The Way I Heard It

by Mike Rowe

  I swallowed some Anchor Steam and nodded. “I heard about that,” I said. “Maybe I will.”

  I never did write that story. But if I had, I’d have called it “The Big Lie”—because Bob Dylan was not what you’d call a slave to the truth.

  It’s true. Bob Dylan lied his way through countless press conferences. He swiped melodies, arrangements, and lyrics from friends and forebears alike. His own memoir contains multiple lines lifted from various sources, and his Nobel Prize lecture, in 2017, contained twenty passages pilfered from the SparkNotes summary of Moby-Dick. Even the quote I’ve just attributed to him is another way of saying “honor among thieves.” That concept was first discussed in Plato’s Republic, then by Shakespeare in Henry IV, and then in every movie ever made about the mob and the importance of not being a rat. Which begs a bigger question: Why the hell would anyone ever believe anything Bob Dylan says? And that question reminds me of my good friend Jon Stewart.

  Long before fake news became a real problem for genuine journalists, there was a real show about genuine news with fake journalists: The Daily Show. On that show, Jon Stewart lampooned every single pretense of news production. The overly dramatic music, the movie-trailer voiceovers, the ridiculous graphics, the desperate attempts by achingly earnest anchormen to make us believe they weren’t reading someone else’s words off a teleprompter: that was all perfect fodder for satire.

  But a funny thing happened to my friend Jon Stewart: The less earnest he appeared to be, the more trusted he became. And the more trusted he became, the more seriously he was taken. It was fascinating to watch, especially when people disagreed with him. “Hey, folks,” he said. “What’s the problem here? I’m just a guy telling jokes.” But now that everyone trusted him, no one believed him. Poor Jon. He simply couldn’t have it both ways. Suddenly, millions of people were turning to The Daily Show for actual news—Jon Stewart was “more trusted” than every actual anchorman out there—and Comedy Central was “more credible” than FOX and CNN. Is it any wonder fake news became a real thing?

  Speaking of lies: Let’s assume, for a moment, that no one on television tells the truth, ever. (Trust me on this one, it’s not a stretch.) One day, I appear on your TV screen and say, “Hi, I’m Mike Rowe, and I’m lying to you!”

  Would that statement be true? It couldn’t be, right? Because by definition, everyone on TV lies, all the time. But if I confess that I’m lying, in a place where no one ever tells the truth, wouldn’t that make my confession… fundamentally honest? If so, would it not therefore be more accurate to say that the only way to be completely authentic in a place where everybody lies is to never tell the truth?

  The answer, my friend, is blowin’ in the wind, but I take comfort in something my father used to say: “A promise made is a debt unpaid.” When it comes to trustworthiness, that strikes me as a sensible statement. But down here at Grumpy’s, where I like to go after explaining How the Universe Works to my trillions of viewers, my ethics tend to be a bit more situational. So I’m going to have one more Anchor Steam and think seriously about the pros and cons of plagiarizing the next chapter and dedicating it to my good friend Bob Dylan.

  THE CHERRY PIE IS TO DIE FOR

  (For Bob Dylan)

  Ted stands perfectly still in the Louisiana woods and looks for signs of prey. He loves to hunt, but today he’d rather be home. The heat is stifling, the rifle feels heavy in his hands, and there’s no sign of game. Ted allows his mind to wander, and before long, he’s thinking about the waitress in Dallas… the one he met five years ago. The one who got away.

  They’d met at the lunch counter at Marco’s. He’d been a postal worker back then and had stopped in one afternoon for a quick bite. The waitress hadn’t noticed him at first. She’d been writing something.

  “Must be mighty important,” Ted said, “to make such a pretty face scrunch up like that.”

  The waitress jumped at the sound of his voice. “Sorry, mister. I was someplace else. What can I get you?”

  She was a tiny thing, not even five feet tall. Her blond hair was uncombed, and her eyes were wide and very blue.

  “I’d like a BLT,” said Ted. “And a cup of coffee.”

  “You got it, but save some room for dessert. The cherry pie is to die for.”

  “Thanks,” said Ted. “I’ll do that.”

