The Way I Heard It

by Mike Rowe

  “And you don’t want that to happen?”

  “No. Not yet, anyway.”

  “But you’re scared to move in because your father is still walking the grounds.”

  “Yes. Something like that.”

  “And what is it you’d need me to do?”

  “If people from the trust come poking around, as they surely will, you will tell them I live there. When they ask you where I am, you will tell them I’m traveling. When they ask who you are, you will tell them that you are my lover.”

  I nodded to Joe, who brought me another Heineken.

  “Just to be clear, we’re not going to be lovers. Are we?”

  “Of course not,” said Kippy. “But feel free to invite them into the house. Show them where we sleep. The closet’s filled with my old clothes.”

  “And your father? What should I tell him if he starts to ask questions?”

  “Handle the ghost of my father as you see fit,” she told me. “My hope is that he will eventually move on, so that I can move in. Until he does, I won’t return to Georgia Farm. But in the meantime, I don’t wish to lose my right to live there.”

  “Even though you don’t want to?”

  “Precisely,” she said. “Even though I don’t want to.”

  It was the strangest offer I’d ever received, but given the circumstances, it was an offer I couldn’t refuse. And so, on Halloween, I moved into the mansion and started in on the strangest year of my life thus far. Strange, because Kippy turned out to be right.

  Georgia Farm really was haunted.…

  THE BISCUIT BOMB

  Rodman looked constipated. The young private’s expression was one of perpetual concentration, punctuated from time to time by a crooked smile that sometimes appeared, apropos of nothing.

  His best friend, on the other hand? Private Levy was the undisputed life of the platoon. In the barracks and on the battlefield, too, he’d proven to be a consummate storyteller. In a matter of minutes, Private Levy’s stories could transport his fellow soldiers out of whatever fresh hell they’d found themselves in. Indeed, his love of a good story would impact not only the lives of his fellow soldiers—it would transform the careers of Dennis Hopper, Robert Redford, Robert Duvall, Lee Marvin, William Shatner, Peter Falk, Elizabeth Montgomery, Jack Klugman, Carol Burnett… the list goes on. In fact, you could argue that The Sopranos, Breaking Bad, and many other classic TV shows would never have come to be if not for the extraordinary contribution this nineteen-year-old private made during the Second World War.

  But of the many stories that Private Levy would tell, the one that had the most impact unfolded beneath a palm tree on the bloody beach of a tiny island that most Americans couldn’t have found on a map.

  Rodman was there on that day—December 18, 1944—along with the rest of the platoon, and they were all hanging on Melvin Levy’s every word. The boys of the 511th Parachute Infantry Regiment had spent a week fighting their way through the jungle, crawling through mud, slithering under barbed wire, and dying in record numbers. They’d lost 50 percent of their original complement—yet, in the midst of the madness and mayhem, there stood Private Levy, holding court under a palm tree in tropical heat, weaving his spell and getting laughs in a country where laughter was no longer among the indigenous sounds.

  Rodman stood off to the side, smiling his crooked smile, looking vaguely constipated, and marveling at his friend’s way with a story.

  At that very moment, high over their heads and maybe a quarter mile to the south, a bombardier opened the doors of his DC-3. The payload left the plane cleanly and began to accelerate with the velocity one might associate with a 4,200-pound crate of K rations, dry sausages, chocolate bars, and hard biscuits. The boys called those crates “biscuit bombs,” and with no supply lines to rely upon, they waited with great anticipation for those lifesavers to float down from the skies.

  Down at ground level, the men of the 511th were spellbound. Private Levy was working up to the climax of his tale. All of his stories had surprising twists, and the men had no idea where this one was headed. For a few brief moments, the exhausted soldiers forgot all about the enemy that surrounded them, as well as their gnawing hunger. They had all lost themselves in Private Levy’s unpredictable narrative.

  Meanwhile, four hundred feet above the beach, the parachute of one of the biscuit bombs failed to deploy. One hundred feet after that, two tons of airborne grub reached terminal velocity.

