The Way I Heard It

by Mike Rowe

  For a guy living in a haunted mansion, McGee was great company. For a guy stuck on the graveyard shift at QVC, he was nothing short of inspirational. I read every book in the series and found myself yearning to live like my fictitious friend. Not on a houseboat, necessarily, or as a salvage expert, per se, but as an inveterate freelancer, unencumbered by unnecessary obligations. Thanks to McGee, I started to question the wisdom of working at any one place for any one boss. And so, when QVC fired me once and for all, I began auditioning only for those projects that seemed doomed to fail. Ones that would not tie me up for more than a few months at a time.

  To my delight, opportunities were everywhere.

  Joan Rivers provided the first with that QVC/CBS hybrid Can We Shop?—a rhetorical question whose answer turned out to be a very literal “no.” It was canceled after three episodes, but no one blamed me. In fact, I was praised for my performance and quickly hired to host Romantic Escapes—a Discovery show that turned out to be neither one of those things. It was canceled after the first season, but again, I wasn’t blamed. I was hired to host New York Expeditions for PBS, The Most for the History Channel, and Bodysense, a syndicated program sponsored by Prevention magazine, with a weekly audience of dozens. I also hosted Worst-Case Scenario, a breathtakingly unwatchable TBS show that lived up to its name in every conceivable way. But was I concerned?

  I was not. I’d had a revelation: I could make real money by hosting shows that no one watched. My favorite failure was an empty shell of a show that aired exclusively at 37,000 feet. American Airlines needed stuff that, in its words, “looked like content.”

  On Air TV, it was called.

  As the host, I was given a pass that allowed me to fly first-class to any destination American served, then make a show about that location. But when I say “show,” I don’t mean a TV show. I mean a piece of fluff designed to surround commercials specifically produced for American’s captive audiences. Basically, it was an airborne infomercial that took me all over the United States. But the pass also took me to Sydney, Cape Town, Amsterdam, and other exotic places—because, coincidentally (or maybe not), that “magic ticket” stayed active for several years after On Air TV had been canceled.

  This happy oversight I neglected to bring to the airline’s attention.

  A Scout is thrifty, after all.

  Point is, all of those projects paid a fair wage for a few months of my time. Better yet, they gave me the freedom to audition for other kinds of work: commercials, industrial films, narration, voice-overs. I even did some modeling work. There I was, standing in my underwear in a Boscov’s catalog holding a football, pretending to throw it—presumably to another thirty-two-year-old man in his underwear standing on some other page. I didn’t know if I was selling footballs or underpants, but I didn’t care. I got paid.

  I auditioned for Domino’s, too. They were introducing a new deep-dish pizza and wanted a low voice for the ad campaign: “Looking for a James Earl Jones quality.” I channeled Darth Vader as I read the copy: “When it’s gotta be deep and it’s gotta be thick,” I said in my deepest basso profundo, “it’s gotta be Domino’s.” Amazingly, I got the gig—and ended up with fifty thousand dollars in residuals.

  Can you imagine? Fifty grand, for one silly line. The checks arrived that summer in $800 increments, filling my mailbox with thousands of dollars, week after week. I had seen the light. Voice-overs were my secret weapon. Residuals, my salvation.

  Travis McGee kept his stash hidden in the bow of his boat, but I knew better. I sent my earnings to the trusted financial adviser I’d come to think of as my friend and built up my nest egg—a respectable safety net that allowed me to start taking my retirement in early installments, just like Travis McGee. Do I sound proud of myself? Well, I was. While most of my friends in the industry were swinging for the fences—struggling to get that big hit—I concentrated on singles. Singles that paid off in spades. By 2002, I had a financial portfolio worth north of a million dollars. I didn’t own much more than a toothbrush, lived in hotels, worked eight months of the year on projects I didn’t care about, and took full and complete advantage of my magical American Airlines ticket. I was thirty-seven years old and delightfully unencumbered—until the day a letter arrived, informing me that the trusted financial adviser I’d come to think of as my friend had been running a massive Ponzi scheme with his clients’ money. It was a betrayal unlike anything I had ever experienced.

