September 23, 2015 • 47 mins
Author Rinker Buck's new book details the trip he and his brother Nick made along the Oregon Trail. Holly chatted with Buck about his journey, his writing and his love of history.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to steph you missed in history class from how
Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Holly Fry and I'm Crazy B. Wilson, and today
we have an author interview for you, and it's one
that I'm really delighted to share with our listeners because
(00:22):
as I read rinker bucks new book, The Oregon Trail,
I got more and more excited about speaking with him.
He is a really compelling writer and he has this
personality that just shines through in the pages of his work.
In this book, Buck talks about a long journey that
he and his brother Nick took by mule pold covered wagon,
and they retrace the steps of the pioneers who traveled
(00:44):
from Missouri to Oregon. So, as you can imagine, the
kind of person who thinks that would be a fun
thing to do is quite interesting. So we're going to
jump in, and before we start, I want to make
a quick note of the sound quality on this one
is not ideal. Awesome Producer Nolan I and Rinkerbuck, we're
kind of calling each other back and forth trying to
get a good connection, and we had some trouble, so, uh,
(01:07):
bear with us. It's not as perfect and christmin clear
as we like, but oh man, he says some fantastic stuff.
So I hope you enjoy it, and we're gonna hop
right in. Okay. So, first, we are so excited to
have rincer Buck on the show because you are a
(01:29):
history lover, so this is like an extra treat for us. Um,
And I first want to jump right into your new book,
The Oregon Trail and some of the stuff in it.
But because I know that you are a very erudite
man with a lot of history knowledge in your noggin,
you know, feel free to go down whatever path you like. Um.
One of the first things that I wanted to talk
(01:50):
to you about. It's really not a particularly important part
of the book, but I found it so charming. There's
a phrase that comes up early in the book to
describe having an adventure, and it's seeing the elephant. And
could you talk a little bit about the etymology of
that incredibly charming phrase. Yeah, it is. It is a
great phrase, and it's interesting because in the nineteenth century,
(02:11):
if you asked what that was, everyone would have known.
So it's a colloquialism that we've lost, but everyone would
have known, but also the meaning of the term changed
over time. So seeing the elephant, we're not positive about
the etymology, but we think it derives from living in
rural areas of the country and lonely frontier areas because
(02:34):
remember by the eighteen thirties Ohio and in beyond on Michigan,
places like that which was called the Old Northwest UM
they were frontier areas and they were reasonably settled, but
people lived on remote farms, and so it was a
big treat once the prince once a year, maybe every
other year, that you would get to go to the surface.
(02:57):
They were always traveling in still showers and services, and
even on the Mississippies there were boats supports that went
down and to go less shipspeare fascinating, but um going
to see the elephants. But you would get into town
early when the parade arrived. In the Um surface parade
arrive and usually the surface wagons would stop a mile
(03:21):
or two out of town and they'd much all the
animals everything they had into town to try and attract
um as big at allience as they can for the
surface before they put up the tent. So it's going
to see the elephant was um taking a big, bad
break from the ali in the bordom of fun life,
going into town. Let's pick you very far from your
(03:41):
home at that point and sitting there and seeing elephants.
Its report was not something that you normally saw, and
the kids always look for fort to it. So that
was the meaning. Originally, you're going to sort of taking
Eventually you're going to see something you've never seen before,
or have a breaking life and something exciting and actually
robbed over time, So the Pioneers, we'll talk about I'm
(04:04):
going to see the elephant, which means I'm going to
cross anyway hundred miles from the Missouri River to the
Columbia River which is six present day stakes and hit
the Oregon or the California Trail, and over time, because
so many people about it, cholera and uh. After the
(04:24):
Civil War there were Indian attacks because they had decided
to slaughter the bussel up to the area better for farming,
and that of course sam the Indians hostel Um. They
were careless and I do mean careless middle forts and
that sort of thing. So going to see the elephant
came to me later in the centuries. Taking a daring
(04:48):
adventure that was risky and might be more emotionally supportive
and life changing than safe. So someone's going to see
the elephant and sort of happening into the wilderness, and
it could be any wilderness. You might be trying to
see the office because you've decided to do something crazy
that your family doesn't expect you to do, like becoming
(05:09):
a minister or something so implied a journey of many
different kinds of particularly of a philosophical or psychological one,
and you decided and it became the tale that's told
in your new book to go see the Elephant in
the form of taking on the Oregon Trail. And the
(05:30):
last documented crossing of the Oregon Trail before yours was
more than a hundred years ago in nineteen o nine.
And of course it's changed a great deal in the
last century. So there is really not a guide book
to tell you how to do this. And I know
you had to figure out a lot as you win.
So what sorts of changes do you did you have
to make to your game plan along the way? Sure, Well,
(05:50):
one thing, let me just make clear, because people have
written in the Amazon and everything. He said, Well, nine,
there's a sasttennial crossing of the Oregon Trail. A uh um,
that to me, those stunt counts, and he said, maybe
only on a sister pressing. There have been very few
crossings of the whole trail. But what people are generally
(06:11):
referring to is you can pay a thousand dollars and
go out and tay Wyoming Outsidre and he'll take you
out for that. Canaser's team miles on the trail all
day and you have this very rugged pioneer experience in
a covered wagon with horses, which in the nineties century
and nobody use horses. They use fules for oxen. And
(06:31):
then the night you gather around and they roll in
the all gates and you can take a nice shower
and maybe sweeping an act of the zoom, and the
meals are catered and and all those kind of things.
And we didn't do that. I didn't want to have
anything to do with that kind of Ironically, they call
themselves reenactors, but they're not reenactors. Um. So we designed
(06:52):
a truck cluff that went along with us. Um. It's
like a commissary part of tow part that we could
behind the wagon. They have you build, you just carry
it up fifty hundred to two thousand towns of surprise, hunting,
gowns of water and all this stuff. That we were independent,
We were free of motorized support. So and they're certainly
with the only ones that done not in a hundred years.
(07:15):
So the kinds of changes that had to make the
trail is twenty one dred moles all the way out
to Oregon, mostly across nearly dry country and high digets
is Wyoming and Idaho, and that's just thing. So the
kind of change um And and about a thousand miles
of the trail is now small two lane black tops,
(07:36):
uh farming country roads and then another thousand miles of
ruts and occasionally especially in eastern um Nebraska and eastern
mail And occasionally you do go to small farming towns
and that kind of thing. So we had a rear
view of hear, we had led safety lights, we had
(07:57):
that orange triangular thing that you see on the back
of tractors. To Warren chest and the guy that made
our truck up and restart our wagon because we did
pick the strip in it actually nights and sence we
Peter shutlow wagon um he was playing, and it was like, well,
those are period details, and nobody cussed the planes and
(08:17):
we were real new and we were making a modern
pressing what is the trail today and what is the
history of the trail? And he didn't have any you know,
And they said, well, where's your period trast where's your
period chest? And I don't want to I don't want
to tell you the answer that maya I sort of
profane and sarcastic. Younger brother gave to that when they
(08:39):
asked him were his tiord tests? But um and so yeah,
we just went around the corner and we went like
five miles up the road and pulled us the side
and put out our tool kit and put on our
real ears and our r D rights and anything like that.
So there's safety things like that. Um uh. One thing
(09:00):
that was very important, and what I explained in the
book is it's something called a ton reliever, the tongue
being a very heavy pro in the front of the
wagon that hangs off the collars of the mules. And
in the next two essentially you can hardly ever see
a picture of a diagram of a wagon at office
screen and chain device that comes down from the wagon
and holds the polar because the way that poll all
(09:25):
day on the mules, um retire out the shoulders and
give them shoulder source quicker than uh that their legs
with the entire out from all the distance you're gone.
And nobody knew how to build one. Nobody nobody do Uh.
I've seen a picture of wine. I've seen an actual
one on a wagon in the Smithsonian Institution once. So
(09:46):
it just did it for memory, and it was it
was something that made our trip possible, um, because we
got the way of that pro offten Wulf and so
they were all kinds of little mobs like that. One
other chance I'll play about just because it's funny, we
end up not using We had no technology and the
half the time you don't uh, you don't need tps
(10:06):
if you're moving in four miles from how and but flashlight,
cold and land, any kind of artificial feel like that.
We had. The wagon just tweats and groans. There's no
springs on it. Everything breaks the doctor source for the
first couple of weeks until les muscles it took up
and so even a flashlight wouldn't work there a couple
of days. So um, we just started living. Um sent
(10:30):
up to sundown, Yeah, and that light in the morning
what they probably woke up and Higston news, Neil breakfast
and hump Boston. When we got the air of seven
Ponti the at night, UM some sort of tense to
be a little later out west in those northern UM
two attitudes so um, and it looked like since that
(10:50):
was got on our way and he came and weston
news and stuff like that, so we moved closer to
kind of changes we didn't. He didn't. You didn't live
with particularly light, and we won't. I'm I'm just thinking
about how much I realized that the world is completely different,
(11:11):
like if we lose power and I don't have light.
So it's uh fascinating to think about, like where you
just reach a point of that's fine, no light is okay,
we can keep going. Yeah, I'm independent of all that stuff.
