![Ep. 136: BEAR GREASE [RENDER] - The Greatest Flood - podcast episode cover](https://assets.metacast.app/images/episode/artwork/JvDVj75I)
My name is Clay Nukeleman. This is a production of the Bear Grease podcast called The Bear Grease Render, where we render down, dive deeper, and look behind the scenes of the actual bear Grease podcast, presented by f HF Gear, American made purpose built hunting and fishing gear that's designed to be as rugged as the place as we explore.
Brent haven't told you about my raccoon woes.
No, So.
You guys know I have two very large dogs, ye great danes. Great Danes that eat ate a lot of dog food. And I keep the dog food on my back deck and I have it in a big tub because I buy it one hundred pounds at a time and it lasts like three weeks. I go through about one hundred punds of dog food in about three three and a half weeks. But I've the dog food lid was off a few times. A couple months ago. It was off a few times, and I'm like, what's going on?
And then I put two and two together that the raccoons have figured out how to open up my dog food tub. Yes, so I got a rack. So I knew I had a raccoon because this raccoon was leaving me a little deposit on the back deck every night too. So so finally I got around a bar on a live trap from a friend of ours to try to help with things. I bought a new dog food tub that has locking handles on the end. So I put the live trap out, put a little bowl of dog food in there on the you know the little deal
that that on the spring of the trap. Yeah, and I my dogs. I hear them wrestling in the night because I sleep in our room, and I was like, oh man. And I had put a ring camera out on the back porch and I was. I popped it up and I see a pair of eyes. I'm like, yes, I got that raccoon. And I go outside and lo and behold, your great dane was in the trap. Lo and behold, I got two raccoons in one trap. And so I uh, I was like, I.
Tried, you was shopping to come in here?
Yeah, exactly. They look pretty young. So that was on Wednesday. When I went out there to to to check the trap. Those sorry suckers had flipped the handles down on the dog food ben and they were getting in there and getting dog food out of there first, and so I caught him. I was like, yes, my all my problems are solved. And till that was on Wednesday night. Thursday night, the dog food bind is open and there's raccoon tracks in the water bowl. I was like, are you moaning me?
There's more?
Yes, So I put the trap out again last night, and at five o'clock this morning, I hear like it sounded like somebody's knocking on my door, like they needed to get in. And I'm kind of in a in a stupor, and I'm like, what's going on? And then I realized I got a raccoon, and I got that other raccoon, and I got knocked on your door, knocked on the door. So I go out to the back porch and opened the door and what do I see? Two raccoons in the track, two fruits, and not only that,
two more raccoons on the deck. Six six raccoons, and I don't know there might be a hole, like they may have moved in next door and I didn't know. Yes, six raccoons, that's crazy, but catching them at.
A time, that's pretty impressive.
Yeah, I got a dog grint.
Well, I asked Clay, I said, you need you need.
I'm coon dog poor right now?
Man?
Did y'all notice on the podcast this week Clay's chair squeaking.
People talk about it all the time. I literally gets.
On the Grease podcast. Really I need to oil this baby up. Welcome to the Bear Grease Render mile My. What a monumentous day we have. We have two, We have a return get.
I just want to say reports of his death have been largely exactly.
We have back back at the Meter South Global Headquarters.
We have Gary.
Believer nucom back back from back.
Man.
It's good to see you with ions.
Good to be here. I can walk without pain now. Yeah, man will be dangerous.
She's been spritten up and down.
A whirl out scouting for deer.
Mm hmm.
And now I'm we'll quit hunt and start playing golf. Oh wow, that's tragedy, isn't it. Well, it's good to have you back. Yes, thank you. Good to have you back. And this is long time coming, Brent. Why don't you introduce our guests.
To my left.
To my left is my lovely wife, Alexis Reeves, fresh fresh from the Bozeman, Montana head North headquarters.
Yes, so good to finally be here.
You had to put yourself on someone else's podcast.
Yeah, so Alexis, Alexis was on the meat Eater podcast and uh.
And never heard of it.
She had through meat Eater before she could be allowed on this.
That's what I've been missing all these years.
Alexis. It's great to have you. You are clearly the best thing going on with Brent. Absolutely, and then to my to my left, the best thing going on with me, mister newcam And then Josh Langbridge filmmaker, Josh, Yeah, did you did you get a chance to read that Brendia book?
I'm I'm I've started on it.
Have you really?
Yeah? Good?
Ye good, It's very interesting. It's not what I expected.
Way, we we have a lot to do on this podcast today. First of all, I would like to to present the reeves with some new Coom Farm apple butter. Josh, you, Christine, that is some good apple butter. And I've already given Juju and Dad.
That's good color.
We've had a bumper crop by apples. Yeah, and so so we made apple butter, which apple butter is pretty much cooked down apples brown sugar and butter, no butter, no butter and uh and uh uh cinnamon and some vanilla and a few other secret ingredients. We got a whole whole ingredients.
But it looks very good.
It's good. It's good apple butter. You know, you can use apple butter in a lot of different ways. I've learned. I've been using it like a side dish, kind of like on Thanksgiving, like cranberry sauce. Like if you're eating meat or eggs or whatever, you can just have a big dollar of apple butter and just use it. And it's fantastic, fantastic. I got to introduce this. I got permission too. This is ad around the first of September, Phelps Game Calls is going to come out with what
they're calling the clay newcomb Achorn grunt bleat. This is not a joke. This is a really high end and when I say high end, it's a it's actually quite a revolutionary deer call. It is a two and one grunt bleat, which I didn't realize. I was with Jason Phelps in Mexico and I we were just talking about deer calls and Phelps has a deer bleat and they have a grunt and I said, man, we need a two in one call. I don't want to carry two calls.
