I remember right, I can remember that moment sitting in my, in my office and just almost doing a dance because we're still the hillbilliest state. And I mean, even, you know, we're smoking Kentucky and West Virginia in this competition. And I even broke it down, like, did the math by per capita. And, you know, Arkansas just blew everybody away in terms of its affiliation with the word hillbilly in 2000. So, I mean, even it survived even into the 21st century. You know, those roots go all the way back to those bare state images that we've talked about.

I mean, that that's how strong that connection has been, that even Walmart can't remove us from, you know, the number one's that even Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, you know, one of the great art museums of the world now. In case you're wondering why you could feel Dr. Blevins and I grinning ear to ear when he said Arkansas was the most hillbilly state, let me explain something. I'm very proud to be from a small, humble place and most of us are comfortable in our identity.

And I have deliberately chosen to focus on the positives of our culture. because there are bad things too, but I'm proud to be from Arkansas. In 1954, an essay was published in American Mercury magazine, written by an Arkansaser by the name of Eugene Newsom. I think he had some good advice for us. He said, quote, I say breed up a race of razorbacks as the Texans are doing with their long horns. Fire the old Kaplock muzzleloader at the neighbors once a week.

give the inquire in stranger directions to possum trot and goose ankle and give him a sample of Uncle Rafe's last run a corn squeezes. If Arkansas is ever going to amount to anything, she's got to advertise the very characteristics. She's been shushing for a hundred years. What Arkansas needs to do is not look, dress, talk, and think like and be indistinguishable from other states. She needs to uncurl her little finger from the teacup

and proclaim her known and recognized honoring us to the wide world. End of quote. The Arkansas image we've described is strong and deep. However, it's partly a product of a voracious American media stereotyping people, exaggerating the truth and feeding people what sells. We're not all lazy, but I do like to take naps. We wear shoes, most of the time. A lot of us do have cooot and squirrel dogs.

That's just the truth. But we also have 401Ks, health insurance, clean and tidy homes, and like going to fancy restaurants. And we're appropriately impacted by fine art and literature. Our governor, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, our first female and youngest governor, just signed in one of the most progressive education reform bills in the country. This is a happening place, brothers. Dr. Blevins just brought up the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art. I think we should check it out and see if this place lines up with the Arkansas you may have pictured in your mind at the first of this podcast. I'm a story about that guy.

I'm at the Crystal Bridges Museum in Bentonville, Arkansas. Tell me who you are. My name is Mindy Bissaw. I am the curator of American art, so I oversee the early American collection here at Crystal Bridges, but I'm also the director of research and fellowships, and we have a great research program. that also attracts scholars from not only across the country, but internationally, to come to Crystal Bridges and study art. Let me ask you this. Put this museum into context for me. Pretend like I know nothing and where some of the treasures of American art are at across the country. And you don't

have to be diplomatic, but how good is the Crystal Bridges Museum on a national scale for American art? It's in the top tier. And I say that as, of course, someone that works here, but also someone that I have my PhD in American Art History. I have been studying American art for a long time. I've worked here for eight years. For an American Art Museum, some of our comparatives might be the A.man Carter Museum in Fort Worth,

the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, D.C. Now, they have had a long, long, long, long history that we haven't had. but our collection is recognizably competitive with other American art museums. Last year, 700,000 people visited Crystal Bridges. This is an incredible number. But I want to let y'all into a little bit of that highfalutin big city drama when all this incredible art ended up in the Ozarks. Some of those fancy folks on the coast weren't that happy.

