May 15, 2024 • 47 mins
Once a year in the small farming town of Gillett, Arkansas, people from the local and surrounding communities gather in the gymnasium of the de-commission high school for a fundraiser to provide scholarships for the towns high school seniors. Throughout the decades, this event has also become an epicenter for state and regional politicians to gladhand with the constituents. In this Bear Grease episode, Clay Newcomb discusses the link between the Gillett Coon Supper and the value of social capital and civic engagement with author, Timothy P. Carney. Additional interviews with local resident Scott Place and a special appearance by former President of the United States, Bill Clinton.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:05):
What are the things you have in your life that
are really valuable but you don't pay for and you
couldn't quite sell them.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
In January of twenty twenty four, the Gillette Coonsupper celebrated
its eightieth annual dinner. This bizarre wild game tradition has
made a name for itself as one of the premier
political events in Arkansas. But it's more than that. It's
holding a struggling but strong community together. This is one
(00:33):
of the most unique Beargrea stories we've ever told. It's
a deep dive into small town America and what makes
us what we are. We'll go to the Coon Supper
and hear from the cooks, the coon hunters, and some
hungry people. We'll interview best selling author Tim P. Carney
about why traditions like this matter and believe it or not.
(00:55):
We'll also hear from former President Bill Clinton about his
interaction with the Coon Supper. This episode will surprise and
impact you, and we'll teach you something about yourself and
about society. Eating barbecue raccoon has never been so good.
I really doubt you're gonna want to miss this one.
What would you say? There's a prime cut on a Coon.
Speaker 3 (01:18):
Absolutely not.
Speaker 2 (01:19):
It's all it's all prime. It's all prime, all prime,
all right. My name is Klay Nukem, and this is
the Bear Grease Podcast, where we'll explore things forgotten but relevant,
(01:42):
search for insight and unlikely places, and where we'll tell
the story of Americans who live their lives close to
the land. Presented by f HF Gear, American made purpose
built hunting and fishing gear as designed to be as
rugged as the places we explored.
Speaker 4 (02:10):
My name is Scott Place. I'm from Gillette, Arkansas. I
live on Main Street and I've been associated with the
Coon Supper all my life. My dad was a master
of ceremonies for it from the beginning up until nineteen
eighty nine or ninety. So I had to go to
(02:33):
the Coon Supper one night I was even a little
guy because there was nowhere else to be. You couldn't
hire a babysitter or anything like that because everybody was
at the Coon Supper.
Speaker 2 (02:47):
The first recorded coons Supper took place in nineteen thirty three.
Scott was born in nineteen fifty four. He's seventy years
old and he was born in the house he's sitting
in right now. In downtown Gillette. It's a handsome, well
taken care of brick home with white modern sighting. It
was his parents before it was his. Scott is a
(03:09):
second generation rice farmer.
Speaker 4 (03:12):
My dad was at the first coon Supper. He was
a people person, and he sang and danced on the
stage when he couldn't sing and dance. And it started
as just a stag gathering from coon hunters around the area.
Well then you can imagine that got a little rough,
(03:34):
and so the next year or two they decided to
invite the women, and then it took off from there.
Speaker 2 (03:43):
Gillette is a small farming town in the Delta of
southeast Arkansas. Their Coon Supper is more than a citywide tradition.
It's an event that brings an entire region together, really
an entire state. Today. Scott place, like his father, is
kind of the grand marshal of this event, not officially,
and he wouldn't want me to say that, but that's
(04:04):
my perception. The Coonsuper's importance to anyone who's been to
it is clear, but it's hard to nail down. Amid
the complexity of economic challenges and the loss of population,
people are leaving places like this and not coming back.
These are real problems for many small towns in America.
(04:26):
Existential time is moving forward without you, kind of stuff
that seems to hover over the delta like a biblical plague.
Just down the street from Scott's house lives Gillette's top politician,
the mayor, Randy Womack. He lives on the corner of
Main Street. He and Scott were college roommates. We're gonna
(04:48):
need some info on Gillette.
Speaker 5 (04:51):
Back when we.
Speaker 6 (04:52):
Moved here in the sixties. At that time there was
close to nine hundred people the best I can remember,
say since last census, best I can remember around five
hundred and twenty five. But it's changed, like a lot
of delta towns have changed as the tractor's got bigger
(05:15):
and eliminated a lot of a lot of the workers,
so it's gradually gotten smaller.
Speaker 2 (05:28):
This is a row crop farming community where soybeans, rice, wheat,
and corn grow in alluvial soils. They call buckshot, which
is fertile clay that holds water, sticks to your boots
and they say it holds the world together. She Lett
is four miles north of the Arkansas River and forty
river miles southeast or twenty eight point two seven crow
(05:52):
flying miles to where the Arkansas River flows into the
Mighty Mississippi River. The bigger name for this bigger region
is the Delta. You've heard us talk about it a lot,
but more specifically, Gillette is in the Grand Prairie. These
soils have been built by ten thousand years of flooding.
The Quapalls farmed here from time immemorial into the early
(06:16):
eighteen hundreds, and modern farming commercial operations have only been
practiced here for roughly one hundred years. But one thing
is certain, if you live here, you're invested. Something about
the flat, muddy ground of the Delta evokes that in people.
There's a word for a person's relationship with their community.
(06:38):
It's called social capital. Just file that away for a minute,
and we're about to go to the Coon Supper. But
there's still one important piece of the story that we
haven't talked about yet. The Gillette school system. Something happened
to their.
Speaker 6 (06:54):
School football games. Doesn't matter what the record was. Stadium
was going on be full basketball game, kind of the
center part of the town when the consolidation had all
come and I understand what it was cased in the
state in as many school district as the were, or
(07:16):
so they went about and you know, putting limit on
what the tennis was once you got to blow that number.
Speaker 2 (07:26):
You may have heard Randy grunt right there at the
end when he did. He was shaking his head as
if something died and he didn't want to speak it
out loud. The school was central to the town. It
was the social glue. Do you let schools consolidated with
the bigger school system in two thousand and four. I
wonder what Scott thought about the school closing.
Speaker 4 (07:49):
It's awful, but one thing led to another, the suspense
of whether the school was going to shut down after
it was officially consolidated, know the district, how long was
it going to stay open? So nobody moves into town
and your slow death. It's agonizing. But the way farming
(08:11):
farm economy has changed, and the land that we farm
in the fifties supported twenty families and now the three
or four and everybody has two kids instead of nine.
There's not enough kids support us a school in this
area anymore. And so this is just inevitable.
Speaker 2 (08:36):
Inevitable is a powerful and intimidating word for rural America.
Two thousand and four was the beginning of the end
for Gillette schools. They kept them open for five years,
but in two thousand and nine they completely closed the
high school in junior high, but the grade school K
through five stayed open until twenty twenty one, when the
(08:56):
last of the Gillette schools were completely closed. Today the
kids bus fourteen miles to de Witt or d Wit
as some would say. But it's not all bad. It's
just a matter of perspective. This is seth place. Scott's son,
he's in his early forties, lives in Gillette, but his
kids go to DeWitt schools.
Speaker 7 (09:19):
It got heated there for a while with the school
consolidation and all that stuff. And it was no big
secret about some hard feelings here and there or whatever.
But when I think about Gillette and how it used
to be, that's how I feel when I go where
my kids go to school up here at d WIT.
Though it's basically from my perspective, the community has grown.
Speaker 2 (09:45):
That's an optimistic perspective, and Gillette does have a history
of expanding its reach. On January thirteenth, twenty twenty four,
Gillette held its eightieth annual Coon Supper. Despite the child olenges,
this event is a bright spot on the calendar that
brings this community together. It gives it identity and is
(10:07):
one of the only anchors that is held. Myself, my
wife Misty, along with Brent and his wife drove to
the Grand Prairie to see it for ourselves. This is
about to get wild, folks, but let's not jump the gun.
The first stop that we made was not at the
Coon Supper, but at the Gillette Pre Coon Supper. That's right,
(10:29):
the pre Coon Supper, which starts about two hours before
the Coon Supper. We've driven a couple of miles down
a gravel road in park by a large metal building.
This is the late Congressman Mary and Barry's farm shed.
What is this? I hear music? I've never been here before.
Speaker 8 (10:52):
Name is Clay Clay Leslie.
Speaker 2 (10:54):
Nice to see a guy in dark framed glasses wearing
a man dadish kind of barbecue and apron greets me.
He carries himself like a guy in charge. I bet
he knows what's up with this pre coonsupper stuff. Hey,
how's it going? Hey doing kway? Newcomer? Give me like
a little overview of the Coon Supper or and maybe
(11:17):
even this event.
Speaker 9 (11:18):
So uh so, yeah, we're we're here at the at
the very farm shop. So this is uh the pre
coonsupper reception.
Speaker 3 (11:27):
So this, this.
Speaker 9 (11:28):
Event, you know, really goes back fifty years. Uh So
former Congressman Marrion Barry, he used to live right across
the street from the Gillette High School and uh when
people and elected officials and Canadas would come down and
come to the Coon Supper, they'd stopped at his house
to have a cocktail before going over the coon Supper.
Speaker 2 (11:51):
That was Gabe Holstrom, and he just told us a
very important component of the tradition that has become the
political event of Arkansas. Let's see who else is here.
Speaker 10 (12:04):
My name is Jeremiah Moore. I'm from Clarenon, Arkansas. Currently
serve as a state representative for House District sixty one
in the Arkansas State Legislature. My district runs from Amigon
in Jackson County all the way down to Gillette in
Arkansas County. And I would be remiss if I did
not say that District sixty one has the best duck
hunting in.
Speaker 2 (12:24):
All the world.
Speaker 10 (12:27):
You know, we're here right now at the Gillette pre
Coon Supper.
Speaker 2 (12:31):
We're about to be confused with the coon souber. This
is a pre coon safer.
Speaker 10 (12:34):
We're about to head on to the actual coon Supper
in a few minutes. And I always say that this
is the foremost political event in the entire state of Arkansas.
Now you tell me any state east or west of
the Mississippi where the foremost political event revolves around eating
a raccoon, and.
