00:00:14 Speaker 1: My name is Clay Nukleman. 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 Maid, purpose built hunting and fishing gear that's designed to be as rugged as the place as we explore. So this is this is the offspring. I'm holding a about a six week old puppy. This is the offspring of a very sought after cross of dogs. This is a ten the famous Singing squirrel Dogs pup and O Sage, which the Registry of squirrel Dogs. I've been in squirrel dogs for a fair number of years. I hadn't had squirrel dogs my whole life, but probably for the last six seven years. And I still don't completely understand the way they register and talk about squirrel dogs because these dogs actually could be registered as tree and curves, but they're also considered feists because a feist is a category of dog. Okay, okay, it's not. It's not a breed. It's handled. It's handled as a breed, like you say, it's a feist. But there's a lot of different kinds of fights. There's mullin phis, there's tree and feist, there's mountain feists, and they all look slightly different. But a feist is, as I understand that, it is a category of dog that's under eighteen inches, under thirty pounds and will tree. 00:02:03 Speaker 2: Really like that's the only classification. 00:02:05 Speaker 1: Yeah, So technically, as I understand it, and somebody could correct me, and we're gonna. 00:02:10 Speaker 2: Have somebody somebody will yeah, yeah. 00:02:13 Speaker 1: We're gonna have at some point a real good squirrel dog man that I know that had a lot to do with breeding. These dogs got named Tyler Asberry. At some point we're gonna have Tyler on here and he can describe it. But but as I understand it, if you had a dog that met those qualifications, he could be considered a feist. But these I call him tree and feists. 00:02:33 Speaker 2: So if that dog were to be registered, it would be a feist. 00:02:39 Speaker 1: Or it could be registered as a tree and feist, and it could also well, tim and test could have been registered as tree in curves. 00:02:48 Speaker 2: But they qualify as is one title more prestigious than the other. 00:02:54 Speaker 1: Feist. 00:02:55 Speaker 3: See going off those rules, thought, I got a neighbor at home he he's got a fist that looks awful lot like a Yorkie. 00:03:04 Speaker 1: Will it tree. Yeah, that's where that's where I kind of lose like knowledge of it. But welcome to the bear Grease render. 00:03:13 Speaker 4: Yeah. 00:03:13 Speaker 1: I've got a very cute little pup, little brindle pup here in my hands. I'm excited about today. I've got the one and only Doctor Lake Pickle here from Mississippi, straight out of Mississippi. Arkansas's favorite state, the only state that we have any right to pick on for any statistic you want is Mississippi. Thank you Lake for that. 00:03:36 Speaker 3: Yeah, I've enjoyed my time here and I'm gonna leave now. 00:03:40 Speaker 1: Uh No, you know I love Mississippi. And then we have Josh Lambridge, spellmaker here here again learning quite a bit more and more about the land Bridge. I'll share with you something wonderful. 00:03:51 Speaker 4: Excited. 00:03:52 Speaker 1: But our guest of honored today is my friend, been a friend for about a decade or so. We decided Tracy Jones from East Tennessee Greenville and uh he's also known as t L. 00:04:08 Speaker 4: What do you? 00:04:09 Speaker 1: What do you prefer? People call you? 00:04:12 Speaker 4: It's been a weird thing my whole life. Tracy's on the birth certificate that my family just always called me Trace. Trace. Yeah, anybody that you know was close, mom, dad, grandparents, it was always Trace. Then when I began to pastor and put my name on the signs and the brochures, some people would get confused and think it was a lady pastor in the church, which some people wouldn't like. Yeah, some people wouldn't come in the building. 00:04:43 Speaker 1: Because you said you You said, Tracy Jones. 00:04:46 Speaker 4: Yeah, I understand. I went to preach a meeting for a pastor who was had brochures printed up and he didn't want to use the name Tracy, so he put Tennessee Jones about a thin blue hair said he went to one house, invited a woman to come hander to the brochure said Tennessee Jones, and she said, yeah, I've heard of him, Indiana Jones cousin. 00:05:13 Speaker 1: I didn't see Jones. Man, if you'd told me that ten years ago, you would have never had another name. 00:05:18 Speaker 4: You'd have a career in country music. Man. So what I did is I just started using my initials TL for you know, Facebook, social media, and. 00:05:27 Speaker 2: It's like your stagua. 00:05:28 Speaker 4: Yeah, I guess. So, Yeah, it's weird. 00:05:31 Speaker 1: But well, people would know you if they follow along on Bear Grease. They might not well they wouldn't know it, but so we did. Tracy was a part of a series that we did two years ago that started out as plot Hounds, but the second the second part of the series was essentially about your grandfather and your family in Houston Valley plots and so so Tennessee, Tennessee. Jones Homes is to me in a in an elite class of people that are longtime plot breeders, bear dog breeders from East Tennessee for real. Yeah, I mean like you guys would have heard me talk about Roy Clark, who's in the Hall of Fame burgeras Hall of Fame. And I was introduced to the to the kind of the plot world of Southern Appalachia, which plots aren't just in Southern Appalachia, but the epicenter of the universe for the plot hound, which is a it's like being a big fish in a very small pond. I'm glad Brent's not here to talk about his walkers and everybody in the world that has one. Uh, the plot world is very small comparatively, and there's these it's it's actually hard to describe, but their families over in Appalachia that can you know, go back generations of having plot dogs and and Tracy's family is one of those. And and to this day they have a line of dogs called Houston Valley Plots. And Tracy's grandfather father him, and then Tracy's son, Ben Jones, young man in his thirties, is is as tough of mountain bear hunter as I've ever been around. So anyway, Tracy's good friend. 00:07:34 Speaker 4: Yeah, glad to be here, Thank you for the invitation. 00:07:36 Speaker 1: Yeah, And so we're going to end up talking about a book that Tracy has written, so that that we'll get to that'll kind of bell. We'll get to that later. But anyway, I was going to introduce Tracy as as the only man more paranoid to me that he is involved, unknowingly and in an underground wildlife sting. When I when I when I first met Brent Reeves, I honestly in the back, deep in the recesses of the back of my mind, Brent was just way too available, way too generous, way too nice. It's suspicious and way too like, hey, I'm done with my I mean, it was like, yeah, I used to be a in law enforcement, not anymore, and at that time I don't know why, but I was like very paranoid for someone who doesn't break the law and purpose, which I'd say that to anybody in the world. I mean like I have a lifetime record of not trying to break the law and purpose. Okay, I mean like I've broken the law, but not on purpose. And to this day, I'm pretty sure Brent's still working on her cover. I'm pretty sure t L probably thought I was an undercover agent when I first reached out to TM. 00:09:06 Speaker 4: Well. In my defense, now, first of all, I'm a stickler about trying to keep the law for obvious reasons, yes, but I grew up daring what I would call the outlaw error of hunting and Appalachia, and most people who would hear this podcast would never be able to come to an understanding of that culture where a lot of them would have been viewed from the outside of outlaws, but they didn't see it that way. That was their home, they lived there, they settled the place, and then people come in from the outside and all of a sudden said no, you're going to go with these rules now, and they just didn't see a need for it, right, And I'm not justifying it or saying it's right or wrong. I'm just saying that there's a perspective of difference of having people come in from the outside and all of a sudden give you a new set of rules you got to go by, and then calling you an outlaw if you don't keep it. And it took several decades for people to transition. And for the most part, all that stuff is a thing in the past. But when I was growing up, there was a lot of undercover agents that were sent into the area to try to find people violating the law. Laws. Yeah, so we were taught early. You know. Of course, Appalachia is a suspicious place. You know, historians say that Appalachia was actually opened up after the West. They say the West was settled before Appalachia. Are attained before Appalachia was and so you know, I the general rule was everybody you don't know as a fed and everybody you do know is a possible informant. Yeah. 00:10:58 Speaker 1: Yeah, how you were how you're taught to operate. 00:11:02 Speaker 4: Just you know, you weren't sat down told that, but you understood that to be the way it worked. Yeah, and it's I have mixed feelings on a lot of the undercover stuff just because of the deception that has to be a part of it and the lies, and I especially hate the part of it that involves building friendships under the guise of something that's eventually going to break you. And I'm not here to say it's right or wrong. I'm just saying it's there's a there's areas there that I think are not as black and white as we make them out to be. Yeah, you know, I knew, of course. I mean I knew a deal where a guy had to come in to do undercover work that married a man's daughter. Oh my goodness, and I thought that was one of the most horrific things I'd ever heard of. 00:11:50 Speaker 1: You and you the story is told as he married the girl just to get in. 00:11:57 Speaker 4: I don't know all the details of it that I and I certainly wouldn't share him if I did, But uh, he came in to try to set a guy up to bust him and ended up marrying his daughter and then followed through with knelling the guy wow, wow wow. And uh, you I could not imagine what you'd feel like as a dad knowing your daughter had been yeah, as a wife, knowing your family had been used that way. I mean, to me, that's far beyond the pale of acceptance no matter what you're trying to catch a guy at. Really, Yeah, especially in wildlife related things which are serious, but not to the degree of seriousness of catching somebody in sect trafficking or something like that. 00:12:42 Speaker 1: It's true. Yeah, yeah, wow, Yeah, it's you know, the last couple of years, with some of the stories that we've told, you know, I've I've interviewed some undercovered people and learned more about it, and I think that's the conflict that a lot of us have felt, is that, you know, especially with Artie Stewart, Ye, that original Secret Agent Man series we did back in the nineties in Ohio, there were no there were less rules that they were some of the first under wildlife undercover agents, and I mean they were just kind of like turned loose, you know, That's what it felt anyway. 