by Mike Rowe
I don’t know. I doubt that Bill Hickman knew. But what I can tell you is this: Back in 2002, I wasn’t searching for signs from the universe. I was too busy impersonating a host every night on Evening Magazine.
“Good evening, folks! I’m Mike Rowe, and tonight we’re at the Mondavi Vineyard in beautiful Napa Valley, home to the finest wines in all the world!”
“Good evening, folks! I’m Mike Rowe, and tonight we’re at the Snodgrass Apple Orchard in scenic Pescadero, home to the finest apples in all the world!”
“Good evening, folks! I’m Mike Rowe, and tonight we’re at Eddie’s Electronic Emporium in beautiful downtown Burlingame, where you can save a bundle on your next big-screen TV!”
Never mind Steve McQueen flying through the mean streets of San Francisco in his souped-up Mustang. Imagine, instead, a forty-two-year-old B-list celebrity, racing along the same streets in a Lincoln Navigator (The Official SUV of Evening Magazine!) stuffed with swag: free wine, free apples, free TVs—free whatever I could get my hands on.
“Good evening, folks! I’m Mike Rowe, and tonight we’re coming to you from Futon World in picturesque Alameda, home of the Bay Area’s very best futons!”
Do you have any idea how hard it is to strap a free futon onto the roof of your free Navigator?
Fact is, for a guy who had lost all his money, starring in a show like Evening was just what the doctor ordered. I got free tickets to every show in town, free nights in fancy hotels, free meals in five-star restaurants, and free clothes from Macy’s (The Official Provider of Mike Rowe’s Wardrobe!). It was like QVC, only this time I got to keep all the stuff I was hawking—including my aforementioned gigantic head, cast in bronze. Not what you’d call a fulfilling time, but I wasn’t searching for meaning. I was just trying to get back on my feet, and all that free crap made me feel a lot better—until, one day, the universe did call. Luckily, I picked up the phone.
“Oh. Hi, Mom. How’s it going?”
“Well, your father’s up on the roof doing God knows what, and I’m afraid he’s going to fall off. But I’m fine.”
Never once has my mother answered this simple question without first telling me what my father was doing. Then she got to the point.
“I’m calling about your grandfather. He’s ninety years old, you know, and won’t be around forever. I was thinking how nice it would be if, just once, he could turn on his television and see you doing something that looks like work.”
Mothers. They can be so cruel.
“Well, thanks, Mom. What did you have in mind?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” she said. “How about a logging camp? Or a dairy farm? Or, maybe, a coal mine?”
“It’s California, Mom. Coal’s illegal out here.”
“Well, I’m sure you’ll come up with something,” she said. “Where are you shooting this evening?”
“I believe tonight’s episode will be coming to you from a Tea Room in Chinatown.”
“Oh my,” she said. “Doesn’t that sound exciting. Your grandfather will be riveted.”
That night, I drove back from Chinatown with my Navigator bursting with complimentary tins of Jasmine Dragon Pearls (The Official Tea of Evening Magazine!). Along the way, I thought about our conversation. It had been a while since I’d talked to my pop, and I missed him. Surely, there was room in our show for a segment that he could relate to. Why not mix things up a bit?
And so, the next morning, after a free haircut at Diepetro/Todd (The Official Hair Stylists of Evening Magazine!), I drove all around San Francisco, trying to see the town through my grandfather’s eyes. There were no logging camps or dairy farms or mines of any kind. Just boutiques and cafés and artisanal what-nots. But the answer to my mother’s question was there, all the same—right under my feet. I didn’t know it, but it had been there all along.…
THE STAR OF THE SHOW
Our hero was knee-deep in a rancid river, far below the city he called home. Accompanying him was his loyal cameraman, Branson, along with his guide—a sewer inspector whose name he didn’t know. The men were dressed in orange overalls, rubber hip boots, and yellow hardhats. The inspector carried a bucket that hung from a rope looped around his neck. Our hero followed, and Branson brought up the rear, weighed down by his camera and a microphone attached to a long pole.
