HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(Appalachian accent) Come on, now, You see there, now.
MARCUS PARKS
(Appalachian accent) Now y'all hear?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I'm trying to dial it.
MARCUS PARKS
Dial it in, yeah. Make it-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(Appalachian accent) Well!
ED LARSON
The problem is you're sober.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes. I thought about that. I thought about it this morning.
MARCUS PARKS
You thought about just getting, what, like three beers in?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(Appalachian accent) Well take a look at that road over there, it's sigogglin. We ain't talking, we singing. That's what I heard. No, that again, Forrest Gump.
MARCUS PARKS
Forrest Gump. We had to have a whole conversations about you can't fall into Forrest Gump, you can't fall into Ross Perot.
ED LARSON
That was Ross Perot meets Forrest Gump.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, that's close though. Because if you hear some of these guys, right, when you get deep into Appalachia, it gets cryptic. And they're saying stuff that you don't know what they're saying.
ED LARSON
They don't know what they're saying.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You ever heard the like (Appalachian accent) yeah, go down to the county store, get yourself a dope.
ED LARSON
It's half emotion.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It is. It is. Dope is a soda.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Really?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(Appalachian accent) Get that can, get a can in there. Get a can in there.
ED LARSON
You don't adjust the voice at all every time.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
What do you mean? (Appalachian accent) Sigogglin. I think it comes more down like this.
ED LARSON
There we go.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(Appalachian accent) There we go. All right, this an Appalachian, Appalachia.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
There we go.
MARCUS PARKS
You got that phlegm in there.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, like you've been smoking two packs a day for 20 years.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(Appalachian accent) I don't need a filter, it's for the Los Angeles gays.
MARCUS PARKS
Welcome to the Last Podcast on the Left, ladies and gentlemen. My name is Marcus Parks, here with Henry Zebrowski.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(Appalachian accent) Now down the river, the river is rusty. Ah, I lost it already.
ED LARSON
It's fine, it's fine. You'll get it back.
MARCUS PARKS
We have two hours to get it back.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah, we do.
MARCUS PARKS
And of course Ed Larson.
ED LARSON
Yee!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah!
ED LARSON
Lot of hog talk today! I'm excited.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
A lot of hog talk.
MARCUS PARKS
Oh man, so much hog talk.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Seriously, talk about... Never have pigs been more important to true crime.
MARCUS PARKS
Except for Robert Pickton.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Absolutely. Thank you for correcting me. But a lot of people say oh the Hatfield and McCoy feud, isn't that just a fight over a pig? And we're here to tell you no! It's a fight over several pigs!
ED LARSON
That's right, some of them were ladies in the family.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Hey now! They have a glandular issue.
MARCUS PARKS
Taking place in the Tug Valley along a small river that forms the border between Kentucky and West Virginia-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yep.
MARCUS PARKS
The feud between the Hatfield and McCoy clans has been a part of the American identity ever since the two families began killing each other in the late 19th century.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, man. Gangster rap.
ED LARSON
Fuck yeah, man. I went to Tug Valley this morning, bro.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Masturbating.
MARCUS PARKS
Now this feud was by no means the longest nor the bloodiest scene in Appalachia during this time period.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Is that true?
MARCUS PARKS
And by the way, Appa-lay-sha and Apple-atcha are both accepted pronunciations.
ED LARSON
Okay.
MARCUS PARKS
Usually if you're more northern, you'll say Appa-lay-sha. If you're more southern, you'll say Apple-atcha.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Well let's say if you're wrong, you're saying Appa-lay-sha.
MARCUS PARKS
I'm saying Appa-lay-sha.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I wanna say upfront before we get in there, obviously I'm struggling with an accent. That's just because of my lack of training.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But for you guys, I know we got some Appalachians out there-
MARCUS PARKS
Definitely.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That listen to this show. All right. And I know they're gonna get immediately hopping mad about many things we're gonna get wrong and say wrong about their town. We're gonna say their towns wrong-
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And certain things. But just know, we know you're separate and valid.
ED LARSON
Another term is 'in dem hills'.
MARCUS PARKS
In dem hills.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(Appalachian accent) In dem hills.
ED LARSON
Yes. That works as well.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(Appalachian accent) Sigogglin.
ED LARSON
I mean these are people who like us their feet as musical instruments.
MARCUS PARKS
Hell yeah, clogging.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Hey man, they were the first musical instruments, they were the first deadly weapon. Feet are great.
MARCUS PARKS
But yeah, it was not the longest nor the bloodiest feud that was in Appalachia at the time.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Why don't we cover those ones though?
MARCUS PARKS
Because the Hatfield and McCoys seriously has a built in narrative structure. It's great, it really does. It has a great fucking story.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And I think that's partially the reason why the Hatfield and McCoys have been absolutely riddled throughout all of media ever since it began.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, I think they said that in the silent era there was something like 92 films made like adjacent to the Hatfields and McCoys.
ED LARSON
Really?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
I mean films were far shorter back then.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
It's like 8 minutes. But yeah, there was a huge outburst, there was kind of a trend of like hillbilly films.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
But yeah, even though it wasn't the bloodiest nor the longest, it still resulted in somewhere between 12 and 24 deaths, depending on the source.
ED LARSON
How do they not know?
MARCUS PARKS
They don't know a lot of shit. We'll get to that here in a second.
ED LARSON
Okay.
MARCUS PARKS
These deaths often occurred in gangland style executions-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Bang, bang, bang!
MARCUS PARKS
Home invasions and brutal hand to hand fights that turned murderous.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(Appalachian accent) Hey, that's my mother you're strangling!
ED LARSON
Now is it a home invasion if there's no doors?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Hey. That's a shack invasion. Actually it's really important to remember that, especially when you're dealing with the In Dem Hills police.
MARCUS PARKS
But to that point, it's important to know that neither the Hatfields nor the McCoys, neither of them were a bunch of barefoot bib overall-wearing simpletons shaking their fists at each other across the creek as they're often portrayed.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Some of them were.
MARCUS PARKS
Some of them were, yeah.
ED LARSON
Many of them were.
MARCUS PARKS
I mean did they make their own moonshine? Yes.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah!
ED LARSON
Yes.
MARCUS PARKS
Did they have names like Bad Jim Vance, Cottontop Mounts, and Squirrel Hunting Sam? Absolutely.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
As they should.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. But some were also community leaders with great economic power, at least locally. And most of them lived lives not too dissimilar from any other American frontiersman at the time.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, they just were truly kind of extra isolated.
MARCUS PARKS
They were absolutely extra isolated. Really, the Hatfield and McCoy feud occurred just before Appalachia turned into a pit of poverty and despair. And it was in fact the industrialization of the area that helped fuel the violence.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I can't wait to do our Coal Belt tour next year. We're going to Munkalunka.
MARCUS PARKS
We already did Norfolk and Norfolk and it was-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Norfolk was fine!
MARCUS PARKS
Ugh.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
The show was good.
MARCUS PARKS
No, remember that was the show where there was that massive fucking orchestra pit between us and the audience was like 30 feet away.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Strange venue, nice people.
MARCUS PARKS
There was no heat on and it was like 35 degrees outside.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You were very cold. Norfolk had a bigger crowd than Charlottesville.
MARCUS PARKS
It did. But Norfolk also had that record store that was full of bootleg records.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
It was the absolute worst. I mean that guy is such a fucking crook.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
See I went to that great cemetery, the Hollywood Cemetery.
MARCUS PARKS
I should have gone to the cemetery.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It was good.
MARCUS PARKS
But put differently-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I'm sorry.
ED LARSON
Now I can't wait, I hope we go again.
MARCUS PARKS
Oh yeah, of course. Put differently, this is when West Virginia began its transformation into coal country, with all the misery that followed. And as we'll see, the feud between the Hatfields and McCoys is partly responsible for that.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's weird. I guess that was like all of you-
MARCUS PARKS
We'll get into it like way deep later.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes. Like all of you, I am certain, except because we're in Marcus' house right now.
ED LARSON
Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, I know he loves this shit. I love this shit too, by the way.
MARCUS PARKS
I love, yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, I do too. I do too. I have history AIDS, he gave it to me. And I do like it.
MARCUS PARKS
Ed's always had it, we've talked about history for many years.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Absolutely. But most of us that know anything about this fucking story, we really know very little. Like I only know it as a name, again, I know about a bunch of straw hatted, long bearded versions of this story and various cartoons.
MARCUS PARKS
Looney Tunes.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah. But I didn't fully understand that this kind of what was happening right underneath and kind of because of this entire bullshit and it kind of hollowed out that entire part of the country literally.
MARCUS PARKS
But while the Hatfields and the McCoys weren't quite the stereotypical hillbillies that they're often portrayed as, this feud really was killing for killing's sake.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Woo!
MARCUS PARKS
It was pure gang warfare.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah!
ED LARSON
Woo-wee!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Woo!
ED LARSON
Woo! Woo!
MARCUS PARKS
But without any of the motivations behind gang warfare like territory or resources.
ED LARSON
Or money.
MARCUS PARKS
Or money. This is just straight up murder.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Senseless murder.
MARCUS PARKS
Nobody benefits.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Wow.
MARCUS PARKS
Now as far as sources go today... Well actually some do benefit but we'll get into that later.
ED LARSON
Okay.
MARCUS PARKS
Now as far as sources go today, we got two books. The first is 'Blood Feud' by Lisa Alther which provides a succinct retelling of what can be a highly complicated story. The other is 'The Feud' by Dean King which gives more of the bloody details.
ED LARSON
Oh thank god.
MARCUS PARKS
The books however contradict each other constantly, which is in fact the very nature of the story.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
No one involved in the feud left any written accounts because most of them were illiterate and the newspapers at the time used a healthy amount of yellow journalism to juice the facts or straight up lie for a better story.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(Appalachian accent) I tell you what, you don't even try to show me a pencil because I'm gonna use it as gum and steal. Help, I am dying of various cancers.
ED LARSON
Their version of Fox News was when they just chased around a fox to the next town and found out what's going on.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(Appalachian accent) You tell me what's going on! Tell me now!
MARCUS PARKS
(Appalachian accent) Oh shit, I showed up in Pinefield. What's happening?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
My god. Oh it's cloudy, it's mostly cloudy. Thanks, Fox News.
MARCUS PARKS
Additionally, most of the oral histories come from Hatfield and McCoy descendants who of course have their own official juiced up versions that paint the other side as the aggressors while they themselves are rugged individualistic American heroes fighting against a force of pure evil.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Depends on which wolf you feed. It depends on who I am every day. Natalie's trying to pull a little bit of this because her family is from some of that area, the far, far western area of Pennsylvania that goes into West Virginia. And she did the you know I might have some McCoy blood in me. And I was like that is what everybody says. They all say they have the blood of the... If you're from that area, they're like (Appalachian accent) yep, my great grandpappy, he was Hatfield number nine. I don't know, I don't know all the names.
MARCUS PARKS
It's the southern version of the Mayflower.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Sure.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. But somewhere inbetween the Hatfield story and the McCoy story lies the truth. So we're gonna do our best to tell the fairest story we can glean from what the world thinks they know about the Hatfields and the McCoys. Now as far as where all this happened, the Hatfield and McCoy feud occurred on the border between West Virginia and Kentucky on a fork of the Big Sandy River called Tug Valley.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yup.
ED LARSON
Yeah, man. People from West Virginia killing people from Kentucky. What is it, my birthday?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah. Fun! Hey, man. Eddie, have you ever been to Yank Gulch? Horrible place.
MARCUS PARKS
No, it was called Tug Valley supposedly like some of the first guys there, like it's so inhospitable they had to eat their own shoes.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No, it's a bad place to be.
MARCUS PARKS
They had to eat their tugs on their boots.
ED LARSON
Because if you boil the leather, that's where the expression comes from. Right?
MARCUS PARKS
What?
ED LARSON
If this is true, I'll eat my own shoe.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I think that just comes from Saddam Hussein. Didn't he say that? Or was it Werner Herzog?
MARCUS PARKS
I've always preferred 'eat my own hat'.
ED LARSON
Oh that's a good one.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(Appalachian accent) I'll eat my hat. Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Could be a Texas thing. Well this was a difficult, densely forested, highly undesirable place to live when whites first began settling there for farming purposes. Although there were of course plenty of native tribes already there who'd been doing just fine with the land for centuries.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But they didn't want them there.
MARCUS PARKS
No.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
So I believe they called it like the bloody land or the cursed land. They tried to do the thing-
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Where they're like you don't wanna go over there, there's a lot of fucking crazy ghosts over there. And you kind of believe them.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Yeah, I think it was like when someone walks outside and fires a gun in the air every night just so gentrification doesn't happen.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I love that idea.