00:13:25 Speaker 3: And. 00:13:27 Speaker 1: It it's definitely a catch twenty two. But yeah, back in the day, there was a lot of there were a lot of stings, or maybe not a lot, but there were There was the bear gallbladder stuff that went on over in Appalachia where they decided the bear hunters were selling gallbladders and. 00:13:46 Speaker 4: And there were some people who needed to be caught. I mean, there were some people, you know, just killing the bear for no other reason than to sell a gallbladder. And you can't sustain a bear population if you're just slaughtering them for sale. So yeah, I mean, my family was the law. My grandfather was a constable. My dad eventually was the sheriff of our county. So I'm not anti law enforcement, yeah, but I was caught in that crux of my family being the law, and I also understanding at the same time there was other law you know, that would come in and try to set you up. I'll give you an example. My grandfather and a group of men had a guy come in and made friends with them and buy them to think. It was New Mexico that they went to. I was already out of going away to college when this happened. I think they drove all the way to New Mexico to go bear hunting, and when they got out there, the guy changed the plans on them and said that they couldn't hunt where they were going to hunt. But he had an alternative plan. Well, the all turned to plan was entirely illegal. My grandfather was a pretty wise fella. He said, well, we've been set up, let's go home in ever return the dog loose. So they turned around in New Mexico and drove all the way back to Tennessee, m And to me, that's the kind of thing that's that's unacceptable. You know, those guys were not sitting in Tennessee thinking let's go to New Mexico and violate the law, right, but somebody comes and invites them to go out to get them to. 00:15:20 Speaker 1: And do you think this guy was working under cover for sure? 00:15:24 Speaker 4: Wow? Yeah, so like an entrapment scenario. Yeah, that was absolutely entrapment. But the problem with entrapment is that people who get to decide whether it's entrapment or not are the same people who get decided to do it to begin with. 00:15:37 Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. 00:15:40 Speaker 4: You know, good luck and court, Yeah exactly. Yeah. 00:15:44 Speaker 2: You know, Tracy, you talked about that that area. I got to go with Clay over there. Gosh, it's probably been almost probably nine months ago, and it is a mysterious feeling country. I mean, you're driving down those curvy roads, you got all that cudsh growing up on the side, and it feels like you're almost entering another world. 00:16:03 Speaker 4: You know. 00:16:03 Speaker 2: It's like like, yeah, it's it's it's pretty pretty unique place. 00:16:08 Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, the the it was so neat doing the story on on Teal's grandfather, who was this plot man. I'll tell you what I remember that just stands It kind of stands out. I don't know why, but when you described the daily routine of Barry Tarleton, I'll never forget that. Yeah, if that were in a book, in the way you described it, if that were in a book, that's what people would remember because it painted a picture of that generation of people so powerfully. And and basically, you know, he talked about his grandfather worked at a pet milk plant I mean basically in an industrial I mean a big plant. Yeah, And basically he described his daily routine and how he he his wife did stuff for him and anyway it was unique. 00:17:13 Speaker 2: She would like set his breakfast out at night. I remember like that that was such a great such a great picture of what their relationship was. 00:17:22 Speaker 4: Like. 00:17:22 Speaker 2: I loved that story. 00:17:23 Speaker 4: Well, without drawing it out too long, I mean I could rehearse it. 00:17:28 Speaker 1: Let's do it. I was, I. 00:17:30 Speaker 4: Was was, Yeah, she was. She was a stay at home wife and wanted to be and he wanted her to be at home. And he would leave for work in the mornings around four o'clock or so, I think he had to be at work, like around four thirty, and he would get off around two. And when he would come home, you could hear him coming down the road. He had great, big what they called co op Gripsburg mud tires on his truck, one one one one, one on one, and the dogs could hear him, you know, for half a mile, and they'd go crazy. Well that was mama's sound, you know. She knew he was coming then when the dogs wild. So when he pulled the driveway, he'd go up into his apple orchard where his dogs were and begin to feed them. She would have supper already cooked and she'd set it on the table for him, and he'd come in from feeding, sit down at the table, begin to eat his supper. She would grow dry his bath water. When he got up from the supper table, he'd go get in the bath and clean up. While he was doing that, she'd get his pajamas and his underclothes and everything and bring them to him. He come out there, he'd go sit in his chair. He washed the news religiously. He was a news fanatic. In fact that the only spanking he ever gave him my whole life was for interrupting the news. He wanted to know what was going on in the world. And while he was watching the news, she'd go turn his bed down, his covers down for him. 00:19:09 Speaker 1: Like unfold the covers so that he. 00:19:12 Speaker 4: Could just like, yes, I told the covers. And when the news was over, he went to bed about eight to eight thirty to the latest. And when after he went to bed, she'd go back to the kitchen and she would pour cereal in a bowl, put sugar on it, covered up with a luminifol, set on the table. So when he got up the next morning, all he had to do was poor milk any cereal. And then she would pack his lunch box for him for work, in an old metal lunch box. She'd put that in the refrigerator for him, already packed. So he got up eighty cereal, picked his lunch box up and went back to work. And she didn't want very much in life. She was not a materialistic person. But the one thing she wanted was a good car, so he kept her with a nice car all the time. She loved great, big, long cars. Had a seventy four or four Galaxy five hundred. 00:20:04 Speaker 2: Oh man, that's a big old car. 00:20:05 Speaker 4: Yeah. Drove like a maniac. And you know, my cousin races race cars, and he will still tell you that one of the only times he was really ever scared in the vegles riding with Mammo down the Houston Valley road. She'd white knuckle you in that car. It's like crazy. She's the only person I know drove so fast. She hit a covey of quail. 00:20:33 Speaker 1: You need to put that in here. That's great. This will be a great segue into the latest. 00:20:40 Speaker 2: Hite that I was with her. 00:20:45 Speaker 3: That's a really good point. 00:20:47 Speaker 1: Oh I'm going to use that from now. 00:20:49 Speaker 3: Anyone that knows the covey of quill is going to go and that's pretty fast. 00:20:54 Speaker 2: Uh. 00:20:55 Speaker 1: You know what, I appreciate it about that story. That story could be taken out of context. It was like a glorification of like a wife like servant her husband's hand and foot. But that was not the point of what you said. 00:21:09 Speaker 4: No, if you knew her, you would know that there was nothing about her that was you know, the door mat mentality that she was being run over. I mean, if he got out of hand, she'd light him up. Yeah, yeah, And I mean she'd light him up good and let him know exactly you know she was. I called her a pistol. I mean when I was a little kid, I was in the bathtub one day, like in the middle of the day. You know, Tarzan was a thing. I was in the bathtub in my underwear with a plastic knife, playing Tarzan in the bathtub because his only place I could have water and little kid, and I heard come boom, and of course I want to know what happened. Somebody had stopped in front of the house to gaucket deer, and she didn't like him parking from the house, so she lowered a double barrel twelve gage over the roof of their car and set her off and sent them on road. And she was she would drive the liquor cars to town. After he'd pull them over and arrest who was in the liquor car. He'd take the criminal to town and put them in jail. She'd drive the liquor car on end so they have the evidence. So she was it was a relationship that I say this. She loved him with all her heart and her care for him wasn't subservient, it was love. But his care for her was the same way he adored her. 00:22:32 Speaker 1: Yeah. 00:22:32 Speaker 4: So yeah, yeah, yeah, what a great story. 