The Way I Heard It

by Mike Rowe

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  For Mom and Dad…

  who may have heard it differently

  A promise made is a debt unpaid.

  —SAM McGEE

  Be wary of all earnestness.

  —TRAVIS McGEE

  INTRODUCTION THE WAY I WROTE IT

  I drove into the long-term parking lot at BWI twenty-five minutes before my flight was scheduled to depart. This would have been back in 1988. June, I think. I had bags to check and security to clear, but if I hustled, I could still make it. There was just one problem—I couldn’t seem to get out of my car. It was the strangest thing. The door wasn’t locked, nor was it jammed. In fact, the door was open but I was stuck to my seat, and I remained that way until the man on the radio spoke his magic words. Words that would allow me to grab my bags from the trunk and sprint for the gate. Finally, those words were spoken.

  “And now, you know the rest of the story.”

  How many times did I sit in parking lots and driveways long after I’d arrived at my intended destination, waiting for Paul Harvey to utter those words? Too many to count. Thanks to his insanely addictive radio program, The Rest of the Story, I missed my flight that day, and ever since, I’ve wanted to write stories that can’t be turned off or put down until the very end. Stories that make people late.

  I’ll have more to say about Paul Harvey later. For now, I just want to thank him for inspiring The Way I Heard It, the podcast whose title is shared by the book you’ve just begun. Like The Rest of the Story, the mysteries in this book tell some true stories you probably don’t know, about some famous people you probably do. Your job is to figure out who or what I’m talking about before I get to the end. Inside, you’ll find thirty-five mysteries pulled from my podcast. Think of them as tiles in a mosaic. Each of these tiles is followed by a personal recollection. Think of those as the grout that holds the tiles together.

  Many of these mysteries were written in the heart of America—in her greasy spoons, hotel rooms, and train stations. Others were composed high above the fruited plain, as I flew hither and yon to host one show or another. Funny thing, though. While writing mysteries up there in the friendly skies, something mysterious happened to me. Time became compressed. Distances started to shrivel. How many times did I begin to write on the tarmac at SFO, only to look up a few minutes later, stunned to be landing at JFK? Too many to count.

  Picture me at 37,000 feet…

  My laptop is open, the light is on above me, and everyone around me is sleeping. That’s what I pictured for the photo on the cover of this book: me in a middle seat, writing the words you’re reading today. I went with a corner diner instead because the food’s better, but you get the idea—half of this book was written on the road. The other half—the grout—was mixed right here, at my kitchen table.

  Perhaps you can picture that, too?

  A fire snaps and crackles in the background, the fog blows in from under the Golden Gate, and my faithful dog, Freddy, gnaws on my slippers as I wrestle with the question gnawing at me—why, exactly, did I write about the people I wrote about? I mean, something must have drawn me toward the subjects I’d picked, right? The more I considered what that something was, the more I discovered some surprising connections—personal connections that I hadn’t noticed from 37,000 feet or at the lunch counter at Mel’s. Invariably, these connections began to rhyme, and soon the mosaic began to change. The grout and the tiles became equally important.

  How many times did I look up from my laptop, only to see that the fire had gone out, the dog was asleep, the fog was gone, and the moon was right where the sun had been shining just moments ago? Too many to count.

  You’ve already met Freddy, and you’ll run across him again in the pages to come. He’s a good boy. You’ll meet my parents, my girlfriend, and my high-school mentor. There will be ghosts and pigs, farmers and fishermen, movie stars, presidents, Nazis, and bloody do-gooders, along with the fictitious knight-errant upon whom my entire worldview was once based. Along the way, you’ll hear stories about Dirty Jobs and a long list of less notable shows that still haunt me on YouTube. Shows I’ve tried to forget, but cannot. In all cases, each story is told the way I heard it. If you’ve heard it differently, I’m okay with that, and I hope you are, too.

  By the way, I’m trying to picture you, too. Is that creepy? I hope not.