MARCUS PARKS
But as far as the types of people who settled the area went, you had a crew pretty similar to what you had out west years later. You had former indentured servants, escaped enslaved people, and of course criminals galore. But because it was such an unforgiving land, the people who lived there were tough and extraordinarily independent due to the fact that the terrain itself prevented any sort of infrastructure from forming until the dawn of the Industrial Age.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
We're about to find out what tough and extraordinarily independent people are gonna be emailing us at the end of the series.
MARCUS PARKS
Accidental death was common, crop failures occurred constantly, storms battered cabins, and settlers were under constant attacks from natives whose land they'd invaded, in addition to bandits who took advantage of an ungovernable land. That's also why we don't know a lot about it is because recordkeeping was spotty to say the least.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah. Oh yeah.
ED LARSON
They wrote with their feet.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
They were being actively murdered by their house.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
In fact before the Civil War, the Tug Valley had no roads or rails, it had very few schools or churches, it basically ignored calendars. And when the Transcontinental Telegraph System began to crawl across the country in the 1860s, they bypassed this area of the country completely because the Telegraph Company figured they had nothing to say.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(Appalachian accent) How dare you! I got plenty to say. All right, give me that telegraph machine. You better come back here. Get, go get. Go on, get. Stop. Go on get now. Stop. All right. Now can you tell me how much money this is?
MARCUS PARKS
But since there was no law to speak of, a man's reputation for violence was the only thing that kept neighbors and bandits in check. That meant that if someone attacked you and yours, it was in your best interest to come back hard with such brutality that word would spread about how violent you were willing to be. This partly explains why so many people in this story have the 'bad' modifier attached to their name, like Bad Jim Vance or Bad Frank Phillips.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I assure you, my name is Bad Frank Phillips because I'm bad at being Frank Phillips. It is not going well for me.
ED LARSON
Do not call me Paul!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Please.
ED LARSON
Do not!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Do not.
ED LARSON
Hello, my name is Sal.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I'm the Bad Sal. I'm the Bad Sal.
MARCUS PARKS
But since nobody really moved to the valley to work for someone else and since none of the settlers could afford to enslave other people, families were their own labor force and were therefore massive.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Probably also it's one of the only fun things they got to do, which is fucking and coming inside.
MARCUS PARKS
Oh it really is. In the Tug Valley, sex was very... Like people-
ED LARSON
I'm gonna laugh.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It better be.
ED LARSON
Every once in a while I'm gonna laugh at Tug Valley.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
No, I mean people fucked and sucked constantly. Babies born out of wedlock were very common.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And where babies weren't happening, it was on Jerk Mountain. None of these are written down. This is great.
MARCUS PARKS
Well as far as the main players in the Hatfield and McCoy families went, Randall McCoy had 16 children, while Anderson Hatfield had 13. And here my friends is where we're gonna get into the prime movers behind the Hatfield and McCoy feud, starting with Anderson 'Devil Anse' Hatfield.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
My favorite portrayal of him so far. I went and I watched as much as I could of Hatfield & McCoy like new media. It's all fucking awful.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Are you talking about the TV movie from like 1978?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I sent it to you, yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Jack Palance as Devil Anse is amazing because we were saying before a lot of times back in these days, everybody who's gonna play an Appalachian, they go move to West Virginia.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Like Daniel Day Lewis is there, he's whittling, hanging out with everybody and all that kind of shit. Jack Palance obviously could not give a fucking shit. And he is just Jack Palance.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
With a fake beard on.
ED LARSON
It's so funny. I watched a little bit of it, you sent it. It's amazing, I can't wait to finish it. But every time he acts, it's like-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I'll tell you what-
ED LARSON
It's like he's having a heart attack while he gives his lines.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He's so scary. I tell you what now, that's my pig now, hey, that's my pig.
MARCUS PARKS
A man has to defend his hog.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes, he's intense.
MARCUS PARKS
Now no one's exactly sure where Devil Anse Hatfield got his nickname. But as is common with his tale, multiple explanations exist. One was that when Devil Anse was a child, he got into a barehanded fight with a cougar and survived, which caused his mother to say that even the devil wouldn't scare her son. Anse is of course a contraction of the name Anderson, which took me fucking days to figure out.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Never understood that, did not know that that was possible.
MARCUS PARKS
Anson. It's just Anse, Anderson, Anson, Anse.
ED LARSON
They don't speak right.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's different.
MARCUS PARKS
I mean admittedly the Texas accent is wildly different from this one.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
But they're cousins.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Flar.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You say flar.
MARCUS PARKS
Flar. Well another story is that one of the McCoys said that Anderson was quote "6 ft of devil and 180 lbs of hell".
ED LARSON
Hell yeah, man. That's fucking awesome.
MARCUS PARKS
That's really fucking cool.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Yet another is that he defended a mountain ridge called the Devil's Backbone against an entire Union platoon during the Civil War.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Isn't there a movie called The Devil's Backbone?
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, it's a Benicio Del Toro movie.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No, it's not Benicio Del Toro.
ED LARSON
Are you thinking of Airborne?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Talking about Air Bud?
ED LARSON
No, Airborne, the rollerblading movie and they have to go down the Devil's Backbone in Cincinnati.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I did not know that.
ED LARSON
Jack Black and Seth Green.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No, I'm thinking of the Guillermo del Toro movie. Benicio Del Toro-
MARCUS PARKS
Oh Benicio Del Toro.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's The Devil's Backbone. Again, it's boring.
ED LARSON
Yeah. Not Airborne, though. I love it.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No.
ED LARSON
That's great fish out of water.
MARCUS PARKS
Well another explanation which I think is most likely is that there were two Anderson Hatfields in Tug Valley, they were cousins. And since Devil Anse was the more wiley of the two, he got the nickname Devil, while the more mild mannered Anderson got Preacher Anse who will play a huge part in this story in the hog trial to come.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Wasn't that the idea... Because wasn't Preacher Anse, like the guy that was the good guy? Am I wrong?
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, he was the good one.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah. But he was the one that kind of like consulted with Devil Anse during the feud. Am I wrong?
MARCUS PARKS
Preacher Anse was a part of the feud definitely.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes but he was like the good guy.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, he was the good one. Yeah.
ED LARSON
Yeah, like how cops are good.
MARCUS PARKS
But as far as Devil Anse's ancestry in the region went, his great grandfather Ephraim Hatfield nicknamed 'Eph of All' because all the Tug Fork Hatfields descended from him, he'd moved to the Tug Fork in 1820 with his wife and 10 children.
ED LARSON
Jesus.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's really weird, for some reason I imagine that he's like 20 ft tall and he's like 25 ft wide and he's just like full of Hatfields.
MARCUS PARKS
What like a possum?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Got a bunch of nipples and all the Hatfields are hanging from them.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah. (Appalachian accent) That's my home. That's my home.
ED LARSON
Was there no infant mortality rate back then?
MARCUS PARKS
There was a huge infant mortality rate.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah but they just kept gooshing.
ED LARSON
They still had 10?
MARCUS PARKS
These women are pregnant from the time they're like 14 until they hit menopause.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Or they die.
ED LARSON
And they're just falling out of them.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah. They kick up the leg, the baby flies out, it's picking, it's digging for coal.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Two weeks later, fucking Big Eph is fucking you again.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Bam-bam-bam! Bam! Machine gunning. Some of them are automatic. Those are the scary ones.
MARCUS PARKS
That's amazing. Well Ephraim begat Valentine who begat Big Eph, Devil Anse's father, who was rumored to be 7ft tall and 300 lbs.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Woo!
MARCUS PARKS
True to the nature of the area, men would travel from all corners of the Tug Valley to wrestle Big Eph to establish their reputation as a guy who could handle himself.
ED LARSON
That shit's real.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's the thing. If you're in Tug Valley, right, you gotta wrestle fucking Big Eph in the center of Tug Valley.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But it's one thing to pin him, but it's another thing to fall in love. (Appalachian accent) And that's when Big Eph, well that was his downfall, weren't it?
MARCUS PARKS
Devil Anse's mother however, Nance Vance, was a-
ED LARSON
Goddamnit.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Just get used to it.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. She was a so-called woods colt child. Colt, that's woods colt child. That's C-O-L-T, which was the local term for a baby born out of wedlock, named after the instances when domestic mares were impregnated by wild stallions. A colt that is born in the woods, yeah.
ED LARSON
Yeah. So these are the first horse women.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
A bastard horse.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
It's a bastard horse, yes. Now concerning her origin story, before the Vances moved to Tug Valley, a man named Lewis Horton had taken Nance's mother Betsy to Baltimore, then brought her home pregnant and unmarried.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Hey man, if I haven't heard that story out of Baltimore 95 times, I haven't heard it once.
MARCUS PARKS
Actually that does sound like a pretty good euphemism for knocking someone up and then leaving them, taking them to Baltimore.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
We love Baltimore.
MARCUS PARKS
We love Baltimore, it's one of my favorite cities.
ED LARSON
It's a really cool city.
MARCUS PARKS
It's one of my favorite cities in the entire country, I adore Baltimore.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Take her to Baltimore.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
But after he got her pregnant, Lewis dropped Betsy on her father's front porch and said quote:
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
"Here's your heifer, you take care of her."
MARCUS PARKS
Harsh.
ED LARSON
That's insulting.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, that's gonna raise your hackles.
ED LARSON
Yeah, yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
In retaliation, Betsy's father murdered Lewis Horton.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, buddy.
MARCUS PARKS
He either shot him or drowned him in the river, we don't really know which one.
ED LARSON
Probably both.
MARCUS PARKS
Probably. Shoot him and then throw him in the river.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He ain't dead enough.
MARCUS PARKS
He then escaped to what is now West Virginia and staked a claim in the Tug Fork Valley. But in an incredibly stupid move, the elder Vance later returned to the town where he'd murdered Lewis Horton hoping that everyone had just forgotten that he'd killed a guy.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's an old school excuse.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You don't see it a lot anymore. But it's fun to... That was also kind of back to the time where they might have.
MARCUS PARKS
They might have.
ED LARSON
Yeah. How long did he wait, do you know?
MARCUS PARKS
Not that long.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Not long enough.
ED LARSON
Couple months.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, he walks in just like ah!
ED LARSON
I'd take my time.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Honestly why did I leave Tug Valley? He forgets himself.
MARCUS PARKS
They had not forgotten. And the Vance was subsequently convicted of murder and hanged. Hatfield legend had it that on his way to the gallows, the elder Vance stood on his coffin, sang a song of injustice-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(singing) (Appalachian accent) They're hanging me for no reason, that ain't hard to see, you gotta see, I'm going in a second... They're like how long is this song?
MARCUS PARKS
The song was incredibly long.
ED LARSON
Any last words?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(singing)
MARCUS PARKS
After the song, he then talked for an hour and a half.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(singing) Second verse, same as the first! A little bit louder and a little bit worse!
MARCUS PARKS
(singing) Second verse, same as the first! A little bit louder and a little bit worse!
ED LARSON
(singing) Second verse, same as the first! A little bit louder and a little bit worse!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He does another three hour set like he's Dave Chappelle.
MARCUS PARKS
Well supposedly Governor James Monroe arrived just after the hanging to pardon the elder Vance.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You're pardoned. Yeah, he's fucking dead, yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
But all attempts to resuscitate Betsy's father failed. From the story though, Devil Anse supposedly learned the lesson that when the government gets involved, injustice is likely to occur.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Tell us about it, brother.
MARCUS PARKS
Therefore if a man... If the government didn't exist, you would be dead decades ago.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I would be a very funny captive amongst other strong men. My goal would be to position myself within, which I've already done. I would position myself in the center of a bunch of very strong men, yeah. And be the morale.
MARCUS PARKS
Of course, everyone needs morale. But because of this, Devil Anse came to believe that if a man needs justice, he's better off taking it upon himself to dole out whatever punishment he sees fit.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Pig justice.
ED LARSON
That's right. Hog justice, please.
MARCUS PARKS
Please. Talking hogs, not pigs. Now as far as Devil Anse's appearance went, he was not a handsome man.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No.
MARCUS PARKS
And was sometimes said to resemble a worried troll.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(Appalachian accent) Hey! I guess I am worried. It's actually kind of difficult out here.
MARCUS PARKS
He had this big, long, awful nose. He looked kind of like sick Rasputin is how I would describe him.
ED LARSON
Okay.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. He did however have charisma and he often used his high pitched nasal voice to tell tall tales and jokes, all of which was very endearing.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Comedy helps.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. This was in stark contrast to his rival and antagonist, Randall McCoy.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yup.
