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 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 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, 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 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 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, 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 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. 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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, 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 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 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 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. 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, 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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, 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 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. 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 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 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 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, 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 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 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, 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, 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 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 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. 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, 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 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 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 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 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 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 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, 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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. 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 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 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 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 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 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 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. 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 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 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 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 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. 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 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 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 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 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 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, 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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, 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 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, 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, 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 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 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 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. 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. 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 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. 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, 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. 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 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 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 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. 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. 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 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 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 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 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 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, 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 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 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, 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 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 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 dot com for more on miss thousands of other topics. Is it how stuff works dot com