  Private Levy had just arrived at his surprising, hysterical punch line. The men had dissolved in fits of laughter and broken into applause. Private Levy took a few steps toward Rodman to bum a cigarette.

  Rodman handed him one he’d just lit and fished another out of his fatigues.

  Twenty feet over their heads, the biscuit bomb was moving at roughly 200 miles per hour. A split second later, it landed directly on Private Levy, and… that was that. The soldier was pulverized by the care package that had been meant to save his life.

  That man, Private Levy, transformed television—but not by forming a legendary studio, starting a talent agency, or pioneering a technical breakthrough. No. All he did was die a few feet in front of his best friend in the most ironic manner you could imagine.

  That evening, Rodman—the only other Jewish kid in the platoon—wrote a eulogy for Private Levy. The next morning, he read that eulogy to the rest of the platoon in a crisp, well-modulated baritone. His words, carefully measured and delivered with great deliberation, articulated the underlying dread of living in a world beyond his understanding—a world where certainty was not for sale. A world where a giant box of biscuits could plummet out of the heavens and pulverize your best friend.

  War changes people, and Rodman was forever changed by the unlikely demise of Private Melvin Levy. He retained his crooked smile, his stilted delivery, and his vague look of chronic constipation. But from that moment on, the die was cast. Private Levy’s surreal, gruesome passing had opened a door through which Rodman willingly walked.

  A door… to another dimension. A dimension not only of sight and sound, but of mind. For that was the moment that a young private named Rodman Edward Serling first entered… the Twilight Zone.

  * * *

  You want to hear a ghost story?

  I don’t blame you. As the narrator of cultural touchstones like Ghost Lab and Ghost Hunters, I’m partial to them myself. But the only ghost story I know to be true is the one I experienced firsthand at Georgia Farm.

  On my very first night in the mansion I sat alone by a fire in the Great Room, where the severed heads of various animals loomed all around me. I was reading a mystery when, all of a sudden, the player piano sprang into action. The tune was “Georgy Girl”—a burst of sound that sent me rocketing out of the chair like a marionette yanked upward by some spastic puppeteer. I don’t remember dropping my scotch on my way out the door. I just remember cleaning it up later, along with the shattered glass, while the player piano continued to roll on its own.

  That first night set the tone for the year that followed. Life at Georgia Farm was shot through with a strange feeling that shadowed my every move in the enormous home, which was not my own home: a fully furnished mansion, with back stairways that led to hidden rooms and grand fireplaces big enough to stand in. A home built in 1740 and filled with the possessions of the last man who’d died there: a smoking jacket (velvet); a humidor (fully stocked); a gun rack with shotguns and rifles (antique); a liquor cabinet (also fully stocked); as well as that player piano with a mind of its own.

  That strange feeling was magnified by the strangeness of my new job. The graveyard shift at QVC had turned my days and nights upside down, leaving me in a permanent state of semiconsciousness. I’d leave for work at one in the morning, pausing on the way out to consider my reflection in an enormous mirror that hung in the vestibule. Suit and tie. Freshly shaven. Did I look like a man who’d been singing opera for a living one month earlier? Did I look like a man about to discuss the timeless a
ppeal of collectible dolls and fake diamonds? I didn’t know, but I was starting to see my late-night interactions with narcoleptic shopaholics in a whole new light. There were so many people out there eager to connect with a kindred spirit—even if that connection was going to cost them just three easy payments of $19.99.

  Georgia Farm was just eight miles away from QVC’s studio in West Chester, but the first few miles were country lanes. That made coming home from work a journey away from civilization. The driveway that led up to the main house was a mile long, at least; a gravel road that took its time winding up and around the old barn, went over a series of cattle guards, and ended at the top of the hill, where the house sat. It had an enormous porch with white pillars, a wide, sloping lawn that led down to a stone retaining wall, and beyond that, a lake stocked with perch and trout. Most mornings, I’d come home from work and sit on the porch, sipping a dead man’s scotch. I’d watch the sunrise and go over the most meaningful interactions I’d had that day—conversations with disembodied voices who’d called in to talk to me while I was on air.