And I love a dough bleat. I've called up so many deer with a dough bleed, especially before the rut. During the rut, all you hear about in deer hunting is grunt calls during the rut to get an aggressive buck to come in. What you don't hear about is in the early season using a bleat or what you hear about it. But you know mainly guys are talking about grunt calls. Well, I said, man, I want to inhale exhale grunt call, and he was like, well, they
don't make any there's there isn't one. And they came up with an incredible design. And this call is about probably three it's probably longer than that. I was going to say five and a half six inches, But it's got a it's got a uh, it's got a a good grunt that you can't top out. You can do it real low.
Or you can do it.
You can it doesn't peg out. A lot of cheaper grunt calls will peg out. Blow it as hard as you can blow it. It won't peg out. But from the same side you can inhale a very supple dobe blue. Wow, that is awesome.
Can it around and blow?
Well, So that's the thing. So if when you're hunting real cold weather, if you want to not exhale into the call and freeze the reeds, you can flip it and suck inhale to get a grunt and then blow. So anyway, anyway, and yeah, yeah, I was flipping it back. Yeah, y'all couldn't see that. Okay, So there's not a call like this. So in theory, you could inhale to get a doe bleat and flip it and inhale to get a butt grunt if you didn't want to freeze the reeds.
But what I like about the call this is, you know, the can calls are so good, the little primos can calls, I mean they really are. I wanted a call that you could replicate that soft and you can do it on these. But but this is the Akron grunner. This is the deer huntunter's grunner. Spell it too, Acron a k E r n spelled spelled the the the old, the old way, the way. Twenty percent of us in the country say, and uh, this is made of genuine white oak. Oh go and this is a deer hunter's call.
That's a great call.
It really is, man and uh, it's even man. I didn't ask them to do this, they did it.
I love it.
It's got my signature on it. They're making really hundred of these, making only five hundred of them. It is called the it's called the acorn grunner, the acorn grunt and bleat. And it's beautiful, little green uh, little little green band in the middle, but it's made of white oak. I mean that tree right there fed deer.
Hey, it'll go quick man. Yeah, lanyard too.
Yeah, so you can get that phelps in early September. This is a big getting big and uh you need a dough bleat is you can call in a pretty high percent, judas in the early season, bleeping at him.
Has that been your experience, Alexis?
Every time?
Yeah, every time I've been looking for something just like that.
Thank you, good, good, excellent, excellent, Brent. I have I have a couple of questions for you. So I was listening to this Country Life, Yeah, just today, and uh, there's a story you telling there about punching your dad in the stomach.
Well he was asleep.
Yeah, what was going through your mind.
I can't.
I don't know, and I even told talked about it in there, but it was like, I mean, I can remember that, and it was like I watched that on TV because I can't believe I would do it. I was not a violent child by any means, and was not a behavior problem either. But I was just laying there and I guess I'd run out of things to think about it.
Other than going swimming.
And when I just looked over there at him, he laid that he was so peaceful, that he was sleeping so good.
It was like he was in a coma.
And and Reva Man she you know, she edits the podcast Reva Hansen does, and she put that him in there snore and it was absolutely perfect. I mean, I was took right back to that spot. But I thought I laid there and I looked at my little little arms in the elementary school. I looked at my arm and I thought, I wonder how hard I would have to hit him to get elbow deep. So I just set up on the edge of the bed. And you are no more relaxed when you're in that first ten
minutes of real good sleep. I mean, you are out because he was you could just just breathe and was just like the ocean.
Man, it was just flowing, just easy.
I just set up on the bed and as hard as I could, I tried to put my fist from his belly to his backbone. And let me tell you, it don't regardless of how good your dad is sleeping or what kind of state of coma tose he's in, he comes wake pretty quick when when you do that.
And it was I couldn't. I got two steps.
Away from the bed, you know, thinking right then the best place I could be was anywhere that he wouldn't And he caught me, and I just know I'm dead. He's gonna kill me. But he didn't.
Obviously I lived through it and he didn't.
That's part of the story. So this is this is a story on this country life podcast. It's about swimming holes and and and the climax of the story is his dad takes him swimming after this. Okay, but what but his dad wanted to take a nap before they went swimming.
We'd been fishing that morning. We've been fishing that morning was from Yep, Briam fishing. Caught a big mess of fish, and when took him up there and cooked them for dinner, some folks would say lunch, they'd be wrong.
And then we took it.
Then he said, as soon as we get this, get you cleaned up, we're gonna we're gonna rest am in it and then we're gonna go swimming. Well, I knew rest am in it was nap and I ain't about no nap. Or let me let me rephrase that. I wasn't about no nap. Then then, yeah, I see the value of it.
I don't know. I was in the fifth or sixth grade, so mm hmm.
Yes, what were you thinking when you married Brent?
I don't know how long have y'all been about it.
What we told Steve twelve.
Years, I think is what we told him.
That's what we're telling people, I think.
But I'm a little worried about this story about him punching his dad during that time, because I'm a big napper.
You're concerned.
I'm a little concerned about this, and maybe this is why I've heard that story.