Not feel like I've been blow. I can easily imagine
(11:32):
what Rinker's brother Nick said when he was asked about
where his period dress was. Um, but Tracy, do you
think you could possibly go for several months traveling across
country without any of the niceties and without any of
your technology that actually sounds really liberating. It sounds terrifying
to me. Nobody could email me, I will see this.
(11:54):
That's kind of what I like about when I do
things like go deep sea fishing with my dad, is
that there's no connectivity, but it's only for a day. Yeah.
The vacation that I took at the beginning of this year,
I intentionally had no Internet at all, and I did
not I didn't connect to the outside world and anyway.
But I have lots of other niceties. So it's it's
(12:16):
the it's the being disconnected from things that sounds liberating.
I probably would be. I would get very tired of
cooking over a fire after a while. Yeah, I think
I'm such an information junkie. I can't kind of go
without being able to look something up when it occurs
to me. But before we get to this next bit
of our interview with rinker Buck, let's pause for a
(12:36):
quick word from one of the great sponsors that keeps
us going. Now we will pick up with our interview
with rinker Buck, and we're going to talk in this
next segment about all the supplies that got loaded into
their wagon. Initially, I know you had packed a lot
of supplies that you ended up deeming unnecessary and kind
(13:00):
of ditching along the way, just as the pioneers that
were doing this trail in the eight hundreds often found
that they had things that they could not keep carrying
with them. And I know you have mentioned that in
some areas where the trail is still remote and largely
unchanged over the years, you sometimes are following a debris trail.
And I think I heard you mentioned in one interview
that you had seen like a piano on the trail,
(13:22):
And I'm just wondering what the sort of most odd
or surprising thing you saw out there was. Well, first
of all, I thought that I was pitching their nite
and smart guy, and I read all these books first,
and read all the pioneer journals, and they talk a
lot about how they overload the wagons. One reason they
over a litted their wagons is that the os and
(13:42):
the merchants into jumping off towns along them as a river.
Um would use a lot of scare tactics to tell people,
you know, you better, you better take at least one
big battle of bacon for each kid, you know, and
the kids are gonna get to arting, you know, like
looking like baby shoey, you know. But um so I
(14:05):
then made this same mistake. And there was a funny
passage in the book where I talked about, you know,
waking up the first morning after you're traveling and realizing
I had way too much here and um you know
probably I mean just kind of give me a break here.
It was. It was pretty touching it. I thought that
I needed a shoeshine, carre In and my books brothers Bass,
(14:25):
so you know, to leave. Well, you were going to
continue a gentlemanly life even on the road, roughing it.
I can't respect that. I think what it was, Yeah, yeah,
I think what it was is I was I wasn't
put a plan area and I was thinking, well, my
old I'm bringing my own life with you, and then
you get out there and you know your old life
has been eradicated, you know. I think new For instance,
(14:50):
crossing my owning, well you have to pick showers, and
that's my own license. I think that crossing my own
and took the twenty nine days the four system up
is twenty nine days, and most of that was original.
Rest in the high desert was nothing wrong. It's insist
miles we did test two towns and UM one town
(15:11):
had four hundred people in it and the other town
had three people in it. So what we learned about
the pioneers, which a seconding is there's still a lot
of archaeological bigs stuff up there. And it is true
that the pioneers um could navagate all the way to
origin by needs and fifties aft of the trail was
premature just by following with the free pall. It could
(15:31):
be the carcass system of all the animals from the
year before and that sort of thing. But there's a
lot of archaeological picked out there and people going with
metal detectives and stuff. And there are especially below places
like Rocky Woods, a big killin item where it was
really a powerless uh distant down to some touch ring.
(15:52):
There are places where you can just turn on the
metal detection now and you're gonna find old wagon Paul,
the old buckets, old um you know, AMA belts and
stuff like that. So UM, you know, hiring fifty years later,
you're still in the dry climber quick, You're still finding
the moment of the original climbers. That's so amazing, UM,
(16:15):
And you originally intended to take this trip solo, which
was something that you eventually recognized as delusional, as you
put it. And then your brother Nick, who is a
really accomplished mechanic and craftsman of many varieties, insisted on
joining you. And you yeah, and you said many times
that you absolutely could not have done this trip without
(16:35):
your brother. But just as a speculative thing, I wonder
how far you think you would have gotten had you
gone on your own to begin with, I think that's
probably would have gotten about yeah miles three days handling
these Cantans, knew amazing and hignessing all three of them
up on my stuff every day. And then there's the
(16:55):
conclusion that I thought, Ohio a cowboy, um, and now
I'm had to find somebody out there. I actually I
was looking to the people, and UM, I think what
the trip demonstrates this way is that if you take
a big risk, UM, things do work out. UM. I
mean I had a lot of planning into it, and
(17:15):
it wasn't completely spontaneous about it, but um, thanks just
for that. My brother had both his foot um in
a construction accident name was supposed to be incorporating, but
he told the doctor, UM, I'll take a little trip
out west with my brother, would that be all right?
And you know they signed off all its forms at
the Dietoris administration. But no, without him, I never would
(17:39):
have made it. And it just shows you. I think
the first line of the book, the first line of
the book is to the effect that naive k is
the mother of a denture. And if you're not naive,
if you're not willing to realize that most of what
you need to know you're gonna learn once you get
out there, you'll never take these trips. So I was
very lucky that my brother heard I was going and
and said uncommon, you know, So he kind of saved
(18:03):
me that way. Uh. And there's this juxtaposition throughout the
book of the historical and the modern that plays out
in a number of ways. But one of the major
ways that really struck me is is what we've been
talking about that some on some areas of your journey,
you're traveling basically on interstate, and on others you are
on the original ruts that have been there since this
(18:23):
you know, whatever part of the trailer you were on
was forged. And I know you have great knowledge of history,
um and of those that traveled these trails before you.
But as you were forced to figure out ways to
navigate both the old and the new along the way,
did you get a new sense or a new appreciation
for the pioneers that originally traveled along these routes. Sure,
(18:47):
most of the wagon chains had experienced UM wagon packs
a lawn, there were a lot of The organ trail
was actually the old search After that the search apter
saw west up into the Rockies into the gate Bover
country UM after the Lewis and Clark expedition and the
(19:08):
Louisiana purchase UM. So they had the advantage and and
a lot of those foot trappers became wagon masters because
they this very organic thing, and they led the pioneers
across the dignity the Mormons who were the most organized
on the trail UM because they seven thousand Mormons crossed
(19:31):
between eighteen seven and roughly eighteen seven and eighteen Mosy,
and they because they were precious back in the Midwest
where they had lived at the time, and they they
were the only group to have organized UM actual professional
wagon masters, and they were sent back east every every
(19:52):
year after the Black and Train started, So Lake and
all the wagon masters would made uh sort of a
parallelous late fall crossing the snow and that's same thing,
UH to get back east so that they could leave
the next train the next time. So they actually had
pretty good guides, UM, and we didn't. We didn't have that.
And there's a lot of places where the trail is
(20:14):
marked or mark curley, but it's marking such a way
that grant or um battle markets are ways hidden up
in the worlderness up in the foothills. Well, I had
to walk ahead of the wagon a lot, and UH,
I estimate that I walked at least seven hild miles
the trail to stuff as are is the other hazards
(20:36):
that we faced, UM was that UM in a couple
of places we actually we have our interstates. We were
always um, you know, stay the tunny roads doing black ups,
but they like right along the old Rust's pretty much
power to them. But a couple of points when the
interstates came to like twenty five, which is the main
northwest street from Texas to Montana, that's blocked away and
(20:59):
uh Wyoming and Mooving four and U or eighty six
in Idaho, Oregon, and so I had to discover roots
around that while still staying on the trail. Unfortunately, and
this is expling book. Unfortunately, there were the very areas
where um they were cut offs, alternate roots. There were
(21:21):
forty major colorff of the trail. The pioneers kept experimenting
was slightly put the ways to get there, whether training,
get a terrain or the rivers that overflowed that year.
So they went a slightly different way and explainstance in
wayoming when we brought the highway finished the point fry
uh I had read about the childhood and a couple
of ranches, and they told me, so this took the
(21:43):
child'shoods the new thanks too, and here's how you get
up there, and that we just took her life headed
up into the rolling instance, you know, four years later
and you know they use all the standard things in navigation,
calling higher memorial, take a compass, staring on the cli
really and then just follow that gun down below to
(22:04):
see whis been planning and right place. So all the
um ultimately to call us I knew about them. I
personally cannot imagine, even for a minute, trying to find
(22:24):
my way in the situations that Rinker and his brother
were navigating. We're gonna hear a lot about mules in
the next segment that comes up. But before we get
to that, Tracy would do like to have another word
from one of the great sponsors that keeps this show going. Yes, please,
as promised, it is time to talk about some mules.
Rincer devotes a lot of space in the early part
(22:45):
of his book talking about mules in the United States history,
and it's something he knows loads about. You think I
was something of a mule advocate in this book? Do
you give a really impressive history of the mule in
the US as both an ecademic driver and as a
(23:05):
largely misunderstood animal. Will you talk to us a little
bit about their ties to George Washington in their place
in the early financial landscape of America? Sure? I love
like this is to give you an opportunity to readvisit
a stuff that when they finished the chapter, readers got wow.