Speaker 5 (12:54):
Now it'll be right here in Jillette.
Speaker 2 (12:56):
So now, this pre he Coonsupper became a must attend
event in part because of Arkansas's most famous son, a
young man who became Arkansas's governor in nineteen seventy eight.
This is the guy that Gary Believer Nukan went to
high school with, and you may recognize his voice. We'll
(13:16):
step out of the pre coon Supper for a minute
to a speech this former governor made in twenty twenty three.
Speaker 11 (13:25):
So when I started to run for office, the lad
had about eight hundred people and they were about as
I recall, a minimum of fifteen hundred people that showed
up at the Coon Sufferer.
Speaker 2 (13:38):
This is former President Bill Clinton. Turns out he's a
long time coon supper guy.
Speaker 11 (13:44):
And someone I said, you know, you've got to do this,
and you've got to call Marion Barry and you got
to go down there and see him make all over
the deal and act like you think coon is better
than Philet Mignon. So I show up and it was
(14:04):
already kind of required appearance to go to Marion's house first,
and all the paul for there and other people, and
then we'd mody over to the dinner.
Speaker 2 (14:14):
He's talking about the pre coon supper, and.
Speaker 11 (14:16):
So I said, Marrying, do I actually have to eat
his coon? He said no, He said not if you
don't want to carry this place ever again, you don't
have to eat it at all.
Speaker 12 (14:32):
And I said, well, okay.
Speaker 11 (14:36):
How do I eat it? He said, what do you mean?
I said, I've seen it prepared for eating, and I said,
there's a lot of gristlin fat right near the bone.
How do I eat it without getting sick? He said, well,
most people think they're eat coon meat with a little
barbecue sauce. You should think of it in reverse, thinking
(14:56):
you're eating barbecue sauce with a little coon. Mea, there's
no such thing as too much barbecue sauce.
Speaker 2 (15:05):
Ironically, This is the second time Bill Clinton's voice has
been on the Bear Grease podcast, and he was once
involved in a plane crash on the way to the
coon Supper, but that's another story. But Clinton helped put
this tradition on the legendary column of Arkansas events. But
it's now time for us to go to the supper.
(15:26):
We're really about to eat some coon. This isn't a joke.
So we just left the pre coon supper party. Brent,
what are your thoughts?
Speaker 3 (15:36):
Oh, well, there was no coon served, but lots of conversation.
But the food was good. There was duck poppers that's
duck wrapped with bacon and jalapenos, and there was ribs
and sausage.
Speaker 2 (15:48):
And so we're driving on a gravel road in the
Grand Prairie of Arkansas. It's dark, the sun has set
and there's a light glow on the horizon on the
western horizon, and we're now headed to the Gillette Coon Souper.
As we get into the Gillette city limits, the streets
(16:08):
are filled with parked cars and people walking towards the school.
We get out of our car. It looks like we're
walking up to an old gymnasium it's dark outside, stars
are out a beautiful uh waning GiB us moon above us.
This is the old Gillette High School gym. It looks
(16:31):
like the movie Hoosiers could have been filmed here.
Speaker 5 (16:34):
Here.
Speaker 2 (16:34):
We are awesome. We just got our tickets and the
tickets are numbered. We gotive. Oh wow, we're gonna have
to split up sorrow. All right, it's on we go.
This year they had eight hundred tickets and they sold out.
The gym is lined with tables with white tablecloths. At
each place setting is the annual glass cup with the
(16:57):
coonsupper emblem. In the year, people collect these. But each
table has an aluminum foil trade of barbecue raccoon. I
see a guy, I want to talk to you. Tell
me your name of.
Speaker 3 (17:10):
Who you work.
Speaker 8 (17:11):
Zach Hartman, chief policy officer for Ducks On Limited.
Speaker 2 (17:14):
Why the heck are you at the coon suburb? Man
at the coons eat duck eggs?
Speaker 13 (17:20):
Well, the most important thing for net success is habitat.
Speaker 2 (17:25):
But I'm not opposed to eating a few coon.
Speaker 8 (17:27):
But I am not opposed to eat a few coons.
Speaker 13 (17:30):
But the really reason that we're here is because this
is a great event for a great cause. We're here
to raise money for Arkansas State's Foundation and the scholarships
that they provide to students that want to get involved
in ag policy, and they have an opportunity to learn
about agriculture conservation, which is an increasingly important component of
(17:51):
our working lands these days.
Speaker 2 (17:54):
Okay, enough all that, man, what do you think of
eating coon?
Speaker 8 (17:57):
How my man had Penny over here, who you know.
Speaker 13 (18:02):
I brought him here for his first time, and I
took him to the coon supper and I gave him
I sat him down and I said, you know, you
gotta eat some coon. And he ate a piece of
coon and then he grabbed another piece and I said
it or are you going back for seconds? And he
said yeah, it's good, and I said really, and I
tasted it and it was and it like ruined.
Speaker 8 (18:22):
The whole joke.
Speaker 2 (18:25):
Bret and I both grab a leg of coon and
have a bite, and he's right, it ain't bad. But
we've both had it before. We're old coon hunters.
Speaker 14 (18:33):
You know.
Speaker 2 (18:34):
Brent's wife won't even try it. But Misty took a
nibble and the report wasn't great, though she was a
little embarrassed to show her displeasure. Anyway, I see somebody
else I want to talk with. This is awesome Booth,
the director of the Arkansas Game and Fish. Why are
you at the coon supper?
Speaker 11 (18:51):
Sir?
Speaker 15 (18:52):
Well, it's an Arkansas radition for us Flatlanders. It's a
good way to point out the nexus between public service
and young Arkansas and also a great way to see
the Grand Prairie in his most beautiful time of the year.
Speaker 2 (19:05):
Shoot some ducks and eat some coon. Now? Are we
also not trying to reduce the coon population in the
state of Arkansas?
Speaker 15 (19:12):
Sir, always and proudly.
Speaker 2 (19:16):
This is a good way to do it right as popularize.
You know, there's a strategy you can If we can
popularize eating coon meat to the level that every child
in America, every man, woman, and child, wants to go
kill a coon and eat it, then we might we
might be winning. Do you agree with this?
Speaker 15 (19:33):
I think coon Wellington would be an American tradition forever.
Speaker 2 (19:39):
Austin Booth is a former marine, a lawyer, and native
our cans and and our youngest Game and Fish director ever.
For my angle, he's exemplifying some legit leadership while navigating
the very complex wildlife issues of our state. Hat tip
to Austin. Oh look, here's somebody else i'd like to
(19:59):
talk with.
Speaker 16 (20:00):
I'm leslie right Ledge, the Lieutenant governor of Arkansas for
the past year. I was the attorney general for eight
years prior to that. I grew up on a cattle farm.
I'm married to a rogrot farmer. So I love being
here in Arkansas farm lamb, you know, celebrating our way
of life, our heritage, and then doing something really awkward.
Speaker 8 (20:21):
Which is eat raccoon.
Speaker 2 (20:24):
Pardon me, madame, Lieutenant governor, but is it really awkward
to eat raccoon? Is that the right word? And by
the way, when i'm governor, Brent will be my lieutenant governor.
Speaker 16 (20:35):
You know, we're doing this odd thing of eating barbecued raccoon.
But it's really to talk about what the needs are
here in Arkansas County, what the needs are for the
farmers in this area.
Speaker 2 (20:48):
Okay, so here's a real question after all that, how
do you like coon?
Speaker 16 (20:53):
Well, it's best not eating. But if you have to
eat it, I certainly suggest getting like one of the yeah,
the banks or something where it looks big but it's
very little meat.
Speaker 2 (21:05):
Oh, you got a strategy to get a big beecet,
but not getting much. That's right, you know, strategy, it's
all about strategy.
Speaker 4 (21:13):
That was good.
Speaker 2 (21:15):
I want to get into the nitty gritty of how
they're coming up with all this raccoon meat. This is
their main supplier, Tommy Cantrell. And how long have you
been supplying the coons over with coons?
Speaker 17 (21:30):
Probably six or seven years probably now.
Speaker 3 (21:33):
Uh huh?
Speaker 2 (21:34):
So how many you usually catch for them?
Speaker 3 (21:36):
I put it this way.
Speaker 17 (21:37):
Last year I carried him like six d and fifty pounds, right,
and they're probably average seven pounds six to seven pounds
per coon. So you can figure that I trap them.
And also we hunt them with my dog. I got
old dog.
Speaker 2 (21:52):
Got a coon dog? What kind of coon dog?
Speaker 17 (21:54):
You well, she's not actually a coon dog coon dog.
She's about half German shepherd and have something new. But anyway,
if we find one, you know, and she'll run him
up a tree or something. But if we shoot him,
if you ain't got a dog, he gonna get away,
but she will ketch him. She will catch him.
Speaker 11 (22:12):
Get there.
Speaker 2 (22:14):
So I did the math, and that's about one hundred
dressed raccoons. But that's just what mister Tommy brought in
they had a few other suppliers. Now I want to
know how they cook it. Guess who the head cook is?
Yep Scott Place, the guy whose dad was the first
master of ceremonies. So are you you're the main coon
cook around here?
Speaker 4 (22:34):
Well, I guess I'm the oldest cook.
Speaker 2 (22:37):
Okay, So tell tell me about the process of how
you're cooking this.
Speaker 4 (22:42):
My son Saith buys the coon and we got freezers
in the old field house and we'll keep it in
and then on Thursday we'll come get it out and
let it fall for a day. And then on Friday
morning we got a pan saw and we cut it
up in the pieces and in the salt water brine
and soak it twenty four hours. And then today is
(23:08):
our longest day, and we boil it in the big
pots with a special recipe of stuff that we put
in the boil of water, almost like a.
Speaker 3 (23:20):
Fish.
Speaker 4 (23:20):
Yeah, and we boil it and then we immediately put
it on these smokers.
Speaker 2 (23:26):
How many coons did y'all You think y'all cooke today?
Speaker 3 (23:30):
Coons?
Speaker 4 (23:30):
I don't know, but it's right. It's just under eight
hundred pounds.