“Be careful,” the inspector said. “It’s slicker than snot through here. If you slip, it’s better to fall backwards.”
This was excellent advice. The flux that flowed through these ancient tunnels was filled with the flotsam and jetsam of a million medicine cabinets: tampons and Q-tips, diapers and dental floss, Kotex and Kleenex and condoms that clung to the men’s rubber boots like colored ornaments on an X-rated Christmas tree.
“How much further?” our hero gasped.
“Not far,” said the inspector. “Another hundred yards.”
The trio went deeper into the labyrinth. The tunnel narrowed, and the lights on their helmets revealed red brick walls that seemed to undulate in the gloom. Was our hero hallucinating? Was it a trick of the light, or a phantasm brought on by the stench? No. It was roaches. Millions of roaches, feasting on a permanent glaze of human excrement. Drawn by their headlamps, like moths to a flame, they rushed over to greet the men, covering our hero in a blanket of rippling vermin. He was disgusted, but determined to do his job. And so, turning to Branson’s camera, he addressed his viewers:
“Good evening, folks…”
But that’s as far as he got before a thumb-sized roach crawled into his mouth, causing him to gag and sputter.
“Try not to talk,” the inspector said. “Nothing good happens down here when your mouth is open.”
This, too, was excellent advice, but our hero could not heed it, for talking was his job and the sound of his own voice enchanted him. Turning once more to Branson’s camera, he started again:
“Funny thing about sewers,” he said, but never got to the punchline. A blast of coffee-colored wastewater had erupted from a small hole in the wall, shellacking the bonnier side of his chiseled visage.
“See what I mean?” said the inspector.
Strange popping sounds filled the air as toilets in Nob Hill, above them, were flushed. Left and right, liquids exploded from hidden pipes that were called “laterals.” Our hero knew all about laterals. Before entering the sewer, he’d filled his head with all sorts of effluvia to share with his audience. That, too, was part of his job: to know all there was to know about various subjects, and share his expertise.
But the sewer was not cooperating.
The men pressed on, duck-walking through this shooting gallery of human scat. Pressing through the muck. Pushing through the mire. Splashing their way through a three-dimensional fresco of macrobiotic devastation that only Dante could have divined. Finally, they rounded a corner and arrived at a crossroads where two tunnels converged.
“This whole area needs work,” the inspector said, as he wiped an army of roaches away from the ceiling. “See these rotten bricks in the arch? They all have to come out.”
But our hero was not listening. He was looking again into the lens of Branson’s camera, and clearing his throat.
“The walls around me were built in 1866,” he explained in a crisp, well-modulated baritone. “And today, you’ll find over a thousand miles of tunnels down here, all of which—”
Just then, a sewer rat emerged from the miasma and crept up behind him, as rats often do. He was the size of a shoebox—plump and wet and reeking of urine. In a twinkling, the rodent scampered onto our hero’s back and up to his shoulder. There he paused, perched like a parrot, squealed into our hero’s ear, and dove into his lap. Squealing back, our hero leapt to his feet, smashed his head into the low ceiling, then fell face-first into the sludge as a curtain of roaches rained down upon him.
Never mind Dante. This was a page only Poe could have penned. A portrait that only Bosch could have painted. This was a baptism in a river of shit.
Our her
o pushed himself up from the sludge and tried to recall the difference between hepatitis A and B. Not that it mattered—surely he had contracted both. For once, he was speechless. But the sewer inspector was not.
“Hey, Chief. When you’re done screwing around with the local wildlife, I could use some help over here. Grab that trowel, would ya, and mix me a new batch of grout?”
Our hero sighed. Why not? The sewer had thwarted him at every turn. If he could not do his job, perhaps he could do someone else’s?
“Thanks,” the inspector said, taking the trowel.
For the first time, our hero looked—really looked—at the inspector. The man was in his late thirties with blond hair. He was breathing hard, drenched in sweat, but good-humored. His name was Gene. It said so, right there on his work shirt.
“Please tell me they pay you a fortune.”
The inspector laughed and hammered his chisel deep into the rotten grout.