I didn't know that, but I sort of should have
known that. And so with the mule was interesting? Is
(23:30):
the plateful economics of the globe at the time very interesting?
We really needed mules um ready h turn of the
nineteenth century, because we are now consing the allogames and
that first transapolation pushed into Ohio Illinoian and playing them
go into the Rockies. Um, and we we didn't have
(23:52):
them for a good NEAs and horses. It's just not
as reliable. The hos line is good and lucky terrain,
they hire more easily, etcetera. They don't have that enough
of that shill genetic makeup that you get from the
borough side of a mule. So what had happened was
we always known in the Europeans had these great draft
mules with Jackson being a big the animal made from
(24:16):
the desire would be a man of jack And we
moved the European tabn but talk until the Revolutionary War.
The Spanish and the French, who were the main breeders
of these big animals, would not allow them into the
United States, into the colonies, the English colonies, because they've
been warring forever with they've written and they didn't didn't
(24:37):
want to help the British colony. As soon as George
Washington had been successful at houstain the British from the
United States, Um, the King of Spain and uh Macyette,
um the big Ally of Washington, essential Ally of Washington
(24:58):
to the Revolution, Spain and France were sent Sepho breeding stock. Um,
the one that came from Francis Club Law gifts and
the one that came from Um. Actually the all gifts
came from Spain, and then uh multis Jack came from
from France. And that was the initial breeding stock that
(25:19):
was sent directly to George Washington, who've had a lot
of loan in the West the Mud. He's gonna need
the European style mules to us to develop that property
and to get to that property. And George Washington again
began the first meeting farm the mules in Martha. But
the currently died. There was sixty working mules on mountain
(25:40):
burning alone, and he was turning his fires around to
the man of jack that are bret to a female horse. Well,
they're kind of the unsung heroes of American history. Like
you don't hear about the great mules that helped build
the country, but they really did. Um yeah, um, they
were here. And my book is about a lile on
(26:02):
pump here. But Cross just a whitman who was to
um the angels to first plus the trail in eighteen
six and sent back these when it was very daring
and interested do so. And there's a lot of prejudice
against it because the West was not considered a safe
place for a white woman. Um, because it was Indian
country and the great American desert and so forth. Um.
(26:25):
And she walked back to the series of layers that
convinced the Americans that it would be safe for women
and children to cross the trail. She really opened up
the trail. She's completely forgotten today. So my resits by
walking out on the trail and reading all the primary
sources and then actually crossing it by wagon, you really
learned how arduous was to get these wagons up and
(26:46):
down the mountains and so forth. Um reveals a lot
of them from here. It's just it's just sad you
want to history that we've never confirmed that we don't
see anymore. Um be could it's not to kind of
sense in history class? I guess, well, yeah. And I
really love that there are many places in the book
where you really break down some of the incorrect myths
(27:09):
that have circulated for years, As you mentioned, Um nursiss
a Whitman. I love that whole section. You break down
the myth of the mule being obstinate, and ordinary creature.
You talked about how the Native Americans really were quite
cooperative for the most part until they realized that they
were really getting the shaft um right right, Well, there's
(27:32):
something fascinating about this today mentioned a little bit, but
it's still have a sub text ons then this is
really fascinated today. Well studied just to you a like
kind of become a writer instead of getting more history.
But one things that historians to Pistorians if they still
have a big advance, big personality approach to history. So
(27:56):
if you want to understand Americic expansion west work, know,
you read a book like the Mantos Decisions, Your Decision
they six and it's all about Thomas part that and
the forces in Congress and the politics and the Pierced
administration and the Buchanan administration and so forth and the
(28:17):
events big guy. But what historians don't do is they
don't go back and look chiefly, and they don't. It's
that's the kind of thing that gives them academic freshpiche
to look at, well, how did people live? You know,
if you're getting across the Chail and you get to
Missouri and you know, um, more than ten thousand people
(28:40):
on a cross that year, and every one of them
crossed with me mules that we're not properly trained, and
they were. They should be pleased by the new brokers
at Missouri. Um, what did that do to life? You know,
what was your life like on the trail when you
were exposed to an almost daily scramble for water, et cetera. Um.
(29:04):
And that's the kind of thing that interests me. And
when I get into in the book, it's like, forget
it off the politics and you know, the biggest picture
and howe moral fun people the Exican American world, which
took so much of this can't play. Um. I think
about that full moment. How did people actually live accomplishing
(29:24):
this two thousand track plus the country And to me,
that's a lot more imputant stuff sometimes than the than
the big picture in the big politits. Yeah, I mean
that's the kind of stuff we love to talk about
as well. It's like it's it's easy to see the
big broad strokes and the the sort of catalyst that
happened on the world stage, but at the same time
(29:44):
you cannot lose sight of the fact that there are living,
breathing people in the trenches so to speak, that never
get any recognition, but they're really the ones that we're
making history. Um. So I love that you touch on
that a little um, one little thing stuff the wind.
You know, the way we live today is we moved
(30:06):
from way over built their condition eagerly to the next
you know, you get out of their condition car and
you go into an air condition to ari m and
then and now you go home to Yes, it's place
that has all these worrying little motors that that solve
all your problems. And you're kind of alienated from nature.
And even if you kept torn ao or something um
(30:30):
most of your life, you're you're protected, you isolated, your
hermetically feeled from the real forces of nature. And then
you get into come the wagon, and as soon as
you get west of the Middle Nebraska, the wind is
going at three five three miles to day, thy fidells
now um all day and you completely lost the DNA.
(30:54):
Who's completely lost the memory of how exhausting it is
to sit on a wagon, see the exposed to this thing.
And it's always right in your face that the west
we windhting how its how even can be, just how
we wind all day. And this trip was, as you
(31:15):
mentioned earlier, arduous. It was incredibly ambitious and you had
a lot of challenges along the way. But one episode
that I found so affecting was the struggle to get
the mule team in the wagon up California Hill in Nebraska.
And so for our listeners, that's a climb of about
two ft of the course of a mile and a
half and your brother Nick made the case that you
(31:36):
should take this route rather than an eight mile detour
around it. Can you talk to us a little bit
about how that challenge played out, because it really was
like I got goose bumps reading that. I was so
terrified for all of you. Um, it's amazing. What happened
was so we got there and Calciorny Hills when he
was very important choke point of the trail was plineers
(32:00):
at that point have to make a near bu the
black guy and the planeers has to make a transition
formal never jines the little bottom line that the south
plot to the north pot across the very high plateau
is the only country the rest of the very raisine.
And to reach that plateau there's just a single hill
(32:21):
which got the name California Hill because you had to
confident Disco killed to make it to California. He followed
the Oregon Trail to the California Trail. The um we
get there, explaining to Nick, you know this places. There's
these hundreds of wagons day day during sumil. The plane
(32:43):
eas and blah blah blah, and there's a big plot
there anything. And Nick looks up at the hill and
he goes, if I can put him, I can put
these mules up that hill. And I'm going, Nick, na glory,
come on the Firehu. So it's not, and he's calling me,
you know this is a podcast while seeing the stec
us a probably only coming phrases for being a grown man,
(33:06):
uh kind of thing that guys used and uh. But
finally I learned and I say, okay, it was just
this a tidal model of the trip. I went off
on my own scary at horizon and my conclusion was, well,
I wouldn't even be this fars it wasn't for my
brother Nick, So I better trust him. So let me
go back and climb the first hill. And this is
(33:28):
what you learn about the West from the base terrain.
Down below, you see the first hill and then you
get up there and there's two more really steeper, much
steeper hill. And so we got to the top and
even Nick was doing Jesus yeah, but he still insisted
that he could get the mules up there, and there
was no turning back now because the trail is too
(33:48):
now or turn the wagon around on. So Nick just conto, Nick,
I'm gonna put these mules on that hill. Don't work
at the night age. And when we get into camp
tonight and they go, yeah, yeah, Nick, what you can
take your medication. Okay, But it was really rough. We
we were kind of the mules are straining. It was
(34:11):
huge embedded tum believed the rotten tumb believe that they
had to stumble too. And you literally reached the top
just moving an inch of the time. And I was
trying to figure out how to so the break on
it if the meles gave up and couldn't get up,
and prevent the wagons from sliding backwards and pulling the
(34:32):
news on top of this. So um, yeah, it was
if you had two stumps just reading it, you can imagine.
But we both got to the top with the daily breezy,
so christ the mules is easy too, that we were
just so um overstimuli. Of course. Yeah, it's an amazing
(34:53):
section of the book. I really was so affected by it.
And then you actually summitted another ridge, Rocky Ridge in Wyoming,
which you have been told flat out was something you
were not going to be able to do with a
mule team. Uh, and you, once again, with Nick's amazing abilities, uh,
managed to do this undoable thing. How did accomplishing the
seemingly impossible tasks as part of this journey really affect
(35:16):
you in the long run and even your relationship with
your brother? Yeah, we mean it tastes effective relationship with
my brother, says. I trusted him a lot more and learned.
I mean I knew he was a great driver, but no,
I just didn't know he was factually the driver and mules. Um.
I think the big the big change in me is
(35:37):
how it affected me is I'm kind of a jeamie guy.
