by Mike Rowe
Philip and Eliza Bender were among the first to contribute, with 50 cents each. Joe printed their names, along with his thanks, right next to a photo of his beloved. Their kids pitched in, too, and Joe printed their names, as well: “Anna, 25 cents; Frannie, 25 cents; Leonard, 10 cents; Frank, 15 cents; Alice, 10 cents; Ralph, 10 cents; Carri, 10 cents; Miss Nicey, 25 cents.” All in all, the Benders were good for $2.30—and everyone read all about it.
Soon hundreds of New Yorkers began donating their pocket change: street sweepers, carriage drivers, stonemasons, housewives, ordinary men and women with only pennies to spare. Anyone who donated saw his or her name in the newspaper, next to an image of Libby. Within months, the necessary funds were in hand, and soon after that, on a place called Bledsoe Island, the construction of a mighty pedestal began—a pedestal sturdy enough to support the full-figured gal that Joe was determined to keep in the Big Apple: the 450,000-pound, 151-foot statue called “Libertas.”
Frédéric Bartholdi had conceived her and given her a name. Gustave Eiffel had raised her and given her a frame. But it was the immigrant from Hungary who’d given the lady from France a place to stand. Without Joe, Libby would be overlooking some other harbor. Philadelphia’s, probably. Or maybe Baltimore’s. Or, she’d be in some other country. She’d almost wound up behind a veil, at the mouth of the Suez Canal, dressed in the robes of an Egyptian peasant. Instead, she stands at the foot of Manhattan, where she welcomes the tired, the poor, the huddled masses yearning to breathe free.
It’s funny: an immigrant, famous today for the prizes bestowed in his name, is largely forgotten for his greatest gift—the campaign that kept our favorite lady right where she belongs. Thanks to thousands of New Yorkers, their pocket change, and a man named Joseph Pulitzer, we can say that, once upon a time, America put Liberty on a pedestal.
* * *
I had a pedestal once. I put a pig on it. You can google it. Go ahead—I’ll wait.
Are you back? Good. Let’s continue.
By 2005, Dirty Jobs was an undeniable hit, but the network and I couldn’t seem to agree on how best to promote it. They wanted a traditional marketing campaign with me at the center of it—a “working-class hero, earnestly attempting to master every blue-collar trade.”
That made me very uncomfortable. Dirty Jobs was not an “earnest” show. Nor was it a show about me. It was a light-hearted tribute to real people who woke up clean and came home dirty. What I wanted was a campaign where everyday people were not only featured, but treated like stars. I imagined them dressed in their work clothes, as they appeared in the show, arriving in limos at a star-studded “red carpet” premiere—where they’d be swarmed by paparazzi and greeted by throngs of adoring fans.
Barsky—my intrepid field producer and partner in grime—wanted a campaign that featured me covered in “feces from every species” (a recurring theme in Season One). A stickler for realism, Barsky also proposed a campaign that featured intimate portraits of me with each of the barnyard animals I’d inseminated, artificially, in my ongoing attempts to demystify the secrets of animal husbandry.
All these ideas had one thing in common: they were non-starters. As a result, we were stuck. Happily, my lawyer was on the case.
I don’t have an agent, or a manager, or a publicist. I have a Mary. Around the office, we call her the Irish Hammer.
Mary Sullivan is her full name. She’s a former bio-major who woke up one day and decided to practice law instead. I’m glad she did. Mary has Farrah Fawcett’s hair and Albert Einstein’s brain, and once I realized the latter was bigger than the former, I started asking her opinion on everything.
Mary had caught wind of the “working-class hero” campaign already. She’d snorted, elegantly, and called my boss. “Mike isn’t a hero,” she had explained. “He’s not the star of the show. He’s not even a host. His job is not to be in the spotlight. His job is to shine the spotlight. My job is to keep him from becoming an asshole. Or worse, from looking like one.”
Candor is a rare commodity in Hollywood. So, too, is charm. The Irish Hammer has both in spades, and so, the network had backed off. But now we were back to square one with the promo, and time was running out.