Speaker 2 (23:35):
Now. At one time it was a lot bigger than that.
Y'all cooked like two thousand pounds.
Speaker 4 (23:39):
Y'all back when we just served coon, Well, we've had
well over a ton before.
Speaker 2 (23:45):
How many people you think we're here tonight?
Speaker 4 (23:48):
Sold out of tickets? So right, eight hundred tickets.
Speaker 3 (23:53):
I believe eight hundred people.
Speaker 4 (23:55):
We used to have a thousand tickets, but we took
a table out, oh, probably twenty years ago, because maybe
Americans are getting a little bigger and.
Speaker 2 (24:07):
Eating too much coon.
Speaker 5 (24:08):
Yeah, it may be eating too much coon.
Speaker 4 (24:10):
And it was just so crowded.
Speaker 2 (24:13):
I think they've got this coon coulking process dialed. I
shuffle to sit down quickly as the main speaker is
about to start. The room quiets as a man in
a suit approaches the stage. Behind the podium is a
(24:36):
giant orange handmade mural paper mural commemorating the eightieth Coon Supper.
On it is a raccoon as big as a picnic table.
On the lookers left since eight high school seniors. These
kids go to de Witch schools now, but they're from
families that live in Gillette. The night is all about them.
Speaker 5 (25:00):
I want to thank you all for trowning. It is
no weather to come and enjoy yourself tonight or really
really happy to have you here.
Speaker 18 (25:09):
This is the eightieth time this group has met.
Speaker 5 (25:12):
This coon sover has been put on.
Speaker 2 (25:16):
The speaker's demeanor changes in the room quiets as everyone
knows what he's about to say.
Speaker 5 (25:24):
Many of you know that we lost Pastor Chad Philip
this past year.
Speaker 18 (25:30):
Pastor was a great icon of Jellette, the surrounding area
and the Coon Sobber.
Speaker 5 (25:36):
Just remember Pastor Chad.
Speaker 2 (25:39):
Pastor Chad was a big player here for the last
several decades. But he's not the only one being remembered
this year.
Speaker 18 (25:47):
As many of you may know, we've lost another icon
of Jillette and the Coon Sober this past year. Without
a doubt, the most famous person from Jillette, Representative Marion Barry.
Marion love the Lord. He loved his family, he loved
his farm. We loved you lit its people in the
Coon Suffer. Mary devoted his life of the service to
(26:11):
his family and his country and his community. Instead of
an example to other's an impact that a man from
a small town can make when seeking direction from God
and being.
Speaker 5 (26:21):
In service to others. Let's remember Representative Marion Barrier.
Speaker 2 (26:32):
I hope you can feel the sense of community and
connectedness in this gym, and to think the mechanism that
it's built around is eating a raccoon. This isn't a joke,
and it's being done inside the context of a town
that by measurable statistics might seem like it's wilting. But wait,
there's more. Here's Senator Tom Cotton.
Speaker 14 (26:55):
Good evening.
Speaker 19 (26:55):
It's great to be back at the Coon Supper again.
You know, we always join at this time of the year.
It's the darkest and the.
Speaker 5 (27:02):
Oldest time of the year.
Speaker 19 (27:03):
We have a night of festivities and the warmth of
community and fellowship. As we've heard, though, we have heavy
hearts two degree this year because of the passing of
the pastor chat and Mary and Mary. But I think
they would want all of us to be here where
we are tonight, and they're looking down on us, and
they're proud that this community is continuing with this unique,
(27:25):
distinctive tradition. I think it's a testament to their legacy
that we're all joining here together as we always do,
to help support.
Speaker 5 (27:32):
The great students and kids of this community. Thank you all, Godless.
Speaker 2 (27:43):
The evening comes to a close after every senior is
recognized for their academic achievements. They each address the crowd
and tell what their plans are after graduating. One young
man is going into his family's pest control business, Another
is heading to the University of Arkansaw. Another is going
into nursing school. Scholarship recipients are announced, and each senior
(28:06):
is met by volumeous applause. Despite the town's population shrinking
the school's closing, the place is riding high on a
deep sense of community pride. This is really something special.
As the Coon Supper adjourns, I'm standing outside the doors
(28:28):
of the event. I ask a passing guy his thoughts
on what just happened? This is Johnny. You've come to
this quite a few times.
Speaker 5 (28:37):
Yes, sir, Yes, sir.
Speaker 2 (28:38):
Where are you from?
Speaker 3 (28:38):
I'm from Palm Low?
Speaker 2 (28:40):
So what what what do you like about this?
Speaker 5 (28:42):
I love it. It's just good people.
Speaker 3 (28:45):
One thing about it is it's constant.
Speaker 5 (28:48):
Ain't nothing ever changed. It's gonna always be the same.
You do not have any problems.
Speaker 2 (28:54):
You're a commercial fisherman. Yes, where do you fishing?
Speaker 4 (28:56):
White River?
Speaker 14 (28:57):
White argistas and awesome man.
Speaker 2 (29:02):
But you're a fan of the Coon something.
Speaker 5 (29:03):
It's beautiful, beautiful, It's beautiful.
Speaker 2 (29:09):
It's good people, stays the same, and it's beautiful. I
think that's a pretty good synopsis. As I'm leaving, I
see Seth Place, who's the second in command cook behind
his dad. I'm a little late in asking him this,
but he seems to be a coon meat expert, and
I have a burning question.
Speaker 5 (29:28):
That's what would you.
Speaker 2 (29:29):
Say there's a prime cut on a coon?
Speaker 20 (29:32):
Absolutely not, it's all it's all prime.
Speaker 2 (29:37):
It's all prime, all prime. Okay, all right, all right,
he asks me if I want to see the cookers.
So we walk out further into the yard right by
the gym. So, y'all cook them all on this big
smoker right here.
Speaker 4 (29:53):
But these are the smokers.
Speaker 2 (29:54):
Now do they all bring these in or they stay here?
These are permanent.
Speaker 20 (29:59):
Smoker now I used to Yeah, the school's closed so
and then they basically donated the these buildings to the
Farms and Businessman Club. So we can have this indefinitely
as long as we can sell tickets, really, but yeah,
we just keep everything here now.
Speaker 2 (30:16):
So this this used to be Gillette Public School. This
is Coal Counts. It consolidated to be with.
Speaker 8 (30:22):
But this year is the first year that elementary has
been gone.
Speaker 2 (30:25):
So this is kind of like a ghost town down here.
Speaker 20 (30:28):
It is, at least in the sense of the school.
Speaker 8 (30:32):
I got to go to school here till I was
in the seventh grade.
Speaker 2 (30:34):
In my eighth grade year, we consolidated, had to go
to d with Okay, amid the excitement and energy of
the event, it's easy to forget this community is struggling
to stay together. More people were in that gym than
live in this town. They leave their giant built in
cookers outside the gym because it's not a functioning gym anymore.
(30:55):
Just keep that in mind. We're going to go back
to that. But first, I've had something on mine since
that first bite of raccoon. We're now in the car
heading home, and I think it's possible that we've all
broken the law. I decide to confront Brent on his hypocrisy.
I'm trying to understand how I'm not the only person
(31:15):
who thought of this. Okay, So the one problem that
I've foreseen is that they're buying this coon meat, and
it is illegal to buy or sell wildlife meat.
Speaker 3 (31:33):
There is an exception, really, yeah, p with coon. Yeah,
let me tell you something. Are you holding onto that
mic because yeah, this is a mic drop moment. Okay,
my brother Tim skins coons and prepares them to be sold,
(31:53):
and his nephew sells them out the window of their
pharmacy in Ford Asson, Arkansas.
Speaker 8 (32:01):
Serious, you can go buy the drop off.
Speaker 3 (32:03):
A gun to get picked up, to get cleaned and repaired.
You can pick up your prescription and you can buy
a coon.
Speaker 2 (32:09):
Really raise yourself because I got the Okay, what's the
AGFC say about it? Missy, We've just left the gillet
coon supper.
Speaker 14 (32:16):
It is.
Speaker 21 (32:17):
It is unlawful to purchase, sell, offer for sale, barter,
or trade any species of wildlife.
Speaker 14 (32:23):
Or proportions there up period exceptions.
Speaker 21 (32:27):
Hey, fur bear pelts and carcasses taken during a fur
bear season may be sold.
Speaker 14 (32:32):
Wow, that's the first one.
Speaker 21 (32:35):
May be sold by person who's valid hunting are furred
to their licenses, legally taken squirrel tails and pelts, rabbit pelts.
Speaker 14 (32:41):
This is a second. This is a like a different
bullet point.
Speaker 2 (32:45):
I've heard all I need to hear red fox grace legal, Baby,
We're going into business.
Speaker 14 (32:49):
Alligator high alligators.
Speaker 2 (32:51):
I'm staying corrected. Sounds like Brent's off the hook. Somehow.
The legality of selling fur bear meat has eluded me.
But I'll tell you what else has eluded me, the
real understanding of why something like the coon supper is valuable.
I mean, it's easy to see and feel the value
when you're there. It's undeniable. Anybody sees it. Everybody sees it,
(33:14):
But how could you explain it to someone? I got
the opportunity to talk with author Tim P. Carney, who's
written multiple best selling books. One is called Alienated America.
He's an expert on this kind of stuff. And to
be more specific about what that stuff is, a lot
of the Coonsupper's value could be summed up by people
(33:36):
gaining social capital. I remember I told you to hold
on to that word, file it away. This is incredibly interesting.
Here's Tim.
Speaker 1 (33:46):
Social capital is this term that like sociologists ues maybe historians,
and it's a weird word because capital is kind of
a financial term, right, you're talking about money. Social is
showing us that we're talking about something very different. So
one way to think of social capital is what are
the things you have in your life that are really
(34:07):
valuable but you don't pay for and you couldn't quite
sell them. Do you have a next door neighbor who
you're just best friends with, that's social capital. Do you
have extended family who will bail you out if you
get into trouble, that's having social capital. And so the
truth is there's real inequality in social capital across America
(34:27):
in ways that sometimes parallels and sometimes deviates from kind
of wealth inequality. But one way of thinking of social
capital is valuable things that you might or might not
have in your life that are they're social, they're not financial.