00:22:36 Speaker 1: That's yeah, that's cool. Well, go ahead and tell again. This was on an episode two years ago about plot hoounds to put it in the show notes of which episode it was. You can hear these stories, but tell us about when they blew up Barry Tarleton's car. 00:23:02 Speaker 4: Yeah, my mom, Mama and Papa had two daughters. My mom is Jane, had a sister named Sandy. Mom I think was like two or three, and Sandy was a baby. And Papa had made life pretty rough on the Moonshiner's because they had He had two brothers killed in relation to liquor. One brother had his head blowed off with a shotgun and his other brother had his throat cut and left him for left him dead in a creek up on the mountain. I've taken you up there, and he said he was going to have to get revenge, either legal or illegally, so he ran for Constable hated liquor. It wasn't about revenue. You know, nobody in the mountains is for taxes. You know, had nothing to do with the revenue. The moonshine trade, then, to me, was very similar to what meth does to people today. It was wreaking havoc in the mountains. There's nothing funny about moonshe and people's lives and families were being destroyed by it, and our community, their community was dangerous community. So he just said, I need to put a stop to it. And he had wreaked so much havoc with the moonshine people, they decided to kill him and tried two or three times. They ambushed him one time with a tommy gun, and he come out with a shotgun and leveled things down. And then when they tried to blow him up, they snuck up to his house one morning in the early hours of the morning and killed his dog that was in the yard, and then packed a car full of dynamite that was set beside the house, and they packed it full of dynamite and set it off and it blew up, but it blew up instead of out, so it didn't blow the house up. And he was up making a baby bottle for his youngest daughter. Your aunt, Yeah, my aunt. They heard the dog's barking, and he was going to go out and check see what the dogs were barking about, and Madama told him no, to go ahead and finish making the baby bottle, that he was leaving for work, and then KABLUEI. Well, they had just put they'd just taken the woodstove out of their house and put in an ol stove. My great grandfather, who lived across the road, had warned them that that new fangled ol stove would blow up and kill them all not to get it. So when the dynamite went off, he run out into the highway and his long johns. Yeah, and I told you that old stove would blow up in Killian's hall. Could I ask you a question related to that? 00:25:39 Speaker 3: Yeah, because you said this is very specific question, but I've never thought about this before. You said, there's nothing funny about moonshine. Yeah, so I grew up watching the Andy Griffith Show. Yeah, And in the Andy Griffith Show, like Andy's always busting steals and there's otis that's always you know, drunk from drinking moonshine. 00:25:59 Speaker 1: It's always like very it made very light. 00:26:01 Speaker 3: Of Yeah, would someone from I guess from where you're talking about your relatives or whatever. Would they watched something like that and like that's not funny at all? 00:26:12 Speaker 2: Or was there? 00:26:13 Speaker 3: Could they see the humor in it? 00:26:14 Speaker 4: No, Appalachian people live such hard scrabble lives. It's incredible to the sense of humor they have. Okay, No, everybody loved the Andy Griffith Show. I never heard anybody say anything about it. But if you notice the only married person on that shows otis the town drunk is the only one marriage that. 00:26:34 Speaker 2: Yeah, I've never thought about that either. 00:26:37 Speaker 4: That's true. Yeah, there's a lot of things that were suddenly taught through the Andy Griffith that were really contrary to a good family culture. Huh. Yeah, But I mean, but it's funny. You know, Barney Fife, You know, my dad was an extremely serious guy, I mean dead pan serious. But he thought Tim, Tim Conway and Don Notts were the two funniest people ever lived. 00:27:00 Speaker 1: Yeah. 00:27:00 Speaker 4: Yeah, So no, I never heard anybody say anything negative about Andy Griffith and the Moonshine deal whatever. They just laughed. But if you lived in a home where your husband was an extreme alcoholic and he laid drunk all the time, and you were already poor, and you were living in a rundown house and he was buying liquor instead of buying shoes and food. It's totally different context. 00:27:26 Speaker 1: And so I appreciated what Tracy said, which which I wouldn't have articulated the same, though I would have felt the same way. Like today, Appalachia kind of celebrates liquor and moonshine. I mean you drive through and there's big billboards about come to the distillery and see it, and it's just like this playful thing. And I mean his point is that, hey, this actually wrecked a lot of homes and still does to this day. And it's interesting. Oh shoot, I had something right on tip of my tongue that was leading to say, I just appreciate a little different perspective on it. Sure you know just about how how lightly that we handle alcoholism. I mean, honestly, and like with popcorn, sutton and stuff like this Appalachian guy that got real famous who you know, it was not a guy that you would want to be around. I mean that's like you wouldn't want him to be your neighbor. I wouldn't. 00:28:28 Speaker 4: Well, just imagine thirty years from now them doing a sitcom on myth Yeah right, we would know better, but people watching it in the next generation wouldn't. 00:28:40 Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, No, I appreciate. I appreciate that perspective a lot. That's interesting. Oh man, there's there's so many directions. I didn't even want to get into it with Tracy until I introduced why Lake is here today. Oh, Blake's here, Lake's here, Lake Pickle, our friend, Lake Pickle. 00:29:07 Speaker 4: I'm scared. 00:29:07 Speaker 3: I'm scared of I mean, he came out the he came out the gate with like some really good stories. 00:29:12 Speaker 4: Want to follow? 00:29:12 Speaker 1: You got nothing? You got nothing? Now see y'all'll be here. Well Lake is uh. Lake has a new podcast produced through meat Eater that is going to be on the Bear Grease feed. 00:29:28 Speaker 4: We got here. 00:29:29 Speaker 1: Heck yeah, we made it. So maybe you've heard this by now, because Lake has been on the meat Eater podcast by the time this comes out. But June the what day, ninth? June the ninth, twenty twenty five. If you're listening to this in twenty thirty, you're five years behind. 00:29:47 Speaker 2: Better listen to all the back episodes. 00:29:49 Speaker 1: But if you're listening to this before June ninth, twenty twenty five, you could hear the inaugural episode of The Backwoods University on the bear Grease Feed. So the bear Grease Feed continue to get more complex, folks, and we have a lot of trust in you guys. 00:30:04 Speaker 2: You need like a ven diagram so they can know how to There's the bear. 00:30:07 Speaker 1: Grease Podcast, which is our documentary style podcast. We have the bear Grease Render, which is this where we sit around and talk about the bear Grease podcast. 00:30:16 Speaker 4: Yep. 00:30:16 Speaker 1: We have Brent Reeves This Country Life, which is a monologue kind of comedy, storytelling and podcast that we all love. Well, there's a new one, the Backwoods University, bringing a little class. Tell us, tell us what the Backwoods University is like. 00:30:33 Speaker 3: Man, it is it's like a deeper understanding or seeking out a deeper understanding of wildlife. 00:30:41 Speaker 1: But also when it started out. 00:30:44 Speaker 3: It was just like a deeper understanding of wildlife and wild wildlife biology. The further that I got into it and you and I talked about this with you know, when we were first starting to put episodes together, it's like I can't talk about a single species, a single wildlifecess, a single piece of habitat. I can't talk about any of it without mentioning the influence that we as humans have on it. Positive or negative, could go either way, and so that's that's the kind of look at it so far. 00:31:12 Speaker 1: It's very very wildlife biology based. 00:31:15 Speaker 3: I try to find perspectives where you get You'll get to hear from biologists, but you also get to hear from hunters, anglers, you know, people that are out there doing doing what we like to do. So you can kind of get an introspective look from both views, but then also the influence that we as humans have on it, because whether we like it or not, we have an influence on all of it, and more often than not, it's the most powerful influence. 00:31:42 Speaker 1: Yeah. So it's it's a wildlife biology podcast and it's it's done really well. It's it's a documentary style podcast, so it's it's built in a way like the structure of a bear grease proper podcast. And so essentially what that does is that Blake is going to biologists, the people who's interviewing whatever expertise they have, and he's having in depth conversations with him and rather than being there for the whole two hour conversations, he's he's telling a story and usually in less than thirty minutes. Typically, yeah, typically less than thirty minutes, you'll you'll have podcast. Yeah, it's it's a it's a it's an efficient listen. But where you're gonna get all the information and what are some of the topics? Run us through the topics even stuff maybe you hadn't even done yet but you may be thinking about. 00:32:37 Speaker 3: Right, Yeah, so we're we're doing bison, but bison in the Eastern United States. 00:32:42 Speaker 1: Yeah, that's episode one that you can listen to. Uh, there's Jason in the East. It's really interesting. 00:32:49 Speaker 3: When we're going to Bob white Quill. Uh history of Bob white Quill. The first part of it is learning why we lost our Bob white Quill, in which there's a lot of reasons, one of which my I have been running down cubes with a. 00:33:01 Speaker 1: Car, yeah, ma'ama. 00:33:08 Speaker 3: And then the other one that I'm really excited about, which you've heard me talk about it a lot. Because again, we talk about the animal and then we talk about human influence. We also focus on people that you know have dedicated their lives to learning these animals conserving them. And so we're doing a look at The first wildlife biologists in the state of Mississippi was a woman named Fanny Cook. And without giving too much away because it's an incredible story, she pretty much single handedly saved the natural resources of Mississippi. 00:33:43 Speaker 4: Wow. 00:33:43 Speaker 3: Wow in the early nineteen twenties. At the time, Mississippi was the only state left that did not have any wildlife laws or infrastructure. 00:33:53 Speaker 1: Wow. 00:33:53 Speaker 3: So if you can go and look, and this is like the fame talk about is out of Loophold actually traveled down to Mississippi wow and did a report on the state. And you can read his report from nineteen twenty nine and he's basically like, this is dismal. So to put it in to put it in context, like now in twenty twenty five, our white tailed deer population Mississippi, our our wildlife department is imploring begging hunters to shoot more deer. 00:34:20 Speaker 1: They're like, please kill more. 00:34:22 Speaker 3: We have an estimated I think it's a little bit over one point five million white tailed deer population Mississippi. When Loopol did his report in nineteen twenty nine, there was an estimated twelve hundred deer in the state. 00:34:33 Speaker 4: Are you kidding me? Twelve hundred? Uh? 00:34:37 Speaker 3: He said the wild turkeys have been wiped out in all their upland ranges, basically saying the only wild turkeys we had left were in the swampy regions and the only reason we had turkeys there is because that's where humans could not get to as effectively and kill. 00:34:51 Speaker 4: Wow. 00:34:52 Speaker 1: So it was it was bad. 00:34:53 Speaker 2: That's amazing. 