  The waitress wrote up his order, passed it to the cook, and went back to her papers.

  “What are you working on?” Ted asked.

  “Oh, nothing,” she said. “Just a poem.”

  “What’s it about?”

  The waitress considered the postal worker. He had a warm smile—and a trustworthy face.

  “It’s about a nice boy who falls in love with the wrong girl.”

  “Maybe you’d like to read it to me?” said Ted, and that’s what the waitress did:

  You don’t want to marry me honey,

  Though just to hear you ask me is sweet;

  If you did you’d regret it tomorrow

  For I’m only a girl of the street.

  Time was when I’d gladly have listened,

  Before I was tainted with shame,

  But it wouldn’t be fair to you honey;

  Men laugh when they mention my name.

  Back there on the farm in Nebraska,

  I might have said yes to you then,

  When I thought the world was a playground,

  Just teeming with Santa Claus men.

  But I left the old home for the city,

  To play in its mad, dirty whirl,

  Never knowing how little of pity,

  It holds for a slip of a girl.

  The waitress stopped reading. “That’s all I got,” she said. “What do you think?”

  “Well,” said Ted, “I’m hoping for a happy ending.”

  The waitress offered a sad little smile. “Aren’t we all, mister… aren’t we all.”

  * * *

  Five years have gone by, and Ted hears a sound that yanks him back to the hunt. Something is approaching in the distance. Something large. Ted clicks off the safety of his rifle and waits to see what might appear in the clearing. He understands the stakes. He understands the danger. But his thoughts are still on the waitress. He recalls their second meeting. She was still behind the counter at Marco’s when he walked into the joint. Still writing. Still lovely. Her pretty face still scrunched up in concentration.

  “You were right,” said Ted. “The cherry pie was to die for.”

  Once again the waitress jumped at the sound of his voice. “You gotta quit sneaking up on me, mister!”

  Ted laughed. “Sorry about that. I thought you saw me come in.”

  The waitress poured him some coffee.

  “How’s the poem coming?” he asked.

  “Chipping away at it.”

  She picked up where she’d left off, reading quietly so that the other customers couldn’t hear. Her lips were very close to Ted’s ear:

  I soon got a job in the chorus,

  With nothing but looks and a form,

  I had a new man every evening,

  My kisses were thrilling and warm.

  Then I fell for the “line” of a “junker,”

  A slim devotee of hop,

  And those dreams in the juice of a poppy

  Had got me before I could stop.

  But I didn’t care while he loved me,

  Just to lie in his arms was delight,

  But his ardor grew cold and he left me;

  In a Chinatown “hop-joint” one night.

  The waitress paused and brushed away a tear. Ted wanted to take her hand. He wanted to comfort her. He wanted to tell her that people can change. Even a girl from the street. But the waitress wasn’t quite finished.

  Don’t spring that old gag of reforming,

  A girl hardly ever goes back,

  Too many are eager and waiting;

  To guide her feet off of the track.

  A man can break ever
y commandment

  And the world will still lend him a hand,

  Yet a girl that has loved, but un-wisely

  Is an outcast all over the land.

  Ted could take no more. He’d never seen so much sadness in such a pretty face.

  “Listen to me,” he said. “One day, a man is going to walk through those doors and sweep you off your feet. A good man. A man who doesn’t care about your past. And from that moment on, your life will never be the same.”

  “Do you really think so?”

  Ted looked earnestly into her wide blue eyes and said, “Maybe he already has.”

  For the next three months, the postal worker stopped by every day for a quick bite with some poetry on the side—and for a while there, it looked like the waitress might write him into her story. But one day, she was gone. Her replacement, Edna, was a sixty-five-year-old grandmother with a snaggletooth. It was Edna who gave poor Ted the bad news.

  “Dunno where she went,” said Edna. “Said she wouldn’t be back. Said she found the love of her life. Now, what can I get ya?”

  Ted was stunned. He swallowed hard and looked blankly down at the menu. But the menu had nothing he wanted.

  Edna poured him some coffee. “Try the cherry pie,” she said. “It’s to die for.”