So the rumor in Arkansas when Crystal Bridges came into Arkansas 11 years ago, we loved it. We loved the hype of it, was that the art community was a little upset that some of this world-class American art ended up in the podunk state of Arkansas. And we loved it because Arkansasans love when we're picked on just a little bit, but we show the world that we're. The real deal. Is it true that some people were like saying that stuff shouldn't be in this place? Of course. I would call them doubters. So again, if you think of the coasts as being elite art world locations, they have long histories. Of course they have a lot to be proud of. And they would say, Arkansas, where is Arkansas even located? Let me help. you don't know where Arkansas is. We're almost in the center of the country, which we'll learn is incredibly helpful if you're

planning to build a global retail empire. The world headquarters of Walmart are in Bentonville, Arkansas. More on that in a second. Mindy and I are standing within arm's reach of a very famous landscape painting, showing a spectacular scene of green forested mountains. There are two men standing on a bluffy crag overlooking a pristine. Valley. Landscape art seems to be all about lighting and this painting almost glows with realism. But it didn't show up here without some drama.

Last spring, Clay Newcomb and I collaborated with Jason Phelps at Phelps Game Calls and building each of our own favorite turkey diaphragms called prime cuts. Now, I'm going to tell you, I love mine because it's easy to use. I'm not going to go, I'm not going to win a turkey calling contest. It's just not going to happen. but when I run this call, I get the sounds that gobblers are looking for. I have a great turkey hunting track record. If you go listen to real turkeys out in the woods, they're not going to win calling contests, right?

That's who I listen to. I can make those sounds on my cut. I also hunt with Phelps's cut, and I hunt with Clay's cut because they're all three great cuts. Check out Prime Cuts at Phelpsgamecalls.com. I think you'll be glad you, did and you'll find out that the Steve Ronella cut is an easy to use cut for beginning callers who just want to start making good turkey noises and getting action.

Okay, so tell me about this one. So this painting is by Asher B. Durand. It's called Kindred Spirits. This is the painting really that prompted the public announcement of Crystal Bridges. And I'll tell you why. So the painting had been housed and owned by the New York Public Library forever. Asher B. Durand was an important landscape painter early in our history of American art, and the two figures that are represented, one is Thomas Cole.

He's the guy with the hat in the portfolio under his arm. He is widely considered the father of American landscape painting. And American painting really felt like it came into its own with landscape because what we had Was landscapes? We didn't have big buildings or? We had landscapes. We didn't have Greek ruins. You know, all the things that would point to history in Europe was not found in the United

States. So this is widely recognized as a hugely important painting for American art. So people were upset that it came here. Yeah. So New York Public Library was a. deaccessioning some works. Now, it's their fault. It's not our fault. It's not as if we went shopping off of their walls. So it means it was for sale. It was for sale. And it went to a silent bid through one of the big auction houses in New York. And that this closed bid wasn't so closed. And it very

quickly leaked that Alice Walton had purchased the painting. And everyone was up in arms, especially in New York. Can you tell us how much it cost? No, I can't. Because everything here is priceless. Good answer. And irreplaceable, if I will. So closed bid, Alice buys the painting. People are up in arms because they think it's going into a private collection in the, quote, middle of nowhere in Arkansas, never to be seen again. Now Alice was just making her museum, building the collection. And as she would say it, she didn't think anyone cared what she was doing just down in Arkansas, buying some art, making a building. Just normal stuff for us.

Just normal stuff. You know, it wasn't very public. And when everything just exploded, it was like, okay, it's time. So she used the controversy around the acquisition of this painting to announce her intentions for Crystal Bridges. This kind of sounds familiar. The humble billionaires of Arkansas just minding their own business and people starting to get cranky about it. It's not our fault if we have good bear and duck hunting spots and have some of the richest people in the world. Yeah, you just heard the name Alice Walton.

This is the daughter of the founder of Walmart, Sam Walton, a true Arkansas hero. As we walk away from the kindred spirits painting, we're heading to the painting I really came to see. It's spectacular. Are there any pictures here of, oh, that's what I'm after right there. I just saw it. So I have a copy of this painting hanging in my living room. That's a certain like a color. One I bought from you guys. Yeah, years ago, I ordered this and had it professionally framed. A little smaller than this.