00:34:54 Speaker 4: Yeah. 00:34:54 Speaker 1: So the Fanny Cookies, really, I'll tell you what I want to know. In the Fanny cook episode, I have a feeling drove fast. 00:35:01 Speaker 3: She did. I don't even know that she did. There's stories, So there is a story I got. So there's there's ladies that have these. 00:35:10 Speaker 1: Uh. The two ladies that I interviewed about it. 00:35:14 Speaker 3: Uh, there was an interview with Fanny's sister, and she's telling this story that like Fanny had. It was she was a notorious like fast driver. 00:35:24 Speaker 1: Like I knew it. I plucked that out of the air. 00:35:27 Speaker 3: And the story was that Fanny was driving and it was her sister and two of the friends in the car and she's driving. The statement she says, she said she would put you over and in the gravel in a minute, and they're driving to the store. It to like a fabric store, and all of a sudden, Fanny just pulls off on the side of the road and goes, I gotta have that bird, because she was she was making she basically like Fanny laid down the groundwork for the first you know, you could go on Google right now and go what kind of birds are in Arkansas and you hit search and you'll and he'll tell you what species of bird you have. Where's that come from? You know, like, where's the baseline of all that? And so Fanny was working on at the time what would be the first basically catalog of what species of animals were in the state of Mississippi. And she pulls over the side of the road, shoots this bird because that's how she was collecting specimens. Shoots this bird, goes, swims out into the pond, gets the bird, swims back, and then all the girls are mad at her because now they can't go to the store. She has to turn around and tend to the bird and get dried off. And her sister said, I was so mad at her, I didn't talk to her for two days. 00:36:30 Speaker 2: Oh my gosh. 00:36:32 Speaker 1: Well, good story. 00:36:33 Speaker 2: Yeah, I wonder if she ever hit a covey of quail. 00:36:36 Speaker 1: Probably probably, But well. 00:36:40 Speaker 2: That sounds awesome. 00:36:40 Speaker 4: Man. 00:36:40 Speaker 2: I'm looking forward to it. 00:36:41 Speaker 3: Man, I'm really excited about it. I yeah, I tell I was talking to my wife Lacy about it. I was like, doing this podcast and having the opportunity to do it. It's a curveball I did not see coming. 00:36:53 Speaker 1: But here we are. 00:36:55 Speaker 2: And that'll come out every week, bi weekly, bye weekly. 00:36:58 Speaker 1: Every other week okay, yeah, come out on Mondays. Okay, on the Bear Grease Feed. 00:37:03 Speaker 4: Awesome. 00:37:04 Speaker 3: Yeah, I am absolutely pumped. 00:37:07 Speaker 2: Mm hmm, well, congratulations, thank you. 00:37:10 Speaker 4: Yeah. 00:37:10 Speaker 3: I'll tell you one more like important factoy that I couldn't fit into either podcast because it just kind of worked out this way. So you said before, when did Gerstalker kill the bison in. 00:37:22 Speaker 1: Arkansas in the eighteen forties? 00:37:24 Speaker 3: Okay, and then this like mid eighteen hundreds is when they were like bison were pretty much pushed out of the east, right. So, one of the things I learned in the Bison episode, and we all know this is like bison have these very like noticeable impacts on the landscape, right. So, and part of the things they studied is like they were basically maintaining some like systems of vegetation, and when they got pushed out, there was some vegetation that they were like basically keeping at bay that were allowed to like just kind of explode because they weren't being raised anymore. And so when I was talking to the quail, they were like in the early like deep times back in that we're not deep times, but like eighteen hundreds, like quail would have thrived in some of those environments because of bison grazing. Say so, bison pushed out in the mid eighteen eighteen hundreds the first what do you know when the first noted declines of bob whit quail were, let me guess eighteen ninety. 00:38:25 Speaker 1: Interesting, so it was connected. It was this ecological web yep and bison were probably tramping tramping stuff down, keeping successionary forests and woodlands from growing up they were Is that what you're saying? 00:38:42 Speaker 3: So much so that I was talking to Jeremy French from the Southeastern Graslands Institute, he said that he has even like pitched the idea to some quail biologists that have contacted them. They contact them about like botanical questions, right, But they're talking about like building a habitat for quail and you know, trying to restore quail in a certain area. And he said so much so that Jeremy has been like if you thought about reintroducing bison, wow as a way to that. 00:39:07 Speaker 2: Makes hashtag bring back the bison, Bring back the bison, Bring. 00:39:10 Speaker 1: Back to quail. You know, I can I can envision. I can envision the scenario where you had a huge property and I mean, obviously you'd have to have a fence, which has its own problems, but like if you had a big five thousand acre property that you're trying to to to make habitat for quail, turn loose a herd of twenty thirty bison, isn't that crazy? I mean I would imagine Byson trails would be, you know, create like edge habitat, like bisecting big fields where you know quail could travel real quick but then duck in the cover and then you know, disperselessly. That's pretty fascinating. 00:39:56 Speaker 3: It's crazy, like and I really didn't expect that, Like I picked quail because I had an interest in bison, because I had an interest, but figuring out that there was some sort of link there between them being pushed out potentially was like the reason that first note noted declines of quills in eighteen ninety. 00:40:12 Speaker 1: I was like, this is wild. So on this stuff you're gonna learn. You're gonna learn some stuff, you know. And and it's the cool thing about the format is that it's it's it's it's efficient. It's an efficient listen. And I mean you could have a podcast where you just did like long form interviews with biologists, you know, for two hours, and a lot of people do that. This is that with all the information just handed to you in a nice, wonderful little bundle of communication that's entertaining. Lake does a good job. And you might not know this offhand, but when I say it, you're going to be like, you know what, Clay, You're right is that Lake's way ahead in the podcast game because his name is Lake Pickle. The things you were kind of behind a little bit and the Appalachian pastoral game by your name being Tracy. Yeah, yeah, he was ahead ahead. 00:41:06 Speaker 4: Yeah, nobody's going to forget Lake Pickle. 00:41:08 Speaker 3: I've always said, man, like my my career in the industry basically kicked off at Primos. Yeah, and part of the reason I got that job is I'd been emailing Brad Ferris for like a year and a half, and when I met Brad Ferris finally in person, I said, I'm Lake Pickle and he was like, you're that kid that's been emailing me, because like everything about me could be forgettable, but I have such an odd name that people. 00:41:30 Speaker 1: Are like, oh, isn't that the truth? 00:41:34 Speaker 4: Like name recognition in media is like the old location is everything with store Flunt's right. Yeah. Yeah. 00:41:41 Speaker 1: Well, when I I hunted with Lake this year killed the turkey, I messaged a friend of mine that I'd killed the turkey. I said, I killed a turkey with with Lake Pickle, and he said, where's that. 00:41:55 Speaker 3: People Typically they either know who I am or they hear it and they think it's a good spot to catch a walleye. Yeah oh yeah, Lake Pickle. 00:42:04 Speaker 1: I hear the bike's hot right now? Yeah yeah yeah. So anyway, well that's gonna be uh, that's gonna be exciting. One other good. 00:42:11 Speaker 3: One other thing I got to point out because Steve Varnella asked me about it. He's like, because with the first two topics being bison in the Eastern United States, and then Quail, It's like, are you keeping it eastern or southeastern base? 00:42:22 Speaker 1: It's like absolutely not. 00:42:24 Speaker 3: Like I mean, that's because while I was up at the media or office last week, I was interviewing some guys about grizzly bears. 00:42:31 Speaker 2: So, yeah, so what is the region North America, United States? Or I mean, are we going to talk about hyenas? 00:42:38 Speaker 1: We're worldwide, baby, all right, anywhere we want to go. 00:42:43 Speaker 4: I like it. 00:42:44 Speaker 3: Pandas Yeah, oh yeah, I don't know if I'll do pandas Maybe, I don't know. 00:42:51 Speaker 4: Yeah. 00:42:51 Speaker 1: The only the only thing that I told Lake today over breakfast is I said I leaked some information to him that I've learned about the Arctic. And I was like, hey, you just stay away from the Arctic for a little bit until I until I get my bear grease on the Arctic. Yeah, I'm working on a working on something. 00:43:13 Speaker 2: A little foreshadowing there a little bit. 00:43:15 Speaker 1: Man, Godlee, the Arctic. You had no, you have no idea, Josh. 00:43:20 Speaker 3: It was the podcaster version of taking a guy to a spot on public and going, don't let me catch you back here exactly. 00:43:27 Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, no, Arctic got it? 00:43:31 Speaker 4: Got it? 00:43:31 Speaker 1: I mean for now, I mean, just give me a little bit of time. I mean, that'd be a time when you know we'll we'll turn you loose on the Arctic. But just give me a little bit of time. 00:43:39 Speaker 4: That's fair. No, Blake. 00:43:43 Speaker 1: Blake and I when we're together, we're kind of nerdy, like he has a turn that I have a turn, and we talk about like this nerdy stuff. Uh tell him what? Tell him what your wife said? 00:43:53 Speaker 3: The other day, I was la, well, it was I was lad to talk about this because Steve was making fun of Clay and I. And then I said, this was like I think it was this week. I was just talking because when I get on like a particular subject, I'm excited about it. 00:44:11 Speaker 4: Yeah. 00:44:11 Speaker 3: So like we had just gotten the final, like the first like cut of this Bison episode back and so I was like back on Bison again. I was super excited to talk about Bison, and I'd probably been talking about it for way too long, and I mean like days on end. And my wife Lacy's like, like, I'm so happy for you that you have found this and I love that you're excited about Bison. Can we please talk about something else? 00:44:33 Speaker 1: I was like, that's fair, Like. 00:44:36 Speaker 4: It's true. That's true. 00:44:38 Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, the uh, the topic at hand, and the reason TL's here is as he wrote a book. When'd you publish this book? 00:44:49 Speaker 4: Tale? Last year, last year, last last spring. It's about a year old. 00:44:54 Speaker 1: Year old a book called The Old Men Conversations that Help Boys Become Men? And uh, so the book is is it eighty seven eighty four? It's it's eighty four short stories. 