And yeah, you haven't heard this story. You told me that story before, Yeah, you have when it when he came on, I remember you didn't give me the context of swimming holes. I remember one time you're saying you punched your dad in the stomach.
Sleep.
Yeah, I never did anything like that after that, before or after, So I don't know it.
Was, do you ever?
No, I don't think so. No, I would have killed him. Yeah, I don't know. I don't think so. I do remember one time we were taking care of my littlest brother when he was just a baby, and you were asleep, and we were Me and Zach are just kind of like tired of messing with him, and so I remember putting him on your belly and like running you got It was like, this is this guy's response. No, okay, Brent, tell me so since Alexis is here, and tell me.
I remember one time you told me so Alexis is kind of a city girl.
All right?
Or am I right very much? Okay? And you told me one time that you quoted the words to a Reda Lynn song to her telling her a story, and she thought.
We hadn't been married long and it was coming before Christmas before yeah, and we had it was before Christmas and before we had long before we ever had Bailey.
And she asked me.
Something about a Christmas ornament. She said, do you have a special Christmas ornament from when you were a child and I said. She got looked over at me and sad face as I could put on. I said, no, we didn't have Christmas ornaments.
We were poor. And she said, oh, you know, just like oh, you know, I'm not going.
To go there.
It's obviously a bad place.
And I said, now, if I can get their lyrics right here, I said, you know, in the in the summertime, we didn't have shoes to wear. She said you didn't. I said no, I said, but in the winter time we'd all get a brand new pair. She said, oh, that's good, I said, I said my mama. My mama would order them from a male order catalog. She said really, I said, yeah. It was money made for my dad selling the hog. She said, did you grow up on the Little House on my period? And I said, no,
that's the lyrics to Cold Miner's daughter. She ain't trusted the thing.
Up, said yeah. She called me an idiot.
She said, you idiot, Josh, can you play us that song? You know that song?
I know of it.
I've never played it, but.
So Dad, yesterday was your fiftieth wedding anniversary. Oh yeah, quite a deal.
If you kept Judy with you for that long, you must be quite.
That you got married in nineteen seventy three, seventy three, seventy three, Yeah, August, I believe fifty years. Yeah, it's pretty good man.
That's got to be the longest hostage case in history.
Yeah, I'll tell you what it's it's been terrible, but we suffered too. If you know miss Judy new Come, she's a real sweetheart. Oh gosh ya, no, anyway, have been real blessed to have Judy nukelem mm hmm.
So was I pretty fortunate?
Yeah, y'are lucky you had her when you were raised up.
She was the kind of mother that would just she wouldn't discipline or whip or anything.
He's all love.
And on the other side it was me. It made a good balance, really.
Good cup, bad cup.
Yeah.
Well, that's congratulations on fifty years.
That's big, thank you.
It's a pretty big deal, really big thing.
Alexis, what what was it like being on the Meteor podcasts? So Alexis, have we already said that yet? Alexis was on the media.
But if you can never say it too much and in reality, in reality, I just said hi, and how many years I was married to Brent?
But I was there talking about dire wolves and all kinds of stuff.
Correct, and I love dogs, So it was great. I learned a lot. I did learn a lot. It was fun. I was honored to be there.
You know, Brent's little video kind of went viral on just showed it to me talking talking about talking about cats eating the nose off of dead people.
Yeah, weirdly, I've actually heard you say that before. You were the first press I've ever heard say that. Well, I just saw, I saw what was happening is I was just scrolling through and I saw if a cat, and I was like, Brent's about to tell them that cats eat dead people? You know that words came up and I was like, oh man, And so I paused to see if you did, and he did. And that's the nastiest thing.
I wish I could. I wish I could forget it.
Misty Nuke loves cats.
I actually hate cats. I wish I didn't, and I don't know why I do. And and I've had some real extreme sponsors to cats. When we first moved out here. You know, this was just kind of a wild place, like we didn't have And I think Clay always he always my dad kind of he didn't like cats, and so every time we'd see when he'd be like, I hate cats, and so Clay just thought, well, that's why Missy didn't like cats. It's just kind of like a family culture thing. And so he always told me, I
don't want you passing that on to our kids. There's no reason to hate cats. So we're not gonna.
Hate I hate cats, but there's no reason to just be like afraid of cats.
Yeah, So I would always just try to keep it under wraps, you know. And when we moved out here, there wasn't a whole lot going on out here. Before we got here, we had to clear out land, and it was still kind of wild. You would see all
sorts of animals coming around, and usually that was fun. Well, the girls were little, they were three and two, and Bear was a newborn when we moved out here, and I would we were coming in, I think from getting groceries or something, and I brought Barry and he was asleep. I brought Barryn and I left the door open so that the girls could come in behind me. And as I'm walking up the stairs, I see a cat that was abnormal. I mean, it wasn't like a normal cat.
It it's tail, it was mangy, it had blood on it. It's something had happened to this cat. And rather than me ow and it was barking. And I just said, girls, don't, don't touch that cat, don't don't look at it, don't invite it over here, because you know, River would have like, come here, kiddy. And so I was like, don't that something's wrong with that cat, y'all just come inside. And I walked out and took Bear inside. When I walked out,
that cat was in our living room. Oh and my girls were sitting there and it was just the girls and I. But I instinctively did what most people would do, and I just started turning circles and screaming out loud, but remembered that I'm not supposed to pass that trait onto my kids, and so what I'm screaming is everything. So cat, I am a tall I mean, you could have wrapped a snake around my arms and I would have been calmer. And seeing that cat right there in
my living room and I just start screaming. I get on the phone. Clay was out of town. That I called my aunt and uncle, who are like just up the road, and I am in a panic. They don't know if something's wrong with one of the kids, if something's and I'm just screaming, there's a cat, said, I'm going crazy. They came down here. When they walked in my aunt Terry, I mean she she walked in less than five minutes and they lived ten minutes away, less than five minutes from the time I made that call.
