Radium Town, USA. Come For The Glow, Stay For The Smell

What if your entire town was built on something that wasn’t real?

Claremore, Oklahoma once rebranded itself as “Radium Town.” Hotels. Parades. Bathhouses. Souvenir jugs. Steam rooms packed with believers.

One problem.

The water didn’t contain radium.

It smelled like sulfur. It burned your nose. And it sold like a miracle.

This episode dives into the radium craze that swept America after the Curies made the element famous. We talk about the Radium Girls, radioactive tonics, glowing promises, and how one Oklahoma town rode that wave hard enough to turn prairie into profit.

There were publicity stunts. Legal fights. City officials declaring the wells a nuisance. And yes — a promoter who was reportedly dead… until he wasn’t.

Then medicine catches up. The glow fades. The wells get capped.

But the town survives.

We break down how Claremore pivoted when the miracle stopped working — and why the story still matters today, because radium wasn’t the last cure people bought without asking questions.

It just glowed louder than most.

If you like odd Americana, marketing gone wild, and history that smells like rotten eggs, this one’s for you.

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Transcript

The Glow That Wasn’t

Paul G 0:14

I don't know, I like this song.

Andrea 0:17

You've been listening to it for the past like fifteen minutes.

Paul G 1:20

It's actually a decent blue song. I mean things that I wanna know. This is a great song.

Andrea 1:47

. It's good, yeah. I'm not complaining.

Paul G 1:50

I mean, AI, that's an AI song. There's not one real human being involved in that other than me typing the prompts in.

Andrea 1:59

That's kind of impressive, actually.

Paul G 2:01

Yeah, it's it's really good. Um, one shot, too. This is not something that I oh, that's not good enough, do it again. That's not good enough, do it again. It was it just made it. And I was like, oh yeah.

Andrea 2:14

Yeah, he's been in here, I guess, honing in on AI to get all these different songs.

Paul G 2:20

Well, I mean, every time we turn around, it's another theme song that what we end up with, a copyright strike.

Andrea 2:27

Uh copyright, yeah.

Paul G 2:28

Even when I pay for it, it's like, no. I don't like that. Copyright this, copyright that. Well, you know what? Copyright you can go copyright yourself.

Andrea 2:40

Well, you might want to do something to keep this song so someone didn't steal it from you.

Paul G 2:44

That's true.

Andrea 2:44

So copyright it.

Paul G 2:47

I can, actually.

Andrea 2:49

I mean, I don't know how that works with AI generating stuff if you can do that.

Paul G 2:55

It's mine. Things I wanna know.

Andrea 3:00

Well, I'm sure our listeners want to know what they're gonna hear about today.

Paul G 3:03

I don't know, they're gonna enjoy, they're rocking out to the song, man.

Andrea 3:06

Maybe. They're fast forwarding us because they dont want to hear us talk.

Paul G 3:09

No, that's why Now wait a minute.

Andrea 3:12

Oh, come on.

Paul G 3:13

You listen to the morbid girls.

Andrea 3:16

Yeah.

Paul G 3:16

And what do they do? They spend the first they just they they they talk about the case like ten minutes in the whole podcast.

Andrea 3:23

I I know, but let's not badmouth other people or They'll never listen to us.

Paul G 3:29

I'm, what I'm saying is that's what people want to hear.

Andrea 3:32

Okay.

Paul G 3:33

They they like the banter and the goofiness. Remember, remember how I explained the podcast to old people.

Andrea 3:40

 This is a radio program

Paul G 3:42

Yeah, it's it's kind of an old school radio program without any without any affiliation with anybody that matters. I mean, I mean, that's whatever.

Radium Craze 101

Andrea 3:50

Yeah. So who are we covering today?

Paul G 3:52

Well, you and I talked about this and you were very interested in Claremore, Oklahoma.

Andrea 4:00

Well, you got me interested in it by talking about the radium town or the radium waters of around Claremore, Oklahoma.

Paul G 4:06

And it was named Radium Town for a while before it was Claremore. How about that? I didn't find that anywhere, but I guess I mean you probably Well, we went I went back into newspapers.com and they Radium Towns it's all it and then all of a sudden they started calling it Claremore.

Andrea 4:25

Well, as you'll find out, that uh yeah, it's probably a good thing that they changed the name.

Paul G 4:32

So radium was a big thing back in the day.

Andrea 4:37

Yes. They everybody thought you could drink it, you can put it in tonics, you could put it in uh uh cosmetics, you could put it in like everything.

Paul G 4:46

They even thought it did it helped erectile dysfunction.

Andrea 4:49

I find that extremely hilarious.

Paul G 4:51

And do it it it eats away at the bone.

Andrea 4:55

Yeah.

Paul G 4:55

Wahm wahm, we're gonna probably get like some violation from the radio gods on that one. Well, I could say that on national public radio, nobody would say anything. Because I was talking about actual bones. And as we know, erectile dysfunction doesn't have anything to do with bones.

Andrea 5:12

Not in the literal sense.

Paul G 5:15

But uh I guess in 1898, Marie and Pierre Cure. Yeah, they they discovered uh I identified didn't do uh they discovered, I guess, radium. And uh the publicly public basically heard we found the glowing element that gives off energy forever. And that was enough to make people, I guess, start worshiping it in the early 1900s.

Andrea 5:42

Well, I mean they started using it for like glow in the dark paint. They uh thought that if you put it in um cosmetics, it would make your face glow and get a right rink get get you know, wrinkles would disappear. But uh we also used to think that about arsenic too.

Paul G 5:56

So Well, it does make wrinkles disappear.

Andrea 5:59

It makes you disappear.

Paul G 6:01

Exactly. Um in between I guess it peaked out about 1910, 1920s. Um, and uh there's a whole deal with they if you don't know about the these folks, then you're not been paying attention to podcasts very long. Uh the Radium Girls, which you know all about them.

The Radium Girls

Andrea 6:19

I don't know. I I mean I've listened to a couple podcasts and I got a book on them, but it's really, really sad what happened to them. It was a bunch of young ladies who worked for a uh clock facing factory, if I remember correctly, and they were going to dip they would put the paintbrush in their lips to make it into a point. They would dip it in the radium paint, and they would play, I guess, paint the numbers on like watch faces and clock faces and stuff like that. And so, you know, they're ingesting this paint, you know, this radium paint a little bit at a time, and uh eventually it started getting sick to Well, what does radium do to you when you have overexposure and the to radium? It basically just annihilates your whole entire immune system and your bone structure. You have you get aplastic anemia, you basically uh your bones rot from the inside out.

Paul G 7:08

Yeah, they just disappear.

Andrea 7:10

Like their jaws and stuff with disintegrate. Yeah. And it was one of the cases that I think, if I remember correctly, they pushed pictures of it. Yeah, they pushed and pushed for basically like recognition from where they work of hey, you did this to us. But it was a long process.

Paul G 7:27

Yeah, that was back before there was any kind of workplace laws either.