They have to do with your connections and interactions with
other people, and they usually explicitly are not something that
(34:48):
you could pay for or sell or directly buy.
Speaker 2 (34:53):
Our society is good at measuring external things that have
monetary impact. So social capital is hard to make, but
it's primarily a function of our relationship to other people.
Whether you're conscious of it or not, every human on
earth has some level of social capital. Now, this next
observation about American society is kind of mind blowing.
Speaker 1 (35:17):
The greatest work on the United States of America I
think that was ever written, was written by a French
guy and was written one hundred years ago. Yeah, it
was Alexis to Toakville's Democracy in America. You know how
sometimes somebody shows up at your house and they notice
something that you don't notice because you just you've come
to take it for granted. Americans, he was saying, two
(35:37):
hundred years ago, take for granted how much they kind
of just rely on not themselves as individuals, but themselves
and their neighbors, their fellow countrymen, their brothers, or whatever
other people they know to solve problems.
Speaker 12 (35:53):
He said.
Speaker 1 (35:54):
In England again this is eighteen thirties. In England, people
they turned to the the big landlord. I mean it
was semi feudal at that point. There'd be a big
rich landholder and they turned to him to solve their problems.
In France, they turned to the government. In the United States,
if there's a problem, people will like form a you know,
(36:15):
a ditch digging organization to keep the town from flooding
when the runoff is coming down from the mountain. So
that idea that where it's both that were self starters,
but we're not just individuals. So it's still a sort
of self reliance, but it's a self reliance in fraternity,
in neighborhood, in community. And that that was unique to
(36:37):
America is what Toauville argued, we.
Speaker 2 (36:42):
Have self reliance inside of fraternity, inside of community, and
this thing was unique to America kind of from the beginning.
A different term to describe what the Toaueville saw here
is civic engagement. That word sounds pretty scary to me,
but it actually determines a lot about our communities. And
(37:04):
to equate it back to the coon supper, attending or
volunteering at a community event like this is civic engagement.
Turns out that stuff is quite important, and it's on
a dramatic decline in America.
Speaker 1 (37:18):
So you could look at you know, how much do
people vote, how much do people participate in the census?
Speaker 12 (37:24):
That all matters. How does that relate to social capital?
Speaker 1 (37:28):
Well, if you're the guy who took it on the
chin and coach kindergarten girls basketball, if you're the guy
who you didn't even think about it, but you sent
your sons over to shovel the neighbor's yard sidewalk when
he was away. It is a little bit like finance
in that you put a bunch in and then when.
Speaker 12 (37:45):
You need it you can draw it out. But there's
not like a.
Speaker 1 (37:48):
Ledger being kept. That's the real thing about social capital
and community. There's just an understanding that we have an
obligation to look out for other people.
Speaker 12 (37:57):
So we're going to do it.
Speaker 1 (37:58):
We're going to be civically engaged, and the more civically engaged.
Speaker 12 (38:01):
You are, the more capital you had.
Speaker 1 (38:03):
The main way I would say that works is the
more things that you belong to, then the more things
you can rely on. That is, I belong to my
local church. I belong to my kids' schools. I don't
just cut the check and send my kids there where
I serve on the board of one. My wife's a
substitute teacher at another. We show up at things. I
(38:25):
belong to my employer. You know, I work to get
to know my neighbors. So I belonged to all these things.
So a common word in this area of study is reciprocity,
which again is just relationship. The understanding I'll take care
of you, you take care of me, and community was
always built on the fact that we had needs. It
wasn't just hey, I want to hang out with my buddies.
(38:45):
It was oh, I need to go into town to
get something. Oh I need to call on my friend
to lift this one thing, and if you take away
some of those needs, then we lose the stuff we
didn't know we needed, which was a connection, the friendship,
the camaraderie, the longing. And so the guy who wrote
the best book on this was Robert Putnam Bowling Alone.
(39:07):
That came out right as you and I were finishing up,
you know, our college years there. Two thousand, I think
was the pub date on that, And he used bowling
because he said he found out that people weren't bowling
less in two thousand than they had in nineteen sixty,
but they were bowling leagues had crumbled everywhere, so people
were more likely to bowl alone, or bowl just with
(39:29):
their best friend or their their wife or whatever. And
that was just almost a little analogy for what was
happening more broadly. Membership, you know, pta membership had collapsed,
and all of this stuff what we belonged to, had
gone down across the board.
Speaker 12 (39:48):
And so I.
Speaker 1 (39:48):
Went and I looked to update the numbers.
Speaker 12 (39:51):
When I wrote Alienated America.
Speaker 1 (39:53):
That came out twenty nineteen, so almost twenty years later,
and it had just continued. The people just again more
likely to sort of strike out on them their own.
When I was on the board of a small organization
here in DC. We did this study and it came
back Millennials didn't want.
Speaker 12 (40:10):
To join anything. We should be a member. They're like,
I don't want to be a member.
Speaker 1 (40:14):
We're like, will you chip in twenty bucks to help
us out? They're like, oh, yeah, I'll do that, but
I'm not joining. Okay, I don't want to belong to it.
And so you and I are at the sort of
tail end of gen X. And I think that that
was already in motion.
Speaker 2 (40:32):
Studies showed that America's civic engagement peaked in the nineteen
sixties and has been declining ever since. By the time
I graduated high school in the late nineteen nineties, it
had plummeted. I remember my dad, the believer, being involved
in everything he possibly could his whole life. He was
in a fraternity in college, he never drank, by the way,
(40:55):
a member of the Kawanas Club, the Lions Club, the
archery club. He was a deacon at the church, and
for decades he was heavily involved in a group that
helped families with critical construction projects, like if the roof
was leaking and they couldn't afford to get it fixed.
Or if some family needed a wheelchair ramp built. He
was very civically involved, but he grew up in the
(41:17):
time of America's peak civic engagement. He always wanted me
to do more stuff, but I just wasn't that interested. Now,
as an adult, I have maintained high levels of involvement
in my church my whole life, but I have not
been nearly as involved in other stuff. I didn't know
(41:37):
until I talked with Tim that I was just a
pawn in the common trend of my generation. I didn't
choose this all on my own, like I thought. It's
kind of spooky when you realize that you have less
control over your life than you think. Hmm, that is interesting.
But who is most affected by this lack of civic
(41:59):
gay Is it the rich or the poor who are
less civically engaged? I bet it's those rich folks.
Speaker 12 (42:07):
There are nuances to this.
Speaker 1 (42:09):
It's worse the collapse of of belonging, civic engagement, bowling leagues,
et cetera. All that stuff is worse in the working
class in America than it is in the middle class
or the upper middle class. There's this stereotype that you know,
wealthier Americans you know, you live behind a gate, or
(42:29):
you're you know, with your money, you're just buying your isolation.
Speaker 12 (42:34):
But if you go to like these rich suburbs.
Speaker 1 (42:36):
Where houses are really expensive and the property taxes are high, they.
Speaker 12 (42:39):
Have enough Little League coaches for every team.
Speaker 1 (42:43):
They have people leaving the kids lead their bikes out
on the front yard because neighbors sort of know neighbors.
Speaker 12 (42:50):
The collapse in community, in civic engagement is greater for
a dozen reasons I go.
Speaker 1 (42:56):
Through in the book in the working class. And that's
particularly harmful because these are people who rely more on
social capital. If you're rich and don't have friends, you
could sort of you could buy stuff. But the irony
is the richer people in America, not the you know,
super rich celebrities who have to live in a gated,
(43:18):
you know, mansion, but the upper middle class. They are
more likely to know their neighbors, more likely to volunteer,
more likely to belong to things. And it's because this
sort of thing isn't just an individual choice, it's a
community thing. The community has to give you those opportunities,
and in some parts of America, those opportunities for belonging
(43:38):
and volunteering aren't there.
Speaker 2 (43:42):
That's very interesting and not what I was expecting. But
that's just why the community of Gillette is so unique.
I spent some time describing the Gillette Coon Supper to
Tim Carney. I wanted to see what he thought.
Speaker 1 (43:57):
Here's what he said, when you describe that, I want
to go to Jillett and see this and eat the
food and watch the people. This is the stuff that
makes America great, really, and I've seen it in other towns.
There's my favorite town in Iowa. It is this town
called Imagen, Iowa, which is down to thirty people. How
(44:17):
does the town survive with thirty people? Well, it has
an Irish pub, a beautiful Catholic church, and then a
softball field where they have a big tournament as part
of what they call Shamrock Days. Because you know Irish
population traditionally, and it brings in people who used to
live there and people from the other towns, and these
sort of things, even if they're only occasional things, they
(44:37):
really keep a town alive. Tradition, customs, these things are
social capital that gets passed down from generation to generation.
It's almost like you're time traveling, right. You're talking about
these kids in Jillette, and they don't even have a
high school, but they still they almost get to travel
back to when they do because suddenly there's a senior.
Speaker 12 (44:58):
Class the high school.
Speaker 1 (45:00):
Let senior class, even though there's no Jillette High school.
And so that is what customs do they provide.
Speaker 12 (45:08):
I often talk about social capital.
Speaker 1 (45:10):
As providing sort of a I mean, we use the
word network, but just imagine an infrastructure, something that's a scaffolding,
a scaffolding that holds you up. Traditions are a sort
of scaffolding that spans across time. And so that's one
of the key things that strong communities do is they
have traditions, they have customs, they have.
Speaker 12 (45:32):
These things, and it just injects a little bit of
meaning into everybody's life.
Speaker 1 (45:38):
And so these big annual things they can sort of
keep a town on the map, give it town an identity,
even if other things are crumbling.
Speaker 2 (46:01):
I think it's pretty unique that we can learn so
much about ourselves and our community by looking at a
wild tradition like the coon Supper. I love it, and
I'd say there's a high likelihood Brent and I will
be back at the Coon Supper next year that is
if we can get some tickets. I can't thank you
(46:23):
enough for listening to Bear Grease. Please leave us a
review on iTunes, and tell your friends, family, and co
workers about the amazing stories you're hearing here and on
Brent's podcast This Country Life. Be sure to check out
our friend Tim P. Carney's new book called Family Unfriendly,
How our culture made raising kids much harder than it
(46:47):
needs to be. I hope you have a great week.
