The Way I Heard It with Mike Rowe - 148: A Book to Pass the Time

Episode Date: February 11, 2020

Because you need something to break the boredom of marching 300 miles in 10 degree weather to bring three boat thieves to justice... or so I'm told.

This is the way I heard it. In 2008, Time Magazine assembled a list of the ten greatest novels ever written. Their methodology was simple. They polled 125 literary geniuses and asked them to submit their top ten picks. Then they combined all 125 lists to determine the collective top ten. At the very top of that list is a novel by Leo Tolstoy called Anna Corinina. I happen to own this novel. In fact, I'm looking at it right now.

It's a big book, 864 pages, and according to websites that track such things, the average reader should be able to complete it in 15 hours. I'm pointing this out because I've owned Anna Karenina for as long as I can remember, but I've never actually read it. Because, like you, I don't have the time to read an 864-page book written in 1890s. But then I stumbled across the story of a 25-year-old deputy sheriff in North Dakota, who was awakened one morning in 1886 to discover that his boat had been stolen. The boat in question was worth about $30, not an insignificant sum in 1886, but not enough for a normal deputy to drop everything and chase three armed bandits down the Little Missouri River. But this particular deputy was not entirely normal.

He didn't care, for instance, that the temperature outside his log cabin was 10 degrees. He didn't care that pursuing the thieves would require him to build another boat from scratch. He didn't care that the Little Missouri River was jammed with breaking ice or that navigating downstream would be very, very dangerous. All he cared about was getting his boat back and punishing the men who took him. it. And so, when he finished building a new boat in which to pursue the thieves, the young deputy packed a bag with some food, a camera, a journal, a book, and lots of extra ammunition for his trusty Winchester. Then he enlisted the help of two ranch hands to accompany him and went off to find the thieves who stole his boat. The next three days were difficult and best

described by the deputy himself, who took the time to write about the many obstacles they encountered, beginning with the ice. Quote, it moved slowly, he wrote, its front forming a high, crumbling wall and creaming over like an immense breaker on the seashore. Along with the shifting ice and treacherous currents, the men were in Sioux country, and the Sioux Indians in 1886 were not exactly thrilled with white people. Plus, the deputy, never knew when they might stumble upon the thieves down river, who would no doubt react poorly to the sudden presence of local law enforcement. Thus, the deputy had to remain constantly vigilant. When he found the bandits, six days after his boat was stolen, tensions were high.

Again, from the deputy's journal. Finally, our watchfulness was rewarded, for in the middle of the afternoon, as we came around to bend, we saw in front of us the stolen boat moored against the bank, while from among the bushes some little way back the smoke of a campfire curled up through the frosty air. What happens next could become the screenplay for a feature-length film. The deputy sneaks up on the thieves and quickly disarms them, at which point he has every right to shoot them on the spot or hang them from the nearest tree. Indeed, common sense and frontier justice demanded. But the deputy doesn't do either. Instead, he takes the criminals to the nearest town for a proper trial. Unfortunately, the nearest town is Dickinson, a couple hundred miles

downstream, and the temperatures are still below freezing, and the Little Missouri River is still clogged with ice, and the Indians are still a constant worry. The next eight days were as irksome as any I ever spent, he wrote, for there is very little amusement in combining the functions of a sheriff with those of an Arctic explorer. Low on supplies and slowly freezing to death, the deputy might have reconsidered his plan and strung the thieves up as his man encouraged him to do. But no, the deputy doubled down. down on his strategy, believing he can make better time on foot. He instructs his men to continue downriver in the boats, while he escorts all three prisoners to Dickinson on foot and by himself.

This is where the story gets interesting, because Dickinson is at least 40 hours away, straight through the Dakota badlands, and the temperatures are still below freezing, and the Indians are still a constant worry, and the deputy is now outnumbered by three criminals who would very much like to kill him. We plotted through the dreary landscape, he wrote, day after day, hunger, cold, and fatigue, struggling with a sense of dogged, weary resolution. Nights were especially difficult, because I couldn't bound the prisoners, for doing so in those temperatures would have meant freezing off both hands and feet. So I simply stayed awake, reading. while keeping the prisoners covered at all times with the Winchester.