I don't mind taking on In fact, it think I
think that issues take on an adventure like this. It's
not so much for adventure sake, it's for um, what
are you gonna learn? What are you gonna see? And
what I learned on this is that um, it's okay
to be impulsive and and descide to like demanding him
(35:59):
to right, I'm going to do this no matter what,
because you can always sit the things that you didn't
do right the Ministerius that you maybe were constantly rebuilding
the wagon and doing things for the wagon that we
didn't think that before we lost. And you can always
pick a bad decision. You know, we put so much
stress on our life today, especially there's down millennials. I
(36:22):
kind of worry about them. You know. It's it's you
have to met with properly, you have to get the
right internships, you have to have it all planned out perfectly,
and you don't really, I mean, you can make make
post directions as often as you want. So that that
was the big changrum and take the risk and then
fitness and stop as you get there. And in fact,
(36:43):
when we got to Rocky this which just this wall
of rock that goes up over um Away, only that
it's very hard to climb with such a staircase of rock.
It's very hard to climb. With the team mules going
to Roggins, it wasn't actually that difficult. And we met
some people said there was a Mormon puff over your
going back up to kind of visit that the pilgrim
(37:05):
moves to the Shrine of Raptosis, which is where a
lot of Mormons did and when six since they got
caught up there in the snow, and they were horsing too,
and they they're still on either end of the roots
when we figured out a possibly can make the crust
these rocks and signing up to keep on the right line.
And um, and they morning for the police structors. They're strong,
(37:28):
They're willing to say things that they other they just
keep going that they wouldn't. But they believed that they
were angels sent there to help us, and that we
were angelus sent there to show them that Rotisie really
had been conquered by a covered wagon. And uh, I didn't.
I don't pul think that way and believe that way,
(37:48):
but I did that day. How could you so, Yeah,
make a decision to do it, and if there's something
wrong with the decision, you exit later. I love it.
I think that's good life advice. UM. At the beginning,
the very beginning of the book is you're kind of
setting up the whole kind of narrative that's going to
(38:10):
unfold before us. You wrote this one thing that just
charmed me to pieces, which is that you wrote about
how you are a history buff and how you quote
you wrote quote I break by wrote at every historical marker,
and I just love that, UM. And I know that
a lot of the markers that you encountered on this
trip inspired the stories that intertwine with your own in
(38:31):
the book. And I know that, UM. You know this
ended up being edited, of course, and I'm wondering if
there were any of these stories that you encountered along
the way, at these historical markers that ended up edited out,
edited out of the book, but that you really wish
you could have kept. In Sure, there was a lot
of things like that. One one thing in particular that
(38:52):
I remember was the way you tell where the um
mark grace to really tell you where the trailers and
there's a destroying lnging and Randy Brown, who's this amazing
guy who's basically documented every grade that can be found
on the Origin trail and getting the book about it.
(39:12):
I had that book along with me, and because coordinates
and directions to each face, if you know where the
grace are, you know where the players were at that time.
Because they vary a lot. There was a main set
of rust that they might play to UM to find
better force for the jacked animals, or to get out
of the dust of UM the wagon chain ahead of them.
(39:32):
And if someone died, they tended to be very close
to the trail, and that they were hardly to move on.
They had to make a certain amount of products every
day even still on God so UM. There were a
lot of grace types that I wish that I could
have written more about. And I have to wonder, and
you may have already covered this, but what is the
one thing above all others that you wish for readers
(39:55):
to take away from this book. I think that everybody
had to kind of in the closing lines of the book,
but I think everybody has the Oregon trail. You know
there's something don't come put things off, UM. You know
there's something you've always wanted to do and you're not
doing it, UM, and you more at your job or whatever.
(40:18):
There's always a way to do it if you want
to do it, you know. UM. I also think the
second thing I hope people take away is UM, I
don't I don't really like that the society has become
right now and you're going to a restaurant and there's
a family there and every really staring at these little
black boxes in front of it in the hands. You know, Um,
(40:39):
we're living so much of social media and websites and
you know, jumpy little TV shows and our cell phones
that um, you're not really to meeting with each other
as people and we're not really living with just we're
just catched it the brain that it's um sophone device.
(41:03):
And I have to wonder, um, because you kind of
became like a piece of living history, one in your
own right, because to have a mule team do this
trip and particularly the things that people said mule teams
were not going to be able to do, you kind
of made your own history. So I wonder did this
journey overall change your relationship with history or how you
view it? Well, it's interesting, Um, I believe actually that
(41:30):
the book is more important than the adventure stuff, because
the adventure stuff because I had like a previous eventure
in our teenager my brother and I type of tump
that we rebuilt it on by the California back and
it was only when you got to California that we rush.
But the Associated Press was calling off the youngest aviators
(41:50):
to fright coast to coast, and I realized he writing
a book, and it's much harder to write the book,
to have the adventure um. The pict would just be
some little practial chatter things, some little thing maybe some
of my old friends would remember, et cetera. You Shane,
without the book, without the turnive the document of the
book UM and people being able to share that adventure
(42:14):
and share that history. The history did the So there's
all these things about the origins trail that now I
was the people that that didn't He wasn't part of
the analoge base um before I decided to write the book.
And so the book is actually the adventure it stuff.
(42:35):
The book is the medium that makes that adventure um
available to people. So that was my longest but really
delightful chat with ring your Bucket. He's the kind of
person I would just love the chatter with for hours.
(42:56):
I had such a fun time talking to him, and
I really just the door the man. So hopefully we
will maybe get to have him for a visit again
in the future, because I know he might want to
do that as well. I will say, like just from
the point of view of his writing. I really connected
with it, which is one of the reasons I was
so excited to do this interview. His writing style is
(43:17):
just one that naturally hits in all the right places
for me. He's got this really um I we cut
it out of the interview, but he has this really
unpretentious way about him, and he's like, nobody sits down
and says him in to write a pretentious sentence. I
don't even know what that means, but it's like he
has this beautifully crafted um turn of phrase that he
(43:37):
manages his His writing is just beautifully written. It has
a lovely cadence. But he's so frank and honest about
himself and his relationship with his brother and their relationship
with this project. And I think that's why it's come
up in a lot of reviews that you'll read that
it's so unpretentious and that's why he just you don't
feel like it's somebody glossing things over to make themselves
(43:58):
look great. It's like you get a very honest picture
of what those months out on the wagon train were
like for him, and it was just spectacular. I love
talking with him. Thanks for bearing with us on the
audio on this one. Yeah, not ideal, but uh an
ideal interview subject just the same. And the book is
called The Oregon Trail and it is out now so
(44:19):
you can pick it up anywhere, and I really do
highly recommend it. And now I'm gonna actually keep them
the listener mail short since we ran a little long
on that interview. And this one is from our listener Gene,
and she says, I have been catching up on some
of your past podcast episodes, and I was listening to
the Halloween Candy podcast this morning after hearing some listener
mail referencing it in another episode. The description of Sweetest
(44:42):
Day made me remember May Day that we celebrated in Omaha,
Nebraska as kids, but I haven't heard of anyone else
celebrating it as I moved across the country. May Day
is May one, and we would traditionally make May Day
baskets filled with candy or other sweets or small gifts
to give to our friends on May one, but the
trick was to leave them on their doorstep without them noticing,
(45:03):
kind of a ding dong ditch method. My sisters and
I were always very excited every May Day to open
our front door and find little baskets of goodies sitting
there from our friends. I remember we would sometimes use
Dixie cups filled with popcorn and some candy, along with
a little note saying who it was for and who
it was from. Did anyone else do this and where
did it come from? Sounds like a good idea for
(45:23):
a podcast. Thank you for expanding my knowledge. I love
your podcast and the energy and excitement about learning from
both of you. Um Gene, I will tell you I
fondly remember may Day myself when I was living in
the Pacific Northwest as a kid. It was always my
thing because I was a little bit of a suck
up to make sure that my teachers had made a baskets. Um,
So I remember it fondly. But I like you, I
(45:45):
remember when we moved to Florida from um from Washington.
They didn't know what I was talking about. So it
may be is isolated pockets. Tracy, did you do may
Day as a kid? Nope? Nope. We have to map
this out so if any of our other listeners did this,
and maybe it's an an age thing and generational thing.
I'm a few years older than Tracy, but not drastically. UM,
(46:08):
we should make the map of May Day celebrations, because
I'm quite fascinated that some of us did it and
some don't. In the meantime, I'll see if I can
look up some other information about where it originated and
what happened to it. Uh. It could be one of
those grassroots things that somebody thought was fun and some
of some places are caught on at some didn't. UH.
If you would like to write to us and share
your stories of may Day or some other delightful candy
(46:30):
and treat related activity that maybe other people didn't do,
you can do that at History Podcast at how stuff
works dot com, or also at Facebook dot com slash
missed in history, on Twitter at misst in history, at
pinterest dot com slash missed in history. We're at misst
in history dot tumbler dot com, and on Instagram at
misston history. If you would like to do additional research
(46:52):
on almost anything you can think of, you can do
that at our parents site, which is how stuff works
dot com. Or you can visit Tracy and I and
missed in history dot com up for show notes for
all of the episodes we've been on together, plus an
archive of every episode ever of all time of Stuffy
Missy History Class, as well as occasional other goodies uh
and again. You can do that at missed in history
dot com or visit our parents site how stuff works
(47:14):
dot com for more on miss thousands of other topics.