00:45:10 Speaker 2: Yeah, collection of short story. 00:45:12 Speaker 1: Collection of short stories that are they're short. I mean some of them are like a page long. Some of them are maybe two or three pages, but you can you can read it like really short little chunks. And it's I'll let you talk about it. But but but it's eighty four things that t. L Has learned from men in his life. And it's it's it's a variety of topics, yep, from bear hunting stuff to buying trucks to spiritual stuff. It's it's a it's a unique assortment of just wisdom. And uh, it's it's really it's it's really good. Well, it's funny. I don't know what most people's processes for writing a book. I know what mine is because I've been in the process of writing a book, and uh, I think yours was like a more of like a hemming Way style approach. You were like, I'm going into the cave to write a book. I'll be back in a couple of months. And how long did it take you to write this? 00:46:25 Speaker 4: About six weeks? 00:46:26 Speaker 1: And I mean you just worked on it, holy smoke, just like every day. Yeah, pretty much then and then you were just like done. One day, you were just like done, and you were like, all right, gonna publish it. 00:46:38 Speaker 4: Yeah. I'd had a lot of friends, especially pastors, who had asked me to put some of the things that we had discussed into writing that I was reluctant to do that because there's just so many books out there, and I think a good philosophy is life is to do things that add value to other people's lives. And but one particular pastor friend of mine called me, like in December, Tom Hatley, and he said, I really want this year for you to set aside some time to write put some of the stuff you know we talk about in private and writing. And I said, well, Tom Watt, write about what And he said, well, I was talking to my assistant Kevin, and he said, if you would write something on manhood, we would read it. But only Moron would write a book and say, you know this is manhood. You know, do it right. Yeah. So I thought, well, if we're going to do that, how how would you do that? And I thought, you know, I've had so many really good, high quality of men in my life. I had said, have said things. And if I have a conversation with you, I will often you will say one thing that I won't forget. Or if I watch a TV show, I will hear somebody say something that I won't forget. Like I was listening to a guy from Horny to the other Day Talk and he said, a bullet never goes anywhere by accident. Well, I was done with that podcast at that point because I can only think about that particular statement. And I sat down and I took out a legal path and I wrote down about one hundred and fifty things that old men had told me that had really mattered to me. I don't mean just trite things, things that had on a daily basis, This may come to my mind to help me. Like my dad would always say, if you're going to do something right, do it right the first time. And he lived that he was a perfectionist, and I can be getting ready to do something sort of slipshod, and my dad's words will come back to me, don't you know? Do it right? So I wrote those like one hundred and fifty things down, and I narrowed it down to eighty four because my grandfather was probably the primary influence of my life and he died at eighty four or there you go. Yeah, So I cut it off at eighty four because that was symbolic to me that the primary influence I had in my life was cut off at eighty four. So I kept the book off at eighty four. 00:49:14 Speaker 1: M you know what you you are. I think it's it's a I don't know if it's if you'd call it a gift or just a way that someone organizes the world. But you you remembering stuff that people say in compact ideas is unique and a a powerful thing. Like because when you say that process, like, I don't know that I could write down one hundred and fifty very poignant sentences of things that people have taught me that are like your book. I mean, so, I mean, like, that's that's a powerful thing. I describe Brent Reeves in the same way. It's different. His is different. But Brent has an uncanny ability to be somewhere and capture a story and a little ball and put it in his pocket and never forget it, like he could. He he just can do that. Uh. But but what you've done here is is really cool. 00:50:24 Speaker 4: What would. 00:50:26 Speaker 1: Take us through a couple of the stories. Yeah, just like if you could, if you could even just tell us, like, well, there's a chapter about this, and this was the story. 00:50:39 Speaker 4: Well, when I wrote the book, it was to try to fill in the gap of what we were doing with our young men today. You know, a lot of feminization of young men not actually developing into what a man ought to be in the historical sense of manhood. And so I sort of wrote the book that if there was a boy out there who was being raised without a dad or good influence, that he could pick the book up and read in a few hours the things that dads and grandpas give to their sons and grandsons over a lifetime, but in a way that could be read. The whole book can be read in a couple hours by anybody. Yeah, And I wanted to be written so that it wasn't for I didn't want to write it for preachers and that kind of thing. I just wanted to write it for the average guy, you know out there. Even a lot of people who don't even like to read, you know, have said I read it. I picked it up and couldn't put it down. I read old thing. Yeah, And I've had a lot of young men call me. But the story I think that probably epitomizes the book is the one I start out with. My grandfather was Barry Tarlton. His dad's name was Hunter Tarlton, Spencer, Hunter Enter And there's an old schoolhouse beside the church where my grandfather was a deacon that's defunct and it's just sitting there today, deteriorating. We were out riding around one day and my grandfather said, he said, when I was going to school there, he said, I was a little boy, and he said, it began to snow, and he said it was going to be, you know, a good snow, And they decided to send the kids home from school, and his dad walked to the school to get him and put him on his shoulders and carried him home. So he didn't want him to have to walk into snow all the way back to their house. And when he told me that, I thought, that is really what That's what fatherhood and the sonhood is about. It's you putting the boys on your shoulders and carrying them until they can walk themselves. Then they carry their sons till they can walk on their own. And your goal is a dad, is not to have to carry your son's whole life. You just carry him when he has when he needs it, but your goals for him to be able to walk on his own, and then for him to be able to carry his son until he can walk on his own. So the successive stories after that are things in my life for my dad or grandfather or some other guy sort of put me on their shoulders and carried me with some bit of wisdom through life. When I was a teenager, I want my own vehicle. My dad told me, he said, well, your mom is going to buy a new car, and she's got her old car. We'll give it to you. It was a seventy four Pontiac LeMans. But I didn't want it because it wasn't cool, you know. I wanted something besides my mom's old car. So I decided I'd go find something better than that, and I found the eighty one Nissan four whel drive pickup truck is all jacked up, had big tires on it, and I thought, man, now, look that'll be great. Dad went with me to look at it, and he looked it over and he said, some kids had this. He's jacked it up, he's put all this stuff on it. He said, it's a piece of junk. Don't bite. And so I bought it, and I had like fifteen hundred bucks in the bank. I've paid that down on it, drained myself dry, and then had payments to make and the truck actually turned out to be a piece of junk, left me stranded all the time, had to have rides, caught on fire. I mean, it was a complete, absolute train wreck of a deal. And that, to me, that's another just illustration of how when you're young in life, you I mean, you started out like the one old boy said, I was born ignorant. I've been losing ground ever since. And we're born ignorant no matter who you are. And you have to acquire wisdom, and that should be the chief aim of life, is to acquire wisdom. Accord the proverbs, and my dad and grandfather and other men invested so much in my life that Dad said to me one day, and Dad wasn't want to set you down teach you. He didn't do that. He just said things off the cuff that would stick with me. He said, do you know if just one generation would learn from the previous generation, it would change the world? Yep. And when he said that, I held on to it. And then when I was about twenty four, I'd got my life turned around. I'd become a Christian. I was actually trying to live right. Previously I wasn't. And I said, you know what, for the rest of my life, I'm going to try to learn from the mistakes and successes of other people and limit the mistakes that I personally make. I'm gonna pay attention. So Dad had said that years ago, but it didn't catch on for probably ten or fifteen years after he had told me. And that's sort of what the book's about. It's like, you know, everybody says experience is the best teacher, but it's also the cruelest. 00:56:20 Speaker 1: M Yep, that's really good. I want to I want you to keep telling me a couple more of these little stories, like if what's another one? That just comes to mind. Well, yeah, feel free to look through it. It's funny that you brought up the truck one because I was gonna that was one that I remembered. 