“What do you think I should do?” I asked Mary. “We need to film something this week.”
Without looking up from her desk, the Irish Hammer said, “What about the pig?”
“What pig?”
“The pig in the show open.”
Every episode of Dirty Jobs opens with a shot of me carrying a two-hundred-pound swine from a barn to a pigpen. (Incidentally, that pig appeared to have an erection, which nobody noticed until viewers started to write in with questions, but that’s a story for another day.)
“I’m not sure I understand,” I told Mary. “You want to make a pig the star of the show?”
“More like the mascot,” she said. “A metaphor for hard work.”
“But pigs don’t work hard,” I said. “Unless truffle hunting counts.”
The Irish Hammer looked at me in the way that a smart person might regard an idiot.
“Do you know what a metaphor is?”
“I think so.”
“Have you ever cleaned a pig pen?”
“Several,” I said.
“Was it difficult?”
“Yes.”
“Was it pleasant?”
“No.”
“All right, then. If you want to honor people who do difficult, unpleasant jobs without coming off as earnest, or making it all about you, elevate the pig. Viewers aren’t stupid. They’ll figure it out. And you won’t end up looking like an asshole.”
See what I mean? Don’t let the Farrah Fawcett hair fool you.
The next day we booked a three-hundred-pound sow for a most unusual photoshoot. She was chauffeured to Hollywood from a farm in Central Valley, and arrived in style at the soundstage bright and early, ready for her close-up. She was a perfect pig, straight from the animal equivalent of Central Casting: pink, with gray spots and a sweet disposition. Like Wilbur from Charlotte’s Web, but all grown up. I called her “Rhonda.”
In a pristine studio with white walls and a white floor, I watched as Rhonda was coaxed up a ramp that led to the top of a white pedestal, four feet off the ground. Once she was situated, the ramp was removed, and I took my place beside her. It was a simple setup. Standing next to Rhonda, I would look into the camera and riff about the unsung heroes of Dirty Jobs. I’d conclude with a pointed question: “So, what’s on your pedestal?” It was a play on that credit card campaign: “What’s in your wallet?”
I nailed it on the first take, in front of a roomful of nervous executives. Unfortunately, Rhonda nailed it, too. Just as I asked, “What’s on your pedestal?” she crapped all over hers.
It was an enormous dump, delivered with impeccable timing. During the second take, Rhonda did it again, right on cue. This time, with a frightful spray of diarrhea that filled the studio with a sulfurous funk, blackening the white walls of our pristine set, and transforming my blue jeans into something browner. I could only marvel at the stench, while the horrified executives backed into a corner—a huddled mass, if you will, yearning to breathe free.
But Rhonda wasn’t done. She crapped on every subsequent take, and when she could crap no more, she began to pee. She peed on my cameraman. She peed on her handler. She peed on me. Finally, when her bladder was empty, we got a take the network could use, along with a commercial that won several awards for “Excellence in Promos.” (Yes, they have trophies for such things.) Interestingly, the footage that went viral was not the footage that aired, but the footage Mary encouraged me to release on YouTube after the fact. The outtakes of Rhonda at her incontinent finest. Those were hysterical, and viewed more times than the actual commercial. Go figure.
Looking back, putting a pig on a pedestal was maybe the smartest thing I ever did. Not only did it make Rhonda famous, it established me as the nontraditional host of a nontraditional show. One w
hose primary job was to appear more like a guest, and less like a host. And, whenever possible, not at all like an asshole. Opinions vary as to the degree to which I accomplished that, but I must have done something right, because Mary Sullivan eventually agreed to leave her firm and partner with me, for which I’m eternally grateful. And as for Rhonda, a poster of her now hangs in the office of the Irish Hammer. Like Libby, who welcomes the tired and the poor to these United States, Rhonda welcomes visitors to mikeroweWORKS, staring out from her pedestal, keeping me honest, and just a little bit dirty…
THE ORPHAN HERO
She was an orphan living on the cold streets of a hard town, doing what she had to do to get by. Unlike most runaways, she didn’t bolt when they approached her. In fact, she greeted them with a curious smile and saw their government vehicle for what it was—a warm place on a cold evening. She got in.