Is it how stuff works dot com
Welcome to steph you missed in history class from how
Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Holly Fry and I'm Crazy B. Wilson, and today
we have an author interview for you, and it's one
that I'm really delighted to share with our listeners because
(00:22):
as I read rinker bucks new book, The Oregon Trail,
I got more and more excited about speaking with him.
He is a really compelling writer and he has this
personality that just shines through in the pages of his work.
In this book, Buck talks about a long journey that
he and his brother Nick took by mule pold covered wagon,
and they retrace the steps of the pioneers who traveled
(00:44):
from Missouri to Oregon. So, as you can imagine, the
kind of person who thinks that would be a fun
thing to do is quite interesting. So we're going to
jump in, and before we start, I want to make
a quick note of the sound quality on this one
is not ideal. Awesome Producer Nolan I and Rinkerbuck, we're
kind of calling each other back and forth trying to
get a good connection, and we had some trouble, so, uh,
(01:07):
bear with us. It's not as perfect and christmin clear
as we like, but oh man, he says some fantastic stuff.
So I hope you enjoy it, and we're gonna hop
right in. Okay. So, first, we are so excited to
have rincer Buck on the show because you are a
(01:29):
history lover, so this is like an extra treat for us. Um,
And I first want to jump right into your new book,
The Oregon Trail and some of the stuff in it.
But because I know that you are a very erudite
man with a lot of history knowledge in your noggin,
you know, feel free to go down whatever path you like. Um.
One of the first things that I wanted to talk
(01:50):
to you about. It's really not a particularly important part
of the book, but I found it so charming. There's
a phrase that comes up early in the book to
describe having an adventure, and it's seeing the elephant. And
could you talk a little bit about the etymology of
that incredibly charming phrase. Yeah, it is. It is a
great phrase, and it's interesting because in the nineteenth century,
(02:11):
if you asked what that was, everyone would have known.
So it's a colloquialism that we've lost, but everyone would
have known, but also the meaning of the term changed
over time. So seeing the elephant, we're not positive about
the etymology, but we think it derives from living in
rural areas of the country and lonely frontier areas because
(02:34):
remember by the eighteen thirties Ohio and in beyond on Michigan,
places like that which was called the Old Northwest UM
they were frontier areas and they were reasonably settled, but
people lived on remote farms, and so it was a
big treat once the prince once a year, maybe every
other year, that you would get to go to the surface.
(02:57):
They were always traveling in still showers and services, and
even on the Mississippies there were boats supports that went
down and to go less shipspeare fascinating, but um going
to see the elephants. But you would get into town
early when the parade arrived. In the Um surface parade
arrive and usually the surface wagons would stop a mile
(03:21):
or two out of town and they'd much all the
animals everything they had into town to try and attract
um as big at allience as they can for the
surface before they put up the tent. So it's going
to see the elephant was um taking a big, bad
break from the ali in the bordom of fun life,
going into town. Let's pick you very far from your
(03:41):
home at that point and sitting there and seeing elephants.
Its report was not something that you normally saw, and
the kids always look for fort to it. So that
was the meaning. Originally, you're going to sort of taking
Eventually you're going to see something you've never seen before,
or have a breaking life and something exciting and actually
robbed over time, So the Pioneers, we'll talk about I'm
(04:04):
going to see the elephant, which means I'm going to
cross anyway hundred miles from the Missouri River to the
Columbia River which is six present day stakes and hit
the Oregon or the California Trail, and over time, because
so many people about it, cholera and uh. After the
(04:24):
Civil War there were Indian attacks because they had decided
to slaughter the bussel up to the area better for farming,
and that of course sam the Indians hostel Um. They
were careless and I do mean careless middle forts and
that sort of thing. So going to see the elephant
came to me later in the centuries. Taking a daring
(04:48):
adventure that was risky and might be more emotionally supportive
and life changing than safe. So someone's going to see
the elephant and sort of happening into the wilderness, and
it could be any wilderness. You might be trying to
see the office because you've decided to do something crazy
that your family doesn't expect you to do, like becoming
(05:09):
a minister or something so implied a journey of many
different kinds of particularly of a philosophical or psychological one,
and you decided and it became the tale that's told
in your new book to go see the Elephant in
the form of taking on the Oregon Trail. And the
(05:30):
last documented crossing of the Oregon Trail before yours was
more than a hundred years ago in nineteen o nine.
And of course it's changed a great deal in the
last century. So there is really not a guide book
to tell you how to do this. And I know
you had to figure out a lot as you win.
So what sorts of changes do you did you have
to make to your game plan along the way? Sure, Well,
(05:50):
one thing, let me just make clear, because people have
written in the Amazon and everything. He said, Well, nine,
there's a sasttennial crossing of the Oregon Trail. A uh um,
that to me, those stunt counts, and he said, maybe
only on a sister pressing. There have been very few
crossings of the whole trail. But what people are generally
(06:11):
referring to is you can pay a thousand dollars and
go out and tay Wyoming Outsidre and he'll take you
out for that. Canaser's team miles on the trail all
day and you have this very rugged pioneer experience in
a covered wagon with horses, which in the nineties century
and nobody use horses. They use fules for oxen. And
(06:31):
then the night you gather around and they roll in
the all gates and you can take a nice shower
and maybe sweeping an act of the zoom, and the
meals are catered and and all those kind of things.
And we didn't do that. I didn't want to have
anything to do with that kind of Ironically, they call
themselves reenactors, but they're not reenactors. Um. So we designed
(06:52):
a truck cluff that went along with us. Um. It's
like a commissary part of tow part that we could
behind the wagon. They have you build, you just carry
it up fifty hundred to two thousand towns of surprise, hunting,
gowns of water and all this stuff. That we were independent,
We were free of motorized support. So and they're certainly
with the only ones that done not in a hundred years.
(07:15):
So the kinds of changes that had to make the
trail is twenty one dred moles all the way out
to Oregon, mostly across nearly dry country and high digets
is Wyoming and Idaho, and that's just thing. So the
kind of change um And and about a thousand miles
of the trail is now small two lane black tops,
(07:36):
uh farming country roads and then another thousand miles of
ruts and occasionally especially in eastern um Nebraska and eastern
mail And occasionally you do go to small farming towns
and that kind of thing. So we had a rear
view of hear, we had led safety lights, we had
(07:57):
that orange triangular thing that you see on the back
of tractors. To Warren chest and the guy that made
our truck up and restart our wagon because we did
pick the strip in it actually nights and sence we
Peter shutlow wagon um he was playing, and it was like, well,
those are period details, and nobody cussed the planes and
(08:17):
we were real new and we were making a modern
pressing what is the trail today and what is the
history of the trail? And he didn't have any you know,
And they said, well, where's your period trast where's your
period chest? And I don't want to I don't want
to tell you the answer that maya I sort of
profane and sarcastic. Younger brother gave to that when they
(08:39):
asked him were his tiord tests? But um and so yeah,
we just went around the corner and we went like
five miles up the road and pulled us the side
and put out our tool kit and put on our
real ears and our r D rights and anything like that.
So there's safety things like that. Um uh. One thing
(09:00):
that was very important, and what I explained in the
book is it's something called a ton reliever, the tongue
being a very heavy pro in the front of the
wagon that hangs off the collars of the mules. And
in the next two essentially you can hardly ever see
a picture of a diagram of a wagon at office
screen and chain device that comes down from the wagon
and holds the polar because the way that poll all
(09:25):
day on the mules, um retire out the shoulders and
give them shoulder source quicker than uh that their legs
with the entire out from all the distance you're gone.
And nobody knew how to build one. Nobody nobody do Uh.
I've seen a picture of wine. I've seen an actual
one on a wagon in the Smithsonian Institution once. So
(09:46):
it just did it for memory, and it was it
was something that made our trip possible, um, because we
got the way of that pro offten Wulf and so
they were all kinds of little mobs like that. One
other chance I'll play about just because it's funny, we
end up not using We had no technology and the
half the time you don't uh, you don't need tps
(10:06):
if you're moving in four miles from how and but flashlight,
cold and land, any kind of artificial feel like that.
We had. The wagon just tweats and groans. There's no
springs on it. Everything breaks the doctor source for the
first couple of weeks until les muscles it took up
and so even a flashlight wouldn't work there a couple
of days. So um, we just started living. Um sent
(10:30):
up to sundown, Yeah, and that light in the morning
what they probably woke up and Higston news, Neil breakfast
and hump Boston. When we got the air of seven
Ponti the at night, UM some sort of tense to
be a little later out west in those northern UM
two attitudes so um, and it looked like since that
(10:50):
was got on our way and he came and weston
news and stuff like that, so we moved closer to
kind of changes we didn't. He didn't. You didn't live
with particularly light, and we won't. I'm I'm just thinking
about how much I realized that the world is completely different,
(11:11):
like if we lose power and I don't have light.
So it's uh fascinating to think about, like where you
just reach a point of that's fine, no light is okay,
we can keep going. Yeah, I'm independent of all that stuff.
Not feel like I've been blow. I can easily imagine
(11:32):
what Rinker's brother Nick said when he was asked about
where his period dress was. Um, but Tracy, do you
think you could possibly go for several months traveling across
country without any of the niceties and without any of
your technology that actually sounds really liberating. It sounds terrifying
to me. Nobody could email me, I will see this.
