Episode 214: Newsboy

the memory palace

Nate DiMeo

Radiotopia, Publicradio, History, Natedimeo

4.8 • 7.2K Ratings

🗓️ 21 March 2024

⏱️ 15 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

The Memory Palace is a proud member of Radiotopia from PRX.

Music

Un geant dans la mer and Triste soiree III from the score to Marie et les naufrages by the genius, Sebastian Tellier.
Love is Blue by Jackie Mittoo and the Soul Vendors.
Rocky Passage by Jeremiah Chiu and Marta Sofia Honer
Morris Visits Dr. Pratt from John Barry's score to The Wrong Box
Adios Muchachos from Andre Popp
Moonlight in Vermont from the great Dorothy Ashby.
Midnight Moon by The Portland Cello Project
Dance PM by Hiroshi Yoshimura
And we hear Blind Andy Jenkins' "Floyd Collins in Sand Cave" followed by Vernon Dalhart doing the same song under the name, "The Death of Floyd Collins." We also hear Jimmy Osbourne do Andy's, "The Death of Little Kathy Fiscus."

Notes

I have a note in my years-long running list of possible story ideas that says, "event songs," but I could never remember why. Then I was reading Charles Hirschberg and Mark Zwonitzer's, Will You Miss me When I'm Gone?: The Carter Family & Their Legacy in American Music and was reminded of Andy's story (that book is great).
I also recommend the always-useful, Country Music USA, by Bill C. Malone for more on Andy and his era as well as Creating Country Music: Fabricating Authenticity by Richard A. Peterson.
If you want more about poor Floyd Collins, you could turn to Robert K. Murray and Roger W. Bruckner's, Trapped!: The Story of Floyd Collins.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	This isn't the memory palace.
0:02.0	I'm Nick De Mayo.
0:04.0	This isn't the story about the man in the cave.
0:06.0	As hard as he had it, poor Floyd Collins,
0:09.0	a 37-year-old man in cave country in Central Kentucky. He had spent so much of his childhood underground,
0:15.6	looking for arrowheads and other artifacts in the caves beneath his family's farm.
0:19.7	He'd feel cool air coming up from a crack in the ground and shimmy down and explore the twisting passages and crystal caverns, a country boy in a jewels vern landscape.
0:30.0	As he grew, he would find himself on the front lines of the Cave Wars, which is not as cool as that sounds, but still quite a story, though it is not this story.
0:38.0	It was a time when landowners and spelunkers were in this heated competition to find and map and ultimately own and exploit the vast network of caves,
0:47.0	bringing tourists and their tourist dollars.
0:50.0	This was a 19-
0:54.5	the 19-tings and 20s, and Floyd Collins found a cave, a big one.
0:56.3	Called it Great Crystal Cave, which was a good and appropriate name.
1:01.0	The kind that would appeal to the traveler driving about the countryside, but
1:04.2	Collins Cave was a bit too far into the countryside, and he couldn't figure out how to get people
1:08.9	to make the trip. And so he kept looking for other caves, one's more convenient to the bigger roads that were being built then to accommodate the cars people were just starting to buy.
1:18.0	And he found one.
1:20.0	Another good one.
1:21.0	Not quite as spectacular, but closer to the road and location, location, and so he
1:26.6	went about trying to figure out the best entry point, so he could dig a nice opening suitable
1:31.0	for non-spelunkers, with a good place out front for a parking lot and a ticket
1:35.8	booth, gift shop, whatever. And one day he is down in the cave and he gets stuck for days.
	...

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