Finally, after an exhausting three-day march with no sleep and very little food, the deputy reached the main street of Dickinson, where he turned his captives over to the local sheriff. In his journal, we can still read his final entry. Under the laws of Dakota, I received my fees as a deputy sheriff for making three arrests and compensation for the third. 300 miles traveled, a total of some $50. It's impossible to read the deputy's words and not be struck by his incredible determination and

resolve, but I'm also struck by the photos he took, the journal he kept, and most of all, by the book he brought along to pass the time. Can you picture it? An exhausted deputy sitting by a campfire night after night. His trusty Winchester trained on three unbound desperadoes as he plows through all 864 pages of Leo Tolstoy's magnum opus. Of course, if you're already familiar with the biography of this famous deputy, you know he never went anywhere without a book,

even when he was settling the frontier, winning the Spanish-American War, hunting big game in Africa, or mapping uncharted rivers in South America. But his ability to read 864 pages of Leo Tolstoy's magnum opus while marching three criminals across the badlands of North Dakota, well, that is without precedent. And my favorite true story about the incomparable determination of our 26th presidents,

the one and only, Teddy Roosevelt. which is a long way of saying, maybe I have time to read Anna Karenina after all. Anyway, that's the way I heard it. Hey there, it's me again. This is the way I talked about the way I heard it, the only spontaneous analysis of the only podcast for the curious mind with a short attention span. Many of you, maybe five, have asked me to talk a little bit at the end of each episode about the circumstances that led to. its writing. And initially, this struck me as a terrible idea because I was doing it already, you know, at the top of each episode. But upon further reflection, I had to admit, it doesn't make a

whole lot of sense to tell you why I wrote a story that you haven't heard yet. So I thought perhaps I would free associate for a couple of moments to satisfy that request and see, in general, if this is a colossal waste of time, or if more than five or six if you actually like it. A book to past the time was inspired initially by a quote I stumbled across from David McCullough, who, you know, the great writer, many, many, many great history books, Adams in particular, I loved. Well, he said, if Teddy Roosevelt could read Anna Karenina while he was chasing down three boat thieves, I ought to be able to finish Atlas Shreve. or whatever it was he was talking about.

I don't remember, but I didn't know what he was talking about regarding Teddy Roosevelt, who's one of my favorite presidents. So I did some research. By research, I mean, you know, I hopped on Google. And sure enough, found the basics of the story I just shared with you. That really happened back when Teddy Roosevelt was a deputy sheriff. And I was struck by that story. And then I kind of forgot about it, as I often do, until I was on a plane, a few weeks

later, flying God knows where, sitting next to a guy about my age who was halfway through James Missioners' tome called Chesapeake. And I struck up a conversation with him because I had to laugh. Everybody around us was fixated on their laptops, their Kindles, their iPads, their iPods. He was the only guy on the whole plane with a book. And we started talking about that and the commitment it takes to read a book these days. that size while you're on the road. It weighs 10 pounds. He's traveling around with it all over the place. And so that reminded me of the quote from McCullough. And then I went home that night and I sat down and I thought, hmm, is there a way to turn this into the way I heard it? And that's when I saw Anna Karenina

staring at me from my shelf. And that's when I googled to see what the experts deemed the greatest novel ever written. And wouldn't you know it was Anna Karenina? So that's how this story came together. No two stories come together in the same way, but this happened because of the typical bullia base of things, a hot mess of circumstances, seemingly unrelated, that all of a sudden started to take shape and then makes sense. And then I just started writing and then I recorded it, and then you listened to it, and that's how it happened. I'm sorry it doesn't happen more frequently. Many of you have also pointed out, and by many this time, I actually mean lots of you, that the inconsistency with which this podcast unfolds has become something between disappointing and vexing.

My words, not yours. And for that, I can only apologize. I'm not going to go into that, but I am going to bring this probably doomed experiment to a conclusion. That's how episode 148 got written. This has been the first and quite possibly last episode of the way I talked. about the way I heard it. The only spontaneous analysis of the only podcast for the curious mind with a short attention span. I'll talk to you next week. Probably.