00:00:05 Speaker 1: Eighteen fifty one movie did gets published. There's one mention of Arkansas, Arkansas always portrayed as crazy, violent, and stupid, only one line. I've waited my whole life for this opportunity. Perhaps this was even the primary reason for my birth and 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 gonna talk about the Arkansas image. Say it was the most picked on state in America in the twentieth 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 doctor Brooks Blevins, doctor Jeanie Wayne, and doctor Bob Cochrane to understand the roots of this image, its impacts, both good and bad. And we'll have some surprised 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 gonna 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 gonna 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 hair. Is someone who grows up in Arkansas, you just expect people are going to make fun of you. My name is Clay Nukeam and this is the Bear Grease Podcast where we'll explore things forgotten but relevant, search for insight and unlikely places, and where we'll tell the story of Americans who lived their lives close to the land, presented by f HF gear, American maid purpose built hunting and fishing gear that's designed to be as rugged as the place. As 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 Dogged, the big Bear of Arkansas. The Arkansas image has been brewed since the late sixteen hundreds, 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 doctor 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 hat in general cussedness. But in the positive column, our Canstans are known as independent, resourceful, nonconformists, 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 suggest that if you're not from here, you just listen and learn. This place is full of squirrel dogs, fortune, five hundred 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, 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 establish 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 and outlandish tales from what Jim Dog 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 eighteen forties by bear being made by dogs, and Native Americans buried his body in a shallow grave roughly twenty five 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 and then to New Orleans to be burned in street lights and used by those Cajun chefs who preferred bear grease over other oils. It's recorded that nine hundred and thirty six bear skins and a considerable amount of bear oil were shipped in eighteen o six by a single company in the Rivertown, Arkansas Post. A traveling rider once described a bear hunter he saw in Hot Springs, Arkansas, in eighteen thirty four. He said the man was a singular fellow who shunned society, was dressed altogether 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 Catto 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 dogs some twenty miles off to hunt bears. The man, although between thirty and forty 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 two hundred 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. Doctor Brooks Blevins wrote a book in two thousand and seven titled Arkansas Arkansas, How Bear Hunters, Hillbillies, and good old Boys defined the State. It's an incredible book. In the title, the first Arkansas has spelled correctly, but the second is spelled with a W at the end, the way the bear hunter gym dogget spelled at. In eighteen forty one, doctor Blevins makes a case that there are two arc and saws, which I think by the end of this you'll agree with. Let's talk about identity. Here's doctor 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 sleught that off and go on about their business and modernize. But Arkansas because of the timing when it becomes a state right there and the 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. Doctor 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 gonna have to go way back. This is doctor Jeanie Wayne of the University of Arkansas. What does the name Arkansas mean? Well, it's It was the name that the group of Illinois Indians who were accompanying the Marquette and Joliette trek down the Mississippi River in the seventeenth century gave to the Indians that we know of as the Quapaw, but the way they pronounced it was something like Arkansas, and the French pronunciation, Oh really, so they were trying to say Qua Paul they were called. The Illinois were calling them what they believed their name to be. The French interpreted it as Arkansas of something like Kansa, 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. Okay, 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 their people at some point land of the downstream people. Even our naming by the Native Americans is suddenly 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 Nucambs have had out into the known world since the early thirties when we arrived in the Washetaw 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 his Arkansas. It's believed Arkansas was first inhabited by Paleo Indians ten to twelve thousand years ago. In fifteen forty one, the Spaniard Hernando de Soto was the first European to set foot here, and not surprisingly, the old codre 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. De Soto 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, weighted with sand and sunk in the Mississippi River. It would be over one hundred and forty years before another European dude would come here. In sixteen eighty two, 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 six hundred men carried smallpox, plague, yellow fever, tuberculosis, to flu typhus, and measles to the tribes, nearly wiping them out. And tree ring analysis of that time shows an incredibly severe one hundred year drought that hit the tribes with a double wammy of crisis. Whatever happened, most of them were gone. LaSalle ends up in a small village of friendly Quawpaus and in sixteen eighty two 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 Quapa for military alliance for agricultural goods, and they engaged in trade. They engaged in a kind of cultural blending. So yes, they intermarried. They intermarried. They again, the military alliances intermarried trade and there was a descriptive pray or word used to describe Matisse. Yeah, so the French and the Quapaw and they're 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 lived together. At Arkansas Post the cultural lines blurred in the extreme isolation form in what they called the Matisse. That's a French word which means mixed and in this case a unique blend of the French and Quapole. Do you remember how I said the Big Bar of Arkansas, Jim Dogget's philosophical doctrines sounded non European to me. Well, this is probably why some of the European backwoods cultures had one hundred and fifty years of deep Native American influence in the seventeen hundreds. 