  Even now, five years later, hidden in the Louisiana woods, Ted can remember the heartbreak he felt that day. Even as his prey draws ever closer. Even as his fellow hunters raise their rifles alongside his. Even as the stolen Ford crests the hill on Highway 154 and slows down at the intersection in the clearing. Even as he and the rest of the posse open fire with tommy guns from the woods on the side of the road.

  When the shooting finally stops, 136 rounds of hot lead have perforated the stolen Ford. Many of those bullets have also perforated the man behind the wheel. Then the smoke clears and Ted slowly approaches what’s left of the driver. It’s him, all right. Justice has finally caught up with the bank robber who’s killed twelve cops in cold blood. Now Ted considers the passenger. She’s a tiny thing, a slip of a girl, not even five feet tall. Her blond hair is uncombed. Her dead eyes are wide open and very blue. He hangs his head, closes his own eyes, and recalls the final stanza from the poem she’d read him five years ago:

  You see how it is don’t you honey,

  I’d marry you now if I could,

  I’d go with you back to the country,

  But I know it won’t do any good,

  For I’m only a poor branded woman

  And I can’t get away from the past.

  Good-bye and God bless you for asking

  But I’ll stick it out now till the last.

  You might not have heard of Ted Hinton, the postal worker turned deputy sheriff who was hired to hunt down the notorious bank robber. You might not remember a poem called “The Street Girl.” But you’ve probably heard of the waitress who wrote it: the woman who got away, until she didn’t. An aspiring poet, whose only appearance in print was in the headlines and on Most Wanted posters. A famous outlaw named… Bonnie Parker.

  * * *

  What if Bonnie had taken a flyer on Ted? She didn’t know him from Adam, and yet there was something between them. Ted had felt it. Had Bonnie felt it too? He might have kept on working for the post office. She might have kept on being a waitress, or become a published poet. Together, they might have been happy—as I was, when a woman named Joan took a flyer on me.

  It was September 1991. I had been fired from QVC a few months earlier (justifiably), rehired (inexplicably), then banished—sent back to the graveyard shift for my sins (permanently). Then a nasty flu had gone around, and most of the prime-time hosts had gone home, where they’d been now for several days, puking their guts up. I’d been called in to fill in for the stricken, and I was halfway through a riveting hour called Ideas to Make Your Life Easier when Joan walked into the studio.

  Rivers was the Joan in question. A mythical figure who’d come up the hard way in the business, enduring ups and downs that would have crushed lesser women. She was a genius, a legend, a rebel. She was the Bonnie Parker of comedy. I had never met her, but I knew who she was, and it was unthinkable to me that my bosses would turn her loose on QVC’s G-rated audience. Stranger still, that they would allow her to share the same stage with me. And yet, there she was.

  Rivers was there to promote her line of clothing and jewelry. She had been scheduled to appear that morning with a real, reputable host. But on her way to the greenroom, she had stopped to watch as I sang a tune from Mack and Mabel, hoping to boost the sales of a portable karaoke machine. When I was done, she pulled something out of her giant purse, walked onto the set, and began asking questions—right there, on live television.

  “Oh, my God. Where did you get that tie?”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Your tie,” she said. “It’s awful. Did you steal it from a Lutheran?”

  “I made it myself,” I said. “On a loom in my attic.”

  “It’s hideous, truly. And that suit? You look like an unmade bed.”

  “Thanks,” I said. “It helps me sleep on the job. You look radiant, though, if I may be so bold.”

  “Look a little closer. One more face-lift, and I’ll have a goatee.”

  It took me a second, but the image sunk in. I may have chortled. I may have even guffawed. If I had been wearing dentures, I might have spat them across the room.

  “You seem like a nice young man. It’s a shame you don’t have any taste. Is there a woman in your life?”

  “Several,” I replied. “But none that compete with your years of experience.”

  Joan laughed. She gave me the finger. Then she presented me with a “Tie-Button Tie”—a fancy piece of silk with a buttonhole in the back that allowed a gentleman to affix the tie to the button on his shirt in a way that, in her words, was “simply to die for.”

  “It won’t swing into your spaghetti sauce the next time you take one of your ‘special ladies’ out for a big night at the Olive Garden,” she said.