  I see you checking in to some quaint bed-and-breakfast—in Oregon, maybe, or Texas, or even in England or France. You’ve arrived late, worn out from your journey. You’ve built a fire and slipped into bed. This book, dog-eared and stained, just happens to be the one lying on your bedside table. You pick it up. You start to read. And when you look up, the fog is gone, the fire is out, and there’s the sun, right where the moon was just moments ago. You wonder where the night went.

  On Monday morning, at the water cooler, you might share one of these stories with a friend. They’ll probably raise an eyebrow and say, “Wow! Is that really the way it happened?” If I were you, I’d say: “You better believe it. At least… that’s the way I heard it.”

  THIS ISN’T FUNNY

  Corporal Kaminsky was precariously perched atop a makeshift utility pole, forty feet above the frozen ground. In the dim light of a crescent moon, he squinted to complete his task and tried not to lose his battle with gravity.

  As a member of the 1104th Engineer Combat Group, Kaminsky was used to such work. What he was not used to was doing it so close to the enemy. You see, the particular pole to which this particular corporal clung was planted in Belgium. Specifically, in the Ardennes Forest. Just through the trees, a big chunk of the German Army was preparing to launch an enormous offensive that would be remembered, forever, as the Battle of the Bulge.

  They were so close Kaminsky could smell them: an odorous stew of gasoline, bratwurst, and boiled cabbage filled his nostrils. He could hear them, too. They’d been playing propaganda recordings all night long: an unholy mix of the German national anthem, the latest ravings of the mad Führer, and the sweet voice of Axis Sally, urging our boys to lay down their guns and surrender.

  As he twisted the last wire around the last screw that would carry the current to a slightly different broadcast, he heard a harsh whisper from the sentry below him. “This isn’t funny, Kaminsky!” That made the young corporal smile. If there was one thing he’d learned growing up on the mean streets of Brooklyn, it was this: whenever anyone said “that’s not funny,” it was almost certain to be hilarious.

  Kaminsky shimmied down the pole, took one last glance up at the enormous loudspeaker he’d just installed, and chuckled. The sentry shook his head as Kaminsky scurried back to battalion command. Along the way he stepped around numerous foxholes filled with exhausted and freezing GIs. Their spirits needed a lift, and by God, he was just the soldier to do the job.

  Kaminsky searched through a small box of vinyl 78s, looking for the perfect selection for an occasion such as this. His eyes settled on a classic, and he chuckled again.

  A switch was flipped, a dial was cranked, and the wall of sound that erupted from Kaminsky’s loudspeaker echoed through the frozen forest. In an instant, the racist rantings of Adolf Hitler were drowned out by the unmistakable refrain known to millions:

  Toot, Toot, Tootsie, goodbye!

  Toot, Toot, Tootsi
e, don’t cry!

  For several glorious and confusing minutes, the only thing the soldiers on either side could hear were the dulcet tones of the one and only… Al Jolson. Who, like Corporal Kaminsky, just happened to be… very, very Jewish.

  Kaminsky watched the war-torn boys poke their heads out of their foxholes like curious prairie dogs. The absurdity of the situation took a few moments to process, but soon the irony washed over the troops and laughter set in. Nazis, in the middle of a battlefield, driven by their insane hatred of Jews, were being serenaded by one. Now, that was funny!

  I guess if you can make people laugh on the battlefields of Europe, you can make people laugh anywhere. And that had always been Corporal Kaminsky’s goal. After the war he found work as a writer and comedian. For the next twenty years, he made a name for himself in Tinseltown. Finally, he got a chance to do what he had been born to do: direct.

  His first effort nearly gave the studio a heart attack. It was a screenplay he had written himself, but the suits were not amused. “That is not funny,” they said. But of course Kaminsky knew exactly what that meant: he had a winner! He stood by his guns. He dug in his heels. Before long, Americans were tapping their toes to catchy numbers like “Springtime for Hitler” and punchy lyrics like “Don’t be stupid, be a smarty, come and join the Nazi Party!”