00:56:47 Speaker 4: Yeah, I'll tell you one that has helped me in my you know, I'm in the ministry and I was going to move out to west somewhere and plant a church from scratch. And in the process of doing that, an old preacher called me named John Halsey. And John Halsey said, I want to talk to you for a little while about an opportunity that's going on in Alaska and ask you to pray about it. There was a pastor in Alaska, I think he was in Juno that had a heart to reach the Aleutian Islands. Of course, you know, they're strung out for miles in small pockets populations, never a pocket really big enough to have its own church. But he was going to take a boat and go from island to island to island on different days and share the gospel with people. And they actually raised money to buy the boat. And then the guy was out jogging and had a heart attack and died. The pastor and Halsey said, I want you to move to Alaska. He said, you pastor this church up here, and he said they were going to have to send me to nautical school become a boat captain. There's a large boat. And he said, then you'll pass the church and then you will maintain a ministry on the Aleutian Islands. And in the process of that conversation, he said, there was pastors when we were trying to raise money to buy the boat that were didn't have the vision for it. And he said they would say to me, well, the pockets of people on those islands are not large enough to have a church. Why do it that way? And Halsey said, I would tell them we can do something or we can do nothing. And everything in life's not idealistic. You can have idealistic goals, but then there's life and you have to constantly modify the way you're functioning in life. You know, be willing to be adaptable. And when Halsey said that, I never forgot it. You know, there's lots of things that you want to accomplish that are not just perfect. But you can do something or you can do nothing. And that was important to me. Mm hmm, yep, you can do something. Or you can do nothing. It is true, that's true. 00:59:13 Speaker 1: How about this one? Three dollars? This chapter titled three dollars? 00:59:18 Speaker 4: What's it say on it? Oh? Yeah, Papa and I we had it ongoing back and forth. He grew up out of the depression, born in nineteen twenty eight. And they were poor. I mean they were so poor. They would catch a possum and put it in a cage and fatten it up to its big enough for a meal. And the first time he went to town, he was thirteen years old. He thought town was just a larger country store. He thought when they got to town, they took a wagon, when they got there, just be a bigger store. He couldn't believe all the buildings. It's unfathomable, all those buildings. To him, he was a penny pincher because he was so poor. He didn't want to be poor anymore. So anything he spent money on, I mean he he waited so he didn't waste. And uh, we were at the farm and we were pulling old planks off of a building and he'd pull You know how a plank on a barn will rot at the bottom where water splashes on it. He pulled those planks off and saw the rotten bottom off and save them. And then he'd drive the nails out of them and straightened them and kept them to use again. I hated using those nails because they to get one to go straight. It's very difficult to straighten the nail and then drive it straight again. It wants to bend all the time. So in my mind, let's just go to town and get nails. And we were going back and forth and was never I was never a smart euct to my dad or father, because they wouldn't have tolerated. You know. Back talk was that that was unacceptable. Our outfit appreciated that was not you don't do that. Yeah, you can have a different opinion, but you expressed it appropriately, right. But I would go back and forth with my grandfather about stuff and express my frustrations with him. And I told him, I said, if you counted up the time that we were spending doing all this, you wouldn't make three dollars an hour. Well, I thought it was sound logic. I had him. 01:01:30 Speaker 1: Yeah, you thought that was pretty sick. 01:01:31 Speaker 4: Yeah, I had him. He just he was driving. He never even phased him. He said, that's three dollars I wouldn't have made today. Yeah, he turned it into three dollars he was making. 01:01:45 Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's justned yeah yeah, just so so the structure of the book, which is so simple. You know, the title of the chapter is three dollars and it has the quote from your grandfather. It says, that's three dollars I wasn't gonna make and you tell that story and just a honestly less than a page. 01:02:10 Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a great book. I read it and passed it on. I appreciate that it's greatly got some got some great words of wisdom in it, and I really enjoy it. Is an easy read, but it's it's uh, it's got some profundity to it. 01:02:24 Speaker 1: You know. 01:02:25 Speaker 2: You just read that story and there's there's lots of great great one life. 01:02:29 Speaker 1: Is this okay? If I just kind of like pointed a chapter and have you tell me story, that's fun. 01:02:33 Speaker 4: Okay. 01:02:33 Speaker 1: How about this one called Laziness and the and the title is did you ride that three wheeler to the mailbox? 01:02:39 Speaker 4: That's one of my least favorite stories. Oh really, yeah, I was. I was terribly mistreated in that story. I actually don't remember it so well it I remember that one dad, Dad had had bought a three wheeler. It was a nineteen eighty five Honda Big Grid. Any story that starts with that I had had. It was the first year they had reverse on them. Oh so this was I mean, this is big, big time, big time. No, this was what was the two fifties. I think the Big Ridge were. Yeah, I think the Big Gridge for two fifties. Yeah. Well, I was fifteen years old, fourteen or fifteen, depend on how my birthday was, and it'd come a big snow where our mailbox was only fifty yards from the front porch, and Dad told me, he said, go down the mailbox and get the mail. So I walked outside and that brand new three wheeler sitting there, and I thought, man, this snow. So I jumped on it, started having some good time, you know, fun, went down, got the mail and come back up and I came in. My dad was like, did you drive that three wheeler down the mailbox? I said, yes, sir man. He was mad, I mean tick mad. He said, that's lazy. Said I can't you know, I can't believe you're that stinking lazy that you can't go down to the mailbox and back because you know, laziness with a lot of them old mountain men, that's you know, yeah, that's there. Yeah, you call the man. You can do a lot of things, but if you're lazy. And but I didn't do it because I was being lazy. I did it because I was fifteen and there was snow on the ground. There was a free will and yeah, yeah, yeah, but it didn't matter because in a dad's mind, you know, here, you're as a father. If you're not careful the things your kids do right now, you project for the rest of their life. 01:04:38 Speaker 2: It's true, that's very true. 01:04:40 Speaker 4: And if you're not real careful, you will overcorrect for something that's just a now thing that you think it's going to get out of hand. See. To me, I just go on the mailbox. But to him, I was, you know, forty five years old and a whino out on the street who never held a job. 01:04:56 Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, he was. He was projecting, Yes, this is going. 01:04:59 Speaker 4: To be a p Yeah, this is going to be a problem. So he told me, he said, well, I tell you what, you're grounded. And I don't remember. It's weak or two. I can't remember. I mean, but I got hammered over it, and I think it's the only time I was ever grounded. 01:05:14 Speaker 1: Really Yeah, yeap, what did what did that produce him? 01:05:18 Speaker 3: Like? 01:05:18 Speaker 1: Did it make you mad? 01:05:19 Speaker 4: Bitterness? Probably? I mean I was not guilt. I was not guilty, Yeah, because. 01:05:25 Speaker 3: You were just like, man, I just want to ride the three wheeler in the snow. 01:05:28 Speaker 4: Yeah. But looking back as a dad though, I can now understand why that was an issue to him. As a dad, Yeah, because he's his eyes are what what's his son going to be when he's thirty, right when he's forty? Yeah, and he wanted to, you know, stamp it out. 01:05:52 Speaker 2: So what's the lesson that you learned from? 01:05:54 Speaker 4: Yeah? 01:05:55 Speaker 1: Yeah, maybe not even in the moment, but now because as you tell that story, I am envisioning a conversation I had with one of my sons this week that that probably was a little unfair to them. But at the same time, in the big picture, I was right, but in the small picture it probably was a little unjust. 01:06:18 Speaker 4: Well, one of my favorite stories in that book, I'll use that to illustrate took place when I was very young. 01:06:25 Speaker 2: And. 01:06:28 Speaker 4: When I was probably four. I was right at four years old, Dad and I were out at the farm. When I say, we always call you live here in the barns out here and out there as the farm, the farms for the barns at you know, we were out there next to the barn and Dad he smoked, and uh, you know, he had him a cigarette and looked cool to me. And I said, can I have a cigarette? And Dad said, I'll tell you what I'll do and make a deal with you. He said, you can have a cigarette, but if you can't smoke the whole thing, you better never ask for another one. So he had me the cigarette and I got the puffing on it, and I couldn't take but just a few puffs. I said, no, wait, man, I cannot handle this. So I hand it back to Dad and he looked at me and he said, never let me catch you with another one. And Dad was a man of his word. If he said it in nineteen twenty, it would still be good in twenty twenty. And uh, well, just maybe a few months or a year past. And h you know, my family was a little rough. And one day Dad and them, if I remember right, him and one of my cousins was sitting on the front porch and they were shooting at the mailbox with a pistol. Just hoo, rod. 01:07:53 Speaker 2: And welcome to Apple. 01:07:54 Speaker 4: At you. 01:07:55 Speaker 1: Yeah, I was looked at their old mailbox. 01:07:58 Speaker 4: I was at I was on the porch with them, and Dad said, I've got to run over the store for a few minutes. I'll be back. While I was on the porch with my cousin. He's older than I am, he's closer to Dad's age. And his name was Johnny. And Johnny was smoking and Dad pull on driveway. Johnny said, you want a cigarette? And uh, I'm like five, I said. I said no, I said. Dad told me if he ever caught me another cigarette, he had beat my break. 