  Rivers told me all about the various trinkets and garments she’d come on to sell, including a simulated diamond set in 14-karat gold that, she suggested, would be perfect for any of the women in my life. (“Remember, ladies, fake jewelry doesn’t have to make you look like a slut, even if you are one.”) She described one stretch jersey as “a pretty little thing with a nice comfortable lining that won’t get stuck in your ass crack.” She made me laugh, both because she was funny and because I imagined my bosses recoiling in horror. Joan wasn’t off script—she was unscriptable. To me, that made her heroic.

  I didn’t see her again for a year and a half. By then, she had become a fixture at QVC, well on her way to selling a billion dollars’ worth of stuff. Really: a billion. I, on the other hand, was still working the graveyard shift, still hawking products that appeared to have been sourced from the midway of some condemned carnival. Then I caught a break. QVC and CBS agreed to coproduce a pilot around Joan, tentatively called Can We Shop? Under the terms of the deal, Joan could select any QVC host to be her second banana, and she chose me.

  I can’t express how profoundly surprising that decision was—to me, to my fellow QVC hosts, and most of all to those who had consigned me to the graveyard shift. But Rivers insisted. The next thing I knew, I was sitting next to her on a soundstage in New York City, doing my very best Ed McMahon impression. Go figure.

  In television, as in real life, you don’t always know the significance of a thing when it happens. This was different. I knew exactly what it meant. Appearing on CBS with Joan Rivers was the first thing I’d done that looked halfway legitimate.

  I left QVC soon after that—of my own volition. I never saw Rivers again. Not in person, anyway. Like the rest of the world, I saw her on the red carpet and watched her shenanigans here and there. How could I not? Icons have a way of being everywhere at once. I watched A Piece of Work, the fine documentary about her—I wanted to call her afterward and tell her how brave s
he’d been to be that forthcoming. I still wish I had. But I’ll settle for my memories of a holiday party at her Fifth Avenue penthouse. It was a black-tie affair, but I wore one of her Tie-Button Ties. It amused her to no end. I brought her some cookies, too. Mom, upon learning that I would be visiting the actual home of a bona fide celebrity, was afraid I would arrive empty-handed or (worse) with a six-pack of Rolling Rock under my arm. She’d made a tin of chocolate chip cookies and told me to give them to “Mrs. Rivers,” with her compliments. Which I did.

  I don’t know if Joan actually ate them, but she accepted them with grace and put them on the mantel next to her menorah.

  A MANLY MAN, A GOLD MEDAL, AND A REALLY BIG SEA

  Long before he won the gold medal that ended up on his mantel, the Manly Man stood in the sand at the tip of Balboa Peninsula, smoking a cigarette, staring at the biggest waves he’d ever seen.

  “God Almighty,” he said. “That is a really big sea.”

  The Olympic champion standing next to him smiled and nodded. Monstrous breakers, blown to towering heights by an offshore breeze, were being forced together at the last moment by a series of jetties that guarded Newport Harbor. Local surfers called it “the Wedge.” Sensible people called it a death trap.

  Wally O’Connor called it a challenge.

  “You’re right,” said Wally. “This is a very big sea. Isn’t it fantastic?”

  The Manly Man felt the adrenaline course through his body. This was the way he felt every week on the gridiron, moments before the bone-jarring impact at the line of scrimmage would determine who remained standing and who got knocked to the ground. He was addicted to the feeling—which is why he was drawn to this dangerous new fad that Wally had come up with.

  “I’ll take the first pass,” said Wally. “Watch and learn.”

  The Manly Man stepped back into the crowd, lit another Camel, and watched Wally O’Connor glide through the water. It was easy to see why he’d won gold in Paris. He ducked under one wave and then another, swimming hard against the riptide with long, powerful strokes. A hundred yards out, the water was only four feet deep, but the waves were at least eight feet in height—treacherous, to say the least. Wally waited for the wave he wanted, dove into its base, pushed hard off the shallow bottom, and burst out of the crest. Then he began to fly. At least that’s how it looked to everyone who was watching.