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 passed their time playing games, dancing, drinking, or doing nothing similar in this as other things to the Savage peoples with whom they passed 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 as a real scandal. End of quote. And not to belabor the point, but Louisiana and Morris Arnold accused the hunters of Arkansas at this time of being murderers, rapists, and fugitives from justice, and as lazy, shiftless, given to excess drinking and laburtonage, and irredeemably lawless and a moral 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 sixteen and early seventeen hundreds, and things don't get better for Arkansas. Here's doctor Blevins. You know, first impressions are very powerful. That first impression can stick you 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 funniest place to visit. And when it gets branded with that, what happens is for the rest of the nineteenth century and into the twentieth century, there's just kind of this continual piling on of imagery. The imagery just started piling on. And to give a very short version of European immigration into Arkansas, for one hundred years after the establishment of the Arkansas Post in sixteen eighty three, there was very little happening here until the late seventeen hundreds when the number of market hunters increased, and they were here in good number through the time when Arkansas achieved territorial status in eighteen nineteen. That's when the numbers of people started to increase. Just remember all that it's important. Trust me, this is a 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 Pond effect. Arkansas was on the weights and 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 grainhorn geologist that came to the ozarks of Arkansas in eighteen eighteen looks 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 doctor 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 eighteen eighteen and eighteen nineteen, so well before the state very sparsely settled. He spends almost all of his time in the Ozarks and the northern third of the state. And Schoolcraft is he's 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 to come 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 Welles in northern Arkansas, probably you know, somewhere in the 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 where all they knew and for him, you know that, I mean, there were no books in the house. There was 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 were you know, there were all kinds of hides stretched out 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 erogeney, keeping the cultural anthropology to the people who know a thing or two about human life. Dirty sap sucker. He called Arkansans 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 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 finding him alike sunken 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 deplorable, and their childish disputes boys frequently stabbed each other with knives, two instances of which have occurred since our residence here. No correction was administered in either case, and the act being rather looked upon and is a promising trait of character. End of quote. You guys know that my annoyance with Schoolcraft is partly tongue in 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 slicking punk elites. Our good buddy, Frederick Gerstalker 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 twenty years after Schoolcraft, so maybe some people of higher character showed up, or Schoolcraft was looking for fault. When leaving the state, Gerstalker 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 passed there. There were many a true heartbeats under a coarse frock or a leather hunting shirt. Perhaps most famously, Washington Irving, America's first well known author, passed through, 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 the 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 and 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, not all and Irving were all here during Arkansas's territorial period from eighteen nineteen to eighteen thirty six. 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. So back to our story how Arkansas became the most belittled state in America. In eighteen thirty six, we became a state, but we weren't ready. We only had fifty two thousand people, no infrastructure, not much agriculture. But something was a brewin here's doctor 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 US 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 eighteen thirty six, so they kind of crammed them together and push them through, and 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 went 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 Washatas where the poverty stricken Hillbillies. That becomes synonymous with the national image of Arkansas. And we'll get into it. But the word hill didn't show up until the twentieth 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 doctor 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. And boy, those guys could control the political lovers well enough to make sure there were no taxes on them. So where's the commerce, Where's 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 it's a state, it's it's an impossible death. And that is really that's not cleared up until the eighteen nineties. Eighteen ninety eight, I believe this news was going out to America and Arkansas was just kind of this like backwater place with corrupt politicians and people in bad debt. You aren't gonna how are you going to get anybody to invest in Arkansas at this point in time. In the eighteen forties and eighteen fifties, 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 and doctor Blevin's 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 illusions, 