  Overnight, I lost everything. The safety net I had constructed was gone, and Travis McGee was nowhere to be found…

  HIS LAST LETTER HOME

  The postman snapped the rubber band off the envelopes and slid another stack of mail through the slot in the front door. Ingrid heard the squeal of the tiny hinge, the chirp of tin on tin, and the soft whoosh of a new stack of mail landing on an old stack of mail. Those were the sounds that she tried to ignore—the sounds that ushered in a new day of grief.

  “Hungry, Mommy! Hungry now!”

  That was a sound that she couldn’t ignore.

  In the kitchen, Ingrid spread peanut butter on toast for her two-year-old son as the telephone jangled in its cradle. “Hello,” she whispered. “Yes, this is she. Yes… he would have been thirty-one in January.… You’re welcome.”

  Ingrid left A.J. to his peanut butter toast and wandered back to the front door. With a bare toe, she pushed aside the catalogs and bills and regarded the dozens of sympathy cards—a literal pile of pity she couldn’t bring herself to read. But there, buried in the condolences, Ingrid saw the unmistakable handwriting. His handwriting. And a postmark that read September 23, 1973. It was a letter from her husband. A letter from beyond the grave.

  * * *

  Fort Jackson, South Carolina. September 1966. Ingrid’s husband is just another private, waiting in line to make a phone call home. Thanks to what the army called his “issues with authority,” this particular private has managed to fail basic training—and that means another six weeks away from his new bride. Ingrid will not be happy.

  As he waits his turn to deliver the bad news, the young private does what he always does: he studies the people around him and makes up stories to pass the time.

  That guy with the soggy shoes and the hangdog expression, for instance? Maybe he’s just come from the carwash pool, where he’s been ordered to clean a fleet of muddy jeeps. And the guy with the arm tattoos that read HEY and BABY? Maybe he’s a new father. That or a committed ladies’ man who wishes to proclaim—in indelible ink—his unshakable belief that women come and go but tattoos are forever.

  The private smiles to himself. Ingrid will love that one.

  * * *

  Truth was, Ingrid found all of his stories delightful. But she never thought they would make her rich and never imagined that they would make her a widow. All the same, six years had gone by, and now here she was, her grief temporarily suspended by the shock of seeing a message from the husband she had buried five days earlier. With trembling hands, she opened the envelope, removed the pages, and began to read her husband’s last words: the very words she’d hoped and prayed he would one day say. Moments later, awash in unspeakable grief, Ingrid tried to place a long-distance call to her mother. But when the operator heard Ingrid’s last name, she hesitated.

  “I hate to ask. Are you any relation?”

  Ingrid sobbed. “Yes. He was my husband.”

  “Oh, honey, I’m so sorry. All the girls down here just loved him. You know that, right? We were his biggest fans.”

  Ingrid sobbed some more. “I know,” she said. “He loved all of you, too.”

  * * *

  Back in line, Ingrid’s husband turns his attention to the soldier immediately in front of him. The red-rimmed eyes. The hunched-up shoulders. The balled-up fist, gently tapping against his fresh crew cut. He’s on the wrong end of a Dear John call, no doubt about it. Ingrid’s husband imagines the girl on the other end. A deceitful girl. A girl who has cheated on the soldier with his best friend.
/>
  The call ends. The phone slips from the soldier’s hand and dangles in midair. Ingrid’s husband is close enough to hear the operator say, “Oh, honey, I’m so sorry. Are you still there? Would you like to place another call?”

  Blinking back a tear, the soldier grips the receiver and pours his heart out to the operator. Ingrid’s husband doesn’t eavesdrop. He simply watches the soldier’s face and dreams up a little story—just to pass the time.