(11:54):
That's kind of what I like about when I do
things like go deep sea fishing with my dad, is
that there's no connectivity, but it's only for a day. Yeah.
The vacation that I took at the beginning of this year,
I intentionally had no Internet at all, and I did
not I didn't connect to the outside world and anyway.
But I have lots of other niceties. So it's it's
(12:16):
the it's the being disconnected from things that sounds liberating.
I probably would be. I would get very tired of
cooking over a fire after a while. Yeah, I think
I'm such an information junkie. I can't kind of go
without being able to look something up when it occurs
to me. But before we get to this next bit
of our interview with rinker Buck, let's pause for a
(12:36):
quick word from one of the great sponsors that keeps
us going. Now we will pick up with our interview
with rinker Buck, and we're going to talk in this
next segment about all the supplies that got loaded into
their wagon. Initially, I know you had packed a lot
of supplies that you ended up deeming unnecessary and kind
(13:00):
of ditching along the way, just as the pioneers that
were doing this trail in the eight hundreds often found
that they had things that they could not keep carrying
with them. And I know you have mentioned that in
some areas where the trail is still remote and largely
unchanged over the years, you sometimes are following a debris trail.
And I think I heard you mentioned in one interview
that you had seen like a piano on the trail,
(13:22):
And I'm just wondering what the sort of most odd
or surprising thing you saw out there was. Well, first
of all, I thought that I was pitching their nite
and smart guy, and I read all these books first,
and read all the pioneer journals, and they talk a
lot about how they overload the wagons. One reason they
over a litted their wagons is that the os and
(13:42):
the merchants into jumping off towns along them as a river.
Um would use a lot of scare tactics to tell people,
you know, you better, you better take at least one
big battle of bacon for each kid, you know, and
the kids are gonna get to arting, you know, like
looking like baby shoey, you know. But um so I
(14:05):
then made this same mistake. And there was a funny
passage in the book where I talked about, you know,
waking up the first morning after you're traveling and realizing
I had way too much here and um you know
probably I mean just kind of give me a break here.
It was. It was pretty touching it. I thought that
I needed a shoeshine, carre In and my books brothers Bass,
(14:25):
so you know, to leave. Well, you were going to
continue a gentlemanly life even on the road, roughing it.
I can't respect that. I think what it was, Yeah, yeah,
I think what it was is I was I wasn't
put a plan area and I was thinking, well, my
old I'm bringing my own life with you, and then
you get out there and you know your old life
has been eradicated, you know. I think new For instance,
(14:50):
crossing my owning, well you have to pick showers, and
that's my own license. I think that crossing my own
and took the twenty nine days the four system up
is twenty nine days, and most of that was original.
Rest in the high desert was nothing wrong. It's insist
miles we did test two towns and UM one town
(15:11):
had four hundred people in it and the other town
had three people in it. So what we learned about
the pioneers, which a seconding is there's still a lot
of archaeological bigs stuff up there. And it is true
that the pioneers um could navagate all the way to
origin by needs and fifties aft of the trail was
premature just by following with the free pall. It could
(15:31):
be the carcass system of all the animals from the
year before and that sort of thing. But there's a
lot of archaeological picked out there and people going with
metal detectives and stuff. And there are especially below places
like Rocky Woods, a big killin item where it was
really a powerless uh distant down to some touch ring.
(15:52):
There are places where you can just turn on the
metal detection now and you're gonna find old wagon Paul,
the old buckets, old um you know, AMA belts and
stuff like that. So UM, you know, hiring fifty years later,
you're still in the dry climber quick, You're still finding
the moment of the original climbers. That's so amazing, UM,
(16:15):
And you originally intended to take this trip solo, which
was something that you eventually recognized as delusional, as you
put it. And then your brother Nick, who is a
really accomplished mechanic and craftsman of many varieties, insisted on
joining you. And you yeah, and you said many times
that you absolutely could not have done this trip without
(16:35):
your brother. But just as a speculative thing, I wonder
how far you think you would have gotten had you
gone on your own to begin with, I think that's
probably would have gotten about yeah miles three days handling
these Cantans, knew amazing and hignessing all three of them
up on my stuff every day. And then there's the
(16:55):
conclusion that I thought, Ohio a cowboy, um, and now
I'm had to find somebody out there. I actually I
was looking to the people, and UM, I think what
the trip demonstrates this way is that if you take
a big risk, UM, things do work out. UM. I
mean I had a lot of planning into it, and
(17:15):
it wasn't completely spontaneous about it, but um, thanks just
for that. My brother had both his foot um in
a construction accident name was supposed to be incorporating, but
he told the doctor, UM, I'll take a little trip
out west with my brother, would that be all right?
And you know they signed off all its forms at
the Dietoris administration. But no, without him, I never would
(17:39):
have made it. And it just shows you. I think
the first line of the book, the first line of
the book is to the effect that naive k is
the mother of a denture. And if you're not naive,
if you're not willing to realize that most of what
you need to know you're gonna learn once you get
out there, you'll never take these trips. So I was
very lucky that my brother heard I was going and
and said uncommon, you know, So he kind of saved
(18:03):
me that way. Uh. And there's this juxtaposition throughout the
book of the historical and the modern that plays out
in a number of ways. But one of the major
ways that really struck me is is what we've been
talking about that some on some areas of your journey,
you're traveling basically on interstate, and on others you are
on the original ruts that have been there since this
(18:23):
you know, whatever part of the trailer you were on
was forged. And I know you have great knowledge of history,
um and of those that traveled these trails before you.
But as you were forced to figure out ways to
navigate both the old and the new along the way,
did you get a new sense or a new appreciation
for the pioneers that originally traveled along these routes. Sure,
(18:47):
most of the wagon chains had experienced UM wagon packs
a lawn, there were a lot of The organ trail
was actually the old search After that the search apter
saw west up into the Rockies into the gate Bover
country UM after the Lewis and Clark expedition and the
(19:08):
Louisiana purchase UM. So they had the advantage and and
a lot of those foot trappers became wagon masters because
they this very organic thing, and they led the pioneers
across the dignity the Mormons who were the most organized
on the trail UM because they seven thousand Mormons crossed
(19:31):
between eighteen seven and roughly eighteen seven and eighteen Mosy,
and they because they were precious back in the Midwest
where they had lived at the time, and they they
were the only group to have organized UM actual professional
wagon masters, and they were sent back east every every
(19:52):
year after the Black and Train started, So Lake and
all the wagon masters would made uh sort of a
parallelous late fall crossing the snow and that's same thing,
UH to get back east so that they could leave
the next train the next time. So they actually had
pretty good guides, UM, and we didn't. We didn't have that.
And there's a lot of places where the trail is
(20:14):
marked or mark curley, but it's marking such a way
that grant or um battle markets are ways hidden up
in the worlderness up in the foothills. Well, I had
to walk ahead of the wagon a lot, and UH,
I estimate that I walked at least seven hild miles
the trail to stuff as are is the other hazards
(20:36):
that we faced, UM was that UM in a couple
of places we actually we have our interstates. We were
always um, you know, stay the tunny roads doing black ups,
but they like right along the old Rust's pretty much
power to them. But a couple of points when the
interstates came to like twenty five, which is the main
northwest street from Texas to Montana, that's blocked away and
(20:59):
uh Wyoming and Mooving four and U or eighty six
in Idaho, Oregon, and so I had to discover roots
around that while still staying on the trail. Unfortunately, and
this is expling book. Unfortunately, there were the very areas
where um they were cut offs, alternate roots. There were
(21:21):
forty major colorff of the trail. The pioneers kept experimenting
was slightly put the ways to get there, whether training,
get a terrain or the rivers that overflowed that year.
So they went a slightly different way and explainstance in
wayoming when we brought the highway finished the point fry
uh I had read about the childhood and a couple
of ranches, and they told me, so this took the
(21:43):
child'shoods the new thanks too, and here's how you get
up there, and that we just took her life headed
up into the rolling instance, you know, four years later
and you know they use all the standard things in navigation,
calling higher memorial, take a compass, staring on the cli
really and then just follow that gun down below to
(22:04):
see whis been planning and right place. So all the
um ultimately to call us I knew about them. I
personally cannot imagine, even for a minute, trying to find
(22:24):
my way in the situations that Rinker and his brother
were navigating. We're gonna hear a lot about mules in
the next segment that comes up. But before we get
to that, Tracy would do like to have another word
from one of the great sponsors that keeps this show going. Yes, please,
as promised, it is time to talk about some mules.
Rincer devotes a lot of space in the early part
(22:45):
of his book talking about mules in the United States history,
and it's something he knows loads about. You think I
was something of a mule advocate in this book? Do
you give a really impressive history of the mule in
the US as both an ecademic driver and as a
(23:05):
largely misunderstood animal. Will you talk to us a little
bit about their ties to George Washington in their place
in the early financial landscape of America? Sure? I love
like this is to give you an opportunity to readvisit
a stuff that when they finished the chapter, readers got wow.
I didn't know that, but I sort of should have
known that. And so with the mule was interesting? Is
(23:30):
the plateful economics of the globe at the time very interesting?