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 arkansawyer becomes a nonconformist who consciously or unconsciously rejects the tenets of an American narrative of the puritan through progressive continuum, like ce Van Woodward's post Civil War Southerners who learned to live for long decades in quiet Unamerican poverty and learned the equally Unamerican lesson of submission. End of quote. Did doctor Blevins just say that Arkansas debunked the idea of American exceptionalism? I think he did. But because doctor 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 twentieth century writer. What 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 one hundred miles through month 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 dirt ball 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 classed intellect was born in Arkansas, lived there, or even passed through the state. End of quote. What a punk. Those are some strong words, mister Edson, and me and Brent Reeves will fight any of your living ken 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 eighteen forties, the widely popular story of the Arkansas Traveler came out. Here's Doctor Blevins. A little bit later, you've got the birth of the Arkansas Traveler. It's The Arkansas Traveler becomes a popular play in the nineteenth century, where you have this sort of sophisticated urbane traveler who ventures into somewhere in the back country, you know, 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 in the squad and the squatter says, well, I've been here twenty years and it ain't never went nowhere, and you know that, why don't you patch up your roof? And the squatter says, well, when it's raining, stu wet to patch it up, and when it's dry, don't need patching that, you know that kind of you know it's 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 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 that are that are still you know, popular, and you see those are around today. So you got a name of Arkansas's baseball team, but right the Little Rocks baseball team, the Lers, the University of Arkansas student newspaper, the Arkansas Traveler. Yeah, I mean that 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, you know, and kind of you've 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 twentieth century when when that comes in. But so Arkansas is already strongly associated with what we would consider hillbilly culture come the twentieth century. It's also around the turn of the twentieth 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 know, you got this kind of book titled that, Yeah, there's there's an old joke on a slow train through Arkansas. And the thing about it is, if you if you actually get the book and look at it, it's a very very offensive book, but not necessarily the people from Arkansas. It's 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 early nine very early nineteen hundreds, Arkansas is already shorthand for humorous. Yeah that was that was branded in and this guy was jumping on the band. He's taking advantage of whom any guy what a dirt ball? Right Once upon a time in Arkansas, an old man sat at its little cabin door. Anything with that a tune that he'd liked to Hugh Johnny, tune that he fleyed by. The Arkansas Travelers story has multiple potential sources, but it started off simply as a story that branded us big time. There's a famous painting fiddle tune. Arkansas Traveler was the name of a national paper published out of Arkansas with the national distribution of eighty five thousand in eighteen eighty seven, and in nineteen thirty eight 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 dad gum joke book. Yeah, Arkansas from you know, from those earliest days when it when he gets branded as the Bear State, that becomes some version of that, some version of the backwoods hillbilly state becomes its brand become it's what everybody in the country knows about it really for the rest of the century. You know, it shows up in in Mark Twain's writing, you know, that there's there are kind of these backwoods crazy characters from Arkansas who shows up, and 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 it's it's frontier stage. And that really you know, continues into the well into the twentieth century. Arkansas maintains its place as kind of the the bud of a national joke. Were there other states in the South that had that quite like quite like Arkansas? If you're if you're from Arkansas, you know, there's the old thank God for Mississippi line, which which I've heard people say many many that usually comes into play when you're looking at statistical rankings, because if anybody's going to be below Arkansas, it's maybe Mississippi. We're fighting for fiftieth place. And didn't they like reference Arkansas as inside of those cartoons they are there? They do that with other SATs. Yeah, well, the one I think you're thinking of, it's it's a Warner Brothers cartoon from nineteen fifty called Hillbilly Hare and it's bugs Bunny, oh Ken Hillbilly Hare. I know they referenced the Ozarks. But in that cartoon Hit 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 hum in danger, so huh. And he gets in the middle of this feud between you know, two feud and families. They're all bearded and barefoot and overalls, and they got you know, shotguns with muzzles on them that are longer than the people themselves. Who crew and just who might you be? Might be Teddy Roosi belt but I eat hey durn foh, what's our idea of time? Knox and the rifle Barron just call me freck Ocean. You know, it's very very it's funny, and it's stereotypical and all that kind of stuff. Well, one of the things you find is that by the twentieth 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 Grease, Hall of Famer Hulk Callier lived, The Ozarks and Washatas. Arkansas's mountainous regions make up about one third of our state, but in the twentieth 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 traveling. And without a doubt, I am very defensive of Arkansas. Doctor Blevins says that defensiveness is part of our cultural inheritance. Doctor Blevins brought up Mark Twain's work. And here is doctor Bob Cochrane 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 nun such show. They know they're just two bombs, but they try to take yokol. And there's a place where Arkansas shows up in Huckleberry Fame. So when he's putting up a placard advertising their hoochie Guccie show, you know, and that's what it is. I mean, there's no they have not the show. They're two guys they don't have, you know. Then they couldn't do a burlesque 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 tends 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 the suckers will think there must be something, you know, risque in the show just by that line, just by the no women and children that admitted. So here's what I'm really saying. Arkansas's reputation as a state this would have supported it. And there's one even more famous. It's Moby Dick eighteen fifty one. 