MARCUS PARKS
Now as opposed to Devil Anse, Randall McCoy had few stories that lived on, partly because he was an old coot that nobody liked and partly because he lost a lot of children in the feud and there weren't as many people to pass down his stories.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I tried to figure this out, right. This is at the very top of this series, so we'll unpack it more. But who's the good guys and who are the bad guys?
ED LARSON
No one's neither.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Right?
MARCUS PARKS
It's hard to tell. I mean it kind of-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Like in terms of society. Because Randall McCoy technically was like lazy and he didn't work hard, where they say that was a stereotype about him. And then Devil Anse was hard working but he also sort of was like a bloodthirsty capitalist.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. It's really hard to, there's really no good guy. I mean I guess it depends on your point of view. But yeah, I mean Devil Anse was definitely the more likable one.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Or is he just more entertaining? Likable and entertaining are very different,
MARCUS PARKS
Very true.
ED LARSON
They are both cold-blooded murderers.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Some guys are still great. Look at Barack Obama, I wanna hang out with him.
ED LARSON
Oh man, what a great kill count he has.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah. He'd be fun.
MARCUS PARKS
What we do know is that Randall was born in 1825 and he married his first cousin, Sarah McCoy, some years later.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(Appalachian accent) It's nice, you go back to the family wick.
ED LARSON
(Appalachian accent) Yeah, I like her cause she looks like me. It's like jerking off.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(Appalachian accent) I guess I should have stayed on Jerk Mountain.
MARCUS PARKS
(Appalachian accent) Nope, that's why I moved into Tug Valley!
ED LARSON
Tug Valley is when you jerk off into a woman's vagina.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Her vagina.
ED LARSON
Yeah. Just so people know.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I put the tug in Tug Valley and you put the bucket in bucket woman.
ED LARSON
Sometimes you skip some of the lower facts.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Thank you. I'm glad you're here. He's been doing good work.
MARCUS PARKS
Well Randall was a known gossip and was in fact taken to court by his cousin, Pleasant McCoy, for spreading a rumor that Pleasant had fucked a cow. Randall was also known to be just an all around miserable bastard who could clear a room because nobody wanted to be around to hear his constant complaining about everything. But in another contrast to Devil Anse Hatfield, Randall McCoy's first choice for a confrontation was not usually violence but frivolous lawsuits which were extremely common in the Tug Valley.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You know it probably helped a lot of violence from happening because then you can kind of do all this. But it's just country court.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
It's country court, yeah. This however was not because Randall McCoy was not a violent man, rather it was mostly because his wife was a deeply religious woman who took the concept of turning the other cheek seriously. And Randall often did what his wife said. But much to Randall McCoy's harm, in a place where violence equaled respect and inaction equaled weakness, turning the other cheek only emboldened the Hatfields and led to the deaths of many of Randall and Sarah's children. Now one of the big misconceptions about the Hatfield and McCoy feud was that every Hatfield hated every McCoy, and that a fight or a gun battle was likely to break out between them if they ever crossed paths. Now this was true for some but not the majority.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Kinda unfortunately. Because I love the idea of like (Appalachian accent) every Hatfield hates every McCoy! Every McCoy hates every Hatfield.
MARCUS PARKS
Like you picture Gangs of New York.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
You picture like these two huge gangs, these teams that all got clubs and bats and they're across the river and they're about to fucking just bump upon each other like it's a big British battle.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But that's just like when we covered Biggie and Tupac and all these various, these types of things, you start to see it's a little bit more complicated.
MARCUS PARKS
Much more.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Most people are just trying to live their lives not being in a bloody feud.
ED LARSON
Also there's not that many other people around.
MARCUS PARKS
I mean there's hundreds.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
There's enough, yeah.
ED LARSON
Hundreds, exactly.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Well in terms of fighting, there's enough and hanging cause it's a small area. And so they would meet together as a community fairly often but it was for giant special events.
ED LARSON
Like hangings.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes, like hangings, their favorite.
MARCUS PARKS
Everyone loved the hangings.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And then every court, every time they'd have like a country court thing, they'd all get to show up and hang out, do a bunch of shit. It was kind of an excuse to hang out, like what we do with work.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Many of the Hatfields and McCoys actually intermingled and intermarried and most of them didn't participate in the feud at all. Speaking to Randall McCoy's popularity even within his own family, only one third of his force were real McCoys, so to speak. And even those were essentially bullied into participating. Really the main reason why people started coming to Randall McCoy's side was because the Hatfields were too powerful for McCoy to beat. And since so many of these guys had experience with guerilla combat due to the Civil War-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
The feud was never gonna stop until some lawful resolution against the Hatfields could be reached.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But then that calls in the government and then they get to do whatever they want with your land.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, yeah. Now as far as why the Hatfields were more powerful than the McCoys, it all came down to a crooked land deal that would come back to bite Devil Anse in the ass years after the swindle went down.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Now this is where we head deep into Marcus territory.
MARCUS PARKS
I mean it's important.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But just remember, this is history, you gotta learn it.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Land deals are a part of it.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, they absolutely are. If you didn't know about the land deal, the rest of the story is not gonna make any fucking sense.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
All I know is big hats, long beards.
MARCUS PARKS
See there had been a man in the Tug Fork Valley named Jacob Cline, nicknamed Rich Jake presumably because he owns 6000 acres of land. It's a lot of land.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
His nearest neighbor was Devil Anse Hatfield, who at the time had no land other than a small plot where his cabin was.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That was because his father for some reason cut him out of the legacy-
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And he gave land, equal amount of land to all the rest of his brothers. He didn't get anything and they mostly think it's just because he was an asshole.
MARCUS PARKS
Well maybe not asshole but uncontrollable, wiley.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He wanted it too much.
MARCUS PARKS
He was wild.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
He was very wild and you couldn't trust Devil Anse.
ED LARSON
His name is Devil.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Well again, his name is Anderson.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, his name is Anderson.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
So eventually the Devil, then you gotta kind of act the part.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
But after Rich Jake died, the land passed to his son Perry Cline.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Perry Cline is a name that doesn't belong in this either. It sounds like somebody that was on Designing Women.
ED LARSON
Someone had to be a lawyer.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. And Perry Cline did eventually become an attorney.
ED LARSON
There we go!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yep.
MARCUS PARKS
After a lot of legal maneuvering, bullying, and palm greasing, Devil Anse snatched 5000 of Perry Cline's 6000 inherited acres, making Devil Anse one of the largest landowners in the valley virtually overnight. Perry Cline moved to the nearest city, became an attorney, and would later side with the McCoys.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah. Slowly, waiting.
MARCUS PARKS
Devil Anse was now the owner of thousands of acres of forest, which turned him into a relatively small time timber baron. And it would be his loyal employees and those who had an economic interest in Devil Anse's timber operation who would make up a large part of the Hatfield force in the feud.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
This is definitely where you get sort of the sleepy history part but it is slightly interesting.
MARCUS PARKS
It's extremely interesting!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Not this part.
ED LARSON
This is extremely interesting.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I'm just saying-
ED LARSON
I just learned that they're all not family members and it's like random yahoos fucking killing people!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I'm saying my fact, I was couching my fact which is that before this time period, oftentimes when people would move into the Appalachian area, they would gather sustenance from the forest. And they would do wild hog raising where the hogs would go out in the forest and then they would go and find them and time to get them to slaughter them, they would go and find their own individual hogs. Now this is when it started to change where they realized instead of getting our sustenance from the forest, the forest itself would be our money making area.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, our commodity. Because right around the time that Devil Anse got a hold of the timber, this was after the Civil War. And if you'll remember, during the Civil War a lot of buildings got burned down.
ED LARSON
Yes.
MARCUS PARKS
A lot of shit got destroyed and a lot of shit needed to be reconstructed. So therefore, having a timber operation on the fucking border of the Confederacy-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's big money.
MARCUS PARKS
Was big fucking money.
ED LARSON
Yeah. Kentucky was burned down, everything was burned down.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
I mean this is like Sherman's March. Well Sherman, I mean that was Georgia but still.
ED LARSON
But he had to get there.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
All those places got hurt.
MARCUS PARKS
But when it comes to the long simmering resentments that actually led to the Hatfield-McCoy feud, we're actually gonna travel back to the Civil War.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I feel like, yes. I feel it.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, we're gonna go back to the point before Devil Anse became a landowner, before Randall McCoy got pissed off at him. We are now in 1863.
ED LARSON
Okay.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(coughing) I'm coughing. The sound of 1863.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. And now we're going to get into the aforementioned guerilla warfare that occurred on the borderlands between the Union and the Confederacy, ie the Tug Valley. See during the Civil War, Kentucky remained in the Union while Virginia seceded to the Confederacy. But in 1863, West Virginia seceded from the Confederacy to rejoin the Union, which is why we still have Virginia and West Virginia.
ED LARSON
Okay, that makes sense.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Cool.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Good.
MARCUS PARKS
That's a fun little factoid.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's a fact.
ED LARSON
Kentucky was very split down the middle.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
ED LARSON
It was technically Union but it was also like half the motherfuckers were Confederacy people.
MARCUS PARKS
Oh of course.
ED LARSON
But that's where you get into the brother vs brother shit.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, that's where you get to the guerilla warfare.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Matthew Broderick. Was that Glory?
MARCUS PARKS
Glory. Yeah, Glory.
ED LARSON
(singing) Oh my lord, lord, lord! I love that shit.
MARCUS PARKS
Now some Virginian soldiers switched sides to the Union when West Virginia was created but others remained in the Confederacy and became extraordinarily violent and effective guerilla fighters. Basically this is Vietnam in Appalachia. As a estimate to how dangerous and brutal the Tug Valley in particular was, future president James Garfield, then a Union colonel, wrote that the people of the Valley excelled at bloodletting and he was shocked by the quote "bitter, remorseless killing".
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I'm shocked that my name would be used for a fat orange cat.
ED LARSON
Yeah. How he didn't have Odie as his VP is like still insulting to this day.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I am so mad.
ED LARSON
So much time together, he's there for you every fucking day.
MARCUS PARKS
Nermal is Secretary of State.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I can't believe it. War criminal.
MARCUS PARKS
Well in a classic Civil War testimony, and if we may get the obligatory Ken Burns Civil War music while I read this.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Every single Hatfield and McCoy documentary makes me feel like I'm waiting on line to go on Splash Mountain.
ED LARSON
Is that a bad thing?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I'm just saying, it's all the same. The story of the Hatfield and McCoys is a lot more complicated than you think.
ED LARSON
Do you know what I learned recently? You know the difference between a violin and a fiddle? A fiddle is played by a racist person.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Coming for you, fiddles!
MARCUS PARKS
I take offense to that.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Your cousin.
MARCUS PARKS
My cousin Liz of the Urban Pioneers.
ED LARSON
She's wonderful.
MARCUS PARKS
Fantastic fiddle player. Go listen to the Urban Pioneers.
ED LARSON
I'm sorry that she is-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And you love fiddle music.
ED LARSON
I think I love fiddle music, it's just a good joke and there's nothing I can do about it.
MARCUS PARKS
Well James Garfield-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
We'll have the music come in.
MARCUS PARKS
Well James Garfield had this to say about his campaign in the Tug Valley. (fiddle music plays) "We were there to root out the infernal devil that has made this valley a home of fiends and converted this war into a black hole in which to murder any man that any soldier from envy, lust, or revenge, hated." James Garfield, 1861.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Turn off that fucking TV, Marcus! Turn that shit off! It's time to watch football!
ED LARSON
Oh man.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
The music is so soothing.
MARCUS PARKS
It is.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But I was watching documentary after documentary just (snoring). McCoy did what?
ED LARSON
It's like Fiddler on the Roof if there was no roof.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It is. Fiddler on my aunt's butthole. I love that musical.
MARCUS PARKS
Now it's suggested by some historians that it was the confusion of living in the borderlands that added kindle to the fire when the feud came 20 years later, because some were Union and some were Confederate. But in reality, loyalties were a mess even within the families themselves. There were Hatfields who fought for the Confederacy and Hatfields who fought for the Union. And even within the feud forces 20 years later, two McCoys who participated served the Union, while another was a dyed-in-the-wool Confederate. But as far as Randall McCoy went, we don't even know who he supported or if he even cared at all who won.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He didn't want to be involved.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Although it could be inferred that he was probably a Union man because he was buried in a cemetery named after a Union colonel who hired free black men and led Union forces. That was a huge, I mean that was a huge, huge thing in post Civil War America.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah. I might be wrong, so please sidestorieslpotl@gmail.com. But it did seem to be at the time period the sentiment is that if you're not choosing a side, you're choosing the Union. You know what I mean? That's how the Confederates viewed it because they were highly passionate about slavery and everybody else was not.
ED LARSON
Also I imagine where they're from, I mean I'm probably wrong when I say this, but wasn't attacked that much just because of all the fucking mountains and hills.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I mean who knows?