  Maybe it was in bad taste. Maybe it was too soon. But all those put off by Kaminsky’s directorial debut were soon afforded more opportunities to be offended—on the big screen, the small screen, and of course the Great White Way. Because even though Melvin Kaminsky changed his name, he never changed his tune. In Belgium, he’d confronted hatred with a song and dance. In New York and Hollywood, he doubled down. Today, The Producers is considered to be one of the greatest comedies of all time. And the funniest corporal of all time? That’s easy. That would be the always improper, always tasteless, never appropriate… Mel Brooks.

  Anyway, that’s the way I heard it.

  * * *

  I never played “Toot, Toot, Tootsie” in a forest filled with Nazis. But with the help of three high school pals, I did sing it, in four-part harmony, for a variety of captive audiences in Baltimore, Maryland. Nursing homes were our favorite venue, followed in no particular order by hospitals, bathrooms, VFW halls, prisons, elevators, stairwells, and crowded restaurants.

  Why, you ask? Why were four teenage boys terrorizing an unsuspecting public in 1979 with songs written decades before we were born?

  Two words: Fred King.

  At Overlea High School in Baltimore, our larger-than-life music teacher, Mr. King, had introduced us to the mysterious pleasures of barbershop harmony. Mr. King himself had been a legendary baritone in a quartet called the Oriole Four; he was known, in the trade, as the “King of the Barbershoppers.” Under his tutelage, we amassed an impressive repertoire of chestnuts like “Margie,” “Lida Rose,” “The Sunshine of Your Smile,” and “Sweet Adeline”—unapologetically sentimental tunes that might have made other teenagers cringe. But we loved those songs, and we quickly formed our own group.

  We called ourselves “Semi-Fourmal” because we wore tuxedos and tennis shoes. We misspelled “formal” intentionally, because there were four of us and we were terribly clever. Chuck sang lead. I sang bass. Bobby and Mike sang baritone and tenor, respectively. Soon we became the youngest members of the oldest men’s chorus in the country—the world champion Chorus of the Chesapeake, which Fred King also directed.

  Every Tuesday night, a hundred men from all walks of life gathered in the old gymnasium at Johns Hopkins Hospital. Doctors, carpenters, lawyers, plumbers, accountants, dentists, teachers, Democrats, Republicans, Protestants, Catholics, Jews—a cross section of men whose deep love of four-part harmony was rivaled only by their deep love of God, country, and beer. I’ll never forget the first time I heard them sing. The Nazis might have been stunned by the sound of “Toot, Toot, Tootsie” blaring through the forest on that cold winter night, but the sound of a hundred men singing that same song in perfect harmony would have left them gobsmacked. It was a sound unlike anything I’d ever heard. A sound that filled the air with overtones that buzzed and crackled. A sound so rich and full and unmistakably masculine, it made the hairs on your arms stand on end.

  Ultimately, it was the sound that pulled me into show business.

  After rehearsal, we’d follow the men over to a Highlandtown bar called Johnny Jones for another kind of singing. They called it “woodshedding,” because a woodshed—far away from the ears of innocent civilians—was the only sensible place to do it. Improvisational harmonizing isn’t always pretty. But it’s fun to do and a fine way to learn the old songs. Johnny’s had a space crammed with square tables—just the right amount of room for four men to harmonize at point-blank range. Johnny himself would pour beer without thinking to ask for my age, pitch pipes would blow in various keys, and various quartets would sing various songs simultaneously. There were songs about mothers and flying machines and pals who would never let you down. There were patriotic songs, as well as songs about sweethearts, punctuated with bottomless pitchers of draft beer and Maryland crab cakes. It was a soundtrack from another time, and in between the cacophony, the men lit their pipes and told their stories. Oftentimes, war stories.