What are the things you have in your life that
are really valuable but you don't pay for and you
couldn't quite sell them.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
In January of twenty twenty four, the Gillette Coonsupper celebrated
its eightieth annual dinner. This bizarre wild game tradition has
made a name for itself as one of the premier
political events in Arkansas. But it's more than that. It's
holding a struggling but strong community together. This is one
(00:33):
of the most unique Beargrea stories we've ever told. It's
a deep dive into small town America and what makes
us what we are. We'll go to the Coon Supper
and hear from the cooks, the coon hunters, and some
hungry people. We'll interview best selling author Tim P. Carney
about why traditions like this matter and believe it or not.
(00:55):
We'll also hear from former President Bill Clinton about his
interaction with the Coon Supper. This episode will surprise and
impact you, and we'll teach you something about yourself and
about society. Eating barbecue raccoon has never been so good.
I really doubt you're gonna want to miss this one.
What would you say? There's a prime cut on a Coon.
Speaker 3 (01:18):
Absolutely not.
Speaker 2 (01:19):
It's all it's all prime. It's all prime, all prime,
all right. My name is Klay Nukem, and this is
the Bear Grease Podcast, where we'll explore things forgotten but relevant,
(01:42):
search for insight and unlikely places, and where we'll tell
the story of Americans who live their lives close to
the land. Presented by f HF Gear, American made purpose
built hunting and fishing gear as designed to be as
rugged as the places we explored.
Speaker 4 (02:10):
My name is Scott Place. I'm from Gillette, Arkansas. I
live on Main Street and I've been associated with the
Coon Supper all my life. My dad was a master
of ceremonies for it from the beginning up until nineteen
eighty nine or ninety. So I had to go to
(02:33):
the Coon Supper one night I was even a little
guy because there was nowhere else to be. You couldn't
hire a babysitter or anything like that because everybody was
at the Coon Supper.
Speaker 2 (02:47):
The first recorded coons Supper took place in nineteen thirty three.
Scott was born in nineteen fifty four. He's seventy years
old and he was born in the house he's sitting
in right now. In downtown Gillette. It's a handsome, well
taken care of brick home with white modern sighting. It
was his parents before it was his. Scott is a
(03:09):
second generation rice farmer.
Speaker 4 (03:12):
My dad was at the first coon Supper. He was
a people person, and he sang and danced on the
stage when he couldn't sing and dance. And it started
as just a stag gathering from coon hunters around the area.
Well then you can imagine that got a little rough,
(03:34):
and so the next year or two they decided to
invite the women, and then it took off from there.
Speaker 2 (03:43):
Gillette is a small farming town in the Delta of
southeast Arkansas. Their Coon Supper is more than a citywide tradition.
It's an event that brings an entire region together, really
an entire state. Today. Scott place, like his father, is
kind of the grand marshal of this event, not officially,
and he wouldn't want me to say that, but that's
(04:04):
my perception. The Coonsuper's importance to anyone who's been to
it is clear, but it's hard to nail down. Amid
the complexity of economic challenges and the loss of population,
people are leaving places like this and not coming back.
These are real problems for many small towns in America.
(04:26):
Existential time is moving forward without you, kind of stuff
that seems to hover over the delta like a biblical plague.
Just down the street from Scott's house lives Gillette's top politician,
the mayor, Randy Womack. He lives on the corner of
Main Street. He and Scott were college roommates. We're gonna
(04:48):
need some info on Gillette.
Speaker 5 (04:51):
Back when we.
Speaker 6 (04:52):
Moved here in the sixties. At that time there was
close to nine hundred people the best I can remember,
say since last census, best I can remember around five
hundred and twenty five. But it's changed, like a lot
of delta towns have changed as the tractor's got bigger
(05:15):
and eliminated a lot of a lot of the workers,
so it's gradually gotten smaller.
Speaker 2 (05:28):
This is a row crop farming community where soybeans, rice, wheat,
and corn grow in alluvial soils. They call buckshot, which
is fertile clay that holds water, sticks to your boots
and they say it holds the world together. She Lett
is four miles north of the Arkansas River and forty
river miles southeast or twenty eight point two seven crow
(05:52):
flying miles to where the Arkansas River flows into the
Mighty Mississippi River. The bigger name for this bigger region
is the Delta. You've heard us talk about it a lot,
but more specifically, Gillette is in the Grand Prairie. These
soils have been built by ten thousand years of flooding.
The Quapalls farmed here from time immemorial into the early
(06:16):
eighteen hundreds, and modern farming commercial operations have only been
practiced here for roughly one hundred years. But one thing
is certain, if you live here, you're invested. Something about
the flat, muddy ground of the Delta evokes that in people.
There's a word for a person's relationship with their community.
(06:38):
It's called social capital. Just file that away for a minute,
and we're about to go to the Coon Supper. But
there's still one important piece of the story that we
haven't talked about yet. The Gillette school system. Something happened
to their.
Speaker 6 (06:54):
School football games. Doesn't matter what the record was. Stadium
was going on be full basketball game, kind of the
center part of the town when the consolidation had all
come and I understand what it was cased in the
state in as many school district as the were, or
(07:16):
so they went about and you know, putting limit on
what the tennis was once you got to blow that number.
Speaker 2 (07:26):
You may have heard Randy grunt right there at the
end when he did. He was shaking his head as
if something died and he didn't want to speak it
out loud. The school was central to the town. It
was the social glue. Do you let schools consolidated with
the bigger school system in two thousand and four. I
wonder what Scott thought about the school closing.
Speaker 4 (07:49):
It's awful, but one thing led to another, the suspense
of whether the school was going to shut down after
it was officially consolidated, know the district, how long was
it going to stay open? So nobody moves into town
and your slow death. It's agonizing. But the way farming
(08:11):
farm economy has changed, and the land that we farm
in the fifties supported twenty families and now the three
or four and everybody has two kids instead of nine.
There's not enough kids support us a school in this
area anymore. And so this is just inevitable.
Speaker 2 (08:36):
Inevitable is a powerful and intimidating word for rural America.
Two thousand and four was the beginning of the end
for Gillette schools. They kept them open for five years,
but in two thousand and nine they completely closed the
high school in junior high, but the grade school K
through five stayed open until twenty twenty one, when the
(08:56):
last of the Gillette schools were completely closed. Today the
kids bus fourteen miles to de Witt or d Wit
as some would say. But it's not all bad. It's
just a matter of perspective. This is seth place. Scott's son,
he's in his early forties, lives in Gillette, but his
kids go to DeWitt schools.
Speaker 7 (09:19):
It got heated there for a while with the school
consolidation and all that stuff. And it was no big
secret about some hard feelings here and there or whatever.
But when I think about Gillette and how it used
to be, that's how I feel when I go where
my kids go to school up here at d WIT.
Though it's basically from my perspective, the community has grown.
Speaker 2 (09:45):
That's an optimistic perspective, and Gillette does have a history
of expanding its reach. On January thirteenth, twenty twenty four,
Gillette held its eightieth annual Coon Supper. Despite the child olenges,
this event is a bright spot on the calendar that
brings this community together. It gives it identity and is
(10:07):
one of the only anchors that is held. Myself, my
wife Misty, along with Brent and his wife drove to
the Grand Prairie to see it for ourselves. This is
about to get wild, folks, but let's not jump the gun.
The first stop that we made was not at the
Coon Supper, but at the Gillette Pre Coon Supper. That's right,
(10:29):
the pre Coon Supper, which starts about two hours before
the Coon Supper. We've driven a couple of miles down
a gravel road in park by a large metal building.
This is the late Congressman Mary and Barry's farm shed.
What is this? I hear music? I've never been here before.
Speaker 8 (10:52):
Name is Clay Clay Leslie.
Speaker 2 (10:54):
Nice to see a guy in dark framed glasses wearing
a man dadish kind of barbecue and apron greets me.
He carries himself like a guy in charge. I bet
he knows what's up with this pre coonsupper stuff. Hey,
how's it going? Hey doing kway? Newcomer? Give me like
a little overview of the Coon Supper or and maybe
(11:17):
even this event.
Speaker 9 (11:18):
So uh so, yeah, we're we're here at the at
the very farm shop. So this is uh the pre
coonsupper reception.
Speaker 3 (11:27):
So this, this.
Speaker 9 (11:28):
Event, you know, really goes back fifty years. Uh So
former Congressman Marrion Barry, he used to live right across
the street from the Gillette High School and uh when
people and elected officials and Canadas would come down and
come to the Coon Supper, they'd stopped at his house
to have a cocktail before going over the coon Supper.
Speaker 2 (11:51):
That was Gabe Holstrom, and he just told us a
very important component of the tradition that has become the
political event of Arkansas. Let's see who else is here.
Speaker 10 (12:04):
My name is Jeremiah Moore. I'm from Clarenon, Arkansas. Currently
serve as a state representative for House District sixty one
in the Arkansas State Legislature. My district runs from Amigon
in Jackson County all the way down to Gillette in
Arkansas County. And I would be remiss if I did
not say that District sixty one has the best duck
hunting in.
Speaker 2 (12:24):
All the world.
Speaker 10 (12:27):
You know, we're here right now at the Gillette pre
Coon Supper.
Speaker 2 (12:31):
We're about to be confused with the coon souber. This
is a pre coon safer.
Speaker 10 (12:34):
We're about to head on to the actual coon Supper
in a few minutes. And I always say that this
is the foremost political event in the entire state of Arkansas.
Now you tell me any state east or west of
the Mississippi where the foremost political event revolves around eating
a raccoon, and.
Speaker 5 (12:54):
Now it'll be right here in Jillette.
Speaker 2 (12:56):
So now, this pre he Coonsupper became a must attend
event in part because of Arkansas's most famous son, a
young man who became Arkansas's governor in nineteen seventy eight.
