The Way I Heard It with Mike Rowe - 128: One Hell of a Toll

Episode Date: March 12, 2019

The journey was an incredible achievement - but the true cost was difficult to bear.

This is the way I heard it. On the day the great celebration, the invalid peered through his telescope, but the crowd gathered below. Hundreds had already assembled. Hundreds more were on their way, hoping to see the famous passenger embark upon a most unlikely journey, a journey 14 years in the making. A journey the expert said could never be completed. The invalid rolled his chair closer to the window and considered, the cost of his little expedition, $15 million, over twice what he'd budgeted for. Today, we call this sort of runaway spending, business as usual. Back then, they called it

the price of progress. Call it what you will. Fifteen million dollars was one hell of a toll. Through his telescope, the invalid watched the passenger approach the vehicle, turn to those assembled, and began to speak. He couldn't hear the words, but he knew what was being said. The passenger was thanking the people for their patience, thanking them for their support, thanking them for the honor of being the first to go

where no man had gone before. When the passenger finished, the crowd applauded. The fireworks exploded. The band began to play. And then the passenger climbed into the vehicle waved to the crowd, and rode into history. The invalid watched it all through the lens of his telescope, and wept, because he knew, better than most,

that the true price of progress was a hell of a lot more than $15 million. Maybe if his wife had been with him on that historic day, she could have brought the invalid some comfort. She'd been good at that over the years, very good. Ever since his escape from that terrible fire, 60 feet below the surface, pain had been his constant companion, and comfort, hard to come by. He recalled the strange tingling in his feet and hands, followed by the intense pain in his knees and elbows. That's how it started. Then the headaches began, headaches that made him scream and moan and wish to God he'd stayed below with the men who perished in the flames. his wife, however, never left his side and treated his symptoms like the full-time nurse she was forced to become.

She wasn't with him today, but she was there when the swelling left him mute, when the numbness left him paralyzed, when his skin began to molt and slough off in pieces. Today, we call it the bends. Back then, they called it casein disease. Call it what you will. It was one hell of a toll. The poor man never did recover, but he did remain on the job, supervising the progress from his bedroom window,

always behind his telescope, always racked with pain, ever more dependent on his wife. In time, she became his ears and hands, relaying his instructions to the men who labored below. She also dove headlong into physics, hydrodynamics, structural engineering, and various other topics deemed unsuitable for women of her time. Then, when her husband's condition deteriorated further,

she began to take meetings on his behalf, meetings to which women were typically uninvited, meetings with crooked politicians, ruthless financiers, and a clutch of unscrupulous vendors, she lobbied for the money that made the journey possible, and somehow she got it. $15 million for a journey that would cost no less than $3 billion today. Through his telescope, the invalid watched the passenger drive past the pier,

the scene of the first calamity, not the calamity that left him crippled, the one that left him in charge, a classic workplace injury, a slip, a fall, a broken foot, a deadly infection, and just like that, his father. The man who first proposed this audacious journey was gone. But of course it wasn't really just like that. It took two weeks for the old man to die. First he had to endure the mysterious contractions that bent his spine backwards, leaving his body arched and twisted.

Then he had to contend with the spasms that caused his arms to jerk wildly before they too went, weirdly and forever rigid. He would never forget the way his father had howled as his face slowly retracted from his skull, the muscles in his head tightening and seizing, pulling his features ever backwards. When the chief engineer finally died, his eyes were wide and bulging,

and his teeth were bared in a terrible grin. Today, we call it tetanus. Back then, they called it lockjaw. Call it what you will. It was one hell of a toll. The invalid lowered his telescope and brushed away a tear as the passenger rolled out of sight and into history. His work was finally done.

The journey was officially underway, a $15 million journey that's been repeated so many times since. The original cost is long since forgotten. In fact, here in the 21st century, you can take the same trip for free because your toll has already been paid. Paid by the 27 men who were crushed, burned alive, torn in half, and hopelessly mangled in a series of gruesome workplace fatalities. Paid by hundreds of other men who lost their fingers and toes

working on a job site that OSHA would have shut down on day one. Paid by the countless immigrants. who labored for $2 a day in death traps called caissons. There, in those pressurized wooden coffins, 60 feet below the surface, an army of forgotten men dug the footings by hand, building the mighty barbacons one stone at a time until the limestone towers finally emerged

from the watery depths to scrape the Manhattan sky. Those were the men who paid your toll. men like John Robling, the engineer who designed the revolutionary road upon which this epic journey might take place, and the first man to die during its construction. Men like his son, Washington Roebling, who inherited his father's dream only to become another of its many casualties, an invalid, doomed to watch the progress through a telescope as his wife took it upon herself to complete the work that he could not. Make no mistake, it was a family affair,

but Washington's wife was the robling who got the job done. Her name was Emily, and she too understood the price of progress. Forty years before she had the right to vote, this remarkable woman took charge of the most ambitious construction project in American history. That's why she wasn't alongside her husband. husband on that historic day in May, way back in 1883. On that day, she was proudly going where no man had gone before, specifically across the East River in a horse-drawn carriage. Emily Roebling was the first passenger to do so on a road the expert said could not be built, a road that hovered in space, 135 feet above the water. a road that would not be there without her.

Back then, they called it the eighth wonder of the world. Today, we call it the Brooklyn Bridge. Call it what you will. Getting it built, that took one hell of a toll. Anyway, that's the way I heard it.