  It was a lonely time, unsettled and unsettling. Sometimes, on the weekends, I’d have coworkers over. I encouraged them to bring friends, and word must have gotten around: one Saturday in early September, two hundred people came by for an impromptu lawn party. Joe, the bartender, brought bushels of oysters and a couple of kegs, which he tapped on the veranda. I must have been an odd sight, dressed as I was in Mr. Stroud’s smoking jacket, sitting on the porch with an antique shotgun across my lap. No one seemed to know who I was and, as a man hired for his discretion, I couldn’t really answer their questions. I let my guests assume what they wanted, knowing that whoever they thought I might be wasn’t me. Sometime after midnight, the player piano started in on an old song I’d learned from Fred King:

  People who pass me in pairs,

  Act like the sidewalks are theirs

  Old friends seem to be total strangers to me

  For I’m so alone in the crowd.

  That’s how I felt at the end of that party: alone in the crowd. Then winter came to Georgia Farm, and I was alone for real.

  Before long, a blizzard dumped two feet of snow over Pennsylvania horse country. I was unable to get to the studio or anywhere else for the better part of a week. I lost phone service, but a generator in the barn kept the power on—for which I was most grateful. Without electricity, I would have lost my mind. Although if you saw the videos I made during that period, you might assume I had lost it already.

  One evening, I set a camcorder on a tripod, trained the lens on the player piano, and hit “record.” The fireplace crackled in the background as I entered the frame, walking confidently, dressed in one of Mr. Stroud’s many tuxedos, which fit surprisingly well. Nodding to my imaginary audience, I took a seat behind the ivories and flipped a switch under the keyboard. The tune was “Mr. Bojangles,” and as the keys began to move, up and down, on their own, I pretended to push them—pantomiming with all the verisimilitude I could muster. When the roll ended, I rose, bowed, and exited the frame. That night, I watched the footage, and evaluated my performance. Did this handsome pianist look at all like Glen Gould? Why yes, I thought. Yes, he did.

  In the morning, I took a revolver down to the lake. Carefully, I set the camera in the crook of a tree, pointed it over the frozen surface, and hit “record.” The woods in the distance were dark and deep, but on this day I had no promises to keep. Only time to kill.

  That night, I watched the footage and evaluated my performance. Who was this dangerous drifter, dressed in a cowboy hat and serape? This ominous hombre who wheeled around, drew his revolver with lightning speed, and took six imaginary enemies down in the blink of an eye? Did this gunslinger resemble Clint Eastwood? Why yes, I thought. Yes, he did. With a few more days of stubble, there’d be no difference at all.

  The months went by. Spring came and then summer and fall. I never did see the ghost of Morris Stroud. The player piano turned out not to have a mind of its own—only a timer that sometimes malfunctioned. Creaks and rattles I’d hear in the night all turned out to be just creaks and rattles. But again, Georgia Farm was haunted—haunted by the man who stood in the vestibule every morning at 1:00 a.m., staring into that enormous mirror, thinking about who he was and what was happening to him. A friendly ghost, to be sure, but a ghost all the same. A kindly spirit who still looked a little like me.

  THE MEN BEHIND BARS

  Jimmy ran a very successful business for a very large company in a very competitive industry. After just two years, his revenues were in the tens of millions of dollars—and his customers were hopelessly addicted. The boss was pleased. Very pleased. But on February 12, 1985, Nicky turned up dead, and things got complicated.

  Nicky was not the biggest earner on Jimmy’s crew, but he was, in many ways, the most important. Nicky wasn’t just an earner; he was the heart and soul of Jimmy’s operation, and his death left a big hole—a hole that had to be filled immediately. But who could fill it? Jimmy set out to find a replacement for that which had been irreplaceable.