And she had lyesol, she had wind ACKs, she had like gloves. I don't know what she thought had happened.
She was ready.
She thought maybe a cat had eaten someone. I don't like cats.
We don't know what happened to the cat.
For twenty probably twenty two years, and we've been very good friends. But I came very close to ruining our friendship one time by shoving a kitten in her face. And it was not not her thing.
Let's just say no, yeah, it's not like a thing in my head that I'm choosing. I think Clay believes this is a choice that I have made. I don't know why. Here he's asked me before something bad happened to me with a cat. If that happened, that's her pressed deep.
I think it's been fed.
You think it's been fad.
I think it's I think I think even the more we talk about the book, bigger it gets okay.
Well, just able to just rest assured when they wake up. They got a cat in the house. They wake up in the morning and Fluffy is laying on your chest and you think, oh, this this cat loves me so much. He's checking to see if you're breathing because he's fixing your nose.
I think I know that I need you to tell me that. When you said that, I was like, that's exactly what I'm afraid of. I know the potential that this cat has exactly it's gonna kill me.
Ultimate predator.
Well, we're on the third Mississippi River episode.
We were we supposed to listen to so that before we came here.
Yes, yes, you were, Yes, you were.
I wait outside, you get a group.
You know what, I thought this episode was really good.
You you like, she wasn't expected.
I wasn't. I kind of felt like it was it was it was a little it was like too much, just a little too much information. He Clay Lexus is like, yeah, you won't get it.
That's fine. I got one on. He kind of preps like he'll come out after he finishes a podcast, and I always know what he thinks about it, and that that shapes how I hear it. So when I listened to it, I was kind of expecting this to be like over the top, but I thought it was really good. I found it super interesting.
It was all like I never put anything in the Bear Grease that I don't think is essential, Like it's it's got to be essential. There's no filler, Like I don't have to make a podcast an hour long. I can make it thirty minutes. I can get whatever. So everything that was said I felt like was essential for the story. It was just there was just there was a lot.
There was nothing redundant in Yeah.
I think that when you when you're doing a podcast like the Mississippi. I mean, like, for example, I thought, as I listened to it, I thought, oh, he's about to talk about blues music. Like I thought that was a direction when when he when you started playing that, yeah, and and then you didn't go that direction. And I think that and we've kind of talked about this whole whole You said it at the beginning. It's hard to know. There's so much people need to know, and it's hard.
To know what kind of have to pick a direction.
Yeah, and then you'll come back to something or not.
What I the reason I feel like knowing who Ellett, Humphreys and ads are those three guys, And not that everybody in the world needs to remember it, but when you see the depth of work and human investment and engineering and thought and everything that went into taming that river, it just makes you respect it because I mean, we just drive over it and just think that this river just it's just here. It's just not that big a deal.
But I mean, this was one of the greatest feats of human engineering on planet Earth was taming this river. And these guys and their story is so fascinating because there's these two guys that are being paid by the government to give reports on the river and.
They hate each other.
They hate each other, and there's this ego rivalry and they both agree on the same thing that there needs to be levees and outlets, and yet because one of them wants to be different than the other, he says Leve's Only will work even though his research said that it wouldn't. They adopt that policy for like fifty years in the corp of Engineers, and then Levee's Only fails and causes the greatest natural disaster, greatest financial natural disaster
in American history. It's just kind of wild when you see the human nature how it's played. And you know, man and rivers have always been have always been linked in rivers. Any kind of obstacle, a natural obstacle brings out the kind of the showcase of human possibility. Good guys, bad guys, cheaters, those that have integrity, heroes, villains. You know, it's like anything can happen. But so, yeah, what, Brent, what stood out to you in this one? Anything stand out?
A couple of things. One of them do you.
Like when they ate that horse?
Oh, they're great.
That was one of my favorite parts the VAKA when that horse drowned along with Juan Velasquez.
I know that they hit the bank down there in Florida, But where did that happen at that?
So the first inland journey into what is now America from Europeans was down kind of in south central Florida.
So you don't know. I'm asking what river? Do you know? Did they know it was dy?
Yeah, it's in there. I don't know what. Okay, offhand, I don't.
But that, I mean, that wasn't what I was talking about. I just I thought about that when it happened, when I when I heard it. But the bureaucracy and both of us having I'm not going to steal a Lexus thunder here, but knowing something doesn't work and going on with it anyway, Yeah, and putting money behind it and sweat equity and people in there and it and it fell miserably, Yeah, and catastrophic to I mean, forget the farms,
think about all the people. You know, I mentioned on I think render number two about my grandfather going over there. Are we ready to get into that part? Sure, he talked about that. He was he would have been about fourteen, or he would have been fourteen when they went over there. He was born nineteen thirteen, fourteen when they went where when he when they went over there to help with the flood.
Okay, well, yeah, tell us we don't know.
I'm sorry.