MARCUS PARKS
Well that's where the guerilla warfare comes in.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. But apart from all that, Randall McCoy was 35 when the war started and had no interest in serving at his age. Devil Anse meanwhile was 21 when the war broke out. He ended up fighting for the Confederacy but not for the reasons you might think. To show just how petty, complicated, and nonsensical people's participation in the Civil War could be on the borderlands, Devil Anse probably would have joined the Union side if not for the fact that he'd been accused of being a Confederate spy by a Union general before he made the decision. So Devil Anse joined the Confederacy, not because he wanted to defend the institution of slavery-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Because no one in the area could afford to even have them.
MARCUS PARKS
Nor did he join out of fear of what freed black people meant, which that was what people who couldn't afford slaves, that was part of their reason for finding.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Their fear of it.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But they were so far from fucking anything.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Nor did he join for so-called state's rights, which is what a lot of other people said, like we wanna have the right to do whatever the fuck we want to do, even if it is slavery.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
And he didn't do it to defend his land from invaders, at least at first, which is what other guys used as a justification for fighting for the Confederacy. True to form concerning his later thirst for revenge, Devil Anse joined the Confederate army for no reason more complicated than a personal grudge.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I got a reason. Fuck them! Sometimes that's all you need.
MARCUS PARKS
You know what, man? You say that and now I like I'm thinking about back to my ancestors who fought in the Civil War, admittedly for the Confederacy.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Goddamn, I can see a fucking ancestor of mine saying exactly that. Because fuck them!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Fuck them!
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Because they say partially there really was... One vibe I got was that people were afraid of any form of massive systemic change.
MARCUS PARKS
Yes.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And so the idea that you're kind of saying here, the idea of like any change they want to kind of fight against because they don't want anything change about the situation they got. Especially Devil Anse.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He's got it pretty fucking sweet, even though he's working his fucking ass off.
MARCUS PARKS
Well at 21 actually at this point he had nothing.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Back when he was 21 years old, yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
This is before he got all the land?
MARCUS PARKS
Way before.
ED LARSON
Yeah, he hasn't stolen all the acres yet.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Oh all right, yeah. I don't know why, yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, no. He's full of piss and vinegar.
ED LARSON
Yup.
MARCUS PARKS
That's basically it. He wants to fight for somebody but he doesn't know for who.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
More piss than vinegar.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. I mean he realized that he wants to fight for somebody, he's a violent person. But he doesn't really know which one to choose until a Union general sees him from across the river and goes 'there sir is a Confederate spy. Go get him.'
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
And then there's a chase, Devil Anse gets away, and by the time he gets away he says fuck them!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
And goes and joins the Confederacy.
ED LARSON
You say that really good, Marcus.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, yeah. It's fun to do.
MARCUS PARKS
Mayhaps it be because I've heard that phrase many times throughout my life.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Back in Texas, the Parks Family Crest might as well just say fuck them!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Fuck them!
ED LARSON
Yeah. See in Jersey, it's more fuck these motherfuckers.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, I get it.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, fuck these motherfuckers.
MARCUS PARKS
Well further proving that Devil Anse had no real loyalty to the Confederacy, he and 44 other men deserted the Confederate army after the Battle of Gettysburg. Now some say it was because Devil Anse had been ordered to hunt down and execute his uncle for desertion. More likely though, Devil Anse and the other deserters had seen after Gettysburg the south is probably gonna lose the war.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And it sounded like the Battle of Gettysburg wasn't like cool. Like it sounded like it was like bad.
MARCUS PARKS
It was real bad.
ED LARSON
Wasn't it was like 100,000 people or some shit?
MARCUS PARKS
I don't know the exact body count but it's not as bad as like Antietam.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
I think that's the most American lives lost in a single day is at Antietam. But Gettysburg was very bad.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, these Civil War battles are like not fun. It's all the infection, the mud.
ED LARSON
It's like three days of fucking just people laying there screaming, bleeding.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
ED LARSON
Fucking horses dead everywhere. There's so many dead horses.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's so bad that I feel like even doing the reenactment looks fucking horrible.
MARCUS PARKS
It's kind of hard, yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
I mean more men died from disease than from battles.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah. which I'm saying is worse.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I think that's worse than fucking just getting shot in the head.
MARCUS PARKS
It's really bad, yeah. Well as I said, Devil Anse after Gettysburg and all these other guys, they saw the South's gonna lose the war. And considering the scorched earth tactics employed during Sherman's March a year later, Devil Anse and his men returned to Tug Fork to defend it from Union attacks. And so once Devil Anse returned to Tug Fork, he formed a 600 man guerilla band called the Logan Wildcats.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Woo!
ED LARSON
Fuck yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Their purpose, they claimed, was to defend the valley against avenging Union troops, which was indeed a problem as it always is when armies march through populated areas. Just because they're Union doesn't mean they're morally sound.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
They're armies.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(Appalachian accent) I'm just happy we're all getting together. Because number one, we're gonna defend our land against these Union soldiers. Number two, we're gonna play the world's largest game of Dungeons & Dragons. And I got all the snacks!
MARCUS PARKS
But while protection against the other side is understandable, the Logan Wildcats and other borderland guerilla groups like them also terrorized and murdered families in the Tug Valley who supported the Union, even if those people were just minding their own business trying to eke out a living in the middle of an active war zone. These men were not heroes.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah. And this was not really the time period to do the thing where you have a sign out front that says like choose love. This house chooses beer. I need that.
MARCUS PARKS
That's a good one. This house chooses beer.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
ED LARSON
This is like Renee Zellweger Cold Mountain time, right?
MARCUS PARKS
I never saw that.
ED LARSON
Oh it's horrible.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah. Yeah, it sucks, man. Reese Witherspoon fucking sucks.
ED LARSON
It wasn't Reese, was it? It was Nicole Kidman and Renee Zellweger.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah, it was bad. Renee Zellweger.
ED LARSON
And you know what? It wasn't even that cold.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It could have been colder.
ED LARSON
That's all we're saying.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Coldest mountain.
MARCUS PARKS
Hyperbole. But as it happened, the most ruthless-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I'm sorry, Reese Witherspoon. I attacked you.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, you did just attack Reese Witherspoon.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Come on the show.
MARCUS PARKS
Sure, why not?
ED LARSON
She's wonderful. Reese's Pieces.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
She is good. She is actually, she's fine.
MARCUS PARKS
But as it happened, the most ruthless of the Logan Wildcats was the very uncle that Devil Anse had supposedly been ordered to execute. That was Devil Anse's uncle on his mother's side, Bad Jim Vance. Reportedly Bad Jim had a condition that seemed to be fairly common in Appalachia that caused his eyes to bulge from his head and roll around on their own accord. But as people who knew him put it, he could draw a pistol faster than a copperhead could strike.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(Appalachian accent) You give me a crayon, I fucking draw. I draw a gun so fast. I don't care that I don't know where the paper is.
MARCUS PARKS
In other words, his condition made him a tough son of a bitch because he most likely grew up beating the shit out of kids who made fun of him.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's great training.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
And continued to strike whenever necessary as an adult against anyone stupid enough to crack wise about his eyes.
ED LARSON
It's like Dick Butkus. He's got that horrible name and he kicked everyone's ass his whole life.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You can't handle, yeah. Dick Butkus had to turn into a guy who kicked the shit out of people.
ED LARSON
RIP.
MARCUS PARKS
I think he wanted to fucking go for it because he could have easily have went for Richard Butkus.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Richard.
ED LARSON
Yeah, yeah, yeah. He's like come on, call me Dick Butkus, I dare you.
MARCUS PARKS
Call me Dick.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It like on his license.
MARCUS PARKS
So after leaving another guerilla group called General Witcher's Raiders who were known to slaughter Union supporters en masse and raze farms while flying a black flag, Bad Jim joined his nephew Devil Anse Hatfield and the Logan Wildcats. Seemingly the Wildcats spent more time searching for targets than they did defending against Union troops. But even though there were a lot of guys in Tug Fork who had joined the Union, the ire of the Logan Wildcats and therefore the ire of the Hatfields focused on a man named Harmon McCoy.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(Appalachian accent) Now I don't know why everyone has to come at me, Harmon McCoy. I'm a simple... What was he?
MARCUS PARKS
Harmon?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Harmon.
MARCUS PARKS
I think he was a colonel.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(Appalachian accent) Yeah. I'm just a little bit of corn. I don't know why everybody's so mad at me.
MARCUS PARKS
Now Harmon McCoy got on Devil Anse's bad side because Harmon was the guy who chased after Devil Anse when the Union General said hey, there's a spy over there.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, that's the reason.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. And that's the whole reason, remember that's the whole reason why Devil Anse joined the fucking Confederacy.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, it's a lot of stuff.
ED LARSON
Oh okay.
MARCUS PARKS
Now Devil Anse might have been able to forget the accusation but Harmon had also shot one of Devil Anse's friends in the chest and stolen his horses.
ED LARSON
That'll do it.
MARCUS PARKS
That'll do it. So Devil Anse first tracked down the general who accused him of espionage, he started cleaning house, and he shot him in his home while he was taking a piss in his chamber pot.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's like old school. That's gangster fucking shit.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. That's just walking up behind someone and popping him in the back of the head.
ED LARSON
He's a fucking general too.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, a general.
ED LARSON
That's crazy.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. And this is while the war is like still happening, I mean it's winding down, it's near the end of it.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
But still. Pretty soon after, the Logan Wildcats tracked down Harmon McCoy and attempted to assassinate him while he was drawing water from his well. After feeling a bullet whizz past his face, Harmon quickly gathered supplies and fled to a nearby cave to wait things out.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Just him hanging upside down from a stalactite. That's all I see in my head.
MARCUS PARKS
They can't tell I'm not a bat.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I am not a bat.
ED LARSON
Now was this in Kentucky?
MARCUS PARKS
This is... Actually I don't know if this is the Kentucky side or the West Virginia side.
ED LARSON
There's a bunch of caves in Kentucky, I know that much.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's super close.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's very, very close.
MARCUS PARKS
I mean this is all borderland stuff, so it's close enough to not make much of a difference.
ED LARSON
Okay.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(Appalachian accent) What does it matter state line when it comes down to blood being spilled?
MARCUS PARKS
On the water. But just as soon as Harmon McCoy started making his way home, he found that the Logan Wildcats had been waiting and he was subsequently shot and killed. Now Devil Anse said that he had nothing to do with the murder of Harmon McCoy, claiming that he was sick at home in bed at the time.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Achoo, achoo!
MARCUS PARKS
In fact, this would be Devil Anse's alibi again and again throughout the feud, that he couldn't possibly be held responsible because he was at home with the sniffles when such and such murder occurred.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(Appalachian accent) Ain't none of you bitches ever have allergies?
MARCUS PARKS
Even so, it was probably Bad Jim Vance who had killed Harmon McCoy. There was not however sufficient evidence to prosecute, especially since there was the matter of the ongoing Civil War which ended just three months after Harmon McCoy was killed. It's a time that I would imagine a lot of scores were getting settled.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah.
ED LARSON
Oh yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because truly some of these guys probably don't even know that the war is over.
MARCUS PARKS
Might not.
ED LARSON
Yeah. No one's looking. Just so many extra dead bodies.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
If the news hasn't gotten to you, you're still fighting the war.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. But the fact that Big Jim Vance probably killed Harmon McCoy, that didn't stop one of the main antagonists in the feud to come, Randall McCoy, from blaming Devil Anse. See Randall McCoy was Harmon McCoy's brother.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Just absorb this.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Remember this as we go, there are some names. You did a fantastic job of slimming out some of the names.
MARCUS PARKS
Thank you.
ED LARSON
There are so many motherfuckers. This is like expert level Game of Thrones shit.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Just remember, so we got Devil Anse, he's the main dude.
MARCUS PARKS
Devil Anse Hatfield, that's the main Hatfield.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Robert Stack. Not Robert Stack, what's his name?
MARCUS PARKS
Harry Dean Stanton?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No, the guy from Game of Thrones.
MARCUS PARKS
He kind of looks like Harry Dean Stanton.
ED LARSON
Oh, which one? The good guy?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Stark.
MARCUS PARKS
Stark.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
So you got Ned Stark. Robert Stack, Unsolved Mysteries. You've got Ned Stark, right. That's him, right? Devil Anse.
ED LARSON
I don't think anyone's a Stark.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
The other guy is the guy from the island town.
MARCUS PARKS
No, I would say that if anyone-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Am I helping?
MARCUS PARKS
No.
ED LARSON
No.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Rivendell. All right, so you got Rivendell.
MARCUS PARKS
If we're gonna lay it out, I would say if we did transpose this to Game of Thrones, Devil Anse would probably be a Lannister.