But tell me what this is and who did it. Sure. So this is Arthur Fitzwilliam Tate. It's called a tight fix. So it's bear hunting in early winter. It's a large painting framed in a gold frame. We have a hunter in buckskin, really in a compromised, sort of seated position, leaning back on his arm with a big black bear, claws out, ready to pounce on the hunter. This is an incredible painting called A Hunter's Life, a tight fix. It's huge. The lighting is spectacular, and it shows a buckskin-clad hunter with a bowie knife drawn in a hand to claw brawl with Ursus Americana. There's blood in the snow.

And in the background, his hunting partner is taking aim at the bear, hoping to save his buddy's life. This was painted in 1856, and the scene is strikingly similar to the one Frederick Gerstocker described in his book Wild Sports in the Far West, which was published just two years before at 1854. It's strikingly similar. We did a whole podcast on this story called Death of a Bear Hunter. We already said it before. but bear hunting was a hot pop culture topic in the mid-1800s. Hunting is deep in the American identity,

and I'm very proud that this painting is front and center at Crystal Bridges. Good job Mindy and Miss Alice. I want to jump back to Dr. Blevins. He has an astute observation and wants to introduce us to a unique Arcanzan. You know, in 2011, Crystal Bridge, Ridge's Museum opened up. I think they opened 1111.11. That was their big thing, November 11, 2011, 2011. They opened one of the great American art museums. I guess it's probably the greatest in terms of a collection of American art, American made art today. And I love the place. I've been there several

times. But what you saw was all of a sudden in the national media, there started to be this kind of almost a rebranding of Arkansas just because, and of the Ozarks, just because of this one thing that happens, you know, this one big, important cultural institution. And it's just a year or two later that, I believe

his name is Joe Wilson. Yes. Joe Wilson found the squirrel cookoff. The world champion squirrel cookoff in Bentonville, Arkansas. And it's almost as it's kind of the, to even things out. I mean, you know, you get all this kind of progressive-sighted,

publicity because of Crystal Bridges and it's almost as if he realizes hey this is not what we're about just yet i mean we're still we're still in arkansas we're still in the ozarks and there's still people who kill and eat squirrels yeah and so you get the you get the squirrel cookoff and it's sort of it brings it restores kind of an equilibrium in a way and it reminds people that what Arkansas has been known for all of these generations long before there was a Walton family in Bentonville and long before there was a Crystal Bridges. Joe Wilson is in his late 40s. He's got a big curled mustache and he's often wearing a black cowboy hat. Joe is a well-respected man in Bentonville, but the beat of his drummer is slightly

different than many of the urbane newcomers to this place. Walmart and the company Tyson Foods, also found in northwest Arkansas, which is the largest meat producer in America, have truly brought the world here. It's pretty incredible. I want y'all to meet my friend Joe Wilson. We're overlooking downtown Bentonville. So interesting enough, the lady right over here in this corner is where the downtown people sit who make the decision. You want to record this or no? Not, don't matter. You know, I'm free willing. So, Last week, I met her in the crosswalk, and she asked when I was bringing the squirrel cookoff back to downtown Bentonville. She wants to meet on that.

So the story of how we got to downtown Bentonville is pretty simple. I was witnessing the change. I seen the change all around us, switching over from pickup trucks to BMWs and Teslas. And, you know, I think there's a stereotype of what Northwest Arkansas is, Arkansas in general. And it really dealt with people like me and you, Clay. I think people come here thinking they're going to see me and you, or guys that act and look like us, and they're hard to find. It's been something that's slowly being erased.

To find a chicken fried steak in Bentonville is a hard thing to do, but you can find something pretty dang fancy, and there's nothing wrong with that. I think my kids have a better opportunity of knowing culture, knowing art, all of that, they have less of an opportunity to see the stuff that me and you've seen as kids. And that was knowing what was going to stick you in the woods, right? Knowing what was going to make you itch, how to cook and clean a squirrel. Those things are kind of disappearing.

So I brought the squirrel cook-off to downtown Bentonville on the square right here to kind of rub it in, you know, and to give people the opportunity to see who we are. And, you know, it wasn't just the redneck guy. We had chefs coming out. We had teachers, doctors. We had people travel from all across the world to see us cook squirrel. And so what started off as me kind of rubbing them, I think they really enjoyed one Saturday out of the year to give us the opportunity to showcase that traditional Ozark lifestyle.