This is the guy that Gary Believer Nukan went to
high school with, and you may recognize his voice. We'll
(13:16):
step out of the pre coon Supper for a minute
to a speech this former governor made in twenty twenty three.
Speaker 11 (13:25):
So when I started to run for office, the lad
had about eight hundred people and they were about as
I recall, a minimum of fifteen hundred people that showed
up at the Coon Sufferer.
Speaker 2 (13:38):
This is former President Bill Clinton. Turns out he's a
long time coon supper guy.
Speaker 11 (13:44):
And someone I said, you know, you've got to do this,
and you've got to call Marion Barry and you got
to go down there and see him make all over
the deal and act like you think coon is better
than Philet Mignon. So I show up and it was
(14:04):
already kind of required appearance to go to Marion's house first,
and all the paul for there and other people, and
then we'd mody over to the dinner.
Speaker 2 (14:14):
He's talking about the pre coon supper, and.
Speaker 11 (14:16):
So I said, Marrying, do I actually have to eat
his coon? He said no, He said not if you
don't want to carry this place ever again, you don't
have to eat it at all.
Speaker 12 (14:32):
And I said, well, okay.
Speaker 11 (14:36):
How do I eat it? He said, what do you mean?
I said, I've seen it prepared for eating, and I said,
there's a lot of gristlin fat right near the bone.
How do I eat it without getting sick? He said, well,
most people think they're eat coon meat with a little
barbecue sauce. You should think of it in reverse, thinking
(14:56):
you're eating barbecue sauce with a little coon. Mea, there's
no such thing as too much barbecue sauce.
Speaker 2 (15:05):
Ironically, This is the second time Bill Clinton's voice has
been on the Bear Grease podcast, and he was once
involved in a plane crash on the way to the
coon Supper, but that's another story. But Clinton helped put
this tradition on the legendary column of Arkansas events. But
it's now time for us to go to the supper.
(15:26):
We're really about to eat some coon. This isn't a joke.
So we just left the pre coon supper party. Brent,
what are your thoughts?
Speaker 3 (15:36):
Oh, well, there was no coon served, but lots of conversation.
But the food was good. There was duck poppers that's
duck wrapped with bacon and jalapenos, and there was ribs
and sausage.
Speaker 2 (15:48):
And so we're driving on a gravel road in the
Grand Prairie of Arkansas. It's dark, the sun has set
and there's a light glow on the horizon on the
western horizon, and we're now headed to the Gillette Coon Souper.
As we get into the Gillette city limits, the streets
(16:08):
are filled with parked cars and people walking towards the school.
We get out of our car. It looks like we're
walking up to an old gymnasium it's dark outside, stars
are out a beautiful uh waning GiB us moon above us.
This is the old Gillette High School gym. It looks
(16:31):
like the movie Hoosiers could have been filmed here.
Speaker 5 (16:34):
Here.
Speaker 2 (16:34):
We are awesome. We just got our tickets and the
tickets are numbered. We gotive. Oh wow, we're gonna have
to split up sorrow. All right, it's on we go.
This year they had eight hundred tickets and they sold out.
The gym is lined with tables with white tablecloths. At
each place setting is the annual glass cup with the
(16:57):
coonsupper emblem. In the year, people collect these. But each
table has an aluminum foil trade of barbecue raccoon. I
see a guy, I want to talk to you. Tell
me your name of.
Speaker 3 (17:10):
Who you work.
Speaker 8 (17:11):
Zach Hartman, chief policy officer for Ducks On Limited.
Speaker 2 (17:14):
Why the heck are you at the coon suburb? Man
at the coons eat duck eggs?
Speaker 13 (17:20):
Well, the most important thing for net success is habitat.
Speaker 2 (17:25):
But I'm not opposed to eating a few coon.
Speaker 8 (17:27):
But I am not opposed to eat a few coons.
Speaker 13 (17:30):
But the really reason that we're here is because this
is a great event for a great cause. We're here
to raise money for Arkansas State's Foundation and the scholarships
that they provide to students that want to get involved
in ag policy, and they have an opportunity to learn
about agriculture conservation, which is an increasingly important component of
(17:51):
our working lands these days.
Speaker 2 (17:54):
Okay, enough all that, man, what do you think of
eating coon?
Speaker 8 (17:57):
How my man had Penny over here, who you know.
Speaker 13 (18:02):
I brought him here for his first time, and I
took him to the coon supper and I gave him
I sat him down and I said, you know, you
gotta eat some coon. And he ate a piece of
coon and then he grabbed another piece and I said
it or are you going back for seconds? And he
said yeah, it's good, and I said really, and I
tasted it and it was and it like ruined.
Speaker 8 (18:22):
The whole joke.
Speaker 2 (18:25):
Bret and I both grab a leg of coon and
have a bite, and he's right, it ain't bad. But
we've both had it before. We're old coon hunters.
Speaker 14 (18:33):
You know.
Speaker 2 (18:34):
Brent's wife won't even try it. But Misty took a
nibble and the report wasn't great, though she was a
little embarrassed to show her displeasure. Anyway, I see somebody
else I want to talk with. This is awesome Booth,
the director of the Arkansas Game and Fish. Why are
you at the coon supper?
Speaker 11 (18:51):
Sir?
Speaker 15 (18:52):
Well, it's an Arkansas radition for us Flatlanders. It's a
good way to point out the nexus between public service
and young Arkansas and also a great way to see
the Grand Prairie in his most beautiful time of the year.
Speaker 2 (19:05):
Shoot some ducks and eat some coon. Now? Are we
also not trying to reduce the coon population in the
state of Arkansas?
Speaker 15 (19:12):
Sir, always and proudly.
Speaker 2 (19:16):
This is a good way to do it right as popularize.
You know, there's a strategy you can If we can
popularize eating coon meat to the level that every child
in America, every man, woman, and child, wants to go
kill a coon and eat it, then we might we
might be winning. Do you agree with this?
Speaker 15 (19:33):
I think coon Wellington would be an American tradition forever.
Speaker 2 (19:39):
Austin Booth is a former marine, a lawyer, and native
our cans and and our youngest Game and Fish director ever.
For my angle, he's exemplifying some legit leadership while navigating
the very complex wildlife issues of our state. Hat tip
to Austin. Oh look, here's somebody else i'd like to
(19:59):
talk with.
Speaker 16 (20:00):
I'm leslie right Ledge, the Lieutenant governor of Arkansas for
the past year. I was the attorney general for eight
years prior to that. I grew up on a cattle farm.
I'm married to a rogrot farmer. So I love being
here in Arkansas farm lamb, you know, celebrating our way
of life, our heritage, and then doing something really awkward.
Speaker 8 (20:21):
Which is eat raccoon.
Speaker 2 (20:24):
Pardon me, madame, Lieutenant governor, but is it really awkward
to eat raccoon? Is that the right word? And by
the way, when i'm governor, Brent will be my lieutenant governor.
Speaker 16 (20:35):
You know, we're doing this odd thing of eating barbecued raccoon.
But it's really to talk about what the needs are
here in Arkansas County, what the needs are for the
farmers in this area.
Speaker 2 (20:48):
Okay, so here's a real question after all that, how
do you like coon?
Speaker 16 (20:53):
Well, it's best not eating. But if you have to
eat it, I certainly suggest getting like one of the yeah,
the banks or something where it looks big but it's
very little meat.
Speaker 2 (21:05):
Oh, you got a strategy to get a big beecet,
but not getting much. That's right, you know, strategy, it's
all about strategy.
Speaker 4 (21:13):
That was good.
Speaker 2 (21:15):
I want to get into the nitty gritty of how
they're coming up with all this raccoon meat. This is
their main supplier, Tommy Cantrell. And how long have you
been supplying the coons over with coons?
Speaker 17 (21:30):
Probably six or seven years probably now.
Speaker 3 (21:33):
Uh huh?
Speaker 2 (21:34):
So how many you usually catch for them?
Speaker 3 (21:36):
I put it this way.
Speaker 17 (21:37):
Last year I carried him like six d and fifty pounds, right,
and they're probably average seven pounds six to seven pounds
per coon. So you can figure that I trap them.
And also we hunt them with my dog. I got
old dog.
Speaker 2 (21:52):
Got a coon dog? What kind of coon dog?
Speaker 17 (21:54):
You well, she's not actually a coon dog coon dog.
She's about half German shepherd and have something new. But anyway,
if we find one, you know, and she'll run him
up a tree or something. But if we shoot him,
if you ain't got a dog, he gonna get away,
but she will ketch him. She will catch him.
Speaker 11 (22:12):
Get there.
Speaker 2 (22:14):
So I did the math, and that's about one hundred
dressed raccoons. But that's just what mister Tommy brought in
they had a few other suppliers. Now I want to
know how they cook it. Guess who the head cook is?
Yep Scott Place, the guy whose dad was the first
master of ceremonies. So are you you're the main coon
cook around here?
Speaker 4 (22:34):
Well, I guess I'm the oldest cook.
Speaker 2 (22:37):
Okay, So tell tell me about the process of how
you're cooking this.
Speaker 4 (22:42):
My son Saith buys the coon and we got freezers
in the old field house and we'll keep it in
and then on Thursday we'll come get it out and
let it fall for a day. And then on Friday
morning we got a pan saw and we cut it
up in the pieces and in the salt water brine
and soak it twenty four hours. And then today is
(23:08):
our longest day, and we boil it in the big
pots with a special recipe of stuff that we put
in the boil of water, almost like a.
Speaker 3 (23:20):
Fish.
Speaker 4 (23:20):
Yeah, and we boil it and then we immediately put
it on these smokers.
Speaker 2 (23:26):
How many coons did y'all You think y'all cooke today?
Speaker 3 (23:30):
Coons?
Speaker 4 (23:30):
I don't know, but it's right. It's just under eight
hundred pounds.
Speaker 2 (23:35):
Now. At one time it was a lot bigger than that.
Y'all cooked like two thousand pounds.
Speaker 4 (23:39):
Y'all back when we just served coon, Well, we've had
well over a ton before.
Speaker 2 (23:45):
How many people you think we're here tonight?