ED LARSON
Yeah. They had money.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
The old Lannister.
MARCUS PARKS
The one with the money. And yeah, I would say the McCoys would probably be, yeah, the people on the sea.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
The island people.
MARCUS PARKS
The island people, yeah.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Because they don't got shit for shit.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah but they're bitter.
MARCUS PARKS
They're very bitter and they're very tough. Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
So yeah, that kind of sort of works. It's not helpful.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No, I ground this to a halt.
MARCUS PARKS
Well starting in 1866, Randall McCoy began harassing Devil Anse Hatfield with frivolous lawsuits over farm animals and such and such. They were basically just meant to annoy Devil Anse. And Devil Anse returned the favor with frivolous lawsuits of his own. This back and forth went on for 13 years.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, man.
MARCUS PARKS
And while Devil Anse became one of the largest landowners in the area with the acquisition of Rich Jake Cline's property in the meantime, Randall McCoy remained a curmudgeon with very little power and very little land.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, this dude had it kind of going on. He had a huge workforce. He was starting a bunch of like... This kind of feels very medieval.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Where you're going up against a guy that has like a fucking... Like it's a feudal lord that you're dealing with.
ED LARSON
I just don't know why they all had so many nicknames when there wasn't even that many people.
MARCUS PARKS
I know, it's crazy, right? I did think about that.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I think about what they didn't have. Remember how Trapper Keepers used to allow us to express our personalities?
MARCUS PARKS
I remember.
ED LARSON
Oh yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Right. They don't have funny t-shirts, they don't have 9 out of 10 voices in my head say don't shoot, right. You don't have those things, right? So how do they express themselves? That's what they do.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
So one guy just shows up and then also, who knows? You trip over a teapot, you're Tripping T McGillicuddy. You know what I mean?
ED LARSON
That's a great name.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Right?
MARCUS PARKS
Tripping T McGillicuddy? Yeah. Like they were an Irish rapper.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I feel like it's straight up their version of me wearing different kinds of shoes.
ED LARSON
Okay.
MARCUS PARKS
Well likewise, Randall McCoy's many sons had even less power than him, which was a situation that was not going to change and they knew it. This some believe was one of the driving factors behind the feud. See this was one of those times and places in American history where the next generation was guaranteed to be worse off than their father's generation.
ED LARSON
Heard that story, baby.
MARCUS PARKS
I mean this is like the housing crisis of 2008.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
But back then it came as a consequence of the Industrial Revolution. Right in the middle of the Hatfield-McCoy feud, families all over the Tug Valley were being swindled out of their land because a massive coal vein had been discovered in their backyard. And more were cheated out of their land when it became necessary to build railroads to transport the coal out of Tug Valley.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Black gunk, Texas shit.
ED LARSON
Now who is that?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Which one? That's the guy from the Hatfield-McCoy show. This is the very top of this. That's the theme song. But they want that coal, man.
MARCUS PARKS
As soon as that coal... They said it was a 13 ft wide vein.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
It was extraordinary.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's like Tommy Lee.
MARCUS PARKS
Well therefore you had a lot of angry young men like Randall McCoy's sons with no purpose, no future, and no hope. Which as we know almost always results in mass violence.
ED LARSON
Woodstock '99.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Those are all trust fund kids.
ED LARSON
Yeah but they got nowhere to go, they got nothing to do. There's no war.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. No water, it's hot.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
They had to go-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Fred Durst. That's what this is missing, that backwards cap Fred Durst.
MARCUS PARKS
Actually if you could distill it all down to one song, it would be Break Stuff.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yes.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
ED LARSON
Good old Bad Fred.
MARCUS PARKS
Bad Fred Durst. See these boys were looking for something to make them a hero, something to set them apart, something to make them feel anything but despair.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Well they also did a bunch of years of guerilla warfare and how the fuck do you just tell them to shut that off in your fucking brain?
MARCUS PARKS
Well a lot of these kids, a lot of the younger kids-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
They didn't...
MARCUS PARKS
They didn't participate.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Got it.
MARCUS PARKS
But they did have uncles and fathers who told them how to do it.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah. They're all like Richard Ramirez's uncle.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
They're all like the same style of like a cousin or a guy that came in and explained how fun violence is.
MARCUS PARKS
Miguel, yeah. And showed him the pictures like here's a picture of me raping a Vietnamese woman, here's a picture of her head being cut off.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Do you have anything of like fun meals you ate or like anything you saw? I heard Ho Chi Minh City was incredible.
MARCUS PARKS
But participating in feuds, ie gang warfare, that was the easiest way to reach this goal, feeling anything else, feeling some sense of purpose. And a lot of people in Appalachia died as a result. This of course benefited nobody but the very industrialists who were destroying their way of life.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah, they just watched them all fight and they know we're gonna bring my big old government spoon and I'm gonna drink your fucking milkshake.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. The constant murderous feuds.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
With a spoon.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, I'll spoon your milkshake spoon.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Fuck it, I'll spoon. Fuck you both.
MARCUS PARKS
The constant murderous feuds allowed companies to frame the theft and destruction of Appalachia as bringing civilization to the savage whites of the mountain in what could be seen as a sort of large scale industrial gentrification. Look at how bad they're fucking it up. We gotta come in and fix it.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
We got to.
MARCUS PARKS
Therefore people outside of Appalachia actually applauded the changes taking place, seeing it as progress because the ensuing media coverage of the Hatfield-McCoy feud portrayed them all as backwards, barbaric hillbillies. Barbarian was the word used a lot to describe these people.
ED LARSON
Really?
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Some of their behavior didn't help.
MARCUS PARKS
No, it did not.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But still, they just had our coal and there were a lot of people in New York and Boston that were being like oh that coal looked mighty fine over here.
MARCUS PARKS
But as far as the Appalachian people went, the feuds themselves were somewhere between a problem and a welcome distraction. In other words, in an area where churches and schools were limited and very few people knew how to read, feuds were entertainment. See while a lot of people in Appalachia didn't participate in the feuds directly, they loved following them, they loved talking about them.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
It's basically a reality TV show where you could conceivably get killed if you're not careful. Put differently, while the people of Appalachia were busy with distractions, the industrialists took their lands bit by bit. And before the people of West Virginia knew it, they'd gone from independent mountain folk to wage slaves.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's just that easy! It's really fucked but it really was.
MARCUS PARKS
(singing) I owe my soul to the company store.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(singing) I owe my soul to the company store.
MARCUS PARKS
(singing) You load 16 tons, what do you get? Another day older and deeper in debt.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(singing) Oh Saint Peter don't you call me home, I owe my soul to the company store. It's very depressing.
ED LARSON
You guys know a lot of shit.
MARCUS PARKS
See once these people had no choice but to become coal miners, they were paid in script which could only be spent at the store owned by the company they worked for. That's what Tennessee Ernie Ford was talking about. This made escape from poverty or even escape from the area impossible.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah because now you got Apple H Bucks that you have to spend.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. That inescapable fate reverberated down through the generations. And that's partly why West Virginia now has the highest rate of opioid overdoses in the nation by a country mile.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And that's how the Hatfield and McCoy feud led to the opioid epidemic in Appalachia.
MARCUS PARKS
I absolutely side with the opinion that the feud between the Hatfields and the McCoys is a far more consequential piece of American history than what people think it is. Especially when you consider that this area of the country is more or less the cradle of the current opioid epidemic.
ED LARSON
I mean just watch The Wild and Wonderful Whites of West Virginia.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yes.
MARCUS PARKS
Woo!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes. But you know what? It's like a smokescreen. The Hatfield and McCoy feud story sort of a smokescreen over what really happened.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Which is we have this like super interesting violent feud which we're covering because it's fun and we love history, but as we're coming underneath it, it's how the people with a broad view-
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Viewed what they were going to do to this small part of the country because they were just rolling under the wheels of Manifest Destiny.
ED LARSON
Yeah. And even like we're talking a lot about West Virginia but Kentucky is a sad ass place too.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
ED LARSON
I mean like even their grass is blue. Thank you very much.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Very good.
MARCUS PARKS
But the consequential nature of the feud makes the overall catalyst all that more ridiculous. Because while their way of life was slowly crashing down around their ears, they were all sitting around arguing about a goddamn hog.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(Appalachian accent) Several hogs!
MARCUS PARKS
Now to be fair, hog theft was serious business to mountain folk. Having plenty of pork could be the difference between life and death during Appalachian winters and hogs made up a large portion of a farmer's wealth because they could be sold for cash during hard times. It was an asset, as the local saying went, because every part of the hog was used in some way or another after slaughter, the only thing they wasted was the squeals.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah. Ooh yeah!
ED LARSON
Woo!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yow! I'd eat the squeal if I could.
MARCUS PARKS
I bet you would. That's all to say that hog theft in Tug Valley was near akin to horse theft out west. Although the way farmers kept their hogs left ownership pretty easy to muddle and therefore open to accusation and argument.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Well it's both about over familiarity has two sides to it, because there's one side of like well we all know each other's stuff but it's also the other side is we all know each other's stuff. So these pigs were marked in a way.
MARCUS PARKS
Well we'll get to that here in a second. See since the razorback hogs raised by the farmers of Appalachia were territorial, they were left to wander and forage in the forest that surrounded their farms during the spring and summer. And then in the fall, they were herded home for fattening and slaughter.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It seems like such a fucking pain in the ass.
ED LARSON
It's the only thing you can do though.
MARCUS PARKS
They still do that. My family-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah. They just let them all out in the forest?
MARCUS PARKS
No, my family still does that. You let them out in the pasture and then when you need them, if you need to give them medication-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You don't go put them to bed or stuff? Like literally.
MARCUS PARKS
No.
ED LARSON
I mean there's other pigs that are like in a pen and shit but these are wild.
MARCUS PARKS
Well these aren't, no, these are older pigs.
ED LARSON
And they're hogs.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, these are all the hogs.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But your family doesn't go like, literally I mean this, I thought that a farmer would go, he wakes up the pigs.
MARCUS PARKS
Rancher.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And he gives them... Whoever that guy is. He goes out there and he feeds it and he slops them up. And then they hang out all day, right, they do whatever pigs do, all right. And then I thought he put them to sleep. Like I thought the rancher would come and literally go like-
ED LARSON
What, hug them and sing to them and shit?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No but I thought that they would have to-
MARCUS PARKS
Well I don't know from pigs but I know with cattle like they are set out onto the pasture to graze, you leave them out, you leave them out there-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Everyday?
MARCUS PARKS
No, they stay out there.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
So you never bring them back in.
MARCUS PARKS
No, sometimes you do.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
When?
ED LARSON
When you kill them.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
ED LARSON
Or milk them.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, when you're wanting to-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
The horses?
MARCUS PARKS
When it's cabin season, when you have to medicate them, when you have to give them vaccines or anything like that, when you're gonna take them to sell where they get slaughtered.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But otherwise they just live out there?
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. They just live out there.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh wow.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. And then sometimes you gotta go out, you gotta get on a horse, you gotta go find it.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh wow.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Because you go and you count, cause you do count the cows everyday and be like 95, 96, 97, great. No, 99 is missing. And then you know by the ear tags, you know like 98 is missing, we gotta go look for 98. So you get on the horse.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
This is a fucking pain in the goddamn ass.
ED LARSON
That's right.
MARCUS PARKS
It's one of the worst jobs in America.
ED LARSON
Yeah but cheeseburgers are great.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Good lord.
MARCUS PARKS
And they love it. Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, cheeseburgers are great. Give me the hamburger.
MARCUS PARKS
They love it, they absolutely love it. Let them. But to make sure that you didn't confuse your neighbor's hog for your own, farmers made individual notches on the hog's ear to identify it. Welcome to fucking agriculture corner, everybody.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Agrarian.
MARCUS PARKS
I hope you all have your FFA memberships paid off.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, this again is a Marcus thick episode.
ED LARSON
Well when I was born my mother put some stripes on my ear and like I never got too far.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah. Because she knew. That's my hog!
MARCUS PARKS
Even besides that though, most farmers were said to be able to identify their hogs by sight alone.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Sure.
MARCUS PARKS
And this is how Randall McCoy came into conflict with Floyd Hatfield. One day whilst Randall McCoy was out searching for a missing hog, he passed by Floyd Hatfield's farm and thought that he recognized the missing hog amidst Floyd's hogs. And so a hearing was convened at Preacher Anse Hatfield's cabin to suss out who this hog belongs to.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Hog justice.
MARCUS PARKS
This was apparently the social event of the season, as seemingly the whole valley descended upon this cabin wearing their Sunday best to go see where this hog was gonna end up.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I feel like this is the perfect example of when you could do the thing of and so I will split this hog in half.