“I wouldn’t call it a fortune,” he said, “but I’m doing pretty well.”
“How about the smell? Do you ever get used to it?”
“A man can get used to anything,” Gene said.
For the next hour, our hero forgot all about the camera and worked as the inspector’s apprentice. He hammered out bricks. He mixed grout. He bumbled and fumbled and got more wrong than right, but he tried, and that’s when it happened. There, at the subterranean crossroads, covered in poop and taking orders, our hero finally realized he wasn’t the star of the show. The real star was Gene—the modest sewer inspector working beside him.
Thus began a new chapter in the life of our humbled hero, who was inspired in that moment to create a new kind of show. A show with a mission instead of a script; a guest instead of a host. A show you may have seen, that led to a podcast you may have listened to, and a book that you’ll probably finish today. Unless, of course, you decide to go back to the beginning—which would please our hero to no end…
Anyway, that’s the way I heard it.
* * *
See what I did there? I turned myself into a hero. You should try it sometime. All you have to do is put yourself on a pedestal and write about yourself in the third person. Be careful, though—when you cast yourself as the star of your own show, it’s easy to see everyone else as a bit player in the story of your life. That’s what happened to me. After I lost my safety net, I became disconnected from all sorts of things, including the people around me. Until my unplanned baptism in the sewers of San Francisco, I didn’t even know Gene’s name. But, thanks to him (and to Branson, who never stopped rolling), I left that day with footage that inspired the first episode of Dirty Jobs, a show that allowed me to tell the stories of people like my grandfather, not through the eyes of a host who pretends to know more than he does, but through the eyes of the new guy, whose first day on the job is every day.
That would have made my pop proud.
Speaking of heroes, at the start of this book I promised to revisit Paul Harvey—and as I might have mentioned, a promise made is a debt unpaid. So let’s get to it: Paul Harvey was a hero to me. The son of a cop who’d been killed by two robbers, he worked his way up from being an office boy at a radio station in Tulsa, Oklahoma, to hosting the popular radio show that inspired my podcast. For thirty-three years, he told us The Rest of the Story, and the way I remember it, he always put his subjects first.
Obviously, I can’t fill Paul Harvey’s shoes. But I can follow in his footsteps, and I’ve tried to do so in these pages, writing about the people who interest me most. Sadly, many of those people are dead, including a few I knew personally. Joan Rivers, Dick Clark, and Tony Bourdain can no longer tell their own stories. Like Fred King, they live now only in my memory, and the memories of the many people they touched. I’m grateful to have known them all.
Kippy Stroud, too, has shuffled off her mortal coil. I didn’t know her well, but I was happy to spend a year in her haunted mansion. I hope that she and her dad have finally reconciled and forgiven me for permanently borrowing all twenty-one Travis McGee mysteries, which I’ve since read and re-read no less than twenty-one times.
Happily, my dog, Freddy, is alive and well as of this writing, and mostly continent. So too are my dear parents, John and Peggy. Dad’s still volunteering at the hospital, delivering Meals on Wheels, and strutting around on the stage. Mom’s still searching for typos on my Facebook page and working on her second book. May they continue to do so for another hundred years.
Sandy is still pissed off at the Russians for sending Laika into space, but pleased to see me publish an actual book. “Nice to see you finally write something you get paid for,” she says. “Think anybody’ll read it?”
That’s a very good question.
Chuck Klausmeyer, my buddy from high school, still wears that terrible blue blazer he loaned me twenty years ago—even though it no longer fits. He also produces my podcast, in spite of my repeated warnings about working for old friends. Likewise, the Irish Hammer is still on the case, doing her best to keep me from becoming an asshole—or, worse, looking like one. This last chapter, for instance, has led to some gentle interrogation.
“Tell me,” she says, “will you be referring to yourself in the third person from now on? Will you require a new pedestal? And what should I call you? Do you prefer ‘My Hero’ or ‘Your Majesty’?”
I’ve assured her that either is fine.