Andrea 7:30

Right.

Paul G 7:31

And so children, these girls started out working there as kids.

Andrea 7:34

Young, like uh 14, why not? I don't know about 14. I remember like 16 maybe to 25. I mean, young, young single ladies or married ladies. A lot of them couldn't have children, obviously, because they were exposed to radium all the time. Yeah. And it was just uh a sad case about, you know, I don't know, I don't really remember if the I know I think the company tried to hide it, like manipulate it for a while.

Paul G 7:59

But it's like what they wouldn't paint their fingernails with it.

Andrea 8:02

Their fingernails, they called it peek-aboo paint. I mean that kind of stuff. So it was just they didn't know, nobody knew.

Paul G 8:08

Nobody knew. And th this radium girls led to a bunch of legislation passed federally to help with workplace regulation.

Andrea 8:17

That's why we have OSHA.

Paul G 8:19

Yeah, OSHA. Uh and Radathor, they call it. It's radium in water. And it had become infamous for uh the wealthy to use, believe it or not.

Andrea 8:33

What did they think? It was gonna cure like uh every disease known to man if they ingested it.

Paul G 8:37

Even Evan Byers, he drank it for years and finally died in 1932 because he was drinking it. And I think they called it. I don't know. Uh notes that the Radathor is one of the few radioactive quack cures unambiguously f linked to someone dying. Because we remember back then Snake Wool we have all heard this this the the term snake oil salesman.

Andrea 9:07

Oh yeah, if anybody I mean, it's been around, that term's been around for a while.

Paul G 9:10

Yeah, and that's what all the radium stuff was about was the snake oil and um all that radium stuff and was all this was about snake oil.

Andrea 9:24

But snake oil's been around since like the early like 1800s when we used to think like putting opium in like uh any type of tonics or stuff would cure you.

Paul G 9:33

They put opium in kids' tooth pain medicine all the way up into the 30s.

Andrea 9:38

Yeah. And I mean cocaine. Oh, heroin, all that stuff we used to think was like fine. We had it in Coca-Cola for God's sakes.

Paul G 9:46

I mean, yeah, that was the 1890s that they stopped doing that, I think.

Andrea 9:49

If I remember correctly on the Coca-Cola thing, I read something where a man wanted to figure out a tonic that would help people coming off off addiction from the Civil War. Yeah, yeah, yeah. From the morphine. From the morphine, and he just made it worse.

Paul G 10:05

Well, no, he didn't make it worse. He gave them more energy.

Andrea 10:09

Yeah, more energy. They got addiction, so they never got off. They went from one addiction to another.

Paul G 10:13

Well, yeah, I'd rather be addicted to cocaine than morphine. I mean, cocaine at least in my house will be clean.

Andrea 10:18

Maybe. No, that's that's meth you're thinking of.

Paul G 10:23

Yes, meth. But methmouth is really bad.

Andrea 10:26

Yes.

Paul G 10:26

Only use pharmaceutical grade meth meth that you can get from a doctor. If you can't get it from a doctor, don't use it.

Andrea 10:33

Which would be what, Adderall?

Paul G 10:35

No. Oh, no. You said for the one of the one of my one of my doctors b gave me uh some weight loss.

Andrea 10:43

Oh, that stuff, yeah.

Paul G 10:44

Oh, so isn't the the what the Fenfen? Fen well, no, it wasn't Fenfen, it was the half of the Fen Fen. Because one screws with your heart.

Andrea 10:51

And the other one doesn't.

Paul G 10:52

And the other one just is just speed.

Andrea 10:54

It's been so long.

Paul G 10:56

It was awesome. He'd give it to me. I'd take it in the morning, uh, right before I went to work, and then I'd go out all day, and then at five o'clock I came home and I was trashed and went right to bed. It was great.

Andrea 11:10

Really?

Paul G 11:10

Yeah. But when I when he gave it to me again, it didn't do that to me. And all it did is just kind of make me so I was like, whatever. I'm not gonna use it no more.

Andrea 11:21

Okay.

Paul G 11:22

Well, I got a lot of work done. Oh Lord.

Andrea 11:28

Yeah, we're learning how to like maybe that is that what I need to give you to clean the house?

Paul G 11:32

No, there's something else you can give me to clean the house.

Andrea 11:35

Oh Lord, we're not gonna go. What?

Paul G 11:36

All right, so how did I, you know, other stuff.

Andrea 11:40

Uh-huh.

Paul G 11:40

Uh-huh.

Andrea 11:41

So how did this get started?

Paul G 11:42

Well, uh, I guess you you know this part of the story better than I do. What is that dude running around collecting oil or something?

The Well That Changed Claremore

Andrea 11:49

George Eaton in 1903, I guess, was an owner of an oil company, and he wanted to find, you know, drilling for some oil and gas. And then he discovered this foul smelling water that was coming up. And he thought, hmm, okay, he took the foul smelling water. This is okay, this is legend.

Paul G 12:07

From the museum.

Andrea 12:08

From a museum that I got, because I was kind of curious, like, w how did this all get started?

Paul G 12:13

And this is Claremore, Oklahoma, today.

Andrea 12:15

Yeah, and so basically he takes this water and throws it in this creek and sees this mangy dog wandering around, and the mangy dog drinks this water. And then a couple days later, when he's out there still drilling and trying to figure out what to do with this water, he discovers that this mangy dog is suddenly cured.

Paul G 12:33

Will Rogers is famous from this town. Many people don't know who that is anymore. Yeah. He was slightly racist.

Andrea 12:40

Um everybody was racist in those days.

Paul G 12:42

Let's just say, I mean, come on. Well, they claim Mark Twain was racist, and in his books, his Huckleberry Finn's best friend is a blackhead. I mean, come on, give me a break. He wasn't racist, he didn't care. Um but uh what it had in it was calcium, magnesium, sulfates, and carbonates, which, if in a high concentration, could deworm a dog.

Andrea 13:06

True. So basically the water w um had uh let me see if I can find my notes. Hydrogen, sulfide, yeah, and sulfur. So the smell we all know what sulfur smells like if you've been there.

Paul G 13:16

Hydrogen sulfide stinks too.

Andrea 13:18

Yeah, so uh basically this is kind of what started this craze.

Paul G 13:22

Let's smother ourselves in some stinky water that smelled like a poo and eggs. You know, so what are these people thinking? It has no radium in it, so I don't know why if he Yeah, it came tested out that there's no radium at all.

Andrea 13:35

So I don't know if he decided whoever's got you know, the if it's him or the town or whoever decided that they just kind of wanted to.

Paul G 13:41

I was gonna bury the lead for later, but you said it already.

Andrea 13:44

Oh, sorry, it's like advertise this town is like having radium in it so people would come to Claremore.

Paul G 13:52

Yeah.