This man is a genius. Joe Rogan ought to have Joe Wilson on his podcast, for real. The World Championship Squirrel Cookoff will be in late September 2023, and I'm planning on being there. The diversity of people this event brings in is astounding. It'll blow your mind. A lot of what's happening in Northwest Arkansas right now revolves around Walmart and say what you will about them,

but the Ozark or Sam Walton simply gave America what it wanted. So don't hate the players. hate the game and around here saving money to live better sounds like a reasonable idea and I will let you in on a little secret if you want to go to the finest Walmart stores on planet earth come to northwest Arkansas the closer you get to the home office the better they get here's Joe talking about mr. Sam we're inside of the original Walton five and dime store on the Bentonville Square and I told you that we were going to talk to Mr. Sam Stand by. Yes, so you're inside of Sam's first store, but a lot of people don't know. Sam Walton was a hunter. Sam Quail hunted, pheasant hunted. The property where Crystal Bridges was was a place that, you know, coondogs ran through there.

His truck that's inside the museum has a dog box in the back. Sam Walton as a hunter, I think that's what he wanted to be known as. Because all the images you see, I mean, there was tons of images in here of him carrying a rifle through the woods with brush pants on. The dog food, Old Roy, named after one of his dogs. So, Northwest Arkansas has had a long, long history of hunting, and Sam Walton's a huge part of it. Sam Walton has a hunter.

It's a big part. I hope it's part of the museum when we built it back. Mr. Sam used to carry his muddy-footed bird dogs with him on his jet and often had a shotgun in his truck when he went to work. They're currently remodeling the Walmart Museum. It's a pretty neat place. Joe says he wants to take me down the street to meet Mr. Sam. I'm not exactly sure what he means. We walk a block down the street to the temporary location of the Walmart Museum, and he introduces me to a kind lady named Lisa. I'm gonna introduce you to my buddy. This is Clay Newcomb.

It's nice to meet you, sir. Yeah, nice to meet you. I'm Clay. Clay's got a national broadcasted podcast. And I just walked him through the old five and dime. And now he had some questions he was going to ask Mr. Sam here. Can you tell me what this is? This is, it's a hologram with a little bit of IT magic. This is an actress portrayal of Mr. Sam.

And then the wonderful company that created this for us, they used facial mapping to put Mr. Sam's face on the hologram. So we're looking at a, it looks like he's in like a little room. And he's just right here by us. His face is moving a little bit. It looks real. Looks like a real man standing in. This is a state-of-the-art hologram machine.

It feels and looks like we're talking to a real man. It's bizarre. Mr. Sam died in 1992, and it's rare to find anybody here that didn't respect Sam Walton. As a kid, I vividly remember my grandfather, Luan Newcomb from Bumblebee, Arkansas, who was a peer in age in fellow Arkansas birdhunter to Mr. Sam, speak incredibly highly of Sam Walton and Billy Graham.

He placed these men at the same level. Lisa has a microphone in her hand, and she's about to ask Mr. Sam a question. Do you think that Mr. Sam knows the name of the nut that comes off of an oak tree? I don't know he did in real life. But what do you think he would call? Do you know what the name of that nut is that comes off of an oak tree? An acorn.

I couldn't think of it. I was seeing it. Where are you from? I'm from Northwest Arkansas. Really? Born and raised. Okay. Okay.

I think that kind of fits into what you're after. Tell me what that is. Well, you're, so there's two versions of the same thing. One would be called an acorn, like you said, and the other one would be called an acorn. Do you know the difference? I see my memoir would tell you it was an acorn. acre. I'm telling you. You're code switching on us. Listen, all this, all this Walton money, your code switching on us pulling out of your Arkansas heritage, calling it an acorn. Are you ashamed

of the acorn? Absolutely not. I'm very proud of my home. I'm very proud of my heritage. It's just that people look at you like you're crazed if you say things like that, like cattywampus, for instance. Have you ever heard the expression? We dug right into the interior and we found what we were looking for. So does Sam know anything about O'Roy still? Yeah, let's ask him in and we'll see what he says, okay? Mr. Sam, can you tell us about Old Roy? Roy was a setter and probably the most overrated bird dog in history.