Now, it’s hardly a secret: orphans make great protagonists. Huck Finn and Harry Potter, Pip and Pollyanna, Dorothy Gale and Daenerys Targaryen—those characters stick with us. But their adventures are entirely fictional, while our protagonist is the real deal.
Twenty minutes after they found her, she was enjoying a hearty meal and a warm bath, both of which she needed. Then, for the first time in memory, she slumbered uninterrupted. When she awakened, she was escorted to a classroom, where she joined a handful of other recruits in various stages of the Program.
Our protagonist was a natural. Her instructors described her as “focused” and “a quick study.” But it wasn’t her aptitude that caught their attention; it was her demeanor. In every challenge, she remained unflappable, seemingly immune to the stress and fatigue that the Program was designed to induce. Her instructors were impressed. On Halloween, just one week after they found her alone and freezing on the mean streets of the city, the decision was made.
They woke her up before dawn and led her to a small room. It was poorly insulated and impossibly cramped. She was seated on a drab leather cushion and commanded to remain as still as possible.
Wires, dangling from machines, were attached to her skin.
Food and water were left within easy reach.
Our protagonist remained calm. She asked no questions and offered nothing but that same curious smile before the men locked the door behind them.
Outside, the instructors gathered around a monitor and watched. Most recruits lasted fifteen or twenty minutes before the claustrophobia became too much to bear. She was different. Unfazed, she lay there for an hour, then another, then another after that—gazing calmly at the gray metal roof a foot above her head, smiling that same curious smile.
A day passed, then another. Finally, after three days locked inside the cold and gloomy enclosure, the wait was over. Buttons were pressed. Switches were flipped. The rumble of unfamiliar noises filled the air. Objects around her began to behave strangely, as the General Theory of Relativity became something more than a theory.
The sound around her intensified. So did her speed. Within moments, she was hurtling through the troposphere, the stratosphere, the mesosphere, the thermosphere, entering space at 18,000 miles per hour. She was an orphan, 4,000 miles above the streets she used to wander—the first of her kind to orbit the Earth.
Those of you who remember the very first days of the space race might recall the way the world held its breath, praying for her safe return. Our protagonist circled the earth four times in zero gravity as the scientists far below monitored her vitals, duly recording every precious scrap of data, until there was nothing left to record. Sputnik II would carry her corpse another 2,566 orbits before plummeting to Earth, leaving no remains for a proper funeral.
Her name was Laika, and though she was most certainly female, she was not a woman. She was a trusting terrier with a curious smile, a patient disposition, and ears that bent in several directions at once. You see, the Soviets recruited their very first cosmonaut from the frigid streets of Moscow because they needed a hardy specimen—a cadet who could endure the cold of a poorly insulated capsule. In other words, they needed a dog with the right stuff.
Today, Laika’s sacrifice is well known in Moscow. In fact, if you visit the icy capital of the former Soviet Union, you’ll see her there, back on the streets she used to wander. Memorialized in bronze, she stands upon a rocket and looks toward the heavens—an eternal reminder to those on two legs that “one small step for man” was made possible by one giant leap by… man’s best friend.
* * *
Full disclosure: That last story almost broke me. It was the first one I wrote for The Way I Heard It, and it generated more sad-faced emojis and disappointed emails than any of the others. It also inspired an angry voice mail from my mother.
“Michael. What the hell is wrong with you? No one wants to hear a story about a puppy who dies in outer space! Now I’m depressed, damn it. And using bad language. Call me back.”
Interesting. I’ve written lots of stories about man’s inhumanity to man, but that was the one story that upset my mother. My girlfriend, Sandy, didn’t take it well, either. At the end of Laika’s sad tale, she threw her headphones across the room.