Andrea 13:53

I mean, I don't know. This is just a theory, but I mean, why I guess you can't say, oh, it comes have the hydrogen sulfide water, it'll cure you. I guess this doesn't have a nice of a sales pitch ring as radium does.

Paul G 14:06

Yes. So in 1904 they built a nice uh hotel there.

Andrea 14:12

Oh yeah.

Paul G 14:12

J.S. Flippin had it constructed in 1904, and uh the area became known as a radium town.

Andrea 14:20

And of course all these people are coming in from all over the US to enjoy the water, they think it's gonna cure everything from what I read stomach problems, skin diseases, rheumatism, and eczema.

Paul G 14:31

Eczema. Yeah, which my hair is falling out.

Andrea 14:35

No, it's you've got a rat a really bad like type of rash.

Paul G 14:38

Oh well, it probably does get rid of that rash since everything's dead.

Andrea 14:41

It'll burn it off essentially. But um this is mind-blowing to me that he they like market this and then all these hotels spring up and all these bathhouses spring up.

Paul G 14:54

And it's all over something that's fake.

Andrea 14:57

Yeah.

Paul G 14:57

The entire time, right?

Andrea 14:59

Yeah, and think about that. People are moving in, people are coming to visit.

Paul G 15:02

Two or no, sixty thousand people visited in one year to go to this bathhouse.

Andrea 15:09

I mean, if you think about it, if you're getting a lot of tourism to a very part of Oklahoma that I can imagine in what in the 1900s all the way up till probably 40s was uh very poor, non-existent dirt town.

Paul G 15:23

Yeah, there was nothing out there.

Andrea 15:25

That if you're getting in people coming in from all over the country, this is tourism. The town's making money.

Paul G 15:31

It's before the dust ball, too, so there's that. Yeah, which is crazy because I mean my grandmother was in born in 1909. And so she was around as a little kid when this was going on, but she was living in Kansas.

Andrea 15:47

They say that it was like advertised from what I read, like all over the US. Like people were like, come to Claremore.

Paul G 15:54

Yeah, and then uh the Gateway to Oklahoma history. The term uh says the description of the place is called the Radium Wells Bathhouse in 1905. And then the Purdue bathhouse as well.

Andrea 16:12

They had a Will Rogers bathhouse hotel, didn't they?

Paul G 16:15

Yes. He just lent his name to it. It wasn't actually his.

Andrea 16:18

Which I guess at that time you're a popular guy. I mean, you know.

Paul G 16:22

Yeah, it's like the Fitz Cent Hotel, right? The Drew Carey Inn. You know.

Andrea 16:31

Oh gosh, I don't think anybody on this call knows who Drew Carey is.

Paul G 16:33

They know who Drew Carey is. They watch the prices, right?

Andrea 16:36

Oh, that's right, he's still on that. That's right. But this got so popular that I read in 1930 the Claremore Chamber of Commerce decided to have an annual bath week.

Paul G 16:45

Yes.

Andrea 16:46

What would encourage all the citizens to go enjoy the nice mineral baths that you can get. Oh, well, let's just say, you know, your skin rotting off bath from Yeah.

Paul G 16:56

Here's the here's the fun part about this place, though. This guy, uh um what's his name that started this joint? The whole thing.

Andrea 17:06

Uh George Eaton.

Paul G 17:08

George Eaton, somebody reported that he was dead in his office.

Andrea 17:14

Oh, really?

Paul G 17:15

Yeah. They reported he was dead in his office, and that the people came to Rush to help him and he was just in there sleeping.

Andrea 17:21

Oh god. That's a deep sleep. Yeah.

Paul G 17:24

But what he did is he turned that entire thing into a huge propaganda machine and said that the water brought him back from the dead.

Andrea 17:35

Are you serious?

Paul G 17:36

Yes, he did.

Andrea 17:37

Oh, I think he probably made this whole entire thing up there.

Paul G 17:41

He said he brought it back from the dead. He he just went with it. He's like, Oh, you thought I thought I was dead? Yes, I was dead. Yes, that was me. Somebody threw the water from the on me and I now back.

Andrea 17:51

I'm surprised they didn't pick up his whole body and just dunk him in it.

Paul G 17:54

I mean you know what I'm saying?

Andrea 17:57

But like in the 30s, they had a whole entire parade. They had floats, they had bands, they had like a big to-do. So I guess every time that we have a town that has a festival that has a week, it's gonna make me wonder.

Paul G 18:08

Oh my god, it started.

Andrea 18:10

You know what I'm saying?

Paul G 18:11

Well, the interesting thing is it didn't last very long.

Andrea 18:14

No, it didn't.

What Was Really in the Water

Paul G 18:15

In 1913, the city attorney instruct was instructed to notify owners that the wells must be closed.

Andrea 18:22

Why? Because they're starting to smell.

Paul G 18:24

Because uh they said to notify the Purdue bathhouse owners that the well must be closed, referencing local newspaper dates within the post. Uh, it said because it's it's uh public nuisance.

Andrea 18:36

Hey, we got on newspaperscott.com before we got on here, and we were were trying to find some but it you got me to thinking about something. What we did read about Claremore area and Radium Town is there was a lot of fire.

Paul G 18:49

Yeah, there was a lot of fires. I wondered if well we know why.

Andrea 18:53

I'm that freaking swamp gas in the air.

Paul G 18:55

No, no, no. Remember the one article. So there's one article that says Radiumtown is looking to get a new uh mo uh auto firetruck.

Andrea 19:05

Okay.

Paul G 19:06

Automotive fire truck. Right? They needed to get that because the hill to get up to Radiumtown was too steep for the horses.

Andrea 19:16

That was an article I do remember you saying that. Yeah, yeah.

Paul G 19:19

So that's why they had a lot of fires, because they were having the horses and the dude's like, oh man, I only got two horses, you're gonna ruin them.

Andrea 19:26

Or like all that smelly swamp gas comes out that somebody lights a cigarette or you know, is smoke and Well, if you notice in Landman, if you watch the the TV show Landman on Paramount Plus, they had that odorless gas that killed all those guys in there. Yeah, I do remember that, yeah.

Paul G 19:45

And that's a real thing that comes out of a natural gas well. When natural gas hits on top of oil.

Andrea 19:51

Yeah.

Paul G 19:53

And Oklahoma uh the Texas oil fields are tied to Oklahoma because Oklahoma hit the wool first before Texas did. Okay. And Oklahoma was the place to be. You know. And that's for some reason they attribute it to Arkansas with the Beverly Hillbillies, but it would have been better if they said Oklahoma.

Andrea 20:10

Yeah.

Paul G 20:11

Because there was more oil in Oklahoma than there ever was in the Ozarks.

Andrea 20:15

Yeah, that's a true statement.

Paul G 20:17

Uh so but yeah, so it's possible that he you know he could have got into that too and died. But you never he wouldn't have known it, he would just fell over dead. They have to have those little they wear those little those needles on their chest, yeah. Yeah. So Radiant Town, now called Claremore. If I drove through there about ten years ago, I wanted to take her over there today, but she's like, nah. Okay.