Grumpy’s is still there, but Johnny’s is no more, and Baltimore’s a worse place for its absence. Sadly, the Baltimore Opera Company is also kaput. Michael Gellert, my buddy who greased the wheels at my first audition, now directs the Harbor City Music Company, one of the very best a cappella women’s choruses in the world. The Chorus of the Chesapeake lives on as well, directed now by Fred King’s son, Kevin. The old guard is mostly gone, but a new batch of men are singing the same songs in four-part harmony, at a volume consistent with that of a Metallica concert.
Shortly after I left CBS to work on Dirty Jobs, Evening Magazine went off the air. I’m told my departure and the show’s demise were purely coincidental. QVC, on the other hand, is alive and well, reaching into over 100 million homes and generating billions of dollars in annual sales. I haven’t always spoken about my tenure there with reverence, but the truth is, everything I needed to know about this business I learned there. For that, I’m indebted. I suppose I should also thank the rat. We’re no longer in touch, but thanks to his timely intervention, I wound up with more than a hit show. I wound up with a foundation and something that looks very much like a career.
Speaking of rats, the trusted financial adviser who stole my money finally went to jail, and deservedly so. But I can’t tell you I was a completely innocent victim. Deep down, I suspected the figures he presented might be too good to be true, but I kept my head in the sand and told myself the story I wanted to believe. Lesson learned.
I also promised, at the outset, to tell you the truth, the way I heard it. And for the most part, I think I have. But of course, the truth and the whole truth are never the same—and that brings me back to Phil Harris. He suffered a massive stroke, in 2010, and ended up in a hospital bed, dying, unable to speak. Todd Stanley, the cameraman who had filmed him for years, was there with him. Todd’s camera was off, out of respect. But Phil motioned Todd to his bedside and scribbled a few words on a scrap of paper: “You’ve got to get the end of the story.”
And so, Todd Stanley picked up his camera and the millions of people who’d gotten to share Phil’s life came together to share in his death. Kind of extraordinary, right? Even… heroic?
Phil Harris believed a story without an ending wasn’t really a story.
Paul Harvey believed a story wasn’t over until you heard the rest of it.
The way I see it, both were correct.
Regarding Paul Harvey and the rest of his story: He passed away, too, a year before Phil Harris did. He was one of the few broadcasters ever to receive the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Not long ago, I heard fr
om his son. Paul Harvey Jr. wrote and produced The Rest of the Story for his dad, and when his letter arrived at my office, I was afraid to open it. For all I knew, it was a cease-and-desist order regarding my podcast.
But it wasn’t. It was a very kind note, along with a generous check for the mikeroweWORKS foundation. According to Paul Jr., his dad would have liked the work we were doing. Modesty aside, that was a proud and humbling moment for me—one more thing to be grateful for.
Finally, a point of clarity regarding Jon Stewart. I dropped his name earlier because I wanted to circle back later and tell you about the time I was hired to host The Daily Show—not once, but twice. It’s an interesting story, but my friend Alex (a wreck of a man and one heck of a writer) says that my book is already too long. His instincts have proven useful—so far, anyway—so I guess I’ll save that one for another day. Instead, I’ll just say, for the record, that I did meet Jon Stewart, once upon a time, way back in 2006. I was a guest on The Daily Show, answering Jon’s trenchant and insightful questions. Questions like “So tell us, Mike, what was your dirtiest job?”
The way I heard it, Jon Stewart called my answer “the funniest thing he’d ever heard.” But you can watch our interview on YouTube and judge for yourself.
In fact, I think you should.
Go ahead. Google it.
I’ll wait…
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
When Jennifer Bergstrom over at Simon & Schuster first encouraged me to write a book, I told her I’d get back to her. Ten years later, I did, and learned to my surprise that her offer was still good. I’m grateful to Jen for her extraordinary patience with me, along with the support of her excellent team—Karyn Marcus, Aimee Bell, Jennifer Long, Molly Gregory, Jennifer Robinson, John Vairo, Caroline Pallotta, Steve Breslin, and Jaime Putorti—all of whom tolerated my endless rewrites and chronic disregard for internal deadlines with understanding and good humor.