“The Russians built her a statue?” she said. “Who cares? Those godless bastards sent her into space for seven days with just one meal? What a bunch of cold-blooded scumbags.”
Sandy struggles sometimes to say how she really feels. Like when Michael Vick was convicted of running a dog-fighting ring. “That guy should be fed to the tigers,” she said.
“The Detroit Tigers?” I asked.
“No, just regular tigers. The NFL could sell tickets. They’d make a killing.”
I don’t have much sympathy for Michael Vick, either. But it’s striking: people seemed to feel more strongly about his dogs than they did about the homeless people they had to step over on the way to their local sports bar. Were those people simply overwhelmed by the sheer volume of human suffering in the world? It’s easy, these days, to turn on CNN, pick up the paper, or scroll through your news feed and conclude that the world’s gone to hell. Maybe it has. But is it really worse than it’s ever been? I don’t think so. We’re exposed to more bad news than ever before, and I think we lack the bandwidth to process so much misery. As Joseph Stalin said—and he would have known—the death of one man is a tragedy; the death of one million is a statistic.
Is that why the story of one little dog—who died alone, with her little heart racing, way out in space—cut so deeply?
The truth is, I didn’t sit down to write about Laika just because I disapproved of the way she was treated. Nor did I write about her to provoke my mother into a fit of profanity; that was just a bonus. I wrote about Laika because, once upon a time, she brought the whole world together. And if I’m being entirely honest, I wrote about her because she reminded me of another fifteen-pound terrier mix—specifically, the one chewing on my slippers right now. The one Sandy plucked from a pound in Marin and brought to our apartment in San Francisco.
When he came to me—nameless and friendless and tiny and cold—I did what I often do in moments of great uncertainty: I went to my Facebook page and asked people who “like” me to name him. Those are the same people who have been programming every show I’ve worked on since Dirty Jobs. The same people who have suggested many of the subjects I’ve written about in this book. I like them, too, and I’ve come to believe that their collective opinion is perilous to ignore. So I posted a few photos of my new dependent and watched in wonder as eighty-seven thousand people wrote in with their suggestions.
It was an amazing thing to behold: my little mutt had the whole Internet by the tail.
After much consideration and some decidedly nonscientific methodologies, I selected the six most popular names. I unfolded a pee pad with six squares on it and wrote one name on each square. Then I set up a camera and waited for my puppy to poop, assuring my Facebook followers that I’d name him according to whatever name he pooped upon. Coincidentally (or maybe not?) the puppy pooped on “Freddy�
�—the name of my beloved high school teacher and mentor. What were the odds? One in six, I suppose. Looking back, though, it feels inevitable.
Point is, in 1957, an orphan from the mean streets of Moscow went to space—and the whole world watched, holding its breath, praying for her safe return. Sixty years later, an orphan from the mean streets of Marin took a dump—and 87,000 people watched, with baited breath, to see where that dump would land. Yet only one is remembered today as a hero.
“Give me a break,” Sandy’s saying. “Laika’s no hero. She didn’t decide to be shot into space, any more than Freddy decided to be videotaped crapping. That statue was built by assholes with a guilty conscience. Period. End of story.”
She’s right. Turning Laika into a hero was a fine way for the Russians to control the narrative. I suppose I control Freddy’s narrative—which is why there’s no statue in his future. I don’t think he’d want one anyway: he seems happy enough with his bone, my slippers, and his own ghostwritten blog. There’s even talk of a book deal, God help us. But if there were a statue, I know precisely what it would look like: Freddy in bronze, the pee pad in bronze, and a pile of bronze poop partially covering his name.
Now, that’s a statue I could get behind.
SOMETHING IS MISSING
A young officer in a pivotal battle—exasperated by the indecision of his general—takes matters into his own hands. Leaping astride his trusty steed, he gallops to the front of the line to rally his troops. From the back of his horse he laughs at the enemy, ignores the bullets that fly past his head, and addresses his men like Henry V at Agincourt. According to the many firsthand accounts, it was a moment worthy of a monument.