My grandfather was born in nineteen thirteen and when the flood happened in twenty seven. He lived in southeast Tarkans where I grew up, and they were taking box car loads of folks and truck loads of folks over there to help not only with rebuilding, but for recovery. And he said they did a lot of that, recovering bodies and stuff over there, and some folks they never found. And he said, as a young man, he said it was absolutely horrible.
He said it was.
He said it was like heout even he had never he said, I'd never seen anything like that. He didn't fight in World War Two, but he said he would have to imagine that that's what it was like for those folks seeing that.
He said, it was just absolutely horrible.
Just whole families, some whole family's gone, yeah, you know, and people walking around trying to find loved ones and neighbors. And yeah, he said, there was absolutely it was just like a clean slate of mud.
Nothing there. Man.
I've always had a pretty strong philosophy about not living near big rivers during the times we live in I mean, for real, like I don't want to live near a big river. I think it's I think you in alexis risky risky. I don't want to live near an ocean. Who in the world gave you an idea that that ocean wasn't going to jump out of those banks and come swallow you, your house, your family.
And your mule every September.
Yeah, the end of time's not a good time to be living on the coasts.
Well, the end of times path, you ain't gonna be safe right up here in northwest Arkansas.
Good point, Good point.
True, alexis, what do you think?
Well, we were talking about this on the way up here, and in all honesty, I have no idea about it, and about this what you had never heard of it? And I guess what I've decided. And as I'm listening, I'm thinking, why why do I not know about this? Was obviously a big deal, And I guess it's because it wasn't raised here I lived in Texas, that that in no way affected anywhere right where we would where would we'd be learning about it?
Yeah, you know, well.
It's not surprising to me that people wouldn't know about it. I would not have known about the flood of nineteen twenty seven if it hadn't been for John Barry's book honestly. I mean, so I don't know that that's that well.
My arising they wasn't taught in school where I grew up. But my only key to it was my grandpa talking about it.
And my grandparents they are they lived in the Delta Are so I'm sure they did know about it, and my parents were raised in Arkansas, so they probably did. We just just was never talked about it, and so we were talking about it or listening to it today, like, wow, I've really met st.
Out on something.
I have no idea about this part of history, and so I learned something. I did learn something from your podcast.
Oh wow, all of it.
I learned all of it and everything you know about it today. So yet, Alexis, you work in we won't say your specific job, but you work inside of systems where you're in bureaucratic structures. Would you say that something like that could happen today.
Absolutely, it happens every day. It's just not with a river. I mean, they are continuously making decisions knowing.
It's really not going to work. But we do it anyway. We do it all the time.
And so but it was interesting listening to your you know, that was way back then nineteen twenty seven, they were making those bad choices.
Yeah, and you think, well.
In nineteen twenty seven, twenty twenty three, why are we still doing that. We haven't learned anything during that time that, hey, maybe we should have Our instinct was correct, we should really think about before we do something.
So that was very interesting. We did talk about that.
And just to clarify once she said we, she didn't mean the place where she works, the bureaucracy.
Yeah, well, I actually read a psychological study and listen to this this whole podcast that really talked about the difficulty of back and out of a bad decision. So it's not just like political structures. It's everywhere, absolutely that, even even in business where profit is king, it's very difficult to step back. If you've attached yourself to an initiative and you know it's going down and it's not
going to work, it's very difficult psychologically. You actually have to train yourself to step away from bad decisions because you kind of attach yourself to an initiative. So in this case is a little different because this guy was like actually created.
Yeah, he was one of the first He was one of the first leaders of the Corps of Engineers. I will also say just in defense. I mean, the whole podcast was kind of about this, this struggle with knowing the right answer. But something else happening is that it is easy for us and it was easy for them in nineteen twenty seven to look back like seventy years prior and you know, point have fault. So it actually
worked for a long time, relatively well. There were there were there were floods and different things, but not a flood to this scale.
And so my brother and I fought a duck camp inside the Arkansas River levee. And at that point when the time and we got the loan and we bought it, there hadn't been a flood in there of any degree in one hundred years. And after we bought it, we owned it twenty something years, and it got in there seven or eight times. Oh really really in that span.
Yeah wow. So we're sitting there thinking, well, we got this flood insurance and all it's doing is getting a little check, and then we got to put it all and cleaning all this stuff back there.
You can't flood it just NonStop. After not flooding for that arad flood years yes, yeah. Well, and that's the thing about these rivers is that you're always working against a giant that's unbeatable and unpredictable. So there had never been a flood and recorded history that big. You know. And and what we haven't said yet on the podcast, and we're not really going to get into it was in twenty eleven there was a flood that was bigger than in nineteen twenty seven.
You're not going to get into that.
Well, it's it's you know, I mean, who wants to hear a good news story. Nobody, not the Burgers podcast listeners. They want to hear about disaster. No, No, I'm joking. I'm joking. The flood of twenty eleven it worked. I mean the corp of Engineers that it was the it was the flood of the biggest flood and recorded history on this continent in twenty eleven. It was the levels were higher than nineteen twenty seven, and it worked. They have floodway.
I have great appreciation for the Corve of Engineers.
Oh there. You know, when I did this, I didn't want it to sound like I was throwing the core under the bus. I mean, it's just an interesting story. Yeah, but I mean they have what they've done with the river is incredible and it worked so and.
It's a engineers.