  Kids today think they know everything. Back in 1979, we were no different. But after a few visits to Johnny’s, I began to think differently about the cost of freedom. That’ll happen, I guess, when you harmonize with men who actually fought in that terrible battle that began in Belgium on December 16, 1944. Along with the dead and the wounded, 23,000 US soldiers went missing in the Battle of the Bulge. That fact I learned from an old tenor named Gus, who for a time had been among the missing. He was just seventeen in 1944, the same age as me when we met in 1979—and he’d actually been there, in the Ardennes, doing things in that dark forest on my behalf that I would never be asked to do. Brave men like Gus had learned the hard way what I came to know simply by standing beside them and singing: You’re only as good as the man next to you.

  But then, Mel Brooks would tell you that courage is a funny thing. You never know where you’ll find it. Or whether you’ll have it, on the day you need it the most.

  A HERO UNDER THE INFLUENCE

  Like everyone else at ground zero, Charlie was in the wrong place at the wrong time. He’d spent all day in the kitchen, overseeing a crew of thirteen junior bakers, churning out breads and cakes and pies and pastries for a crowd that never seemed to dwindle. Charlie had always hoped to make a name for himself in a famous kitchen. He’d headed off to a faraway, famous city armed with dreams of success. Now those dreams were coming true. As the chief baker in one of the world’s premier restaurants, Charlie was practicing the trade he loved and devoted to pleasing his customers.

  To be clear, Charlie was drunk on the day in question. His blood alcohol content a few hours after impact would have confirmed an almost inconceivable rate of consumption. But that’s the point—Charlie’s drinking did not precede the impact—it followed it. And really, who can blame him? When the walls and floor shuddered around him, Charlie knew something had slammed into the towering structure—something big. And when he saw the extent of the damage, he didn’t panic. He merely retired to the bar of his now empty restaurant to enjoy what he knew would be the last drink of his life. But what exactly does one drink as one ponders one’s own mortality and considers one’s final actions on Earth?

  For Charlie, the options were endless. From the finest champagnes to the very best Italian wines, they were all there for the sampling—and Charlie sampled them all. There were Beaujolais and sherry, Drambuie and absinthe, cognac and Armagnac, endless rows of schnapps, and beers from around the world. Mostly, though, there was some old Irish whiskey. Ah, yes. That was just what the doctor ordered. The perfect elixir to prepare Charlie for the job at hand—the job he believed he was duty bound to execute.

  Charlie pounded half the bottle and poured the rest into a large flask. Then he
filled a sack with breads and pastries and made his way slowly up to the top floor. Elevators were not an option, so he took the stairs, encountering dozens of panicked customers along the way—people who just a few hours before had been sitting in his restaurant, eating his cakes and pies, luxuriating in five-star elegance.

  “Follow me,” he said. “I know the way out.”

  Up top, it was pandemonium. Charlie did everything he could to calm his customers. First he handed out his pastries. Then he offered shots of courage from his bottomless flask. When it became obvious that the first responders weren’t responding, he did what he knew had to be done—he began to push his customers over the edge. Understandably, many resisted, but Charlie knew there was no other way out. He grabbed them, one after the next, and heaved them over the side. But when the opportunity came for him to follow suit, he said, “No.” He grabbed another customer from the panicked crowd and insisted she go in his place.

  If you’ve seen the movie, you might recall the dramatic finale—two lovers, standing on the pinnacle of that doomed and crumbling edifice, waiting for the inevitable collapse. Well, those lovers weren’t really there—but the chief baker was. Charles Joughin, filled with adrenaline and booze, had taken it upon himself to fill multiple lifeboats with dozens of terrified women and children, all of whom were loath to leave their husbands and fathers behind. Then—defying the laws of gravity and the basic rules of intoxication—the inebriated baker crawled over the side and scampered all the way up to what must have felt like the top of the world. There, flask in hand, he rode the ruined remains all the way down, waiting until the last possible second before stepping from his perch into the 28-degree water.

  He should have died, just like everyone else who didn’t make it into a lifeboat. But he didn’t. He splashed around the North Atlantic for three hours, until the Carpathia finally arrived and plucked him out of the black, icy sea with little more than two swollen feet and a lingering buzz. It was the booze, they said, that had kept him alive, thinning his blood to the point where hypothermia was kept at bay.