  Eventually Ingrid’s husband makes it out of the army and back home. Briefly. He keeps writing stories, but when A.J. arrives and money becomes more of a concern, the former private begins telling his tales to anyone who might pay to hear them. Turns out, Ingrid isn’t the only one who likes them. People say they feel so real. They say his characters remind them of their own neighbors.

  And so the former private takes his tales on the road, and before long the money begans to roll in. But being away from his family is painful. Ingrid misses her husband, A.J. misses his dad, and the man who used to write stories—just to pass the time—begins to agonize over the days he can never get back. Once, after an all-too-brief visit home, he writes the story of a lonesome troubadour who yearns to relive his favorite days over and over again. People like that one, too. A lot.

  Then, just as his career is taking off, Ingrid’s husband does the unthinkable: he quits. In his last letter home, the young writer promises to start writing different kinds of stories. Novels and screenplays. Anything that doesn’t have to be told night after night, over and over again. He ends his letter with this: “Remember baby, it’s the first sixty years that count, and I’ve got thirty more to go. I love you.”

  Later that same day, he drops the letter in the mail and boards a private plane that crashes moments after leaving the runway. Five days after that, the postman on Ingrid’s porch delivers the best possible news at the worst possible time.

  * * *

  We still remember the characters Ingrid’s husband described. The kid in the soggy shoes with a case of the Car Wash Blues. Rapid Roy the Stock Car Boy with one tattoo that said BABY and another one that just said HEY. We still remember the roller derby queen, the pool room hustler no one messed with, the baddest man in the whole damn town, and of course the anonymous telephone operator whose sweet voice calmed a heartbroken soldier at the lowest point of his life.

  We remember these characters not only because they feel real, but because the man who brought them to life never made it home. Because his death catapulted his stories to the top of the charts, even as the characters he created ensured his own immortality.

  Naturally, Ingrid still has his last letter home. It’s kept in a box just for wishes and dreams that will never come true. It is, perhaps, the ultimate love letter—a promise made from beyond the grave by a homesick troubadour who yearned to save time in a bottle. A teller of stories, a singer of songs… named Jim Croce.

  * * *

  Late one Tuesday night in the back room at Johnny’s, my high school friend Chuck and I listened as old men from the Chorus of the Chesapeake sang the saddest songs ever written. As always, the men were broken down into foursomes, harmonizing around the square tables that held bowls of peanuts and pitchers of draft beer. Things began with “Danny Boy,” as they always do, but then moved on to a song I’d never heard before: “Little Pal,” an impossibly maudlin tale of a man who must say good-bye to his young son before heading off to prison, for a crime he didn’t commit.

  Little pal, if Daddy goes away

  Promise you’ll be good from day to day

  Do as Mother says and never sin.

  Be the man your daddy might have been…

  The men stared into each other’s faces as they sang and wept unashamedly. “Good Christ!” Chuck said. “That’s gotta be the saddest song ever sung!” But Chuck was wrong. As “Little Pal” came to an end, another toe-tapper called “Old Folks” began.

  Everyone knows him as Old Folks

  Like the seasons, he’ll come and he’ll go

  Just as free as a bird, and as good as his word

  That’s why everybody loves him so…

  This song goes on to describe a world where all the old people suddenly drop dead. It’s beyond depressing and very powerful. This song actually made me miss my grandparents, which was weird, since they were alive and well at the time.

  Once again the men wept as they sang, but before anyone could mourn the death of “Old Folks,” another pitch pipe blew and another lamentation began. Are you familiar with a peppy tune called “The Little Boy That Santa Claus Forgot”? No? Neither was I.

  You know, Christmas comes but once a year for every girl and boy

  The laughter and the joy they find in each brand-new toy.

  I’ll tell you of a little boy that lives across the way

  This little fella’s Christmas is just another day.

  I’ll cut to the chase. The little boy writes to Santa, asking for a soldier and a drum. He’s devastated when he gets neither. In fact, the little boy who Santa forgot gets nothing at all for Christmas. Zero. Zilch. Why? Because his father was killed in the war. The “laddie,” you see, hasn’t got a “daddy.”