We really needed mules um ready h turn of the
nineteenth century, because we are now consing the allogames and
that first transapolation pushed into Ohio Illinoian and playing them
go into the Rockies. Um, and we we didn't have
(23:52):
them for a good NEAs and horses. It's just not
as reliable. The hos line is good and lucky terrain,
they hire more easily, etcetera. They don't have that enough
of that shill genetic makeup that you get from the
borough side of a mule. So what had happened was
we always known in the Europeans had these great draft
mules with Jackson being a big the animal made from
(24:16):
the desire would be a man of jack And we
moved the European tabn but talk until the Revolutionary War.
The Spanish and the French, who were the main breeders
of these big animals, would not allow them into the
United States, into the colonies, the English colonies, because they've
been warring forever with they've written and they didn't didn't
(24:37):
want to help the British colony. As soon as George
Washington had been successful at houstain the British from the
United States, Um, the King of Spain and uh Macyette,
um the big Ally of Washington, essential Ally of Washington
(24:58):
to the Revolution, Spain and France were sent Sepho breeding stock. Um,
the one that came from Francis Club Law gifts and
the one that came from Um. Actually the all gifts
came from Spain, and then uh multis Jack came from
from France. And that was the initial breeding stock that
(25:19):
was sent directly to George Washington, who've had a lot
of loan in the West the Mud. He's gonna need
the European style mules to us to develop that property
and to get to that property. And George Washington again
began the first meeting farm the mules in Martha. But
the currently died. There was sixty working mules on mountain
(25:40):
burning alone, and he was turning his fires around to
the man of jack that are bret to a female horse. Well,
they're kind of the unsung heroes of American history. Like
you don't hear about the great mules that helped build
the country, but they really did. Um yeah, um, they
were here. And my book is about a lile on
(26:02):
pump here. But Cross just a whitman who was to
um the angels to first plus the trail in eighteen
six and sent back these when it was very daring
and interested do so. And there's a lot of prejudice
against it because the West was not considered a safe
place for a white woman. Um, because it was Indian
country and the great American desert and so forth. Um.
(26:25):
And she walked back to the series of layers that
convinced the Americans that it would be safe for women
and children to cross the trail. She really opened up
the trail. She's completely forgotten today. So my resits by
walking out on the trail and reading all the primary
sources and then actually crossing it by wagon, you really
learned how arduous was to get these wagons up and
(26:46):
down the mountains and so forth. Um reveals a lot
of them from here. It's just it's just sad you
want to history that we've never confirmed that we don't
see anymore. Um be could it's not to kind of
sense in history class? I guess, well, yeah. And I
really love that there are many places in the book
where you really break down some of the incorrect myths
(27:09):
that have circulated for years, As you mentioned, Um nursiss
a Whitman. I love that whole section. You break down
the myth of the mule being obstinate, and ordinary creature.
You talked about how the Native Americans really were quite
cooperative for the most part until they realized that they
were really getting the shaft um right right, Well, there's
(27:32):
something fascinating about this today mentioned a little bit, but
it's still have a sub text ons then this is
really fascinated today. Well studied just to you a like
kind of become a writer instead of getting more history.
But one things that historians to Pistorians if they still
have a big advance, big personality approach to history. So
(27:56):
if you want to understand Americic expansion west work, know,
you read a book like the Mantos Decisions, Your Decision
they six and it's all about Thomas part that and
the forces in Congress and the politics and the Pierced
administration and the Buchanan administration and so forth and the
(28:17):
events big guy. But what historians don't do is they
don't go back and look chiefly, and they don't. It's
that's the kind of thing that gives them academic freshpiche
to look at, well, how did people live? You know,
if you're getting across the Chail and you get to
Missouri and you know, um, more than ten thousand people
(28:40):
on a cross that year, and every one of them
crossed with me mules that we're not properly trained, and
they were. They should be pleased by the new brokers
at Missouri. Um, what did that do to life? You know,
what was your life like on the trail when you
were exposed to an almost daily scramble for water, et cetera. Um.
(29:04):
And that's the kind of thing that interests me. And
when I get into in the book, it's like, forget
it off the politics and you know, the biggest picture
and howe moral fun people the Exican American world, which
took so much of this can't play. Um. I think
about that full moment. How did people actually live accomplishing
(29:24):
this two thousand track plus the country And to me,
that's a lot more imputant stuff sometimes than the than
the big picture in the big politits. Yeah, I mean
that's the kind of stuff we love to talk about
as well. It's like it's it's easy to see the
big broad strokes and the the sort of catalyst that
happened on the world stage, but at the same time
(29:44):
you cannot lose sight of the fact that there are living,
breathing people in the trenches so to speak, that never
get any recognition, but they're really the ones that we're
making history. Um. So I love that you touch on
that a little um, one little thing stuff the wind.
You know, the way we live today is we moved
(30:06):
from way over built their condition eagerly to the next
you know, you get out of their condition car and
you go into an air condition to ari m and
then and now you go home to Yes, it's place
that has all these worrying little motors that that solve
all your problems. And you're kind of alienated from nature.
And even if you kept torn ao or something um
(30:30):
most of your life, you're you're protected, you isolated, your
hermetically feeled from the real forces of nature. And then
you get into come the wagon, and as soon as
you get west of the Middle Nebraska, the wind is
going at three five three miles to day, thy fidells
now um all day and you completely lost the DNA.
(30:54):
Who's completely lost the memory of how exhausting it is
to sit on a wagon, see the exposed to this thing.
And it's always right in your face that the west
we windhting how its how even can be, just how
we wind all day. And this trip was, as you
(31:15):
mentioned earlier, arduous. It was incredibly ambitious and you had
a lot of challenges along the way. But one episode
that I found so affecting was the struggle to get
the mule team in the wagon up California Hill in Nebraska.
And so for our listeners, that's a climb of about
two ft of the course of a mile and a
half and your brother Nick made the case that you
(31:36):
should take this route rather than an eight mile detour
around it. Can you talk to us a little bit
about how that challenge played out, because it really was
like I got goose bumps reading that. I was so
terrified for all of you. Um, it's amazing. What happened
was so we got there and Calciorny Hills when he
was very important choke point of the trail was plineers
(32:00):
at that point have to make a near bu the
black guy and the planeers has to make a transition
formal never jines the little bottom line that the south
plot to the north pot across the very high plateau
is the only country the rest of the very raisine.
And to reach that plateau there's just a single hill
(32:21):
which got the name California Hill because you had to
confident Disco killed to make it to California. He followed
the Oregon Trail to the California Trail. The um we
get there, explaining to Nick, you know this places. There's
these hundreds of wagons day day during sumil. The plane
(32:43):
eas and blah blah blah, and there's a big plot
there anything. And Nick looks up at the hill and
he goes, if I can put him, I can put
these mules up that hill. And I'm going, Nick, na glory,
come on the Firehu. So it's not, and he's calling me,
you know this is a podcast while seeing the stec
us a probably only coming phrases for being a grown man,
(33:06):
uh kind of thing that guys used and uh. But
finally I learned and I say, okay, it was just
this a tidal model of the trip. I went off
on my own scary at horizon and my conclusion was, well,
I wouldn't even be this fars it wasn't for my
brother Nick, So I better trust him. So let me
go back and climb the first hill. And this is
(33:28):
what you learn about the West from the base terrain.
Down below, you see the first hill and then you
get up there and there's two more really steeper, much
steeper hill. And so we got to the top and
even Nick was doing Jesus yeah, but he still insisted
that he could get the mules up there, and there
was no turning back now because the trail is too
(33:48):
now or turn the wagon around on. So Nick just conto, Nick,
I'm gonna put these mules on that hill. Don't work
at the night age. And when we get into camp
tonight and they go, yeah, yeah, Nick, what you can
take your medication. Okay, But it was really rough. We
we were kind of the mules are straining. It was
(34:11):
huge embedded tum believed the rotten tumb believe that they
had to stumble too. And you literally reached the top
just moving an inch of the time. And I was
trying to figure out how to so the break on
it if the meles gave up and couldn't get up,
and prevent the wagons from sliding backwards and pulling the
(34:32):
news on top of this. So um, yeah, it was
if you had two stumps just reading it, you can imagine.
But we both got to the top with the daily breezy,
so christ the mules is easy too, that we were
just so um overstimuli. Of course. Yeah, it's an amazing
(34:53):
section of the book. I really was so affected by it.
And then you actually summitted another ridge, Rocky Ridge in Wyoming,
which you have been told flat out was something you
were not going to be able to do with a
mule team. Uh, and you, once again, with Nick's amazing abilities, uh,
managed to do this undoable thing. How did accomplishing the
seemingly impossible tasks as part of this journey really affect
(35:16):
you in the long run and even your relationship with
your brother? Yeah, we mean it tastes effective relationship with
my brother, says. I trusted him a lot more and learned.
I mean I knew he was a great driver, but no,
I just didn't know he was factually the driver and mules. Um.
I think the big the big change in me is
(35:37):
how it affected me is I'm kind of a jeamie guy.