Andrea 20:41

It was raining all day.

Paul G 20:42

Two and a half hour drive. One way. So I was like, nah, I don't really care. They still have that bathhouses and the signage is at the time, maybe gone now, I don't know. Uh, but at the time they had the the the painted signs from the nineteen tens still visible on the side of the concrete buildings.

Andrea 21:03

They should preserve those. That's part of their history.

Paul G 21:07

They may have, I don't know.

Andrea 21:08

I mean, there is a museum about it, so Yeah, it's like all about the Claremore area, and they have a little snippet that talks about this, and I thought that was kind of interesting when I was reading up on it, because I'm like, how did this get started? I mean, and the funny thing is though, is once they start but uh I looked up, okay, did they start to decline? Because obviously they're not around anymore. So were people getting sick? Were people getting cancer? Were people getting, you know, what was what do you get if you decided you want to bathe in this stuff? And the only thing I could find that you basically get respiratory issues, skin irritation, and headaches.

Paul G 21:44

Which And no bones.

Andrea 21:46

Nothing to do with any deaths that I can find, nothing to do with like anything like you know, obviously there's no radium in this stuff, but like obviously it's not healthy for us to bathe in this stuff. So you know, like what what does it do to you? And I couldn't find like any. Anything specific that would, you know, uh or linkage or anything to this ex person died because he took X amount of baths in radiotome.

Paul G 22:09

Well, and this is also the same era uh coming off the same era that gave birth to Eureka Springs and Hot Springs.

Andrea 22:16

Yeah, that's true.

Paul G 22:17

But Eureka Springs well, I mean, I have never heard you would not take a bath in shallow water from Eureka Springs.

Andrea 22:26

No, but back then though the water was cleaner.

Paul G 22:29

True. That's true. Now who knows what's in there?

Andrea 22:31

Because they have all that those streams and all those. You can go visit the various like water places, but the water's closed down where you can't drink it.

Paul G 22:38

Yeah, yeah, yeah, because it's not potable anymore.

Andrea 22:41

Exactly.

Paul G 22:42

Well, here's the interesting thing. Uh back then there was a very uh uh notable actress named Rochelle Hudson. Okay, now this is 1930s, mid-1930s. Okay. And she made remarks about Claremore, Radium Town. Uh and she said that Hudson said later she had must have been there before the wells were capped because before they were capped you could smell it all over town and it stunk bad and she hated it. And when she did that, well, we're Will Rogers came back and they had a public dispute for months about this town. And Will Rogers was a Mark Twain of stay.

Andrea 23:33

So was she disputing against what she said, or is he just He was defending the town. Well, yeah.

Paul G 23:38

I mean, I guess He's well, he's got investment there too. He's got his names up on the building.

Steam, Stunts, and Salesmen

Andrea 23:43

But as I I looked up like, what do they do in these baths? Do they just like draw you a tub of b water that looks I mean, what does it look like? Is it yellow in color? I mean, that that's my first vision of like what does it look like?

Paul G 23:54

Only after you're done.

Andrea 23:55

You know, and then I'm yeah, exactly. Then I'm like and I couldn't really find anything specific, but basically they would do like steam vapor baths, tub bathing, showers, blanket sweating, and alcohol rubs in this stuff. Oh God.

Paul G 24:07

Blanket sweating, really?

Andrea 24:09

Well, some people used to believe, like with certain fevers and things like that, if you bundle somebody up and then you could sweat it out, that used to be a thing.

Paul G 24:16

Well, that's what they do in the American Indian culture, is they have the sweat lodges, and they usually don't use the sweat lodges for medicine as much as they do for visions, because you go in there and you get so hot that and then they burn herbs and stuff and you start to hallucinate sometimes.

Andrea 24:34

I mean, that's what I'm envisioning is bank blanket sweating, but I've really honestly it's not a practice that I've ever heard anybody do anymore.

Paul G 24:41

Yeah. Yeah. So they used to sell this stuff in radium water jars.

Andrea 24:48

Yes, I saw a picture of that jar, and I'm sitting there thinking, it's not radium, but it's like what is it? Like what is it? Does it settle at the bottom? Is it gonna eat the bottom of it? I mean, well, it's glass, it's not gonna go through glass. Yeah, yeah.

Paul G 25:01

That's the interesting thing about glass. You know, well, like with even with the plutonium that we have today, uranium, if you can actually handle it as long as you have on a certain type of rubber glove.

Andrea 25:13

Which is mind-blowing.

Paul G 25:14

Yeah, and it doesn't penetrate. The radiation doesn't penetrate and you're fine.

Andrea 25:17

Which is mind-blowing.

Paul G 25:19

Radiation suits are like maybe a tenth of an inch thick, and you don't get any radiation.

Andrea 25:27

That's crazy. But if you think about it, if you go to the doctor and you're getting an x-ray.

Paul G 25:32

Big old lead smunk.

Andrea 25:34

They have put something over areas that they don't want, you know. Like if you're a woman, they'll put it over your, you know, your tummy area or things like that, so you don't get like your ovaries. Your ovaries basically cooked. And so, um, I guess and it's not very thick, so I guess that kind of makes sense.

Paul G 25:48

Well, these people didn't have any idea what they were doing when it came to x-rays. X-rays are different than radiation.

Andrea 25:54

Yeah.

Paul G 25:54

That's a man-made ray. It's it's it's it's a chemical X-rays are not something that just happened in nature the way we use them.

Andrea 26:04

Yeah.

Paul G 26:04

They have to be like plutonium doesn't exist in the way we use them. In the Northwest, or the midway uh desert. Plutonium and uranium just laying on top of the soil.

Andrea 26:18

Yeah, I remember you saying that in one of your um Yeah, with Paul G's corner stuff, yeah, police corner stuff.

Paul G 26:24

And that's something I've done for a long time. It just lays there. And if you dig enough, you're gonna get it. That's why but it's weird that they it must also be in Kentucky or somewhere wherever was it Kentucky where they had the big plant where they did it in World War II? Or was it Tennessee? I can't remember.

Andrea 26:41

I can't remember.

Paul G 26:42

Um, but you have to have tons and tons and tons of ore to refine, refine enough out to concentrate it enough to make energy. And this basically the same thing we're talking about. It's radium versus in in in plutonium.

Andrea 26:59

But but think about it here for a second. You're a person that's coming to radium town to get cured, and you're walking into town, and it's like, you know, I don't know, we'll say 1920, and it stinks. The town stinks. And then you go into this bath.

Paul G 27:15

Then every town's dunk.

Andrea 27:16

That's true. But here's the horses. Here's the thing that gets me though. This is hydrogen sulfide and sulfur. Okay, you don't know what that is because it's 1920. But you're going in there to take your bath, and wouldn't you sit instantly go, I'm not getting to that, that stinks.