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. They love doing that. And here's how he did it. Here's how he did it. He it's in one sentence. The phrase itself is uh like an Arkansas duellist is the phrase where Arkansas comes in. And the person who is described as being like an Arkansas duellist is Captain Ahab, the monomaniac, you know. And it's he is right under the bus, that 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 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 that's exactly an idiotic thing to do. Dumb thing to do, dumb and violent. So Arkansas was portrayed as crazy, viol and stupid. Only one line, wow, and Arkansas duelist and a duel in that time would have been common language for a shootout, right, like you would just would 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. Poland the guy who wrote the Peate Wetstone things, he killed somebody in a duel. He killed Governor Pope's nephew. Governor John Pope's nephew insulted him. They had to challenge him to a duel. They were they were distressingly common duels in those days. They loved to go to places where police jurisdiction was a little bit in doubt, like islands in a river, is this in this county? Here 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, you know, so and you know they're all carrying booie knives around and yeah. In eighteen thirty seven, 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 wild and violent place. We're gonna skip ahead in time to some stuff from the twentieth century. The heyday of the hillbilly in American media was in the nineteen thirties and forties. 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 Goth from my hometown of Mina, Arkansas. They had a wildly popular national radio show called Lomon Abner that ran nationally for twenty three years from nineteen thirty one until nineteen fifty four. I better in my life order run him out of town. Oh, he'll come to a Shamshire granddam. Abner just ain't used to having a lot of money and inch when they Shorter went to his head, and he's going to kill somebody with that cornhesion. Shets backing and back sheet and keeps punching night children the back with his walking keen making him go faster. Nineteen thirty three, Lom and Abner were receiving fifteen thousand 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 Arkansawyers as funny, quirky, but noble. In nineteen thirty seven, Lom and Abner moved to Hollywood and starting seven movies. These guys were a big part of Arkansas's He'll belly image being exported to the country, but they didn't create it. They just inherited it from the last two hundred and fifty years. But America couldn't get enough of Arkansas. Moving forward, here's Doctor 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 nineteen sixty eight until nineteen ninety And No, you can't make this stuff up. You know, when I wrote Arkansas Arkansas several years ago, by far the funniest job I had in writing that book was writing that little chapter on the state's inferiority complex, because the funniest characters in the book to me were the folks in Arkansas who got got their backs up. You know so much about people making fun of them. And I think from the very earliest days there has been this sort of defensive ferriority 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 sixties, there were, you know, people in Little Rock who were upset about that. You know, their response wasn't, well, you know where all of Arkansas 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 nineteen eighties. All I can remember is the log ride in all the overalls. Man, it was cool. I think that's where Brett Reeves was born. Here's more from doctor Blevins. And one of the things I did this was back in I think it was back in two thousand and seven. I did these internet searches. Not very scientific, but it's about as scientific as I could get. I just because I remember thinking one day I had almost finished the first draft of my book Arkansas Arkansas, which is all about, you know, 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 at 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 twenty first 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 like Google searches where I would do exact phrase searches and I'd do like Arkansas hillbillys in quotation marks, and I would do hillbilly from Arkansas and 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 just whatever, and and and I remember being so relieved at the end of that day because in that I would count like the hits that each of these phrases God, and sure enough, Arkansas was still the hillbilliesst state according to the Internet in two thousand 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 hillbillyist state. And I mean even, you know, we're smoking Kentucky and West Virginia and in this competition, and I even broke it down like it did the math by per capita, and you know, Arkansas just blew everybody away in terms of its affiliation with the word hillbilly in two thousand sets. So I mean even it survived even into the twenty first century. You know, those rude Let's go all the way back to those Bear state images that we've talked about. I mean, that's how strong that connection has been that even Walmart can't remove us from, you know, the number one spot 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 doctor 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 nineteen fifty four, in essay was published in American Mercury magazine, written by an arkansawyer by the name of Eugene Newsome. 