I don't mind taking on In fact, it think I
think that issues take on an adventure like this. It's
not so much for adventure sake, it's for um, what
are you gonna learn? What are you gonna see? And
what I learned on this is that um, it's okay
to be impulsive and and descide to like demanding him
(35:59):
to right, I'm going to do this no matter what,
because you can always sit the things that you didn't
do right the Ministerius that you maybe were constantly rebuilding
the wagon and doing things for the wagon that we
didn't think that before we lost. And you can always
pick a bad decision. You know, we put so much
stress on our life today, especially there's down millennials. I
(36:22):
kind of worry about them. You know. It's it's you
have to met with properly, you have to get the
right internships, you have to have it all planned out perfectly,
and you don't really, I mean, you can make make
post directions as often as you want. So that that
was the big changrum and take the risk and then
fitness and stop as you get there. And in fact,
(36:43):
when we got to Rocky this which just this wall
of rock that goes up over um Away, only that
it's very hard to climb with such a staircase of rock.
It's very hard to climb. With the team mules going
to Roggins, it wasn't actually that difficult. And we met
some people said there was a Mormon puff over your
going back up to kind of visit that the pilgrim
(37:05):
moves to the Shrine of Raptosis, which is where a
lot of Mormons did and when six since they got
caught up there in the snow, and they were horsing too,
and they they're still on either end of the roots
when we figured out a possibly can make the crust
these rocks and signing up to keep on the right line.
And um, and they morning for the police structors. They're strong,
(37:28):
They're willing to say things that they other they just
keep going that they wouldn't. But they believed that they
were angels sent there to help us, and that we
were angelus sent there to show them that Rotisie really
had been conquered by a covered wagon. And uh, I didn't.
I don't pul think that way and believe that way,
(37:48):
but I did that day. How could you so, Yeah,
make a decision to do it, and if there's something
wrong with the decision, you exit later. I love it.
I think that's good life advice. UM. At the beginning,
the very beginning of the book is you're kind of
setting up the whole kind of narrative that's going to
(38:10):
unfold before us. You wrote this one thing that just
charmed me to pieces, which is that you wrote about
how you are a history buff and how you quote
you wrote quote I break by wrote at every historical marker,
and I just love that, UM. And I know that
a lot of the markers that you encountered on this
trip inspired the stories that intertwine with your own in
(38:31):
the book. And I know that, UM. You know this
ended up being edited, of course, and I'm wondering if
there were any of these stories that you encountered along
the way, at these historical markers that ended up edited out,
edited out of the book, but that you really wish
you could have kept. In Sure, there was a lot
of things like that. One one thing in particular that
(38:52):
I remember was the way you tell where the um
mark grace to really tell you where the trailers and
there's a destroying lnging and Randy Brown, who's this amazing
guy who's basically documented every grade that can be found
on the Origin trail and getting the book about it.
(39:12):
I had that book along with me, and because coordinates
and directions to each face, if you know where the
grace are, you know where the players were at that time.
Because they vary a lot. There was a main set
of rust that they might play to UM to find
better force for the jacked animals, or to get out
of the dust of UM the wagon chain ahead of them.
(39:32):
And if someone died, they tended to be very close
to the trail, and that they were hardly to move on.
They had to make a certain amount of products every
day even still on God so UM. There were a
lot of grace types that I wish that I could
have written more about. And I have to wonder, and
you may have already covered this, but what is the
one thing above all others that you wish for readers
(39:55):
to take away from this book. I think that everybody
had to kind of in the closing lines of the book,
but I think everybody has the Oregon trail. You know
there's something don't come put things off, UM. You know
there's something you've always wanted to do and you're not
doing it, UM, and you more at your job or whatever.
(40:18):
There's always a way to do it if you want
to do it, you know. UM. I also think the
second thing I hope people take away is UM, I
don't I don't really like that the society has become
right now and you're going to a restaurant and there's
a family there and every really staring at these little
black boxes in front of it in the hands. You know, Um,
(40:39):
we're living so much of social media and websites and
you know, jumpy little TV shows and our cell phones
that um, you're not really to meeting with each other
as people and we're not really living with just we're
just catched it the brain that it's um sophone device.
(41:03):
And I have to wonder, um, because you kind of
became like a piece of living history, one in your
own right, because to have a mule team do this
trip and particularly the things that people said mule teams
were not going to be able to do, you kind
of made your own history. So I wonder did this
journey overall change your relationship with history or how you
view it? Well, it's interesting, Um, I believe actually that
(41:30):
the book is more important than the adventure stuff, because
the adventure stuff because I had like a previous eventure
in our teenager my brother and I type of tump
that we rebuilt it on by the California back and
it was only when you got to California that we rush.
But the Associated Press was calling off the youngest aviators
(41:50):
to fright coast to coast, and I realized he writing
a book, and it's much harder to write the book,
to have the adventure um. The pict would just be
some little practial chatter things, some little thing maybe some
of my old friends would remember, et cetera. You Shane,
without the book, without the turnive the document of the
book UM and people being able to share that adventure
(42:14):
and share that history. The history did the So there's
all these things about the origins trail that now I
was the people that that didn't He wasn't part of
the analoge base um before I decided to write the book.
And so the book is actually the adventure it stuff.
(42:35):
The book is the medium that makes that adventure um
available to people. So that was my longest but really
delightful chat with ring your Bucket. He's the kind of
person I would just love the chatter with for hours.
(42:56):
I had such a fun time talking to him, and
I really just the door the man. So hopefully we
will maybe get to have him for a visit again
in the future, because I know he might want to
do that as well. I will say, like just from
the point of view of his writing. I really connected
with it, which is one of the reasons I was
so excited to do this interview. His writing style is
(43:17):
just one that naturally hits in all the right places
for me. He's got this really um I we cut
it out of the interview, but he has this really
unpretentious way about him, and he's like, nobody sits down
and says him in to write a pretentious sentence. I
don't even know what that means, but it's like he
has this beautifully crafted um turn of phrase that he
(43:37):
manages his His writing is just beautifully written. It has
a lovely cadence. But he's so frank and honest about
himself and his relationship with his brother and their relationship
with this project. And I think that's why it's come
up in a lot of reviews that you'll read that
it's so unpretentious and that's why he just you don't
feel like it's somebody glossing things over to make themselves
(43:58):
look great. It's like you get a very honest picture
of what those months out on the wagon train were
like for him, and it was just spectacular. I love
talking with him. Thanks for bearing with us on the
audio on this one. Yeah, not ideal, but uh an
ideal interview subject just the same. And the book is
called The Oregon Trail and it is out now so
(44:19):
you can pick it up anywhere, and I really do
highly recommend it. And now I'm gonna actually keep them
the listener mail short since we ran a little long
on that interview. And this one is from our listener Gene,
and she says, I have been catching up on some
of your past podcast episodes, and I was listening to
the Halloween Candy podcast this morning after hearing some listener
mail referencing it in another episode. The description of Sweetest
(44:42):
Day made me remember May Day that we celebrated in Omaha,
Nebraska as kids, but I haven't heard of anyone else
celebrating it as I moved across the country. May Day
is May one, and we would traditionally make May Day
baskets filled with candy or other sweets or small gifts
to give to our friends on May one, but the
trick was to leave them on their doorstep without them noticing,
(45:03):
kind of a ding dong ditch method. My sisters and
I were always very excited every May Day to open
our front door and find little baskets of goodies sitting
there from our friends. I remember we would sometimes use
Dixie cups filled with popcorn and some candy, along with
a little note saying who it was for and who
it was from. Did anyone else do this and where
did it come from? Sounds like a good idea for
(45:23):
a podcast. Thank you for expanding my knowledge. I love
your podcast and the energy and excitement about learning from
both of you. Um Gene, I will tell you I
fondly remember may Day myself when I was living in
the Pacific Northwest as a kid. It was always my
thing because I was a little bit of a suck
up to make sure that my teachers had made a baskets. Um,
So I remember it fondly. But I like you, I
(45:45):
remember when we moved to Florida from um from Washington.
They didn't know what I was talking about. So it
may be is isolated pockets. Tracy, did you do may
Day as a kid? Nope? Nope. We have to map
this out so if any of our other listeners did this,
and maybe it's an an age thing and generational thing.
I'm a few years older than Tracy, but not drastically. UM,
(46:08):
we should make the map of May Day celebrations, because
I'm quite fascinated that some of us did it and
some don't. In the meantime, I'll see if I can
look up some other information about where it originated and
what happened to it. Uh. It could be one of
those grassroots things that somebody thought was fun and some
of some places are caught on at some didn't. UH.
If you would like to write to us and share
your stories of may Day or some other delightful candy
(46:30):
and treat related activity that maybe other people didn't do,
you can do that at History Podcast at how stuff
works dot com, or also at Facebook dot com slash
missed in history, on Twitter at misst in history, at
pinterest dot com slash missed in history. We're at misst
in history dot tumbler dot com, and on Instagram at
misston history. If you would like to do additional research
(46:52):
on almost anything you can think of, you can do
that at our parents site, which is how stuff works
dot com. Or you can visit Tracy and I and
missed in history dot com up for show notes for
all of the episodes we've been on together, plus an
archive of every episode ever of all time of Stuffy
Missy History Class, as well as occasional other goodies uh
and again. You can do that at missed in history
dot com or visit our parents site how stuff works
(47:14):
dot com for more on miss thousands of other topics.
Is it how stuff works dot com
Stuff You Missed in History Class News
Hosts And Creators
Holly Frey
Tracy Wilson
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