01:08:32 Speaker 2: So when you first had that first cigarette, you were under five. 01:08:35 Speaker 4: Yeah, it was like four. 01:08:39 Speaker 2: I'm thinking eight or ten years old, and that's important context. 01:08:43 Speaker 4: Some I'm like five and Johnny he said, don't worry about it. He said, I'll take it for you. I won't let you Daddy whip you. So I took the cigarette. If you missed. Dad came rolling back in the driveway, stepped out of the car, looked at me up on the court. Five year old laid back, never said a word, walked right up on the porch and got me by the hand. We went in the house and kept his word on the matter, and Johnny never lifted a finger to help me at all. Sorry, dog, And I've told him since it I ought to whip him still over the matter, and it never helped me all. But fast forward, that dad was He was a heavy smoker, but when he didn't want me to be a smoker. And it was a cat and mouse game because I when I got older, I started chewing the back and I loved it. I hated smoking, but I love chewing. He didn't want me to chew. He didn't want me to be on the back at all. Now a lot of people say, well, your dad was a hypocrite, and I said, no. What you got to understand life as a child, when you reach a certain age is your parents love you, but they're imperfect and if you hold their imperfections again, you'll never learn from them. And it wasn't a matter of hypocrisy with Dad. It was a matter if he was addicted to nicotine and he couldn't stop. He wanted to quit, but it had a hold on him and he couldn't let go of it. He didn't want that. For me, it wasn't hypocrisy, it was love and having issues as parents that you don't want your children to have. A lot of kids grow up and despise the imperfections of their parents and call them hypocrites and say, well, my parents didn't live what they preached and all that kind of stuff. But you need to Parents need to be good to their children, and their children also need to reach a material level where they're good to their parents, and you need to understand that. We it's the unfortunate thing of life as you start raising your children when you don't know how to raise them, yep, and by the time you do, they're grown. Yep. You don't know. Nobody knows exactly what they're doing parenting. I don't care who you are. You just you do the best you can with what you have. And then the kids need to grow up and be merciful to their parents. And pray to God that your kids will grow up and be merciful to you. Yep. 01:11:17 Speaker 1: That is such insightful, an insightful look on it. We have four children. My youngest is setting now seventeen, oldest is twenty three. My oldest daughter is married now and people I often feel like when people talk to me, they think, oh, Clay, you've been through you know, young parents, and they're like, you've done this before. How do you feel you got some wisdom to give? And I tell you that the most the thing that I feel most right now is humility. In terms of man, I look back, we were young when we had kids, did it was exactly what you described. We did the best we could. We really tried to apply the value systems that we had into our kids. But man, we made a lot of mistakes. Absolutely, And you come into parenting often with a very idealistic view of how to be a parent, and then at some point a lot of your doctrine and the way you did things, you're probably going to realize you didn't execute it exactly right. Like if you had written down on a paper, if I'd written down on a piece of paper everything that I intended to do with my kids when I was twenty two, probably I would still agree with that list. But if you actually took that list and compared it to the to the replay video of actually what happened, you would see that I was not great at really executing and and but I sure tried And yeah, man, right, now, that's the thing I hope my kids give Misty and eyes is empathy. 01:12:54 Speaker 2: My wife, Christy has this, this theory. She calls it the curve of criticality. She says, She says, when you when you first become a parent, you find everything wrong that your parents did, you know what I mean, and you're so unbelievably critical. Then as you get older, you know, you get into your forties and you start thinking about your parents and you're like, you know, maybe I kind of understand why they did that, or you know what I mean, And you start having a lot more compassion and understanding for your parents as you see the errors in your parenting years later. 01:13:28 Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, I'll try to take a big spin here that I think will be relevant. Identity is so powerful, Like essentially, when you're raising the kid, you're trying to tell them who they are. You're trying to let them discover who they're supposed to be. Yep, inside of a context. You know, you may you may live in Africa, you may live in Appalachia, but you have a context for your life. The parent knows that context and how that child can be successful. More than that, child you, and much of identity is perceiving things that already have a very strong identity around you and then triangulating and calibrating to figure out who you are. And I think that parents act as that, like when your kid becomes an adult and gets married and starts having kids and then they go, well, mom and dad, sure did it wrong. Back here, we're going to do it right. I mean they triangulate and basically the parent or the grandparent, or or it could be a society or a church you went to, or some reference point that has strong identity becomes something even if you're critical of it, becomes important for you to build identity. Does that make sense? So it's almost like as a parent, now I recognize the natural tendency and even the it's probably healthy for my it's to be a little critical of me, and as a parent I kind of just have to be okay with that to some degree. 01:15:07 Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean, you know, like, well, I got a feedback off of that story there from a guy, and I would never give names or details, but a guy sent me an inbox and he said a lot of churches have bought these books in bulk and give them out for Father's Day and he said, our church gave me your book. He said, I read it and I wanted to let you know that he was raised in one particular state, moved to a more southern state, got in church, got his life straightened up, but he had an extreme amount of bitterness toward his dad. His dad was very abusive when they grew up. And now I don't consider my dad abusive at all, but this guy considered his dad very abusive and had a hard time. He said he read the story about the cigarette and the explanation of you got to be merciful to your folks and get over some things. And he said, I tell you what I did. He said, I've tried for years, but I decided to forgive my dad. He said, I forgave him. Want to. I wanted to thank you because his life, his life's now better because he's not walking around with the burden of hating his dad the rest of his life. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, that's good. That's cool. Yep. 01:16:19 Speaker 1: Oh man, I mean you've got eighty four stories in this book like that that all that, all have all. 01:16:28 Speaker 4: Have a point. 01:16:29 Speaker 1: I'd like to comment on your writing style, which is uh. They say they say, uh, himing Way wrote, and I'm not a Hemingway expert. I've read a couple of books, but that he wrote like very short, very like just like very direct. 01:16:53 Speaker 2: Like. 01:16:53 Speaker 1: When I first started reading Himingway, I thought it would be this like big, grandiose descriptions of stuff, but he actually known for just being like the ocean was blue to the point the wind hit us in the face from the east. The old man's wrinkles looked like the ocean. I mean, like, it's just like and as you get into it, you realize how clear it is as compared to someone who might be like the ocean sparkled like diamonds in the in the in the nether world and dolphins in It's like, I mean, you know, there's different ways to do it. When I read your book, I was I liked how simple and profound it was inside of like a very restrained style of writing that was like very clear, very to the point, short, but but poignant. If that's the right word. I've used that word a couple of times. I think that's the right word. 01:17:50 Speaker 4: But anyway, well, there's a story in there about that that very thing I think that I don't know I haven't. I haven't read the book since I published it. I didn't go back and read it. Yeah, but it's I think it's called talk less. 01:18:04 Speaker 1: I remember that. 01:18:05 Speaker 4: Sorry. Yeah, And uh, it may seem strange because I'm a preacher and I talk all the time from the pulpit, but in private life I don't talk a lot. Ben doesn't talk a lot. My dad didn't talk a lot. Now in private conversation, we might have a long conversation, but I can also ride from here to Idaho with you don't have to say nothing. And that goes back to my dad bear hunting, and he would say the reason some people don't kill bear is because they're on the radio too much. He say, stay off the radio and kill the bear, because trying to get out ahead of the bear, if the dogs is after, you know, takes focus and movement and action. And there was times when we would I would ride with I stay the weekend with my grandpa and we would go up on the mountain. The hunt wouldn't even know Dad was hunting that day. Somebody'd find a track, turn the dogs loose on it, and the race could gone all day long and you still wouldn't know. He was there, and then the dogs may get tread and then you'd hear his back. In the old CB days, you could talk maybe a couple of miles if you were lucky, but you could hear the truck drivers for forty miles, you know. Yeah and so, but you'd hear that thing start crackling, the way it would when somebody'd keep down on their mic and Dad would carry this great, big radio. I'd be in the truck with my grandpa and you'd hear that crackling, and Dad say, how about it, Barry, it's all over? And that's it. I mean, it's the race been going all day. I mean it was wild and chaotic and a huge, big day. And Dad's comment was I've killed it. 01:19:51 Speaker 1: And y'all didn't even know he was there. 01:19:52 Speaker 4: You wouldn't even know I was hunting. Yeah, it'd say about it, Barry, it's all over. One of the things that gave him an advantage. He didn't run his mouth all the time them. Yeah. 01:20:00 Speaker 1: Mm hmmm, mm hmm. That's tough. That's tough. Council to a podcast. 