Paul G 27:30

They tan, they use these chemicals to tan leather.

Andrea 27:36

Yeah. I guess for me, like most people are like, oh, I don't want to look at that, taste that, touch that, whatever, because it smells or it's have you ever had a Manhattan? No.

Paul G 27:48

It's not good. It's terrible. Vermouth is awful. But yet they loved it back then. So the tastes of everything. It's like there's certain certain shots that that people get that cause them to their tastes their tastes and smells change, and they're like uh the food they used to like they don't like anymore. Right?

Andrea 28:11

I can't recall a shot I do know stuff that makes like bodily functions like urine change color, but I don't know anything.

Paul G 28:18

No, I'm talking about the way you perceive the smell or the food taste.

Andrea 28:24

I can't think of anything off the top of my head specifically, no.

Paul G 28:28

Okay.

Andrea 28:29

What you talking about COVID?

Paul G 28:31

No. Uh the Zetbound stuff.

Andrea 28:34

Oh, Zetbound? Why'd you just say it, Zipbound?

Paul G 28:36

Because I didn't want to air dirty laundry on air, but I guess I have to since you weren't following me.

Andrea 28:41

Zet bound, yes, has made me have certain aversions to food and certain aversions to smells, yes.

Paul G 28:47

And it it's also almost cured your uh arthritis.

Andrea 28:53

It's where I don't have any chronic pain anymore, yes.

When the Wells Became a Nuisance

Paul G 28:55

Yeah, but we don't know if it's it's gotta be due to the zip bound because it's the only thing she changed. But we cannot guarantee that it will happen for you.

Andrea 29:02

Well, think about it. Back then they thought that like all this this nice funky water is gonna make them have like be cured. Who knows? Maybe the zip bound's gonna make me grow like a th three nipples or something 20 years down the road because of the way it's got something in it.

Paul G 29:14

Well, there's always plastic surgery.

Andrea 29:15

Oh my god. You see what I'm saying? Like there's always fads and things, and then you realize, like, oh, that's not a good idea.

Paul G 29:22

But what I'm getting getting at is the food they ate wasn't clean. Right? Not not in today's standards. And it definitely wasn't processed, like it was all made from scratch. True. And half the stuff wasn't washed.

Andrea 29:35

But we also didn't understand about like um refrigeration as well, depending on what time of the year, but depending on the time.

Paul G 29:41

Most of the stuff they ate was salted because it was the only way to keep it good.

Andrea 29:45

Yeah.

Paul G 29:46

So and so they had high levels of salt. Uh they also they drank whatever water was around and m beer and alcohol and wine. And they he everybody used an outhouse. Every every moment of every day when you had to go to the bathroom, it was a communal bathroom. There was no I have a bathroom in my bedroom or I have a bathroom in my office.

Andrea 30:11

Yeah.

Paul G 30:12

No, you didn't have that.

Andrea 30:13

Well, yeah, I mean things have developed and changed.

Paul G 30:16

If you wanted a bathroom in your office in eight the in 1890 or 1901, it was a bucket in the corner.

Andrea 30:23

Yeah.

Paul G 30:23

I mean that's what it was, because there was no the plumbing it existed, but but not in Oklahoma. Yeah. You know, they didn't have they didn't have that stuff. So all those things can change my per what I would think is all that stuff can change the way you smell and taste things. So yes, it stinks, but uh does it stink to the point that we would think today that's awful.

Andrea 30:50

That's true. Their pri perception's probably different because they're used to everything smelling bad.

Paul G 30:54

Yeah, because the horses pooping everywhere. Cattle there was m cattle running everywhere, especially in Oklahoma, Kansas, Texas. Yeah. Cattle everywhere, and they were just running loose. They weren't in trucks. Well, they didn't have trucks.

Andrea 31:09

Yeah.

Paul G 31:09

They didn't and they barely had a cattle train, and only the guys with the money could afford to put their cattle on a cattle train to send it to Kansas City to get go to market. Because Kansas City at the time was where all the cattle in the nation went to go out to the east.

Andrea 31:25

Yeah, that's correct. I do remember that Kansas City's a big hub. Uh Fort Worth was a big hub.

Paul G 31:30

Um Fort Worth is where they started and then they ended in Kansas City. Cattle drives.

Andrea 31:36

Yeah.

Paul G 31:37

The cowboys. My great uncle was a cowboy.

Andrea 31:40

I remember you saying that.

Paul G 31:41

He was born in the 1800s and he went out and became an actual cowboy. And he said it sucked. It was awful. He hated it.

Andrea 31:51

So what made this place turn turn um against, I guess, obviously change?

Paul G 31:56

Well, um I don't I'm you know, scandal for one thing. It was that it found out there was no radium in the water.

Andrea 32:06

But we couldn't find I couldn't find anything where it's been like a newspaper busted them or you know, it's none of that.

Paul G 32:14

Well, the the last bathhouse didn't close till 1990.

Andrea 32:18

Which I tried to find out.

Paul G 32:19

The Hotel Will Rogers.

Andrea 32:21

If okay, I would like to help and think that uh they figured out that this water is not good for you, so this hotel started chipping in like better water for you. But I couldn't find anything where there was like a newspaper article about the badness of it or you know nothing. I could find nothing. But granted uh newspaper they might have not had a very robust newspaper.

Paul G 32:44

No. Before 1902, there was no newspaper in that's recorded today in Claremore.

Andrea 32:51

Which probably most places were that way.

Paul G 32:53

Yeah, you got to get some newspaper from somewhere else. Um by the 1940s and fifties, the bathhouses though in Claremore became less popular. Uh and the national registration nomination for the Will Rogers Hotel uh flat out describes that decline. And even though some places were kept operating for decades after uh it's it's uh the Oklahoma Historical Society just didn't care. And they just wrote it off by the forties. Um and once medicine actually became medicine as it is today, which started in the forties. Yeah. Mostly due to World War II and World War One, um, bathing your way to health was one of those things they didn't do anymore.

Andrea 33:43

Yeah, because you should be bathing every day, essentially. But people weren't really doing that way back in the past.

Paul G 33:50

They say it stopped stopped sounding like a cure and started sounding like a weekend hobby.

The End of Miracle Medicine

Andrea 33:59

I mean uh it's just kind of crazy though. I mean, I guess that bathhouse stayed around, but then again, and uh hot like hot springs and even in Eureka, the bathhouses obviously don't have this kind of like you know, hydrogen.

Paul G 34:12

There's only one left.

Andrea 34:13

But um they're still available and there you could still go, like Hot Springs still has a big Hot Springs is different, it's a national park.

Paul G 34:20

Yeah, PR did that. So but Hot Springs is the that water is so hot in Hot Springs, Arkansas, when they bring it in, they have to cool it before putting it in a hot pool that you're re recommended not to get in unless you're ready for it to be almost too hot.

Andrea 34:41

Yeah, I have I've never been there, but you gotta go.