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 caplock muzzloader at the neighbors once a week, give the inquiring stranger directions to possum trot and goose ankle, and give him a sample of Uncle Rape's last run of corn squeezings. If Arkansas is ever gonna 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 recognize honoriness to the wide world. End of quote. The Arkansas image we've described as 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 cood and squirrel dogs. That's just the truth. But we also have four oh one k's 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 happening place, brothers. Doctor 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 sorry. I'm at the Crystal Bridges Museum in Bentonville, Arkansas. Tell me who you are. My name is Mindy Pisa. 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 Amon Carter Museum in Fort Worth, the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, tendc. 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's seven hundred thousand people visited Crystal Bridges. This is an incredible number. But I want to let y'all into a little bit of that high aluten 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 eleven 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 po dunk state. Of Arkansas, and we loved it because Arkansans 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, you know. 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 if you don't know where Arkansas is. We're almost in the center of the country, which will learn as 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. 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 as Thomas Cole. He's the guy with the hat and 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 land 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. So New York Public Library was 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 that 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 costs? 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, normal stuff for us, just normal stuff, you know, 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 Hutting's 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, the 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? Oh, there's there. That's what I'm actor right there. I just saw it. So I have a copy of this painting hanging in my living rooms, a certain like a color when I bought from you guys. Yeah, years ago I ordered this and had it professionally framed a little smaller than this. But tell me that what this is and who who did it? Sure? So this is Arthur Fitzwilliam Tate. It's called a Tate 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 compromise sort of heated 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 spectacular, and it shows a buckskin clad hunter with a bowie knife drawn in a hand to call brawl with Ursus Americanus. 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 eighteen fifty six, and the scene is strikingly similar to the one Frederick Gerstalker described in his book Wild Sports in the Far West, which was published just two years before at eighteen fifty four. 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 eighteen hundreds. 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 doctor Blevins. He has an astute observation and wants to introduce us to a unique Arkansan. You know, in In twenty eleven, Crystal Bridges Museum opened up. I think they opened on eleven, eleven eleven. That was their big thing. November eleven, twenty eleven, 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 there started to be this kind of almost a rebranding of Arkansas just because and of the ozark 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 founds the Squirrel cook Off World champions in Bentonville, Arkansas. And it's almost as it's kind of the even things out. I mean, you know, you get all of this kind of progressive sided 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 are still people who kill and eat squirrels, and so you get the you get the squirrels Joe Wilson and the World Champions Squirrel cook Off. Yeah, it's kind of It brings 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, long before there was a Crystal Bridges. Joe Willson is in his late forties. 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 I don't matter, you know, I'm free will. 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, it's pretty simple. I was witnessing the change. I've seen the change all around us, switching over from pickup trucks to BMW's and Tesla's, 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 gonna see me and you or guys that act and look like us, and they're hard to find. You know, 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. 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 gonna 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, 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 cook Off will be in late September twenty twenty three, 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 him, but the ozark Er, Sam Walton simply gave America what it wanted. So don't hate the player, 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, better they get. Here's Joe talking about mister 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 mister Sam. Stand by, Yes, so you're inside is Sam's first store. But a lot of people don't know Sam Walton was a hunter. Sam Quell hunted, pheasant hunted. The property where Crystal Bridges was was a place that you know, coon dogs 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 fans on the dog food. Old Roy named after one of his dogs. So Lords West 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 build it back. Mister 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 mister 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 going to introduce you, do my buddy. This is Clay Newcomb. Yeah, nice to meet you. I'm Clay's got a national broadcasted podcast. And I just walked into the old five and dime. And now he had some questions. He was going to ask, mister 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 mister Sam. And then the wonderful company that created this for us. They used facial mapping to put mister Sam's face on the holiday. So we're looking at a it's a it's a. It looks like he's in like a little room and he's just right here by us, and his face is moving a little bit. It looks real, looks like a real man standing it. This is a state of the art hologram machine. It feels