I read a whole book about the flood of twenty eleven and what they did during that time. They saw what was happening. It was this perfect storm. It was high, high snow melt in the Rockies, big rains in the Ohio River Valley. I mean, it's not just like raining in Southeast Arkansas and Memphis that makes it flood. It's all these factors way up in the drainage basin. And so they what they had to do, who was in
multiple places blow up the levee at at floodways. So there's places where they have dynamite embedded in the levee, buried in the levee and they light it. Yeah, ready to blow the levee up. And so it diverts the water in a strategic place that goes in floods, these huge areas that are primarily agricultural areas. And if you live in a floodway like you know it. You're like, hey, you can build a house here. This is a federal floodway.
That's the way I understand it. And you just kind of bank on your house may flood, or you build your house up like these deer camps are built up on stilts. And there's a lot of floodways all down the Mississippi from basically Memphis down to Louisiana. There's some wild stuff like that. And the Atchafalaya River wise off
of the Mississippi and Louisiana. And they think if it hadn't been for the corp of Engineers keeping the Mississippi in the Mississippi, the whole Mississippi River would have naturally turned into the Atchafalayah Basin and basically the Mississippi River would have cut down through Louisiana and just like destroyed the place. But they but they continually monitored that section of the river and do a lot of thuff. Anyway, we're not we're going to get into some of that,
but pretty wild, dad. What'd you think what stood out to you in this one?
Well?
How little I knew about it. I mean I've crossed the Mississippi River like most everybody, not hundreds, but tens of times, and you know, you just cross it and look at it and go, what a nice body of water? Yeah, and then you find out how complicated, how powerful, and you just go, wow, this is probably, you know, one of the uh the most powerful batel sources of the world. I mean it's just you know, you take water and it's it's pretty powerful.
And uh, you know, I.
Love Mark Twain's thoughts. You know how he described the river. I love that song from Old Charlie. I can sing that one when you read the lyrics, you know, and he had it, he had it tagged so and the human nature of Humphreys.
And Elliott Elliott, Elliott Elliott. You know those guys.
You know, they're geniuses, that they're the top of the heap, they're the best there are, but they're still humans, man. I mean they're gonna lie, cheat and still occasionally. But it all worked except you know, maybe maybe the.
Flood was a little bad.
But yeah, uh, anyway, I got I really enjoyed it. It was more it's like you said, it was almost more than I could handle.
I mean, I'll be honest with my doctor.
Buddy told me that if you have major surgery, your brain doesn't work quite right. And he just had major surgery and we were talking. He couldn't think of a simple part that we were trying to he said, that's an example of what I'm talking about. So my brain's not working real well, but it worked well enough to realize that I was way over my head with this thing.
I mean I had to listen to it two three times. Well, see that. To me, that's a success inside of this because the reason I was interested in the Mississippi River two years ago was because of how I realized. I knew nothing about it, but I knew that it was important to America. I knew that rivers are fascinating, it's important to deer camp. According to you, how's that, well, you said, you guys bear gries, that gives you something
to talk about. Yes, well, it just shows you how well complex things are all around us, that we have no idea what went into it. You just and that to me makes the world a deeper, more robust, a place where you can be curious and learn and understand things.
And yeah, the river is absolutely fascinating, and as it is as dynamic of a natural feature as we have in this country, Like if you think about the Rocky Mountains and you think about going to Montana, going to Yellowstone, going to all these places where there's this grandiose, like big majesty that you look at and go wow. The Mississippi River is the same when you look at impact, but you might drive over and say, man, it's just a big mudhole. You know, it has a different kind of beauty.
But it has a mule float down it occasionally too. Yeah. That was crazy.
It's crazy.
Yeah, but hey, you think about that river.
I mean, it runs straight through the country, and as the country developed, it came to that river.
And just stopped.
Yeah, and then these guys started going, look, we can make iron, but that won't build a We're gonna get across this thing.
So it created a totally new product. And steel.
I mean when you can read about steel, and I mean it was a big deal.
You know for this guy, I forget his name. It was ADS that was challenging Carnegie. Yeah, Carnegie. They were making steel. Carnegie was a gazillionaire, but it wasn't good steal Well, it was the best the market. It was the best that they ever had. But AIDS came in and basically raised the whole standard by testing every single piece of steel, and then they were able to you know, that changed the whole steel market you know, you.
Know a book I read and I think it might have been Lewis and Clark. I can't remember. But this guy that it was a little different from this story. But the guy that designed this bridge, he he had to he had to create a product that would work. So he builds the bridge across the river, and no one would cross it, and he kept trying to figure out how I'm I gonna get these people across it. So he had a big press conference, had newspapers out.
He had an elephant, and of course people knew that an elephant won't do anything dangerous, and he had to across the bridge. And then all of a sudden, here they go else. I don't know how true that.
Was, Okay, Bridges and animals. We were we were riding mules uh Saturday in the Ozarks, and we came up on We're riding down kind of a county road and came upon a big, brand new concrete bridge that was really high, and I was riding banjo and a guy, a good mule man, was riding with me and he said, Clay, is that mule yours ever cross the bridge? And I said, well, I don't know, Oh, I guess not. I don't think he has. And he said, he was like better you know, if you want to go around it, you can. You
better watch him. It's really high because what happens when you walk across a concrete bridge is that just sounds clipping across there. It sounds funny, it's hollow, there's it's just this unique thing. And so he I was I was a little bit worried about across the bridge, but Banjo went right across it.