Paul G 34:43

I've heard of it though. I've been there once, and you get a big old tour behind the scenes of all the stuff they used to do back then. And it has all the medical devices and crazy stuff they had. You know that thing where they put it around your waist and shake you back and forth? Yeah. They had one of those.

Andrea 34:59

Oh, that's cool.

Paul G 35:00

Yeah, that didn't do anything for anybody.

Andrea 35:03

No, other than probably like hurt your vertebrae.

Paul G 35:06

If you had hip problems, you were screwed. Yeah.

Andrea 35:09

So basically it sounds like it's just kind of like when I could research it, and granted, we didn't get a book on this that someone's probably like pulled every record on demand. We try to do this without that.

Paul G 35:21

But and the city made them cap the stinky wells in 1913.

Andrea 35:27

So they just kind of naturally declined.

Paul G 35:30

Yeah, there wasn't anything left. I mean they sanitized the experience, I guess.

Andrea 35:36

So it makes me like uh I guess no scandal over no radium.

Paul G 35:42

No. No, because well, I don't think they discovered that there wouldn't so it's nationally what I think the the um I think the radium health craze didn't last very long.

Andrea 35:57

No, we started to figure out that your jaw will rot off and parts of your body will fall off.

Paul G 36:01

By 1930s, they knew it was bad. The the radium girls were stole Yeah, that's different because they're not taking a bath in it. They're just they're painting with it. We still have radium in our watch faces today. That's what that glow is. That's crazy. It's radioactive, but it's put there by a machine, not a person. So it's fine. I mean, it's under that quartz crystal and it's protected, you can't get to it. And it's not radioactive enough to get past the glass. Because remember what I said there earlier, the even that little bit of plastic.

Andrea 36:37

Yeah.

Paul G 36:38

Right? It's it's weird too how that works because uh Tom Clancy did a whole section on it. On how radioactivity you can just stop it. Weird.

Andrea 36:50

That is strange.

Paul G 36:52

And it didn't just die out, it just kind of dwindled away, just kind of disappeared.

Andrea 36:57

Yeah, I mean, I I don't know what Claremore's industry was that kept them as surviving as a town, but it makes me wonder like I mean, obviously it's still a town now, and it's obviously a very decent sized town from what I can recall, but like well, it's just outside of Oklahoma or Tel Tulsa, so it's like a suburb now, I think. So, I mean, basically, like hopefully, obviously the town was able to recover.

Paul G 37:20

Well, and you know, it's got you know, the Will Rogers thing, nobody knows who it is anymore.

Andrea 37:25

No.

Paul G 37:26

Will Rogers that's he was a big deal. He really was. He was doing records all the way up until he died.

Andrea 37:33

Wow.

Paul G 37:34

Dad has a bunch of them, or did have a bunch of them. Mom probably got rid of them by now. Since, you know, dad died a while back. Uh it became a government town, it says. Uh it was designated the Rogers County seat, so it's the it's the the the county seat of the county. Well, it's not gonna die when you do that.

Andrea 37:55

The head of the county.

Paul G 37:56

Route sixty-six went through there.

Andrea 38:00

I imagine the interstate changed that.

Paul G 38:02

Yeah, yeah, yeah. But have you been down the Route 66? You should see some of those towns. It is they are beautiful.

Andrea 38:10

I vaguely remember some of it when my parents drove out to California. We went through a few of them.

Paul G 38:15

There's one town I went to outside of Oklahoma uh outside of Tulsa. Um, I went out there and it's got a few hotels and stuff, but the downtown square is a uh I'm sure it's a co it's probably ten acres big. And it used to be a big deal. You could tell all these ornate beautiful buildings that no one's in anymore.

Andrea 38:37

Wow.

Paul G 38:38

It's actually interesting. Yeah, Route 66 used to be the route before we had highways. So Eisenhower put the highways in because he wanted to be able to get troops from one side of the country to the other without having to stop and go through towns. Which makes sense. And that's why we did it, because Eisenhower's a general and he knew just how important it was, because he's the one that won World War II, one of the ones anyway. Yeah. Uh he he was president and he knew how important it was to be able to mobilize your forces. So if somebody attacked you on the West Coast and you had most of your forces on the East Coast, they needed to get there in two days. Which, if you have enough men, you can drive all night and all day and get there the night and get there in two, three days. From from Maine to Oregon. And so Route 66 was the predecessor to our highway system. That's how you got to California.

Andrea 39:32

Yeah, yeah. I do remember my mother talking about that when she would come like from to back from California to Arkansas.

Paul G 39:40

Just two-lane road the whole time, too.

Andrea 39:41

Yeah.

Paul G 39:42

And weird. Um and then of course they guess I guess they get some real industries now. Um Baker Hughes has a presence in Claremore. Uh they manufacture stuff. And uh so and they're just down the road from it also.

Andrea 40:01

So they were able to survive the whole, you know, lovely radium water.

Paul G 40:06

It it it helps them to survive because they had the uh because they had the uh Will Rogers and then they became the county seat.

Andrea 40:14

Okay.

Paul G 40:14

County seats don't die.

Andrea 40:16

True.

Paul G 40:17

And that's everybody has to go there to get their horses tagged. Yeah. Back then I guess. Do you have a thysence plate on the back of your horse? I would hope not. Just put it around their neck. Do it from the front.

Andrea 40:30

That's so sad. It's so scary. What? If you think about it, the mental image of that.

Paul G 40:36

But it it was just snake oil the whole time. Radium radium did something, but it didn't do what you thought it did.

Andrea 40:43

And not for them.

Paul G 40:44

Which is it's the same thing as sticking your uh uh no, I'm not gonna say that. It's putting in um dirty-minded people. It's like putting morphine in your in your tooth fix your tooth soothing syrup for your two-year-old.

Andrea 41:02

Yeah, we've come a long way over that.

Paul G 41:04

Cocaine's much better for that, by the way, than morphine.

Andrea 41:07

I wouldn't know.

Paul G 41:08

Cocaine will just numb you.

How Claremore Survived

Andrea 41:10

And also rot your teeth out, so you know there's that. Well, you don't do it all the time, just every now and again. But this is a time era where they used to put your medicines next to your uh bug elements or your arsenic and yeah, you could buy arsenic just off the counter. Arsenic and your your lime and stuff next to your uh uh powdered milk or whatever for your kid, and they had the exact same packaging that was very similar, which is why all these laws had to come out where packaging had to look different from food from like, you know, pesticides and things like that.

Paul G 41:40

It's interesting. Arsenic's just made from appleseeds.

Andrea 41:44

Crazy.

Paul G 41:45

Isn't that something?

Andrea 41:45

That is crazy.

Paul G 41:46

Who knew? Cyanide, uh, I can't remember where it's made out of. What is it is what is cyanide made out of?

Andrea 41:53

I honestly don't remember.

Paul G 41:55

Yeah, you could just take some apple seeds, crush them, and do something to them, and you've got our you've got our snake.