01:20:10 Speaker 3: From Yeah, on the podcast, the next Bear Grease is going to be two minutes long. 01:20:17 Speaker 4: Yeah, exactly, next grease. 01:20:20 Speaker 1: No, No, it's gonna be fifty five minutes long like all the rest of them, and we're gonna have some silence on there. I'm gonna be like, guys, I really want you all to think about this for about ten minutes. Just music. 01:20:35 Speaker 4: Man. 01:20:35 Speaker 1: That Yeah, that's good man, that's really good. It's been when when you when I first I ordered this book off Amazon? When you when you when you uh printed it and when you published it. I remember, I don't remember the details. I remember a story of tobacco, stealing tobacco. I don't remember was there wasn't there a story about and I think it was you that stole tobacco from a country store and yeah, you mind telling that story? 01:21:20 Speaker 4: Oh my goodness. Yeah. Uh there was a country store there. It was called Cove Creek, and uh, I mean, I just I know it sounds weird for a kid, but I just love tobacco. I mean I liked it. 01:21:34 Speaker 1: And uh so voodoo as we call it, the he did try a cigarette. 01:21:41 Speaker 4: It for yeah, exactly. So that the hunters would meet at Cove Creek in the morning, real early and sort of formulate a game plan, then go up on the mountain and try to execute the game plan. Well, that particular morning, I was with my papa and it's only me and him and the guy that owned the store in the building at the time, and we were standing here to owner, and the tobacco isle was not behind the counter. Then it should have been for kids like me, I guess, but the tobacco was all over here, and I eyed that, and I thought, boy, I'd like to have that today I'll be out in the mountains by myself. And so I just eased around the side, got down on I don't know ten twelve, Yeah, got down on my knees, and I just crawled over there, reached my hand around and got me a pack, and eased my way back to the store bathroom, concealed. It just walked out like nothing ever happened. With The sorry thing about that is the man that owns the story as a family friend, a personal friend of my grandfather. I'd have got caught red ended, my grandpa would have been destroyed. I mean, it's entirely self centered, selfish thing, not to mention just the penalty in my family forgetting caught being a thief. And so years went by, I became a Christian I went to Bible College. I was out in Montana planting the church, and we'd come home to visit, and we didn't get home very often. I drove down the Houston Valley Road on the way down to Papa was and passed the old man's house and on the store he had sold it, but then he was still alive. And when I passed thy house, the Lord told me you stole from him, and now it's time for restitution. You claimed to be a Christian and you stole from him, and you take care of it. I turned the car around. I drove back down to his house. You know, it was shame. And I walked up, knocked on his door, and he came up the door and he said why you know he knew me, and I said, I got to talk to you about something. He said, all right. I told him what had happened, and I wish it had just hit me in the face, but instead he said, Tracy, I never would have thought that of You could not. That was hard. It's like being poleaxed because Dad wouldn't have done it, and Papa wouldn't have done it, but their boy did. And I asked him to forgive me, and then I asked him what I owed him. You know, Zachs was told to pay back four times or offered to pay back four times when he stole. And I didn't know what the interest was on the pack at the back of from the seventies. And the old man told me. He said no, he said, you don't owe me a thing. He said, don't you worry about it. He forgave me so but cleared my conscience. Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah. 01:24:49 Speaker 1: Man, what a good story. 01:24:50 Speaker 4: That is a good story. 01:24:51 Speaker 1: Yeah, that stuff is powerful. I think people people that don't understand the way the spirit realm works, which the spirit real am is as real as the physical realm, don't understand the power of stuff like that. Yeah, truly, I mean that that that that's a great story. 01:25:15 Speaker 4: Yeah yeah, yeah, And that that was a good That was a good man. And I was glad to have that out of the way. 01:25:25 Speaker 1: Yeah. 01:25:26 Speaker 4: But the Lord will do that after you, after you get saved and become a Christian and the Holy Spirit lives inside of you, the Lord, I tell I explained this to my church a few weeks ago with an illustration about turkey calls. When I make a turkey call, people ask me how do you make one? I soa I just take a piece of wood, it's got turkey in it. Then I remove everything that's not turkey. And because someone's don't really have turkey in them, they're just not good for a call. But and now, like in that to being saved, you're never going to be a Christian until God's in you. When you get saved, God moves in you. Now you've got something for God to work with. And then after Christ moves inside of you, then God spends the rest of your life taking everything out of you that's not Christ. 01:26:17 Speaker 3: Yep. 01:26:19 Speaker 4: And I think when I chip away at those turkey calls and move a piece here, and if you ever make a box call, it's very intricate in the sound, the slope of it, the hall of the inside, the shape of it. I mean, you can be so close and it's still not sound like a turkey. Then you almost get it, and then you go too far and there's no going back. So you're trying to hit that just right with a removal that would because you can't add it back to where it sounds like a turkey. And it's better to stop too soon. And I think that's discipleship is God taking everything out of you. That's not christ. 01:27:00 Speaker 1: Mm hmm. That's good. It's good man. This has been fantastic. 01:27:07 Speaker 2: We've been talking for hour and a half, almost hour. 01:27:09 Speaker 1: And a half. That has been fantastic. Blake, what about that silly podcast you've got? What's it called it? 01:27:17 Speaker 3: It doesn't matter anymore? 01:27:23 Speaker 2: Uh? 01:27:25 Speaker 1: No that this has been so good. Yeah, So you can order this online. 01:27:29 Speaker 4: Yes, sir, he can order it on Amazon. 01:27:32 Speaker 1: Ordered on Amazon and called the old Man and Tracy Tennessee is uh Tennessee Jones. He fulfills these orders himself. I mean you got you got? Is that correct? 01:27:44 Speaker 3: Or? 01:27:44 Speaker 4: No? 01:27:44 Speaker 3: No? 01:27:45 Speaker 4: Uh, you can order them straight from me. People do that if they want them signed, Okay, they can just you know. 01:27:51 Speaker 1: So Amazon is printing them on demand. 01:27:53 Speaker 4: Amazon's print on demand. And yeah, when they first started to do it, you know when that when that first dropped, it went to uh an Amazon what they call it for a new there's some category they have that's a new publication. That went to number one right away. Well, then Amazon throttled it. They had ai that I guess read the book and it was not politically correct. So Amazon throttled it. Well, my state representative and the mayor of Knoxville got a hold of Amazon said in Tennessee, we don't allow discrimination, we believe in free speech, and Amazon the very next day gave me a positive review. I didn't know AI could be so bendable. Yeah. And one of the coolest things I've had happened is I got a card from JD Vance that somebody'd give him a copy of it. State representative had give him a copy and he had read it and he sent me a card. Wow, that was pretty cool. Yeah, yep, yeah, that's great. 01:29:02 Speaker 1: So The Old Men The Conversations that Help Boys Become Men by T. L. Tennessee Jones, Tennessee Jones, T. L. 01:29:11 Speaker 2: Tracy, Tennessee Jones Man. 01:29:14 Speaker 1: Yeah, excellent, excellent. Well Blake Backwoods University, June the ninth, June ninth, June ninth, be bi weekly, bi weekly show and uh yeah, you'll be hearing more from Doctor Lake Pickle on the Bear Grease feed. 01:29:32 Speaker 2: Looking forward to it. 01:29:33 Speaker 4: Happy to be here. 01:29:34 Speaker 1: We've got a nice robust feed. We're gonna have to start I talk to Brent about this. I think we're gonna have to start some episodes with like a description of the channel because bear Grease started as just like the podcast, the bear Grease podcast, that's just what all it was. It actually started with one bi weekly show, which was bear Grease Podcast. After a few months, we were like, let's take it the weekly and do this thing called the Render, which is this round table a little bit more of a traditional style podcast, conversational, long form stuff. And then we added this Country Life, and then now we've added Backwoods University. 01:30:15 Speaker 2: So basically Monday, Wednesday, Friday, just packing them in. 01:30:19 Speaker 1: You got something, You've got no more room for any other podcast. 01:30:24 Speaker 4: And that's what we want. 01:30:25 Speaker 2: Listen, unsubscribe from those other ones. 01:30:29 Speaker 1: We need to We need to find a way to like service all the category. I guess we just got to figure out what fields we're playing in. I mean, we're now in the wildlife, Bilisy field, Brent's and the I don't know what Brent's doing. I mean, I don't know how you would even describe it. When I try to describe what Brent does, I'm just like, I just listened to it. I bet you'll like it, and I'm always right. I'm always right. 01:30:49 Speaker 4: I can't believe how many people that I run into that listen to by Our Grease. I mean it surprises me. I mean I'll go somewhere to preach, and like there was a I was in Chesapeake, Virginia and I was going to preach a sportsman's banquet for a church over there, and a little kid, probably I bet he was like eight ten years old, walked up to me and he said, now you were on bear Grease, right, you didn't care if I was there. It was an association. Yeah yeah, And so that kid, and it's all and it's people you wouldn't even think listen to podcast. It's great. Yeah yeah, yep. 01:31:24 Speaker 1: Oh cool. Well, thank you t Al for coming. 01:31:27 Speaker 4: Yep. 01:31:27 Speaker 1: I really appreciate it. Came all the way from East Tennessee, like going it all the way from Mississippi. Thank you for coming. Happy to be here, yep. And anything else we're supposed to. 01:31:38 Speaker 2: Talk about, I don't think so. I think you're covering it all. 01:31:41 Speaker 1: Keep the wild places wild, because that's where the bears live.