MARCUS PARKS
No!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
One half-
MARCUS PARKS
Let him have the hog!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Meanwhile he's like all right, he takes off, immediately cuts it in half.
MARCUS PARKS
No, actually I think it was one of the McCoys later said like (Appalachian accent) if they would just barbecued that hog up, we could have saved a lot of trouble.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Just barbecue it up on the spot. And indeed when the hearing convened, the hog in question was trotted inside and placed in the middle of the cabin so arguments could be made concerning who was gonna go home with the hog.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(Appalachian accent) Now I say, I do say, I say, I say here, I say here, we need to put the hog on the stand. Now Mr. Hog, or is it Mrs. Hog?
ED LARSON
(snorting)
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(Appalachian accent) Let me see, oh, got a pussy. Mrs. Hog, can you point towards your rightful owner.
ED LARSON
(squealing)
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(Appalachian accent) Goddamnit Mrs. Hog, I'm fucking gonna marry you.
ED LARSON
(squealing)
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(Appalachian accent) We're gonna have so much sex.
ED LARSON
You can suck a squeal out of me any day.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(Appalachian accent) Oh my god, she can talk.
MARCUS PARKS
Suck the squeal out.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Suck the squeal out.
MARCUS PARKS
Awful. Oh my god.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Honestly I'm gonna start saying that because sometimes I do need to get the squeal sucked out of me. It's very important.
MARCUS PARKS
Well some people opined that the hog bore Randall McCoy's notches on its ears. Others said that the notches were so disfigured as to be unrecognizable, while some even tried arguing that there were no notches at all and that's just how the hog's ears were.
ED LARSON
Just cut the ear off and feed it to a dog.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Just everybody eat the pig. Just everybody eat it!
MARCUS PARKS
Now the monkey in the middle of all this was, as I said, Devil Anse's good natured counterpart, Preacher Anse, who did not want to take personal responsibility for declaring ownership of this hog.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Pussy.
MARCUS PARKS
Well I mean it was hard, even at this point before the feud even started, it was not a good idea to take sides between the Hatfields and the McCoys.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Sure.
MARCUS PARKS
Even if you were a Hatfield or a McCoy.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Sure.
MARCUS PARKS
And Preacher Anse is just, he's good natured man.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
He does not want trouble.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I just want things to be cool.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. He also couldn't get anyone to serve on the jury because if the McCoys won, the Hatfields might punish the jurors economically. But if the Hatfields won, then the McCoys were likely to get violent. Because they were according to one study scientifically violent.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah. Yeah, that's true.it fucking is.
MARCUS PARKS
See one of the more interesting wrinkles in this tale actually came over 100 years after the feud in 2007.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, that's weird.
MARCUS PARKS
When an endocrinologist published a study showing that modern McCoys suffer from a hereditary disease called Von Hippel-Lindau syndrome.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah. Petulant asshole flu.
MARCUS PARKS
This syndrome produces small tumors all over the body. But interestingly, 75% of the modern McCoys tested had tumors on their adrenal glands which caused their production of adrenaline to greatly increase. And this increase in adrenaline of course caused regular violent outbursts.
ED LARSON
Do you think this is why Holden turns into such an asshole?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He's from the North Carolina McNeelys.
MARCUS PARKS
And his fucking grandparents were first cousins.
ED LARSON
That's right.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah. I wanna pop... Do you think if you shaved the top of his lump, there'd be a little angry face in it?
ED LARSON
Lumps on a person do not make them happier, I know that much.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No it doesn't. Unless it's these two, the big tits.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. But do your lumps make you happy?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
They make me me.
MARCUS PARKS
And isn't that the best answer you can give?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's just me.
ED LARSON
That is fucking awesome though.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, right?
ED LARSON
Lumps on my adrenal gland and shit.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, man.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That is literally what might have cause a lot of their literally just going like woo, woo, woo! It's all biological.
MARCUS PARKS
Now this explanation doesn't quite cover why the Hatfields were also extremely violent.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
But considering how the two families intermarried so much prior to the feud, it's possible that this syndrome was present on both sides of the conflict, especially when you consider a lot of the participants weren't official Hatfields or official McCoys. It's just this fucking syndrome is just in this area.
ED LARSON
They were all fucking.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Now Preacher Anse Hatfield eventually figured out a way to kick the can down the road by appointing six Hatfields and six McCoys to the jury, hoping that all of them will vote down family lines and hang the case.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But then where does the pig go?
MARCUS PARKS
I don't think he was thinking that far.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
ED LARSON
Just fucking do a barbecue for everybody!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
This is what everybody keeps saying.
MARCUS PARKS
That's what they said. They said if they would have done that, then we could have avoided all of this. However, yeah, they could have avoided all of this and West Virginia would now be like fucking Atlantis.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's like Wakanda, you show up and there's like floating cities above West Virginia.
MARCUS PARKS
It all hangs on a pig.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
However after a man named Bill Staton swore that he saw Floyd Hatfield notch the hog himself with his own eyes, one of the McCoys sided with the Hatfields, saying that Randall didn't have any evidence to counter Bill Staton's testimony. More likely though, this McCoy sided with the Hatfields because he'd fought with the Logan Wildcats with Devil Anse during the Civil War and two of his sons worked on Devil Anse's timber crew. Additionally, Devil Anse awarded this McCoy 120 acres of land after the trial.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Actually you know what's interesting? He kind of reminds me a lot of John Gotti. Because I watched that John Gotti documentary that's on Netflix. Because that's what he did when he first got off on the first like series of racketeering charges, John Gotti very publicly paid off like four jurors like 60K apiece.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
ED LARSON
Fuck yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
And so Floyd Hatfield got the hog. Although from that day forward until the day he died, he had to live with the name Hog Floyd Hatfield.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Is there a formal appeal? Is there a way for me to talk to some judge?
MARCUS PARKS
Fuck you, Hog Floyd!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(Appalachian accent) I just testified! I testified!
MARCUS PARKS
No, he got the hog.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
It's because he got the hog. He became Hog Floyd because (Appalachian accent) doesn't Hog Floyd Hatfield, oh watch out for him, he's gonna make a big old stink about his hog.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(Appalachian accent) He got one more hog I guess.
ED LARSON
If you're a defensive lineman, it's a great nickname.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Hog Floyd Hatfield? Hog Floyd Hatfield.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
He sounds like he fucking plays for Alabama.
ED LARSON
Yeah, he just eats quarterbacks.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
So cool.
MARCUS PARKS
Now from there, the feud came in fits and starts, mostly in the form of rock throwing, it was a lot of rock throwing.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You know.
ED LARSON
What else are you gonna do with them?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. And half-hearted gunfights between boats on the river that wouldn't have been out of place in a Trailer Park Boys episode. Like you know when they get into gunfights and one of them gets shot and they're like time out!
ED LARSON
Yeah. For yucks.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, yeah, yeah. But each time a Hatfield got his ass kicked by a McCoy, a Hatfield would return the favor and vice versa.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And that's how an eye for an eye makes everyone blind.
ED LARSON
Gandhi said that while he was fucking a little girl.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He was like thank you! Thank you big daddy!
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, while Mother Teresa was in the corner saying she deserved it.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, yeah, going like fuck yeah, another leper?
MARCUS PARKS
She was gonna be closer to god after having it.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Another fucking leper? That's more god money for me!
MARCUS PARKS
But in the fall after the hog trial, the feud finally came down to murder when Randall McCoy's nephew, Squirrel Hunting Sam McCoy, that's the full name-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Guess why.
ED LARSON
That's who you would play if this was cast by LPN.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, yeah, yeah. He's definitely Squirrel Hunting Sam McCoy.
MARCUS PARKS
You're only saying that because I did such a stellar job with Toeless Joe and you imagine them to be the same people.
ED LARSON
Yes, absolutely. They're cousins.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Well Squirrel Hunting Sam McCoy-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's a long nickname.
MARCUS PARKS
Squirrel Hunting Sam McCoy? Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You could just call him Squirrel.
MARCUS PARKS
No, you call him Squirrel Hunting Sam. Because I would imagine he would take issue with Squirrel because he kills squirrels.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(Appalachian accent) I hate squirrels!
MARCUS PARKS
He obviously has no love for squirrels.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Because he got his name because he would walk the same 25 mile stretch of road everyday just to hunt squirrels. Sometimes he'd kill 100 squirrels in a day and then he'd show up at the church and say (Appalachian accent) hey, I got you these squirrels, you gonna serve them at the community dinner?
ED LARSON
Thanks.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Thanks.
MARCUS PARKS
Wow, more squirrels.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I do find interesting, I've actually had many people talk about liking squirrel, eating squirrel.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I think it's one of those, depending on where you're at in the country-
ED LARSON
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And especially in the Appalachia area, if you eat squirrel, you kind of get a taste for it.
MARCUS PARKS
I would imagine, yeah.
ED LARSON
The chicken wings of the forest.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's chickens. They had chicken.
MARCUS PARKS
Well Squirrel Hunting Sam McCoy crossed paths with Bill Staton, whose testimony if you'll remember had supposedly swayed the turncoat McCoy during the hog trial. Bill Staton by the way wasn't even a Hatfield by blood. His sister was married to Ellison Hatfield, Devil Anse's brother. And since Devil Anse was a local mover and shaker, Staton of course hitched his wagon to the Hatfield clan.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
All right, yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
This happened a lot.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
So Bill Staton is just like he's a hanger on. He's a part of it.
MARCUS PARKS
By marriage. He's in the Hatfield family by marriage.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He's Crip by association.
MARCUS PARKS
Sure, sure. Now concerning the confrontation between Squirrel Hunting Sam and Bill Staton, it's impossible to know who the actual aggressor was. But according to Sam and his brother Paris McCoy, it was Bill Staton who decided to take out two McCoys that day. But considering Staton's role in the hog trial, I think it's more likely that the McCoys shot first.
ED LARSON
Yeah. Or Staton was just dressed like a squirrel.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah! He was the first furry. And no one knew that he was out there expressing himself not sexually.
MARCUS PARKS
(Appalachian accent) This is my fursona! Do not come to me saying that my fursona is wrong or weird!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(Appalachian accent) Bill, Bill, I'm not saying it's wrong that you think that you're a squirrel, I'm just saying we have one associate of ours who specifically kills squirrels. I kind of wish you'd go for a rooster.
MARCUS PARKS
(Appalachian accent) I would rather live on my feet than die on my knees!
ED LARSON
Excuse me, I gotta go bury some nuts.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(Appalachian accent) You're gonna need to go to dogsinabathtub.co for that.
MARCUS PARKS
But as the story goes in Dean King's book, Bill Staton hid behind a bush when he saw Sam and Paris coming. He's even acting like a squirrel.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
He ambushed the two McCoys and hit Paris in the hip. Paris fired back and hit Staton in the chest, after which the two of them dropped the rifles and fought hand to hand as blood was just spurting out of their wounds.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Cool.
MARCUS PARKS
Squirrel Hunting Sam meanwhile was aiming his pistol but was hesitant to pull the trigger because he didn't want to hit his brother. But when Bill Staton sunk his teeth into Paris' throat-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's Civil War fighting.
ED LARSON
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. About to rip it out, Squirrel Hunting Sam put the pistol to Staton's head and blew his brains all over the Appalachian wilderness.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(Appalachian accent) There's one less huge squirrel.
MARCUS PARKS
(Appalachian accent) I died as I lived.
ED LARSON
That's how he got caught, he brought it to the church for everyone to eat.
MARCUS PARKS
(Appalachian accent) Oh, I just thought it was big.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(Appalachian accent) I thought it was big.
MARCUS PARKS
Well after prying Staton's jaws open, Sam and Paris left the body where Staton was killed. It was found days later decomposed, half eaten, and nearly headless. And so the score was one Hatfield and one McCoy.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Check the over under.
MARCUS PARKS
Now I'm not exactly sure how it was known that Squirrel Hunting Sam and Paris McCoy were the killers but Valentine Hatfield, known to his friends as Wall, was the Justice of the Peace in the district where the murder took place.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I kind of feel like they just told people. They came back being like (Appalachian accent) got ourselves a McCoy today.
MARCUS PARKS
A Hatfield.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(Appalachian accent) Got ourselves a Hatfield today.
MARCUS PARKS
Technically a Staton.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Fuck you.