  At the same time, halfway across the country, an Indiana farm boy wrestled with a very different kind of challenge. Tracy’s dad had been arrested for murder and sentenced to life in prison. Clearly, the conviction was a bum rap. The state had spent millions of dollars prosecuting Tracy’s dad, while the defense had spent less than $7,000 defending him. Plus, the wise guy who’d allegedly hired the boy’s dad to murder a judge had been released in some kind of plea bargain. To top it all off, the judge who had condemned Tracy’s father to a life behind bars had been one of the victim’s pallbearers!

  The whole setup stunk. Tracy was determined to get his dad an appeal. Of course, that would require the services of a real lawyer—something that would cost real money. So the twenty-four-year-old farm boy from Indiana did what he felt he had to do: he assumed a new identity and went looking for the kind of job that paid the kind of money he needed.

  Tracy had no experience in this line of work, but he knew a few people who could possibly arrange a few introductions—and one of those people knew a guy, who introduced him to another guy, who arranged for a meeting with Jimmy.

  It was a pivotal moment for the kid from Indiana. There was no denying his nervousness when he walked into Jimmy’s bar for a sit-down.

  “You know who I am?”

  Tracy nodded. “Yes, sir. You’re Jimmy, though I’m not sure if that’s what I should call you. Sir.”

  Jimmy smiled. The kid had an openness about him. An undeniable midwestern likability that could be… useful—assuming he possessed other, necessary qualities that could make up for the loss of Nicky’s unique set of talents.

  Jimmy and Tracy talked at length. Then Jimmy introduced him to his crew. It was important that everyone be comfortable with Nicky’s potential replacement—essential, in fact. Jimmy even asked Tracy to have a brief conversation with a few of his best customers, including a psychiatrist, to get a better sense of how he might cope with the pressures and challenges of Jimmy’s operation.

  It was a leap of faith, sure. But decisions like that often are. So, Jimmy hired the kid from Indiana to fill Nicky’s shoes—and to everyone’s relief, Tracy fit right in. Not only did the work come naturally, the money was even better than he’d imagined. A lot better. Before long, he had enough to hire the best attorneys in the country and set them to work, reviewing the dubious case that had landed his dad in a maximum-security prison.

  Tracy would spend many years and many millions of dollars trying to get his father a second chance. But it was all for naught. Even the brilliant Alan Dershowitz, with his Harvard Law School professorship and the team of legal eagles that he had assembled, failed to get an appeal through the courts. Maybe it was because it wasn’t the first time that Tracy’s father had been charged with murder.

  Nor was it the second time.

  The truth is, Tracy’s dad really was a hit man—a natural-born killer. And even though the circu
mstances surrounding his final conviction were undeniably squishy, the totality of his life was not exactly consistent with that of a model citizen. That was why he was denied his appeal. That’s why he died behind bars, twenty-two years after his son walked into one to interview for the job that changed his career.

  It’s worth noting, though, that although Tracy worked at Jimmy’s bar every day, he kept his dad’s personal drama to himself. He knew that Jimmy’s customers didn’t want to hear a sad story about some kid from Indiana whose dad had turned out to be a murderer. They just wanted to relax in a friendly place where they all knew one another. Tracy also knew that Jim Burrows had given him more than a chance to pour beer in America’s favorite bar—he had given him a chance to become America’s favorite bartender, just as his predecessor, Nicky, had been. Nicky Colasanto, the actor who’d given us a lovable character named “Coach.”

  That’s how Charles Voyde Harrelson wound up behind bars, in a cold and lonely place where everybody knew his name. And that’s how his son, Woodrow Tracy Harrelson, became Woody Boyd: a man who spent eight years in a much friendlier joint, working behind the bar in a place called… Cheers.

  * * *

  “To live outside the law, you must be honest.”

  That’s a direct quote from Bob Dylan, and it came to mind while I was sitting at the bar in Grumpy’s, writing the story you’ve just read. Was Charles Harrelson an honest man? Was he honest with his fellow criminals? Was he honest with his son? With himself?

  The bartender at Grumpy’s had no answers, but wanted me to know that Bob Dylan was his favorite artist of all time. “An absolute genius,” he said. “Why don’t you write a story about him? Did you know he won a Nobel Prize?”