Andrea 42:03

It's just crazy, but very simple to make. We've come a long way in our packaging and our snake oil stuff and our you know ability to like modern medicine.

Paul G 42:12

Well, we had we had the same the equivalent today would be the BHPs or whatever it was in in plastics. They had our BH what was it called? The stuff they had to remove out of plastics because it was giving people cancer.

Andrea 42:25

Oh, what was that?

Paul G 42:26

And it was in baby bottles and baby nipples and all sorts of stuff, yeah. And BHP, I think it is, in it.

Andrea 42:33

They think everything gives you cancer. They think your cell phone gives you cancer, they think eating too much eggs.

Paul G 42:38

5G was supposed to be the next big thing. It's gonna kill off everyone, and guess what? Now we're on 6G and no one's dead.

Andrea 42:44

Too many eggs gives you cancer. Too little eggs gives you cancer.

Paul G 42:47

I mean, you know what I'm saying, like uh it's it's like that old joke I that that people used to tell. They said, uh, did you know lack of sex causes medicine?

Andrea 42:56

What?

Paul G 42:57

Yeah, lack of sex causes men.

Andrea 42:59

Yeah. Yeah.

Paul G 43:02

You know the joke.

Andrea 43:04

I know the joke, yeah.

Paul G 43:05

Lack of sex causes bad hearings, which yeah, it's a person. Yeah. I've heard it.

Andrea 43:12

It's a terrible joke. Yeah.

Paul G 43:14

It is very I did not promise good jokes. There's nowhere on this podcast does it say in the notes or where otherwise that there are good jokes.

Andrea 43:22

This is true, guys. This is very true.

Paul G 43:24

Yes. So but the this radium stuff, though, they did that with I think they tried to do that with uranium, but it was pretty clear, pretty quick, that if you used uranium in the wrong way, you were dead.

Andrea 43:38

I've never heard anything.

Paul G 43:39

Hmm. So what's your takeaway?

Andrea 43:45

Um, it makes me wonder like what other type of similar towns are out there that have had this similar situation. Um, or what other type of things can we like? I did read something in the Victorian era about like Some of the same similar type stuff.

Paul G 44:02

Yeah.

Andrea 44:02

But it makes me curious, like, what other type of weird medical things have been out there with people thought, oh, this is the l-rated latest and greatest craze, and it's like X-rays.

Paul G 44:13

Uh well, no, but like it Well no, they used X-rays to they did an experiment when they first figured out X-rays, they were removing ringworm from people's scalps with X-rays. And yes, it does work. But if you're not careful, you'll melt someone's skull and leave them with no skull in their head.

Andrea 44:34

Yeah, but what I was trying to say is like other things besides that, like other like what other weird, crazy medical things are out there or cures that we thought were out there that's maybe based in another town.

Paul G 44:45

Well, Mineral Wells, Texas. It's a well-known town. Same thing.

Andrea 44:50

Same thing.

Paul G 44:51

Yeah. Um I guess. There's a lot of different places like that. You know, Eureka Springs, even though it wasn't like that. Hot Springs is real though, because it's it literally that water boils up from the earth's crust.

Andrea 45:06

Yeah.

Paul G 45:07

It's that hot.

Andrea 45:08

I think Eureka Springs, they mainly they made it on the Crescent Hotel and Dr. Baker and his quack treatments for cancer.

Paul G 45:14

Yeah. Was it now wasn't it a school first or was it Baker first?

Andrea 45:17

It was a school. It was a hotel, then it was a school. School for girls, right? School for girls, and then um it became a sanitorium. Basically, this Dr. Baker guy bought the, you know, bought the hotel and decided that he was going to um cure cancer. And so he would promise uh cures that were non-existent. I'm not exactly sure what he would give people for the cure. And uh basically people would just die of cancer and their disease and you know have to be shipped back to their families.

Paul G 45:54

Mind over matter is a lot of things too. If you think you're gonna get better, you will feel better for a while.

Andrea 45:59

Yeah, but the I wanted to say like uh not giving them pain medicine when they need it. I can't I have to do some research on exactly what he did, but it was like he was This is Eureka Springs, Arkansas. It was more or less a quack.

Paul G 46:15

Quack, quack.

Andrea 46:17

But he like basically took people's hopes and dreams down the toilet for cures.

Paul G 46:23

No, he took people's hopes and dreams and traded them for money.

Andrea 46:26

Yeah.

Paul G 46:27

The Nawata, Nowita, Nawata, Oklahoma, also did the exact same thing. Uh it out in the kind of the prairie portion of it. Right? Uh British Columbia had one Radium Hot Springs. Pryor and Celina, Oklahoma, did the same thing. Uh and in the Czech Republic they did it as well. It's not the only one. There's a bunch of places that did this. And here's the thing. Um radium bathhouse. Uh it it's none of these places except for the one in Chuck in in the Czech Republic actually had radium in it.

Andrea 47:16

Wow. How about that?

Paul G 47:18

They all just lied. That's crazy. It's the era that was it's the era that they lived in. Yeah, it was you couldn't trust anything that you d do you think it's bad today? It's not bad at all today. What you get is what you're gonna get. However, phenyphrine they finally took it off the market because the FDA is like, no, phenolphrine does nothing.

Andrea 47:42

Oh, yeah, for like col like colds and congestion.

Paul G 47:46

Phenolphrine does absolutely nothing. It's still available, you can still go buy it, but phenyphrine does not clear your sinuses or help you with symptoms of the cold.

Andrea 47:56

Well, they had to do something because you can't obviously put in what they used to because people make meth out of that.

Paul G 48:00

Yeah, I know. Well it's always somebody screwing things up for the rest of us. I never did like pseudoephedrine anyway. It's the awful god. It made me feel terrible.

Andrea 48:10

It's the only thing that would help me when I had like sinus congestion or really bad like sinuses or something.

Paul G 48:16

Chlorophenamine helps me, and they don't like us using that either because it drives your blood pressure up, I think.

Andrea 48:20

Yeah, I have to go to different stuff now. I can't use any of that stuff with the blood pressure.

Paul G 48:24

I used to take mini thins, like they're going out of style.

Andrea 48:27

I think everybody else.

Paul G 48:28

Epinephrine. Ephedrin.

Andrea 48:32

Yeah, I'm surprised we don't have more people with like heart valve problems.

The Other Cure Towns

Paul G 48:35

Oh, we had a guy on our football fan football team just he was he was out playing and he just collapsed and died. Because he took a bunch of mini thins while I was at Springdale High School. You can look it up.

Andrea 48:45

That's a thing. People did it. Yeah.

Paul G 48:48

Well, but for a truck driver it was great because he could stay awake. And for me it was great because I would listen to music really loud and go, yeah. Oh god. What? That's what I did. Well, when you're young. I didn't do it all the time.

Andrea 49:01

Yeah.

Paul G 49:01

But I didn't want to go anything deeper or harder because it was like that. I go to jail.