Speaker 4 (23:48):
Sold out of tickets? So right, eight hundred tickets.
Speaker 3 (23:53):
I believe eight hundred people.
Speaker 4 (23:55):
We used to have a thousand tickets, but we took
a table out, oh, probably twenty years ago, because maybe
Americans are getting a little bigger and.
Speaker 2 (24:07):
Eating too much coon.
Speaker 5 (24:08):
Yeah, it may be eating too much coon.
Speaker 4 (24:10):
And it was just so crowded.
Speaker 2 (24:13):
I think they've got this coon coulking process dialed. I
shuffle to sit down quickly as the main speaker is
about to start. The room quiets as a man in
a suit approaches the stage. Behind the podium is a
(24:36):
giant orange handmade mural paper mural commemorating the eightieth Coon Supper.
On it is a raccoon as big as a picnic table.
On the lookers left since eight high school seniors. These
kids go to de Witch schools now, but they're from
families that live in Gillette. The night is all about them.
Speaker 5 (25:00):
I want to thank you all for trowning. It is
no weather to come and enjoy yourself tonight or really
really happy to have you here.
Speaker 18 (25:09):
This is the eightieth time this group has met.
Speaker 5 (25:12):
This coon sover has been put on.
Speaker 2 (25:16):
The speaker's demeanor changes in the room quiets as everyone
knows what he's about to say.
Speaker 5 (25:24):
Many of you know that we lost Pastor Chad Philip
this past year.
Speaker 18 (25:30):
Pastor was a great icon of Jellette, the surrounding area
and the Coon Sobber.
Speaker 5 (25:36):
Just remember Pastor Chad.
Speaker 2 (25:39):
Pastor Chad was a big player here for the last
several decades. But he's not the only one being remembered
this year.
Speaker 18 (25:47):
As many of you may know, we've lost another icon
of Jillette and the Coon Sober this past year. Without
a doubt, the most famous person from Jillette, Representative Marion Barry.
Marion love the Lord. He loved his family, he loved
his farm. We loved you lit its people in the
Coon Suffer. Mary devoted his life of the service to
(26:11):
his family and his country and his community. Instead of
an example to other's an impact that a man from
a small town can make when seeking direction from God
and being.
Speaker 5 (26:21):
In service to others. Let's remember Representative Marion Barrier.
Speaker 2 (26:32):
I hope you can feel the sense of community and
connectedness in this gym, and to think the mechanism that
it's built around is eating a raccoon. This isn't a joke,
and it's being done inside the context of a town
that by measurable statistics might seem like it's wilting. But wait,
there's more. Here's Senator Tom Cotton.
Speaker 14 (26:55):
Good evening.
Speaker 19 (26:55):
It's great to be back at the Coon Supper again.
You know, we always join at this time of the year.
It's the darkest and the.
Speaker 5 (27:02):
Oldest time of the year.
Speaker 19 (27:03):
We have a night of festivities and the warmth of
community and fellowship. As we've heard, though, we have heavy
hearts two degree this year because of the passing of
the pastor chat and Mary and Mary. But I think
they would want all of us to be here where
we are tonight, and they're looking down on us, and
they're proud that this community is continuing with this unique,
(27:25):
distinctive tradition. I think it's a testament to their legacy
that we're all joining here together as we always do,
to help support.
Speaker 5 (27:32):
The great students and kids of this community. Thank you all, Godless.
Speaker 2 (27:43):
The evening comes to a close after every senior is
recognized for their academic achievements. They each address the crowd
and tell what their plans are after graduating. One young
man is going into his family's pest control business, Another
is heading to the University of Arkansaw. Another is going
into nursing school. Scholarship recipients are announced, and each senior
(28:06):
is met by volumeous applause. Despite the town's population shrinking
the school's closing, the place is riding high on a
deep sense of community pride. This is really something special.
As the Coon Supper adjourns, I'm standing outside the doors
(28:28):
of the event. I ask a passing guy his thoughts
on what just happened? This is Johnny. You've come to
this quite a few times.
Speaker 5 (28:37):
Yes, sir, Yes, sir.
Speaker 2 (28:38):
Where are you from?
Speaker 3 (28:38):
I'm from Palm Low?
Speaker 2 (28:40):
So what what what do you like about this?
Speaker 5 (28:42):
I love it. It's just good people.
Speaker 3 (28:45):
One thing about it is it's constant.
Speaker 5 (28:48):
Ain't nothing ever changed. It's gonna always be the same.
You do not have any problems.
Speaker 2 (28:54):
You're a commercial fisherman. Yes, where do you fishing?
Speaker 4 (28:56):
White River?
Speaker 14 (28:57):
White argistas and awesome man.
Speaker 2 (29:02):
But you're a fan of the Coon something.
Speaker 5 (29:03):
It's beautiful, beautiful, It's beautiful.
Speaker 2 (29:09):
It's good people, stays the same, and it's beautiful. I
think that's a pretty good synopsis. As I'm leaving, I
see Seth Place, who's the second in command cook behind
his dad. I'm a little late in asking him this,
but he seems to be a coon meat expert, and
I have a burning question.
Speaker 5 (29:28):
That's what would you.
Speaker 2 (29:29):
Say there's a prime cut on a coon?
Speaker 20 (29:32):
Absolutely not, it's all it's all prime.
Speaker 2 (29:37):
It's all prime, all prime. Okay, all right, all right,
he asks me if I want to see the cookers.
So we walk out further into the yard right by
the gym. So, y'all cook them all on this big
smoker right here.
Speaker 4 (29:53):
But these are the smokers.
Speaker 2 (29:54):
Now do they all bring these in or they stay here?
These are permanent.
Speaker 20 (29:59):
Smoker now I used to Yeah, the school's closed so
and then they basically donated the these buildings to the
Farms and Businessman Club. So we can have this indefinitely
as long as we can sell tickets, really, but yeah,
we just keep everything here now.
Speaker 2 (30:16):
So this this used to be Gillette Public School. This
is Coal Counts. It consolidated to be with.
Speaker 8 (30:22):
But this year is the first year that elementary has
been gone.
Speaker 2 (30:25):
So this is kind of like a ghost town down here.
Speaker 20 (30:28):
It is, at least in the sense of the school.
Speaker 8 (30:32):
I got to go to school here till I was
in the seventh grade.
Speaker 2 (30:34):
In my eighth grade year, we consolidated, had to go
to d with Okay, amid the excitement and energy of
the event, it's easy to forget this community is struggling
to stay together. More people were in that gym than
live in this town. They leave their giant built in
cookers outside the gym because it's not a functioning gym anymore.
(30:55):
Just keep that in mind. We're going to go back
to that. But first, I've had something on mine since
that first bite of raccoon. We're now in the car
heading home, and I think it's possible that we've all
broken the law. I decide to confront Brent on his hypocrisy.
I'm trying to understand how I'm not the only person
(31:15):
who thought of this. Okay, So the one problem that
I've foreseen is that they're buying this coon meat, and
it is illegal to buy or sell wildlife meat.
Speaker 3 (31:33):
There is an exception, really, yeah, p with coon. Yeah,
let me tell you something. Are you holding onto that
mic because yeah, this is a mic drop moment. Okay,
my brother Tim skins coons and prepares them to be sold,
(31:53):
and his nephew sells them out the window of their
pharmacy in Ford Asson, Arkansas.
Speaker 8 (32:01):
Serious, you can go buy the drop off.
Speaker 3 (32:03):
A gun to get picked up, to get cleaned and repaired.
You can pick up your prescription and you can buy
a coon.
Speaker 2 (32:09):
Really raise yourself because I got the Okay, what's the
AGFC say about it? Missy, We've just left the gillet
coon supper.
Speaker 14 (32:16):
It is.
Speaker 21 (32:17):
It is unlawful to purchase, sell, offer for sale, barter,
or trade any species of wildlife.
Speaker 14 (32:23):
Or proportions there up period exceptions.
Speaker 21 (32:27):
Hey, fur bear pelts and carcasses taken during a fur
bear season may be sold.
Speaker 14 (32:32):
Wow, that's the first one.
Speaker 21 (32:35):
May be sold by person who's valid hunting are furred
to their licenses, legally taken squirrel tails and pelts, rabbit pelts.
Speaker 14 (32:41):
This is a second. This is a like a different
bullet point.
Speaker 2 (32:45):
I've heard all I need to hear red fox grace legal, Baby,
We're going into business.
Speaker 14 (32:49):
Alligator high alligators.
Speaker 2 (32:51):
I'm staying corrected. Sounds like Brent's off the hook. Somehow.
The legality of selling fur bear meat has eluded me.
But I'll tell you what else has eluded me, the
real understanding of why something like the coon supper is valuable.
I mean, it's easy to see and feel the value
when you're there. It's undeniable. Anybody sees it. Everybody sees it,
(33:14):
But how could you explain it to someone? I got
the opportunity to talk with author Tim P. Carney, who's
written multiple best selling books. One is called Alienated America.
He's an expert on this kind of stuff. And to
be more specific about what that stuff is, a lot
of the Coonsupper's value could be summed up by people
(33:36):
gaining social capital. I remember I told you to hold
on to that word, file it away. This is incredibly interesting.
Here's Tim.
Speaker 1 (33:46):
Social capital is this term that like sociologists ues maybe historians,
and it's a weird word because capital is kind of
a financial term, right, you're talking about money. Social is
showing us that we're talking about something very different. So
one way to think of social capital is what are
the things you have in your life that are really
(34:07):
valuable but you don't pay for and you couldn't quite
sell them. Do you have a next door neighbor who
you're just best friends with, that's social capital. Do you
have extended family who will bail you out if you
get into trouble, that's having social capital. And so the
truth is there's real inequality in social capital across America
(34:27):
in ways that sometimes parallels and sometimes deviates from kind
of wealth inequality. But one way of thinking of social
capital is valuable things that you might or might not
have in your life that are they're social, they're not financial.
They have to do with your connections and interactions with
other people, and they usually explicitly are not something that
(34:48):
you could pay for or sell or directly buy.