MARCUS PARKS
Well Wall Hatfield issued warrants for the arrest of the two McCoys but while Paris was captured within a month, it took two years to track down Squirrel Hunting Sam because I'd imagine anyone named Squirrel Hunting Sam is gonna be a slippery little feller.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
ED LARSON
They weren't looking in the trees.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Do you have any idea how hard it would be if I was ever renting a house and on the form it said like Sam Hatfield. You know how they say how do you want to be referred to? Squirrel Hunting. I'd just be like I'm sorry, you can't be here. Because it's gonna be hard to get rent from Squirrel Hunting Sam.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. And even harder to get rid of him. Both McCoys however were acquitted on grounds of self-defense. Although oral Hatfield history maintains that it was Devil Anse himself who arranged for their acquittals in the hopes that the feud would go no further. Even if that is true though, it only put a pause on proceedings because a fateful election day was fast approaching. Now election day in Tug Fork was an important, popular, and raucous social function.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Whoa! Just like we wanted it to be with Dave Matthews Band.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
As one local put it, election day was like a wedding without a pastor. Yeah.
ED LARSON
Yeah, like a party at Kiefer Sutherland's house.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah. Pastors are legally not allowed to go to Kiefer Sutherland's.
MARCUS PARKS
Everyone again dressed in their Sunday best, farmers came down from the mountains, they bought and they sold horses, they bought and sold goods, and they bought and sold votes. But it was also a drunken fucking mess. See voters were usually bought with whiskey or moonshine. And because most people voted in the morning, everyone was fucking hammered by the afternoon.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
This is how we get people back to the polls. We make it into a big party like this where it's all the sucking and fucking, drinking and fighting.
MARCUS PARKS
Oh man, there was sucking and fucking. Men picked up women, women picked up men.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I'm saying we do it now.
ED LARSON
Do you not do that on election day?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No, I normally sit in a solemn remembrance. I cleanse myself, I do a full enema. Yeah, a bourbon enema.
ED LARSON
Yeah, I needed a couple to vote for Biden, I'll tell you that.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(slurring) It will be fine, we'll get him in there. Honestly it's fun, it's the creepiest vote I've ever done because you get to vote for an actual skeleton. That's a funny joke.
MARCUS PARKS
It's a funny joke.
ED LARSON
We need him.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Unfortunately he must be alive.
MARCUS PARKS
We just have to do it. We just have to do it. Just do it. Well at these election days, fights broke out constantly and fiddlers and banjo pickers soundtracked the whole thing. Of course this is before the advent of bluegrass so this is a different type of picking and fiddling than you're used to.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Hey! Ha!
ED LARSON
Ho!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah! Mumford & Sons without the corporate fucking bullshit, man.
ED LARSON
Mumford & Dads.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Now the Hatfields were big moonshiners and since they often had the best liquor in the highest quantity, usually a variety of moonshine called Applejack, their candidates were often the ones that got elected. Now state authorities did try to put an end to this by issuing dozens of indictments but the Hatfields never served a sentence because most of the jurors drank Hatfield moonshine. And that was besides the fact that the Hatfields were also heavily armed.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
This was back in the day when the second quote unquote, whatever would become the second amendment meant something. Because you had the same guns that the government had, where you're not against massive robot bodies and drones.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, and tanks.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
But on election day 1882, it was more of a problem of too much Applejack than too many guns. And that of course led to the escalation of the Hatfield-McCoy feud. Now by this point, Randall McCoy had racked up a fair number of grievances against the Hatfields. There was of course the matter of the hog.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Hog justice.
MARCUS PARKS
But that wasn't the only thing that bothered Randall. Ellison Hatfield had testified against Squirrel Hunting Sam McCoy and his brother Paris during their murder trial, even though everyone was saying it was self-defense. The land snatch that made Devil Anse powerful had always rubbed Randall McCoy the wrong way and there was a fair amount of jealousy.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah because he also did technically sort of take it by force.
MARCUS PARKS
He did.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He's not a nice man.
MARCUS PARKS
No. And there had even been a sort of Romeo and Juliet situation between Devil Anse's son Johnse and Randall's daughter Roseanna.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And that should have healed everything.
MARCUS PARKS
Honestly though that story is far too complicated and long to go into. But suffice to say it did not end well for the McCoys, with Johnse eventually marrying Roseanna's cousin Nancy but only after he left Roseanna to temporarily shack up with a sex worker named Belle Beaver.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Love her.
ED LARSON
(Appalachian accent) My name's Belle Beaver.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(Appalachian accent) Hey, hey! I'm Belle Beaver!
ED LARSON
(Appalachian accent) You mind if I chop some wood?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(Appalachian accent) Hey now, hey!
ED LARSON
(Appalachian accent) Get up in my damn fine vagina!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Hey! Belle Beaver is honestly a great burlesque game.
MARCUS PARKS
It really is.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
It really is. But that's all to say that Randall McCoy, who was known as a constant complainer, had spent years telling his many violent sons all about how terrible the Hatfields were. And on election day 1882, the Hatfield that got caught up in that hatred was Devil Anse's brother Ellison Hatfield.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
God, this is so exciting. We have nothing like this.
MARCUS PARKS
I think we have a lot like this.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
What do you mean?
MARCUS PARKS
Violent local grudges breaking out into constant murders?
ED LARSON
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
This is I think happening all over America every day constantly.
ED LARSON
Have you not been to Little Rock?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Not in a while. Not since Bill and Hillary brought me on that cocaine airplane.
MARCUS PARKS
Woo!
ED LARSON
Do you remember when that like whole family killed the other family in that little town in Ohio a couple of years ago?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Wow.
MARCUS PARKS
I didn't hear about that.
ED LARSON
Well I'll bring it up on the next time I'm on Side Stories.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Perfect. Now as I said, election day was always a drunken mess to begin with. But when four of Randall McCoy's sons arrived, they were already liquored up and ready to throw down. Those sons were Bill, Bud, Tolbert, and Pharmer.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
With a PH!
MARCUS PARKS
Pharmer with a PH, not an F.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah. Because that's a name.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, Pharmer McCoy. Now in one version of the story, the McCoy brothers were causing trouble, racing up and down the roads on their horses, and shouting nonsense.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, woo!
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
ED LARSON
Woo! Woo! Woo!
MARCUS PARKS
Tolbert, for example, jumped off his horse and shouted quote:
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(Appalachian accent) "I'm hell on earth!"
ED LARSON
Fuck yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's cool.
MARCUS PARKS
But to that, Ellison Hatfield, who didn't think much of Tolbert, retorted with quote:
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(Appalachian accent) "You're a damn shithog."
MARCUS PARKS
Now shithog, that's a real thing and a great fucking insult.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
ED LARSON
Okay.
MARCUS PARKS
But shithogs, just so you know, shithogs are hogs that snuffle through the manure left behind by other hogs in search of undigested grain.
ED LARSON
The tasty ones.
MARCUS PARKS
Double stuffed.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, double stuffed.
MARCUS PARKS
And the fight of course proceeded from there. In another version of the story though which is no less stereotypical, Tolbert was having a grand old time buck dancing to a banjo player up on the official buck dancing platform.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yep, yep!
MARCUS PARKS
You know what buck dancing is?
ED LARSON
It's when you shake your butt and stomp your feet?
MARCUS PARKS
No, buck dancing.
ED LARSON
Oh buck dancing.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Butt dancing, that was invented in 1968.
ED LARSON
That was popular in the 90s.
MARCUS PARKS
It's hillbilly tap dancing.
ED LARSON
Oh okay.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
ED LARSON
That's almost like it's the music kind of.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, yeah. Exactly.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Here, I got a good example of it.
MARCUS PARKS
That's buck dancing.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's buck dancing.
ED LARSON
Yeah, it's like the leader of The Wild and Wonderful Whites, this is what he was known for.
MARCUS PARKS
I know what buck dancing is.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's buck dancing.
MARCUS PARKS
I explained to you what buck dancing was.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's this guy.
MARCUS PARKS
I'm glad you pulled up a video for our podcast.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I'm just looking at it. I didn't say nothing, man.
MARCUS PARKS
I'd love to see you try buck dancing. It's difficult. It's extraordinarily difficult.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's funny to look at.
ED LARSON
Yeah because it's not just clipping and clopping, it's sliding as well.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's just fun to see.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, it is fun to see but you know...
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I'm just laughing. I don't think it's bad.
ED LARSON
That's what picnic tables are for in West Virginia.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I know.
MARCUS PARKS
Well there was an official buck dancing platform here. And Tolbert was up there showing off his skills when a Hatfield named Black Elias tried joining in. Tolbert however, drunk as he was, started shouting that Black Elias owed him money for a fiddle, which Black Elias maintained was a debt that had already been paid. You owe me for the fucking fiddle. Fuck you, no I don't.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(Appalachian accent) Fuck you! I gave you fiddle fucking money two weeks ago.
ED LARSON
Goddamnit, Tolbert! Tolbert's a great name to yell.
MARCUS PARKS
Tolbert.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah. (Appalachian accent) Tolbert! You're getting on my last nerve.
MARCUS PARKS
Fuck you, Tolbert!
ED LARSON
Feels good, right?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(Appalachian accent) Y'all asked me for my opinion, not just Tolbert-
MARCUS PARKS
Shut the fuck up, Tolbert!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(Appalachian accent) You asked me first.
ED LARSON
I think that our audience at home should pause the podcast right now and just say fuck you, Tolbert!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Fuck you, Tolbert!
ED LARSON
Just feel real good for a little bit.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Just label somebody that you hate in your life a Tolbert.
MARCUS PARKS
Well Black Elias then punched Tolbert in the chin in a fighting suit, which ended when Tolbert knocked Black Elias out cold. But after Black Elias went down, Ellison Hatfield stepped in. Tolbert allegedly called Ellison a cross between a gorilla and a polecat.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh hey now.
ED LARSON
Hey, come on.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
ED LARSON
I mean almost a compliment.
MARCUS PARKS
Almost, yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's what I would say. He's a big guy.
MARCUS PARKS
I mean a cross between a gorilla and a skunk, it's a terrifying thing to behold.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah. You fucking spray, it can rip your face off and spray shit lumps into your fucking mouth. That's cool.
MARCUS PARKS
And so the fight began. But pretty quickly both men pulled out a couple of knives.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Sure.
MARCUS PARKS
Now while you might have like a switchblade or a hunting knife in mind when you picture their weapons, these guys were holding little folding jackknives.
ED LARSON
Whittlers.
MARCUS PARKS
They're closer to shivs than machetes.
ED LARSON
Okay.
MARCUS PARKS
Regardless though, both started swiping at each other with their blades-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(Appalachian accent) Yeah, come on!
MARCUS PARKS
And the crowd watched.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(humming Beat It by Michael Jackson)
MARCUS PARKS
But Tolbert, smaller and quicker than Ellison because Ellison's the size of a gorilla-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Huge.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Tolbert got the first stab, although the blade deflected off of Ellison's ribcage, he got it a little bit lower, might have killed him. Since it was just a mere flesh wound though, Ellison returned with a swipe to Tolbert's face, creating a gash that went from Tolbert's ear to the top of his forehead. But when the two of them crashed together to grapple, Ellison's jackknife closed on his own fingers, removing a weapon from the equation. That however didn't stop the much larger Ellison whatsoever, who knocked Tolbert to the ground with his heavily bleeding fists. But as Ellison put one hand to Tolbert's throat and punched Tolbert in the chest with the other, Tolbert stabbed Ellison's side over and over with the jackknife, shredding Ellison's hip and stomach. And to make matters worse, Tolbert's younger brother, Bill McCoy, cowardly stabbed Ellison while Tolbert was on the ground, then ran away. But even though Ellison had 27 stab wounds, he still had enough strength to grab a 10 lb rock that he was just about to use to smash Tolbert's skull. That however is when Pharmer McCoy, who had thus far only been a bystander, pulled his revolver and shot Ellison in the back.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(Appalachian accent) That's for making fun of my name.
MARCUS PARKS
And yet Ellison still did not die.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah!
MARCUS PARKS
He wandered over to a tree and slumped down while the constable, a Hatfield named Matt, the first guy with a normal fucking name in this story-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I'm just Matthew.
MARCUS PARKS
Matthew Hatfield.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I developed a time machine deep inside of my home in southern California. And now I'm here gazing upon the Hatfield-McCoy beginning of the feud and my name's Matt.
MARCUS PARKS
Well he arrested Pharmer and Tolbert McCoy. As far as Bill McCoy went, he got away because he'd run off after stabbing Ellison. Unfortunately for Bill's brother Bud though, the two of them looked almost exactly alike. So Bud McCoy was arrested for his brother's crime.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Also a very old timey thing that could happen.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah! Yeah, yeah.
ED LARSON
They all probably looked the same.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah. They're all weird.
MARCUS PARKS
Pretty similar. Now Preacher Anse Hatfield, the man who'd hosted the hog trial, he was now also the justice of the peace. So he had Tolbert, Bud, and Pharmer McCoy sent to Pikeville 25 miles away over the Kentucky State line where the nearest jail was located. They didn't get far however before two Hatfields caught up to them and convinced the constables that the McCoys needed to be tried in Tug Fork back in West Virginia because that's where the murders had taken place.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
This is so much chaos.