Way to go, buddy.
Really, just like your elephant, that.
All things come together. James b Eads was the guy that he's talking about.
Yeah, he was in the podcast.
I know, that's what I'm saying.
He was the one that made the elephant. Yeah, no way, what's his name?
The Eads Bridge is a three arts Still Trust bridge.
It Aids from the Aids is the one that had the elephant. Okay, okay, I asked John. For some reason, I thought his name was Scott.
But I'm sure you're sure.
The one with the elephant.
Listen, I mean, I'm I'm on the Saint Louis Bank website in the mid eighteen hundreds.
That's it.
That's all.
James Buchanan Aids had a learned distress of riverboats and deep determination, a necessary combination to construct the unbuildable bridge.
That was That was the highlight for me.
Yeah, yeah, come on, it's like eighteen Missouri Elephant? How did you get the elephant?
I've I've always had a fascination with craftsmen and structures, and and listening to that part of the podcast was just fascinating to me thinking about this guy. I had actually never heard of him before, and the way that John Barry was talking about his his intellectual prowess and and and genius. I found it surprising that he's not a more common name.
Well, he's you know, I think it just goes back so deep, and there's only so much that, you know, a person can kind of file away in their brain. But he he's up there with the great engineers and inventors of America.
Well, the dude told his self calculus, and I couldn't have somebody that knew calculus, couldn't teach me calculus.
I just have great appreciation for structures that stand the test of time.
Can you believe that bridge is still fascinating?
Yeah?
And hat tip to mister.
Aids well, and I thought it was interesting that in Mark Twain's book Life on the Mississippi, he directly addressed AIDS and tried to cut him down at the knees, Like you think about writing a book and you're a best selling author, and you are not just an author like you would be today. Today. You're an author and there's you're you know, there's also Netflix, and there's social media, and there's all these different avenues to get media into
your brain. Back then, books, newspapers, it wasn't even radio. And so Mark Twain is like the I don't know the biggest guy on the in the in America, and he calls out Aids in his book as a as a guy that thinks he knows it all but doesn't. And so Twain called it. He was like, you can't control this river. You're never going to be able to control it. And I felt like it was important to put the Mark Twain stuff in there.
You can't talk about the mississipb.
Obviously, there's a lot of people that have read Mark Twain to maybe this is a surprise to you, Josh, I have not. I haven't read Mark Twain.
Really required reading.
For kids too.
Yeah, and where I came from. They never made me read Mark Twain.
That's surprising.
Yeah, I don't know, but I felt like reading those sections. They were they were so witty, and you see Mark Twain he was so enamored with riverboat pilots and how they had to navigate, which was pretty wild. And then his uh my favorite part was when he talked about how science back in the day. He was ridiculing the most modern science, basically saying that scientists change their minds all the time and use inaccurate things to get the spiel I made about science.
That's a pretty good it was a good spell.
Well, it's not that, you know, there's one extreme of not trusting science where you're a flat earth and you just don't think science even matters. I'm not there at all. I'm a big fan of science. Much of much of some part of science is kind of making the best speculations of what we can for the future based upon what we know or think happened in the past. And I mean, if there's one thing that's that is certain in science is that it really does constantly change. Yeah,
it's constantly and that's okay. That means it's working, and that we're progressing anyway.
So it's kind of funny when people say you've got to you've got to you know, you've got to trust science, and they kind of be little people who who question some aspects of things that are coming out. You know, it's okay to question that stuff. But it's also when people treat the scientists as if like they're not credible, or they're not they're not intelligent, or they've got some sinister motive. That's also wrong because that's just part of science,
that's part of discovery. Is you gotta you gotta run some tests. And all you're saying with science is in this test, this is what it looks like. Yeah, that's really all you're saying. Yeah, and you could you can generalize that out in other ways, but in every you know, you put a lot of those little rocks together, you get a little mountain.
Yeah. Well, but what I'm always saying on Bear Greece is that there there are some parts of the human existence and life on this planet that will never be measured by science, that are more real than gravity.
Yeah.
I could if I if you get a tattoo for Bear grease, write that word for word. Have someone look it over grammatically to make sure it makes sense. But that's the truth. Like the trend of the intelligent is to be like the only thing that's on planet Earth is what can be measured, seen, tasted, and touched. What I was trying to say is that that is new. Humans for a long time have known that there is a spiritual dynamic to this place. Mister Earle knows it.
There's a spiritual dynamic and there's a natural dynamic, both very real, both very relevant to human existence. I mean like love science, yeah, also love the things that will never be tracked by science, like asking a pinball machine to make bread. How'd you like that?
Brand?
Bam bam bam. It sounds like something out of this country life.
I could just see Clay sitting in here in his office and thinking, what's the most obscure that I could think of?
Right now?
That one just came. I didn't even think about it.
It just it just sometimes they just righted themselves.
Sometimes they right themselves. Yes, yes, testosterone. Uh any comments on the testosterone part. We're getting some eye rolls. Raising his hand.
When I started playing that, when I started playing it on the way up here, I said, now, you know, it's not going to be a test.
I don't think sometimes there used to be.
But but the day ain't over, obviously, I said, But just think about something there that that that made sense to you, or that or maybe it didn't make sense to you. That just something that you grasped onto. And and he's because he's going to ask you what what you got out of it about it or what stood out to you. She's like, okay, we started playing, and I started playing it, and when it got to the part about the underwear, she's like, can I comment on that?