He wasn't much of a hunter at all. He would point rabbits, for example. But he was a great tennis dog. He would go with me to the tennis court and lay a little. there and whenever the ball went out of the court or over the fence or whatever, he would go chasing after it and bring it back to me. And the associates and the customers got a kick out of visiting with him in the stores. And once we put his name and picture on our private label dog food, it sold tons. One year, Old Rale became the number two dog food in America.

And remember, we only sell it in Walmart. Oh, that's so good. Lou and Newcomb love to feed his bird dog some old Roy dog food. But he wouldn't have tolerated a bird dog pointing rabbits. That's another story. There is one thing, though, that we have not talked about that's leaving a glaring hole in the modern history of Arkansas. Boy, this is some treacherous waters.

Bill Clinton, I don't. know a person that probably would get behind Bill Clinton politically. Right. But he's someone that I don't find a lot of people wanting to talk bad about in the state of Arkansas. Yeah. He was like our one guy that made it to the top. That's right. Yeah.

People are still pretty defensive of him. Like they probably wouldn't talk real bad. That's been my experience anyway. Yeah, I think Bill Clinton's a good example of that. I mean, he certainly the most famous person. from Arkansas, I guess Johnny Cash would give him a pretty good run for his money, but on the world stage, I mean, we got Bill Clinton and, yeah, whatever your politics are, there's still a part of you that's proud that here's this small town boy from Arkansas who made it to the

White House. And that's just something that you don't expect us to do. I've told you all before that my dad went to the same high school as Bill Clinton in Hot Springs, Arkansas, a town in which market bear hunters used to roam the streets and buckskin. Well, in 1993, shortly after Clinton took office, he made a visit to Hot Springs. And randomly, Jujoo Newcomb and my little brother, Tyler, who was eight years old at the time, were walking downtown, and believe it or not, they ran into the president of the United States, Bill Clinton. My little brother had a talk boy recorder with him. Do you remember those?

Anyway, here's what happened. It's short, really short. But the world has never heard this unreleased interview of Bill Clinton. Clinton's down there eat. Yum, yum, yum to my tum. Third grade class in Mina, and this is a neat machine. I've never seen it before. I didn't get to say it.

Hi, Tyler. Hi, Tyler. Yum, yum to my tongue? Tyler's always had a way with words. When we dug the cassette tape out after 30 years, years, it was corrupted and about half of the full interview remained. But Tyler asked Bill Clinton to say hi to his third grade class in Mina, Arkansas, and he graciously did. Tyler then boldly asked the president of the United States to repeat saying, hi, Tyler. We better listen to that

again. Clinton's down there eating. Yum, yum, yum to my tongue. Third grade class and Mina, and this is a neat machine. I've never seen it before. I didn't get to say hi, Tyler, say it again. Hi, Tyler. That's some good stuff. Good job, Tyler. Did you catch that Clinton and Johnny Cash might be neck-in-neck for the most famous Arkansasans? Yep, the man in black was born in Kingsland, Arkansas in 1932, and we're pretty proud of that. I'm still trying to understand why myself, Joe Wilson, and Dr. Blevins, and so many others are interested in staying true to the original Arkansas image,

even with its flaws. Here's Dr. Blevins. Well, you know, it all comes back to that old 19th century division between the Enlightenment and Romanticism. And still today, you know, there are people who are going to take schoolcraft side and who are not going to want to have anything to do with the hillbilly image of Arkansas or the people who still kind of make that realm. relevant in some way as part of the image of Arkansas. And then they're going to be the people who are

excited about it and who are glad that not everybody is just sort of lining up and running willy-nilly into this progressive future that awaits us, that some people are kind of holding back and still doing things by the old ways. Can you not have both? Yeah. Yeah. And I remember years ago in class, I think I was working on Arkansas. Arkansas, when this discussion came up, one of my classes. But I remember we were talking about the state's hillbilly image, and I remember one of the students saying, well, at least they know who we are. And his point was, if you're going to have an identity, you're going to be known for something. It's better to be the hillbilly state than to be all of these sort of vanilla cookie cutter states that don't really have any image at all.