ED LARSON
It does make sense though.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Sort of. But still it's like a bunch of guys show up and tell two cops, hey, those guys are gonna need to come with us. And the two cops are like yep. Yep.
ED LARSON
Well yeah because there was a bunch of dudes who were gonna kill those cops unless they-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. But in one direction is a judge and in the other direction is Devil Anse Hatfield.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
And so the McCoy brothers were brought back to Preacher Anse's house, which was the very place where the hog trial had taken place a couple of years prior.
ED LARSON
Delicious.
MARCUS PARKS
We need to have our own LPN hog trial.
ED LARSON
Oh my god.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, I want a hog trial! And we sentence this hog to death. Yay!
MARCUS PARKS
I find this hog delicious.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yay!
ED LARSON
(squealing) It's happy about it tool.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I get to serve a purpose.
MARCUS PARKS
Well after much serious debate, Devil Anse moved the McCoy brothers to an abandoned schoolhouse and declared that if his brother Ellison lived, the brothers McCoy would be returned to Pikeville to stand trial. But he refused to say what would happen if his brother died, which of course happened two agonizing days later.
ED LARSON
Damn, that's a big motherfucker.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's also just dying in that time period was bad.
MARCUS PARKS
Real bad. Yeah, it takes a long time. Now in the time between the fight and Ellison's death, the mother of the McCoy brothers and Randall McCoy's wife, Sarah McCoy, she traveled to the abandoned schoolhouse to beg for mercy concerning her sons. In response, Devil Anse promised that he'd bring her sons back to Kentucky alive no matter what. But Devil Anse made no promises as to what he'd do to the McCoy brothers once the state line was crossed.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Just tell him he's gonna shoot her in the head. He's doing all these sort of like (Appalachian accent) yeah, I'll definitely make sure they make it to Kentucky.
MARCUS PARKS
He just wanted to get rid of her.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I guess to not upset her, not have to shoot her in the head.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. And so after Ellison McCoy died, Devil Anse and 20 of his henchmen, mostly his employees, marched Tolbert, Bud, and Pharmer McCoy across the state line to a sinkhole where people tossed the carcasses of dead dogs.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(Appalachian accent) Wait a second, where are we going? I thought we were going to... Oh I know where we're going. Oh this is the saddest place in the goddamn world. Oh this ain't good.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Dead dog hole?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Why are we going to dead dog hole?
ED LARSON
I've never been to dog mud Kentucky.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Do you think that our employees would ever allow us to march three other podcasters to their death? Would they surround us in a cloud as we bring the SmartLess guys like to a place where we'll murder them?
MARCUS PARKS
To dead dog hole?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
ED LARSON
Man, Bateman could talk his way out of anything.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I'd be like you know what, Mr. Arnett? I am just pleased to be next to you.
MARCUS PARKS
(Appalachian accent) I ain't gonna listen to nothing you fucking say, Arnett.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah! That's Squirrel Hunting Marcus.
MARCUS PARKS
(Appalachian accent) Fucking tie a goddamn sock around that mothercuker's mouth because I don't wanna hear nothing.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah because you're charming.
MARCUS PARKS
(Appalachian accent) I don't wanna hear about how he's just as upset about this as I am.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(Appalachian accent) Don't let his trifling performer's tongue fool you.
MARCUS PARKS
Well included in this vigilante group was a young man named Cottontop Mounts who was a bastard son of the recently deceased Ellison Hatfield. Cottontop had the intelligence of an eight year old and had a highly annoying laugh that irritated the other Hatfields. But he was useful because he was also incredibly violent, high body count.
ED LARSON
He's probably mean.
MARCUS PARKS
So once the vigilante group arrived at the sinkhole in the dead of night, the three McCoy brothers were blindfolded and tied to small pawpaw trees for the firing squad to come.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(Appalachian accent) Now you're gonna wait, all right. We wait, we fight now. We're all gonna sit here and we're gonna wait. Just hours.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Cottontop, being the least respected of the Hatfields, was tasked with holding a lantern next to the condemned men so the others could see where to shoot.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Goddamn.
ED LARSON
(Appalachian accent) Hold steady now! No, we won't get you, we promise.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(Appalachian accent) Now daddy, we're gonna have to shoot him in the head.
ED LARSON
(Appalachian accent) I feel like I'm kinda close. Now get on in there! Get on!
MARCUS PARKS
Well when the word to fire was given, more than 50 shots rang out which ripped Tolbert and Pharmer McCoy to shreds. But no one had aimed at Bud McCoy, who was still trying to convince the vigilantes that it was actually his brother Bill who had stabbed Ellison and run away.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You don't want to shoot me, guys. You don't shoot me, guys. Let's think about this for a second. It was my brother.
ED LARSON
But it actually worked.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Now it was said that Devil Anse wanted to spare Bud's life because they really couldn't be sure if he was telling the truth and he seemed to be pretty convincing.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He's sitting there looking just like... As he's like trying to be like it was my brother, see. It's my brother. Being like (Appalachian accent) was it now?
MARCUS PARKS
But just as the Hatfield gang was walking away, Bad Jim Vance walked up to Bud and pointed a shotgun in his face. Before pulling the trigger and blasting the top of Bud's skull 6ft behind his body, Bad Jim Vance declared quote:
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(Appalachian accent) "Dead men tell no tales."
MARCUS PARKS
Cottontop then had his own fun, emptying his guns into the three dead bodies.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah!
ED LARSON
Yeah, you got them Cottontop.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I got them!
ED LARSON
Good job, buddy. We could have used those bullets. It's fine, let him have his fun.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(Appalachian accent) We gotta make them individually. These bullets are hard, actually you do have to make each one.
ED LARSON
All right. Well you can sleep inside tonight.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Wow!
MARCUS PARKS
When the bodies were found by the other McCoys, Squirrel Hunting Sam, out of respect I suppose, scooped up Bud McCoy's brains with his bare hands and slid them back into his open skull.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(Appalachian accent) You won't want to leave a mess. Honestly the worst part is squirrels get into these brains. Squirrels get into the brains and then I mean... Because then you'd get mad squirrel.
ED LARSON
Yeah, yeah. Squirrels get strong, they get harder to kill.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes.
ED LARSON
He knows.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He knows. (Appalachian accent) You don't wanna leave a mess.
MARCUS PARKS
Now Randall McCoy immediately formed a posse when he got word that his sons had been executed. But his highly religious wife Sarah begged him not to retaliate, saying that they should let the courts take care of the Hatfields. Reluctantly Randall agreed, which was a huge mistake. See a lot of relatives believe that if Randall had come back full force with a counterattack immediately, the feud would have ended there. Because in this part of the country during this time period, an eye for an eye was the only principle anyone respected. But as one neighbor put it, (Appalachian accent) if they think they got you on the run, they'll keep after you. And so the Hatfields did and that's where we'll pick back up for the conclusion to our series on the Hatfields and McCoys.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Now we've been asked to do this series for a long time and it's fun to do.
MARCUS PARKS
I love this series, it's so much fun.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah. This is one of those. And we got a lot of stuff coming up but I'm excited where this goes because it just gets more violent. Which I like.
MARCUS PARKS
Oh no, there's midnight raids, there's all kinds-
ED LARSON
Yeah, we've barely killed anybody yet.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
We're getting there.
ED LARSON
They killed like five, right?
MARCUS PARKS
Right now it's 5:1.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
No, 5:2, 5:2.
ED LARSON
So we've killed 7 people so far and we're gonna go for between 12-24.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yep.
MARCUS PARKS
Yep.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
So we'll get there. Super excited. For those of you, we want to announce that we are officially on sale with Classy Night Out is going to be live in Los Angeles at the Knitting Factory in North Hollywood, which I'm really excited for. We haven't done a show there.
ED LARSON
Yeah, I've never even been there but it's on top of The Federal.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes.
ED LARSON
So if you know where The Federal is there-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's the top floor. December 22nd, we're gonna have a good old Christmas Cavalcade and we're gonna make you laugh a little bit and we might make you smile, we might make you cry a tear or two. I don't know.
ED LARSON
Yeah. Check it out. Just look for a Classy Night Out at knittingfactory.com. It's in North Hollywood. It's gonna be a lot of fun. We've got a lot of LPN people doing the show.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
ED LARSON
Seena Ghaznavi, Jackie Zebrowski, Amber Nelson.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Everyone that's forced. Yeah, everyone that's forced to do the show will be there.
ED LARSON
That's right, yeah. And we're gonna have some surprise guests. It's gonna be a lot of fun. I can't wait for this fucking show. I'm glad Classy Night Out is back.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
ED LARSON
I love doing that show.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Me too, I love going to Classy Night Out.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah, we'll have a great time.
ED LARSON
And the Knitting Factory fucking rocks, I'm glad there's one in LA now.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Me too.
MARCUS PARKS
That's crazy.
ED LARSON
Also next weekend I'm gonna be in Boca Raton, Florida. I'm doing two shows on December 8th and 9th. I'm fucking going home, I'm from Boca. I'm very excited for this.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Hometown boy!
ED LARSON
Last time I performed at Boca I was playing a cop in Guys and Dolls. And so I'm so excited for the show. It's at the Sol Theater, I'm opening for a guy named Brian Kiley. He's like one of Conan's writers, he's unbelievable, joke machine. So go check it out. I can't wait. I hope y'all come out to the show. I would love to see you there. That's gonna be at the Sol Theater, it's all presented by Comic Cure. Come check it out.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's great. Cannot wait. We also got Operation Sunshine #2. It is for sale, go and check it out at your local comic bookstore. We always ask you to go and ask for it by name at your comic bookstore.
ED LARSON
Yeah. It was sold out where I went.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, it should be. It's doing well.
ED LARSON
They had to get it shipped in from another comic book store so I can get it. So it's almost gone. So go get it now.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Please, please. We worked hard on it and I think it's really, I really love it. And the response has been really beautiful.
ED LARSON
When does #3 come out?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Next month.
ED LARSON
Okay, nice.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
So soon.
MARCUS PARKS
Every month.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Every month.
ED LARSON
A lot of these comic book stores, you can put your name in and they'll hold one for you.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's what Eddie just learned.
MARCUS PARKS
You just learned it. It's called a pull list.
ED LARSON
Oh a pull list. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm new to this whole thing.
MARCUS PARKS
Or a pull box, one of the two.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Pull box. Pull list is also an incredible bar in the Tug Valley.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, it's right next to Pull Box.
ED LARSON
I love going in and pretending like I don't know you and shit, just being like hey, I hear these guys are funny! Marcus Parks, Henry Zebrowski.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah! But they're offering something new and honestly I gotta check it out for myself. Looking around.
MARCUS PARKS
And don't forget to check out all the shows on twitch.tv/lpntv.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes, next week we got Tiers of a Clown will be back, No Dogs in Space is coming back Monday.
MARCUS PARKS
No Dogs in Space is every two weeks, Monday at 6pm PST.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Sí, sí, sí.
MARCUS PARKS
Our next one is gonna be on Monday, December 4th. So tune in, twitch.tv/lpntv for that one.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I love it. And come check out, we're gonna do Gud Pud on Thursday next week, I'm really excited, I got new material for that.
ED LARSON
And Wednesday is gonna be Brighter Side at 5pm. So we're all on that shit next week.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
We're up in that fucking horseshit.
MARCUS PARKS
Ooh, looking at my calendar, the Pasadena City College flea market is on Sunday. Cool.
ED LARSON
Oh there you go. Go have a nice time.
MARCUS PARKS
I think I will.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Bring your Subaru Outback, I think you get 20% off. There's one other thing. Oh we said it
here, we said it on the stream but I will say it here again. So Open Lines, we're not going to be doing Open Lines because we are shifting to focusing on a new show. So just for people, there's confusion about the Sirius XM app. People have been asking me and honestly, I don't know the answer yet. So I will let you know as soon as we know where the new project is going to live.
MARCUS PARKS
Yes.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Is that fun?
MARCUS PARKS
That's so much fun.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Do you guys like that? Do you guys like that actual, that's information that you can't use.
ED LARSON
Yeah, there you go.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Doesn't help.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, it's almost like you gave no information at all.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But that's all that I have.
MARCUS PARKS
And isn't that what the show is all about.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Hey. Why change now?
ED LARSON
I gotta get stoned, can we get outta here?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah. Hail Satan!
MARCUS PARKS
Hail Gein.
ED LARSON
Hail ham.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes!
ED LARSON
Or ham ham ham.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Ham ham ham.
MARCUS PARKS
Ham ham ham.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Hail me, motherfuckers.