I don't know. I don't know, Christy.
Christy asked me. She goes, is that true? And I said, I don't know. She's like, she's like, is he talking about boxer briefs? And I was like, it's like, well, I guess. She's like, is it the same with whitey tities? I said, I don't.
Know that tight man's under obviously be whitey tight.
Yeah.
No, for it's legitimately with my.
In my podcast, I talked about me and my dad's tripping down to our boxers, you know, so to take a nap in the heat. M anything you want to say about boxers or.
I agree with you.
Can I say, Can I say something else that I learned or that I like?
Could we we talked about this too.
Is the political part of it always dings for me when I'm listening to something because I love it.
I mean, that's my life, you know. I liked I like all that kind of stuff.
And the Hoover, Yeah, that was so fascinating to me. I had no idea about because you never hear about him as a president. I'm a big president person. I love that history. I love to learn about it.
You know.
I knew about the voting, you know, because Lincoln.
You know, all of that made sense because of what I've learned, But I did not know that he was such a big part of that and he had you know, deceived and you know, all of that makes sense.
But I didn't know any of that. So that was very interesting.
Well that's a good That's a good thing to talk about. Is the is the things that that flood influenced in America. And what is one thing John Barry said is that it got Herbert Hoover like a president and he was a hero of the flood. Right, There was a lot of good things that he did. He was a genius, as John Barry said. But then yeah, and men, it's so interesting that it changed the African Americans from the
from the Republican to the Democratic Party. I had no idea the point when it happened, which is interesting.
I just didn't know, like it was neat. That was neat to learn about that part of history.
I didn't know about, mister. Any of those five things stand out to you, the five things ways four things.
Well, I did like that. I appreciated your spiel on on Mark Twain and science and I we've already covered that. I thought. I did not realize that they kept the Black family's hostage. Yeah, that was total news to me. I knew about the Great Migration that that. I mean, there's a lot of like that's a really big part
of history. But what's interesting is that I've actually taught about the Great Migration, but you always teach about it in the sense of where they went to and where people moved to and kind of what was pushing on there when you think about it in terms of Jim Crow laws and in Hospital South. But boy, that was a whole different that was a whole different level. I didn't know any of that that was news to me, So I thought that was I thought that was interesting.
I agree with the lexus. I thought the Hoover thing was interesting. Probably my favorite part of the whole thing was when you were talking about Mark Twain. I enjoyed hearing his his readings. I hadn't heard those, but I thought the part about spirituality was interesting. And yeah, Clay like to talk about testosterone a lot these days. When I listened to it, I was like, good grief, we just had this conversation, just like over coffee this morning,
and so, yeah, that's it. I didn't know that I was getting teed up to hear it on the podcast.
I told you they and John Bray's book, it talks a lot about what happened on those Levy refugee camps, the murders, the incredible you know, there there were, there were There was a time when they when they said that a mule was worth more than a person on that levee, and uh, there was a yeah, it got really wild for a long time, and that river was up for a long time, and those people were on the levees, and yeah, they wouldn't let the black people leave.
They would let the white people leave, and it all went back to that thing of to Will and Leroy Percy, those guys who you know, it's like there's good and there's bad.
Yeah, that was kind of crazy because they were so well, it's.
Kind of like you know, it got down to uh, as they say in the in the cattle industry, down to nut cutting time, and they Leroy kind of showed his hand about really where he was at.
It's why motivation. Motivation matters because like you could, you could see just this one section from from was It podcast, the number two right talked about you, Okay, well these are decent people, but then you you listen to part three, it's like, well they did some good things because they were motivated by this, and therefore the motivation is what actually matters the most because here I wouldn't use the
terms that they just used. I mean, here we go, but it really showed their motivation and that actually because that's their motivation that influenced their actions in a different way.
Yeah, yeah, it. I mean, it's the thing about the Percys, those that they declared their they never tried to hide why they they were like, we're going to build an empire, we need labor. We need to empower these people so they'll stay here. And then but then when they wanted to leave, that's when the percys were like, Hey, these guys need to stay here for the for the for the farms, for everything that's going on. So yeah, no,
it's a it's an interesting, interesting, interesting story. We've got one more Missisippi River podcast, and it's gonna be totally different. It's not gonna be deep and heavy and old. It's gonna be fish and turtles and and there's a little near inside of it. It's got what there's one near death experience. Get ready, get ready, go ahead.
Well.
One of the things that I thought was interesting too, when they were talking about the year before the flood and everybody was like, hey, if it rains anymore, yeah, we're gonna be in trouble. I was listening to that the day I listened to these people talk about our heat this year. Yeah, and they're all like, it can't get much harder than this. It's we're gonna be in trouble.
And I just thought it was kind of interesting, like this major natural disaster and crisis that hit America and they're kind of having similar conversations right now, and I just thought, what would it have been like to have read that in the paper. You know, these guys are worried about the water, and it would probably be exactly like I feel right now hearing about it in a podcast.
Mm hmm about the heat man, we really put you in a bind here?
Did you really put me in a bye?
You're not even aware of There's a game camera right out there.
It's been up for years, no problem, it doesn't work well, Alexis. It's great to have you on the podcast, you know, you know, after seven years of not being on here and beg mm hmm, yep, it was worth it. It's time. It was time.
It's worth it, so thank you.
Yes, Dad, good to have you back.
Than you.
I hope everybody has a great life.