  Chuck stifled a nervous giggle. “Sweet Jesus!” he said. “Who the hell writes a song like that?”

  I had no answer to give him, but I did notice that many of the older men who’d been listening were smiling, too—even as they wept. Some actually chortled. Interesting… there’s nothing funny about orphans and death, shell shock and prison, but when old men sing about pain and loss in four-part harmony, the imagery becomes exponentially more intense. So much so that the songs collapse under the weight of their own mawkishness, leaving you with little choice but to laugh at the unbearable tragedy of it all.

  Somewhere across the crowded room, someone blew another pitch pipe and we were treated to the story of an old man living alone for the first time in his life, grieving the loss of his beloved wife. At her grave site, he says:

  Dear old girl, the robin sings above you,

  Dear old girl, it speaks of how I love you.

  The blinding tears are falling, as I think of my lost pearl,

  And my broken heart is calling, calling for you

  Dear old girl.

  The quartet of men who sang that song were all widowers. But there they sat, weeping and smiling and drinking beer and singing into their grief. In the far corner, another pitch pipe blew and the room was treated to a jaunty rumination on crib death. I’m not even kidding. It begins with a father who walks into the nursery, many months after his little girl’s death:

  I had opened wide the shutters of the long-deserted room

  And a flood of golden sunshine chased away the dreary gloom

  While gazing ’round with tenderness where baby last had laid

  I chanced to see her fingerprints upon the windowpane…

  How the silent tears were falling

  Foolish tears that I wept in vain

  But my heart forgot its pains

  As I kissed away the stains

  Kissed away those fingerprints, off the windowpane.

  That was an impossibly depressing tableau—yet even more laughter rang out in the back room at Johnny’s as “Fingerprints” came to its weepy conclusion. That’s when it occurred to me that those men didn’t sing sad songs to reconnect with sadness; they sang them to let sadness go. That’s when I understood that those sad old songs took real, heavy feelings and helped distribute their weight. And that brings me to the saddest song I heard on that particular night—a song my old quartet still sings when we get together, every decade or so. A song so sad, Chuck can’t get through it without giggling.

  Playmates were they, girl and lad,

  She’s home today, lad feels sad

  Doctor who calls, whispers low,

  “When the last autumn leaves fall,

  Then she must go.”

  Lad with a tear climbs a tree.

  “I’ll keep her here,” murm
urs he.

  Big man in blue sternly cries,

  “What are you doing there?”

  Lad replies,

  “I’m tying the leaves so they won’t come down;

  So the wind won’t blow them away,

  For the best little girl in the wide, wide world,

  Is lying so ill today.

  Her young life must go when the last leaves fall;

  I’m fixing them fast so they’ll stay.

  I’m tying the leaves so they won’t come down,

  So Nellie won’t go away.”

  Can you picture it? A little boy, desperate to keep his playmate from an early grave, tries to prolong her life by tying leaves to a tree! They just don’t write ’em like that anymore.

  When I learned about Jim Croce’s last letter home and the family he left behind, I thought about the little boy up there in the tree, tying the leaves so they wouldn’t come down, and I wondered if one day they might sing a song about poor Ingrid, in the back room at Johnny’s.

  God knows, her story’s sad enough.

  ONE HELL OF A TOLL

  On the day of the great celebration, the invalid looked through his telescope at the crowd gathered below. Thousands of people had already assembled. Hundreds more were on their way, hoping to see the passenger embark upon a most unlikely trip—a trip experts had predicted would never be completed.

  The invalid rolled his chair close to the window and considered the price of the little expedition. Fifteen million dollars. Twice as much as what he’d budgeted. Somehow the cost had gotten out of control. Way out of control. Unforgivably, totally, completely out of control. Today we call such profligacy “business as usual.” Back then, they called it “the price of progress.” Either way, $15 million for a ten-minute trip was one hell of a toll.