At least they know who we are. I think that's pretty profound. A deep longing of every human is to simply be known. And sometimes we don't get to choose what we're known for. It chooses us. I do not understand the psychological complexities of why humans naturally become so attached to place. I don't fully understand why I love Arkansas so much.

I suspect it's deeply biological and has helped us survive. And it probably has something to do with the incredible natural beauty of our mountains, the clear water of our highland streams, and the enchanting rivers and lowlands of our delta. Throw in the hospitable character of our people, many of which have an intangible charm unique to the creation state. And if I'm being honest, I'm quite certain Arkansas must be the best place in America. Loving place makes us curious. It makes us explore.

It makes us protect. It makes us value that place. And it can empower us to live the best life that we can possibly live in that place. But I think the take home for this whole discussion is that you may live in a trailer park in rural America or in an urban ghetto, but you can thrive there. You get to interpret first to yourself. and then secondly to the world about the place you live by displaying who you are. Where we're born doesn't fully define us, but we can use it to positively shape us or negatively shape us if we let it.

And I hope you love where you're from because it doesn't have to be perfect, but it is where you're from. So I'd suggest make the best of it. In closing, I'd like to thank America. for all the jokes, and you're welcome for all the laughs at our expense, because in the end we're having the last laugh, living the high life in the creation state, the bear state, with all our fancy art, making state-of-the-art holograms of our heroes. We've got our World Championship Squirrel Cook-off, our Black Bear Bonanza,

and the Razorbacks have the best coach in college basketball, Eric Musselman. One day they'll make a bronze statue of him as big as jayor-banks. Jerry Clower's Cadillac. And coach, please don't take some big job at Duke or some school out in California. There's no doubt that we love this place, but we've certainly got a lot of things to improve on. But that's the thing about Arkansas is we never really thought we were perfect. Jim Doggett said we were, and we believed him, but we knew it was kind of an exaggeration. In Arkansas, we don't take ourselves too seriously.

We're not too concerned about the hottest trends. And I find Arkansasans to be accepting of people with good intentions and the willingness to work to better their lives. In the end, we're just okay being Arkansasans. I'd like to close with a song from our own Johnny Cash. I think there's a message here. Well, my daddy left home when I was three and he didn't leave much. Tomorrow and me, just this old guitar and an empty bar.

of boo. Now I don't blame him because he run and hid, but the meanest thing that he ever did was before he left, he went and named me Sue. This poor man's dad named him Sue and then abandoned him, and then one day he meets up with his dad. He said, son, this world is rough, and if a man's gonna make it, he's gotta be tough, and I know I wouldn't be there to help you along. So I give you that name and I said goodbye and you

you'd have to get tough or die. And it's that name that helped to make you strong. Yeah. He said, now you just fought one of a fight, and I know you hate me and you've got the right to kill me now, and I wouldn't blame you if you do. But you ought to thank me before I die for the gravel in your guts and a spit me eye

because I'm the son of a that named you soon. I feel like I can hear Arkansas saying, you've got the right to be upset for the image I've portrayed of you over the years, but you ought to thank me for the gravel in your gut and the spit in your eye. All I've got to say is, long live the Arkansas image. I can't thank you guys enough for listening to Bear Grease. We put our heart and soul into this thing, and we appreciate y'all following along. Leave us a review on iTunes and share this podcast with some of your free

friends this week. And I can't wait to talk about this on the render with all those arcansans next week. And y'all can join in too in the conversation. Is your state ever been made fun of? 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 pool of blood. Oh my God, he doesn't have a hit. Blood Trails is a true crime podcast born in the Outgues. doors. 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 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.