Speaker 2 (34:53):
Our society is good at measuring external things that have
monetary impact. So social capital is hard to make, but
it's primarily a function of our relationship to other people.
Whether you're conscious of it or not, every human on
earth has some level of social capital. Now, this next
observation about American society is kind of mind blowing.
Speaker 1 (35:17):
The greatest work on the United States of America I
think that was ever written, was written by a French
guy and was written one hundred years ago. Yeah, it
was Alexis to Toakville's Democracy in America. You know how
sometimes somebody shows up at your house and they notice
something that you don't notice because you just you've come
to take it for granted. Americans, he was saying, two
(35:37):
hundred years ago, take for granted how much they kind
of just rely on not themselves as individuals, but themselves
and their neighbors, their fellow countrymen, their brothers, or whatever
other people they know to solve problems.
Speaker 12 (35:53):
He said.
Speaker 1 (35:54):
In England again this is eighteen thirties. In England, people
they turned to the the big landlord. I mean it
was semi feudal at that point. There'd be a big
rich landholder and they turned to him to solve their problems.
In France, they turned to the government. In the United States,
if there's a problem, people will like form a you know,
(36:15):
a ditch digging organization to keep the town from flooding
when the runoff is coming down from the mountain. So
that idea that where it's both that were self starters,
but we're not just individuals. So it's still a sort
of self reliance, but it's a self reliance in fraternity,
in neighborhood, in community. And that that was unique to
(36:37):
America is what Toauville argued, we.
Speaker 2 (36:42):
Have self reliance inside of fraternity, inside of community, and
this thing was unique to America kind of from the beginning.
A different term to describe what the Toaueville saw here
is civic engagement. That word sounds pretty scary to me,
but it actually determines a lot about our communities. And
(37:04):
to equate it back to the coon supper, attending or
volunteering at a community event like this is civic engagement.
Turns out that stuff is quite important, and it's on
a dramatic decline in America.
Speaker 1 (37:18):
So you could look at you know, how much do
people vote, how much do people participate in the census?
Speaker 12 (37:24):
That all matters. How does that relate to social capital?
Speaker 1 (37:28):
Well, if you're the guy who took it on the
chin and coach kindergarten girls basketball, if you're the guy
who you didn't even think about it, but you sent
your sons over to shovel the neighbor's yard sidewalk when
he was away. It is a little bit like finance
in that you put a bunch in and then when.
Speaker 12 (37:45):
You need it you can draw it out. But there's
not like a.
Speaker 1 (37:48):
Ledger being kept. That's the real thing about social capital
and community. There's just an understanding that we have an
obligation to look out for other people.
Speaker 12 (37:57):
So we're going to do it.
Speaker 1 (37:58):
We're going to be civically engaged, and the more civically engaged.
Speaker 12 (38:01):
You are, the more capital you had.
Speaker 1 (38:03):
The main way I would say that works is the
more things that you belong to, then the more things
you can rely on. That is, I belong to my
local church. I belong to my kids' schools. I don't
just cut the check and send my kids there where
I serve on the board of one. My wife's a
substitute teacher at another. We show up at things. I
(38:25):
belong to my employer. You know, I work to get
to know my neighbors. So I belonged to all these things.
So a common word in this area of study is reciprocity,
which again is just relationship. The understanding I'll take care
of you, you take care of me, and community was
always built on the fact that we had needs. It
wasn't just hey, I want to hang out with my buddies.
(38:45):
It was oh, I need to go into town to
get something. Oh I need to call on my friend
to lift this one thing, and if you take away
some of those needs, then we lose the stuff we
didn't know we needed, which was a connection, the friendship,
the camaraderie, the longing. And so the guy who wrote
the best book on this was Robert Putnam Bowling Alone.
(39:07):
That came out right as you and I were finishing up,
you know, our college years there. Two thousand, I think
was the pub date on that, And he used bowling
because he said he found out that people weren't bowling
less in two thousand than they had in nineteen sixty,
but they were bowling leagues had crumbled everywhere, so people
were more likely to bowl alone, or bowl just with
(39:29):
their best friend or their their wife or whatever. And
that was just almost a little analogy for what was
happening more broadly. Membership, you know, pta membership had collapsed,
and all of this stuff what we belonged to, had
gone down across the board.
Speaker 12 (39:48):
And so I.
Speaker 1 (39:48):
Went and I looked to update the numbers.
Speaker 12 (39:51):
When I wrote Alienated America.
Speaker 1 (39:53):
That came out twenty nineteen, so almost twenty years later,
and it had just continued. The people just again more
likely to sort of strike out on them their own.
When I was on the board of a small organization
here in DC. We did this study and it came
back Millennials didn't want.
Speaker 12 (40:10):
To join anything. We should be a member. They're like,
I don't want to be a member.
Speaker 1 (40:14):
We're like, will you chip in twenty bucks to help
us out? They're like, oh, yeah, I'll do that, but
I'm not joining. Okay, I don't want to belong to it.
And so you and I are at the sort of
tail end of gen X. And I think that that
was already in motion.
Speaker 2 (40:32):
Studies showed that America's civic engagement peaked in the nineteen
sixties and has been declining ever since. By the time
I graduated high school in the late nineteen nineties, it
had plummeted. I remember my dad, the believer, being involved
in everything he possibly could his whole life. He was
in a fraternity in college, he never drank, by the way,
(40:55):
a member of the Kawanas Club, the Lions Club, the
archery club. He was a deacon at the church, and
for decades he was heavily involved in a group that
helped families with critical construction projects, like if the roof
was leaking and they couldn't afford to get it fixed.
Or if some family needed a wheelchair ramp built. He
was very civically involved, but he grew up in the
(41:17):
time of America's peak civic engagement. He always wanted me
to do more stuff, but I just wasn't that interested. Now,
as an adult, I have maintained high levels of involvement
in my church my whole life, but I have not
been nearly as involved in other stuff. I didn't know
(41:37):
until I talked with Tim that I was just a
pawn in the common trend of my generation. I didn't
choose this all on my own, like I thought. It's
kind of spooky when you realize that you have less
control over your life than you think. Hmm, that is interesting.
But who is most affected by this lack of civic
(41:59):
gay Is it the rich or the poor who are
less civically engaged? I bet it's those rich folks.
Speaker 12 (42:07):
There are nuances to this.
Speaker 1 (42:09):
It's worse the collapse of of belonging, civic engagement, bowling leagues,
et cetera. All that stuff is worse in the working
class in America than it is in the middle class
or the upper middle class. There's this stereotype that you know,
wealthier Americans you know, you live behind a gate, or
(42:29):
you're you know, with your money, you're just buying your isolation.
Speaker 12 (42:34):
But if you go to like these rich suburbs.
Speaker 1 (42:36):
Where houses are really expensive and the property taxes are high, they.
Speaker 12 (42:39):
Have enough Little League coaches for every team.
Speaker 1 (42:43):
They have people leaving the kids lead their bikes out
on the front yard because neighbors sort of know neighbors.
Speaker 12 (42:50):
The collapse in community, in civic engagement is greater for
a dozen reasons I go.
Speaker 1 (42:56):
Through in the book in the working class. And that's
particularly harmful because these are people who rely more on
social capital. If you're rich and don't have friends, you
could sort of you could buy stuff. But the irony
is the richer people in America, not the you know,
super rich celebrities who have to live in a gated,
(43:18):
you know, mansion, but the upper middle class. They are
more likely to know their neighbors, more likely to volunteer,
more likely to belong to things. And it's because this
sort of thing isn't just an individual choice, it's a
community thing. The community has to give you those opportunities,
and in some parts of America, those opportunities for belonging
(43:38):
and volunteering aren't there.
Speaker 2 (43:42):
That's very interesting and not what I was expecting. But
that's just why the community of Gillette is so unique.
I spent some time describing the Gillette Coon Supper to
Tim Carney. I wanted to see what he thought.
Speaker 1 (43:57):
Here's what he said, when you describe that, I want
to go to Jillett and see this and eat the
food and watch the people. This is the stuff that
makes America great, really, and I've seen it in other towns.
There's my favorite town in Iowa. It is this town
called Imagen, Iowa, which is down to thirty people. How
(44:17):
does the town survive with thirty people? Well, it has
an Irish pub, a beautiful Catholic church, and then a
softball field where they have a big tournament as part
of what they call Shamrock Days. Because you know Irish
population traditionally, and it brings in people who used to
live there and people from the other towns, and these
sort of things, even if they're only occasional things, they
(44:37):
really keep a town alive. Tradition, customs, these things are
social capital that gets passed down from generation to generation.
It's almost like you're time traveling, right. You're talking about
these kids in Jillette, and they don't even have a
high school, but they still they almost get to travel
back to when they do because suddenly there's a senior.
Speaker 12 (44:58):
Class the high school.
Speaker 1 (45:00):
Let senior class, even though there's no Jillette High school.
And so that is what customs do they provide.
Speaker 12 (45:08):
I often talk about social capital.
Speaker 1 (45:10):
As providing sort of a I mean, we use the
word network, but just imagine an infrastructure, something that's a scaffolding,
a scaffolding that holds you up. Traditions are a sort
of scaffolding that spans across time. And so that's one
of the key things that strong communities do is they
have traditions, they have customs, they have.
Speaker 12 (45:32):
These things, and it just injects a little bit of
meaning into everybody's life.
Speaker 1 (45:38):
And so these big annual things they can sort of
keep a town on the map, give it town an identity,
even if other things are crumbling.
Speaker 2 (46:01):
I think it's pretty unique that we can learn so
much about ourselves and our community by looking at a
wild tradition like the coon Supper. I love it, and
I'd say there's a high likelihood Brent and I will
be back at the Coon Supper next year that is
if we can get some tickets. I can't thank you
(46:23):
enough for listening to Bear Grease. Please leave us a
review on iTunes, and tell your friends, family, and co
workers about the amazing stories you're hearing here and on
Brent's podcast This Country Life. Be sure to check out
our friend Tim P. Carney's new book called Family Unfriendly,
How our culture made raising kids much harder than it
(46:47):
needs to be. I hope you have a great week.
Host
Clay Newcomb
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