Andrea 49:07

Well, yeah.

Paul G 49:08

I won't do anything that would send me to jail.

Andrea 49:10

No, jail's not a place to be.

Paul G 49:12

No. Unless, of course, it's you know. I don't think there's anything today in modern times that would I would do that would send me to jail.

Andrea 49:22

No, we're too old. We're too old and we've been as a kid I wouldn't. We've grown up. You know, we're lying.

Paul G 49:29

Speak for yourself.

Andrea 49:31

We're older now. We don't do stupid stuff.

Paul G 49:33

I do stupid stuff all the time. Not to get arrested. Well, you didn't qualify it. You just had stupid stuff.

Andrea 49:40

Alright, alright, alright, alright.

Paul G 49:44

So I guess next week we're going to move on to some murders.

Andrea 49:49

Yeah, we'll see if you know this is supposed to be Paul's week, but I got suckered into doing this week.

Paul G 49:56

It's not my week. It's our program. It's our week.

Andrea 50:00

Usually we alternate between who does a lot of the research.

Paul G 50:03

I didn't even know you're doing the research till like earlier today when we went to Olive Garden.

Andrea 50:07

Well, like you told me like, what are we are we talking about your podcast on tomorrow? And I'm like, uh thinking I'm thinking I thought it was your week.

Paul G 50:14

Well, she initially saw talked to me about uh Radium Girls, and I'm like, well, they've got a lot of press. There's whole books on Radium Girls.

Andrea 50:24

And I don't I'm gonna just be regurgitating what everybody else knows.

Paul G 50:27

Yeah. And it's it's nothing new. But did you know? And that's and and then I told her, Did you know there was a place in Oklahoma that had radium baths and it's on the side of the wall as you drive through town?

Andrea 50:38

And I didn't, so I were dug in some stuff into it and I was like, wow. And I thought, well, wow, it's gonna have real it didn't even have radium in it. So I was like, wow, how'd they how'd they do that?

Paul G 50:48

Yeah, so uh there's a lot of little things like that around you, around town. If you look hard enough, I don't know, Springdale, just chickens. What's Rogers known for?

Andrea 50:58

The railroad back in the day.

Paul G 51:00

I think it's so boring.

Andrea 51:01

I think it was the railroad. I could be wrong.

Paul G 51:04

Springdale was just chickens and Fayetteville's university.

Andrea 51:07

Uh Fayeville, Arkansas.

Paul G 51:09

And then Bentonville wasn't anything until Sam Walton came. Yeah, Walmart. Yeah, now it's a huge metropolis.

Andrea 51:15

So I I don't know. I I'd have to look up what R I want to say it was for the railroad, but now you got me wondering.

Paul G 51:21

Yeah, I don't well it had to be because it was they still celebrate. But Springdale had the railroad too. But all they had was all all Springdale had was chickens. I mean, up until ten years ago, the downtown Springdale was the way it looked for fifty years. It had Ryan's clothing store, a couple of restaurants, and a and a bank two bank buildings that were abandoned. Because there's nothing down there. Fable has a square. So does Bentonville, actually.

Andrea 51:54

But it used to be compared to now, like that's where all the older shops were, you know.

Paul G 52:01

Well, this but they didn't ha you know, they didn't have Walmart.

Andrea 52:05

Yeah.

Paul G 52:06

And you know Dollar General is owned by a Walton.

Andrea 52:09

Really? I'm not surprised. They're everywhere.

Paul G 52:11

Well, they're that's Dollar that's it makes sense now. There's when the memes Dollar General show up on the moon.

Andrea 52:18

Probably will.

Paul G 52:20

Well, it makes sense to me now because they're taking the old model of Walmart before they turn them into super centers and using it for Dollar Generals.

Andrea 52:27

Which makes sense.

Paul G 52:28

Makes more money.

Andrea 52:29

Yeah.

Paul G 52:30

Actually. Yeah, and you in the entire time when you went to Dollar General, the cool part was you could still hear the banjos.

Andrea 52:47

It's not that bad. It is not that bad.

Paul G 52:55

Yes, I know. And it still bothers you five years later.

Andrea 52:59

I'm like, it was not that bad.

Paul G 53:03

Alright. Alright.

Andrea 53:04

Alright, you gonna put are you gonna put your song on?

Paul G 53:07

Yeah, I like my song.

Andrea 53:09

I thought last week was your song too.

Paul G 53:12

No. Well, it was last week. This week's this week.

Andrea 53:17

We'll see what he puts on next week, guys.

Paul G 53:19

Next week? I have to make a new one. How many of you recorded like 20 of them? I know, but. I just I have to. I have to surprise you now. I don't know what I'm gonna make. I could do it uh uh like an old bluegrass, I guess.

Andrea 53:38

I wouldn't be surprised if you did.

Paul G 53:40

I wonder if it does bluegrass.

Andrea 53:43

Oh no. Guys, we got him down a rabbit hole now. So, what should we cover next week?

Paul G 53:49

Uh well, we have true crime?

Andrea 53:53

We can. Let's do it.

Paul G 53:54

What if we what if we want why don't we find I let's I you know what I want to know?

Andrea 54:00

What do you want to know?

Snake Oil Never Dies

Paul G 54:01

I wanna know who's the most profound I want to talk about that one woman who's in the insane asylum just died recently. Who killed her entire family and other people in Springdale between Rogers and Mount and Winslow. That's what I want to know about. We can get Kent over here, put him on mic, and he can tell us. Because he covered that story because he was an old newspaper reporter.

Andrea 54:22

Well, let's see if we can get him to see if he wants to tell us what he knows.

Paul G 54:25

He likes to talk and hear himself talk, so he probably will. He's just he's worse than me. If you can imagine that. That's what I want to know. Is this possible? That's saying something, I'm telling you right now. Alright. So go to wwwp.paulgnewton.com and get some swag. You want some swag. You want a t-shirt, you want a coffee mug, you want a hat that says, Oh my god, Paul Stoff. That's still up there. You can buy that still.

Andrea 55:02

Somebody buys that, send a picture of it. I would like to see that.

Paul G 55:05

That'd be that'd be actually kind of fun. And if you get that, then uh you will help us to buy the website thingsIwanna Know.com.

Andrea 55:15

That's true.

Paul G 55:15

Actually, it'd be thingsIwanna Know.org, because thingsIwanna Know.com is something else.

Andrea 55:20

Oh.

Paul G 55:21

Or maybe I could just do ToWiki. Things I Wanna Know. To Wiki. It's the acronym. Oh, okay. To Wiki.

Andrea 55:29

To Wiki. Yeah.

Paul G 55:32

Alright.

Andrea 55:35

I don't even know what to say. To wiki. Towiki.

Paul G 55:38

Sounds like a I don't know. Twit wiki leaks. Twiki, it might work.

Andrea 55:44

I can see people like thinking some interesting thoughts with Tawiki.