and looks like we're talking to a real man. It's bizarre. Mister Sam died in nineteen ninety two, and it's rare to find anybody here that didn't respect Sam Walton as a kid. I vividly remember my grandfather lew and Nucom from Bumblebee, Arkansas, who was a peer in age and fellow Arkansas bird hundred to mister 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 mister Sam a question. Do you think that mister Sam knows the name of the nut that comes off of an oak tree? I 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 I'm seeing I would I'm from northwest Arkansas. Okay, I think that kind of fits into what you're after. Well, you're so, there's two versions of the same thing on one would be called an acorn, like you said, and the other one would be called an akern. Do you know the difference? See my memo would sell use an acorn? Okay, I'm telling you your code switching on us. Listen, because all this all this Walton money, your code switching on us, pull it out of your Arkansas heritage calling it an acorn? Are you ashamed of or absolutely not. I'm very proud of my home. I'm very proud of my heritage. Um, it's just that people look at you like you're crazed if you say things like that, like ketty womp us fringet? Have you ever heard the expression? Key? Doug, We dug right into the interior and we found what we were looking for. So does Sam know anything about Old Roy Steel? Yeah, let's ask Yeah. Yeah, we'll see what he says. Okay, mister Sam, can you tell us about Old Roy Roy was a setter, probably the most overrated bird dog in history. He was a merchant, a hunter at all. He would point for having for his hand. But he was a great tennis dog. He would go with me to the tennis court and lay there, and whenever the ball went out of the court or over the fenced or whatever, he would go chasing after it and bring him 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 in picture on our private label Bigra Fruit, he had sold tons one year alight became the number two dog fruit the Nmmerica. And remember we all may sell it in Walmart. That's so good. Lew and Nucom loved to feed his bird dogs 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 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 he was like our our one guy that made it to that's right. Yeah, because people are still pretty defensive of him, like they probably wouldn't talk real bad. That's might have been my experience anyway. Yeah, I think Bill Clinton's a good example of that. I mean, he certainly the most famous person from Market. I guess Johnny Cash would give him a pretty good run for his money. But but on the world stage, I mean we got Bill Clinton, and uh yeah, whatever your politics are, there's 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 y'all before that my dad went to the same high school as Bill Clinton and Hot Springs, Arkansas, a town in which Market bear hunters used to roam the streets and buckskin well. In nineteen ninety three, shortly after Clinton took office, he made a visit to Hot Springs and randomly, Juju Nukam and my little brother Tyler, who was eight years old at the time, we're walking downtown and believe you 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 ry yeah, yum kum Tom heard grade class and mina and this is a neat machine. I've never seen it before. H Tyler, yum yum to my tum. Tyler's always had a way with words. When we've dug the cassette tape out after thirty 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 and Mina, Arkansas, and he graciously did. Tyler then boldly asked the President of the United States to repeat, saying Hi Tyler, We'd better listen to that again. Clinton's down ry yeah yeahm Q my Tom, third grade class and mina and this is a neat machine. I've never seen it before. Hi Tyler, that's some good stuff. Good job, Tyler. Did you catch that Clinton and Johnny Cash might be neck and neck for the most famous Arkansans yep, The Man in Black was born in Kingsland, Arkansas in nineteen thirty two, and we're pretty proud of that. I'm still trying to understand why myself, Joe Wilson, and doctor Blevins and so many others are interested in staying true to the original Arkansas image, even with its flaws. Here's doctor Blevins. Well, you know, it all comes back to that old nineteenth century division between the Enlightenment and Romanticism and it and still today. You know, there are people who are going to take schoolcraft side and who are not gonna want to have any anything to do with the hillbilly image of Arkansas or the people who still kind of make that 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 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 can you 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 gonna have an identity, you're gonna 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 becomes 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, throwing 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 to 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 out 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 that are 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 broad statue of him as big as Jerry Clower's Cadillac and coach, Please don't take some big job, 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 it. 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 our Kansas to be accepting of people with good intentions and a willingness to work to better their lives. In the end, we're just okay being our Kansas. 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 jamw and me, just his old guitar and empty bottle of food. Now, I don't blame him because he running head, But the meanest thing that he ever did was before he left, he wasn't named me Sue. This poor man's dad named him Sue and then abandoned him looking. 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 has got to be cough. 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 got the write 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 and your guts in the spit in the eye, because I'm the son of a that named you Sue. Yeah, 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 friends this week. And I can't wait to talk about this on The Render all those Arkansas next week, and y'all can join into in the conversations. Your state ever been made fun of?

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